Is it possible that you believe in the inerrancy of the bible simply because of your faith and not because of any logic or human reason?
When I come up with an argument, I always think it through several times and try to think of the flaws in my logic and counter arguments. In other words, I don't like to simply throw it out and hope for the best.
To me, the statement that you made about the improbability of a fictional story telling about real places sounds too much like you're just desperately trying to find a reason, any reason, to believe in the bible. To me, if you had just sat back for a couple seconds and tried to think of a flaw of such a statement you would have immediately figured out that most stories in the fiction section of the library contain real places in real life. Even Star Wars tells of a real place... a galaxy far, far away.
I should tell you a little bit about myself. I grew up christian fundamentalist. When I was in college, I had the most interesting philosophy professor. He was loud and obnoxious. But he did get his points across. I walked away from his classes having learned that if I don't criticize and ridicule my own ideas someone else will. And believe you me, every evidence, every argument, every idea, even every human thought has at least 2 ways to be viewed. If you can't interpret a statement more than 1 way, then it's not a comprehensible statement.
For example, when I was little my father would occasionally tell me to go get something from the basement. Nothing bothered me more than when I asked 'where is it?' and he answered 'in the basement'. You could either interpret my question to mean where in the house is it or where in the basement is it? The fact that I was already going to the basement should be clue enough that the latter made more sense.
The fundamentalist mindset that I was trapped in prevented me from critical thinking simply because every time I thought up of an argument for my cause I never bothered to give it a second thought and find the flaws.
In philosophy debates, I used to make the argument that if you put a group of gay men on an island they wouldn't be able to breed. This, I argued, was reason enough that homosexuality was immoral. I was absolutely embarrass when someone finally told me straight in my face that (1) a group of straight men on an island wouldn't be able to breed either and (2) the argument bears absolutely no relevance to morality. I stopped making such a ridiculous argument after that.
Don't rush into making "infallable" statements. Give it some thought first. Try to force yourself to see your "infallable" statement in a different light. Try to find the flaws in your argument. Criticize it. Ridicule it. Why? Because if you don't, we will.
Edited by Taz, : Fixed the goddamn mother fucking grammars
™ Version 4.2
