Errors in the Torah and Septuagint - Fact or Fiction?

[I_Tichy]

@badchad

I’ll buy that to a point. If you want to define the bible as fiction rather than fact, then regardless of what’s in there, you can say it was meant that way.

Of course it also does not follow that someone should use a work of fiction go guide how they live their real lives. Nor should a fictional book, be considered evidence to the divinity of its author.

Now you’re putting the cart way before the horse. There is no reason to think the bible is “divinely-wrought” other than its own say so, which you have admitted is likely fictional. Second as far as works of fiction go, the bible kind of sucks. It’s long, it’s repetitive, it’s boring, the authors can’t keep their facts straight from one chapter to another and often from one verse to another. In contrast Candide, now that’s a great work of fiction.

You neglect to notice that I am offering an argument that assumes – for the sake of the argument – that the Bible (Koran, Torah…) is ‘divinely-wrought’. My intention is to explore the consequences of holding the assumption, without considering whether or not the assumption is true.

So I ask something like “what would the assumption that the Bible is divinely inspired constrain one to conclude?” And then I answer that it would not constrain one to conclude that the bible must be factually true in every instance where it appears to make factual or historical claims.

It would constrain you to conclude that the work is perfect in the ‘ought fraught’ sense that I try to explain in my post. (I.e. that it perfectly serves the purpose for which it was written)

if we assume that there is a God and that the author of the Bible is God, then we are in no position to assume that we know why it was written or how it ought to have been written. The initial assumption – that the book is by God – disallows the other assumption – that we know how it ought to have been written, for example that it ought to all be factually or historically true. This is relevant because many people who make the first assumption ALSO make the second one.

(If you don’t make the first assumption then it doesn’t matter, and you can go on happily interpreting scriptural texts as cultural documents, lies and fabrications, good literature, bad literature, better or worse than Voltaire, or whatever.)

I’m not going to go into the rather silly claims about it as a ‘work of fiction’. Is Thucydides History a work of fact or of fiction? How about Plato’s dialogues? Descartes Meditations? If the stultifying distinction ‘fact/fiction’ is all we have to work with, we’re not going to get very far in trying to grasp what a book is about, what it is for, or why it may have been written. (Let alone by whom.)

[I_Tichy]

Oops.

I write:

“It would constrain you to conclude that the work is perfect in the ‘ought fraught’ sense that I try to explain in my post. (I.e. that it perfectly serves the purpose for which it was written)”

Of course it would also constrain you to conclude that the purpose for which it was written was a good one. (Assumption: all-perfect, all-benevolent being wrote it. From this is follows that it was written perfectly, and for the best possible reason.)

[badchad]

@I Tichy

You neglect to notice that I am offering an argument that assumes – for the sake of the argument – that the Bible (Koran, Torah…) is ‘divinely-wrought’.

Ok, but one would have to be dumber than a sack of hammers to just make that assumption. Assumption made, god then authors a book that says among other things, thou shalt not kill. He also writes thou shalt kill infidels. He writes that he is loving and forgiving but also that he’ll kill and torture you if you don’t love him back. So now what?

@I Tichy

My intention is to explore the consequences of holding the assumption, without considering whether or not the assumption is true.

My intention is to point out the assumption is ridiculous from the get go, and even if made, gets you nowhere at best.

@I Tichy

(If you don’t make the first assumption then it doesn’t matter…

Do you I Tichy make the first assumption?

[I_Tichy]

@badchad

Ok, but one would have to be dumber than a sack of hammers to just make that assumption. Assumption made, god then authors a book that says among other things, thou shalt not kill. He also writes thou shalt kill infidels. He writes that he is loving and forgiving but also that he’ll kill and torture you if you don’t love him back. So now what?

You’re not responding at all to the argument I’m making.

@badchad

My intention is to point out the assumption is ridiculous from the get go.

That may be true. But it’s irrelevant.

@badchad

Do you I Tichy make the first assumption?

Irrelevant. My beliefs (or lack thereof) are not at issue. I get the sense that you’re in this to browbeat believers. Which is about as intellectually stimulating as being browbeaten by them.

[I_Tichy]

My intention is to point out the assumption is ridiculous from the get go, and even if made, gets you nowhere at best.

Let me clarify my claim that this is irrelevant. It is irrelevant to the question I am asking.

We’re I an atheist I could ask it like this: “Suppose someone makes the (erroneous) assumption that there is a God and that God is all good and all perfect and that God wrote a book. Is this person constrained to believe – on the basis of that assumption – that every passage in that book that appears to make a factual or historical claim is actually factually or historically true?”

