Fallon

RobertLW, I too would like to hear what convinced you to radically change your worldview.


Fallon

Legion

If you are really interested in hearing that perspective, I borrowed your question (I thought it was a pretty interesting question too ) and posted it here; more inerrantists than I had expected have jumped in to reply (though they keep wanting to debate the matter rather than just address my question), and so far none of them have taken Robert's approach of believing the message to be inerrant but not necessarily the word for word text being the same (though most have conceded that current-day translations aren't inerrant).

Sven

Thanks for the link!

I just skimmed over the first answer and found it entirely ridiculous. His points are in essence:
(1) common theme of the bible, no contradictions in portray of god
(2) Historical accuracy
(3) Scientific accuracy
(4) "The setting of the writtings. Look at other ancient mythologies predating Christianity. All of these myths set their stories in very odd, or unreachable places, their deities in fanciful stories." [What about Judaism?!?! What about the Illias?!?! etc. etc.]
(5) Predictive prophecy
(6) agreement between the available manuscripts

None of these points, and even all 6 in total, even if all of them were correct (as far as I know, all of them are wrong) justifies the assumption of inerrancy - that there are no errors. These points only justify the assumption that most of the bible is correct, but not that it is without any error. And I think one can only believe that these 6 points are reality when one starts with an assumption of inerrancy (to explain away any encountered problems) - so this doesn't answer my question at all. But I don't expect this guy getting these points... since he also writes things like this: "the majority of modern science is not open to all facts or possibilities with regards to evolution"

Another "answer" is a lot of preaching without really answering the question.
From the next answer:
I'm too lazy to read the rest of the thread - if something more interesting comes up, could you perhaps post another link, Legion?

Legion

Certainly. I'll try to skim through it again later today and give you a link to any that you might find interesting.

RobertLW

No, my presuppostions are different than yours. That is my explaination.

RobertLW

Well, if you would ever e-mail me back, I would give you the detailed answer to these questions.

RobertLW

You are very welcome.





I read the Bible in light of my ultimate authority.






In that case, I can see that I did indeed answer your question.





It does not do a poor job in communicating it's message to me. I do believe that the message, "seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear" is a true message communicated in the Bible. My observation on the disagreements among the denominations of Christianity are that they are mostly about how to practice our faith and are not theological in nature.





If by "ominous data" you mean reason, morality, love etc.... then I have answered your why question. I can't make it any more clear.





I have justified my presumption. I can't make it any more clear.






"Honest errors" would contradict my world view. I clearly answered the question. My worldview is justified, any other option than inerrancy would contradict my fully justified worldview. I cannot make it any more clear than that.








I am not sure which errors you mean, so I really can't address this.... But as a general statement, I cannot harmonize error, I can only harmonize potential error.

Thanks.

Robert

RobertLW

How is any book of any kind that contains any claim of any kind any more self-authenticating then a pile of dog crap or the Marcus Borg's The God We Never Knew? It pains me to say that this is a very poor showing of logic. It is my ultimate standard of truth because without it I could not justify ALL that I find and use in this world and it could not be said that I truly know anything.





Here, let me just make the following statement and be done with it:

"The Bible just is, we are stuck with it. End of Story. I make no further statements or require anything else." I mean, c'mon....talk about believing something in blind faith.....

