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Author | Topic: Does the Errancy of Fundamentalism Disprove the God of the Bible? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
DeclinetoState Member (Idle past 6467 days) Posts: 158 Joined: |
Personal Information: Niclas Berggren, born in 1968, holds a Ph.D. in economics and resides in Stockholm, Sweden. At the age of 16, independent of his non-believing parents, he decided to become a born-again Christian and joined the Pentecostal Church (doctrinally close to the Assemblies of God in the U.S.). He remained an earnest, active member - which included bible studies, evangelisation, prayer, speaking in tongues, etc. - until 1994, when he began to question the rationale for believing in the god of the Bible. In 1996, he left his Church after having become an atheist through careful Bible study and rational reasoning. Some of the basis for this radical, albeit calm and gradual, change is presented in this essay. 1. IntroductionThis essay will investigate the often-made claim from Christians, that the Bible is the inspired word of god, a corollary of which is that it is perfectly without error. This view is exemplified by the following statement of Jimmy Swaggart, a Pentecostal pastor: "One of the most basic tenants of the Christian faith is that the Scriptures are inerrant. Because the Bible is God's Word, it is entirely error-free." (Swaggart, 1987, p. 8) [1] It will be argued that this view - which will be referred to as Fundamentalism - is the only possible logical view of the Bible for a Christian, but that it is incorrect and, therefore, that the Christian god[2] does not exist. More formally, the argument of this essay can be expressed in the following manner: 1. If the Christian god (as defined in footnote [2]) exists, there is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.2. If there is a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good, his revelation is error-free, unambiguously clear, and objectively verifiable as true. 3. The Bible is neither error-free, unambiguously clear, nor objectively verifiable. C. The Christian god does not exist. We shall begin by examining the nature of this god and what implications it has for our analysis of the Bible. Konsumtentrd inom frskringar, ln, privatekonomi och teknik Vra guider gr dina val som konsument enklare. ‘ P ntet sedan 1995. If errors can be shown to exist in the Bible, as Berggren asserts, does it then follow that God, at least as an omnipotent Supreme Being, cannot exist?
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AdminPD Inactive Administrator |
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DeclinetoState Member (Idle past 6467 days) Posts: 158 Joined: |
You have not provided your point of view, only a question.
That is not true. A point of view is implied in the question.
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AdminPD Inactive Administrator |
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AdminPhat Inactive Member |
Hello, DeclinetoState, and welcome to EvC! I'll give you a couple of more days to edit your opening post and start a topic, if you want.
Think of it like this: You wish to engage someone in a conversation, right? Lay out your personal point of view, THEN provide a link or two....then decide which forum you want to focus on and let me know. Say by the first of Feb? Comments on moderation procedures (or wish to respond to admin messages)? - Go to:
New Members: to get an understanding of what makes great posts, check out:
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DeclinetoState Member (Idle past 6467 days) Posts: 158 Joined: |
I do not intend to "edit" my opening post. I will add this comment, however: I think that Berggren engages in some leaps of logic, to wit:
If God exists, and God is perfect, then everything He has created must be perfect. The Bible, among other things, is not perfect. Therefore, God does not exist. Some fundamentalists accept the first premise but not the second (they assert the Bible is perfect). A couple of points must be kept in mind: 1. If everything in the universe were perfect, the Bible would not be necessary, since it begins (almost) with the story of how sin came into the world in the Garden of Eden. 2. It could thus be argued that if the Bible were perfect, it would disprove itself, since it would not be an example of the imperfection that has befallen the universe. I think No. 1 is certainly defensible, but I think No. 2 is a leap of logic neither I nor anyone else that I know would take. Nonetheless, it still seems possible.
Think of it like this: You wish to engage someone in a conversation, right? Lay out your personal point of view, THEN provide a link or two....then decide which forum you want to focus on and let me know.
I do not have a strongly held personal point of view on this issue; indeed, I don't really have a point of view at all. If I did, I wouldn't have bothered posting here. My point in posting here it to develop a point of view, specifically, to see if there is one that is in any way defensible. Right now, I'm not sure there is one.
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AdminPD Inactive Administrator |
Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
While the errancy of the Bible disproves the idea that God directly produced the Bible I have to ask why "inspiration" must be interpreted in this way. If the Bible is even partly a human creation the idea that it is GOd's creation falls and with it the whole argument.
