Introducing A Christian To Rational Thought

Farrell Till introduces a Christian to rational thought. From the Errancy Discussion List, 8-9-99:

TILL
Well, okay, Eric, let me revise the answer that I gave to your question, because I can now see that your answer is much better than mine.  In order for me to believe that the Bible is the word of God, God himself would have to tell me that it is. So all he has to do is appear in a POOF here in my office, and then he'll have me on your side. When can I expect this to happen?

(DAVE 8/7)
Does this mean that for you to accept that anything exists it must appear in your office? (POOF). With that kind of criteria you: (a) don't accept that very much exists or (b) you have faith in an awful lot.

TILL
What a stupidly false analogy. I have never seen Tokyo, Japan, but I have seen countless cities and towns, and I have known people who have been to Tokyo and tell me that it is there. Hence, there is nothing irrational about thinking that Tokyo is a real city.

(DAVE 8/8)
You rely on eyewitness accounts for your beliefs and except them as fact (as well as accepting the reliability of the witnesses). Does this mean that you accept everything you are told just because you have seen a similar occurrence or phenomenon?

TILL
Certainly not. There are some people I wouldn't believe if they told me the sun rises in the east. You're simply setting up a straw man with another false analogy in which you are trying to compare the acceptance of testimony to the commonplace and ordinary with the acceptance of testimony to the extraordinary. Try to get this through your thick skull, Dave. There is a difference in accepting the report that John Doe died and in accepting the claim that he later returned from the dead. When a claim is entirely contrary to reality as one knows it to be from his lifetime of experiences, then he is being entirely reasonable to reject the claim. That is entirely different from believing Jane Doe when she tells me that she saw a car wreck on her way to Peoria this morning. I have also seen car wrecks on the way to Peoria, so it is reasonable to accept her claim as truth. If she is lying about it, so what? That wouldn't be the first time that I believed a lie that could easily have been the truth. If, however, I believe my former student, whom I think I have mentioned on this list, who claims that she is routinely visited by alien beings and has an alien living inside her body to guide and direct her in her crusade to enlighten the public about alien visitations to earth, then I will deserve every bit of ridicule that is heaped onto me for being so gullible.

The Moabite Stone

From Alt.Bible.Errancy, 2-24-02:

GEISIK Greetings all. Traffic is slow so I will not feel too guilty asking this. It appears that there are many similarities between the Moabite god Kemosh and the god of the bible YHWH. I will not detail them here, but would like to ask if anyone has suggested references to pursue this amazing parallel.

TILL
Yes, read the inscription on the Moabite Stone. It purported to be a message from King Mesha, the Moabite king mentioned in 2 Kings 3:4-27. If the name Yahweh were substituted for Chemosh, it would read like a page out of the OT.

Farrell Till 

[Here is a link to information about The Moabite Stone, including the text of inscription, kwh]

The Slave Is His Money?

And people actually believe this Yahweh  beast is God. Amazing. From the Errancy Discussion List, 8-4-99 (comments welcome):

Gaudreau:
Ex. 2-13 Thou shalt not kill.

Ex. 21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a
rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be
punished: for he is his money. (KJV)

If you beat a slave to death and he/she dies straight away,
you're punished. But if it takes the slave one or two days to
die, you get away scott free. Now there is a fine example of the
absolute morality of the Bible, the high moral road Xians keep
telling us about. Slaves are MONEY and they can be beaten to
death, just as long as it takes them a lot of time to die. God
certainly does move in a mysterious way.

TILL
Yeah, if the slave dies right away, the slave owner was punished, but if the poor slave lingered in pain a day or two and then died, the slave owner was not punished. What can I say except that this sounds just like something this god Yahweh would have decreed?

