Is the Bible reliable?

[elliott95]

Indeed - the self-conflicted self-contradicting position they adopt not only is a horrible wrench/bend of the Bible text - it does not fit any narrative - evolutionist or bible.

Darwin was unnable to marry the two - so also Dawkins, Provine, Meyers all admit to being unnable to merge the two mutually exclusive views - and so admit almost all atheists and also Bible believing Christians that choose not to wrench the text of Gen 1:2-2:3 in the direction of blind faith evolutionism about "stories easy enough to tell but they are not science" when talking about "stories based on the fossil record...stories of how one thing came from another".

in Christ,

Bob

There are however many Christians who have reached an authentic reading of the text, once they have let go of the idea that the text is anything other than tangentially related to history. Dawkins, Hitchens, Darwin, and all the new atheists could not let go off what we may call that fundamentalist reading, and so their arguments against the Bible are against the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.
Contrarily, there is very little that liberal Christian theologians are unwilling to let go of when it comes to a reading of the Bible as a history. But as it turns out, there is often very little left of anything discernibly traditionally Christian in the liberal theology either, for the high sense of morality and ethics become as expendable as the history, in many liberal theologies.

Be that as it may, that leaves those conservatives who have a deep sense of the abiding moral truths and proscribed behaviors of traditional Christianity, but cannot authentically hold on to the fundamentalist interpretation, due to the cognitive dissonance it causes with the indisputable truths revealed by science.

Compounding the problem is the cognitive dissonance caused by such statements as 'evolution is compatible with faith, and yet Adam and Eve are to be regarded as real people'. If by real people, what is being interpreted is historic figures and the biological mother and father of all mankind, the compromise between the two world view becomes an impossible one.

Nevertheless, reading the text on its own terms, neither insisting upon its inerrant historical value, nor bending and contorting it to conform to the latest findings of science, the Wisdom of the Ages, and the traditional theological and spiritual meanings of the text, as they have always been understood, may still shine through.

The real value of the Bible has never been its status as a history book, but as its immeasurable value as the testimony and dialogue between God and his people, the struggles that we have all gone through together, with God and against God even, to discover what is good and what is evil.

That value is not reduced whether or not one has a fundamentalist understanding of scripture. The message of Jonah and the whale is the same either way, whether or not it is a historical account of what really happened. The richness of the story does not depend on the miracle actually taking place. And to try to determine whether the miracle took place or not really goes outside of the text. It add nothing to the story to focus in on that aspect, and miss the deeper meaning of the relationship between justice and mercy in the process.

I have frequently listened to an evangelist philosopher, Dr Bill Craig debate people like Hitchens and other advocates of materialistic naturalism. Invariably, in terms of an objective assessment of the debate, he cleans the floor up with them. He does so by insisting that his proofs for God are not based on a inerrant Scripture (even though he does believe it to be inerrant) and instead focuses on the objective arguments that God is the more reasonable belief, compared to the alternatives.

Unfortunately he did meet his match in his debate with the very liberal member of the Jesus Seminar, Marcus Borg. Very likely he could have won that debate, because arguably believing in the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus is the more reasonable hypothesis, given all the evidence.

But how he failed to win that debate was in his insistence that to not believe in the resurrection of the physical body makes faith worthless. By doing so to counter Marcus Borg's claim that what is important is the ongoing personal relationship that he has with the Risen Jesus, he also ironically negated his strongest argument against the atheists. That argument was that the ultimate and most meaningful proof of God was to be found in his personal, salvific relationship with Jesus, the ongoing relationship he experienced as real every day since he had became a born again Christian. Compared to that, it was 'almost folly to focus on all the other proofs' was how he argued for that point against the godless.

But in his counter to Marcus Borg, that argument, his most important and most heartfelt, was thrown out the window, as being worthless unless also believed in the empty tomb.

I suppose for any of us to authentically be here in GT as orthodox Nicene Christians, we really DO need to believe in the empty tomb and the resurrection of the body. Marcus Borg is not an orthodox Christian.