So far as I can see this view of "inspiration" is a questionable interpretation of a single verse in an epistle that is generally regarded by scholars as pseudonymous. If that is the case then this issue represents a major weak point in the argument.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
If errors can be shown to exist in the Bible, as Berggren asserts, does it then follow that God, at least as an omnipotent Supreme Being, cannot exist? No, of course not. That would be a totally unwarranted conclusion. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Hal Jordan Inactive Member |
If God exists, and God is perfect, then everything He has created must be perfect. Why must this be so?If a perfect God exists and creates something, and that something wears out or becomes in some way imperfect, how does this in any way translate to God being imperfect? Forgive me, but I'm afraid I do not follow.
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ramoss Member (Idle past 642 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
I believe the reasoning is that a perfect being would not create something that is less than perfect, and if something wears out, then it it is 'perfect' to begin with.
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Hal Jordan Inactive Member |
I believe the reasoning is that a perfect being would not create something that is less than perfect, and if something wears out, then it it is 'perfect' to begin with. Do you mean 'imperfect to begin with'?
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DeclinetoState Member (Idle past 6467 days) Posts: 158 Joined: |
Robert Bratcher, editor of the TEV (Good News Bible) had an interesting (and controversial!) take on the question of Bible accuracy and inerrancy:
At a Dallas conference on the theme "Biblical Authority for the Church Today" sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention in March 1981 he openly lambasted conservative evangelicals, calling them ignorant and dishonest, and scoffed at their contention that the words of the Bible were inspired and authoritative: Good News Bible "Only willful ignorance or intellectual dishonesty can account for the claim that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. To qualify this absurd claim by adding 'with respect to the autographs' is a bit of sophistry, a specious attempt to justify a patent error ... No thruth [sic]-loving, God-respecting, Christ-honoring believer should be guilty of such heresy. To invest the Bible with the qualities of inerrancy and infallibility is to idolatrize it, to transform it into a false God ... No one seriously claims that all the words of the Bible are the very words of God. If someone does so it is only because that person is not willing thoroughly to explore its implications ... Even words spoken by Jesus in Aramaic in the thirties of the first century and preserved in writing in Greek 35 to 50 years later do not necessarily wield compelling or authentic authority over us today. The locus of scriptural authority is not the words themselves. It is Jesus Christ as THE Word of God who is the authority for us to be and to do." (6)
I'm not sure I would have made this argument to a group of Southern Baptists! The argument is compelling: Christ is perfect, the Bible is not. In favor of that point of view, one could argue that, for example, the words of Job's friends (and even Job himself, to some extent) are "garbage," since they represent false though evidently widely held beliefs about God, man, punishment, etc. Of course, even though they don't represent what God thinks about man, they're still useful and appropriate in the Bible (and arguably don't make the Bible imperfect, though it's hard to see how the words could be considered "inspired"). Similarly, the passage in 1 Samuel 20:30, where King Saul calls his son Jonathan a "son of a perverse, rebellious woman"--paraphrased to "son of a bitch" in the first editions of The Living Bible (changed to "fool" in later editions)--is obviously not "inspired" in that it's difficult to imagine God inspiring the king to curse his son. OTOH, it does explain why God was "sorry" he had made Saul king in the first place. (But now we're getting to a topic for another thread...) The major objection that I would have to Bratcher's position is that, lacking other direct historical evidence for Jesus Christ, we need to know that the Gospels are in fact inspired and accurate before we can be certain that Jesus ever walked the earth and/or is alive in heaven today. Right now, we seem to have a compelling story in the Gospels, yet one that seems to have discrepancies that will cause many critical readers to question its veracity.
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ramoss Member (Idle past 642 days) Posts: 3228 Joined: |
Actually, the arguement about GOd is making the logical fallacy of assumping that the only possible god is the god of the bible.
At most, you can say that the bible does not accurate represent God.
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
To some, God is a construct of the human mind to begin with. To others, such as myself, Christ has been found to be very much alive and active. This was discovered when His imparted awareness shown through me like light! I DO think that you have a great point here:
The major objection that I would have to Bratcher's position is that, lacking other direct historical evidence for Jesus Christ, we need to know that the Gospels are in fact inspired and accurate before we can be certain that Jesus ever walked the earth and/or is alive in heaven today. Right now, we seem to have a compelling story in the Gospels, yet one that seems to have discrepancies that will cause many critical readers to question its veracity. And I feel as if the Gospels will always be a matter of belief and not fact, from a critical viewpoint. This type of logic is also an impartation, I believe. Just as ice floats upon water, spiritually enlightened minds will always "float" on another plain from the concrete empiricism of limited human rationality. There ain't nothin wrong with questions, though! Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
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