How can we trust the Bible if it's not inerrant?

[otseng]

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:

How can you trust something that's written about god that contradictory, contains errors and just plain wrong at times? Is there a logical way to do so, or do you just want it to be god's word so much that you overlook these things like happens so often through the history of christianity?

The Bible can still be God's word, inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy without the need to believe in inerrancy.

For debate:
How can the Bible be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy?

While debating, do not simply state verses to say the Bible is inspired or trustworthy.

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Thread Milestones

• Case study of Hezekiah
• Start discussing global flood / Flood Model summary
• Recap arguments of authority of the Bible
• Start discussing Tower of Babel / Tower of Babel summary
• Start discussing archaeology / Philosophy of science / Origin of alphabet / End of discussion on archaeology
• Start discussing cosmology / Concluding cosmology
• Start discussing Shroud of Turin / Summary top TS imaging theories / Created DefendingChristianity.com and TS subforums / Shroud of Turin summary
• Start discussing Bible and resurrection
• Start discussing the Messiahship of Jesus / Messiahship of Jesus wrap up
• Start discussing Old Testament ethics
• Summary argument of atheism and morality / God basis for objective morality
• Start discussing genocide / Genocide summary argument
• Start discussing slavery / Slavery summary argument
• Start discussing homosexuality / Homosexuality summary argument
• Old Testament ethics summary argument
• Start discussing philosophy / Summary argument on philosophy
• Start discussing creation of universe / Summary argument universe was created

[otseng]

Apart from the fact that the pattern is observed globally, how do you account for the deposition of the layers and subsequent erosion in terms of the biblical flood scenario?

I'll present how the FM answers all the questions later. In the meantime, please present how SG answers the questions I've been posing.

Yes, but why should this be a surprise? The same erosion and geology and rivers cutting into strata is going on all over the world. If there geology of the Grand canyon does not support a flood -scenario, why should any of these others?

Yes, erosion is going on all over the world as evidenced after all the layers were deposited. But, where is it evidenced while all the layers were formed for the past billion or so years?

Do we have to again go over why the Grand Canyon does not show that it was caused by a flood in a few months but over millions of years of gradual river erosion?

OK, what happened before the erosion started? Before any river formed to start eroding it into a canyon, would you agree it was just a vast flat area with the complete strata lying below that?

[Replying to bluegreenearth in post #270]

Please also post the relevant text or summary of what the videos are about.

[otseng]

We agree all the layers were originally formed underwater. And obviously all the layers now are above water. So, the question is what happened to cause the layers that was once below water to be above water? I see there are two possibilities - either the land rose vertically so that it became above sea level or the sea level became lower. Would you agree these are the only two possibilties? If not, what else could've happened? If you do agree with the two, which one occurred according to SG?

[bluegreenearth]

Please also post the relevant text or summary of what the videos are about.

As I indicated to you in an earlier post, it is not possible to resolve your confusion with a summarization of the complex and nuanced geologic processes that are involved. In fact, the videos already provide condensed versions of those concepts. If you are unwilling to take the time to do the necessary work of acquiring the advanced education needed to resolve your confusion, then your continued misunderstanding of those complex and nuanced geologic processes will fail to provide you with a justification for exhibiting confidence in the objections you have against them. Again, a little intellectual humility will go along away to mitigate for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

[William]

From the On the Bible being inerrant thread:

How can you trust something that's written about god that contradictory, contains errors and just plain wrong at times? Is there a logical way to do so, or do you just want it to be god's word so much that you overlook these things like happens so often through the history of christianity?

The Bible can still be God's word, inspired, authoritative, and trustworthy without the need to believe in inerrancy.

For debate:
How can the Bible be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy?

While debating, do not simply state verses to say the Bible is inspired or trustworthy.

