ecco

From NERV111:
Their unfailing capacity to believe what they prefer to be true … Could anyone offer any insight as to why some religious people behave like this?

It’s called brainwashing. It begins at an early age and is constantly reinforced throughout ones lifetime

babelfish

It's because of FAITH. FAITH is a quality to be sought after fervently. It is highly admired by some if one believes in that which cannot be explained rationally. I think people with FAITH feel sorry for the rest of us who insist upon being shown PROOF before we are willing to believe in something.

[ November 09, 2001: Message edited by: babelfish ]

Benjamin Franklin

I read that most bible scholars have already admitted that only the original scriptures were inerrant so there must be some contradiction which they cannot reconcile. So far from what I read, people like Glenn Archer and Glen Miller have an explanation for almost everything. Does anyone have an example of a contradiction which they cannot explain away.

Imhotehp

The contradictory creation accounts. In genesis 1:1 and 2:4 the order is as follows:
[list=1][*](Day 1)Genesis 1:1 Earth[*](Day 2)Genesis 1:6 Heavens[*](Day 3)Genesis 1:11 Plants[*](Day 4)Genesis 1:16 Stars[*](Day 5)Genesis 1:20-22 Animals(air,sea)[*](Day 6)Genesis 1:24-31 Animals(Land), Humans[/list=a]

And in genesis 2:4...
[list=1][*](Day 1)Genesis 2:4-19 Heavens, the earth, plants, Humans, animals all on the same day all in a different order.[/list=a]

As we can see, the Biblical Inerrancy(TM) idea is complete and utter nonsense. Inerrancy requires consistency. The creation stories are inconsistent. If there is no consistency, their can be no inerrancy.

Benjamin Franklin

This is one possible explanation

There is nothing in Genesis 2 that suggests that that everything happened in one day.
And just because everything that is listed in ordinal order does not mean everything happened in ordinal order. There is another explanation given as feedback to Mark Vuletic article's on evolution which pointed out this discrepancy (I cannot find it at the moment) . I am sure my Christian friend will come back and tell me regarding the contradiction between which was created first bird or man that there is problem with the translation of the tense.

There is another tread (KJV NIV) which describes how NIV mistranslate things to resolve the contradictions.

My NIV bible says "Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field

Imhotehp

Oh no?

Genesis 2:4 -These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens-

We are told that adam was walking around before the "beasts of the field" and the "foul of the air", despite the fact the Genesis 1 says they were created in a different order and different days.

Most importantly there is nothing in genesis 2 supporting a 6 day creation either.

In other words we should ignore the Genesis 2 creation story. Why we should do this is never explained.

Again, I have no reason to believe that these are indeed "translation errors" because you never point out what the errors are and what the "original" error free translation would have been like.

Furthermore translation errors are still errors and why god whould allow "translation errors" in his message to all people are not explained. If I am going to issue a message to all humanity for all time I am going to make sure that people will be able to read it as I intended for all humanity for all time. I most certainly wouldn't allow the destruction of the original copies and then let the copies' copies get damaged, mis-interpreted, mis-translated, etc., etc.

Benjamin Franklin

The day is not in my NIV bible( Serves to prove my point about NIV mistranslating things). Secondly the verse only indicates that the heaven and earth were created in a day, nothing about the humans and animals being created in the same day

I can't find this verse in Genesis 2. I agree we can infer this from the whole context of Genesis 2 but there is not a verse saying this explicitly

Argument from silence.

Well humans have free will and God cannot override that. However as Mattew Perman says with a bit of diligent work, we can infer back the orignal message and there are no major doctrinal disputes

Just it clarify, I am not a christian. I am just playing the devil's advocate as my catholic friend is struggling with the inerrancy of the bible. He wants to believe the bible is the word of God because there are loving people/resurrected saints who tell him that there is no contradiction between the barbaric old testament and the forgiving new testament and he wants to emulate them.

What is happening is that I point out some problem with the bible and he comes back with some rationalisation from the friar which he accepts uncritically

I think this might make a better contradiction
MT 8:5-12 The centurion himself approaches Jesus to ask to heal his servant.
LK 7:2-10 The centurion sends elders to do the asking.

But I am sure he has a ready-made explanation for that. God allows certain details to be changed when trying to teach different people or the Roman Catholic Church/Archbishop Carey's explanation, despite this difficuties, we can be sure of the truth of the scriptures throught the witness of the Holy Spirit.

Imhotehp, if you are interested, in the KJV vs NIV thread, there is a discussion on the contradictions in the resurrection accounts

Imhotehp

There is nothing here to suggest they weren't created in the same day. In Genesis 2:4, they say that the earth and the heavens were created in 1 day, despite the fact that genesis 1(in both the KJV and the NIV) says they were created on different days.

In that scripture, they talk about a one day creation and their is no reason to believe they still aren't talking about the same day through out the rest of the chapter.

No, but since you agree that this is indeed the inference then you agree in genesis 2 we are told adam was walking around before "the beasts of the field" and the "foul of the air"

So? There is no reason to believe Genesis 2 supports a 6 day creation because it does not infer, explicitly or implicitly state that there was a 6 day creation. In 2:4(apparently only found in the KJV), we are told about a single day creation and there is nothing in the rest of the chapter that changes that.

Then he is not all-powerful. How an error-free version of the bible would violate our free will isn't explained.

I try as hard as I can to avoid asking someone to make a declaration of allegience, because, IMHO, I believe it lays the foundation for unneccesary bias twoards ones opponent.

I think your friends problem is the fact that he relies on an appeal to authority fallacy. It's not true just because the friar or even the bible says so.

Benjamin Franklin

I agree that based on reasonable inference, Genesis 1 contradicts Genesis 2 but as long as there are no clear cut verses showing contradiction, inerrantist will try to interpret the bible in such a way that it does not contradict itself, saying that as long as there is a possibility that their interpretation is correct, we cannot say outright say that they are wrong

I was debating a friend once regarding contradictions in the resurrection accounts and he came up with an examaple showing that things listed ordinally does not mean they happened ordinally.

I am aware that my friend is making the fallacy of appeal to authority/ loving nature that he wants so much to emulate. But the problem is I cannot make him see it. That's why he is uncritically accepting all this rationalisations from the
friar. At this rate I and him are debating, he will soon be able to publish the sequel to Giesler's "When critics ask"

P_Brian_Bateman

I do'nt know how most Christians today try to rationalize the different contradictions in the Bible, but I do know how Martin Luther did. He held the view that sure, there are contradictions in the texts, but some texts are superior to others and thus, if one of these texts contradicts with an inferior text, the message in the superior text is the true one. For example, I'm sure we've all heard about the famous contradiction about the meaning of faith espoused in the Bible. James says "faith without works is dead" where as Paul says "we are justified by faith". Luther admitted that there is a contradiction here, but said that Paul's works supercedes James because it is superior (how he determined that it was superior, I do'nt know. Most likely he did so because he already agreed with Paul's message). And also, in Luther's Bible, he added the word "alone" to Paul's statement to give without a doubt the message he felt the Bible was really giving. Also Luther would tend to ignore the synoptic gospels because they just focused on history and righteousness where as the Gospel of John focused on Jesus' love and other theological subjects. Luther felt the message of John was more powerful since it dealt directly with the Christian theology that he, and Christians since then, were raised on.