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.
boatsnguitars wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2023 5:28 am
Again, I find you disingenuous. I think you must be aware of the myriad discussions surrounding the accuracy of the Bible - EVEN AMONG CHRISTIANS!
You know this, but seem play ignorant. Why?
Because this is our conversation about trusting the bible...or not.
Are you not aware that some Christian denominations and sects treat the Bible more literally than others? Are you not aware of the main points of contention?
But this is our conversation.
Since you are aware of these issues (I must assume), I wonder why you ask me to re-state them - especially since the OP isn't asking for evidence, but asking "How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?"
But you're going to give me an example soon, anyway........
"if it's not inerrant?" what logically follows?
If.... If...... ! There are over 65 books in the bible, and some folks want to chuck the whole library out because there are errors in some of them..... I can't help that kind of mindset any more than I can help somebody who insists that God caused its publication and sao it's all correct.
I don't care what these folks think at present..... I care about what you think.
What would a Christian say, if they say the Flood wasn't literally Global, but wants to assert the Rez was real? What logic would they use? I think you are also familiar with all those arguments, too.
Well you'd need to write to a Christian that thinks that.
I've read the depositions in the New Testament and the one which I believe is the most accurate doesn't mention 'the rez' as you put it.
Or, like Bishop Spong who believes the Rez is an allegory. How does he trust the Bible in it's claims of redemption, God, etc. when - on the basic face - he doesn't believe in the literal truth of key point in the Bible.
But you're talking to me....... and I'm waiting for your opinion about whether the bible should be trusted...at all.
I feel the OP was pretty clear: If one doesn't accept some claims in a text, what process does one use to trust other claims in the text? Is that not a worthy discussion?
If it's inerrant then the OP is moot.
..... because it was written by so many pens, and compiled over hundreds of years, even I can see that so many of its accounts, reports, laws and claims are worth taking notice of.
When I think of 'the Flood' I am reminded of the many mass-extinction events that have happened here, and whilst I don't think that any human author back then could have been aware of these, I just find those events to be most interesting in connection with 'the Flood'.
I don't have to believe in 'the Rez' because the deposition that I take most notice of doesn't mention it. You see, even the gospel writers had different agendas, and one was horribly fixated upon propaganda.
And so to answer the OP, we can trust many of the accounts in the bible, even knowing about the hyperbole, metaphorical accounts and some outright deceptions that can be found.
Or did you think that God wrote it?
We have your opinion, and now I will wait for Christians to scream and howl because they believe it can be fully trusted - "God-inspired", they'll say.
My opinion of the Bible is that it's not reliable. The only reason we can trust some of the more mundane things in the Bible is because of more reliable texts or facts that corroborate those things. Things like some cities existing, Rome existing, etc. We can reliably say there were fishermen, carpenters, tax collectors, prostitutes - but not witches (in the supernatural sense), demons, gollums, etc.
We can presume people knew the magic tricks of 'healing' the blind, lengthening legs, etc. but not that people would say a magic spell over someone and their leprosy was cured.
All said, you and I are probably in general agreement, but I probably go a little further, as I have no reason to trust the Bible since I don't know when it was last edited, and how we could even begin to verify the unique claims in the Bible, since there are no reports outside the Bible of Jesus doing any of the miracles attributed to him.
That said, the Bible is 100% reliable in explaining what each writer wanted to convey at the time they wrote it (or when the editor edited it) - well, not 100% because we still have translation errors that obscure the original intent of the author.
For all we know, it was originally a cook book. "To Serve Man"
“And do you think that unto such as you
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew
God gave a secret, and denied it me?
Well, well—what matters it? Believe that, too!”
― Omar Khayyâm
otseng wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2023 7:56 am
What process should be used? By confirming if the major claims are veridical through examination of the non-Biblical evidence and see if it corroborates with the Bible. A major claim is a doctrinal claim. Minor claims are non-doctrinal issues. The most significant doctrinal claim of Christianity is the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And I'm providing evidence to support this claim through the Turin Shroud.
