What's more important, truth or the Bible?

[Sketcher]

I'm not sure the question implies they are at odds. For example, as a non-believer, it shouldn't be surprising that to me, science is the best tool to come about finding truth in our surroundings. To me science and truth are not at odds in the least. But if you were to demonstrate to me that science is actually not a reliable way to find the truth, to me truth is more important, I wouldn't have a problem throwing science out the window, as I've mentioned.

I'd even call this line of reasoning flawed. The scientific method is a valuable tool for learning many things about the physical world. Yet, there have been experiments and studies that had led people to believe things that later experiments and studies disproved. Does it mean that science is bad? No. It means the way many people handle science is bad. People fail to critically ask: What did this discovery find? What did it not find? What does it really indicate? What does it not indicate? Truth is more than just what science can tell us, because science must be guided by truth - what is observed, what logic indicates about what is observed, etc.

It surprises me very much this sort of fear that believers seem to have to even consider hypothetically that the bible might not contain the truth, why is that? Is it because the bible is indeed more important than truth to you guys?

The Bible makes a lot of truth claims, and people believe it because they ring true. To claim that the Bible doesn't contain the truth is to go against that.

I really want to know, because, for example, when I tell a believer that the bible condones slavery, their reaction is never "does it? wow, let me take a look to confirm"... it's more something like "no, that's not possible, the bible would never do that".
You see the bias in there? It's possible that believers are not aware that they put the bible way higher than the truth and they don't even know it... it could be, I don't know.

I'd say they need to read their Bibles more. It's perfectly obvious that slavery was permitted in New Testament times, but that doesn't mean it should be permitted today. Christians especially need to be versed in that, unbelievers too - it's one thing to reject something for what it is, it's another to reject it for what it is not.

 

[skepticlogician]

I'd even call this line of reasoning flawed. The scientific method is a valuable tool for learning many things about the physical world. Yet, there have been experiments and studies that had led people to believe things that later experiments and studies disproved. Does it mean that science is bad? No. It means the way many people handle science is bad. People fail to critically ask: What did this discovery find? What did it not find? What does it really indicate? What does it not indicate?

I completely agree, error prone humans can commit errors, perform malformed experiments, or come to incorrect conclusions, they do it all the time. Then later on, this same marvelous tool called science is the one that facilitates the clarification of these past errors. Science is a never ending process, self fine tuning and regression testing constantly. Not sure what is it that you are calling flawed reasoning.

Truth is more than just what science can tell us, because science must be guided by truth - what is observed, what logic indicates about what is observed, etc.

Agreed. And this goes to confirm that science is still the best tool we have to come closer to truth.

The Bible makes a lot of truth claims, and people believe it because they ring true. To claim that the Bible doesn't contain the truth is to go against that.

Well, if it was demonstrated to you without a doubt that in fact the bible does not contain the truth, would you still believe that it does?

I'd say they need to read their Bibles more. It's perfectly obvious that slavery was permitted in New Testament times, but that doesn't mean it should be permitted today. Christians especially need to be versed in that, unbelievers too - it's one thing to reject something for what it is, it's another to reject it for what it is not.

Well, if we were to debate slavery and the bible, we should probably create a separate thread. But let me just mention a couple things. I'm not saying that slavery should be permitted today, but NOWHERE in the bible does it say that slavery should NOT be permitted. All the contrary, it condones slavery. But again, we should discuss slavery on a separate thread.

 

[Sketcher]

I completely agree, error prone humans can commit errors, perform malformed experiments, or come to incorrect conclusions, they do it all the time. Then later on, this same marvelous tool called science is the one that facilitates the clarification of these past errors. Science is a never ending process, self fine tuning and regression testing constantly. Not sure what is it that you are calling flawed reasoning.

Just the bit about science being not reliable and thrown away, but since you agreed with me, that's a moot point.

Agreed. And this goes to confirm that science is still the best tool we have to come closer to truth.

When it comes to making discoveries about the physical world, I'd agree with that.

