llamaluvr

It was a rhetorical question, insinuating that, in order to know what that verse is saying, we need to define "inspired".

Though its various means, the OED offers two relevant definitions:

Well, we're having a bunch of people over watching a movie right now, and, of 18 Christians, representing at least four denominations, 0 of them thought that every single word had to be dictated, so I'm not like the only one who thinks this ;-).

Seriously, this makes sense, because the word "inspired" doesn't necessarily mean that every single word was dictated from God. I'm just saying that it's not right to assume any more than what the Bible for sure says.

If another Christian says otherwise, great! It doesn't make me wrong, and it certainly doesn't make the Bible contradictory or uninspired, and I challenge them to actually validate their position.

I wasn't making a statement about their actual authenticity. I was just saying, that, in my opinion, for the texts to be "inspired", the authors must have been inspired by God in some way, and what they wrote down should be required to be trustworthy. A writer who recieves Godly inspiration, but refuses to follow it in writing, would not be writing an inspired work.

Whoa, I was just saying that these should be considered the limits of inspiration. These "exceptions" are only relevant under the assumption that scripture is inspired- I'm saying that, if these texts are inspired, these facets are still allowable.

In regards to copyist's errors, it only makes sense that an incorrect copy is considered the fault of whoever copies it. This is a consequence of free will- any human who has the time and resources can make a bad copy of scripture. That doesn't mean that the inspiration of the scripture is null and void; the inspiration was for the original author, not the copyist. This is why I included the clause about the original author's being truthful in their writing.

These "errors" aren't a matter of one manuscript, for example, saying that x is a commandment and another saying x isn't (or not saying anything about x at all). These are things like how some of the earliest manuscripts do not include John 7:53-8:11. Bibles generally have it marked off, but still include it for the sake of completeness.

Also, I am totally lost as to why you keep saying "Occam's Razor?". Seriously, in this context, it has about as much meaning to me as one asking, "Cheesesteak?". In at least one of the places where you've used it, could you supply the name and a brief description of the model, the name of the entity being eliminated, and why? Just doing it once would give me some hope of finally figuring out how you're using the Razor.

This is a total shot in the dark, but are you talking about how God didn't direct every person who has ever copied the Bible to do it correctly?

First off, omnipotence only speaks of having the power to do something; it has nothing to do with actually being compelled to do something. Of course God has the power to do as you say he should, but that doesn't mean he has to. Rather, in this case, God is compelled otherwise by free will. Not that the concept of free will is more powerful than him, but that he wants to preserve it.

These positions are not related to the passages I'm talking about. Many Christian groups adobt different meanings for passages that have already been agreed upon syntactically. This is just proof that humans aren't perfect.

Unless you're talking about the Apocrypha, which is a very different animal. I have no problem with saying that the Catholic Church is wrong about the Apocrypha; pre-Jesus Jews did not even recognize it as inspired scripture, so why should anybody else farther removed from the whole thing? So, yeah, they're probably wrong. Are they going to Hell for it? I seriously doubt it.

Okay, here's some quick and dirty math. Let's assume that the average scripture fragment contains 15% of the New Testament. The New Testament has about 181,000 words, so now there's 5400 * .15 * 181000 = 146610000 words to look at. Let's take the high estimate of 300,000 differences. So, 146610000/ 300,000 = 488.7. Now, we have one difference for every 488.7 words. That means that these fragments are 99.8% similar. That's pretty good. Most Christian resources only claim 98-99% similarity. Perhaps that means that maybe I should use 5%, instead. With that, it's still at 99.4%, so maybe it's even lower than that.

But there's lies, damn lies, and statistics. We really don't know how they count a difference. How are they counting them between different language translations (not all of these early manuscripts are Greek)? The vast majority of languages do not have one-to-one correspondance, so you have to change things just to be able to express the same concept when translating. Often, when you translate, you end up "forking" the text, providing one translation that is literal, and another that focuses on conveying the concepts in a fashion more reasonable for the new language.

Most of these differences are minutiae, such as phrasing or punctuation, so it would be interesting to have a count of how many of them actually matter. Also, there's the added advantage of having 5400 manuscripts- if you have 5 copies, and 4 agree in one place, that helps.

So, are you saying that mistranslations actually invalidate inspiration, even though that effort involves none of the parties supposedly involved in the instance of inspiration (God, the original author, and the paper)?