I think you'll find that few serious historians think that the supernatural claims in any religious text are to be taken seriously. So, there's a Bayesian threshold that you'd have to overcome first - which no religion has.
Yes, historians assume naturalism to be true in their work, just like scientists. Since they assume naturalism is true, of course they don't take supernatural claims seriously. It is not because naturalism has been demonstrated to be true, but because it is assumed to be true.
To get to a supernatural causation, I'm using philosophy and logic, not a historical or scientific methodology, both of which should not appeal to a supernatural causation.
Also, note that the supernatural element is only involved with the resurrection. The crucifixion and death of Jesus and the TS align with each other without the need to appeal to the supernatural.
Then how should a text be determined to be authoritative?
For one thing, by inerrancy.
That means no document can be authoritative, except with the possible exception of the Bible and other religious texts which people claim to be inerrant.
So, you're saying there do not exist any documents outside of religious texts that are authoritative?
Again, are there any authoritative documents that are inerrant?
I assume you're taking the position that the Quran and Book of Mormon are authoritative.
I'm not referring to religious texts, but any text - constitutions, contracts, dictionaries, wills, deeds, rules, papers, text books, journals, rule books, etc.
Why should your interpretation of the data be preferred over the interpretation of the scientists who performed the test?
Because I've presented the counterevidence. If you have logical counters to my evidence, please present them.
Why should anyone have to interpret your counterevidence the way you do?
This is the entire premise of this forum. We can argue for truth through logical argumentation and evidence. Anybody can claim anything they want, but it's merely opinion if there is no logical argumentation backed by evidence.
If Christian scripture isn't inerrant (it isn't without error), as you admit, perhaps the "evidence" of the Turin cloth more likely supports this interpretation of Jesus:
Anybody can have any interpretation of Jesus that they want. But again, to argue for its truthfulness, it must be backed by logical arguments and evidence.
A major claim is a doctrinal claim. Minor claims are non-doctrinal issues.
Not if.....
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. (Luke 16:10)
I have no idea what you're trying to get at. If you do not agree with my criteria on how to differentiate between a major claim and a minor claim, then what is your criteria?
oldbadger wrote: ↑Fri Aug 04, 2023 2:03 am
The Shroud...? I put that piece of cloth in the same box with all the pieces of wooden cross, teeth, cups, bones and any other items that Christianity 'found and displayed' for grooming the faiths of the unaware.
I'd like to focus on this, since the shroud is my primary evidence. Yeah, that view is the most common perception. But when one starts to do actual research on it, it goes way beyond any other religious relic. As a matter of fact, it even goes way beyond any other artifact in human history.
boatsnguitars wrote: ↑Fri Aug 04, 2023 4:48 am
My opinion of the Bible is that it's not reliable. The only reason we can trust some of the more mundane things in the Bible is because of more reliable texts or facts that corroborate those things. Things like some cities existing, Rome existing, etc. We can reliably say there were fishermen, carpenters, tax collectors, prostitutes - but not witches (in the supernatural sense), demons, gollums, etc.
It goes way beyond just mundane claims. The Bible spends so much time on making historical claims that it gets boring reading all the names of people, names of places, description of events, etc. And though this thread is massive already, we only had time to briefly cover the tower of Babel, the global flood, archaeology, Egyptology, cosmology, etc. Now, we are exploring the capstone of Christianity and the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus.
The second episode on Reason to Doubt discusses the imaging on the shroud.
The Shroud of Turin Image is NOT Jesus | Debunking the Shroud ep.2 (Artists, Radiation, & Chemistry)
They present some proposals on how the image was formed. First hypothesis they discuss is it was a work of art.
Hypothesis 1: Medieval artist w/ paint or stain
10:44
Number one explanation is that a medieval artist did it with some kind of paint or stain. They painted just like you'd expect an artist to do it. This was actually the first explanation that was posited in history.
This explanation for the Shroud has been around basically as long as we've known the Shroud has been around.
One champion of this model of the artist's explanation was Walter McCrone. And he examined the Shroud using extremely powerful microscopes and he found vermilion and red ocher, which are pigments from the 14th century.