My argument concludes that NO, that person is not constrained to believe that.

I hope this clarifies why claims about the truth, falsity, or “ridiculousness” of the assumption is utterly irrelevant to the argument.

Does anyone else have an opinion about the [I/]argument*? Thanks.

[I_Tichy]

Oops. Sorry for mucking up the tags. Thought I could do 'em manually.

Oh, and the original argument I’m interested to hear opinions about is post #176.

Best, I Tichy

[Contrapuntal]

@I Tichy

We’re I an atheist I could ask it like this: “Suppose someone makes the (erroneous) assumption that there is a God and that God is all good and all perfect and that God wrote a book. Is this person constrained to believe – on the basis of that assumption – that every passage in that book that appears to make a factual or historical claim is actually factually or historically true?”

No, that person is not constrained to believe such an assertion. However, if one asserts that God has written a book that is not ‘actually factualy or historically true,’ one is constrained to believe that God is a liar, inasmuch as he claims it to be true.

Or are you conjuring the trickster God, who tells us stuff he knows is wrong just to test our faith? A bit hard to reconcile that with ‘all good and all perfect,’ yes?

[Polycarp]

@I Tichy

Oops. Sorry for mucking up the tags. Thought I could do 'em manually.

You can; I often do. But the punctuation in an attributed quote tag is an equals sign: {OpBrkt}QUOTE=badchad{ClBrkt}Insert quote here{OpBrkt}/QUOTE{ClBrkt} with the obvious keystrokes for the brace equivalents. Lowercase works just fine for the code “quote” too, even though the automatic version uses solid caps.

[I_Tichy]

@Contrapuntal

No, that person is not constrained to believe such an assertion. However, if one asserts that God has written a book that is not ‘actually factualy or historically true,’ one is constrained to believe that God is a liar, inasmuch as he claims it to be true.

Or are you conjuring the trickster God, who tells us stuff he knows is wrong just to test our faith? A bit hard to reconcile that with ‘all good and all perfect,’ yes?

I’m not sure what I’m conjuring. I was actually set on this question when I came across the Averroes passage I cite in my original post.

I don’t that we’d be constrained to believe that such a God is a liar, because not all of a scriptural text should be considered to be made up of claims and assertions. A believer must contend that the same God that inspired the document gave humanity the ability to read and think about it. (And to, presumably, develop the science of archaeology and become able to determine which supposedly historical passages in scripture accord with the archaeological record and which don’t.)

One could also interpret the presence of obvious contradictions in scripture as a ‘red flag’ that is, as Averroes puts it, “intended to spur the learned to deeper study.” Liars try to conceal the fact that there’s untruth afoot. The Bible is a text that practically announces that something other than a bevy of scientific/historical truths is being put forth.

[Contrapuntal]

@I Tichy

I don’t that we’d be constrained to believe that such a God is a liar, because not all of a scriptural text should be considered to be made up of claims and assertions. A believer must contend that the same God that inspired the document gave humanity the ability to read and think about it. (And to, presumably, develop the science of archaeology and become able to determine which supposedly historical passages in scripture accord with the archaeological record and which don’t.)

It does not matter if all of scriptural text is made up of claims and assertions, it really only matters if once God made a false assertion. This seems to me to be a bit of a strawman argument.

One could also interpret the presence of obvious contradictions in scripture as a ‘red flag’ that is, as Averroes puts it, “intended to spur the learned to deeper study.” Liars try to conceal the fact that there’s untruth afoot. The Bible is a text that practically announces that something other than a bevy of scientific/historical truths is being put forth.

This seems like special pleading to me. Wht not just directly spur the learned to deeper study? Why rely on subterfuge? One could also argue that the contradictions are evidence that the bible is not divinely inspired.

What about the unlearned? What is there to spur them on? Why inspire a work that is crucial to salvation but only accessible to those who can read? Why would he not make it equally available to everyone? Why would we need an intermediary (Averroes) to explicate the word of God? Do you really believe that saying that humanity has the ability to read and understand is the same thing as saying each human has the ability to read and understand? If we all have the ability to read and understand, why are there so many different interpretations of scripture?

[badchad]

@I Tichy

You’re not responding at all to the argument I’m making.

I did respond to it. I said that then your god’s fictional work contained conflicting information. I asked you now what? How is conflicting info supposed to guide us, help us or further his will?

@I Tichy

Irrelevant. My beliefs (or lack thereof) are not at issue. I get the sense that you’re in this to browbeat believers. Which is about as intellectually stimulating as being browbeaten by them.

