Open letter to all Atheists.

nevermindEdited by DrJones*, : No reason given.Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

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As a Christian, you have to acknowledge that the Bible (including Genesis) is the inerrant word of God

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Not all Christians are inerrantists.Moreover, I don't see how it is possible for a Christian to seriously believe it.The Bible never claims to be the inerrant word of God. You can find parts which claim to be repeating words God said, but that just emphasises that the surrounding text makes no such claim. You can point to 2 Timothy 3:16, but that is vague and doesn't seem to go so far as to claim that the writings referred to (and it's not even clear which writings are meant, but it's pretty unlikely to include itself) are the word of God, or inerrant (and how do you know that 2 Timothy is correct ?)And then there are the disagreements in the Bible. Sure, if you're prepared to strain the text you can explain them away, but such explanations are hardly satisfactory - unless you insist that the inerrancy doctrine dictates the interpretation of the Bible - to the point of making it more important than the actual text.So, the doctrine that the Bible is the inerrant word of God appears to be a human creation at odds with the Bible. The only way to believe the the doctrine that the Bible the inerrant word of God is to say that that doctrine is MORE IMPORTANT than the inerrant word of God.Does that really make sense to ANYONE ?

He'd also need to add: "Sorry about that Creation-in-6-days thing. I really threw you literalists a curve on that didn't I? And the after-their-own-kind bit, fuhgeddaboudit."You deprecate the intelligence of a Creator. I know you don't believe in one, but if you grant for argument's sake that one exists, then does it seem logical to you that a Creator could be imperfect? If there are imperfections, then it would stand to reason there's room for improvement, thus God as the ultimate one-stop-shop Creator must be perfect, not imperfect (since by definition there can be nothing higher than Him). If God is perfect, then He cannot make mistakes.For evolution and God to be true simultaneously, God must have made a mistake (in His Bible). But He can't make mistakes, if He exists - so we're back to the same premise: either evolution is true, or God is true. But we don't get to claim both.

If I have a boolean variable, assign it TRUE, it can't then at the same time become a walnut. That would violate the law of identity, and has nothing to do with human language.If a comet is passing through the Alpha Centauri system, it's not also at the same time a school of plankton being devoured by a blue whale. Again, nothing to do with human language.I know it might seem like there's a radon leak in my house, by the way I'm writing, but I'm trying to illustrate what logical violations would look like. For a world to exist, without logic (i.e. before it evolved) would be nothing less than an Alice in Wonderland reality.

{gif graphic deleted. I don't know about for others, but for me it took a long time to load and even then didn't display correctly. So, everyone please stop doing such things. Or something like that. - Adminnemooseus}Edit: It was mildly dubious.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Delete problem .gif file of very dubious merit.Edited by faceman, : Level of dubiousness

And not all cops follow the law. It does claim to be God's word, however. God cannot be God if He is errant. That would make Him less than perfect and allow for improvement, which cannot be true if He is the ultimate supreme being (which could not be improved upon). If God is inerrant, then so is His word.

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If a comet is passing through the Alpha Centauri system, it's not also at the same time a school of plankton being devoured by a blue whale. Again, nothing to do with human language.

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Really ? Wouldn't you say that the MEANING of the statement "a comet is passing through Alpha Centauri" has rather a lot to do with human language ? And the fact that it excludes the meaning of the statement "it is a school of plankton being devoured by a blue whale" also has rather a lot to do with human language ?

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And not all cops follow the law.

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That's a piece of deliberate nastiness. Especially when you don't answer most of my post.

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It does claim to be God's word

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No, it doesn't.And if the Bible is so perfect, why do so many inerrantists feel that they have to improve it, by pretending that it says what they think it ought to say ?

Sure, if God wrote the Bible, and if you are correct in interpreting it the way you do, then God exists and has said something that isn't true. This observation does not lead me to equate evolution with atheism, because why on Earth would it?

Could a comet in a distant solar system and a school of plankton here on Earth exist without humans (and thus our language)?The answer is of course yes. Neither event requires our presence nor our language.Now could both of those events occur at the exact same time, and yet somehow be the same event? I don't see how. Spock would not approve.To put it another way, say you look back in time, 10 billion years (before humans, but after the "big bang"). You spot an asteroid tumbling through space. At the exact same time, could it also NOT be an asteroid NOT tumbling through space?

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Could a comet in a distant solar system and a school of plankton here on Earth exist without humans (and thus our language)?
The answer is of course yes. Neither event requires our presence nor our language.

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And it is not logic which makes them different. Thus you miss the point.

Evolution does not comport with a Creator. To do so, would require the Creator to be fallible, which would disqualify Him as God (since the Creator must be perfect).Therefore evolution is not compatible with God. If evolution is true, atheism must follow (as there could be no God). They go hand in hand.

Logic doesn't "make" anything. It is simply a set of absolute laws.Yes I think I must be missing your point, because up until now it seems you believe logic is a construct of the human mind.

Actually it's your poor understanding of logic that is the problemFormal logic is essentially a "truth algebra" as indifferent to the meaning of the statements plugged into it as algebra is to the value of the variables - or, perhaps better, the physical meaning of the variables when algebra is deployed in physics.The contradictions you identify are not formal logical contradictions - they contradict only because the meanings of the statements are incompatible. But that incompatibility has nothing to do with logic. That the states of affairs described by the statements are incompatible is a matter if physical rather than logical impossibility.Now logic is derived from ordinary human language, and formalises certain aspects. Notably the concept of "truth", the operators "and", "or" and "not" and the notion of implication (although the formalisation of that may surprise you!).Further, as a consequence of this a valid logical argument tells us nothing that is not inherent in the collection of premises it is given. All valid logical arguments are tautologous.Logic is not a set of laws applying to the physical world at all. Edited by PaulK, : correct the auto-"correct" (WHY does it hate apostrophes?)