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

[otseng]

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:

How 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?

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.

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Thread Milestones

• Case study of Hezekiah
• Start discussing global flood / Flood Model summary
• Recap arguments of authority of the Bible
• Start discussing Tower of Babel / Tower of Babel summary
• Start discussing archaeology / Philosophy of science / Origin of alphabet / End of discussion on archaeology
• Start discussing cosmology / Concluding cosmology
• Start discussing Shroud of Turin / Summary top TS imaging theories / Created DefendingChristianity.com and TS subforums / Shroud of Turin summary
• Start discussing Bible and resurrection
• Start discussing the Messiahship of Jesus / Messiahship of Jesus wrap up
• Start discussing Old Testament ethics
• Summary argument of atheism and morality / God basis for objective morality
• Start discussing genocide / Genocide summary argument
• Start discussing slavery / Slavery summary argument
• Start discussing homosexuality / Homosexuality summary argument
• Old Testament ethics summary argument
• Start discussing philosophy / Summary argument on philosophy
• Start discussing creation of universe / Summary argument universe was created

[JoeyKnothead]

1. Jesus was borne of him a magic birth and you and your y chromosome can go eat a pile of mud.

Using your logic, abiogenesis is a pile a mud, literally. Since abiogenesis is some magical incantation of producing a living cell out of primordial soup that cannot be proved to be veridical, evolution has no legs to stand on.

So let's dismiss abiogenesis as somehow involved with putting an image on the shroud. Let's dismiss abiogenesis as the cause of a y chromosome in the child of a virgin pregnancy.

What explains this y chromosome?

I spent a lot of time presenting the facts on the shroud. The issue is what explanation best explains the facts. So, besides Jackson's cloth collapse theory, what do you believe it is? If you have no alternative, then the cloth collapse is by default the best explanation.

I believe... The shroud is a religious relic of dubious origin, and that where confirmation can't be had, speculation'll rule the day.

Notice our claimant here demands an explanation, declaring the absence of such makes their claim true (best) by default. This ain't how facts work.

I remind the observer of the three major problems here...

1. A virgin pregnancy can't be shown to produce a male offspring. No virgin birth, no biblical Jesus.

2. The image on the shroud can't be compared to a contemporaneous image.

3. The blood on the shroud can't be compared to a sample we don't have.

These problems are so damaging to shroud claims, our resident theist has chosen to ignore them in favor of, "a magic man did him a magic thing".

[otseng]

Yet there's a clear, dark image of the bottom of one foot----including the heel. The first photo you posted shows the fabric covering that heel at the same angle at which it would have covered the top of the head----where there is no image.

The angle encoding I propose is the angle of the cloth relative to the plane along the body from head to the feet. I would disagree with Jackson's depiction of Jesus' foot angle relative to the plane. I think it must've been parallel with the plane of the body. It appears Jackson believes there was a suppedaneum on the cross that Jesus had his feet on. So, it would cause the feet to be more like 45 degrees to the plane.



But I believe the right foot was nailed directly to the cross and the sole of the right foot was flush against the cross. The left foot was nailed on top of the right foot.



Paul Maloney has a paper on how he believes the feet were affixed to the cross, which I think is pretty reasonable. He bases his theory primarily on the foot blood patterns and not on the foot imaging.

My conclusion therefore is this: First, two nails in the right foot
flattened the foot against the stipes of the cross creating the downward
flow of blood and the capillaric spread of blood throughout the bottom
of the foot. But the left foot, nailed with only one nail, retained the
arch of the foot with little chance for any capillary action to spread the
blood.

https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/stlmaloneypaper.pdf

Since the foot imaging is fairly dark, the right foot flat against the cross is consistent with angle encoding.

[otseng]

Notice our claimant here demands an explanation, declaring the absence of such makes their claim true (best) by default. This ain't how facts work.

This is how debates work: I have a position and you have a position; I defend my position and attack your position; you defend your position and attack my position. I've never claimed Jesus was born of a virgin, that we have a "contemporary" picture of Jesus, or we have a "contemporary" sample of his blood. So, your "attacks" are all spurious and irrelevant since I've never made these claims. What I am claiming is the shroud is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus and I brought up my final arguments many pages ago which you have consistently failed to address. As for your claim, I don't even know what it is. Are you even willing to claim it is a medieval forgery, which pretty much all shroud skeptics do claim?

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to otseng in post #2782

The angle encoding I propose is the angle of the cloth relative to the plane along the body from head to the feet.

You haven't illustrated how cloth collapse vacuum would be limited to vertical direction, except to propose that the body conveniently----and inexplicably----disappeared in pieces.

Suppose that I were to propose a different explanation for gravity. Instead of a warping of space, what if I were to attribute gravity to the existence of countless invisible and incorporeal creatures known as "downpullers" which hold everything in place and pull down what isn't supported? Some downpullers could be small and pull your popcorn to the floor when you tip the bowl; some could be large enough to keep the planets swinging around the sun.

The existence of downpullers explains every gravitational effect we observe. Does that make them the best explanation for gravity, especially when we can't observe downpullers?