They admit it being a work of art has many problems.
12:24
There's a lot of disconfirming pieces to this. Direct evidence of the fibers, and here I'm looking at the summary of Schwalbe and Rogers, could find no evidence of liquid being absorbed. So you can see a picture there of the image extremely faint but if you look all the way down with the microscope, there's no liquid meniscus marks.
No fibers are cemented together, so like you don't have two fibers glued together with some kind of material like if you had painted it.
There's no evidence of brush strokes or any other mark of application. And also remember this is a half tone when you're seeing those darker bits of brown there on the screen it's not because the fibers themselves are any darker there's just more darker threads. So it seems like that would be pretty hard for an artist to do.
Also the faintness itself makes it hard for an artist. So just looking at this you're really up close I tell you that it's dark and you can you can see like some are dark some are light but it's really hard to like see that there's an image. If you're close to this in fact you have to to be like a few meters away before you can really like see the image. Until then it just kind of looks like a kind of stained piece of fabric.
And so that doesn't necessarily preclude an artist from having done it. I mean the artists have been super intelligent over the ages. If there was an artist maybe they figured a way around it, but it would be another obstacle in the way of the artist hypothesis.
But if there was an artist involved it seems they used a method a lot more sophisticated than just taking a brush to the shroud. Like it clearly didn't do that. So whatever they did if an artist was involved they used something more sophisticated than that.
Then they discuss the Maillard reaction.
Hypothesis 2: Maillard reaction (Ray Rogers)
16:59
So the next class of explanations has to do with chemical reactions.
19:27
The body that was wrapped in this shroud amidst gases so when when you die you're going to emit gases, lovely things like ammonia and some other things called cadaverine and these gases are volatile. And these volatile gases can react with sugars the sugars that are on the linen to produce a Maillard reaction. And that would lead to browning and importantly would lead to Browning only on the surface, not all the way.
First of all like it's a natural mechanism so that's great. We don't have to posit some kind of supernatural layer
to reality.
Then they discuss the issues with the Maillard reaction.
22:10
There are some problems. So first of all Ray wasn't an expert on the Maillard reaction.
On top of that this hasn't really been picked up a lot in the literature. I can only find two peer-reviewed papers that discuss this mechanism and they're both pretty dubious.
25:58
So if we're just recapping this section for the Maillard reaction one it's a naturalistic explanation right so it would account for a good portion of the things that made the image. But what you found was that there's not a lot of research done on it and the stuff that has been done wasn't necessarily done in a peer-reviewed fashion. There hasn't been any replication of the process to show it being duplicating a good hypothesis.
There are other issues with the Maillard reaction, but they don't discuss those issues. See my list of issues with the Maillard reaction here: viewtopic.php?p=1124081#p1124081
The next proposal they discuss is radiation. Since Jordan is a nuclear engineer, they spend a lot of time on this one.
Hypothesis 3: Radiation
27:09
It's time for some radiation and boy am I excited about this. If you don't know I'm a nuclear engineer, which means I think radiation is super cool and so I've been reading a lot about it.
There's a lot of problems with this model so start with the protons would need to have a very specific band of energy. The protons are flying off of Jesus body they hit this thread they need to be absorbed and just the first few fibers but never further, never further than three.
They're like so turn around and hit the back side they went to the quantum realm real quick no it doesn't really explain why the back side of the fibers would also be colored. But even worse than that while the Shroud would be like on Jesus face sometimes you know it's also draped on the body so not every part of the image would have been in contact with the skin.
So that means the protons have to travel through some air to get to the Shroud. But if they're going to be low enough energy that they'll only penetrate the outer 0.4 microns, they don't have enough energy to move that space. Now that for that to work then you'd have to have a finely tuned profile of proton energies such that where the where the the fabric is touching the skin the protons are low energy so they don't penetrate too far.
Something that radiation does is it travels isotropically and what that means is it travels about equally in all directions. If you just randomize all these things it's going to roughly equal to the same everywhere. It's not it doesn't have any preference for up or down right.
