Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Sven · 02-22-2006, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

I'm not really in this thread, but I must say that I don't recognise such a position. People known to me to have converted to Christianity have followed the following logic:

I was not talking about why people convert to Christianity, but how they try to convert others - regardless of their own conversion story.

Sven · 02-22-2006, 01:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdarus

Thank you Sven, that helps some. I agree that the problem is in Premise 3.

1) Belief in the book is probably not the goal. The book is likely a means to the higher goal of belief in the God described in the book. To the extent that belief in the book is beneficial to the primary goal, belief in the book is a good thing. To the extent that belief in the book would obstruct the goal of believing in this God, such a belief would become a distraction.

2) Even though this God wants belief, it does not follow that the inerrant book will necessarily produce universal belief. If some do not believe, it is not evidence that premises 1 and 2 are wrong. Belief may not be something that this God is willing to manipulate in that way.

P3 isn't about belief in god, but about belief in inerrancy (certainly there are other ways to get to a belief in god).
Since you agree that god (if he exists and inspired the bible) not necessarily wants people to believe in inerrancy, we have no argument. That's all what I've been saying.

Or do you disagree with the consequence - that trying to convince others of inerrancy is useless?

Sven · 02-22-2006, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mdarus

Robert made some good points.

No. Because he argued something different then I.

Quote:

I can't relate to coming to a belief in God because the Bible says so. However, there is much reliance on the Bible to determine what God is like. This can look very similar.

I'm quite aware of this. But apparently not many Christians.

Quote:

However, I don't see how you get an inerrant Bible without a precursory belief in God who reveals truth about himself.

Well, tell this to Christians who try to use this bad argument. Mostly, it's futile to tell them that their argument is circular.

mdarus · 02-22-2006, 01:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sven

P3 isn't about belief in god, but about belief in inerrancy (certainly there are other ways to get to a belief in god).
Since you agree that god (if he exists and inspired the bible) not necessarily wants people to believe in inerrancy, we have no argument. That's all what I've been saying.

Or do you disagree with the consequence - that trying to convince others of inerrancy is useless?

I agree that trying to convince unbelievers of inerrancy is pretty futile. There are too many prerequisite beliefs before you can get to inerrancy. This is a conversation among Christians about how to understand the authority of the Bible and how to glean information and inspiration from the Bible. I find that inerrancy is a helpful hermeneutic. To that extent, I would reccomend this approach to other Christians and perhaps seek to convince them of its value. I don't, however, consider it crucial.

Doug Shaver · 02-22-2006, 04:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helpmabob

You mentioned Shakespeare first. His comedies are about as funny as toothache these days, but biblical meanings remain relevant. I would not argue at all that the authors of the Bible were infallible, only the text that they produced through the leading of the Holy Spirit largely is.

Your response to the thread title was:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helpmabob

For me, it's not so much an assumtion as an experience. The Bible has never forced me to err, or encouraged me to desire to do evil. This suggests that it is in itself based on the best good around, and probably largely free from error. The rewards are by far the best when read with an openness to the the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

By that logic, I should believe that Shakespeare's writings are based on the best good around and probably largely free from error. Do you think I should believe those things about Shakespeare? Do you think I should believe them for no reason except that his works never force me to err or encourage me to desire to do evil?

FatherMithras · 02-22-2006, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by praxeus

Most emphatically.

#2. The KJB is better than any Greek version.
I don't read Greek versions, however from what I have studied, seen and heard, if there was a question about some ambiguous spot, I trust the translation of the KJB more than any Greek text. Such questions are few and far between between the Textus Receptus and the KJB. Or Textus Recepti if that is a good plural

#3. The KJB was inspired (or reinspired if you prefer) at the time of translation under King James by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Well, I tend to avoid that language, since it isolates the KJB from a whole historical process that involved usage and preservation of the Byzantine Text and even the Old Latin and Vulgate, followed by great scholarship and labors on many texts (Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza, Elzivir, Tyndale, Geneva, etal). With that caveat, I would say that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit put together the inspired and preserved scripture that has been the base of faith and evangelism ever since

#4. The King James Bible is inspired in a manner as good or better than the original manuscripts. God guided the translation.
Or equal to (yes, that's like as good). And since I don't have any original manuscripts, the King James Bible is the word of God today. When you find me the originals, signed, sealed and delivered, I'll review the issue again

#5. It doesn't matter what manuscripts the KJ translators worked with. The Holy Spirit in effect guided the translators to produce an inerrant version.
The first no. It made all the difference what manuscripts they worked with were. See #3. You can't isolate out the KJB from the historical processes that brought it to be. Even issues like the birth of the Christian Hebraist movement, and the studies of classical languages emphasizing Greek as well as Latin in 16th century England. Even the tensions between the Puritans and Anglicans helped bring forth a Bible using great scholarship and men dedicated to the purpose of accurately translating the word of God. The earlier work of Tyndale and the Bishop's Bible and Geneva also set the stage, since the KJB was in a sense simply an update within an excellent textual line.

