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.

[Data]

That was a good one. It had me thinking "I rather prefer to believe than not', but of course, there's the bear pit in front of me. Where is skepticism?

Back where you were when you decided to tread where bears have their pits.

I would have to consider the whole epistemology of everyday interaction. Supernatural claims are not to be credited until verified.

Wrong. Science claims aren't made because they can't be verified or they would no longer be supernatural. People, at one time, believed whales and giant squids were supernatural tales. If you saw a whale or giant squid then, it would be supernatural. What would you claim? That you see the supernatural? What if you saw a ghost or Jesus spoke directly to you, would you be making a supernatural claim? A claim is defined as to state or assert that something is the case, typically without providing evidence or proof. Does science make claims by not providing evidence or proof?

The same with scientific ones. Personal matters, one credits what one is told - until there is reason to doubt it, like someone in a bar cadging a drink while claiming to be a nuclear physicist - and then he confuses an atom with a molecule. In the old days I thought 'everyone gets one chance - on consideration, two. When they try to bamboozle me, the third time, I'm done. Of course that doesn't apply to religious debate where Rhetorical and lawyer tricks in the cause of Faith are the way the game is played.

You crack me up, David. British humour is a favorite of mine and sometimes I think that must be it.

And of course "The Book". We had a discussion about fiction and non -fiction, (re Genesis) and of course fact or metaphor was a long time apologetic. Yet i rather unusually would not make a special case against the bible just because it contained miracles.Generally atheist apologists rejected it as just another faith 0-claim but that's not how we treat the Axiomatic "Other Books". I use the Jugurthine war because it read like straight history until we got to a miracle, and I rejected that but still believed the rest. So reasonably I credited a LOT of the Bible as History apart from miracles because "Miracles don't happen".It's what on trial and error we do - we try to get the history we can out of the most dubious tales, but we do not credit miracles. Epistemology works that way and it seems reasonable to me, though I'm no expert.

As you may have garnered from some of my posts, more and more of what I credited in the Bible as history (though doubting a miracle) more and more has come adrift the more I learned. Kenyon's Jericho excavations debunked the walls of Jericho story. The nativities went in my time (and I credit that i put the final touches to that) and recently (well,over the last decade) Exodus has also been looking dubious. And I needn't labour the case I am pushing that the resurrection event -scenario never happened.

What are you on about? I don't understand what you're on about. What is all of that in aid of? Let me take two points of it and try to make some sense of it. Somebody said Jericho "story" was debunked. That means nothing to me really, but what are you talking about? The other point was Genesis fiction or non-fiction - what in Genesis specifically? Eve said the serpent told her something that was fiction. Okay, got that sorted out, what else? You mentioned Tyre. What about it. SPECIFICALLY.

[Data]

Yes. The opposite of religion. Which is just ideology. Which the militant atheists are. But science isn't. Get it? That's what I've been saying since I got here. Well, long before that, but here, I mean. It's what I've been saying here.

Is that what you've been trying to say? All this time? That because science is the process of testing, that means it's an ideology, therefore as bad as religion?

That's about the dumbest thing I've read for a long time. And, the fact that you've been trying to express this over so many months, years(?)... I'm sorry for you.

Excellent. Perfect.

That reminds me of "If I've alienated our paying customers, I've done my job". You make a question to be answered,sure, but it is a flawed case, because militant atheists (even supposing that militant atheism was not justified or even urgently needed) do not affect the validity of atheism per se. Just as convicted criminals using Christianity as a cover does not a thing to debunk the case for religion.

Ideology is irrelevant to the discussion and for you to appeal to it, even in a fair and balanced way rather than the twisted mud - slinging method you do - just shows up what is wrong with your case, argument and (so far as i can see) entire mindset, rationale and way of thinking.

It's like we're from different planets. I said excellent. Perfect. And you got all of that?

I think militant atheism is most certainly justified and needed. It's just a pity it's so irretrievably stupid. That's fine because facts, truth, logic, science, evidence, claims etc. etc. are not REALLY important to militant atheists much the same as God isn't really important to the religious. They are both ideological nonsense. Singular. I have to give my spell check a dam good thrashing on that, but I'm sticking with it.

I don't criticize atheism, science; religion or gods. I criticize vacuous ideology.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to Data in post #111]

A waste of my time, pal (1). If you don't get it or claim you don't (and you clearly don't 'get' science or pretend you don't) then others will. To dismis the work that showed the walls collapsing Biblical story wasn't right and hardly could be, shows either ignorance lack of willingness to do minimal research or just denialis, or possibly all three

(1) did I give my name away or are we acquainted?

[TRANSPONDER]

Yes. The opposite of religion. Which is just ideology. Which the militant atheists are. But science isn't. Get it? That's what I've been saying since I got here. Well, long before that, but here, I mean. It's what I've been saying here.

Is that what you've been trying to say? All this time? That because science is the process of testing, that means it's an ideology, therefore as bad as religion?

That's about the dumbest thing I've read for a long time. And, the fact that you've been trying to express this over so many months, years(?)... I'm sorry for you.

Excellent. Perfect.

That reminds me of "If I've alienated our paying customers, I've done my job". You make a question to be answered,sure, but it is a flawed case, because militant atheists (even supposing that militant atheism was not justified or even urgently needed) do not affect the validity of atheism per se. Just as convicted criminals using Christianity as a cover does not a thing to debunk the case for religion.

Ideology is irrelevant to the discussion and for you to appeal to it, even in a fair and balanced way rather than the twisted mud - slinging method you do - just shows up what is wrong with your case, argument and (so far as i can see) entire mindset, rationale and way of thinking.

It's like we're from different planets. I said excellent. Perfect. And you got all of that?

I think militant atheism is most certainly justified and needed. It's just a pity it's so irretrievably stupid. That's fine because facts, truth, logic, science, evidence, claims etc. etc. are not REALLY important to militant atheists much the same as God isn't really important to the religious. They are both ideological nonsense. Singular. I have to give my spell check a dam good thrashing on that, but I'm sticking with it.

I don't criticize atheism, science; religion or gods. I criticize vacuous ideology.

It flags up your problem. Like legal 'clean hands' or boy who cried wolf or Fool me once. Also a stopped clock once a day and once at night. You may coincidentally agree with one or twothings I say, but if I thought you were being mocking and sarcastic, that's your fault, not mine. Especially when you now denounce atheism in such a closed -minded and dismissive way. The only reason I even talk to you is because Theists May look and say "My God - do I sound like that?"

Of course, the door is always open.You May be confusing militant atheism with Woke, which is an irreligious and even atheist ideology because that supports patriarchy. Perhaps one day they will wear T shirts and a idiot smirk saying "The Creator is female" .

[Data]

[Replying to Data in post #111]

A waste of my time, pal (1). If you don't get it or claim you don't (and you clearly don't 'get' science or pretend you don't) then others will. To dismis the work that showed the walls collapsing Biblical story wasn't right and hardly could be, shows either ignorance lack of willingness to do minimal research or just denialis, or possibly all three

(1) did I give my name away or are we acquainted?

I will give you this, you do at least have the courage to acknowledge a question. Most of your contemporaries won't even do that. You won't answer but you do at least acknowledge.

David. That much we have in common.