The Bible is inerrant - Part 2 (Talk.Origins)
Go to Part 1: CH101
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5. Ultimately, there is no authority for inerrancy except oneself.
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This all boils down to one question. Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? If you answer yes, then it is logical to conclude that the Bible is inerrant. This is a case where faith comes into play. You can present evidence for the inerrancy of the Bible, but ultimately it comes down to believing that the Bible is the Word of God. If the Bible is the Word of God, that is the authority for its inerrancy. If you do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God then no authority or evidence for its inerrancy will be acceptable.
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6. Claiming inerrancy in the Bible is pointless unless one also claims inerrancy in one's interpretation of it. Some people believe that the earth is flat and is covered by a solid dome, because the Bible says so and the Bible is inerrant. Most people, including most Biblical inerrantists, would say they are wrong. Claiming inerrancy for a particular view of creation or the flood is no different in principle. Claiming that the Flood account is a true literal account is an error if it was written as an allegory; claiming that it is a true allegory is an error if it was a literal account. To claim that a particular interpretation of any part of the Bible is inerrant is to claim that you yourself are inerrant. |
WRONG. As flawed fallen human beings we can easily err in interpreting the Bible, but this does not change the fact that the Bible is inerrant. The inerrancy of the Bible stands irrespective of one's ability to interpret it correctly.
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7. There are several aspects of the Bible that show it is not inerrant. These include factual errors, for example: |
The actual errors are on the part of those making the claim. Most often they result from taking only a superficial look at passages.
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Talk.Origins is giving the wrong reference. The correct verse is Lev. 11:6. And in fact rabbits do have a reingestion process that is essentially the same as chewing the cud. The main difference is that the cud is passed in their feces, and these soft pellets are subsequently reingested. So it is accurate to say that rabbits do indeed chew the cud. It is a slightly different process to that used by a cow, but it is basically the same thing.
Before Talk.Origins accuse the Bible of a factual error, they really should check their facts.
Reference: Do Rabbits Chew the Cud?
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Actually the author is differentiating between the four front limbs that are used for crawling and the two hind limbs which are used for hopping. This is demonstrated by verse 21. Its amazing how quickly some of these "errors" go away when you actually read the passage.
This is an example of irrational sceptical objection to anything that can possibly be used to try and undermine the Bible. Do critics not realise that the people of Biblical times were able to count? Do they not realise that they were familiar with grasshoppers? Such criticisms are not an attempt to demonstrate that the Biblical authors could not have known of things that we only know via modern scientific tequniques; rather they are effectively claiming that the Biblical authors and their readers were stupid, blind, or could not even count to six.
These types of "errors" have been answered time and time again, yet sceptics such as those at Talk.Origins keep recycling this same nonsense as though it deals body blows to Biblical inerrancy; or perhaps it says something about the expected level of intelligence of their readers?
Reference: Is the Bible wrong about insects having "four feet"?
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Neither of the verses are speaking about the planet Earth. The English word is world, not Earth, and even the Hebrew word is different. The Hebrew word "tebel" is also translated "habitable part", which suggests that this is a reference to man's habitation of the Earth and all that is related to it. Furthermore, in both passages the verb "moved" is passive, and can be translated removed.
So these verses are not saying that the planet Earth does not move, but that God established man's habitation that it should not be removed. Furthermore, the English word "world" does not always refer to the Earth. The Americas have been refered to as the New World. There are many uses of the word "world" that do not mean the physical planet call Earth.
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and contradictions |
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Talk.Origins errs in separating the two accounts. This a direct result of the documentary hypothesis which claims that these are two separate creation stories, and it is this which results in an apparent disagreement. However, when one looks at the two chapters as a signal account, the answer is clear. Genesis 1 gives a general overview of creation, while Genesis 2 is concentrating on the creation of man and the subsequent creation of the Garden of Eden. God created the rest of Earth, and the plants and animals before man. After creating Adam, God then created the Garden of Eden. It is clear from the text as long as one keeps the two chapters as a single account.
Talk.Origins is also relying on particular translations to make this claim. The NIV, however, translates Genesis 2:19a as "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air." (emphasis added).
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There is no disagreement because they are different genealogies.
Matthew is presenting Jesus as King, and as such his genealogy reflects the royal line of the throne of Israel. Physically it is Joseph's genealogy. It is through his stepfather, Joseph, that Jesus inherited the right to David's throne.
Luke is showing Jesus' humanity and as such he presents Jesus' physical genealogy through his mother Mary. Luke's genealogy is actually that of Mary. Joseph's name is used because in the 1st century a woman's husband would be listed in her place in a genealogy.
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First of all, Talk.Origins is comparing Mark's record of Christ's' actual prophecy with the accounts of its fulfillment in the other three gospels. Mark also records the fulfillment but simply gives more detail than the other three gospel writers. It turns out that there was a gap between the two times that the cock crowed, and Matthew, Luke, and John only recorded the last one, because it was the important one.
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This is simply a difference in perspective. Satan provoked David but God allowed him to do it. One of the reasons the Bible records some events more than once is to provide a different perspective on that event.
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Actually there is no conflict since 2 Sam. 21:19 says that Elhanan killed the son of Goliath, not Goliath himself. This is supported by 1 Chronicles 20:5.