#6. Would the KJB be the same if the translators had no source documents to work with? The Holy spirits guidance was entirely sufficient for producing the KJB.
I tend to avoid "what if" questions unless they are really germane. Again, see #3. If the KJB was not the KJB it wouldn't be the KJB

#7. The KJB is the result of a miraculous intervention by God. (If the answer to this is yes, how do you know?).
All of God's inspiration is miraculous

#8. The King James Bible is the Word of God, the scriptures.
100% yes.

#9. there is no advantage in knowing Greek or Hebrew, because the KJB is more accurate than any text (extant or recreated by textual criticism) in those languages.
There can be apologetic and evangelistic advantages. There might be professional advantages too

From what I have seen time and again the supposed comprehension advantages have been dust in the wind (carefully watching claim after claim), while the pitfalls of correcting the Bible falsely with hidden wisdom by "going to the Greek" has snared many. There may be an esthetic pleasure in catching the Hebrew cadence or the Greek language precision, and how it interplays with the English translation, so that might be an advantage (if you have the time). So my answer here is mixed. However the short answer is yes, we have no advantages, we have no advantages today. ie. The Bible is for the ploughman, as clear and as powerful as to the scholastic, often more so. Tyndale and Erasmus both, if I recall, have powerful quotes in this regard.

#10. There is absolutely no error in the KJB. No contradicitions, no interpolations, no grammatical or scientific errors. It is completely and absolutely 100% perfect.
Well, I haven't seen any

And I've become confident that this is because it is the true word of God.

The list was well thought out. Probably the first time I got a bunch of those types of questions put in a sensible manner.

Hope my answers were reasonably straightforward and clear. My position changed radically over the last 3-5 years so I basically just go day-by-day in the conceptual constuct, although a couple of the KJB afficiondos (aka crazies) have really helped crystallize the issues, much in the way that questions like above can help.

Please realize that usually such questions are just to try to find a cause of offense, I do think you are really trying to understand my view, not asking just to find what you might consider "the weakest link"

Shalom,
Steven Avery

ROFLMAO. Circular logic at it's finest.

Doug Shaver · 02-22-2006, 05:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by praxeus

In many cases neither side will over "prove" their case, even with additional evidence.

It is pretty unlikely that either of us as individuals will change the other's mind. However, I do believe that debates such as ours can be informative to people who read them with their minds still open. And I feel very certain that there are plenty of people left in this world whose minds are open with regard to the claims of all of its major religions (and even the minor ones).

Quote:

Originally Posted by praxeus

We are talking preferences and probabilities and paradigms, not proof.

I agree that we're not talking about proof in any mathematical sense. We are talking about what a reasonable person may infer is most likely to be true, taking into consideration the entirety of evidence currently known and being willing to infer something else if more evidence should emerge later that is inconsistent with any such tentative conclusion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by praxeus

lection difficlior is a primary tenet of modern textcrit, and it creates errancy even when the fabricated error has very little textual support.

I might need a little hand-holding here, because I'm still having a problem with the notion of creating errancy.

Given two versions of a manuscript for which a common but not extant original is reasonably assumed, at least one of them is errant. An error exists. We might misidentify it. We might decide that the error is in manuscript B when it actually is in A, but we have not created an error in so doing.

Of course you could criticize the method used to identify the error on any number of grounds. One of those grounds could be that for some reason, perhaps apparent to nonpartisans, it is likely to lead to a particular kind of misidentification, i.e. it is biased against the correct identification of errors. But that bias needs to be demonstrated independently of the fact that its conclusions tend to contradict some orthodoxy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by praxeus

Example. . . . Lectio difficlior places this in reverse, that the Gospel writers would have made the error (presumption of errancy) and the copyists would have corrected it. The presumption of errancy is unneutral and unwarrented.

As a generality, and all else being equal (which it almost never is), I would suppose that the original author knew what he meant to say and said it. However, the presumption that he could not have made a mistake is unneutral and unwarranted. Authors do in fact make mistakes, and people who copy their works do correct those mistakes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by praxeus

The current "scholarly" or "scientific" "best means" is GIGO for the errancy discussion, since it fabricates the very errancy that is later proclaimed.

Well, if you suppose that there must be an error in there somewhere, you can always find one even if you have to imagine it. If that is your point, I have no problem with it. Given some manuscript variation, though, the supposition that there must be an error in at least one of them is logically necessary. It cannot be denied.

But then, the further supposition that the error cannot lie in a particular corpus of manuscripts will fabricate the inerrant corpus that it proclaims. If manuscript A is presumed inerrant, then it is always possible to formulate a not-impossible hypothesis explaining how the error appeared in manuscript B.

