How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Argue for and against Christianity

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
otseng
Savant
Posts: 20689
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:16 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA
Has thanked: 206 times
Been thanked: 348 times
Contact:

How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1

Post by otseng »

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:
nobspeople wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:42 amHow can you trust something that's written about god that contradictory, contains errors and just plain wrong at times? Is there a logical way to do so, or do you just want it to be god's word so much that you overlook these things like happens so often through the history of christianity?
otseng wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 7:08 am The Bible can still be God's word, inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy without the need to believe in inerrancy.
For debate:
How can the Bible be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy?

While debating, do not simply state verses to say the Bible is inspired or trustworthy.

----------

Thread Milestones

User avatar
JoeyKnothead
Banned
Banned
Posts: 20879
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:59 am
Location: Here
Has thanked: 4093 times
Been thanked: 2576 times

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1851

Post by JoeyKnothead »

otseng wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 10:56 pm
JoeyKnothead wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 5:24 pm It's easy to do when one doesn't consider all the facts.
What facts are you referring to? And please don't tell me it's your "3 facts".
"Tell me what you're talking about, but don't tell me what I don't wanna hear" is a poor means of discovering truth.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
-Punkinhead Martin

User avatar
otseng
Savant
Posts: 20689
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:16 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA
Has thanked: 206 times
Been thanked: 348 times
Contact:

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1852

Post by otseng »

The first procedural problem is what DrNoGods mentioned...
DrNoGods wrote: Mon Feb 06, 2023 2:02 pm To me, a bigger concern might be the fact that so few TS samples were tested, and all from a single "patch" about 3" x 1" in size. The fact that three indpendent labs all obtained similar results is certainly supportive of the results, but I would have thought more samples from different locations would have been taken if they really wanted to get the best results and put the issue to rest.
If one is going to do C-14 testing, multiple samples from different parts would have a more meaningful result. But, it was only taken from a single patch.
As a precautionary measure, a piece twice as big as the one required by the protocol was cut from the Shroud; it measured 81 mm × 21 mm (3.19 in × 0.83 in). An outer strip showing coloured filaments of uncertain origin was discarded.[37] The remaining sample, measuring 81 mm × 16 mm (3.19 in × 0.63 in) and weighing 300 mg, was first divided in two equal parts, one of which was preserved in a sealed container, in the custody of the Vatican, in case of future need. The other half was cut into three segments, and packaged for the labs in a separate room by Tite and the archbishop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarb ... d_of_Turin

This single patch is arguably not representative of the entire cloth. Here's an image of the patch that was taken relative to the entire cloth....

Image

Most likely, this was decided by the church since they certainly wouldn't allow parts of the image to be cut. And it would be best to use a section that would not dramatically affect the presentation of the shroud. Also, it was already cut there before in 1973 by Raes.
In 1973, Gilbert Raes, a textile expert, was allowed to cut a small sample of the Turin Shroud. The
sample included a part of the main piece (Piece 1: 40mm.x13mm.) and of the side-strip (Piece 2:
40mm.x10mm.) as well as the sewing thread that joined the two pieces together.
https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/thibaultr7part1.pdf

That sample is typically referred to as the Raes sample and the entire area is called the Raes corner.

Though 3 labs tested parts of this small patch, it doesn't really matter how many labs tested it. It could be 7 or 100 labs, it's still in effect only one small sample from a single location on the entire shroud.

User avatar
otseng
Savant
Posts: 20689
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:16 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA
Has thanked: 206 times
Been thanked: 348 times
Contact:

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1853

Post by otseng »

JoeyKnothead wrote: Fri Feb 10, 2023 12:15 am "Tell me what you're talking about, but don't tell me what I don't wanna hear" is a poor means of discovering truth.
You have the opportunity to convince people you are saying "truth" in your thread. I eagerly await for your evidence to support your assertions there.

User avatar
EarthScienceguy
Guru
Posts: 2226
Joined: Thu Aug 16, 2018 2:53 pm
Has thanked: 33 times
Been thanked: 44 times
Contact:

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1854

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #1849]
AMS blindly detects C-14 regardless of how it got into the sample. So the issue with C-14 in coal deposits reduces to how it may have gotten there if not by the primary assumption used in C-14 dating: A continuous interaction with the environment (eating, breathing) by a living thing produces equivalent amounts of carbon isotopes as in the environment, and at death the isotopes all decay according to their half-lives. Measuring the amount of C-14 relative to C-12 and C-13 can then establish an age when the living thing stopped living... IF nothing comes along to disturb this scenario.
I am not a big fan of the Shroud argument. But I did have a professor during my master's program that highly supported it. You may have already covered this I did not read the whole thread on this topic. One of the major problems with carbon 14 dating is that carbon 14 can change in the atmosphere because of sunspots and the amount of vegetation on the earth. So anything that you want to try to date with carbon 14 you have to know how much C-14 was in the atmosphere where the living thing died. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswith ... cc3b8e3e81

User avatar
otseng
Savant
Posts: 20689
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:16 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA
Has thanked: 206 times
Been thanked: 348 times
Contact:

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1855

Post by otseng »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #1859]

Yes, C-14 dating relies on many assumptions. If any are wrong, then it can either skew the results or make it invalid. These assumptions have not been specifically listed, but I'll touch on some as we continue to discuss C-14.

