Importance of Innerrancy to Moderate Christians

Phat,Consider that there is no such thing as a message without a receiver.
Recall the test where people listened to white noise through headphones. When asked what they heard they would often report hearing words. In the abscence of meaningful input the brain will project it.I was reading a book by a sleep researcher. He had a patient who was newly married and learned from his wife that he cursed in his sleep and he sought help. The researcher didn't know what to do so asked him to tape record himself sleeping thinking he might get some data to formulate a solution. A week later the guy returned and thanked the researcher profusely for curing him! Seems like just knowing the recorder was on changed something in his unconscious. A message is only as real as the effect it has on a recipient. The recipient doesn't even have to be a human, or alive, it could be a computer or other control device. If the computer is down, no message is received, nothing happens, it's like there was no message sent.You are so likable. I'll get angry with your church I guess. They use such poor reasoning. I see the point you are hoping to make, and you have a very nice religion but I get frustrated by the confusion in your arguments. Sorry. I really want Christians to not use such obviously wrong analogies. Honest, it will help everyone, believers and unbelievers alike in the conversation. Well, if you are monotheist, not even a nondualist, everything that exists is of divine origin. Unless,of course,Paul dreamed him up. Phat, reasoning by analogy requires care. Of course water can rise higher than its source, where do you think rain comes from?I'm frustrated with you in a friendly way. I know you want to bracket out the teachings of some people as divine. It's a tough problem.The only solution I see is faith. I know Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, but millions of Mormons on faith believe it was divine revelation. There is no good evidence, certainly no proof. In fact all the proof and evidence is on my assertion, but that is what religious faith is for. For believing things that otherwise can't be proven. If you've got something more than that I'd like to see it but so far no one has come up with anything other than faith.lfen

I don't know to what extent acceptance of supernatural hypothese would change the observation but there is also the problem of anachronisms that demonstrates books were written long after the time they were attributed to. That is a fairly straight forward critical historical analysis of a text.The most recent example I've encountered is not prophecy but demonstrates that the David Goliath material was written in the time of Josiah most likely because the Philistines were described as wearing Greek style armor that was current in the time of Josiah and not the style of armor known to be used in the time of David.The historical critical scholars are pointing right at the texts and archeology and known history. It's not anti-surpenatural bias is is informed examination of the texts in their historical settings using as much known data for the time and place as archeology and history have collected.Your charge of bias is a projection.lfen

Truthlover,Your position makes sense to me. This seems to me the best way to base a faith in one's religion which is to say that it is found meaningful in one's life rather than it has been proven in a logical scientific way.To me this seems like real faith whereas literalism seems like a fear that if it's all not literally true then one would lose the benefits of one's faith.lfen