I get a sense that you are a liberal Christian, who wants to have his cake and eat it too, one step further than the typical liberal Christian does. You want to admit that the bible is incorrect in some places, so you don’t have to believe it, and don’t have to follow it, but you still want to maintain that it’s completely inerrant, by calling it a work of fiction. Feel free to clarify your beliefs if I have it wrong, but until doing so this is the assumption I’m going off of.

Your beliefs aside, you still have the same problem all liberal Christians do, except rather than deciding what is error and fact, you just rephrase it so you can ask a more pleasing question of, what is fictional and what is fact. This is no different than just calling everything you don’t like in the bible an allegory, to which my immediate reply is, what makes you think the parts you like aren’t allegory.

@I Tichy

We’re I an atheist I could ask it like this: “Suppose someone makes the (erroneous) assumption that there is a God and that God is all good and all perfect and that God wrote a book. Is this person constrained to believe – on the basis of that assumption – that every passage in that book that appears to make a factual or historical claim is actually factually or historically true?”

My argument concludes that NO, that person is not constrained to believe that.

As I said above, I like that. If you want to claim the bible is mere fiction, then say so. You won’t run into problems until you try to claim that a given passage is fact, while another is fiction, because someone at that point (I at least) will ask you how you can tell. I would also ask why you, or someone, would think that god wrote a book, when it has been directly attributed to real human authors, some of whom have been identified as real human people (Paul for example).

@I Tichy

I don’t that we’d be constrained to believe that such a God is a liar, because not all of a scriptural text should be considered to be made up of claims and assertions.

I think we’d be constrained to believe that said god was neither all good, nor all knowing, for he either did not care or did not perceive that by giving people conflicting texts (you claim the Koran inerrant too), said people would kill and torture each other over the differences contained therein.

@I Tichy

A believer must contend that the same God that inspired the document gave humanity the ability to read and think about it.

Except it does encourage us in the bible to take given facts on faith, and it does say that man’s wisdom is foolishness. I imagine you wish us to take those parts as fictional, and they thereby don’t count.

@I Tichy

One could also interpret the presence of obvious contradictions in scripture as a ‘red flag’…

One could far more reasonably conclude that obvious contradictions are just that, contradictions. Contradictions do imply an error is afoot. Even when a fictional work is full of contradictions, while we may admit they were intended, we can still perceive that there is an error in reasoning present. I notice these things when I watch a movie all the time.

@I Tichy

as Averroes puts it, “intended to spur the learned to deeper study.” Liars try to conceal the fact that there’s untruth afoot. The Bible is a text that practically announces that something other than a bevy of scientific/historical truths is being put forth.

James Randi pointed out in his book Flim Flam that hucksters and charlatans very frequently point out obvious weaknesses in their claims and highlight them as strengths as a testament to their honesty. I see no difference in what you are doing here.

[Polycarp]

@Contrapuntal

It does not matter if all of scriptural text is made up of claims and assertions, it really only matters if once God made a false assertion. This seems to me to be a bit of a strawman argument.

This seems like special pleading to me. Wht not just directly spur the learned to deeper study? Why rely on subterfuge? One could also argue that the contradictions are evidence that the bible is not divinely inspired.

What about the unlearned? What is there to spur them on? Why inspire a work that is crucial to salvation but only accessible to those who can read? Why would he not make it equally available to everyone? Why would we need an intermediary (Averroes) to explicate the word of God? Do you really believe that saying that humanity has the ability to read and understand is the same thing as saying each human has the ability to read and understand? If we all have the ability to read and understand, why are there so many different interpretations of scripture?

Solidly argued. Of course, context is important, whether or not the Bible has any degree of inspiration. A particular verse lifted out of context may say something entirely anithetical to the actual point being made.

But the idea of “inspiration” is a question that has exercised a lot of people. Clearly, Galatians is a letter written by Saul of Tarsus, renamed Paul. Amos is a collection of prophecies written by Amos. And so on. We have the following options (plus no doubt others): 1. God dictated the accounts verbatim. 2. They were written by human beings, but the Holy Spirit guided their writing in every detail. 3. They were written and conceived by human beings, but the Holy Spirit influenced them in the general scope of what they conceived of to write. 4. They were written by human beings whose knowledge and awareness of God shaped what they wrote (“Inspired” in the same sense that the attack on Fort McHenry inspired the Star-Spangled Banner.) 5. If there is a God, he did not influence the writing of the Bible at all.