User avatar
DrNoGods
Prodigy
Posts: 2719
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 2:18 pm
Location: Nevada
Has thanked: 593 times
Been thanked: 1645 times

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1856

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #1859]
One of the major problems with carbon 14 dating is that carbon 14 can change in the atmosphere because of sunspots and the amount of vegetation on the earth. So anything that you want to try to date with carbon 14 you have to know how much C-14 was in the atmosphere where the living thing died.
These have been discussed earlier. C-14 dating is not some panacea for dating things under about 50,000 years old, but neither is any other sophisticated measurement technique measuring anything else. The reason we use any measurement instrumentation (eg. MRIs, CT scans, NMRs, Gas Chromatagraphs (GC), the Large Hadron Collider instruments, LIGO, and countless over examples) is to get the best information possible.

All of these instruments and techniques require maintenance, calibration, know-how for operating and interpretation, and properly prepared samples. Some are purely analytical (eg. a GC) in that samples with known values for the property being measured are subjected to analysis, and if a range of such samples produce correct results then the probability is high that an unknown sample can also be measured reliably.

In the case of the shroud, the issue seems to be with the sample itself and nothing to do with the AMS C-14 measurements themselves. If that is the case, then the discussion is not about C-14 dating at all but whether the sample taken is actually representative of the original shroud, and if it was did it get contaminated over time to skew the C-14 results, or was there contamination between the time it was extracted from the shroud and received by the labs that somehow (???) resulted in roughly AD 1300 dates by all 3 labs. If any of these things happened then of course the C-14 results would not be accurate ... but this would be no fault of the AMS C-14 measurements themselves, or that technique in general. It would be a sample problem not a C-14 problem.

Still seems strange that if they really wanted the C-14 dating results to provide a definitive answer, they would have taken more samples from different areas of the shroud. But again, the people involved evidently believed that this particular area was original material or the whole effort would have been a poorly planned effort that was a waste of time and money.
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
John Paul Jones, 1779

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
Mark Twain

User avatar
brunumb
Savant
Posts: 6020
Joined: Thu Nov 02, 2017 4:20 am
Location: Melbourne
Has thanked: 6751 times
Been thanked: 3234 times

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1857

Post by brunumb »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #1856]

Has anyone taken samples from similar fabric known to be from the 1300s and carbon dated it for comparison? The same for first century fabric.
George Orwell:: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”
Voltaire: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
Gender ideology is anti-science, anti truth.

User avatar
otseng
Savant
Posts: 20689
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:16 pm
Location: Atlanta, GA
Has thanked: 206 times
Been thanked: 348 times
Contact:

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1858

Post by otseng »

After the STURP results were published, the group officially fulfilled their purpose and disbanded. However, many of the original team members wanted to continue to study it, so they formed STURP II.
Dr. John Jackson and Tom D' Muhala present Cardinal Ballestrero with proposals for further scientific work on the Shroud. They have quietly formed a new group called "STURP II" and enlisted the participation of many of the original team members.
https://www.shroud.com/history.htm

They submitted proposals to do a subsequent study of the shroud. However, due to some politicking, STURP II proposals were eventually rejected and the C-14 labs were able to be the sole testers of the shroud.
As is well-known, the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) had detailed plans for a second round of testing. These tests would have been more sophisticated than, and developed out of, the week-long testing that STURP did in 1978.

The 1984 STURP proposal for C14 dating was sensible, although they lacked any personnel with actual field experience in C14 dating, and crucially in "handling" the C14 lab grandees. This flaw, combined with some devilishly deceptive behavior on the part of Harry Gove and others, led ultimately to the C14 dating project being totally divorced from STURP, and the proposed further testing of the Shroud being quashed.
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wmeacha ... sturp2.htm

It was the influence of the C-14 labs that prevented STURP II from doing any further research on the shroud and to not be involved in the C-14 dating.
In 1984, STURP submitted a test proposal for twenty-six tests, including a C-14 test.

In July 1985, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI), approved the proposal; STURP would be given two weeks to perform their tests.

