aiki
Regular Member
It doesn't sound like this is so from your posts. You sound highly skeptical of human truthfulness.
I wrote:
"Well, even sinners are capable of communicating truth. Is the sinner who says 2+2=4 telling a lie?"
You replied:
"Of course they are. The challenge is in determining when they are not doing so."
I think you meant to say "Of course they aren't." In any case, my point was that, just because humans are morally-corrupt and so capable of telling falsehoods, it doesn't follow that they don't tell the truth, or are incapable of speaking it.
If you think a person is telling a lie, you can certainly cross-examine them, but it seems to me you shouldn't just assume a lie without reasonable cause for doing so. The mere possibility that a lie could be told is not, I think, sufficient reason to believe one has been told.
I wrote:
"You doubt the Bible when it says we are all sinners? Really?"
You replied:
"No, I agree with the Bible on this point. Its the whole reason I don't trust the validity of the Bible yet."
It just doesn't follow that because people are sinners, the Bible can't be trusted. Sinners produce perfectly reliable, perfectly true, documents all the time: bus schedules, maps, chemistry texts, car repair manuals, cookbooks, etc.
I wrote:
But another person may come along and say, "I don't believe it. I don't believe that scar is from cutting yourself with a knife. You're a human just like those rotten Nigerian con artists, or lousy insurance salesman!"
You replied:
"Indeed they could, and should. I could then show them by doing it again or doing it to them or a 3rd party."
But this wouldn't establish that the original scar was produced the way you claim - only that you can produce new, similar scars with a knife. You see, if people want to be radically skeptical about your claim about the scar, not even a re-enactment will suffice. Generally, though, unless there is a good reason to doubt your claim about how you got the scar, people will assume - quite reasonably - that you got it the way you say you did. Why, then, isn't this the way one should approach the Bible?
I was pointing out that strong biases cannot be overcome even with perfectly good evidence and argument. The mother of a just-convicted murderer who refuses to accept the finding of the court and jury concerning her son is an example of this. My greater point being that solid evidence and sound argument aren't always sufficient to convince people of the truth of a thing.
Well, whatever problem you may have, so far, you haven't given good reason for it. You seem to have an unjustified radical skepticism toward the Bible which seems to be based largely on the non sequitur that, because people are fallible, the Bible must therefore be in error. This is no more true in regards to the Bible than it is of any document fallible humans produce.
Ideally, we should have all the evidence we would like to make up our minds about important things, about things that have high stakes for us. But, this just isn't how life works. Many things we must decide upon without all the information or certainty we could wish for. Career decisions, financial decisions, health decisions - these all are often made without having all the facts one might want in order to make them. I take a significant risk every time I get on the roadway with other drivers. I know nothing of their state of mind, or driving ability, or trustworthiness but I drive at high - potentially fatal - speeds among them every day. Every time I eat out at a restaurant I could be food poisoned. But, not knowing all the details of how my food has been prepared, or the trustworthiness of the one preparing it, I still eat the food the restaurant gives to me. And so on. Though the stakes are sometimes high, and without having all the evidence for our decisions we might like, we still manage to navigate all the potential jeopardy in relative safety.
The Bible has ample evidence in support of its claims:
Thematic unity.
Fulfilled prophecy.
Survivability.
Historical accuracy.
Impact upon human history.
Personal experience of multi-millions of people.
And so on.
But this assumes that the role of a high school teacher parallels that of God and that the passing rates of the teacher pursue the same, or a similar, goal to that of the entrance rate of people into God's kingdom. Neither parallel is legitimate. God is not a high school teacher trying to get students to pass his class. Not hardly.
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