Summations Only

There's no need to try to make it sound true, because it is the truth.But feel free to prove me wrong, if you can. Show me these allegedly "adequate defences". Bearing in mind that what you are defending is Biblical prophecy as evidence of Biblical inspiration - and you have to come up with some really good evidence for THAT.

If prophecy is your evidence that the Bible is the literally inerrant Word of God, then prophecy is the evidence you have to present. By the way, Islam claims fulfilled prophecies for the Quran as evidence of divine origin just as you do for the Bible. As I said before, your willingness to make disparaging comments, first about that passage from the Quran and now about both it and me, carries no weight as evidence. If you have evidence for the positions your arguing then now is the time to introduce it into the discussion.--Percy

I know what you are saying mike but my problem is this. My whole life is built around my Christian faith. I know that I am called by God to respond to His call to reflect His love, peace, forgiveness etc to the world as is called for in the signature I use.I also know that the Bible is not meant to be understood the way Faith uses it. Faith's method IMHO belittles the Bible by understanding it and promoting as inerrant. That understanding actually minimizes what God wants us to gain from it. As I have said numerous times it is Jesus that is the "Word" of God. The Bible is the "word" of God. God reaches out through the words of the Bible as written by men. The books of the Bible together tells the narrative of the story of reaching out to mankind, with them sometimes getting things right but more often than not getting them wrong. The narrative climaxes with Jesus which brings light to the whole collection of books that make up the canon. Again, it is Christianity not Bibleinaity.So Faith knows that the Bible is inerrant and I know it isn't and yet we can't both be right.

As I said I don't need the frustration of going through evidence only to have it dismissed anyway.Here's a page on prophecy:Page not found - Apologetics PressHere's a page on Inspiration:Page not found - Apologetics PressHere's a short argument for inspiration:A Subtle Argument for Inspiration - Apologetics PressPage not found - Apologetics Press

Faith I understand that you get frustrated when your illusions are dismantled and shown to be false. But what else can you expect in a debate site ? We're not here to just accept whatever you say. Rational people DON'T accept poor arguments or false evidence just because not doing so will hurt your feelings.Your problem is that reality refuses to be the way that you want it to be. But why get upset about it ?Don't hate the truth Faith. Don't condemn those who tell the truth as "stupid" or irrational. Don't try to set yourself up as God, dictating to everyone what they must believe with bullying and slander and lies.And if you can manage that, then maybe you might even be a Christian one day.

First you say that you "know" it but can't prove it, and now you're claiming you can prove it through the evidence of prophecy?Anyway, in previous discussions of prophecy all you offered were declarations of belief, and they were shown wrong by evidence from both the Bible and the real world. How long have you been here? Here's rule 5 of the Forum Guidelines:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

But let's look at just the first prophecy, Jeremiah 50 that prophesizes that Babylon will be conquered and laid waste. The claim is that the prophecy was fulfilled when Cyrus the great conquered Babylon, but the bulk of Cyrus's empire lay to the east, not the north, and according to the Wikipedia article on Babylon the city flourished over the next couple centuries: So much for prophecy.Naturally there are prophecies sufficiently vague or unspecific that they can't be considered wrong, but they're scant evidence. Even if you do find a correct prophecy you still have to draw a connection between correct prophecy and divine and inerrant authorship. How does one imply the other? To clarify, if Jeremiah did issue some completely correct prophecies, how does someone recounting those prophecies while composing a book that later became part of the Bible make the entire Bible into something inerrant and authored or inspired by God.--Percy

What Are We Trying To Prove, Anyway?1)Was the Bible written by men or by God? I believe that it was of course obviously written by men. I do believe that these men were inspired.So our argument is concerning the source and/or sources of information.Essentially our overall argument is about many things. Is humanity the sole source of inspiration for itself, or is God the source?Who is God, anyway? Is there only One? Many? None? Must this argument be black & white or can it be gray?