My "ommissions and additions" qualification had nothing to do with differing positions on the inspiration of scripture. Any of these denominations would agree that mistranslations do not affect inspiration. I was talking apples; you're now talking oranges.

That wasn't my definition of logic; it was my definition of omnipotence.

It is not nearly enough to show that God can do something when arguing that he should.

I haven't done them all (yet). I tackled all of Don's "Fatal Biblical Flaws" in a converstation a few years ago (although that's a short list), as well, as at least a few hundred others. I've actually just decided to start compiling all of these (as I come to them) so maybe I can at least make a database of them. I might submit directly here when I have enough, but I would rather write more about the theory behind Biblical contradictions, since I think actually examining them is pretty intuitive once one has a firm grasp on formal logic.

BSM

Keith,

Yes I agree that we need to define inspired. The one that seems to typify how Christians use the term (IMO) is this. :
Seems to me that irregardless of what I like to call the "human pen" hypothesis (a position that you seem to defend), the Word of God should be much better than it is. Moreover, the very fact that Christian denominations differ over the defintion of "divinely inspired" and how to interprete this "divine inspiration" seems to be problematic from where I stand.

So, this might be a good example of how I'm using Occams Razor:

1) The Bible is divinely inspired and is God's word. 2) The Bible is man-made.

The evidence:

The much more reasonable (and simple) explanation based on the evidence is the Bible is man-made. To argue premise 1) you DO have to multiply entities--sometimes to the point of absurdity. In fact, some aplogists (e.g., William Lane Craig) do so to the point that they are accused of "commiting the fallacy of excessive footnotes." (See: God:A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist by Walter-Sinnott Armstrong and William Lane Craig)

Anyhow, if you use the razor in a different fashion that's fine. Perhaps, we need to agree not to use it at all since we can't seem to agree. The bottom line for me is that for you to say with all seriousness that the Bible is God's word (in light of the evidence) you have to come up with some pretty creative apologies. Like I said before: I have no problem if you assert that your position is "a matter of faith."

Being all-knowing, God would have known that the current Bible (i.e., the things that I have described) would cause many people to lose faith. In fact, this board is full of people who have "lost faith in faith" because of the Bible. Given that His message is so darn important (without it we burn in hell or are separated from god) one has to ask why he didn't do a better job of it. I have described a better job of it and I know that Morgan often does in the feedback forum. Moreover, my example would not violate freewill:

Given this example we would still have the "freewill" to choose the Koran, the Torah, or any of the umpteen other divinely inspired texts out there. In fact, a God who can create something out of nothing could have/should have/ and in my opinion, would have created a much better book were he so concerned with my eternal salvation.

You needn't agree of course.

Yes, given the above definition of inspiration. In fact, in my opinion it [the Bible] hardly "transcends all the greatest productions of human genius." Being of average intelligence I've come up with a much better scenario that describes a product that would be closer to that mark. Although from time to time I do tell my wife that I am God, I'll have to be honest and admit that I am not. So, having established my lack of divinity, one has to wonder why I can concieve of a better product than God?

I disagree:

"The only way in which fallible humans could have written so much inerrant text would have been for them to have been inspired by God. Given biblical inerrancy, one can assume that God must have overseen the creation of the Bible's text in some way, and pro-actively prevented the authors from committing any error."

Excerpt from:

Did the Holy Spirit Inspire the Authors of the Bible?

So, a fundamentalist Baptist might say that God directly inspired the authors to creat a work with these characteristics: "...every word with every inflection, every verse and line, and every tense of the verb, every number of the noun, and every little particle are regarded as coming from God. Scripture is "God-breathed," and God does not breathe falsehood..."

Whereas, your position seems to side with the liberal side: Excerpts from here:

Biblical Inerrancy

So, the fundamental Bapist, or a Christian who believes in "King James Onlyism", would say that divine inspiration and innerency are directly related to the other: The perfect and error-free text is proof of God's inspiration, God's inspiration is the reason for the perfect text. In short, there are no mistranlastions because it is not possible due to divine inspiration. So, your energy might be better served in convincing memebers of your own religion to get on the same page, as oppossed to fencing with eccentric atheists.



Well, I for one would like to see it if you ever turn it into an essay (whatever the topic). Personally, I'd like to see more well-written essays by Christians here on the Secular Web. It's always good to get dialogs going even if we do not agree.