Farrell Till

Traditional Biblical Inerrancy---What The Bible Says About Inspiration, Part 3 of 3

From *The Skeptical Review Online*, 12-3-03:

By Farrell Till 

In two previous articles in this series, I showed that leading inerrancy spokesmen, past and present, have declared emphatically that the Bible was verbally inspired of God. As I noted, the term "verbal inspiration" denotes that God inspired not the thoughts or ideas in the Bible, but the very words that the writers used. In the second article, I also noted that there are good reasons why biblical inerrantists espouse the doctrine of verbal inspiration, because (1) the Bible itself teaches that God put his words into the mouths of the Old Testament prophets and at times ordered them to write "his words" that had been revealed to them, (2) the New Testament teaches that Jesus sent the "spirit of truth" to guide his apostles so that the words that they spoke were not their words but the words of the Holy Spirit speaking through them, and (3) the NT teaches that "prophecies of scripture" did not come from private interpretation but as men were "moved" by the Holy Spirit. The doctrine of verbal inspiration is the only effective description of the process of guidance that the Bible claims that God used in guiding his inspired ones into "all truth." This doctrine is the exact reason why so many Bible believers also believe in biblical inerrancy. This belief is a logical consequence of the doctrine of verbal inspiration.

Traditional Biblical Inerrancy---What The Bible Says About Inspiration , Part 2 of 3

From *The Skeptical Review Online*, 12-3-03:

By Farrell Till 

In Part One of this series, I discussed the old school of fundamentalism, which taught that the Bible was the verbally inspired word of God, and the logic in their position as opposed to the illogical views of those who advocate a "high view of inspiration," which holds that "God" inspired only the ideas in the Bible. In this second article, I will show that the Bible itself supports those who teach the verbal view of inspiration.

The Old Testament prophets often claimed that they were speaking the "words of Yahweh." In Isaiah 51:16, the prophet had Yahweh saying to him, "I have put my words in your mouth." The same claim was made in Jeremiah 1:9, "Then Yahweh put forth his hand, and touched my mouth, and Yahweh said to me, Behold I have put my words into your mouth." Jeremiah had opened his book with the claim that the "word of Yahweh came to [him], saying..." (1:4), and thereafter he frequently claimed that what he was saying were the "words of Yahweh."

"The word of Yahweh came to me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem..." (2:1). 

"The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, Stand in the gate of Yahweh's house and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of Yahweh all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship Yahweh" (7:1-2). 

"Hear you the word that Yahweh speaks to you, O house of Israel" (10:1). 

"The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, Hear the words of this covenant..." (11:1). 

"The word of Yahweh that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought..." (14:1).

There are many other passages in Jeremiah that I could cite where he prefaced a change of subject with the claim that this was the "word of Yahweh" that had come to him. In 25:3, he even said that for 23 years the word of Yahweh had come to him and that he had spoken them to the people. Scattered throughout his book are dozens of statements that he began with, "Thus says Yahweh," so obviously he was not claiming that Yahweh had given him just the "ideas" that he was preaching but that Yahweh had given him the very words that he spoke. In this respect, Jeremiah was no different from the other prophets, because they repeatedly claimed that what they were preaching was the "word of Yahweh" that had come to them (Ezek. 6:1; 7:1; 12:1; 13:1; 15:1; 16:1; 17:1; 18:1; etc., etc., etc.). Hosea claimed that the "word of Yahweh" had come to him (1:1), and so did Joel (1:1), and so did Jonah (1:1), and so did Micah (1:1), etc., etc., etc. Like Jeremiah and Isaiah, their writings were filled with the expression "thus says Yahweh," followed by statements of what Yahweh had said. It seems absurd to me to think that these prophets thought that they were only expressing "ideas" that Yahweh had given to them rather than the very words that they thought their god had told them to speak.

