Mediancat

I have an analogy I'd like to try out.

I was a huge fan of the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (as anyone who read or moderated that thread in M&PC will attest to.) In the course of being a huge fan, naturally you notice things that don't quite work. Plot holes, inconsistencies, questions brought up and never answered, etc.

For example, early in season 2 a character mentions that Sunnydale -- the show's setting -- doesn't have a miniature golf course. A half dozen or so shows later, the characters go miniature golfing.

Now, this is an inconsistency. There are two easy ways to explain it, though; one is that in the intervening couple of months or so of show time, someone built a miniature golf course in Sunnydale, and the other is that they simply went golfing somewhere else. But neither explanation is given in the show. (More likely, of course, is that the show's writers screwed up, but I'm not taking that tack for the moment.)

Nonfans of a show or a movie can point to these inconsistencies, absurdities and plot holes and say that these are glaring weaknesses; fans will do their best to explain why, in most if not all cases, the mistake was only an apparent one which can be easily explained away, as in the example above.

The analogy to Biblical Errancy seems obvious to me; as a nonfan of the "show" in question, I point to the inconsistencies and absurdities of the Bible and say that those are glaring weaknesses; but as fans of the "show," Christians who believe the Bible is inerrant feel that the weaknesses and plot holes are only apparent, and that if one tries hard enough they can be explained away or smoothed over.

I am not, incidentally, saying that this means the Bible IS inerrant, any more than I think Buffy was one smooth, unbroken chain of flawless continuity from episode one to episode 144. Just that I think this is the reasoning, roughly, of the Inerrantists, and I can understand it.

Does this make sense?

Rob aka Mediancat

PS, the reason I put this in GRD and not Biblical Criticism et al is that I wasn't really inclined to get down to cases, which I'm not really an expert in in any event (with the Bible, that is; I can argue Buffy all day). Moderators' mileage may, of course, vary.

seebs

A very interesting point. Note that the word "inerrant" as mostly used today is substantially different from what people used to understand.

I do see your point, though. In fact, the *point* of Buffy is utterly unmarred by the question of whether or not there's a miniature golf course. I think this is why many Christians are fine with saying "on core issues, the Bible is inerrant", and simply don't care how many people were where, or what size a mustard seed is.

CJD

While I hold to the infallibility of the text, I do not support "inerrancy" as fundamentalists' understand it. At any rate, I like the analogy. It has the welcoming effect of "relativizing the relativizers," or, put differently, putting us on equal epistemic grounds. It also shows rightly that being a "fan" does not require "checking your brain in at the door."

Thanks,

CJD


The bishops all have sworn to shed their blood
To prove it is true the hare chews the cud.
Oh bishops, doctors, divines, beware—
Weak is the faith that hangs on a hare.

Anon.

Amaranth

Careful, there, CJD. You're working yourself up for an extended analogy. Perhaps, before you march off armed with your new weapon of why xian's aren't irrational, you should ponder that Buffy is a work of fiction, and is presented and taken as such. "Checking your brain at the door" is actually believing that Buffy is a real person, slaying vampires.

CJD

Yikes! On second thought, the analogy is good so far as it goes . . .

CJD

bocajeff

Buffy also doesn't claim to be written or inspired by an omnimax being either. We know it's written by humans and by default will not be perfect.

Pyrrho

Please explain what you mean by the "infallibility of the text".

Thank you.

CJD

And again:

The bishops all have sworn to shed their blood
To prove it is true the hare chews the cud.
Oh bishops, doctors, divines, beware—
Weak is the faith that hangs on a hare.

Anon.

Calzaer

CJD: Ya know, I have this recurring pipe dream... it involves you actually giving someone a straight answer.

CJD

Calzaer, seriously now. I daresay little in life can be answered as simply as you might want. Experience dictates that I not touch a discussion about Scriptural infallibility--outside of the faith community--with a ten-foot pole. It would be fruitless.

Nonetheless, the short lyric above does encapsulate my general approach: things like hares chewing cud, or the Preacher (of Ecclesiastes) thinking that the earth is flat, do not undermine the theological infallibility of the text. Rather, it serves to bolster the notion that we can indeed--despite our faulty knowledge of the empirical world--know something about the metaphysical and its relationship to the physical. Unless you are unwilling to admit that we moderns do not exhaustively know everything (the naturalists' assumption), you must at least leave open the possibility that something or someone exists beyond the box. Otherwise, you are left with self-referential absurdity. Consider the following from the opening page at Infidels.org:

Our goal is to defend and promote a nontheistic worldview which holds that the natural world is all that there is, a closed system in no need of a supernatural explanantion and sufficient unto itself.

One glaring problem with the above is that it assumes a knowledge it does not possess (i.e., all of reality is a closed system). Correct me if I am wrong, but the perimeters of the "natural world" have yet to be measured empirically (sight, smell, hear, taste, touch). Therefore, "God" must have wrote this opener to the Secular Web. How ironic. I'll leave you to figure out the ramifications.


CJD