Rather then hijack this thread: how big is the creationist movement? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board on creationism, I am just curious how biblical literalists explain the internal contradictions of which there are many? Also since much of the bible is old testament, which they include I assume, why don’t they follow, say, the kosher laws that declare that the pig is unclean and may not be eaten?
According to the folks over at Christiananswers.net, it’s just a trick to weed out the unfaithful. Sort of a Divine entrapment scheme:
I think when you say Bible literalists, the assumption is we’re talking about Christians. The specific permission regarding kosher food is covered in the New Testament.
I think any conflicts in the Bible are settled in favor of existing prejudices.
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Generally it involves trying to find ambiguities in the language by which they can contrive loopholes and convoluted reconciliations.
Natural speech is generally not so precise and careful that it can seal off all possible ambiguities in every word, and when you have independent texts making contradictory claims, it is virtually always possible (as long as they don’t directly reference each other…i.e. Matthew saying Luke is a liar) to massage ambiguities in language or context so as to create loopholes by which the claims can be connected.
Just as an exercise, you can write two mutually contradictory claims, and as long as those claims don’t reference each other, you can make them reconcile practically any of them with enough linguistic massage and construction of ad hoc connective extrapolation.
Or to put in another way, they employ liberal amounts of bullshit.
I’m currently reading a book called Misquoting Jesus, by Bart D. Ehram. It talks quite a bit about this.
-D/a
Ehrman has a whole book about Biblical contradictions called Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them).
The short answer is that Jesus’ teachings, and the teachings of later writers (Paul mostly) in the New Testament which expand upon Jesus’ teachings, more or less indicate that Jesus made Old Testament law obsolete, and the law that governs Christians should be based on love.
This, of course, means that any Christian who quotes Old Testament law as an excuse to persecute gays, but yet still eats shrimp, is being, at best, intellectually dishonest. But that’s a different thread entirely.
There are a wide variety of techniques for addressing the wide variety of contradictions found in the Bible. For any given contradiction, there are probably a half dozen different excuses of varying plausibility a Biblical literalist could use to explain it away.
For example, the gospels indicate that Judas hanged himself, but in Acts it’s claimed he died in a field when he fell and “burst asunder”, spilling his guts. I have heard Christians attempt to reconcile these two passages by claiming that his guts burst asunder as a consequence of his hanging himself. Other Christians claim the proper interpretation of “hanged himself” is actually “squeezed himself with great emotion”, so the gospel passage doesn’t refer to his death at all. Still others claim that Judas did indeed hang himself, but that the suicide was botched and he didn’t die then.
Yes, but they talk about the “absolute inerrancy” of the bible, by which they mean old and new. But I understand the various gospels also tell somewhat different stories. Anyway, the 6 day creationists are certainly quoting the old testament. Never mind the shrimp and pork eaters.
And that concept is strengthened by the idea that God provides “mysteries” to test our faith, and anything we don’t understand or don’t agree with is evidence of the greater intelligence of a supernatural being. We aren’t intended to understand it, so quite trying and worship.
Or, we are only pawns in the game of life, as Mongo said.
Contradictions are considered minor. If you believe, as the Christian answers site says, that the Bible is [ul][]Historically accurate,[]Scientifically accurate,[*]and contains fulfilled prophecies,[/ul]none of which are believed by more rationally thinking people (see the staff reports on the Bible), then you can ignore a contradiction here and there.
I don’t know much about the subject but it seems it might not be totally unreasonable that the latter teachings replace the former except in the areas where the latter is silent on a specific issue. So if prohibitions against pork were explicitly removed but those against sodomy, or whatever the Bible calls homosexuality, were not then they would still be acting consistently with their beliefs.
Who Does? Do you know some people who make that claim? Can we get them here to answer the questions?
Let’s say essentially those later writers. Jesus unambiguously declares in the gospels that not even a dot in the Law will change till the end of times. To which is only opposed a specific statement in specific circumstances (Jesus healing the sicks on the Sabbath and asking who wouldn’t rescue his donkey on Sabbath).
One of the reasons why I think Christianism should more properly be called Paulism.
Paul says the entire old covenant was rendered moot by the crucifixion.
Note, though, that Jesus himself never said this. Jesus, according to the Gospels, said to keep every bit of the law and obey the pharisees. Paul also said that the “pillars” in Jerusalem (Peter, James and John) were still keeping kosher and following Jewish law. These were guys who actually knew Jesus, were in his entourage and learned directly from him. One of them (according to Paul) was his brother. If Jesus ever said that Mosaic law was no longer binding, it’s pretty odd that those guys who were closest to him, including his own brother, weren’t aware of it.
Of course, Paul said he got all his information directly from Jesus’ ghost and “not from any man,” so it boils down to whether you believe Jesus’ ghost actually spoke to Paul.
There’s also Peter’s vision in Acts 10, where, more or less, Jesus told Peter to ignore Old Testament law - at least as it regards clean & unclean food, and clean & unclean persons. Of course, Jesus was making a larger point, but still…
Acts was written long after Peter and Paul were dead (and written by an author who never knew Peter), so can’t be taken as a reliable indication of anything ever claimed by Peter or as any indication that the original disciples ever stopped keeping the law. The only primary source we have about the apostles is Paul, and Paul never says they stopped keeping the law, only that he argued with them about it.
The Bible attempts to expand our mind to think beyond the 3 dimensions that we observe directly to the multi-dimensional space we actually live in, it is literally mind expanding. Apparent conflicts is one such way of doing this. In a 2d world 2 lines will cross if they are not parallel but that does not apply if we are in 3d. That is what God is trying to show us about our world. Try to take Him as His word and define your world around His.
God comes right out and tells us things that in our word can’t seem right, such as I(Jesus) and the Father are one, The man is united to the woman and become one flesh, etc.
God is telling it as it is, it just man’s conventional teachings are a bit behind.
There are 2 paths since the whole mess with the serpent in the garden. The path of rules that lead to sin and death and the path of Love that leads to life. These are the 2 paths we get to chose to live under, which is basically broken down OT and NT, but there is much overlapping, such as King David was under the new covenant and Paul imposed OT rules such as women not speaking.
Jesus came to set the people free, which means the OT laws are nailed to tree, they have no enforcement (death where is your sting). And they will get in the way of doing God’s work.
My copy of the Bible quotes Jesus as saying “Do not suppose that I came to throw down the law or the prophets – I did not come to throw down, but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)
Once something has been fulfilled, it is no longer in effect. Jesus fulfilled the laws of the Old Testament, therefore they are no longer binding on mankind.
He didn’t say anything like that. You’re making a rather strained semantic stretch. You’'re also ignoring the fact that in the very next verse Matthew has Jesus say this:
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Have Heaven and Earth passed away yet? if not, then Jesus says the law is still the Law.