Traditional Biblical Inerrancy---What The Bible Says About Inspiration , Part 1 of 3

From *The Skeptical Review Online *, 12-3-03:

By Farrell Till 

In recent years, there has been an increase in the numbers of those who disclaim the doctrine of inerrancy while maintaining that the Bible is nevertheless the inspired word of God. The motives of those who teach this view can only be surmised, since they would never admit to any ulterior objectives, but I suspect that the growth of this new approach to "apologetics" has resulted from a painful recognition that the traditional view of inerrancy, as defended by such apologists as Gleason Archer, William Arndt, John Haley, Josh McDowell, Norman Geisler, and such like, has suffered such obvious defeat in debating arenas, which have dramatically increased with the growth of the internet, that another kind of "apologetics" became necessary. In this series of articles, I will be discussing the "new fundamentalism," which readers will understand better if they first understand what the old school of inerrantists believed.

The old school believed that the Bible, in its entirety, was verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity. Many people fail to understand why these inerrantists argued that the Bible is inerrant, because they don't understand what was meant by the term "verbal inspiration." Verbal inspiration is a view that the very words that the biblical writers used were the words that "God" selected for them. Of course, I don't believe that the Bible was verbally inspired. I don't believe that the Bible was in any sense inspired by a deity, but if it could be established beyond doubt that the Bible was verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity, I would have to agree that a logical necessity of that process of inspiration would be a totally inerrant biblical text.

God Is Omniscient?

More problems for biblical inerrantists. From *The Skeptical Review*, January- February 1995:

by Farrell Till

Elsewhere in this issue (pp. 9, 16), we discussed inconsistencies in the biblical claim that God cannot be tempted (James 1:13) and the fact that the Bible also claims that although Jesus was God (John 1:1, 14), he was nevertheless tempted (Mark 1:12-13;Heb. 5:14-15). If we accept the premise that Jesus actually was God incarnate, we have another inconsistency between the passages that teach that God is omniscient or all-knowing (Ps. 147:5) and other passages that indicate that Jesus didn't know certain things.

In summarizing the childhood of Jesus, Luke said that he "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men" (2:3), but if Jesus were truly an omniscient deity, how could he possibly have "increased in wisdom"? To increase one's wisdom is to increase one's knowledge, so if Jesus increased in wisdom, he couldn't have been omniscient when he began to increase his wisdom. Yet we are asked to believe that Jesus was the omniscient god who made all things (Col. 1:16).

In speaking to the apostles about the time of his second coming, Jesus said, "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Matt. 24:36). The problem in this statement is obvious. If Jesus were an omniscient deity, how could it possibly be that he would not know the day and hour of his second coming? The issue of omniscience aside, we might also ask how it could possibly be that the Father would know something that the Son wouldn't know if the Father and the Son were one and the same as the absurd doctrine of the trinity teaches.

Some scribes must have recognized the problem that this passage poses, because some Greek manuscripts of the New Testament made no reference to "the Son" in this verse. The ASV, RSV, NRSV, NIV, and other versions of the New Testament have a footnote to inform readers that "some ancient authorities omit 'nor the Son,'" and the KJV and NKJV omit the reference entirely. However, the fact that "some ancient authorities" don't mention "the Son" in this verse is of no benefit to inerrantists, because the exact statement is in Mark's parallel account of Jesus' discourse on his second coming (13:32), and there are no footnotes in Mark to inform us that "some ancient authorities" omitted the reference to "the Son." Hence, the problem remains. God is omniscient, Jesus was God, yet Jesus didn't know when he would come again, even though the Father, who is the same God that Jesus is (was) did know. Was Peter wrong then when he said to Jesus, "Lord, You know all things" (John 21:17)? And if Peter was right, were Matthew and Mark wrong when they said that Jesus said there was at least one thing he didn't know? And if there was even one thing that Jesus didn't know, how could he have been an omniscient god?

Maybe some enterprising inerrantist can explain all this to us dumb skeptics.

Ezekiel's Prophecy About Egypt

In Ezekiel 29:8-21, Ezekiel prophesied that king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon (c 634 – 562 BC) would destroy  Egypt and leave it utterly desolate for a period of 40 years, during which no foot of man or beast would pass through it. But history records no such desolation of Egypt during or after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.