Well, if it was demonstrated to you without a doubt that in fact the bible does not contain the truth, would you still believe that it does?

This is an absurdity because the Bible makes many truth claims, many of which are indisputably right on the mark. If anyone were for instance, to claim that its moral teachings about murder, theft, lying, and how you should generally interact with people are wrong, I'd shoot them a funny look and move on.

 

[W2L]

The world is full of lies. The bible is the only thing we can trust.

 

[Noxot]

science has limits as to what it can speak about and it has the potential to be a great thing. as for slavery, if you followed the fundamental points of Christianity then you would come to the conclusion that there are certainly some things that are wrong. the problem is that many people are only so willing to follow higher ideals. it is no virtue of yours that you hate slavery, near everyone hates slavery now. if you were born in nazi germany there is a big chance that you would have simply became a nazi.

and I would not be surprised at all if it was in part because of Christ that there is less slavery in the world. why is that? because in general most of the world has been influenced by a few geniuses and great people compared to the multitude that exist and are influenced.

what is really saddening is that even a lot of the supposed "good guys" end up turning out to have horrible faults that in our modern age are just despicable. case in point would be someone like gandi (who was racist).

 

[skepticlogician]

The world is full of lies. The bible is the only thing we can trust.

No thanks... unless you could convincingly show me why should I only trust the bible, and not science, for example, without which we wouldn't be even having this discussion across the internet, using cool web browsers and fancy electronic devices. Do you believe these advances in technology and scientific knowledge would have been possible just by studying the bible? How?

 

[W2L]

No thanks... unless you could convincingly show me why should I only trust the bible, and not science, for example, without which we wouldn't be even having this discussion across the internet, using cool web browsers and fancy electronic devices. Do you believe these advances in technology and scientific knowledge would have been possible just by studying the bible? How?

I never said anything about science. I trust the bible because i see lies everywhere in this world. I say no thanks to that.

 

[skepticlogician]

This is an absurdity because the Bible makes many truth claims, many of which are indisputably right on the mark. If anyone were for instance, to claim that its moral teachings about murder, theft, lying, and how you should generally interact with people are wrong, I'd shoot them a funny look and move on.

Ok, I believe we have a case of misunderstanding here. I don't expect you to have read every single post of mine in this thread, but I did mention at least once and very clearly that I myself believe the bible contains quite a few truths and valuable ones. So, my contention is more geared towards those who are in one of these buckets:
1. Those who believe that the bible only contains truths and zero mistakes/errors/contradictions.
2. Those who believe that because the bible contains some valuable truths, therefore it is divine and that the miraculous stories in the bible are therefore true as well.
3. Those who believe that truth can only come from the bible.

If you are not in any of these buckets, we probably agree on many things and we've just been misunderstanding each other.

 

[skepticlogician]

I never said anything about science. I trust the bible because i see lies everywhere in this world. I say no thanks to that.

You did say "the bible is the only thing we can trust", which infers that science is not trust-able.
To me science is the most reliable tool to bring us closer to truth, thank you very much.

 

[W2L]

You did say "the bible is the only thing we can trust", which infers that science is not trust-able.
To me science is the most reliable tool to bring us closer to truth, thank you very much.

I would say that science cannot be trusted with the whole truth. They are not above human error or corrupt political ambition.

 

[skepticlogician]

I would say that science cannot be trusted with the whole truth. They are not above human error or corrupt political ambition.

When scientific knowledge is in some way affected by human error, who do you think discover such errors? Other scientists. Who do you think finds either a solution to the error or better theoretical explanations to the scientific concept in question? Other scientists. See, this is what makes science such a valuable and reliable tool to find truth. If you were to dig a bit deeper into what makes scientists tick, you would find that it is actually these observations that seem to be inconsistent to current scientific knowledge what makes scientists get very excited. These are the opportunities that result in science growing stronger each iteration. Scientist live for those moments when they find something completely new, apparently contradictory to current knowledge. The difference is that they don't go out the door saying "see? science had it all wrong, it doesn't work, boo...". Quite the contrary, they dive head first and do intense research to find a solution to the problem, a new theory that explains the observations, and in every case, these finds are what make science stronger. If you don't understand this about science, then you don't understand science to begin with.
And this corrupt political ambition you talk about, I'm not sure what you are referring to... Care to elaborate more on that?