Inerrancy Is a Relatively New Term, but a Clear Biblical Concept
While inerrancy is a new term, coined within the last one hundred years, it describes a concept that the Bible clearly teaches about itself and that the church has held from the beginning—God’s Word is without error. Over time, the terminology in describing the nature of the Bible has changed. The term, “inerrancy” came into common usage as a response to those who claimed to have found errors in Scripture. It was merely expressing the concept of God’s truthfulness in a way that responded to the charges that were made against it. Therefore, the fact that the precise term, “inerrancy” is not found in Scripture, in the historic creeds, or in confessional statements, is not relevant. Historically, the church has built all its doctrines out of the teachings found in Scripture, which has been believed to be authoritative and completely truthful in all that it teaches.
Source

Guidelines for the TD&D subforum
In this subforum the canon of the Bible is considered authoritative with respect to the historical consensus of the canon's content.
Source

As far as I can tell, the Bible cannot be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy.

The question which comes to mind from this is;

Q: Why is it even necessary to believe the bible has to be considered authoritative and inspired by a God, and therefore inerrant?

Q: Is that its main selling point?

Although it is impossible to obtain exact figures, there is little doubt that the Bible is the world's best-selling and most widely distributed book. A survey by the Bible Society concluded that around 2.5 billion copies were printed between 1815 and 1975, but more recent estimates put the number at more than 5 billion.
Source

Of interest, although I don't doubt the world records site re the numbers, I do think the link addy is misleading with the words "best-selling-book-of-non-fiction" in the address line.

2.22 billion Christians might believe the bible is a work of fact, but belief in and of itself does not make it so.

So perhaps the whole thing is based upon the error of human judgment, along the same lines as trusting in men because they are well dressed, rather than examining their words and their actions for more precise and helpful information in order to be that much better informed as to the state of the heart/mind behind the suits?

[otseng]

As I indicated to you in an earlier post, it is not possible to resolve your confusion with a summarization of the complex and nuanced geologic processes that are involved.
In fact, the videos already provide condensed versions of those concepts. If you are unwilling to take the time to do the necessary work of acquiring the advanced education needed to resolve your confusion, then your continued misunderstanding of those complex and nuanced geologic processes will fail to provide you with a justification for exhibiting confidence in the objections you have against them. Again, a little intellectual humility will go along away to mitigate for the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I'll ignore the ad hom attacks and get to the point. Again, all I'm asking is for you to summarize the arguments made in the videos. This is how debates occur here. It is not simply by posting links to address questions. Until this is done, I will be considering the questions unanswered.

As far as I can tell, the Bible cannot be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy.

Yes, this is what a lot of people believe, both Christians and skeptics alike. But, as you've pointed out, the doctrine of inerrancy is a new concept. Did people believe in the authority of the Bible prior to the introduction of the doctrine of inerrancy?

Historically, the church has built all its doctrines out of the teachings found in Scripture, which has been believed to be authoritative and completely truthful in all that it teaches.

And one can believe this without the doctrine of inerrancy.

2.22 billion Christians might believe the bible is a work of fact, but belief in and of itself does not make it so.

Of course.

So perhaps the whole thing is based upon the error of human judgment, along the same lines as trusting in men because they are well dressed, rather than examining their words and their actions for more precise and helpful information in order to be that much better informed as to the state of the heart/mind behind the suits?

Yes, I believe there is an aspect of that.

[TRANSPONDER]

Apart from the fact that the pattern is observed globally, how do you account for the deposition of the layers and subsequent erosion in terms of the biblical flood scenario?

I'll present how the FM answers all the questions later. In the meantime, please present how SG answers the questions I've been posing.

Yes, but why should this be a surprise? The same erosion and geology and rivers cutting into strata is going on all over the world. If there geology of the Grand canyon does not support a flood -scenario, why should any of these others?

Yes, erosion is going on all over the world as evidenced after all the layers were deposited. But, where is it evidenced while all the layers were formed for the past billion or so years?

Do we have to again go over why the Grand Canyon does not show that it was caused by a flood in a few months but over millions of years of gradual river erosion?

