On all my previous threads about Dawkins and how truth-challenged he his, the atheist side, or at least some of them, have accepted my main point. (That now appears to include this thread as well.) It is of course the case that one gets the impression from some posters that they’re upset about me telling the truth, but that doesn’t bother me much.
In the thread about Dawkins falsely claiming that Martin Luther King’s non-violent resistance had nothing to do with religion:
“I agree with you on this.” – Revenant Threshold
“Dawkins is going to see things through atheist-colored glasses.” – Cisco
In the thread on the death of Alan Turing, which Dawkins erroneously blames on religion:
“Dawkins is most vulnerable when he tries to argue that religion necessarily causes violence. I think human bigotry is more innate than that, and that Dawkins shouldn’t waste his time with it. I have noticed that every attempted rebuttal of The God Delusion fixates on that one rather unimportant aspect of the book.” – Diogenes
In the thread on Dawkins’ distortions of St. Thomas:
“I do see a flaw in this paraphrasing, and it is that it misses out on Aquinas’ logic on how that which is moved cannot itself be the cause of the movement; that one way out of the regress is for something to be both the moved and the mover of itself, and that Aquinas shows this not to be possible (well, he says it, and offers no reason to believe him, as I believe you are fond of saying). So i’d say a black mark against Dawkins on this one,” – Revenant Threshold
And so forth.
In any case, the main point is that with so many people informing me that Dawkins’ book has crushing arguments against religion, it’s worth investigating what those arguments are. And it seems that Dawkins mainly tries to win converts to atheism by telling things that aren’t true. After each instance is investigated, someone usually informs me that though Dawkins was wrong in this particular case, he’s right in general. In which case, perhaps somebody could tell me what in this book is actually supposed to be truthful and honestly presented.
Presumably you’d be willing to include a modifier such as “a few” in that last sentence, since I doubt you’d accuse scholars such as Metzger, Evans, Blomberg, and Craig of being woefully ignorant. I see no particular reason why a typical Christian should be encouraged to delve into the minutiae of the Bible. On the question of reading the entire thing, much of it does not apply to Christians due to Jesus making the New Covenant. I’ve read Leviticus, but I see no reason to encourage everyone else to, unless they really want to know what merits a bull sacrifice and when you can get away with just a goat sacrifice. As for textual variants, as Metzger says, none of them throw Christian doctrine into doubt. It is, of course, just fine to study the Bible in depth and I’m pleased that lots of folks have done so. As we’ve seen, there are plenty out there for whom such study bolsters their faith quite a bit. But to suggest that such is necessary for living a Christian life is erroneous. A Christian life is centered around establishing a relationship with God, not about obsessive Bible study. Or as Dr. Daniel Wallace said, “The Bible is not the fourth member of the Trinity.”
On rereading I’ve noticed that post 81 could be misinterpreted. The line about “some posters being upset that I’m telling the truth” was not intended to refer to any of the three that I quoted; those three are all polite and civil in debates.
Which book doesn’t contain plausible errors? And I don’t mean Dawkins, I mean -what- book out of all the books ever written, contains nothing where you couldn’t find one or two items to quibble about if you were of the mood to do so?
I’d be fairly willing to bet that that number is zero. Regardless of anything, there’s always going to be something that you can go “Nyuh uhh” if you really want to.
Why should we hold Dawkins up to a standard that so far no other human being on the planet has been able to match? If you are aware that the Gospel of Nicodemus shouldn’t be included in his list, why not mentally scratch that one out and proceed on with reading? Why focus on that one sentence when you (presumably) passed by tens or hundreds of pages which didn’t present any particular errors of note?
I think the logic is that if a book has a few trivial errors or inonsistencies, that one can thereby know that the entire book is not gospel and its message can be utterly disregarded.
It’s too bad they don’t use the same standard for their religious texts. I seem to remember a saying about throwing motes in glass houses of sin. Or something like that.
I’d include a modifier such as “most but not all Christians are woefully etc” You’re correct I wouldn’t include the scholars in that. I was speaking specifically of the average Christian who regularly attends church and perhaps takes a Bible class at same.
Metzger is speaking for Metzger and it’s obvious others don’t agree. My own study led me away from traditional Christianity. I’d like individuals to know some of the details and decide for themselves rather than accept someone else’s opinion as “gospel” Just an improved knowledge about the NT would be enough. If the Bible and the NT in particular is going to be presented as the inspired word of God , inerrant or otherwise, and Jesus as God’s only begotten Son and the path to salvation, with the Bible as a Christian’s primary authoritative guide, then certainly something more than a cursory knowledge of the source and details of those beliefs is called for.
This type of information is available even for layman like myself but when I was a Christian it was never mentioned in any study group I attended. Instead the tradition of the inspired reliability of what was declared scripture was taught with the added implication that anything other than Christian scripture wasn’t really any good.