 

[ViaCrucis]

Are you actually proposing there's a relationship between pizza and the color blue which is analogous to truth and the Bible, or are you just trying to sarcastically dismiss my question?

Do you believe the Bible to be in any of these buckets?
1. The bible contains many truths.
2. The bible contains only truths.
3. The bible IS the truth.

If none of the above, what is then your position regarding the relationship between truth and the bible?

No, I don't believe there is a relationship between pizza and the color blue, hence why I was arguing that this is a false dichotomy.

We could just as easily replace the Bible with any literary collection or composition and I think the question can be seen to be, at the very least, odd. For example, which is more important truth or the collected works of Mark Twain?

Truth is an abstract concept; the Bible, or any other literary collection or composition, is a specific thing.

I understand what the question is intended to address: Is truth more important, and thus when/where the Bible is in error one should go with what is true over the Bible; or conversely if the Bible is more important, then one is denying truth if and where the Bible is in error. I just think that the question could have been asked better.

Yes, we should aim to believe what is actually true, even where and when that results in us no longer subscribing to cherished beliefs; as such if the Bible is in error, one should take truth over the Bible.

But it's critical, I believe, to understand what the purpose of the Bible is in the Christian religion; the Bible isn't "the truth" or its substitute; it's a collection of texts that cover a wide range of subjects because its authors had different things to say, to different people, from vastly different time periods and geographic areas; but its purpose in our religion is to point us to the central truth of our religion: Jesus Christ. We don't read the Bible to learn about how to perform complex algebra, or to map out constellations, or learn how life evolved here on earth over the last 4 billions years; we read the Bible because we confess by faith that these texts, by their transmission and reception within the Church speak of and proclaim our hope in the Person of Jesus. In *Christianity the Word of God is not a book (or a collection of books), the Word of God is a Person, Jesus--the Word of God became flesh, not text.

-CryptoLutheran

*I mean here what is the historic, orthodox teaching of the Christian faith.

 

[skepticlogician]

Thank you for your clarification, ViaCrucis.

I see that the fact that there are so many christian denominations and so many positions regarding the degree of veracity of the bible or even how much that veracity matters or not, can complicate the discussion very much.
I believe I posed my question in such a way because I've been mainly surrounded with christians of the type that say the bible is 100% the truth or even are promptly willing to dismiss scientific evidence of any kind the very moment this evidence seems to contradict the bible in any small way.
In the eyes of such individuals, there's no hesitation in saying that the bible is absolutely what matters and nothing else.
I now realize that christianity and positions regarding the veracity of the bible is actually a very wide spectrum and not a small list of a few different positions about it. If nothing else, the interactions I've had because of this question have helped me learn that the discussion is way more complex than a simple debate between bible fundamentalists and non-believers.

 

[Hawkins]

No thanks... unless you could convincingly show me why should I only trust the bible, and not science, for example, without which we wouldn't be even having this discussion across the internet, using cool web browsers and fancy electronic devices. Do you believe these advances in technology and scientific knowledge would have been possible just by studying the bible? How?

You have a misconception about what science is and what science can do. Science is always about the discovery of a set of rules governing a repeatable behavior. Science is almost futile about something which doesn't repeat itself. Humans can come a scientific conclusion primarily because we can speculate infinitive number of times how that behavior repeats before we can theorize what it is and predict its repetition accurately.

Even so, a scientific truth is only directly accessible to limited number of humans (we call them scientists). All other humans rather put faith in this small group of humans to get to the truth. For an example, only the cosmic scientists have direct evidence of the existence of black holes. All other humans don't have the direct evidence but to put faith in the scientists to get to the truth that black holes exist. It is a process of human witnessing. We get to the truth by believing in what the eye-witnesses (our cosmic scientists in this case) said.