[earl]

The Foot image
The Urantia Book ,Paper 187,section 2,1st .par "....they bound and nailed his feet to the wood,using one long nail to penetrate both feet"
This may give credibility of one foot over the other angle

[JoeyKnothead]

Notice our claimant here demands an explanation, declaring the absence of such makes their claim true (best) by default. This ain't how facts work.

This is how debates work: I have a position and you have a position; I defend my position and attack your position; you defend your position and attack my position.

Ackshually, site rules indicate the challenger is under no obligation to provide alternate explanations, or to defend claims they don't make.

I've never claimed Jesus was born of a virgin,...

https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/The-Virgin-Birth

There's nine times the Bible claims it just on the one quick google. As you promote this shroud, we're confronted by claims that bear on the matter. Whether you promote such is beside the point. We all know Christians have a wont to pick and choose which Bible claims they accept. My position is that as you refer to the Bible in order to match up scars, we're all to consider the Bible in it's entirety, as relates to reliability of claims.

...that we have a "contemporary" picture of Jesus, or we have a "contemporary" sample of his blood. So, your "attacks" are all spurious and irrelevant since I've never made these claims.

These are claims made regarding the individual in question, and so are worthy of consideration whether they make you proud or not.

What I am claiming is the shroud is the authentic burial shroud of Jesus and I brought up my final arguments many pages ago which you have consistently failed to address.

I have addressed my concerns with your position. That you reject my concerns speaks volumes about your faulty conclusions in this matter.

As for your claim, I don't even know what it is. Are you even willing to claim it is a medieval forgery, which pretty much all shroud skeptics do claim?

My claim is that we have no means to confirm this shroud as being anything other'n a piece of cloth with the apparent image of a human male somehow (placed?) upon it. (However placed, naturally or no)

I claim we can't confirm the provenance of the shroud, the y chromosome issue, the image, or the blood as belonging to the character in question. Someone who can English, please fix that sentence for me

In the absence of confirmation, the best we can do is judge this item, under this context, as unexplained.

[otseng]

You haven't illustrated how cloth collapse vacuum would be limited to vertical direction, except to propose that the body conveniently----and inexplicably----disappeared in pieces.

As I said:

Neither of us know exactly the mechanics of dematerialization. As mentioned before, it could've dematerialized in layers, like an MRI. If it was by layers parallel to the front and back cloth and from the outside of the body inward, then there would've been little vacuum at the top of the head.

I'm not claiming I know exactly the process of dematerialization. As a matter of fact, I don't know exactly how any of the features was produced. I can reach a certain point explaining each of the features, but can never reach the point of complete understanding. This is why the shroud is the most scientifically studied artifact in human history. There are so many thing left unanswered in so many disciplines of science that we cannot fully grasp and yet to be researched. Most likely it will require for us to discover new technologies in order for us to more fully grasp it, and this includes body teleportation, if it ever comes about.

What the evidence points to is simply the body vanished while the cloth was wrapped around the body. What better alternative is there that can account for the data?

[otseng]

Notice our claimant here demands an explanation, declaring the absence of such makes their claim true (best) by default. This ain't how facts work.

This is how debates work: I have a position and you have a position; I defend my position and attack your position; you defend your position and attack my position.

Ackshually, site rules indicate the challenger is under no obligation to provide alternate explanations, or to defend claims they don't make.

Yes, there's no rules that people should debate correctly. But, if you're going to debate me, you'll need to step up your game and not just continually post irrelevant claims.

I'm trying to help you here Joey. I've given you a start by telling you who I consider to be the top shroud skeptic. All you have to do is just a little research on things he has said and simply post what he has said and the evidence he has for it. I'll give another tip, he shows up in skeptic YouTube videos.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to otseng in post #2787

What better alternative is there that can account for the data?

You're really not in a position to ask that question, since there's so much data which your hypothesis doesn't account for. At least downpullers explain all gravitational observations.

As I pointed out earlier, a good sign that you're off-track is having your explanations get more complicated instead of simpler.

[JoeyKnothead]

Notice our claimant here demands an explanation, declaring the absence of such makes their claim true (best) by default. This ain't how facts work.

This is how debates work: I have a position and you have a position; I defend my position and attack your position; you defend your position and attack my position.

Ackshually, site rules indicate the challenger is under no obligation to provide alternate explanations, or to defend claims they don't make.

Yes, there's no rules that people should debate correctly. But, if you're going to debate me, you'll need to step up your game and not just continually post irrelevant claims.

I'm content in having the observer decide what's relevant and what ain't.

I'm trying to help you here Joey. I've given you a start by telling you who I consider to be the top shroud skeptic. All you have to do is just a little research on things he has said and simply post what he has said and the evidence he has for it. I'll give another tip, he shows up in skeptic YouTube videos.

I've done enough research to know male children require a chromosome their mother doesn't have. That fact alone is quite problematic for the "he's there, I swear" crowd.

Then, with image and blood analysis as advanced as it is, we still have no comparison samples.

I don't need some YouTuber trying to tell me these facts are so damaging to your case, I know it all by myself.

So, instead of trying to address these problematic problems, we get this whole "You should debate some other way" attempt to avoid the problems.