I tend to think that kind of thing is still being taught and many average Christians accept what their fellow Christians and their preachers say is true without ever having the proper information to consider. A presentation of something as “truth” deserves the proper information.
sub check_for_irrelevancy_to_atheist_position();
{
if (thread.contains(“sound reasons to be religious”)) {
freeze(create_object(Hell)); return(1/0);
}
else return TRUE;
}
It appear that you’re objecting to an argument that you wish I had made, rather than the one that I did make. I don’t at all object that Richard Dawkins tells a few untrue things of small significance. I object to him telling many untrue things of large significance. Suppose that Dawkins had limited himself to propagating minor urban legends, such as James Watt using the Rapture to justify environmental policy (chapter 8) or the English mob that confused pediatrician with pedophile (chapter 9). If so, I could respect Mr. Dawkins even though I disagree with him. However, he also tried to mislead his readers on a large number of major points. That is why I cannot respect him.
See this is where that whole issue of “spelling” and “definition” comes in again. “untrue” is spelled differently from “error”. They’re spelled differently because they’re different words, and have entirely different definitions. It’s just one of those things.
Not that I see too much point in continuing this discussion when you apparently intend to rely solely on sarcasm, but I happen to have a dictionary handy. “Erroneous” is a synonym for “untrue”, and the first definition or error is “belief in something untrue”.
This whole thread demonstrates why it is a mistake for Dawkins (or any other atheist) to climb atop his hobby horse and go charging through town like the Headless Horseman. By addressing the ambiguous details of Christianity (or any other religion) upon which even the devout scholars are in disagreement, he opens himself up to legitimate accusations that he is either insufficiently versed in Christian theology or intentionally cherry-picking his facts to support his interpretation. Instead, if he merely stood back and pointed out that the entire Christian belief system is based upon not one single shred of demonstrable, testable evidence that would stand up to even the slightest critical scrutiny he’d find himself on much firmer ground.
Of course, Dawkins has a very personal axe to grind with fundamentalist Christians, and specifically an ex-wife who has schooled their child in beliefs abhorrent to him, and so attacks on this issue with a passion that overrides good scientific judgment; to wit, that wrestling with a pig only gets you dirty and makes the pig happy.
Well let’s say it this way then. It’s unlikely that Dawkins was lying. He wasn’t telling falsehoods. He made a mistake. He probably googled up the name of all the various things with “gospel” in the title and noted them down randomly since it was rather irrelevant to his point.
His point was that there were any number of other sources that were of just as plausible authorship at the time, which could have been chosen, but weren’t for reasons that likely had little to do with the plausibility of the authorship. That is true.
That you’re ignoring the overall truth in favor of nitpicking his list of example titles is silly.
In that case there must be hundreds of Christian authors that you don’t respect. I’ve been sent lots of books by my traditional Christian family members and friends as well as reading some I’ve heard about. I’ve been consistently astonished and disappointed by the lack of clear reasoning, logic, and accurate facts in most of them.
Let’s take an example;
Know the Truth by Bruce Milne who has written several Christian books.
Aside from the audacity of the title Milne does identify some interesting questions
In part 1 titled Authority, he asks “how do we encounter God and discover his mind and will?” and “has God provided a source from which we may arrive at his truth and thus bring ourselves under his authority?”
His conclusion is that revelation from the Holy Spirit works essentially in and through the Scriptures.
Milne says “The ultimate source of authority is the triune God himself as he is made known to us through the words of the Bible. Our knowledge of God comes through the Bible. He has caused it to be written and through it speaks to us today as he spoke to his people when those words were first given. The Bible is to be received as God’s words to us and revered and obeyed as such”
Powerful words. How are they accepted? Well by some. from the reviews on Amazon.
“Milne says that there are two sources of special revelation: The Incarnate Word (i.e. Jesus Christ Himself) and the Word (which is the Bible). Milne then examines what Jesus said about the Bible, what the Apostles said about it, inspiration, and the ideas of infallible vs. inerrant and so on.”
and another
“A lack of solid biblical understanding of essential Christian doctrine. As a minister of God’s word for almost twenty years, I can tell you that the root of all heresy, cults, occults and just down right silly thinking is the result of not knowing the truths of God’s word.”
It seems to me if Christians are going to stress the Bible as being this crucial then a very real practical knowledge of it’s history is clearly called for which would include the influence of man, changes intentional and accidental etc.
This would assume that man has the authority to actually change the Word of God by some sort of manipulation of the scriptures. While different words can be used in translations, the ‘meaning’ behind the scriptures are consistent and not changeable by man.
God shows us this in the 10 commandants, which Moses takes down 3 times, each time different words are used, the meaning, how God uses the Word to speak to your heart is consistent however.
The only reason to study the history of the Bible, would to see the glory of God that all throughout attempts of man to change His Word (both intentional and accidental) it still stands unchanged.