That said, not all kinds of truths are a science. Science is just a particular kind of truths (which are repeatable). For an example, what you just did yesterday can hardly be evidenced on a 24 hours basis. We can however get to know what you did yesterday if you or someone as a witness wrote down what you did, and for us to believe with faith. Under most circumstance, this is the way and the only way for us to reach a truth of this kind.

If we don't trust what the witness said, we have no truth about what you did. If we trust the witness with faith, he could possibly be a liar. Yet, trust or not, this is the only way which could possibly lead us to the truth (of what you did). Science has bearing on this, unless scientists can make a time machine for us to go back to take a look.

That's actually the nature of what history is. We get to know history (especially about what happened 2000 years ago) almost exclusively relying on the accounts of witnessing of the historians. That's the way, and the only way under most circumstance, for humans to reach truths of this kind (historical truths).

Christianity shares the same pattern. The difference from human history is that the Bible is the recording of God's deeds instead of human deeds.

If the witness who wrote about what you just did yesterday is willing to martyr himself to back up what has been written down, I will believe what he says as it doesn't make any sense for him to kill himself just in order to tell me a lie. If 10 out of 12 eye witnesses martyred themselves to back up what has been written down (of what you did yesterday), it's no point for a sane person to reject what is said. Well, this is actually what the Bible is!

In a nutshell, there are various kinds of truths of which scientific truths are only one of them. Regardless, putting faith in accounts of human witnessing is the fundamental way for humans to reach a truth of any kind.

 

[ViaCrucis]

The world is full of lies. The bible is the only thing we can trust.

This leads us to a massive problem, because the statement "the Bible is the only thing we can trust" is itself an extra-biblical statement, and thus itself becomes untrustworthy by way of its own axiomatic expression.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[W2L]

This leads us to a massive problem, because the statement "the Bible is the only thing we can trust" is itself an extra-biblical statement, and thus itself becomes untrustworthy by way of its own axiomatic expression.

-CryptoLutheran

The bible shows a clear distinction between following God vs following ourselves.

 

[ViaCrucis]

The bible shows a clear distinction between following God vs following ourselves.

Yes. My point was that if one takes it as axiomatic that there is nothing trustworthy except what is written in the Bible then we've argued ourselves into a contradiction.

Besides, it's simply not true that everything not written in the Bible is untrustworthy, such a position is demonstrably false; and further such a position has never been Christian. Scripture is not the sole location of truth, Scripture is instead the conveyor of a particular and specific truth, namely of God's revelation of Himself to us in and through Jesus Christ our Lord. We don't look to the Bible to learn the mating habits of tree frogs, we can learn that outside of Scripture and its verity can be determined through the scientific method. To call into question all truth outside of the Bible results in a near solipsism, where nothing is true and nothing can be true.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[W2L]

Yes. My point was that if one takes it as axiomatic that there is nothing trustworthy except what is written in the Bible then we've argued ourselves into a contradiction.

Besides, it's simply not true that everything not written in the Bible is untrustworthy, such a position is demonstrably false; and further such a position has never been Christian. Scripture is not the sole location of truth, Scripture is instead the conveyor of a particular and specific truth, namely of God's revelation of Himself to us in and through Jesus Christ our Lord. We don't look to the Bible to learn the mating habits of tree frogs, we can learn that outside of Scripture and its verity can be determined through the scientific method. To call into question all truth outside of the Bible results in a near solipsism, where nothing is true and nothing can be true.

-CryptoLutheran

I think the world is deceived and cannot help us. Everything is polluted with political propaganda and deception. This is probably why God tells us to be separate from the world.

 

[Noxot]

sometimes it's good to see the world as filthy and all wrong and sometimes it's bad to see it that way.

 

[Hieronymus]

What do you mean? Am I presenting a false dichotomy? How so?

Maybe apply some scepticism and logic to your own OP.