What Could God do About Bible Errors?

[Purple Knight]

Hypothetically. I'm not saying the Bible has errors. I'm saying, what if people want to put lies in?

If I'm an unscrupulous monk, wanting to foist my own ideas on what I'm copying, and I just decide to lie like a dog and put down what I want to put down, what can God do about it? Can he act against me without violating my free will, which he has known compunctions against doing?

If I decide to burn originals and say I lost them, am I going to immediately suffer a heart attack or get struck by lightning before I destroy the precious scripture and corrupt it? Is my plan going to miraculously fail in some other way? Arguably the wind can blow everything away every time I try. Is that violating my free will? I mean, it's a bit like stopping the bullet every time somebody tries to shoot somebody else and it easily crosses into not allowing people the freedom to be bad, which may invalidate the choice to be good, to some degree.

Ultimately if I lie to gullible people, the only way to stop them being taken in, is by the use of force against me, right? And that's rather tactless and ham-handed; not something God would do.

But what if there's another way to stop people being taken in?

I could argue that just giving people Reason and permission to use it, is enough to defend against all possible lies. Now this is a really, really good argument, because all you people who have Reason are supposed to use it, and then you might see something wrong with people telling you to take things on faith. And you don't have to conclude that this means God doesn't exist. You are fully empowered to say it means God does exist: It means God does exist and he doesn't strike people dead who decide to lie to you, rather, he implores you to use this gift of Reason to see through it. So then, there's this one piece that doesn't fit and it's the necessity of faith.

So if you follow, then maybe anyone who has said not to use your Reason and just trust, is exactly such an unpunished liar and blasphemer God has allowed to do evil because he prefers not to interfere directly. And it's okay, because God gave you what you needed to see which puzzle piece doesn't fit.

God, yes. Faith, no.

[boatsnguitars]

I dont think the focus of the OP was to debate claimed divinity of authorship of the bible but to speculate on prospective methods of protecting said text existing from potential corruption. The OP in fact does not refer to "God's Word" at all but rather to "the bible" and it seems you yourelf introduced this notion into the thread. Everybody else, including myself, simply focusec on the text under discussion from the supposition that should God exist, He supposedly would have an interest in the integrity of scripture. (I have ignored the rest of your rambling post having searched it for any information retated to the OP and found nothing )

Perhaps in future it might be an idea to read the posts you are responding to more carefully to avoid attempting to debate an irrelevant point or introduce a focus that at best introduces a distraction from the discussion at hand.



JW

Everything you said doesn't matter. ....

Well then you are free to ignore it. I'm here to debate with those that are interested in a serious exchange on topic and preferably ad hominem free.

Thanks for your contribution anyway. Have a most excellent day,

JW

I addressed the points. Keep ignoring that fact.

[boatsnguitars]

....
JW

The point is, you have no idea if God preserves the Bible, or the emotional belief that one understands Gods Intentions, Beliefs, or "Word." You don't know what God's Word is (or what the Bible was supposed to say according to God). Even Jesus couldn't have known. Certainly the writers of the Bible couldn't have known if Jesus was speaking for God, or if the Bible was the story God wanted them to tell.

What could God do about Bible errors? Everything, nothing, or something in between- you don't know. No one can know. At all. Full stop. Debate over.

You believe you know. You believe based on your religious choice. You aren't God. You don't speak for God, nor can you confirm that God agrees with anything you say about him. God could feel very strongly the Bible has it completely wrong - you can't know.

It's all speculation. It's not debate. It's not something to ponder. it's not something to use an ounce of energy on trying to figure out. It's patently obvious that there is no method, real or imagined, that would give you any knowledge as to whether God could or couldn't preserve his word. For every invented rationale, one could come up with an opposite rationale - and you'd never know who is right.

There is no method in Heaven or on Earth to determine if God could preserve his word, the Bible, preserve revelation to be accurate. You can't know if he communicates at all, or if he does (he doesn't) whether he is clear or if his message is lost - you CAN'T know. You can't even know how you'd know or not. You have no way to assess whether a revelation is from God or a mental condition. A person with a mental disorder might have the feeling that God told them to save a person, God could tell someone to kill someone - you wouldn't know the difference.
You can't know if God did anything in the Bible. All you know is that some men claimed God did something - and that men preserved it.

Like men preserved Beowulf and The Epic of Gilgamesh, more or less - and maybe the revisions they made were more correct to what actually happened - or not - you can't know.

Even if God were to appear and say: "This is my Word: Eat fish!"" You wouldn't know if that was what he actually wanted to say. It'd be a decent guess - but, as you know, God doesn't exist, so he can't say "eat fish." We have no idea what a God would want us to eat - because Gods don't exist (or act exactly as if they don't exist).

But, feel free to spend your finite time inventing a reason and pretending it's more correct than any other invented reason to the contrary.

[Purple Knight]

Correct, but he doesn't poof up the good copies and spread them up, does he? He needs a world where there are more honest people than unscrupulous ones, for this to work. ...