Om the other hand, when it comes to our salvation, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to belief in an inerrant fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. What is necessary is to know God through a personal, living relationship with Jesus, precisely as Borg had described that relationship to be.

Liberal or conservative, fundamentalist reading or literary reading, the Bible will show us all who Jesus is, who we are having that personal spiritual relationship with in our daily lives, here and now, if only we want him.


And that is all the Bible really needs to be about to be considered to be fully reliable.

In Christ,
Just another Anonymous Poster

 

[BobRyan]

The myth that the Bible can be sliced up - shredded and some shard of it can be held up as "true" while the rest is considered fiction only works if you don't pay attention to the details.

As pointed out the Law of God is founded on the Genesis 1:2-2:3 so "the detail is ignored".

The gospel of the new Covenant "writes the law in the heart and mind" Heb 8 - and that law declares "SIX days you shall labor...for in SIX DAys the Lord made". Ex 20:8-11 -- the very thing that the external-agenda for evolutionism wants to delete.

The Gospel declares that until Adam fell there was no sin or death sorrow disease corruption in Romans 8 and Romans 5 -- the very thing that blind faith evolutionism declares to be most untrue.

The Gospel says that Christ is the Creator everything just as Genesis 1:2-2:3 states in that real 7 day period - the very thing that blind faith evolutionism says is most untrue.

The Gospel says that from the beginning God created mankind sinless, and predicts a restoration to Paradise and the tree of life - the sinless deathless paradise start - the the detail about our starting condition that blind faith evolutionism say is most un true.

The Gospel says that since sin and death only came into the world through one man's sin and that man is the ancestor of us all - that all are held guilty ... Rom 5... a statement about the starting condition that blind faith evolutionism claims to be most untrue.

The NT authors say that the OT text is "The Word of God" and say of it "The Holy Spirit says" when speaking of the OT text -- placing God Himself as the author rather than "the best efforts of well intentioned men living in a pre-science age" -- and thus at odds with the very detail that blind faith evolutionism says is most untrue.

the list is endless.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

There are however many Christians who have reached an authentic reading of the text, once they have let go of the idea that the text is anything other than tangentially related to history. Dawkins, Hitchens, Darwin, and all the new atheists could not let go off what we may call that fundamentalist reading, and so their arguments against the Bible are against the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.

You use the term "fundamentalist" to mean "Anyone that actually believes the Bible is accurate" in regard to its own stated 7 day timeline in Genesis 1, the incarnation "God with us", the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection of Christ etc because none of these would be believed by atheist scientists who notice that this is not how birth works and it is not what happens to dead people and is not how life comes from rocks.

You claim that the Christians who hold to the integrity and accuracy of the Bible know nothing about the Bible and neither do the Christians like Darwin who coming to terms with his own blind faith evolutionism discovered that it can not be married to the bible.

Christians who slice up the Bible in the way that you suggest have only been around in any sort of numbers since Darwin completed his 1844 manuscript. They tend to "not pay attention to the details" in the text and how they are woven into key sections of the Gospel itself.

Be that as it may, that leaves those conservatives who have a deep sense of the abiding moral truths and proscribed behaviors of traditional Christianity, but cannot authentically hold on to the fundamentalist interpretation, due to the cognitive dissonance it causes with the indisputable truths revealed by science.

In the above statement you clearly admit to the external-agenda you bring to the text to ignore it, bend it, dismiss it. And you claim that not bringing that pure eisegesis to the text - that bend-the-text-for-external-agenda is "Fundamentalist" and in that respect you are right. Fundamentalists use exegesis - not eisegetical "insert what you need to the text to say to fit evolutionism" when reading the text.

Science debunks blind faith evolutionism - but atheist scientists do not.

Martin Reese and Leonard Suskind are two world renowned scientists (atheists at heart) who demonstrate for all to see in their video "What we still don't know" just how biased and subjective is the effort to "bend science" away from observations in nature that do not please atheism.

So also did Collin Patterson of the British Museum of Natural History explain how it is that a religious devotion to evolutionism bends the evolutionist to the point that "Evolution seems to convey anti-knowledge".

Blind faith evolutionism survives by "ignoring the details" while claiming it does not.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[listed]

The myth that the Bible can be sliced up - shredded and some shard of it can be held up as "true" while the rest is considered fiction only works if you don't pay attention to the details.

As pointed out the Law of God is founded on the Genesis 1:2-2:3 so "the detail is ignored".

The gospel of the new Covenant "writes the law in the heart and mind" Heb 8 - and that law declares "SIX days you shall labor...for in SIX DAys the Lord made". Ex 20:8-11 -- the very thing that the external-agenda for evolutionism wants to delete.

The problem here is that 'My law' and "the law" are very different things. The verse in question clearly speaks of "My law" being written in the heart.

For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.

The preceding verse talks about "the law".

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.

The covenant is the law. The 10 Cs are the covenant. Jesus, Paul and James all indicate the law are the 10 Cs. Moses clearly called the 10 Cs the covenant.

My law is not the law as you insist. You arrive at this through logic. It is very true that the 10 Cs are God's law. It is very true that the 10 Cs are not the all inclusive law of God you would have us to believe. Gen 26:5 is a good point in case. Abraham could not have possibly observed "the law" (10 Cs) because they came after him even by the words of Moses found in Deut 5. Is Moses a reliable witness inspired by God? If I were to believe what you said above I would have to say no. Then this all becomes mere foolishness.

What you have done is what EGW says about us. You used sophistry in using a partial quote to avoid what Heb 8:10 actually states. You hoped no 1 would notice this slight of hand (words).

 

[BobRyan]

As noted in the signature line below - even the majority of pro-sunday scholarship admit to the Bible "detail" that the Law of God includes the Commandment "SIX DAYS you shall labor...for in SIX DAYS the Lord made...".

And that is an iron clad statement in stone spoken by God himself that does not argue against the 7 day timeline of Gen 1:2-2:3 -- rather it argues in favor of it without loophole... without exception.

theistic evolutionism is fine if one is not a Christian it has much fewer obstacles to overcome... but in the case of Christians who must make a habit of slicing up this part of the Bible or that one - it demonstrates the connected house-of-cards task they have chosen for themselves ... just to serve an outside agenda.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[Root of Jesse]

As noted in the signature line below - even the majority of pro-sunday scholarship admit to the Bible "detail" that the Law of God includes the Commandment "SIX DAYS you shall labor...for in SIX DAYS the Lord made...".

And that is an iron clad statement in stone spoken by God himself that does not argue against the 7 day timeline of Gen 1:2-2:3 -- rather it argues in favor of it without loophole... without exception.

theistic evolutionism is fine if one is not a Christian it has much fewer obstacles to overcome... but in the case of Christians who must make a habit of slicing up this part of the Bible or that one - it demonstrates the connected house-of-cards task they have chosen for themselves ... just to serve an outside agenda.

in Christ,

Bob

Considering your view of the person of Jesus Christ, how can you say that we can't quibble over the meaning of "day". The use of the word "day", in Daniel, does not mean literally a 24 hour period. Psalm 102 (Catholic counting) says, paraphrasing, a day is an age to you, O Lord. The word for "day" in Hebrew means "period of time" as well as 24 hours. That said, it really matters not. God did it, I believe it, that settles it.

 

[BobRyan]

Considering your view of the person of Jesus Christ, how can you say that we can't quibble over the meaning of "day".

What in the world are you talking about???

The use of the word "day", in Daniel, does not mean literally a 24 hour

You cannot use an "any ol excuse will do" method to solve the problem.

The day-for-year model in Daniel and Revelation is very very precise when it comes to apocalyptic literature using that precise ruler exactly 1 solar year for one prophetic day.

And never is it "and evening and morning were the first day" or "And evening and morning were the 3rd day" etc.

Genesis is neither apocalyptic nor is the Genesis account a prophetic prediction.

Thus we have it in iron-clad summary written in stone "SIX DAYS you shall labor...for in SIX DAYS the Lord made.." -- in legal code not in myth not in conjecture not in poetic symbol.

Arguments against the 7 day timeline that you find in Gen 1:2-2:3 and Ex 20:8-11 are used "in spite of the content of the text" -- not "because of it". (As we noticed here #306 )

in Christ,

Bob

 

[elliott95]

...

In the above statement you clearly admit to the external-agenda you bring to the text......

Yes, the external agenda that I bring to the text of the Bible is what is known as reality testing.

If the bible is true and reliable,-which I believe it is- it is true in the real world and for real life situations.

 

[MoreCoffee]

One ought not to pretend that the 66 book bible (especially the KJV) is perfect.

 

[elliott95]

One ought not to pretend that the 66 book bible (especially the KJV) is perfect.

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

It is definitely not the KJV translation, but it does nicely summarize how Christians ought to approach the topic of the reliability of the Bible.

 

[MKJ]

Oh good grief.

It does not prove anything that Darwin, or Dawkins, thinks that science and the Bible were in some way incompatible.

I know people who think all kinds of bizarre things. That proves nothing.

Darwin was not any sort of theologian, and he stood right at the beginning of thinking about evolution. I have no doubt he had all kinds of thought about where it would lead and questions about how it would work. His knowledge of the Fathers seems to have been rather limited - did he know that Augustine said that God created everything in an instant?

Dawkins is probably even worse. He not only has zero understanding of Christianity, he tries to talk about how we know things with clearly no background in epistemology, and he has a very outdated understanding of science itself - it ignores all the work and understanding of science that has been accomplished in almost the whole of the 20th century, which is quite clear that science is not the kind of pure direct access to the physical world that he imagines.

So why - why why why - would anyone take the conclusions of Darwin to be anything more than the thoughts of someone struggling with many new ideas, and the thoughts of Dawkins et al to be anything other than a slightly foul-smelling wind of flatulence?

 

[MoreCoffee]

Poor Dawkins! After that mauling, MKJ, he would rightly feel slighted. The truth is that Richard Dawkins knows a bit about Christianity and has spoken with numerous Christians ranging from the very literal creation-science kind to the much more sophisticated and theologically aware kind. Dawkins himself doesn't pretend to deep theological knowledge. He spends his time fighting religion in general and fundamentalist religion in particular. His knowledge in his own field is deep and rather impressive. If you have not yet read "The Extended Phenotype" then may I recommend it, Dawkins wrote it in 1982. His popular books on biological evolution are generally good and offer coherent reasonable explanations of the concepts in modern biology. The Selfish Gene is quite good; I recommend it. His anti-christian books are not so good and even his "The Blind Watchmaker" is slightly marred by the closing chapters dealing with religious alternatives to biological evolution but their main fault is to accept fundamentalist explanations as if they are normal - mind you, he can rightly argue that in the USA fundamentalist style creationism is possibly the majority view among professing Christians.

Anyway, Dawkins' views do not define christianity very well so on that point I am in full agreement with you. But let's be a little less critical of his views since what he actually writes and what he says in public is more nuanced than the caricatures that I've seen in many christian forums.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

the caricatures in many christian forums is not a standard of anything. modern science with all its whooppeee-doo is anti-christ in nature along with society and mankind, and gets no respect from the Creator of all Life nor from His people.

those opposed to Christ Jesus are doomed unless they repent, no matter how many phd they have or claim.

 

[MKJ]

Poor Dawkins! After that mauling, MKJ, he would rightly feel slighted. The truth is that Richard Dawkins knows a bit about Christianity and has spoken with numerous Christians ranging from the very literal creation-science kind to the much more sophisticated and theologically aware kind. Dawkins himself doesn't pretend to deep theological knowledge. He spends his time fighting religion in general and fundamentalist religion in particular. His knowledge in his own field is deep and rather impressive. If you have not yet read "The Extended Phenotype" then may I recommend it, Dawkins wrote it in 1982. His popular books on biological evolution are generally good and offer coherent reasonable explanations of the concepts in modern biology. The Selfish Gene is quite good; I recommend it. His anti-christian books are not so good and even his "The Blind Watchmaker" is slightly marred by the closing chapters dealing with religious alternatives to biological evolution but their main fault is to accept fundamentalist explanations as if they are normal - mind you, he can rightly argue that in the USA fundamentalist style creationism is possibly the majority view among professing Christians.

Anyway, Dawkins' views do not define christianity very well so on that point I am in full agreement with you. But let's be a little less critical of his views since what he actually writes and what he says in public is more nuanced than the caricatures that I've seen in many christian forums.

No, I am not willing to be kinder.

It would be one thing to fight against fundamentalist visions. However, he makes it clear that his "arguments" against religion, as far as he is concerned, demolish the idea that Christianity and other religions are true.

If he really believed that he was only addressing the stupid versions, his response ought to be "while I can show you these arguments for religion are not good ones, it may be that more theologically sophisticated ones are - I have not addressed those and don't really understand them." Clearly that is not what he does.

I also stand by what I have said about science. He may be a fine technician in his own field, but he plays loosey-goosey with science and speculative theory himself, suggesting as an alternate to religious belief the possibility that the universe could accumulate complexity through a type of physical evolution - not only is there actually no evidence for this, it is pretty questionable that such evidence is even theoretically possible, which would actually take it out of the realm of science altogether. There are also philosophical issues with it which he seems wholly unaware of.

This is a man who naively tries to tell us that all knowledge comes through the senses, and bases his view of science on this, seemingly unaware even of the arguments about this from neurologists, not to mention several hundred years of hot discussion among modern philosophers.

He is clearly entirely out of his depth with regards to how science is understood as a disapline - its place in theory of knowledge, the extent to which it is a cultural phenomena, the way in which science itself seems to be showing the modernist assumptions about science to be inadequate, and pretty much everything going on in the philosophy of science which is has been a very active discipline for the past 30 years.

The man is a faulty thinker who doesn't seem to know the difference between a premise and conclusion.

And the fact is, if you don't understand what science is, and what it can really say, you can't be a good scientist.

 

[MoreCoffee]

It seems to me that Richard Dawkins does in fact present a coherent view of epistemology in his book "Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True".

 

[MKJ]

It seems to me that Richard Dawkins does in fact present a coherent view of epistemology in his book "Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True".

No. It is of course a children's book and should be understood in those terms, but this is precisely the kind of thing that I am talking about.

The idea that all knowledge comes through sensory information is full of problems from a logical, evidential, and epitemological basis.

 

[MoreCoffee]

No. It is of course a children's book and should be understood in those terms, but this is precisely the kind of thing that I am talking about.

The idea that all knowledge comes through sensory information is full of problems from a logical, evidential, and epitemological basis.

But he says precisely the opposite in the first chapter. He points out that very small things which no eye sees exist and that very distant things once existed even though they may not exist any longer; his statements are far more nuanced than "The idea that all knowledge comes through sensory information". But he is, of course, something of a materialist and so he does equate reality with what can be detected or in theory could be detected if we had the kind of instrumentation needed to detect it. This perspective is very far from naive materialism even if it is somewhat dogmatic. The followers of Ayn Rand have a vaguely similar view of reality and they offer a species of epistemological argument to support their view.

I do not much care for some of Richard Dawkins views but I am unwilling to dismiss his views as naive or stupid.

EDIT: May I suggest listening to the first 20 minutes of this debate (by all means listen to more if you wish) to see for yourself that Richard Dawkins is far from a naive materialist with no real epistemology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bow4nnh1Wv0

 

[Root of Jesse]

What in the world are you talking about???

You don't believe that Jesus is the incarnation of Archangel Michael???

You cannot use an "any ol excuse will do" method to solve the problem.

And I don't. I work within my belief system, and you're opposed to that. Day is used to mean several things, especially the 'yom' in Hebrew.

The day-for-year model in Daniel and Revelation is very very precise when it comes to apocalyptic literature using that precise ruler exactly 1 solar year for one prophetic day.

And yet that doesn't work very well, either.

And never is it "and evening and morning were the first day" or "And evening and morning were the 3rd day" etc.

Genesis is neither apocalyptic nor is the Genesis account a prophetic prediction.

Right. But it is poetic. It's not a history.

Thus we have it in iron-clad summary written in stone "SIX DAYS you shall labor...for in SIX DAYS the Lord made.." -- in legal code not in myth not in conjecture not in poetic symbol.

Arguments against the 7 day timeline that you find in Gen 1:2-2:3 and Ex 20:8-11 are used "in spite of the content of the text" -- not "because of it". (As we noticed here #306 )

in Christ,

Bob

Again, I don't argue against a 7 day timeline. I ask what is a day to God, who is timeless.

 

[elliott95]

But he says precisely the opposite in the first chapter. He points out that very small things which no eye sees exist

The reason a scientist can say that is because of extending the magnifying power of the eye through the microscope. It is still sensory data.

and that very distant things once existed even though they may not exist any longer

That is because a looking deep into space is looking deep into time. Even the sun we see is eight minutes old, with a remote possibility of not existing by the time evidence of it reaches us.

; his statements are far more nuanced than "The idea that all knowledge comes through sensory information".

That may well be so, but the examples you have given are not nuanced. Believing in the existence of a spiritual reality that is by definition unseen, untouched, unheard, without taste or smell is evidence of some real nuance.

I do not much care for some of Richard Dawkins views but I am unwilling to dismiss his views as naive or stupid.

I have listened to many of the debates of these atheists. They are not stupid. Nevertheless, their debating points seldom go beyond a refutation of the literalism that few Christians much believe in any more anyway.

 

[MKJ]

But he says precisely the opposite in the first chapter. He points out that very small things which no eye sees exist and that very distant things once existed even though they may not exist any longer; his statements are far more nuanced than "The idea that all knowledge comes through sensory information". But he is, of course, something of a materialist and so he does equate reality with what can be detected or in theory could be detected if we had the kind of instrumentation needed to detect it. This perspective is very far from naive materialism even if it is somewhat dogmatic. The followers of Ayn Rand have a vaguely similar view of reality and they offer a species of epistemological argument to support their view.

I do not much care for some of Richard Dawkins views but I am unwilling to dismiss his views as naive or stupid.

EDIT: May I suggest listening to the first 20 minutes of this debate (by all means listen to more if you wish) to see for yourself that Richard Dawkins is far from a naive materialist with no real epistemology.

Dialogue with Richard Dawkins, Rowan Williams and Anthony Kenny - YouTube

I'll have a look at the video later, MC, after my kids are in bed. (Though - they are having a sleepover so i may be engaging in wishful thinking here.)

As elliot said, the things you describe are still sensory things, and they align quite nicely with Dawkin's idea that all knowledge is sensory.

And yet the problems remain. What about mathematics and logic, where we can even create proofs about things that don't relate to anything actual at all?

If "all things that are known are known through sense," how do we affirm that proposition itself?

What about all the things neurologists have to tell us that suggest that the sensory is not necessarily the basis for what we know?

What about our awareness of our own consciousness?

The difficulty with Dawkins is not just that he does not agree that these things could be problems he should address- he seems to be totally unaware that they are questions at all - that it has been a major argument in philosophy and science for a long time. This is a man who has said - though I am sure it is no longer as true - that he did not know what epistemology was.

All of which would be much less unsavoury if he did not act like anyone who objects to his way of thinking must be an uneducated idiot.

As for Objectivism - I am afraid I am just going to point out that the only people who take objectivism seriously are teenagers and Alan Greenspan. It isn't actually considered a serious philosophical system, and it's completely tedious to talk about. (which is perhaps not a good excuse for not bothering, but it is the one I am going to make anyway.)