What if I were to say that it is reasonable for you to make the statement "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." Well, I would have just used reason to justify reason. Would that make me crazy or incompetent? Absolutely not. If you will recall, sometime back I wrote that when someone reaches the end of their argument, they will appeal to their ultimate authority because they have reached the end of their reasoning abilities. Here you have proven my point. You reached the end and said, "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." You must use reason to make the statement "we are stuck with it" in order to justify reason. (Like it or not, you attempted to justify reason) This is circular, which is the point I have been making. Your admitted ultimate authority is reason however you use reason to justify it by saying "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." It would seem to me that only a skeptic can use the argument, "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." and have it be acceptable. If a Christian appeals to their ultimate authority by saying, "The Bible says so and that is the end of the story", it seems as though you would proceed to hammer on him for using circular reasoning or a "really bad argument". You can clearly see that I am honest about that fact up front, yes my ultimate authority is self-authenticating and I do not have a problem with it because by nature, ALL ultimate authority is self-authenticating. Because I admit it, I have no need to run from it by saying, "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." If you read up on it you will find that even the scientific method is only justified by one thing, the scientific method. It is a well known fact that all ultimate standards are self authenticating. In my view, you used a Christian argument for forwarding your skeptical opinion by using reason to prove reason. Furthermore, your reason is not justified as an ultimate authority or ultimate standard of truth. Reason cannot justify all empirical data for example. Zeno used reason to prove that no motion can happen. For example, he argued that an arrow, when shot, travels halfway to the target, then halfway again, then halfway again and we all know that we can cut the distance in half to infinity therefore motion is not possible. However, we can plainly see that the arrow hits the target but if reason is your ultimate standard of truth, then you could not admit it. When I use both reason and empirical data to come to a conclusion, I am fully justified in doing so in light of my ultimate authority and I have no need to say, "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else."

The question you must ask yourself is why is it you can say "reason just is" and have that be acceptable yet you condemn a Christian when he says "God just is".



The Bible is at the top level because God says it is. Yes, I used reason "to this position" and I used it because it was in the way that God meant for me to use it. Our entire debate is like to people arguing over the existence of air and in the meantime breathing the air that is the source of the argument. God gave me reason, therefore reason is not self-justifying. Logic is transcendental but it is not self-authenticating, only a personal being can be self-authenticating.




At least you admit that your reason is circular and is built upon a glaring logical fallacy. However, you simply want to shut it off and offer nothing else. You seem to realize that reason itself is circular however you seem to prefer taking it on blind faith by saying, "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." You seem to not want anyone to require you to offer anything else other than your blind faith. In reality, a really good example of blind faith is saying "reason just is." I have neither the time nor the inclination to entertain critical theories of my ultimate authority with someone who, when pressed about his, will answer, "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." In my view, this presents you with a really big problem. How can you justify critiquing my ultimate authority, which is justified, when your ultimate authority is based in blind faith and is unjustified?

I came to this forum hoping to have a good discussion with someone but in the end all you could say is, "We are just stuck with it. End of story. I make no further statements or require anything else." Meantime, you feel that if a Christian makes the same argument it is inadequate and inappropriate. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Having said that, unless someone has something really interesting for me to respond to, I think I am done here. Thanks to all for your participation.

Robert

Rowdy

As a former Christian for well over a decade, I can honestly say that saying The Bible is free of errors is basically a must....I myself stopped believing after noticing the many (and boy are there many) contradictions just between one book and another, God himself, historical records and the dubious nature of The Gospel themselves. Once one believes that The Bible is full of holes, it's pretty hard to keep on believing. Basically, The Bible is undoubtedly the backbone of the Christian religion.

azmodan

a couple things:
you have conceded the probability of scribal errors, so may i ask: how do you know these scribal errors didnt mar any critical doctrines? imean god referring to itself in singular then plural then switching back again could be a scribal error. so by allowing scribal errors dont you make the entire text suspect?

what about the scribes who made those errors? the ending of revalations holds some pretty stiff penalties for altering the text.

how exactly is the bible being its own witness any more convincing than "well my book supports itself" said by any author?

yes if the motion of the arrow was restricted to going exactly half the distance between the archer & the target, then dividing the distance in half each time zeno's logical analysis would be correct, but it isnt. this makes my point, logic doesnt stand on its own, it needs to be supported by empirical evidence. the same way any authority on its own isnt suficient, it must stand up to the tests of reason, evidence, etc.

just my thoughts, never proven only not yet disproven.
always with respect