Thanks Faith, that's a thoughtful post, I'm only this thread once, I say what I mean then go but I do want to say a few things in response to your insights. It never ceases to amaze me how it can't be seen, especially the incontrovertible evidence of design all around us.Yes, there is evidence, confirmation evidence, some of that evidence is just for the existence of an intelligent designer, so it can become a can of worms. But the bible with all it's prophecies and wisdom, can't be deemed to be an ordinary collection of books comparable to another religious book, IMHO. to put it in common terms, if God has shown Himself somehow to humanity - "what would He look like?" Well, the first thing we would say is this - " God, you've allowed the bible to be the clear winner, now if it isn't why did you make it mislead us in this manner? I mean the Koran is a johnny-come-lately, the bible spans centuries, and states things that unmistakenly lay claim to all of the divine claims we would expect it to,."Think about it? who claims to have made the earth, made man on it, formed the eye, planted the ear, see the heart of man, have omniscience, omnipotence, transcendance, immutability and sovereignty, and "be love" itself? All of these claims SATISFY those who seek God. So I can't see how any comparison can be drawn. Quite simply, if God isn't the God of the bible, then He has made it overwhelmingly look like he is, to the world, which would make no sense. also it's the only book that explains our sin-nature, and tells us why the world is the way it is, and the only book to claim we are unique to the animals, as our consciousness clearly is, that we are made in God's image. These things are not comparable to the shallow god-of-thunder, "Thor", who gives no answers to anything. Yet Dawkins would compare our God to Thor?!? Lol! I've read most of it, it's seven foot away from me as I speak. Although I hope not to offend you or catholics, but it seemed like a lot of catholic-fluff, but perhaps I misunderstood because the language was hard to read. Some things made sense to me, but others didn't. that language seemed more linguistic, more informal statements, opinionated. I don't have much of a view of it either way, but I can see there might be some insights in there that have credence. He said that to exist between two infinites spaces for no reason at all makes no sense, IIRC, which certainly made sense to me when I read it. I agree, we partake of ministerial reason whereas they partake of magisterial reason, and the latter is basically the wisdom of this world, which is mankind being man-centric, and claiming their own wisdom and philosophy is "god", (they are their own god.) I would say personally that they don't say the same thing, they claim the same thing. But the problem is we can't compare them and amalgamate them like Dawkins and his ilk want to do.When a Christian spoke to Dawkins about an experience with the Holy Spirit, Dawkins appealed by saying someone could speak of a similar experience with another religion. But that's fallacious because there is no way to differentiate between a subjective delusion and a genuine spiritual reality. Therefore to conclude one is all and all is one, is a non sequitur.I appreciate that atheists TREAT one as all and all as one, but they only do that out of their own subjective ignorance. (Lack of experience of the genuine spiritual walk.)We know that when a person receives the genuine article they can't soon after look for fulfillment in something less.(If I don't come back to discuss, thanks for reading this post.)

I don't think it has to be contentious among Christians. It is a difficult can of worms, because everything you have just stated I basically agree with, but I would say I personally take it as inerrant, as a trust-issue between me and God. I admit my "reason" leads me to similar conclusions you would probably have and atheists would have, sometimes, but I choose to basically humble myself and admit I don't understand.I am not against your way of seeing it, as you are clearly a genuine believer, it doesn't have to be contentious, it's just a difficult thing, because we are all at our own different stages of our walk with God, really, and we all have our own personal little differences.

If "false gods" are made up, as many theists claim, did the "real" God inspire men to make them up?

Good question. Did God inspire Lucifer to choose to rebel? Did "the devil" make the devil do it? false gods are simply our inborn nature to deify ourselves one way or another. Some folks even use the real God as their excuse...their own ego.Others use intellect and false humility. Notice how there are so many "humanitarian secular humanists who get all teary eyed and touchy feely over saving the whales or the forest or adopting stray animals. They essentially value their good deeds as the highest form of altruism...one that everyone with a heart simply must emulate. Its a form of proselytizing that insists that humanity take care of itself in an almost sacred way. Humanist sacredness is itself a false god, in my opinion.

Since we're talking about Bible inerrancy, the idea of "deifying" ourselves doesn't make much sense. Recognizing that the Bible is full of errors admits the frailty of the authors.

Assuming for a moment that the story that the books of the Bible is trying to teach involves humanities relationship with One God who eventually made Himself known to all people---what significant errors are there that muddy this thinking or contradict it in any way?

This obviously is nowhere close to being true.

The issue is not whether or not there are errors. The point is that if we think there are errors and men are the authors, then we're not exactly "deifying" men, are we?