Regards,

~BSM

Jon Promnitz

[http://www.drdino.com/QandA/index.js...intheBible.jsp]

BSM

John,

Responding to someone named "Dr. Dino" is hardly worth my time. I assume your post was meant in humor.

Regards,

~BSM

Jon Promnitz

correct

BSM

Ah, good! Sometimes I can be a little thick in the head.

~BSM

llamaluvr

There's an "easy" way to prove or disprove that the Bible could be better. Take one part that would have to be "inspired" according to the minimum requirements of the Bible, and transform it in a way that it can be proven that it would be better in some way.

Of course, I said "easy" because it's easier said than done :-).

Which entities are we multiplying here? A greater number of assumptions is not the same as having unnecessary assumptions, which is what Occam's Razor is all about. The "fallacy of excessive footnotes" sounds more like a quip to me. I hope that was a joke :-).

I think "creative" is the wrong word for apologies. There's nothing that creative about forming a conclusion that doesn't cause any premises to be logically inconsistent. In fact, creativity in apologies can probably be often axed by Occam's Razor, because it is likely to add extra truth statements that weren't originally in the premises.

I take inspiration as a matter of faith, but I don't leave logic at the door. I refuse to believe anything logically inconsistent or unsound. Since nobody has demonstrated that for the inspiration of the Bible, based on positive affirmations, I believe as such.

My faith probably wouldnt' be anything like it is today if I hadn't been required to investigate difficulties with the Bible. "Difficult" does not mean "wrong" or "bad". It just means "difficult".

Unless you claim to be the exception, I have not met a single person here who is a non-Christian simply because the Bible isn't "better". I have never met an athiest or agnostic or otherwise non-Christian who even has a valid grasp on the scriptures we have (they might know the book really well, but they hold inconsistent/ invalid views on the claims of it, so they assume it says things that it really doesn't), let alone has an actual use for additional information.

I believe "You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32) means that, when you actually have all the facts straight, believing in Jesus is easy. I am hard-pressed to find a non-Christian who actually has all the facts. Either somebody has duped them, or they've duped themselves. I'm really talking more about what's inside the Bible than anything- these can range from having a Biblically inconsistent viewpoint on atonement, to selectively interpretting the OT to conclude it proves that God isn't loving.

My point is not that anybody's stupid. I think people that do this are really smart, largely. I also think that they don't give their bias enough credit. My real point is, though, that how can we suppose that more information is necessary if what is currently there hasn't been properly utilized?

People are not believing long before they examine the historicity of the Bible. The evidence is already quite good, and is only getting better, so I doubt if it were even 100% better that any of these people would just drop everything and believe it.

[quote]
Given this example we would still have the "freewill" to choose the Koran, the Torah, or any of the umpteen other divinely inspired texts out there. In fact, a God who can create something out of nothing could have/should have/ and in my opinion, would have created a much better book were he so concerned with my eternal salvation.
That's not a better product, though. None of those conditions actually change a written word of the Bible.

So, does that mean you believe that if you were to intentionally create a mistranslation of the Bible, it would discredit it's inspiration? Doesn't that sound a tad farfetched?

Inspiration is a transaction between God and the author, not God and the copyist.

That's great that people believe that. I challenge them to prove that that's an explicitly biblical position, however.

I'm not talking about "falsehood". I'm talking about parts where one person says something like "there were 800 sheep" and another says there were 807. It's not that one writer was false. One might have been eyeballing it, and another might have been in the field counting. I don't see why these parts need to be dictated from God.


Whereas, your position seems to side with the liberal side:

Isn't this nitpicking (if I were to do this, rather)? Why should I waste my time berating other Christians because they have a slightly different definition of "inspired"? Does it really have anything meaningful to do with our mission on earth?

I mean, it's one thing to talk about it at leisure, but to make a mission of it? Ugh. I thought athiests hated how we usually do that with every stinkin' bit of doctine in the church. :-)

Diogenes the Cynic

I think that the Razor can be better summarized as follows:

1,)This book was written by human beings.
2.)This book was written by an all powerful, invisible, undetectable supernatural entity in the sky.

Option two is an ipso facto multiplication of entities. You are adding an entity ("God") to the equation and the question of whether it violates the Razor boils down to whether such an entity is necessary (we'll set plausibility aside for the moment).