If I’m catching I Tichy’s argument correctly, he’s doing a variant on reductio ad absurdam. Presume an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God for purposes of argument. Now, further, presume Him to have inspired the Bible under either #1 or #2 in my options above. It follows that the Bible must be error-free (because God is omniscient, hence will know the truth, and omnibenevolent, hence not a trickster). So any demonstrated error in the Bible rules out either one of God’s characteristics or the presumed form of inspiration.

Notice that this does not impact the variant of doctrinal inerrancy I mentioned in post #151. While I do not hold to that, it does allow for factual error that does not impact doctrine. An erroneous ethnological, historical, or natural-history fact is simply an error, with no impact on the sort of inerrancy that variant on fundamentalism claims. It’s only the form that deduces Young Earth Creationism and homosexuality as intentional choice from stray passages of Scripture (by their definition inerrant) that is impacted by the I Tichy disproof.

[badchad]

@Polycarp

The problem with that whole approach is that it’s logically possible to posit: 1. There is a real entity congruous with YHWH, the Trinity, and/or other Judaeo-Christian concepts of “God” AND 2. The Bible is a collection of literary works of various forms, some or none of which were “inspired” in the sense of being dictated by Him or otherwise caused by Him to be written in the precise form they exist.

I grant that to a large proportion of Dopers, there is little or no evidence for the existence of such a God. And to a lot of conservative evangelical Christians, the connection is that He did in fact intentionally and willfully cause the words of the Bible to be written in the form we see them. But I submit that there is a large middle ground there, where “God exists” does not necessarily infer “And He made Ezekiel write the bit about the wheels in the air and the valley of dry bones just as we have it” or “And He demanded the genocide of the Amelekites, because it says so right here!”

Now, considering that the Bible is the one major common-consent source for knowing what this God is supposed to be like, that leaves a lot of wiggle room. And on thinking over the points badchad has made, I see his criticism of my own stance quite clearly.

But I offer that bit of to-me-obvious critique as a means of getting past an impasse. Once there, we can address later why I or someone else might see a plausible mode of sorting accurate-if-slanted information from tribal myth in the Bible.

What?

[badchad]

@Polycarp

But the idea of “inspiration” is a question that has exercised a lot of people. Clearly, Galatians is a letter written by Saul of Tarsus, renamed Paul. Amos is a collection of prophecies written by Amos. And so on. We have the following options (plus no doubt others): 1. God dictated the accounts verbatim. 2. They were written by human beings, but the Holy Spirit guided their writing in every detail. 3. They were written and conceived by human beings, but the Holy Spirit influenced them in the general scope of what they conceived of to write. 4. They were written by human beings whose knowledge and awareness of God shaped what they wrote (“Inspired” in the same sense that the attack on Fort McHenry inspired the Star-Spangled Banner.) 5. If there is a God, he did not influence the writing of the Bible at all.

Considering that man, even fairly ancient man, can all by himself write books with far fewer errors and contradictions than those present in the bible, option 5 is the only option that can be reasonably considered. There is absolutely no reason to assume divine help of any kind.

@Polycarp

If I’m catching I Tichy’s argument correctly, he’s doing a variant on reductio ad absurdam. Presume an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God for purposes of argument.

Those three characteristics are incompatible with a god claiming to create this universe. One may as well be assuming pigs fly. The problem of evil, will always rear its ugly head.

[Contrapuntal]

@Polycarp

Solidly argued. Of course, context is important, whether or not the Bible has any degree of inspiration. A particular verse lifted out of context may say something entirely anithetical to the actual point being made.

True enough. If we leave all examples of such aside, is there not one example of a direct contradiction that exists entirely in context?

But the idea of “inspiration” is a question that has exercised a lot of people. Clearly, Galatians is a letter written by Saul of Tarsus, renamed Paul. Amos is a collection of prophecies written by Amos. And so on. We have the following options (plus no doubt others): 1. God dictated the accounts verbatim. 2. They were written by human beings, but the Holy Spirit guided their writing in every detail. 3. They were written and conceived by human beings, but the Holy Spirit influenced them in the general scope of what they conceived of to write. 4. They were written by human beings whose knowledge and awareness of God shaped what they wrote (“Inspired” in the same sense that the attack on Fort McHenry inspired the Star-Spangled Banner.) 5. If there is a God, he did not influence the writing of the Bible at all.

6. There is a God, and he did influence writing, only it was not the Bible.

If I’m catching I Tichy’s argument correctly, he’s doing a variant on reductio ad absurdam. Presume an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God for purposes of argument. Now, further, presume Him to have inspired the Bible under either #1 or #2 in my options above. It follows that the Bible must be error-free (because God is omniscient, hence will know the truth, and omnibenevolent, hence not a trickster). So any demonstrated error in the Bible rules out either one of God’s characteristics or the presumed form of inspiration.

