Fundamentalism and Inerrancy, are they so?

[polonius]

[polonius]

[Divine Insight]

If the Bible were truly divine commandments, instructions and directives to humans telling humans how they must behave in order to avoid eternal damnation it would indeed need to be perfectly clear and inerrant in it's instructions. Especially if we're going to hold that the God behind it is trustworthy, righteous, and benevolent.

Therefore in order for the Bible to truly be instructions from God it must indeed be perfect and inerrant.

As you point out in post #2 it's clearly neither.

Therefore there can only be one conclusion possible. The Bible cannot be the inerrant instructions from any trustworthy, righteous, and benevolent God.

So there we have it. An indisputable observation that the Bible cannot be the word of any trustworthy, righteous, and benevolent God.

We could try to get around this by suggesting that the God of the Bible is not trustworthy, righteous, and benevolent God. But that would clearly not be a very good argument for this theology.

Other arguments have been given that we're not being given instructions through the Bible, but rather we are supposed to be following the guidance of a "Holy Spirit". But that clearly fails as well, because if that were true, then there would be no need for an errant Bible in the first place.

So there's really no rational arguments left to support this theology.

We certainly can't be standing there holding up a Bible proclaiming that we are to be guided by a "Holy Spirit" because that would be an oxymoron to use the Bible as a symbol of authority to make such a proclamation. An errant Bible cannot be held up as a symbol of authority for anything.

So the fact that the Bible is errant proves that it's not the instructions from any trustworthy, righteous, and benevolent God.

Could it have something to do with an untrustworthy, unrighteous, and malevolent God? Sure. But I doubt that Biblical theists would want to make that argument.

[Elijah John]

[showme]

[Tcg]

[Elijah John]

[Tcg]

[Tcg]

[Replying to post 8 by Tcg]

For those interested in seeing the depth of faith that can lead to death, here is a video from ABC News that documents the death of Jamie Coots, the father of Cody Coots who is the pastor mentioned in the article I listed previously:



As I mentioned earlier, these are real snakes whose venom can and at times do cause death. There is no scam involved in these ceremonies.

It is easy to question the wisdom of this display of faith, but the faith these folks place in God is hard to top. Very few truly risk their lives for their faith. These faithful Christians do so on a regular basis.

[Elijah John]

The perils of taking the Bible seriously.

The vast majority of those who take the Bible seriously but not literally do not handle snakes nor do they deliberately drink poison.

Even the snake handlers are a distinct minority within the population of Fundamentalist Christians.