Ours looks like perfectly vertical, but and there's it would actually be like this because it's draped on the dude's head. But there's nothing over here there's no image on the side, so if it was actually radiation you'd expect it to go into every direction and you'd have uh some burning I'm going to call burning stop burning but some like darkening around the sides of this dude's torso. It would basically make a less sharp image because it would be like a blurred.
But don't worry they thought of this and they have a solution. This radiation is special radiation, see this radiation is vertically collimated.
They specifically discuss Robert Rucker's neutron radiation hypothesis.
Hypothesis 3c: Neutron Radiation
41:31
We're going to go to Robert Rucker's vertically collimated radiation burst hypothesis. This is a hypothesis that is going to bear directly on the radiocarbon dating that we talked about last time.
To be fair this hypothesis does exactly that it makes some very firm predictions. Like if you made a measurement anywhere else on the Shroud either it's going to have ridiculously high carbon 14 levels or it won't. And his model requires it does and it even tells you about how many. In fact there's so much carbon 14 there at the middle where like it was showing it would be 8400 years in the future.
Problems with Rucker's neutron radiation hypothesis is that it is completely utterly and fully ad hoc. It is starting at the end point and working backwards.
Ruckers has said in interviews that the strength of his hypothesis is that it matches all the data. While this is true in fact he he the word he used was that it's astonishing. It's astonishing it matches this. It should be astonishing to absolutely nobody because that's the input to his model. And this if you take nothing else away from this very long diatribe on radiation, understand this Rucker's model has no value because all of the known data points are inputs to his model. It cannot help but to match them.
You remember that curve from before that showed like the carbon 14 date there's no mechanism to tell him the number of neutrons. All he knows is that it must yield 1260 at this one spot and so he does a simulation and then normalizes his curve so it automatically agrees to the first requirement.
Until those testable predictions have in fact been tested nobody should put one picogram of certainty on this thing. It is completely and utterly useless as an explanation until that happens.
They do not discuss any other image theories and completely ignore Jackson's cloth collapse theory.
Summary
1:02:12
That's all of the main classes of image hypotheses. You've had your artist hypothesis hypothesis that someone painted it. There were issues with not seeing paint, not seeing the markers of paint, and that sort of thing. So if an artist did do it, he didn't do with paint. You have the chemical reaction, which has a nice natural pathway and it seems plausible, but it hasn't been demonstrated to actually like work. And it hasn't been scrutinized in a lot in the peer-reviewed literature, so definitely problems there. And then you have the radiation hypothesis which is ad hoc from start to finish and completely nuts. You know it ignores a ton of problems and basically any kind of obstacle is just waved away as a miracle.
So they discuss only three proposals and none of them are presented as viable.
They then admit they don't know how the image was made.
1:02:57
The one thing we can say for sure is that we don't know how the image was made. That's the takeaway everyone should take. That is the key point. the answer to how is the image on the Shroud of Turin made is we don't know. But we don't know does not mean therefore I do know and it was God.
I mean it if I had to pick I would throw I throw the radiation in the trash immediately because that's just completely implausible. From there I'd be left with either some kind of natural thing so either it was a natural mechanism that happened to a first century thing which I don't think it happened so probably it was a natural mechanism or an artistic rendering or some combination of the two in the 14th century.
Yet they can then conclude the Shroud of Turin is NOT Jesus? This is such a non sequitur argument. As they admitted, based on the explanations they've explored, at most they can say is they don't know how the image was made.
Strangely, they never even considered Jackson's cloth collapse theory. It's not like Jackson is a nobody. He was the president and founder of STURP. There's even a BBC documentary video about his theory. Perhaps they'd rather have a "I don't know" position than admit there's a theory that is more plausible than any other existing theory?
Diogenes wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2023 5:52 pm
'And this is crucial, there is no basis for supporting WAXS as a reliable method of dating. There are simply too many variables and those variables are subject to opinion which is sometimes fueled by irrational (faith based) beliefs. This is why we can't find stats on it. It simply is not a reliable method for dating as the number of variables in the article demonstrate.'