I cautiously agree with you. Any demonstrated error rules out the above definition of God. I say ‘cautiously’ because you seem to be making my point for me, and I suspect that is not the case. At any rate, I am sure that you will enlighten me.

Notice that this does not impact the variant of doctrinal inerrancy I mentioned in post #151. While I do not hold to that, it does allow for factual error that does not impact doctrine. An erroneous ethnological, historical, or natural-history fact is simply an error, with no impact on the sort of inerrancy that variant on fundamentalism claims. It’s only the form that deduces Young Earth Creationism and homosexuality as intentional choice from stray passages of Scripture (by their definition inerrant) that is impacted by the I Tichy disproof.

I take your point. And I understand the argument that A) God exists and B) the Bible is His Word. I just think it fails as an argument to assert A by way of B.

[I_Tichy]

Wooh! Alright! Some real arguing going on here now!

Badchad: I am still a bit unnerved by your attempts to figure out what I “am”. What I am is interested in a question. What I am aside from that is not relevant. (Ah, heck, that relevant thing he keeps saying I hear ya say.) If you must know, I believe in puppy dogs, Dock Boggs, Stanislaw Lem and the Kingdom of Ends. When I argue with scriptural literalists and other religionists that I take to hold irrational beliefs – and to hold beliefs irrationally – I like to give them as many of their premises as possible before I start. That way there’s much less likelihood of the talking past each other problem. Those who insist on talking past me (as I initially thought you were doing) I stop talking to, because I figure I’m just a second or two away from someone trying to make me accept someone as my personal something.

But I still really wish you’d abandon the stark it’s either fiction or it’s not stance. It’s not helping. Plato’s dialogues are fictional, in the sense that they purport to be actual conversations that never really happened (with the possible exception of the Apology). If we stopped thinking about them because of that…we’ll that’d just suck, now wouldn’t it? Descartes probably never actually sat in front of a stove and tried to doubt his own existence…and etc. (By the way, I prefer Rabelais to Voltaire…because Rabelais is actually funny.)

Polycarp: I am not arguing in such a way to attempt to get a religionist to abandon his or her belief in God (Allah, YHWH etc.) I am arguing against scriptural literalism by trying to show that it’s incompatible with intelligent religious belief. Much of the technique I’m trying to develop here has to do with talking to committed believers, and not with people who doubt the veracity of scriptural texts. Thus my argument hews as close to what a committed religionist would believe as I can muster before having to grant premises that seem bonkers. I don’t think what I’m working on is a reductio: the argument is simple – the existence of untruth in a scriptural text is not the same thing as error. “Error” means that there’s something wrong with the text. Something that’s there that shouldn’t be.

I attempt to start from the PREMISE that the scriptural work is perfect (i.e. error free) and see how far we can get in interpreting it, and dealing with the manifest contradictions, historical anomalies, apparent bad advice, and exhortations to criminal conduct one finds in scriptural texts of all sorts (with the possible exception of the gospels – I’m reminded of Nietzsche attacking St. Paul for screwing up that great thing Jesus had goin’ on) without having to either abandon reading it as a SACRED (and hence perfect) text, or going over to the hyperliteralist side of simply asserting that la la la I can’t hear you JESUS JESUS help me! (For some great thoughts about the power of the idea of a sacred text, look at Jorge Luis Borges’ essay on the Kabbalah in Seven Nights )

Contrapuntal: I agree that my initial response to you was lame, a straw man as you say. However, in keeping with my attempt to push the religionist line as far as possible before having to accept the literalist one, here goes: it’s something like the standard response to the problem of moral evil. Why does an all powerful all good God allow people to do bad things?: because free will is the greatest good and trumps all other goods. Without free will we are not human and our lives are meaningless. For God to prevent moral bads would require God to deny humans free will, which would be the same as denying our humanity. The issue here is similar: scripture isn’t straightforward because there is value in questioning, a faith arrived at by fiat isn’t a faith at all.

If we want to critique the Bible from the standpoint of human reason there are infinitely many ways to do so. But none of those is going to convince a literalist, or a committed religionist of any sort. (Of either the American Right stripe, or of the Kierkegaardian.) The thing that will turn any religionist off but quick is the whiff of you dictating to their God.

(Historical note: to your question about Averroes and the unlearned. His answer is (unsurprisingly) that the learneds’ job is to tell the unlearned what to believe. This also accords with Christian doctrine of that era. The clergy knew Latin, the people didn’t; they were the privileged interpreters of the biblical text. Remember that Luther’s greatest revolution isn’t the 95 theses, but the translation of the bible into the vernacular.)

