Asha'man

For most Christians, you are correct: the lack of an inerrant bible doesn’t seem to be a problem. But then again, most Christians have been trained to accept things without supporting evidence.

From my point of view, an inerrant bible is a death blow to its claims. The bible claims to be a revelation about the supernatural. By definition, man cannot learn about the supernatural from observation. In order to have any factual information about it, he must have assistance. The bible does not appear to demonstrate any supernatural assistance, therefore I reject its primary claim.

Actually, I should clarify that thought. The bible could easily have been the result of supernatural inspiration, but only if the source is not expected to be particularly knowledgeable or honest. There is nothing in the bible that would disprove satanic authorship, for example.

On a side note, this thread has been focused entirely on internal contradictions within the bible. (A perfectly valid focus for a single thread) You can also evaluate the accuracy of the bible against what we know of the rest of the world. It turns out that the bible fails miserably in this area as well. The scientific and historical accuracy of the bible also demonstrates that it is a fiction written by man, not a revelation sent by a supernatural entity.

Madkins007

One of the things I have been trying to research is what the bible says about itself- that is, what claims does IT make, versus the claims made FOR it?

Actually, such problems would be useful as well- if they could reasonably be considered errors by God, as opposed to errors by transcribers, human narrators, etc. (which we already can assume, if the bible was not specially guided somehow, could humanly screw things up!)

For example- I am pretty tired of the 'locusts with 4 legs' as an error. Come on- the people saw these things, fought and ate these things. The 'going on all fours' phrase is either gross stupidity or an idiom. The 'leviathan breathing fire' bit (for a different example) is written in a poetic style, which would tend to make one wonder how literal it is supposed to be.

It probably sounds like I am trying to create a series of escape clauses for any reported error, but I am only trying to see if there are any places God, himself, said something that just ain't so and has no real wriggle room left.

On the other hand,

Jack the Bodiless

I'm not sure how you'd class the Genesis creation account by this criterion.

Obviously, no human was around before Adam. Therefore, if the story WAS true, then the pre-Adamic parts must have been dictated by God to a human (traditionally Moses IIRC) at some point.

However, the story is clearly false (even the parts dealing with Adam and Eve). Therefore the utterances of God within the story are also clearly false.

Asha'man

What would you say if the entire story of Moses, the exodus from Egypt, the wandering in the Sinai desert, and the conquest of Canaan turned out to be a complete and utter fiction? What if archeologists could say conclusively that this entire population movement never happened? What if they could point to specific contradictions, like the city of Jericho not having any walls at the time Joshua was supposed to have knocked them down? What about cities that were never burned at the time that Joshua was supposed to have burned them to the ground? (After all, population movements and conquests are exactly the type of thing archeology is good at finding.)

If the Jews were never led by Moses out of Egypt, then it’s pretty likely that Moses never brought any stone commandments down from a mountain, at least not in the middle of a trip that never happened. That puts the entire Jewish Law in question, which is the basis of their covenant.

If the whole basis of Jewish law, history, and culture was purely based on a myth, don’t you think God would know that, and would have been honest enough to have mentioned it?

Madkins007

Actually, I already pretty much think that Genesis is a story of one type or another (older myth, imported tale, oral traditonal teaching story, or something.)

However, just because the beginnings may be a myth or similar tale, does not mean that the whole thing is trash. We have pretty much reduced a lot of the foundation of America to myths, but that does not invalidate the country or the laws it was based on.

Sure- it casts aspersions and a cloak of doubt on everything, but it does not justify throwing the baby out with the bath.

It may just well be that the Bible (possibly mostly the OT) is primarily just a collection of oral stories about the history of the Hebrews and nothing more religious/spiritual/whatever than that. Would that mean that the book and the religion are worthless? I dunno at this point.

Asha'man

If the Bible appears to be completely unreliable when it comes to facts that can be verified, how can you possibly trust it for facts that you can't verify?

(Btw, I'm reading The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man by Robert Price right now. He is taking a critical look at the Gospels, trying to separate out fictional elements from any historical fragments. So far, everything has been rejected as most probably fiction, but I haven't finished the book yet.)

Knowledge about heaven, hell, and the afterlife, cannot possibly come from humans observing the universe. That knowledge can only come from a supernatural source. If the bible conclusively contains large quantities of fiction and man-made errors, false and failed prophecies, dubious morality, how can you conclude that any part of it is from a reliable supernatural source?

I'm not sure I'd classify the religion as worthless, btw. It's demonstrated it's usefulness as a tool for controlling large populations, and for fleecing sheep of their money and their critical thinking skills, and for supporting uncounted generations of priests. Surely, that has been valuable for somebody. More accurately, I'd classify it as a useful lie.

Sparrow

Which doesn't distinguish it from hundreds of other creation myths of other cultures. But it does admit that the bible is errant.


Which myths concerning the founding are you referring to? That George Washington chopped down the cherry tree? That America was founded as a Christian nation?


There may be a nugget of truth in the book, but I can't right now think of one that is unique to the bible. If it's science that leads you to disbelieve the literal truth of genesis, why wouldn't that same science lead you to disbelieve the parting of the (red or reed) sea, virgin birth, resurrection, assorted miracles, etc? If you then remove all the parts where the impossible happened, is there anything left that can be considered divine revelation? It's entirely possible that you could find another document with all the positive messages of the bible, but without the parts that zealots use to justify evil acts. If so, the bible has very little value in my opinion.

Religion can be useful in both positive and negative ways. To often today we hear about the negative ways. Religious adherents of all faiths need to reexamine their tenets that support violence and oppression if they are to live together in peace.

Have you read anything by Bishop John Shelby Spong?

Vinnie

"""""The bible claims to be a revelation about the supernatural. """"""

It claims no such thing and can claim no such thing. See my debate with RObertlw on the problems of referring to the Bible collectively.

Vinnie

Madkins007

American myths are pretty common. Betsy Ross, a lot of the life storeis of the founding fathers, Pocahontas, Thanksgiving, our understanding of the Native Americans, the selling of Manhatten, the Constitutional Convention and the Constitution itself, and probably most of the 'stories' we were taught are oversimplified, exaggerated, or just plain wrong.

And all of this is from a period only a couple hundred years ago that was reasonably well documented!

Madkins007

This assumes that there is no revelation apart from the Bible AND that the entire Bible is equally trustworthy or untrustworthy to the same degree (when it probably should be looked at as a collection of books to be analyzed seperately).

I AM interested in the phenomena that the Bible draws such great black or white ultimatums by most people- all perfect or all trash. This is not a standard we apply to any other document that I can see- even if similar claims are made by followers.

A related phenomena is that a contemproary book can be considered mostly trash, yet still considered to have a degree of validity (thinking here of 90% of the political commentary, histories, and biographies written in recent years). Events that happened in current times are hotly debated, difficult to prove one way or the other, difficult to pin down- yet we know enough about the ancient Middle East to state with certainty what did or did not happen?



OK, I AM tired, and I am reacting to what feels like pressure to abandon the bible totally, based in part on the findings of some historians and experts. If these guys cannot agree on a premise as simple as 'did Jesus really live', why should I listen to any of them that the bible is pretty much trashed? (After all, in earlier postings somewhere on this database, there was a review of a book insisting that Jesus lived in India, while other threads from the same period insisted there was no such person.)