Johnny Skeptic

Not necessarily. If God inspired PART of the Bible, but not ALL of the Bible, then obviously EVERYTHING in the Bible would not be instances of the writers speaking for themselves and NOT for God. Assuming that a God exists, I am not aware of any good reasons why anyone should assume that he inspired any writings at all. If a God did inspire the writing of all of the Bible, he certainly could have done a much better job of it as has been adequately proven by the fact that there are so many versions of Christianity. That could have been avoided by better writing, or by frequent personal appearances by God over the centures, or by frequent personal appearances by a representative of God.

In the first century, it is quite odd that God refused to tell anyone about the Gospel message who lived far away from Palestine. How do you account for that? When geography determines who gets to hear the supposedly most important and needed message in history, there is a rat in the woodpile somewhere. God must not have considered the spread of the Gospel message to be a priority.

Gundulf

Sure, but now we're back to the presupposition of whether the said text is inerrant or not. If you believe that the entire thing is inspired as do I and your typical evangelical Christian, then the question of whether or not any particular text reflects only the author's position, not God's is entirely irrelelvent.

If you were to believe that only certain parts of the Bible are inspired, then how does one judge which is true and which isn't? I imagine it is based, then, on your own standards of truth. But if you are going to be the arbiter of what is eternally true and what is just the opinion of men, then you don't need inspiration at all.

Johnny Skeptic

But the issue is not THAT you believe that the entire Bible is inspired by God, but WHY? You still haven't told us why. Please do so. I assume that inerrancy/inspriration satisfies your emotional needs regarding what God must be like. Isn't that what religion is all about?

Is it your position that God is obligated to provide people with inerrant/inspired texts? If God is not obligated to provide people with inerrant/inspired texts, then why would he want to do so?

That was exactly my point.

Regarding the Gospel accounts of the events at the tomb, it is not rational for anyone to conclude that the accounts were inspired by a moral God. That is because the accounts invite dissent rather than agreement. This could easily have been avoided if the accounts had been written more clearly. This is only one of many examples that the Bible needlessly invites dissent rather than agreement.

Not just my standands of truth since billions of other people do not believe that God inspired the writing of the Bible.

The issue of God's motives tells a lot about this issue. The notion of inerrancy/inspiration assumes that God wants humans to have inerrant/inspired texts, but history does not back that up since God refused to provide any texts at all to hundreds of millions of people who died without hearing the Gospel message, and in the first century, for some strange reason he had a preference for people who lived closer to Palestine, turning his back on people who lived far away from Palestine. When geography determines who gets to hear the Gospel message, something is fishy. It does not make any sense that the supposedly most important and needed message in history was spread like a secular message would have been spread, namely by the prevailing human means of communication, transportation, printing, and transportation of a given time period, and thousands of years after it was needed. Whenever the first human committed a sin was when Jesus needed to come to earth, not thousands of years later.

I certainly never said that I was the arbiter of what is eternally true, and I am not aware of any credible evidence that any being in the universe is qualified to be the arbiter of what is eternally true. If you have any evidence regarding this issue other than evidence that some fallible, imperfect humans
living on a tiny speck of a planet in a large universe said in their attempts to speak for God, please present it.

It is my position that written records could never be nearly as helpful and useful as frequent tangible appearances by God, or Jesus, thoughout the centuries to arbitrate unnecessary disputes about the Bible. Christian history has proven that the Bible does not even come close to giving Christians the necessary information that they need to properly lives their lives.

The Bible cannot be accepted without making numerous uncorroborated and nonverifiable assumptions about some very important issues. Following are some examples:

1 - The God of the Bible created the heavens and the earth.

2 - There was a global flood.

3 - There were ten plagues in Egypt.

4 - Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

5 - Jesus never committed a sin.

6 - Jesus' shed blood and death atoned for the sins of mankind.

Items 1, 4, 5, and 6 are four of the major foundations of the Bible, but none of them can be verified by any means except for faith, speculation, and guesswork. Do you by any chance have any major claims that do not need to be verified by faith, speculation, and guesswork? The Resurrection will not do. All that rising from the dead has to do with is power, not character. If Elvis Presley rose from the dead, you most certainly would not worship him. The miracles that Jesus supposedly performed will not do either. Today, millions of Christians disagree as to what constitutes a miracle healing. Why should anyone believe that it was any different back then?

Are you pretty sure that Jesus said what the Gospel writers said that he said? If so, why?

Dave Hawkins

Oral accounts CAN contain accurate information, but written accounts are better. Why? Details can become lost, distorted and embellished more easily with oral accounts. Yes, an author of a written record can lie just as well as the teller of a tale, but all things being equal, the written account is more reliable. Why do you think court cases place more weight on written documents? This is elementary.