Whew. I did lots of writing, but I think I didn’t touch half of what y’all said.

Best, I Tichy.

PS: Where oh where is sfworker?

[badchad]

@I Tichy

Badchad: I am still a bit unnerved by your attempts to figure out what I “am”. What I am is interested in a question.

It’s ok, I’m pretty sure I know what you are. I can smell a liberal Christian.

@I Tichy

When I argue with scriptural literalists and other religionists that I take to hold irrational beliefs – and to hold beliefs irrationally – I like to give them as many of their premises as possible before I start.

You hold your beliefs irrationally though, don’t you? It is hypocritical to criticize scriptural literalists while at the same time holding equally irrational beliefs? Perhaps you are aware of this and this is why you are trying to conceal your beliefs.

@I Tichy

That way there’s much less likelihood of the talking past each other problem. Those who insist on talking past me (as I initially thought you were doing) I stop talking to, because I figure I’m just a second or two away from someone trying to make me accept someone as my personal something.

Speaking of talking past, I entertained your assumption, commented on, questioned you, and you have ignored it.

@I Tichy

But I still really wish you’d abandon the stark it’s either fiction or it’s not stance. It’s not helping.

I’ll bet you do. Not because my calling biblical errors fiction isn’t helping, but because it isn’t flattering. And while were at it, if untruths in the bible are neither errantly placed, nor fictional accounts, what should we call them? Outright lies?

@I Tichy

Plato’s dialogues are fictional, in the sense that they purport to be actual conversations that never really happened (with the possible exception of the Apology).

Not sure how you know Plato’s conversations never happened, but that’s beside the point. I didn’t ever claim that there are not items of value, sometimes much value, to be found in fictional works. But we should be clear about what is fiction/error/untrue/lie from what isn’t. Else we might end up in a world where people kill each other because they think it will help them obtain heaven.

@I Tichy

Polycarp: I am not arguing in such a way to attempt to get a religionist to abandon his or her belief in God (Allah, YHWH etc.) I am arguing against scriptural literalism by trying to show that it’s incompatible with intelligent religious belief.

That is identical with what Polycarp does. It sounds like you are two peas in a pod. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I must give Polycarp credit for being able to admit and error is an error, at least part of the time, and not appealing to some special form of inerrancy which claims that all mistakes are on purpose but still not fiction.

@I Tichy

I don’t think what I’m working on is a reductio: the argument is simple – the existence of untruth in a scriptural text is not the same thing as error. “Error” means that there’s something wrong with the text. Something that’s there that shouldn’t be.

You’re just claiming that, you aren’t demonstrating such. Even if you do demonstrate it adequately, that the biblical authors meant their mistakes, then you still only make their accounts fictional. A bigger leap is to claim these accounts, errant or not, of divine origin. Allowing your grandiloquent assumptions, as I asked before, then what?

@I Tichy

I attempt to start from the PREMISE that the scriptural work is perfect (i.e. error free)…

Why start from this premise?

@I Tichy

Why does an all powerful all good God allow people to do bad things?: because free will is the greatest good and trumps all other goods. Without free will we are not human and our lives are meaningless. For God to prevent moral bads would require God to deny humans free will, which would be the same as denying our humanity.

1. The bible (that you claim inerrant but don’t have to believe) says god does deny us free will.

2. Free will is incompatible with an all knowing, all powerful, all sovereign god.

3. Free will is incompatible with physics and chemistry as well, and yet we see humanity existing.

4. For you to say free will is the greater good, yet evil results from it, then either heaven must have evil, or we will be lacking free will. Either way, by your reasoning, heaven sucks.

5. If by miracle free will were present, how much is it worth, how many children must starve, be raped, be drowned in bathtubs so that you can choose vanilla over chocolate or hell over heaven.

6. Your asserting free will is the greatest good, again without evidence.

What you’re doing here is no more than standard Christian apology

@I Tichy

The issue here is similar: scripture isn’t straightforward because there is value in questioning, a faith arrived at by fiat isn’t a faith at all.

People can value and question just fine, and would probably do so better without “inerrant” texts leading them astray.

@I Tichy

If we want to critique the Bible from the standpoint of human reason there are infinitely many ways to do so. But none of those is going to convince a literalist, or a committed religionist of any sort.

It sounds to me like you just want to replace one version of make believe with another.

@I Tichy

Whew. I did lots of writing, but I think I didn’t touch half of what y’all said.

Yeah, no shit.

[I_Tichy]

Sorry Badchad. I’m no longer going to respond to your posts as long as you refuse to have this not be a referendum on whether I’m a ‘liberal christian’ or not. (I’m not, I’m a transcendental idealist with a side order of virtue ethics.)

I’ve tried three times and you still insist on talking past the argument. And now you’ve descended into the depths of ad hominem and ridicule. Which are not flattering.

How do you know whether or not I hold beliefs irrationally if I haven’t told you what they are or why I believe them? Oh, that’s right, you can smell them. But yet you appear completely unable to grasp the possibility of someone entertaining a premise without believing it him or herself and experimenting with it. I do not claim that the bible is inerrant…I ask whether or not the premise of inerrancy constrains one to believe that the bible is true in all its particulars. They’re very different things. As a matter of fact I have great trouble with the idea of biblical inerrancy. That’s why I’m interested in the question.

I am not attempting to conceal my beliefs. They are simply not relevant to the discussion. (As I —please— hope the above paragraph explains. Again.) The argument stands or falls on its own.

You ask: “Why start from this premise?”

Because it’s interesting! (If you don’t think it’s interesting, then don’t worry about it, just stop posting about it.)

You said: “Speaking of talking past, I entertained your assumption, commented on, questioned you, and you have ignored it.”

I counter: No, you didn’t. You denied the assumption that I asked, for the sake of the argument, to be allowed. And I cried foul. And then you did it again, adding words like “ridiculous”. And I cried foul. And then you did it again. So here we are.

It’s like I say ‘hey guys let’s play this fun game, it’s got a few rules’, and then you say ‘rule 1 is dumb but I wanna play anyway.’ At that point the game becomes about whether or not rule 1 is dumb, and ceases to be a fun game…it becomes a shouting match, or a game where one player insists on playing left field for the whole hockey match. If you don’t like the game, don’t play it. Don’t just stand on the sideline and keep going on about how it’s a dumb game.

[I_Tichy]

After I posted that I realized I’d forgotten to respond to the stuff about the problem of evil:

“1) The bible (that you claim inerrant but don’t have to believe) says god does deny us free will.”

No I don’t, and no it doesn’t. The gods of the book demand things of humanity, of course. But the people they demand them of sometimes choose to do what’s demanded of them and sometimes dont, they sometimes succeed and sometimes fail. I don’t think the question of free will (i.e. the question of whether or not we are the cause of, or in control of, our actions) is raised as a question. It seems the governing assumption in scriptural texts is that people are the cause of, and hence responsible for, their actions.

"2) Free will is incompatible with an all knowing, all powerful, all sovereign god. "

No it’s not. Free will is the ability to make decisions for oneself and to act on them. No religion believes that God moves people around like puppets. In fact debates usually revovle around whether or not God ever intervenes in human affairs.

They do however believe that God knows what will happen. The standard theistic free will problem is this: “if god knows what decision I’ll make before I make it, how is it free?” The standard answer is that foreknowledge is not the same as coercion. Knowing something isn’t the cause of its being true.

“3) Free will is incompatible with physics and chemistry as well, and yet we see humanity existing.”

I agree that modern science – in the guise of hard causal determinism – raises troubling questions for belief in free will. But since we’re arguing from the standpoint of, as you put it, standard christian apologetics, it’s not at issue. (My preferred answer to this question is the transcendental idealist one…)

“4) For you to say free will is the greater good, yet evil results from it, then either heaven must have evil, or we will be lacking free will. Either way, by your reasoning, heaven sucks.”
5) If by miracle free will were present, how much is it worth, how many children must starve, be raped, be drowned in bathtubs so that you can choose vanilla over chocolate or hell over heaven.
6) Your asserting free will is the greatest good, again without evidence."

#4’s actually an interesting point. I guess the idea is that the good people go to heaven. (Lame answer, yes.) But the real problem for apologetics seems to me to not be moral evil, but natural evil. We can argue all day about whether or not free will is a good. But at least there’s an explanation for the existence of the evil that can lean on a possible good. Earthquakes and tsunamis, however? That just seems like bad planning. The answers to that one that I’ve seen are singularly lame, either ‘the universe is so big and complicated’ or ‘god works in mysterious ways.’

To #6: You may think my evidence is crappy, but it’s there: “without free will we are not human and our lives are meaningless.” The idea is that ‘meaning’ in life is a good, and that a life in which we see ourselves as determined by forces outside of our control in all our thoughts and actions would be one without meaning. (Because we would have no hand in its shaping.) Thus we recoil at the thought of not having free will. (Or, alternatively, we assert that we don’t have free will but refuse to think that premise down to its disquieting consequences. The only exceptions to this I can think of are Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s stuff about the eternal return.)