Steven Avery · 02-22-2006, 06:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Given two versions of a manuscript for which a common but not extant original is reasonably assumed, at least one of them is errant. An error exists.

Hi Doug ... No, that would only be a variant. And if the difference has any significance (ie. not just spelling and such) then one is the perfect word of God, the other is imperfect. That alone doesn't create errancy. However there are dozens of such situations where errancy is the concern, so we can focus on those.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

I might need a little hand-holding here, because I'm still having a problem with the notion of creating errancy.

I will give you the general situation.

1) Reading "A" is in the great majority of manuscripts
Also it is in the historic Bible, Textus Receptus, Geneva, KJB, Luther

2) Reading "B" is in a handful of manuscripts, sometimes only 1 or 2, sometimes a dozen, some sort of small minority. And virtually nobody anywhere we know of considered it the word of God for 1900 years. It was only placed in the versions around 1880 by the textcrit confusions then propagated.

3) Reading "A" has no problem

4) Reading "B" is errant, geographical, logical, consistency, names whatever, (also a tendency to horrid doctrine).

5) By AMT (absurd modern textcrit) "B" is considered "original", largely because of a combination of lectio difficilior and other confused & connected ideas (eg. the strange idea that additions would be more common than omissions) promulgated by Westcott & Hort in order to attempt to replace the "vile" Textus Receptus, and followed by various spiritual 'Christian' lemmings.

This pattern repeats similar again and again and again, such as in the Asa "smackdown" debate on the Kirby/Wallach forum, or Gerash (the prime geography error claim in the NT), or Jesus "not" going to the feast and much, much more.

Also the same general pattern is on the supposed redaction theories that are so beloved of the skeptics, such as Mark having an chopped-off awkward ending, against the overwhelming majority of manuscripts. And one negative theory builds on another, this wasn't written by Paul, this was interpolated, etc.

Hope that helps.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Johnny Skeptic · 02-22-2006, 07:22 PM

Message to praxeus: Regarding the hundreds of millions of people who died without ever having heard the Gospel message, what good was a supposedly inerrant Bible to those people?

In the NIV, Acts 17:10-11 say "As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." The word "Scriptures" of course refers to the Old Testament. Who chose which writings were included in the Old Testament, and by what means did they make their choices?

Regarding the story of Adam and Eve, do you have any idea who decided to include it as part of Old Testament, and when the story was first written down? Jews did not learn to write until thousands of years after the alleged story took place, so the formation of the Old Testament was a much different process than the formation of the New Testament canon, and was therefore was a much more questionable process than the formation of the New Testament canon.

Roger Pearse · 02-23-2006, 12:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julian

But you live in the UK. I am pretty sure that there is a huge difference between average British christians and average American christians.

No doubt: things here never get as extreme as they do with you, in every walk of life, religious or secular. We sent you all our loonies...

Quote:

Here in the US we are dealing with a population where roughly 50% believes that the bible is to be taken literally, i.e. the flood, 6000 years old and so on. Christians in europe seem as a whole far more relaxed about these matters.

That's because the disputes that led to the rise of fundamentalism (in the proper use of the term) did not happen here, or to the same extent. Relatively few people over here went around insisting endlessly that believers had to choose between either rejecting evolution or Christianity. The upshot is that Christians tend not to accept this false dichotomy.

From what I have read, in your country this choice has been hammered home for decades, in the most insulting form possible. Since Christianity will certainly outlive our civilisation, as it did the last civilisation, the only possible consequence is to undermine popular support for and trust in science as a whole; and I am told that you in the US are now reaping some of the consequences.

Surely those who love a discipline do not go around trying to make it stink in the nostrils of the public by using it to insult their religion or politics or pet cat? I would not run a course on the church fathers and start by telling people that it proved something offensive to them -- rather I would minimise such things, so that they would get interested in the fathers! But on this logic, this tells us something rather disgraceful about all those Americans who have been pushing evolution for the last 70 years, if I have the facts right (and of course I may not).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

02-22-2006, 07:22 PM	#159
Johnny Skeptic Banned Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Florida Posts: 19,796	Why do some Christians assume that the Bible is inerrant? Message to praxeus: Regarding the hundreds of millions of people who died without ever having heard the Gospel message, what good was a supposedly inerrant Bible to those people? In the NIV, Acts 17:10-11 say "As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." The word "Scriptures" of course refers to the Old Testament. Who chose which writings were included in the Old Testament, and by what means did they make their choices? Regarding the story of Adam and Eve, do you have any idea who decided to include it as part of Old Testament, and when the story was first written down? Jews did not learn to write until thousands of years after the alleged story took place, so the formation of the Old Testament was a much different process than the formation of the New Testament canon, and was therefore was a much more questionable process than the formation of the New Testament canon.

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