Arguments for Biblical Inerrancy

[Matt]

Well I might have a category for miracles if one were ever verified as valid by several dependable, reputable, objective sources who were not connected to each other in any way. However, not if the sources have personal ties with or investments in the person involved or the claims made.

You need to have a category for miracles before you can amass "evidence" for them.

As an example of someone not tied to the church who testified to the resurrection of Jesus, I would suggest Saul of Tarsus. He made a career out of killing Christians before something happened to him on the road to Damascus. Whatever it was that happened to him, it was enough to turn the sworn enemy of the church into its greatest missionary. Saul claims he saw Jesus.

You could just as easily say that if someone doesn't have a category for magic words, lucky charms, etc. then it would be impossible for them to have meaningful dialogue with people who make those types of claims.

This would be true, though, wouldn't it? Could you have a meaningful conversation with an African witchdoctor whose worldview centered on the legitimacy of totems and charms and magic words? If you are going to have meaningful dialogue, you have to be willing to take the other position seriously.

Allowing oneself to have categories for belief in supernatural realms without evidence that even supports their existence seems rather naive and gullible to me. And possibly dangerous as well

It is dangerous. VERY dangerous. Taking Jesus seriously is the most dangerous thing you could ever do.

This is quite an assumption to make, Matt. If God implanted innate knowledge of himself in every person, why do parents invest so much time teaching and reinforcing their beliefs in their children? And why do missionaries find it necessary to proselytize? The reason I don't worship God is because I don't believe there's a God to be worshiped. Period. The deity I believe may exist is not something that desires worship. Also, I do not reject God out of ignorance any more than you reject all the deities you do not believe exist out of ignorance. We reject them because we do not see ample evidence to support belief in them.

I am sorry that I left you out of my blanket response to his question. You, Spongebob and Jim asked the same thing. I didn't mean to leave you out, but I don't want to repeat myself. Please read my response to them.

Furthermore, I could not force myself to believe something that I considered not real any more than you could. If someone held a gun to your head and said you must believe in Santa Claus or die, well you'd probably say you believed just to spare your life, but chances are very strong that you would not really believe in Santa. Is that because you are ignorant? Is it because you don't want to worship him? No, it's because based on what you perceive to be true, you believe he is imaginary, not real.

I agree. You can't believe what you don't want to believe. But I think we would be naive to think that reason was the only thing at play here. Emotions play a strong role in the things we choose to believe or reject.

[spongebob]

Consider the following argument:

Spongebob says in his heart, "There is no god."

Correction: Spongebob says in his head, not his heart. My heart pumps blood and does little else. My head does all my thinking and feeling.

[spongebob]

It is dangerous. VERY dangerous. Taking Jesus seriously is the most dangerous thing you could ever do.

matt, please spare us these kind of over-the-top appeals. Being a Jesus freak in the U.S. is no more dangerous than reading the morning paper.

[Matt]

I don't know, it just seems like you're not willing to question those answers, much less those questions.

Could be.

More likely? Maybe, but that's relative.

Yup.

I find it difficult to believe that it's even possible to prove this to the level of certainty Christianity demands

I am not sure the early Christians wrestled with the question of "how certain" you had to be. I think they were more interested in how closely they were living like Jesus.

Yes. Neutrality is an ideal. It can never be perfectly achieved. However, it is vital to strive for neutrality in order to justify our beliefs in relation to one another and to the world around us. Neutrality is not the only ideal; once any kind of moral question comes into play, one must abandon it at least to some extent, although one must still use neutral observations to verify whether a given action is in fact in accordance with one's morality.

I'm not following you. I do think it is admirable to "strive for neutrality" in the sense that we should be honest with ourselves about our motivations for thinking certain ways. (Although I don't think we will ever know ourselves that well.)

Not for sure. There's no such thing as absolute certainty. It's still possible to increase one's (justified) certainty by examining the internal and external consistency of one's beliefs.

Agreed. Can we summarize what we both believe like this--"We can't know for certain, but we can know"?

Obviously. Please elaborate on why you think so.

Discourse is tricky because meaning is always lost in translation. You can use different words to mean the same thing, and you can use the same words to mean different things. So, we never perfectly understand communication. However, when we see a red light, we stop (i.e. communication is not perfect, but it is effective).

If I may say so, your position does not strike me as humble. It strikes me as an obstinate and arrogant unwillingness to question your own beliefs or let them be put to the test.

Perhaps something has been lost in translation through electronic communication. Also, I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt since I am defending myself against attacks from multiple fronts, not all of them kind.

I'm not clear on exactly how far you are going. That's probably the source of much of my confusion.

Unlike the hard postmodernists, I believe in an objective reality. The world is not just a social construct, it is real. However, we do not have objective knowledge of the objective world. All of our truth claims about the world are necessarily perspectival.