OK, what happened before the erosion started? Before any river formed to start eroding it into a canyon, would you agree it was just a vast flat area with the complete strata lying below that?

[Replying to bluegreenearth in post #270]

Please also post the relevant text or summary of what the videos are about.

I thought we'd already dealt with that. But quite apart from the sheer dept of the deposits convincing geologists even before Darwin that these layers had to be far more than a few hundred years old let alone laid down during a flood lasting a year or two. various dating methods including radiometric have given better dates than the guesstimates before then. I mentioned before that Creationists tried to debunk the dating (see the RATE initiative) but failed utterly, as has everything else they have tried from denial of transitionals to the I/D argument.

And to pick up another point you mentioned, yes of course these layers that once were sea beds have been raised up. This happens over geological time. Haven't you heard the famous old Creationist argument for 'fossil sea -shells on mountains? But what they either didn't know or didn't care is that these were in situ with fossil worm burrows in what was originally sea floor. Thus over geological time old sea beds were raised up as mountains (not sea shells tossed onto mountain tops during some mythical flood) while other land surfaces were buried and new strata over the top. That's why we have some salt or coal mines that have to be dug for rather than being conveniently on the surface.

[TRANSPONDER]

p.s To quote from Talk origins again,
Claim CD010:
Radiometric dating gives unreliable results.
Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 24.
Response:
Independent measurements, using different and independent radiometric techniques, give consistent results (Dalrymple 2000; Lindsay 1999; Meert 2000). Such results cannot be explained either by chance or by a systematic error in decay rate assumptions.

Radiometric dates are consistent with several nonradiometric dating methods. For example:

The Hawaiian archipelago was formed by the Pacific ocean plate moving over a hot spot at a slow but observable rate. Radiometric dates of the islands are consistent with the order and rate of their being positioned over the hot spot (Rubin 2001).

Radiometric dating is consistent with Milankovitch cycles, which depend only on astronomical factors such as precession of the earth's tilt and orbital eccentricity (Hilgen et al. 1997).

Radiometric dating is consistent with the luminescence dating method (Thompson n.d.; Thorne et al. 1999).

Radiometric dating gives results consistent with relative dating methods such as "deeper is older" (Lindsay 2000).

The creationist claim that radiometric dates are inconsistent rest on a relatively few examples. Creationists ignore the vast majority of radiometric dates showing consistent results (e.g., Harland et al. 1990).

It's the same (or used to be) with Creationists denying Carbon 14 dates. Those weren't perfect and local conditions or contamination could affect the results. But by and large the older organic material could reliably be shown to be any more thousands of years older than the proverbial 4- 8,000 years.

There's a rather nice story I heard from an evolutionists who attended a creationist conference to see what they were arguing. I recall that it was at the conclusion of the RATE research and the spokesbod announced that they had debunked the millions of years claim and could argue that it was only fifty thousand years old, to gasps of dismay from the audience. It has to be Bishop Ushers' 8,000 years old and no more.

[TRANSPONDER]

A bit more from Talk Origins 'Radiometric dating and the geological time -scale'
In more complicated situations, like in a mountain belt, there are often faults, folds, and other structural complications that have deformed and "chopped up" the original stratigraphy. Despite this, the "principle of cross cutting relationships" can be used to determine the sequence of deposition, folds, and faults based on their intersections -- if folds and faults deform or cut across the sedimentary layers and surfaces, then they obviously came after deposition of the sediments. You can't deform a structure (e.g., bedding) that is not there yet! Even in complex situations of multiple deposition, deformation, erosion, deposition, and repeated events, it is possible to reconstruct the sequence of events. Even if the folding is so intense that some of the strata is now upside down, this fact can be recognized with "way up" indicators.