To #5: Without a concept of free will we cannot hold baby rapers and other bad doers responsible for their actions in any more than a ‘proximal cause’ sense. Without a concept of free will we are constrained to see all human action as either determined by nature or by God. That, to me, would make the atrocities you mention even worse.

So two arguments for ‘free will is a good’: one based on meaning in life as a good, the other on the good of being able to assert moral responsibility for actions.

“What you’re doing here is no more than standard Christian apology.”

It certainly is. But to be fair I marked it as such – an attempt to push the religionist line as far as I can. But “standard Christian apologetics” refers to a centuries-long era of philosophical thinking. I don’t think it can be dismissed out of hand.

And I’m not sure claiming that ‘meaning’ in life is tied to free will is standard apologetics. It’s a bit too existentialist for the Angelic Doctor.

[badchad]

@I Tichy

Sorry Badchad. I’m no longer going to respond to your posts as long as you refuse to have this not be a referendum on whether I’m a ‘liberal christian’ or not.

I’ve asked you several questions that are not contingent on this. You could answer those but it seems you don’t want to. Could it be doing so won’t bode well for either your assumption or the good nature of god?

@I Tichy

(I’m not, I’m a transcendental idealist with a side order of virtue ethics.)

Does that mean you believe in a god/gods or don’t? Does that mean you believe the bible and/or Koran is the word of god or not? What do you think of the divinity of Jesus?

@I Tichy

I’ve tried three times and you still insist on talking past the argument.

Three times, or so, I have granted your assumption and asked follow up questions. Each time you ignore those questions.

@I Tichy

How do you know whether or not I hold beliefs irrationally if I haven’t told you what they are or why I believe them? Oh, that’s right, you can smell them.

Am I smelling wrong? I assume you hold certain beliefs because without them you would have no motivation to argue as you do. I have asked you to clarify and you don’t. As long as you’re hiding it under a bushel, I’ll continue to make speculate.

@I Tichy

But yet you appear completely unable to grasp the possibility of someone entertaining a premise without believing it him or herself and experimenting with it.

I completely grasp that concept and again I have responded to your assumption.

@I Tichy

I do not claim that the bible is inerrant…

So do think it’s errant, or are you afraid to claim that too.

@I Tichy

I ask whether or not the premise of inerrancy constrains one to believe that the bible is true in all its particulars. They’re very different things. As a matter of fact I have great trouble with the idea of biblical inerrancy. That’s why I’m interested in the question.

Why do you have trouble? Don’t you think it, a lot simpler to just admit errors, which are pretty obvious, than come up with some sort of fictional account that is conveniently unfalsifiable?

@I Tichy

You ask: “Why start from this premise?”

Because it’s interesting! (If you don’t think it’s interesting, then don’t worry about it, just stop posting about it.)

I think the premise (which holds up logically until we get to the point of it being put forth by a loving god) only helps to promote superstition and ignorance.

@I Tichy

You said: “Speaking of talking past, I entertained your assumption, commented on, questioned you, and you have ignored it.”

I counter: No, you didn’t. You denied the assumption that I asked, for the sake of the argument, to be allowed. And I cried foul. And then you did it again, adding words like “ridiculous”. And I cried foul. And then you did it again. So here we are.

I quote myself:

“Assumption made, god then authors a book that says among other things, thou shalt not kill. He also writes thou shalt kill infidels. He writes that he is loving and forgiving but also that he’ll kill and torture you if you don’t love him back. So now what?”

“I did respond to it. I said that then your god’s fictional work contained conflicting information. I asked you now what? How is conflicting info supposed to guide us, help us or further his will?”

“Your beliefs aside, you still have the same problem all liberal Christians do, except rather than deciding what is error and fact, you just rephrase it so you can ask a more pleasing question of, what is fictional and what is fact. This is no different than just calling everything you don’t like in the bible an allegory, to which my immediate reply is, what makes you think the parts you like aren’t allegory.”

“And while were at it, if untruths in the bible are neither errantly placed, nor fictional accounts, what should we call them? Outright lies?”

“You’re just claiming that, you aren’t demonstrating such. Even if you do demonstrate it adequately, that the biblical authors meant their mistakes, then you still only make their accounts fictional. A bigger leap is to claim these accounts, errant or not, of divine origin. Allowing your grandiloquent assumptions, as I asked before, then what?”

All this, you have ignored.