Unreasonable Belief

The following is a comment by former Church-of-Christ preacher Farrell Till from his Errancy Discussion list from 1997, about the Bible's claim that Aaron and Moses followed Yahweh's command to inflict incredibly destructive plagues on Egypt in order to get Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go free. And that Pharaoh, unbelievably, had his own magicians attempt the same destructive plagues on his own people to prove that he was as powerful as Aaron and Moses' god (please see my comments in blue at the end):

It is unreasonable to believe that when Aaron and Moses changed all of the water throughout all the land of Egypt into blood, pharaoh's magicians would have done "likewise with their enchantments." Well, as I have already noted in an X but not X posting, it would have been a logical impossibility for the magicians to have done likewise with their enchantments, because there would have been no water left for them to change into blood. But if we assume that such a feat was logically possible, it was certainly a stupid act on pharaoh's part. If, for example, terrorists should contaminate all water east of the Mississippi with a deadly chemical, the president would be an idiot if he ordered his agents to do the same thing to all water west of the Mississippi. How idiotic! The story would have been more reasonable if the magicians had been presented as agents of pharaoh who undid the plagues that Aaron and Moses inflicted on Egypt.

Instead, we find this tit-for-tat premise in the story of the plagues. At the beginning whatever Aaron and Moses did, the magicians did likewise with their enchantments. A & M changed all of the water in Egypt into blood, and then the magicians somehow changed all of the water in Egypt into blood. A & brought forth the plague of frogs, and then the magicians brought forth even more frogs. Who can believe such nonsense? Why didn't the magicians show their power by taking away all of the frogs?

Farrell Till

At first thought one might wonder, why biblical inerrantists don't come up with insightful, reasonable thinking like this, but when one realizes the irrational thought process that they are working with--wanting to believe the Bible is inerrant and only looking for reasons to believe that it is inerrant, rather than simply looking for the truth--it's no wonder at all. (KWH)