How do you know it isn't the Qur'an, or Oahspe, or the Book of Mormon? Those books all hold the same claim the Bible holds. They all present fulfilled prophecy. How do you separate the Bible out and proclaim it and only it as the word of God?
You can hold any book up to it's own word and you'll always find that it says what it says. If you apply the same type of selective criteria to Mother Goose that you apply to the Bible, you'll find that Mother Goose says exactly what it says too. Does that make it the word of God?
I'm sure Pharaoh thought that, too.
He was, in all probability, completely correct. Have you ever noticed how whenever you wish to present authenticity for the Bible the only source you cite is the Bible? Are you familiar with the term, "circular reasoning"? Do you understand why it is illogical?
I don't even have to apply scrutiny to something someone claims is the Word of God. (See Wiccan Child's post above.)
Then you needn't apply scrutiny to the writings of David Koresh, or of John Newbrough or of Joseph Smith or Muhammed or dozens of others. They all claim to be the "word of god". But they contain contradictive elements.
The autographs went they way of entropy.
You're not making any sense here. You're telling everyone that anything written down and proclaimed to be the word of God means more than physical evidence. Anyone can write anything and claim it as God's word. This has been done time and time again throughout history. If you can't recognize how easy it is to simply jot down your own ideas and say you were inspired by God then you can never lay any claim to holding or understanding truth. People can write out a check and sign someone else's name. People can write their own thoughts and claim it came from God. Without applying scrutiny, you have no hope of knowing the truth.
How many times do you have to lose the same argument?
[bible]2 Peter 1:21[/bible]
Peter was a man. Nothing he wrote has any greater validity, just because he wrote it, than what I write or what you write or what Koresh wrote. To hold a claim to validity, writing must contain a demonstrable truth. When what can be found can be shown to constitute untruth, any claim to validity is null and void. If you ever want to hold your claims as representative of integrity, then you have to consider the fact that what you want to believe is the word of God may well be nothing of the sort. It holds no exclusive claim. It offers nothing of proof for the claim. It even offers multiple lines of evidence to show that it isn't the word of God.
The Bible was written by men -- just men. These men thought they were inspired by God, just as have so many other men throughout history -- men like David Koresh, John Newbrough, Joseph Smith and Muhammed. In the case of the Bible an additional group of men sifted through many writings and arbitrarily sorted the writings out into that which they selected to be the word of God and that which they selected to be other than the word of God. Then what these men decided was the word of God was all bound together and offered up as the word of God. Then you, without any desire or recognition of the need for scrutiny were introduced to it, noted that people told you it was the word of God and you simply won't listen to anything else. Had you been born in the middle east, you'd now be holding the Qur'an in exactly the same position you hold the Bible. Had you been born in Utah, you'd likely be holding the Book of Mormon up and telling us all that it is the true word of God, because it is claimed to be by its author.
An unverified claim is no better than a lie. And a claim which is shown to be wrong, is an untruth. Many of the Bible's claims are wrong.