The classic postmodern illustration of reality is the one about the three blind men describing the elephant. One blind man feels his ear and says, "It's a sail." One blind man feels his leg and says, "It's a tree." The last man feels his tail and says, "It's a rope." The postmodernist points out that none of them has a clue about the reality of what they experience, they are just making knowledge claims based on their limited perspective.

While I would agree that we approach reality like blind men describing an elephant, I think there is an objective reality that may or may not cohere to our construction. While the blind men have the right to make any statements they like based on their limited perspective, these beliefs can be right or wrong and can have conseuqences. Thus, if the one blind man decided he wanted to cut down the tree, he would find out soon enough that his construction of reality was wrong.

Such heuristics become more or less necessary depending on how much information is available.

Yes, and their attitude toward the subject.

Granted. It's still necessary to increase and revise one's understanding by acquiring new knowledge and reexamining what one already knows.

Agreed.

[Matt]

matt, please spare us these kind of over-the-top appeals. Being a Jesus freak in the U.S. is no more dangerous than reading the morning paper.

Fair critique. American evangelicalism is pretty tame--but the life Jesus described is not. We have completely lost the plot, but we are reforming!

[Matt]

Looking at certain bits of the OT, I would not put so much faith in YHVH's idea of "justice".

Fair enough. There is much in the OT I don't understand. (Maybe I can file it away under the category "Theological problems I have not yet solved but am confident I will understand some day.")

Furthermore, what is the purpose of punishing people after they have died, when they don't have the chance to change? Such a punishment has no preventative value; it's just "two wrongs make a right". (Or rather, its preventative value does not depend on whether the punishment is carried out, only the threat of the punishment.)

That's a pretty deep question about the nature of justice. I don't know, but most people don't have a problem with punishment after-the-fact.

[Matt]

Consider the following argument:

Spongebob says in his heart, "There is no god."

Correction: Spongebob says in his head, not his heart. My heart pumps blood and does little else. My head does all my thinking and feeling.

Touche. I will refrain from using metaphors in the future.

(But how does the air from your lungs pass through your brain so that you "say" something in your head?)

[Mr. Sluagh]

I don't know, it just seems like you're not willing to question those answers, much less those questions.

Could be.

More likely? Maybe, but that's relative.

Yup.

I find it difficult to believe that it's even possible to prove this to the level of certainty Christianity demands

I am not sure the early Christians wrestled with the question of "how certain" you had to be. I think they were more interested in how closely they were living like Jesus.

Yes. Neutrality is an ideal. It can never be perfectly achieved. However, it is vital to strive for neutrality in order to justify our beliefs in relation to one another and to the world around us. Neutrality is not the only ideal; once any kind of moral question comes into play, one must abandon it at least to some extent, although one must still use neutral observations to verify whether a given action is in fact in accordance with one's morality.

I'm not following you. I do think it is admirable to "strive for neutrality" in the sense that we should be honest with ourselves about our motivations for thinking certain ways. (Although I don't think we will ever know ourselves that well.)

Not for sure. There's no such thing as absolute certainty. It's still possible to increase one's (justified) certainty by examining the internal and external consistency of one's beliefs.

Agreed. Can we summarize what we both believe like this--"We can't know for certain, but we can know"?

Obviously. Please elaborate on why you think so.

Discourse is tricky because meaning is always lost in translation. You can use different words to mean the same thing, and you can use the same words to mean different things. So, we never perfectly understand communication. However, when we see a red light, we stop (i.e. communication is not perfect, but it is effective).

If I may say so, your position does not strike me as humble. It strikes me as an obstinate and arrogant unwillingness to question your own beliefs or let them be put to the test.

Perhaps something has been lost in translation through electronic communication. Also, I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt since I am defending myself against attacks from multiple fronts, not all of them kind.

I'm not clear on exactly how far you are going. That's probably the source of much of my confusion.

Unlike the hard postmodernists, I believe in an objective reality. The world is not just a social construct, it is real. However, we do not have objective knowledge of the objective world. All of our truth claims about the world are necessarily perspectival.

The classic postmodern illustration of reality is the one about the three blind men describing the elephant. One blind man feels his ear and says, "It's a sail." One blind man feels his leg and says, "It's a tree." The last man feels his tail and says, "It's a rope." The postmodernist points out that none of them has a clue about the reality of what they experience, they are just making knowledge claims based on their limited perspective.

While I would agree that we approach reality like blind men describing an elephant, I think there is an objective reality that may or may not cohere to our construction. While the blind men have the right to make any statements they like based on their limited perspective, these beliefs can be right or wrong and can have conseuqences. Thus, if the one blind man decided he wanted to cut down the tree, he would find out soon enough that his construction of reality was wrong.

Such heuristics become more or less necessary depending on how much information is available.

Yes, and their attitude toward the subject.

Granted. It's still necessary to increase and revise one's understanding by acquiring new knowledge and reexamining what one already knows.