Now, regarding the comparison of one written account over another. Both are written, right? Why should I trust one more than the other? Good question. The answer is corroboration and believablility. Which is more believable? The dimensions of the ark in Genesis? Or those given in the Gilgamesh epic (a cube)? Which is older? Genesis is monotheistic. Gilgamesh is polytheistic. Archaeologists have confirmed that monotheism is more ancient than polytheism. So it follows that the Genesis source material is older. Also, Genesis is obviously a compilation AND the historical details that we CAN confirm are very accurate. Therefore, it probably came from sources much older than Moses. It is for these types of reasons (and many others) that I think that Genesis is a more reliable written record than the other tablet accounts.

Gundulf

Careful - you're bordering on an ad hominem there - I could just as easily suggest that your belief in atheism satisfies your emotional needs about how the universe must be, and your emotional need to be free from any ultimate authority....

But I won't.

So, no, this is not what religion is all about. There are plenty of things about the Christian faith I don't particularly like, having grown up as a product of Western Civilization. I embrace these things because I believe they are true, not because I happen to like them. There were more things that I can possibly count that I have found in the Bible as I was studying that I didn't like, and my emotional needs would have been far better satisfied if I went on believing in a God of my own contrivance, rather than choosing to believe that what was presented in the Bible was in fact true.

Why do I believe the Bible is inspired? Well, to me personally, it is not entirely unlike that "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" thing - the Bible claims to be the word of God, inspired, God breathed, etc. So that claim is either true or false. If false, it is was knowingly made false (the people that claimed it knew it wasn't and lied), or unknowingly false (they were just deluded). Mix this with the content about God becoming man, the testimony about Christ, etc. There is way more to it, but that is at least a basic start as to why I believe it is inspired, to give you enough ground to start tearing into it...



No, it is my position that God is not obliged to give people anything.

Why would he at all? To give people the ability to know him. If there was no revelation in SOME form, then every religion is a shot in the dark and entirely untrustworthy in anything they claim. Whether that revelation was verbal, incarnational, or textual. Without revelation, no one could know God. If God wanted people to know him (by his choice, not obligation), he had to reveal himself somehow.



A 'moral' God? The events were written by different people who had their own different agendas and different ideas of how to arrange their material for the purposes they wished, some of which I have no problem conceding may not have ever been intended to be strictly historical.


God wanted SOME people to have inerrant/inspired texts. There is never a claim that he wanted ALL people to have the same access to the truth. Remember, Jesus spoke in parables specifically so that only some people would get the message?


No, I never meant to suggest that you [specifically]were - my point was that, if only 'part' of the Bible was inspired, and parts were just the bright ideas of the writers speaking for God stuff that God would never have wanted written... Then how would I know which parts were inspired and which weren't? My own opinion? My own taste? If only part of the Bible is inspired, then it rests on ME to determine which is 'true' and which isn't - making me (or whichever reader) the final arbiter of truth.

Sure, if God's intention were that the absolute maximum number of people would 'believe' (cognitively) in him. However, if his purpose was different, then this might well be the best way.

Similarly, if Jesus' intention were that the absolute maximum number of people would beleive (cognitively) in him, then he should never have spoken in parables to hide truth from 'those on the outside', or refrained from doing miracles when asked to prove himself, etc.



And atheism cannot be accepted without making numerous uncorroborated and nonverifiable assumptions about some very important issues. Such as, "The God of the Bible did NOT create the heavens and the earth", or "Jesus was NOT God incarnate", etc.

I will of course grant the burden of proof thing (aka, the orbiting teapot or whatever), if we are talking about scientific evidence.

The very point though, espoused in the Bible quite deeply, is that God is absolutely not interested whatsoever in "cognitive assent". I think this is your major difficulty in understanding the Christian claims, if I may be so bold. I entirely concur with you that if "Salvation" = "Cognitive assent that God exists and that Jesus really is God incarnate", that, if God wanted to save people, he should have done a much better job at demonstrating his reality, the reality of the resurrection, etc.

But cognitive assent has nothing to do with salvation. The most famous prooftext of this, of course, is "You believe that there is one God? Good! Even the demons believe that..." Or the people who came to Jesus at the end of all things proclaiming their belief in him and all the great things they did 'in his name', only to have Jesus say, "I never knew you - away from me."

If faith, trust, repentance, love of God - if these are the things that bring salvation, not 'mental/cognitive assent', then perhaps it makes sense that God were to communicate the truth on a level that is not an appeal to scientific knowledge, but is at on a level of requesting the believe to step out in trust and faith and repentance of his self-sufficiency.

Steviepinhead

Nope, it's not "elementary," dave. Courts don't just credit written accounts over oral ones willy-nilly, or in all cases. Written documents must first be authenticated, usually through such matters as signatures/handwriting comparisons, oral testimony of the drafters, stipulation by the opposite party, notarization, etc. All the things which the Bible account lacks.