In order to prove necessity you would have to show some reason that option 1 is not possible. If no reason can be shown why humans could npt have written the book then we have an unnecessary multiplication of entia and a violation of the Razor.
"Better" is kind of a meaningless word in this context and I don't understand what you mean by "inspired according to minimum requirements of the Bible." If you are challenging us to find a part of the Bible that Christians believe is "inspired" and devise some way in that it could be "better," then you would have to define what you mean by "better."

I would suggest that "inspiration" might better be proven if some sort of fulfilled predictive prphecy could be shown or if any aspect of the Bible can be demonstrated to be beyond human achievment (and good luck with that).

BSM

Diogenes,

Thanks for helping me to sum up my rambling thoughts! You should change your name to Diogenes the Parsimonious.

Keith, you write:

What Diogenes said.

Again, what Digonenes said; and, yes it was a quip. Furthermore, I do enjoy spirited repartee with a challenging opponent. However, if I have resorted to blatant ad hominem attacks please let me know and I’d be happy to submit a formal apology.

Getting the facts straight may prove difficult considering that God apparently deceives. See Morgan's Fatal Biblical Flaws which you apparently have refuted.

Funny, as I have pointed out in several posts to you, this seems to be a problem within Christianity itself. Furthermore, define "valid". I assume by valid you mean coming to the same presupposed conclusions as you? Regardless, there are many other religions that say the same of their texts.

Or, do you refuse to believe that there is any possibility of anything being logically inconsistent or unsound in the bible?

Actually it is in my opinion. In particular, the part where I say "little or no variation between them". Moreover, whether my hypothetical example gave us manuscripts with "little" (say 99% agreement) or "no" (meaning total agreement) it would change many words in the Bible. Were either the case Don et al would be out of business with their errancy lists and you wouldn't have to try and aplogize for them.

I again disagree. The evidence is sorely lacking and only gets worse the deeper one digs.

Ah, the blame the copyist argument again. The ONLY defense that you have is to fall back on your faith. Again, we have no originals period. So, since you having nothing to compare to how do you know a word of it is true? We quite literally have thousands of documents and no absolutely certain way of knowing which ones have copyist errors and which are correct. So, aside from direct revelations from God to EACH human, all we are left with is physical evidence, our faith, and educated opinions (which can vary from egghead to egghead). Faith doesn't cut it for me anymore and I for one am going to side with my interpretation of the evidence.

No, it's ducking my question. The simple fact of the matter is that Christians cannot agree on what "inspiration" is, nor can they agree on how to interpret God's message. Moreover, these are not minor differences nor can they be chalked up to theological diversity. Second, your mission is to "make disciples of all nations" so it seems to me that it does have relevance. You have thousands upon thousands of fundamentalists and biblical literalists who do not agree with "The Translation According To Keith." In fact, some of those groups would say that you have been deceived and are bound for hell because of it. So, once more: the fundamental Baptist, or a Christian who believes in "King James Onlyism" would say that divine inspiration and innerency are directly related to the other: The perfect and error-free text is proof of God's inspiration, God's inspiration is the reason for the perfect text. In short, there are no mistranslations because it is not possible due to divine inspiration. So, your energy might be better served in convincing members of your own religion to get on the same page, as opposed to fencing with eccentric atheists.

How I feel about it is a moot point. However, according to your own dogma you DO have a mission. Seems to me it might be easier to convert the partially converted Christians to the Gospel According To Keith, as opposed to converting atheists that do not have "a valid grasp on the scriptures [sic] we have."

Regards,

BSM

Killer Mike

The irony is that it is Christians who are generally the most ignorant of the Bible. Go to any major university like Harvard and one will be exposed to the history and development of how the Bible came to be. Source and literary criticism for example tells us many Bible stories were written over and over again, with many modifications. This is why the modern Bible often has two different accounts of the same story with differing details (two Creation accounts in Genesis for example). Christians for example often believe the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses. But this is not true. Any introductory college textbook will tell you this. "Introduction to the Old Testament" by Bernard Anderson and "Introduction to the New Testament" by Howard Clark Kee are two good introductory textbooks used in many major state universities. Its a good place to start.

Christians often perceive themselves as educated on the Bible, simply because they know the stories backwards and forwards. They take pride in knowing where a particular Book and Chapter a verse may come from, or being able to recount the endless stories in detail. But they are ignorant of what the Bible really is, who wrote the Bible and how it came to be, and the historical and literary context in which the Bible was written. :Cheeky: