AiG responds to Seebs

[RufusAtticus]

With all these scribal errors going around, do you know of a single existing version of The Word that is 100% without error? If so, which one and how do you know it?

 

[Susan]

It is impossible to know for sure.
However, 95 to 98 percent, no major errors, and very few minor errors is a wonderful record for accuracy.

Compare that to the New York Times, which is considered the standard for newspaper journalism in America. It has to print a correction of something almost every week, and has for all of its existence. Many of these corrections have also been of errors that strike at the very integrity and accuracy of the writing, rather than just simple typos or a wrong place name.
To go farther back in time compare it to Aristotle or Plato. Their works have even fewer original texts than the Bible, the accuracy rate is somewhere around 60 percent, they have major errors of science and knowledge, but yet no one doubts that Aristotle or Plato existed and were the actual writers.

Could you do one other thing, for me? Look up how exacting the scribes were in recording the Old Testament. It might surprise you, and wouldn't you think the writers of the NT would have taken at least the same amount of care?

 

[David Gould]

For a newspaper to issue three or four corrections a week means that there error rate is far less than 1%. There are thousands of words in a newspaper, after all.

For them to have a worse record than the Bible (98%) for a 5,000 word newspaper there would have to be more than 100 words wrong every issue. I challenge that that is the case.

I work as an editor. Where I work, we make perhaps 2 mistakes every 500 words or so on a bad day. In many speeches we make no errors at all.

I also would like to know how you know that there are only 2% errors in the Bible. Compared to what standard exactly? From linguistic and historical evidence it is now known that Daniel is not a prophetic text but it was accepted as such by the compilers of the Bible. Is this counted as an error in the Bible or not?

 

[Didaskomenos]

Susan, where did Jesus say that the creation days were literal? Where? I can't find it. You can't either.

Why would it hurt you so badly if God intended Genesis to be translated in a not-so-literal way? Why?! Because it's one of those things you've been told that separates you from the "bad guys"?

Why are you acting all triumphant over this? God left his testimony all over Creation. He testifies to you through the rocks and the stars that you're not supposed to read Genesis literally.

Just because it is non-Christians who are more often willing to read the earth (God's testimony as how to interpret the Bible) and deviate from your view of how to read Scripture doesn't invalidate their conclusions. Are Christians the only ones who can ever discern facts about the universe? Besides, Christians have not always taken Genesis literally. The great Christian St. Augustine was one who didn't have a problem with taking Genesis non-literally. C. S. Lewis as well.

I am getting way too worked up over someone who doesn't have any interest in Truth. It's really quite pointless.

 

[Susan]

Maybe I got my numbers wrong or something.
I will be the first to admit I don't have all the answers, and maybe I don't want them even if I could, in theory, get them.
But I know enough of the answers to my main questions in life, and I know that I am going to Heaven.
For me, that is more than enough.
ing for you all

 

[Didaskomenos]

That's all that matters! Why in the world would you act like you did about a non-literal view of Genesis if that were the case? Your, seebs', and everyone else's relationship with God really *is* all that matters.

 

[Susan]

I just want to be sure that seebs DOES have a relatonship with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

I would be the most sorry if I saw anyone "saved as by fire" rather than getting many crowns to cats at the feet of Jesus because I had been lax in my duty to post the truth.

 

[Didaskomenos]

"The truth" which you know entirely in and out, right? That's the problem. You've not made it clear as to why seebs' view places "his relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ" in question for you. Jesus didn't say Genesis was to be interpreted literally. As long as God made us, why does it matter how?

I can disagree with the fundamentalist "legalistic" interpretation of Scripture, and it's ok with me that they believe things sometimes that I believe are wrong. I will argue with them, but I'm not going to question their relationship with God over it! Why? Because I value Truth enough to know that it's bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than any one group of people who interpret the Bible. And God never said that a relationship with him through Jesus was predicated on a belief that Genesis is literal. No way, no how.

 

[alexgb00]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
I would also like to comment that the man who wrote the responce is a Caucasian Australian with a PhD in agriculture science. Not the kind of man I'd expect to see responding about Chinese historical orthography.

Rufus, is there a way you can support this? I learned on this site that some people won't take your word for anything. Thanks.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Alex, It's easy to support usingDon Batten's biography. AiG even links to it from their response to Seebs.

Ph.D. — University of Sydney, Department of Agronomy and Horticultural Science. Thesis: Induction of adventitious root formation in mung bean (Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek)

His picture:

Looks like a caucasian australian to me with a degree in horticulture/agronomy.

Looks like his entire qualification to respond is that he has worked with the Chinese in the past, and picked up a little Chinese along the way. And yet he makes a big deal about Seebs lapsed familarity with Chinese. In all honesty, they seem almost equalivant to me.

 

[Susan]

"Jesus believed Genesis was literal history, including the creation of Adam and Eve ‘from the beginning of creation’ (Matthew 19:3–6, Mark 10:6–9) and a global Flood (Luke 17:26–27) — see Jesus and the age of the world, so that puts our critic in a rather invidious position (a Christian by definition is one who believes / obeys / follows Christ)."

Amen.

 

[Jerry Smith]

Matthew 19:3-6

The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made [them] at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

So Jesus believed that God created humans and created them in two sexes. No mention of a literal 6 day creation here.

Luke 17:26–27

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

Jesus believes that there was a flood that destroyed the people to whom Noah belonged (the Sumerians, possibly?). Again, there is no mention of a literal 6 day creation or of a global flood.

Susan,
Whose words are these? "Jesus believed Genesis was literal history, including the creation of Adam and Eve ‘from the beginning of creation’ "
It sounds like it is important to that author to convince you of something, and like he is willing to put words in the mouth of Jesus in order to accomplish that. Did you look up the verses he cited as references to his opinion?

 

[Susan]

^O^ I'm embarrased but not defeated yet. :o

 

[Jerry Smith]

Don't be embarrassed. And don't think of it is a war. I really don't believe that there is any scriptural evidence that Jesus would have been a YEC creationist. If you don't find any, would you consider the possibility that he wouldn't have been?

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Well Susan, since Jesus didn't write the NT, any "mistakes" in it might be the fault of the writers and not Jesus. The belief that Jesus wouldn't make a mistake, doesn't automatically make the NT mistakefree.

Now the belief that Mohammad wouldn't make a mistake, would automatically make the Quran mistake free, since he composed it.

Mohammed didn't compose anything, he could not read or write.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

I have never seen Jesus speak of a literal 6 days. Genesis tells an overall story, a theme...being that God created everything out of nothing, and gave men souls. 6 days is not actually 24 hours...

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith


Seebs?? You married an anti-christian??

No, but I hang out on infidels.org sometimes. I don't think I'm "yoked" with them. I admit that my wife isn't Christian; when we started hanging out, she was agnostic, currently she's monotheist and grants that Christ clearly had some very good teachings.

Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of the original messag, so I don't recall what the "atheistic" site was that I allegedly linked to; I believe it was the talk.origins newsgroup thread in which several other people who know Chinese pointed out the errors.

The claim about the character they think is an 8 is just plain not true; it is a *DIFFERENT WORD*, with a *DIFFERENT MEANING*.

 

[seebs]

BTW, just for the record, their response strikes me as wholly inadequate, even apart from the assertions they make about the character for '8', which are inconsistent with anything anyone in China ever told me.

We could, of course, drag in Chinese speakers for ages. I don't see much point.

My question was, are the AiG people going to react honestly when confronted with a great deal of documentation of the errors. The answer is, no. They made snide remarks about an atheistic web site, as though a linguist who didn't believe in God would necessarily be unqualified; in fact, I pointed them at a LOT of data and discussion of how Chinese works.

Very disappointing.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Reading the AiG response it seems that it mostly just reiterated what was in the original work. They didn't respond too much to seebs comments. They made a big deal about that native chineese speakers took part. So what? How many native English speakers are competant enough to discuss the historical linguistics and orthography of English?

Indeed. I was particularly stunned by "any native speaker would recognize this as an eight". Any native speaker would recognize it as the other character it was. It's like drawing a Z, and saying that any native speaker would recognize it as a 2.

I would also like to comment that the man who wrote the responce is a Caucasian Australian with a PhD in agriculture science. Not the kind of man I'd expect to see responding about Chinese historical orthography.

I was fairly disappointed by the lack of substance in the response. I didn't see any clear explanation of why they wish to attach meaning to every part of a word, even though that's not how Chinese normally works. I certainly didn't see any response to the attempt to decompose the word for "bull" into the words for "dirt" and "life".

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by s0uljah
Mohammed didn't compose anything, he could not read or write.

But he could speak. And that is what he did, spoke to scribes who wrote down his oral composition. That's why I used "composed" and not "wrote."