Meanwhile, representatives
from various C-14 labs lobbied the authorities to do only a C-14 test. That contingent was being
led by Dr. Harry Gove, co-inventor of the aforementioned AMS C-14 dating method. Eight days
after Cardinal Ratzinger gave his approval for the STURP tests, Gove, along with Dr. Victor
Canuto, the right-hand man of Dr. Carlos Chagas of the Pontifical Academy of Science, the
Pope’s scientific advisory body, met in New York with Monsignor Celli, Vatican ambassador to
the United States. Canuto then advised the Pope that STURP’s tests were “dangerous.”

Then in 1988, STURP submitted the last of their proposals. By the time a sample was taken
on April 21, 1988, for C-14 dating, the labs had managed to convince the Church authorities to
only do the C-14, AND they managed to keep STURP from being involved in any manner.
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/8 ... GGSLRBV4ZA
"For reasons that Cardinal Ballestrero and I were never able
to understand, a deployment formed aiming at excluding any
research that was not the radiocarbon dating."

Dr. Luigi Gonella, scientific advisor to Cardinal Ballestrero,
after STURP submitted to the Vatican a proposal for 26
interdisciplinary tests in 1984
https://www.academia.edu/35676841/Polit ... Dating_S25

Why would anyone want to prevent STURP from doing any additional research on the shroud? Why would the C-14 labs consider it "dangerous" for the STURP team to continue to do non-destructive tests, while it is the C-14 labs that will be doing destructive tests?

To this day, STURP is the only scientific body that has done any extensive hands-on research on the shroud. So, they had the most knowledge on the shroud. But not only were they not consulted, the C-14 labs were instrumental in preventing their further research on the shroud and any involvement in the C-14 dating. This means the C-14 labs were not really a proponent of open scientific research, but only furthering their own agenda, which is a breach of honest scientific pursuit.

User avatar
DrNoGods
Prodigy
Posts: 2719
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 2:18 pm
Location: Nevada
Has thanked: 593 times
Been thanked: 1645 times

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1859

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to brunumb in post #1862]
Has anyone taken samples from similar fabric known to be from the 1300s and carbon dated it for comparison? The same for first century fabric.
You'd think every possible measurement method for determining the age of something as important as the shroud (to the religious who see it as highly significant) would have been sought out by the people who really want an answer. The comments by otseng in post #1863 indicate that at least some attempts like this were blocked (although this by itself does not invalidate the AMS C-14 results), and no surprise politics were involved as it usually is for something this visible and controversial, but the Wikipedia article does mention additional tests beyond C-14 (already mentioned earlier in the thread).

One of these illustrates the disagreements in interpretation of the same data:

"In October 1978, a team of scientists affiliated with STURP took 32 samples from the surface of the Shroud, using adhesive tape. Of those samples, 18 were taken from areas of the Shroud that showed a body or blood image, while 14 were taken from non-image areas .... McCrone reported that no actual blood was present in the samples taken from the Shroud ... Other members of STURP rejected McCrone's conclusions and concluded, based on their own examination of the Shroud and the tape samples, that the image on the Shroud could not be explained by the presence of pigments. ... John Heller and Alan Adler examined the same samples and agreed with McCrone's result that the cloth contains iron oxide. However, they argued that the exceptional purity of the chemical and comparisons with other ancient textiles showed that, while retting flax absorbs iron selectively, the iron itself was not the source of the image on the shroud. ... "

Several other types of analysis were also described in the Wikipedia article (pigment tests, forensics, image analysis, flowers and pollen) and in the many links otseng has provided. It seems that a lack of definite conclusions from these other analyses is what has placed heavy weight on the C-14 results as those should be more definitive (despite the politics) if the sample tested was indeed representative of the original material, not contaminated prior to extraction, or afterwards, and there was no conspiracy between the three measurement groups to fake the test results. Again, the issue seems to be with the sample itself that was used for the C-14 dating, rather than the C-14 dating process itself (despite any politics that were involved).
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
John Paul Jones, 1779

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
Mark Twain

User avatar
JoeyKnothead
Banned
Banned
Posts: 20879
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:59 am
Location: Here
Has thanked: 4093 times
Been thanked: 2576 times

Re: How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

Post #1860

Post by JoeyKnothead »

otseng wrote: Fri Feb 10, 2023 7:46 am
JoeyKnothead wrote: Fri Feb 10, 2023 12:15 am "Tell me what you're talking about, but don't tell me what I don't wanna hear" is a poor means of discovering truth.
You have the opportunity to convince people you are saying "truth" in your thread. I eagerly await for your evidence to support your assertions there.
Kinda hard to support my position with you chasing me down threatening to ban me.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
-Punkinhead Martin

Post Reply