Likewise, when the "intent of the drafters" is legitimately in issue--as it certainly is with regard to whether the Bible was intended as fiction, fable, allegory, scientific fact, historically accurate, etc., then oral testimony as to the intent of the written document can trump the written words themselves, dave. As you are aware, however, the intent behind the Bible account also lacks such critical oral attestation.

As others have pointed out--but you have ignored--the Bible could have been written as a record of a previously-circulating oral mythical account, like Grimm's Fairy Tales or 1001 Arabian Nights. In many cases, to lend that "air of versimilitude" which enables temporary suspension of belief (allowing one to "immerse" oneself in the faux reality of the tale while it is being told), the account contains internal claims of "accuracy," such as claimed eyewitness testimony, or a laundry list of how the current teller received the tale verbatim from someone who got it verbatim from someone who was "really" there.

The inclusion of such faux-reality claims, in and of themselves, clearly affords the reader/listener no principled way to make a fiction/fact distinction. Ordinarily, the reader actually interested in telling fact from fiction will test the account in multiple other ways--that whole consilience, corroboration thingy--including what the reader/listener knows about the reputation for veracity of the tale-teller (are they a respected, fact-checked peer reviewed historian? or a mega-selling novel writer?)--something which we once again cannot do with regard to the unknown and unknowable scribes of the Bible.

This has all been pointed out to you many times, without any satisfactory rejoinder.

However, you do pay lip service to these concepts...

Neither set of dimensions results in a remotely deluge-worthy craft, as has been brought to your attention on prior occasions. You have chosen to ignore the fact- and marine-design-based objections to the alleged "seaworthiness" of the Ark in preference for the hand-wavery of alleged creationist "authorities." Really, an unpowered, rudderless, oversized wooden vessel has seaworthiness problems of such astounding obviousness--particularly in the ultra-extreme conditions that you have yourself postulated or accepted for the "flood"--that it's amazing that anyone could argue about them with anything approaching a straight face.

Your claims here have been rebutted, without satisfactory response from you. You simply choose to believe, against the archaeological and religious-historical evidence, that monotheism came first. Indeed, you contradict yourself here, since many of the cultures upon whose oral "flood" traditions you rely were themselves polytheistic, shamanistic, or animistic. You cannot pick one oral tradition from such a culture and accept it as true while ignoring the evidence of other oral traditions from the same culture which rebuts your claims.

You have brought forward few if any "historical details" that have been confirmed as accurate. Few archaeological remains in the Holy Land--even of places mentioned in the early books of the Bible--have been dated to anything like the times that they would have needed to be in order to verify the Biblical account. Where are the archaeological (or "documentary," for that matter) verifications of the Israelites' dwelling in Egypt, or wandering in the desert, of the destruction of the walls of Jericho, of the Temple, etc., etc. This is, actually, your "Tyre" moment, writ large, dave.

In any event, many of the historical and cultural details found in the Odyssey and Illiad might be found to be accurate. This, you would presumably agree, furnishes no warrant for believing in the supernatural elements contained in those accounts (well, we might credit them as furnishing motivations for the personages in the accounts, but not otherwise...). Likewise, even if some few of the personages, places, and cultural descriptions in the opening scenes of the Bible turn out to be "real," this furnishes no basis for crediting the reality of the claimed "supernatural motivators" alleged in the account.

But thanks for finally deigning to notice these important critiques, dave.

Maybe now I can look forward to a response regarding the sheperd guy...?

Steviepinhead

Orrrrr.... Maybe not.

Another thread that busy dave seems to have abandoned.

Mike PSS

Yeah. He's doing that a lot the past few weeks.

So I'll ask the other theists, like Gundulf.

I'm sure a lot has been written about this, and refer me to another thread/book/discussion that covers it but....

Why do christians, YEC's specifically, cling onto the OT stories when the Christian faith is based upon the writings of the NT?

Is this a case of not wanting to throw out the baby (jesus) with the bath water (the OT).

The OT was old even in jesus day. So why cling onto this obvious collection of multiple writers as "truth" or even a reliable description of the faith. Why not just sit with the NT as "truth" and leave the OT as some past story-guide from the long-lost ancestors.

I have yet to see any real objections to things scientific or historical from people quoting the NT (except those specific archeologic discussions around some specific NT mention of some specific person or place. pretty narrow discussion that, not like the whole flood thing in the OT).

Clouseau

YECs are antichrist for that very reason. They are legalists.

Cege

(is YEC 'Young Earth Christians'?) It would seem that Christians who consider the NT to be inspired and/or inerrant scripture also would need to rely ditto on the OT because Jesus quoted OT verses and referred to OT persons/stories like Jonah as real persons/events. At least that's my understanding after a near-lifetime of instruction in Christian churches.