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This only serves to show that Talk.Origins does not understand Biblical inerrancy. In recording historical events, the Bible often records cases of a person lying through their teeth. That is, it inerrantly records the lie. This is the case in 2 Sam. 1:5-10, where the young man who gave David an account of Saul's death was an Amalekite, who probably thought he could gain favour with David by telling him that he had killed Saul. In saying this, he lied to David. The Amalekite's trick backfired, however, since David had him executed for killing Saul. In this case the Bible inerrantly records what the Amalekite said, even though he was lying.
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| Gospel | Inscription |
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| Matt. 27:37 | THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. |
| Mark 15:26 | THE KING OF THE JEWS |
| Luke 23:38 | THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. |
| John 19:19 | JESUS OF NAZARETH THE KING OF THE JEWS. |
This is a prime example of just how picky these scoffers are. It is likely that if the wording were identical the accusation would be that three of them copied from the fourth. The differences can easily be accounted for by differences in emphasis. All these differences show is that the writers did not quote the entire inscription. Furthermore Luke 23:38 indicates that the inscription was in three different languages Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. If different ones were being quoted that would account for some of the differences as well.
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First of all Acts 1:18-19 is quoting Peter. When the Bible quotes someone, it does so inerrantly, even if what they say is untrue. This does not reflect on the [[inerrancy of the Bible since in quoting it is not responsible for the accuracy of what the person quoted said.
That said there is no reason why both can not be correct. Matt. 27:5-8 says that Judas hanged himself. Matthew simply may not have been inclined to give all the gory details, since they are irrelevant to the fact that Judas killed himself. Matthew was making the point that Judas committed suicide, but he was simply leaving out the gory details. In Acts 1:18-19 Peter is simply giving the gory details. What seems to have happened is that Judas hanged himself but did a sloppy job of it resulting in the gory death that Peter describes.
The key here is the context. Gen. 9:3 is a general statement giving mankind permission to eat meat, while Lev. 11:4 is part of Jewish dietary laws, which are intended as both a sign of separation and associated with their worship. This not a contradiction, but simply a case of general and specific.
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Again, the key is the context. In James 2:12 James is talking about works of obedience to the gospel, the law of liberty. James is saying that true saving faith that justifies us before God will be inseperable from works of obedience to the law of liberty. That James is talking about salvation before God is evident in James 2:14.
On the other hand, in Rom. 3:20-28, Paul is teaching that no man can be justified by works of the Old Law. A careful study of Paul's letter to the Romans, and even several of his other writings clearly indicates that Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, was concerned that Christians who had once been Jews were requiring Gentiles to observe parts of the Law of Moses (e.g. they must be circumcised) first before they could become Christians. These false teachers were called Judiazers. Paul's letters write of the superiority of the New Law over the Old Law and how that no man could be saved by works of that old, law. His fight was against Judiazers.
As James is writing that a person is justified by works of the New Law and Paul is writing against justification by works of the Old Law, there is no contradiction.
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In John 9:3 Jesus is simply stating that in that particular case, the man's blindness was not the result of sin, neither his nor his parents'.
Ezekiel 18:4 is not saying that a father's sin will not affect the son, but it is simply saying that the souls of both belong to God, and sin results in death.
The real question comes from 19-20. To understand how this is not a real conflict it is necessary to look at what Exodus 20:5, Num. 14:18, and Deut. 5:9 actually say.
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3. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness [of any thing] that [is] in heaven above, or that [is] in the earth beneath, or that [is] in the water under the earth: 5. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God [am] a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth [generation] of them that hate me;
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Note that the connection here is idolatry, not the qualifying statement "'of them that hate me." The same pattern can be found in Deut. 5:7-9. While this pattern does not appear in Num. 14:13-20, in this case Moses is praying and he did not include the entire statement. While the Bible does inerrantly quote Moses, it is Exodus 20:3-5, and Deut. 5:7-9 that provide the full meaning.
Exodus 20:5 and Deut. 5:9 are referring to the sin of those who hate God, not to sin in general, whereas 19-22 is dealing with repentance of sin. Further, Exodus 20:5 and Deut. 5:9 are also referring to the fact that ungodly parents will most likely raise ungodly children, which is the way the iniquity of the father is visited on the children.
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Inerrantists are familiar with these and find rationalizations for these and other errors and contradictions, |
Talk.Origins is dismissing out of hand all answers to their alleged errors and contradictions as rationalizations, when the answers are based on what the Bible actually says, and, in the case of some of the alleged errors, on the actual facts. They are dismissive of all answers without addressing a single one. There is no effort to show why they think the answers are rationalizations, they simply declare it to be so. They are acting as though their declarations about these passages are inerrant.
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but they are unconvincing. |
The answers to these so called errors and contradictions are only unconvincing to scoffers like those at Talk.Origins who are so closed-minded that no answer would be convincing.
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The rationalizations merely make the point that what the Bible seems to say isn't what it means, which defeats the whole concept of scriptural inerrancy. |
Not one of the above answers in any way imply that the Bible does not say what it means. In most cases the alleged problem is a result of taking verses out context.
Go to Part 1: CH101
See Also:
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