Agreed.

NOTHING you have said here contradicts the scientific method. Science never, ever claims to offer absolute certainty. Every scientist, science textbook and science major I have met has been very careful never to even say off-hand that science had "proved" anything. Your experience may vary, but if it does, it is not consistent with the scientific method. In what way do you think the scientific method contradicts your preferred method of analyzing information?

[JustJim]

I would add that all people have rejected this innate knowledge of God and replaced it with other things.

I don't expect you to agree with this statement. I arrive at it through a theological method of which you would probably not approve. That's okay with me. The statement, though unprovable through the scientific method, is also un-disprovable through that same method.

It's a theological statement. Let's leave it at that.

First, Matt, you still haven't made a case to substantiate that it's true that God did implant such innate knowledge in all people, let alone that they've "all rejected it" and replaced it with something (unspecified) else. How do you know that? Or why do you believe that? What indications do you have of that?

Second, you haven't explained what that knowledge of God is, or worse, why there's such disagreement among those who were "implanted" with it (genetically?) about what it is.

Third, I'm not limiting myself to scientific method here, so I'm not necessarily looking for scientific "proof" to back up your claims. I'd just like to see some good reasons for what you believe.

Finally, regarding the "un-disprovability" of your statements (or mine), please don't forget that it's not possible to prove a negative assertion. The burden of proof is on the person who makes the positive assertion. If I say there are fairies living in my garden out back, it's up to me to prove that claim; it's not up to you to disprove it. So, I can't prove God did not implant all people with innate knowledge of God, but I don't have to. It's up to you to "prove" God did (or explain why you believe God did).

I would be careful not to read Dante into my use of the word "Hell."

Aren't you the one who said you believe hell involved fire in some way?

I believe that punishment for crime is perfectly just. If people escape punishment for evil deeds committed on earth, God is perfectly just in punishing them for these evil deeds in the afterlife.

I agree. But we're not talking about punishment for crimes. We were talking about punishment for disbelief due to ignorance, and you said it is "just" for God to punish people who've never heard of God or Jesus by sending them to hell (that's punishment).

You're also, I believe, claiming God will "forgive" believers their "evil deeds committed on earth" (and they will therefore deserve no punishment) because they accept Jesus as their savior, while at the same time God will not forgive non-believers and will condemn them to hell as "just" punishment - even though they may either never have heard of God/Jesus or were not convinced by the "evidence" (provided by God - apparently insufficiently) to believe in God/Jesus. That's where I think our understandings of "justice" diverge....

Jim

[spongebob]

matt, please spare us these kind of over-the-top appeals. Being a Jesus freak in the U.S. is no more dangerous than reading the morning paper.

Fair critique. American evangelicalism is pretty tame--but the life Jesus described is not. We have completely lost the plot, but we are reforming!

This sounds like just another appeal to True (TM) Christianity. They seem to be legion. And I don't find anything in Jesus's teaching that is truly "dangerous". A little counter intuitive, but not dangerous. The sounds like elitism to me. Now, OT lessons are much different. One could say they are often cruel and inhumane.

[spongebob]

Consider the following argument:

Spongebob says in his heart, "There is no god."

Correction: Spongebob says in his head, not his heart. My heart pumps blood and does little else. My head does all my thinking and feeling.

Touche. I will refrain from using metaphors in the future.

(But how does the air from your lungs pass through your brain so that you "say" something in your head?)

You're just being cute. In this case "says" means "thinks".

No need to refrain from metaphors; they make conversation more colorful. I just like to point out the strangeness of this particular use of the term "heart". It's used on conversation almost without thinking, but if you evaluate it honestly, you have to admit that it must mean either thoughts or emotions, and neither of those things take place in our physical "heart", but in our mind, our brain.

[JustJim]

You're just being cute. In this case "says" means "thinks".

And in Matt's case, doesn't "heart" mean "head"? I think we all know that it does. What's good for the goose...?

Jim

[NH Baritone]

You're just being cute. In this case "says" means "thinks".

And in Matt's case, doesn't "heart" mean "head"? I think we all know that it does. What's good for the goose...?

Jim

I disagree. In these discussions, it's important to speak precisely, not poetically. SB is simply trying to keep the language one that everyone accepts and understands, rather than allowing the conversation to drift into religion-speak, where they never really define their terms.

For example, ever get any 2 Christians to agree on a specific definition of God?

[mikedsjr]

For example, ever get any 2 Christians to agree on a specific definition of God?

Yes

[NH Baritone]

For example, ever get any 2 Christians to agree on a specific definition of God?

Yes

I suggest that you have not, in reality, been specific. My experience is that Christians THINK they agree until they don't. Give me 5 minutes with any 2 Christians and I'll have them either disagreeing or sighing, "I don't know'' to one another. And the more sophisticated their theology, the easier it will be.