It's not a question of majority, its a question if enough. If, as seems to have been the case for the preservation of the bible, enough people value the text and are willing to go to almost any length to ensure it is preserved for future generations, then they don't have to be in the majority.

You might not need a majority, but it is easier to destroy something than preserve it. Every good copy that got through, requires that only honest people touched it. All it takes is one knave to ruin the work of all the generations that came before.

You have a lot of trust in this. I know it's true (at least up to the point of stronger) but all I see is a bunch of inconsistent jerks who always win because it's more beneficial to say the popular thing, because then you don't have to defend it. While I have good reasons for everything I think, but if I say something considered to be evil, it then does not matter how well I defend it.

[JehovahsWitness]

Correct, but he doesn't poof up the good copies and spread them up, does he? He needs a world where there are more honest people than unscrupulous ones, for this to work. ...

It's not a question of majority, its a question if enough. If, as seems to have been the case for the preservation of the bible, enough people value the text and are willing to go to almost any length to ensure it is preserved for future generations, then they don't have to be in the majority.

You might not need a majority, but it is easier to destroy something than preserve it.

That is true ; all the more reason for honest hearted people to ask how it is the bible has survived. Could it be that it has had supernatural protection? In any case, we do not have to theorize as to what it might take to ensure the bible would survive since the bible HAS survived.

• The bible has been preserved.

• This is due to the FACT that there are indeed thousands of ancient manuscripts available

• Those that ensured this is the case were indeed a the minority

• They evidently did so because they valued the text they struggle to preserve

The preservation of the integrity of the bible is not a matter of blind "trust" it's a matter of evidence.

They valued the bible [extract 6 MINS] ...

JW

[bluegreenearth]

Written communication of complex and nuanced information has been and will always be inherently unreliable and a significant source of confusion regardless of the author. It becomes even more problematic when translations between different languages are involved. All literate people know this intimately well. With in-person dialogue, tone of voice and body language offer essential insights and meanings that aren't available in written communications. For example, it is relatively easy for people to detect a sarcastic comment or disingenuous platitude when it is uttered by someone sitting across the table from them, but the meaning is less obvious when the same phrasing is delivered in an email or text message. Accordingly, when it comes to the development of valued interpersonal relationships, face-to-face conversations are consistently the best and most preferred method of communication people choose where possible. Of course, one-on-one verbal exchanges are not always possible between human beings, and written communication is often employed a useful but limited substitute.

So, what could God do about it? Well, would it be more reasonable to ask if it logically follows that an eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, and infallible being would directly or indirectly employ such a fallible and unnecessary form of communication given the availability of more reliable and efficient options?

[JehovahsWitness]

So, what could God do about it? Well, would it be more reasonable to ask if it logically follows that an eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, and infallible being would directly or indirectly employ such a fallible and unnecessary form of communication given the availability of more reliable and efficient options?

"more reliable and efficient options"- which options did you have in mind?

[bluegreenearth]

"more reliable and efficient options"- which options did you have in mind?

Are you asking me because you don't believe your infallible god has the power to develop an infallible form of communication? Does your question imply that you believe written language is the most reliable and efficient form of communication available to your god?

[JehovahsWitness]

"more reliable and efficient options"- which options did you have in mind?

Are you asking me because you don't believe your infallible god has the power to develop an infallible form of communication? Does your question imply that you believe written language is the most reliable and efficient form of communication available to your god?

I'm asking because I would like to know what you had in mind when you referred to "more reliable and efficient options"

[TRANSPONDER]

"more reliable and efficient options"- which options did you have in mind?

Are you asking me because you don't believe your infallible god has the power to develop an infallible form of communication? Does your question imply that you believe written language is the most reliable and efficient form of communication available to your god?

I'm asking because I would like to know what you had in mind when you referred to "more reliable and efficient options"

That is an irrelevant question. When we are talking about the resurrection, we don't have to ask what molecular thing happened to make Jesus alive again? Do we have to ask how God made everything out of nothing in a way that couldn't happen naturally no way, not at all?

No, that it is evident that it is an option is all we need to know. And that God can communicate with people as evidence that he is real (even though they have to be convinced of it first) shows that he knows how to do it.
There is no excuse for God choosing a tatty old book full of errors and non science to make His case when he could just give everyone the same faith globally. Whether they then accepted grovelling unto Him eternally would be their choice; right now, it isn't. The only choice people have now is whether to use their reasoning or not.

We know the Bible take on that.Matthew 11.25.At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them unto babes.

[bluegreenearth]

I'm asking because I would like to know what you had in mind when you referred to "more reliable and efficient options"

Must I specify or even know of more reliable and efficient options to ask critical thinking questions about the logical contradiction that inhabits the relationship between an infallible god and the fallibility of written communications? Is it unreasonable to infer that some form of infallible communication is available to an infallible god who, by definition, must communicate infallibly?