Prayer Problems

From the mailbag section of *The Skeptical Review*, May-June, 1994. A Christian reader of TSR tells Farrell Till that she's praying for him. An excerpt from Till's reply:

...As for the prayers she is uttering for me, I wish I had a nickle for everyone who has told me he is praying for me. There must be thousands of people out there praying for me at any given moment. So I wonder when we can expect to see any results from all these prayers. God wants all men to be saved: "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our saviour, who would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:3-4). Therefore, if the Bible is truly the infallible word of God, as Mrs. Kaley no doubt believes, then she must agree that God certainly wants Farrell Till to be saved. So I see a dilemma for her when this scripture is considered in conjunction with 1 John 5:14-15: "And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him." Now please notice that this passage does not say that if we ask anything according to God's will, he may hear us and grant it; it flatly says that we can know that he hears it and will give us what we ask.

From this, I can only conclude that the New Testament promises that God will hear and grant the prayer of any Christian who asks ANYTHING in accordance with God's will. So since it is obviously God's will that Farrell Till be saved, then why haven't the many prayers on my behalf been answered? I once presented this dilemma to a Baptist preacher who had told me that he was praying for me. His response was that I am not dead yet, so there is still the possibility that I will yet be "saved." I suppose that he is technically right, but if I should die without returning to my former beliefs--and I really don't believe there is even a remote possibility that I will return--would this not constitute logical proof that the Bible is not inerrant?

Miracle Claims

Farrell Till  discusses miracle claims with Theo, a Christian apologist. From the Errancy Discussion list, 7-25-99:

TILL
This shows how very little you know about historiography. Historians do not automatically assume that an ancient document is telling the truth unless there are reasons to suspect otherwise. The information in ancient documents is subjected to very rigorous methods of evaluation to try to determine if there are sufficient reasons to accept the information as historical fact. What serious historiography would accept as historical fact that the emperor Vespasian healed a blind man and a man with a withered hand, just because both Tacitus and Suetonius reported that he did in their historical writings? I'm afraid you have been reading too many Josh McDowellian apologetic works.

THEO
Mr. Till, in your debate against Norman Geisler, you seemed to insinuate that we were to evaluate the evidence in the NT by the laws of jurisprudence used in the courtroom. You claimed that since the NT testimonies of the Resurrection of Christ are not(sic) eyewitness testimonies, then we are to reject them as hearsay.

What About Scientific Foreknowledge in the Bible?

From *The Skeptical Review*, July-August 1990:

by Farrell Till
Any challenge to the Bible inerrancy doctrine will sooner or later encounter the scientific-foreknowledge argument. "If the Bible is not the inspired word of God," the inerrancy spokesmen ask, "then how do you explain the many examples of scientific foreknowledge in it?" The claim implied in this question is that men writing in an age of relative ignorance indicated in various passages of the Bible that they understood scientific truths that were completely unknown at the time. The response the question seeks is that these scientific facts could not have been known to Bible writers without God's having revealed them during the verbal inspiration process. They see this as a compelling argument for the inerrancy doctrine.

A basic problem with this argument is the same as the one found in the familiar harmonious-content, unity-of-theme, and fulfillment-of-prophecy arguments so often presented in the Bible's defense. It is based more on speculation, imaginative interpretations, and wishful thinking than on verifiable facts. As I write this, I am engaged in a written debate with a Church-of-Christ preacher who, in trying to use this argument, threw a volley of speculatively conceived questions at me in his second affirmative manuscript. How did Moses know of woman's seed being involved in the conception of children, (Gen. 3:15)? How did Isaiah know in his day that the earth is round, (Isa. 40:22)? How did Job know that the earth rests on no material foundation, (Job 26:7)? How did Moses know that life is in the blood (Gen. 9:4), when medical science didn't know it until a late date? How did David know of the moon's bearing witness (Ps. 89:37) to the sunlight on the other side of the earth? How did David know that there are paths in the seas (Ps. 8:8) long before oceanography and Matthew Maury's work found it so?

These are the questions exactly as he fired them at me. Not once did he take the time to explicate scripture references to show reasonable proof that the writers meant what he was interpreting them to mean. He just tacked the references onto his questions as if this alone were enough to establish that the writers had intended the meanings he was attributing to them. Any verbal communication, however, whether oral or written, must be interpreted before it can be understood, and this is doubly true of written statements. 

What Have These Sheep Done?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1999 July/August. This article is absolutely devastating to the biblical inerrancy doctrine:

by Farrell Till

One of the most puzzling tales of the Bible is told in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. Yahweh or Satan (depending on which account you want to believe) "moved David to number Israel" (v:1). Since biblical inerrantists argue that the Bible is completely free of errors, we will assume that in some sense Yahweh moved David to number Israel. One would think that if Yahweh moved David to number Israel, Yahweh would have been pleased if David did as he had been "moved" and took the census, but if you think this way, you are reasoning like a rational person, and Bible stories aren't necessarily rational. In fact, they many times tax the imagination of those who try to find rationality in them.