Without wishing to slip into Ad Hom. All the answers and explanations are there if a doubter of the million of years - old geological dates of strata is doubted, the millions of years of tectonic rearrangement of former sea -beds turning into mountains and ancient mountains being worn down to sea beds is doubted and that the fossils in those strata can be doubted and which confirm an evolutionary sequence and not a single cataclysmic food with Belemnites, Brachiosaurus and brown bears all being crushed into one flood -layer. And that's the point here, even if the Grand Canyon could be shown to have been carved by a flash flood in a short time some thousand years ago - which on all the evidence it wasn't.

I recall one photo otseng posted showing strata layers. But it also showed the tilted strata with one corner sheared off flat (indicating ancient and long time geological processes and erosion) as had been argued in a diagram I recall was posted here. The evidence supposed to support a Flood does in fact not support it, but only if one looks at it.

[William]

[Replying to otseng in post #275]

As far as I can tell, the Bible cannot be considered authoritative and inspired without the need to believe in the doctrine of inerrancy.

Yes, this is what a lot of people believe, both Christians and skeptics alike. But, as you've pointed out, the doctrine of inerrancy is a new concept. Did people believe in the authority of the Bible prior to the introduction of the doctrine of inerrancy?

Only on the word of the Church priesthood. Before mass printing was invented.

Historically, the church has built all its doctrines out of the teachings found in Scripture, which has been believed to be authoritative and completely truthful in all that it teaches.

And one can believe this without the doctrine of inerrancy.

It is not a matter of having to believe this. It is a matter of fact.

From the outside looking in one can ascertain that this is what occurred.

From the inside looking out, one has to believe that the bible is inerrant IF one also has to believe that the bible is the word of god.

Does one have to believe that the bible is both? Is that part of what being a Christian is about?

So perhaps the whole thing is based upon the error of human judgment, along the same lines as trusting in men because they are well dressed, rather than examining their words and their actions for more precise and helpful information in order to be that much better informed as to the state of the heart/mind behind the suits?

Yes, I believe there is an aspect of that.

In all the words found in the bible?

[bluegreenearth]

I'll ignore the ad hom attacks and get to the point. Again, all I'm asking is for you to summarize the arguments made in the videos. This is how debates occur here. It is not simply by posting links to address questions. Until this is done, I will be considering the questions unanswered.

An ad hominem occurs when an argument attacks the opponent in an attempt to defeat the opponent's argument. While I can understand how my response could be perceived as an ad hominem attack, by advising you to acquire the necessary advanced education in geology, I am not attempting to defeat your argument against geology. No, I am providing that advice because you are requesting summaries which would not function for the purpose you intend. Again, the summaries you are requesting will not facilitate the understanding you need because the geologic processes responsible for the stratigraphy you are observing cannot be adequately summarized further than what has already been provided in the videos without severely compromising their ability to provide an accurate and sufficient explanation. In other words, some concepts are just too complex and nuanced to be adequately debated by untrained interlocutors in an online forum such as this. Therefore, dissatisfying as it may be, your questions will likely remain unanswered in this forum. For you to discover if your objections are legitimate, you must dedicate sufficient time and effort towards conducting the necessary research at an accredited university or at your public library reading peer-reviewed journal articles and text books rather than asking your interlocutors to summarize complex and nuanced geologic explanations in an online debate forum.

Seriously, if not the Dunning-Kruger effect, what else could explain the lack of intellectual humility and almost arrogant confidence implied by your poorly informed objections to the principles of geology which are rigorously and routinely tested by experts in the field? I am not asking this question rhetorically as an ad hominem attack either. I am genuinely perplexed by the attitude you appear to be exhibiting in this regard, and I would like to understand it better. I'm both puzzled and concerned because you seem to realize that you lack the prerequisite knowledge and capabilities in the field of geology, yet you express a disproportionate amount of confidence in your objections to the explanations provided by the expert geologists who have the necessary prerequisite knowledge and capabilities in the field. Please explain to me how you are justifying your confidence in those objections given your lack of qualifications and capabilities in the field of geology?