More assertions without providing evidence and a citation. And more accusations of irrational faith based motivation.
Do you seriously think that by redacting part of what I wrote, you can claim I did not leave a citation and explanation?
The full quote: "If mechanical deterioration could really be used as a chronograph, then surely it would have been taken up by now, but a glance at Google Scholar tells us that ‘Multi-parametric micro-mechanical dating of single fibers coming from ancient flax textiles’ has only been cited 11 times since publication in 2014, 7 times by Fanti himself, and all of them solely in connection with the Shroud. The archaeological world, it seems, remains unimpressed.
And this is crucial, there is no basis for supporting WAXS as a reliable method of dating. There are simply too many variables and those variables are subject to opinion which is sometimes fueled by irrational (faith based) beliefs. This is why we can't find stats on it. It simply is not a reliable method for dating as the number of variables in the article demonstrate
Read the article. It demolishes WAXS as a dating method for the reasons I summarized. ONLY 'shroud' people use it.
BTW the burden of proving a dating method works and is reliable is ON THE PERSON WHO ADVOCATES ITS USE.
'Shroudists' invariably use junk 'science' when actual science does not serve their preconceived belief.
So, you're saying there do not exist any documents outside of religious texts that are authoritative?
There are plenty of authoritative texts outside religious documents----but only the religious documents claim divine inspiration, and probably not even all of them.
Anybody can have any interpretation of Jesus that they want. But again, to argue for its truthfulness, it must be backed by logical arguments and evidence.
Since the Turin cloth isn't sufficient evidence of the reliability of the Christian Bible, the Christian Bible being errant and therefore unreliable, some other interpretation of the Turin cloth would have to be more likely.
Since we agree that the Christian Bible isn't inerrant, what convinces you that it's authoritative beyond the claim that it's authoritative?
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. (Luke 16:10)
I have no idea what you're trying to get at.
If a writer's "minor" claim is wrong, how can that writer's "major" claim be trusted to be right?
If you do not agree with my criteria on how to differentiate between a major claim and a minor claim, then what is your criteria?
A claim, "major" or "minor", is just that----a claim. Claims are not arguments in support of themselves.
boatsnguitars wrote: ↑Fri Aug 04, 2023 4:48 am
My opinion of the Bible is that it's not reliable. The only reason we can trust some of the more mundane things in the Bible is because of more reliable texts or facts that corroborate those things. Things like some cities existing, Rome existing, etc. We can reliably say there were fishermen, carpenters, tax collectors, prostitutes - but not witches (in the supernatural sense), demons, gollums, etc.
It goes way beyond just mundane claims. The Bible spends so much time on making historical claims that it gets boring reading all the names of people, names of places, description of events, etc. And though this thread is massive already, we only had time to briefly cover the tower of Babel, the global flood, archaeology, Egyptology, cosmology, etc. Now, we are exploring the capstone of Christianity and the Bible, the resurrection of Jesus.
Right, I wouldn't trust the Bible in most of those areas as they are not confirmed by anything else. The Bible has not shown to be reliable in its own right.
“And do you think that unto such as you
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew
God gave a secret, and denied it me?
Well, well—what matters it? Believe that, too!”
― Omar Khayyâm
oldbadger wrote: ↑Fri Aug 04, 2023 2:03 am
The Shroud...? I put that piece of cloth in the same box with all the pieces of wooden cross, teeth, cups, bones and any other items that Christianity 'found and displayed' for grooming the faiths of the unaware.
I'd like to focus on this, since the shroud is my primary evidence. Yeah, that view is the most common perception. But when one starts to do actual research on it, it goes way beyond any other religious relic. As a matter of fact, it even goes way beyond any other artifact in human history.
Well that must come down to religious belief. If you believe that the Turin Shroud is really the cloth that covered Jesus then that's what you believe.
But since I don't believe that Jesus even died in Jerusalem that 'last week' it means little or nothing to me.