That's the case with this story about David. He conducted the census just as Yahweh had "moved" him to do, but for some reason known only to Yahweh and the Gleason Archer type of "apologists" who entertain us with verbal gymnastics that supposedly explain biblical discrepancies, Yahweh was ticked off after David had done exactly what he had been "moved" to do, and so he sent Nathan the prophet to call David on the carpet for taking the census (2 Sam. 24:12). That wasn't really necessary, because David had already realized that in doing what Yahweh had "moved"him to do, he had somehow sinned. That's what the inspired word of God says: "But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people" (v:10). Why taking a census would be a sin, especially after God had moved David to do it, is anyone's guess. Well, not anyone's guess, of course, because the professional "apologists" like Gleason Archer, Norman Geisler, John Haley, etc. were apparently blessed with special insights that enabled them to know that the Bible didn't really mean what it plainly said. Just read their books, and you'll find all of the answers if you can stop laughing long enough to read them all the way through.

The Temple Vessels

From the Errancy discussion list, 6-13-97:

The Bible teaches that when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, he cut into pieces all of the vessels of gold in the temple.

2 Kings 24:13 He carried off all the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king's house; he cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of Yahweh, which King Solomon of Israel had made, all this as
Yahweh had foretold.

But did Nebuchadnezzar really cut into pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple? At a feast that Belshazzar prepared for a thousand of his lords, he "commanded to bring the GOLDEN and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his father [who wasn't really his father] had taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem" (Daniel 5:1-2). Verse 3 says that "they brought the GOLDEN vessels that were taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem," and the
king, his lords, and his wives and concubines drank from them. Ezra indicated that when Cyrus issued his decree to allow the captives to return to Judah, he gave them the vessels to take back to Jerusalem with them.

Ezra 1:7 King Cyrus himself brought out the vessels of the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods.
8 King Cyrus of Persia had them released into the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.
9 And this was the inventory: GOLD basins, thirty; silver basins, one thousand; knives, twenty-nine;
10 GOLD bowls, thirty; other silver bowls, four hundred ten; other vessels, one thousand;
11 the total of the GOLD and silver vessels was five thousand four hundred. All these Sheshbazzar brought up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

So one passage says that Nebuchadnezzar cut to pieces the vessels of gold in the temple, and two other passages say that he didn't.

Farrell Till

Silence Of Contemporary Writers

The following is Chapter Two of John Remsburg's *The Christ*, published in 1909:

Silence of Contemporary Writers.

Another proof that the Christ of Christianity is a fabulous and not a historical character is the silence of the writers who lived during and immediately following the time he is said to have existed.

That a man named Jesus, an obscure religious teacher, the basis of this fabulous Christ, lived in Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago, may be true. But of this man we know nothing. His biography has not been written. E. Renan and others have attempted to write it, but have failed—have failed because no materials for such a work exist. Contemporary writers have left us not one word concerning him. For generations afterward, outside of a few theological epistles, we find no mention of him.

The following is a list of writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time, that Christ is said to have lived and performed his wonderful works:

Josephus, Philo-Judaeus, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Arrian, Petronius, Dion Pruseus, Paterculus,[25] Suetonius, Juvenal, Martial, Persius, Plutarch, Justus of Tiberius, Apollonius, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Quintilian, Lucanus, Epictetus, Silius Italicus,

Statius, Ptolemy, Hermogones, Valerius Maximus, Appian, Theon of Smyrna, Phlegon, Pompon Mela, Quintius Curtius Lucian, Pausanias, Valerius Flaccus, Florus Lucius, Favorinus, Phaedrus, Damis, Aulus Gellius, Columella, Dio Chrysostom, Lysias, Appion of Alexandria.

Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ.

Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ’s miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion [26]with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness, and resurrection of the dead took place—when Christ himself rose from the dead, and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not.

Josephus, the renowned Jewish historian, was a native of Judea. He was born in 37 A. D., and was a contemporary of the Apostles. He was, for a time, Governor of Galilee, the province in which Christ lived and taught. He traversed every part of this province and visited the places where but a generation before Christ had performed his prodigies. He resided in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle. He mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era. But Christ was of too little consequence and his deeds too trivial to merit a line from this historian’s pen.

Justus of Tiberius was a native of Christ’s own country, Galilee. He wrote a history covering the time of Christ’s reputed existence. This [27]work has perished, but Photius, a Christian scholar and critic of the ninth century, who was acquainted with it, says: “He [Justus] makes not the least mention of the appearance of Christ, of what things happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did” (Photius’ Bibliotheca, code 33).

Christ's Real Existence Impossible

The following is Chapter One from John Remsburg's 1909 classic, *The Christ*:

by John Remsburg

The reader who accepts as divine the prevailing religion of our land may consider this criticism on “The Christ” irreverent and unjust. And yet for man’s true saviors I have no lack of reverence. For him who lives and labors to uplift his fellow men I have the deepest reverence and respect, and at the grave of him who upon the altar of immortal truth has sacrificed his life I would gladly pay the sincere tribute of a mourner’s tears. It is not against the man Jesus that I write, but against the Christ Jesus of theology; a being in whose name an Atlantic of innocent blood has been shed; a being in whose name the whole black catalogue of crime has been exhausted; a being in whose name five hundred thousand priests are now enlisted to keep

“Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.”

Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity, the [14]pathetic story of whose humble life and tragic death has awakened the sympathies of millions, is a possible character and may have existed; but the Jesus of Bethlehem, the Christ of Christianity, is an impossible character and does not exist.

From the beginning to the end of this Christ’s earthly career he is represented by his alleged biographers as a supernatural being endowed with superhuman powers. He is conceived without a natural father: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When, as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. i, 18).

His ministry is a succession of miracles. With a few loaves and fishes he feeds a multitude: “And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men” (Mark vi, 41–44).