Ezekiel's Failed Prophecy Against Egypt

An excellent example of biblical prophecy failure--from the Errancy Discussion list, 29 June 1997:

Yet, another Christian with his prophecy fulfillment claims.

ROB
There are many religious books in the world that have many good things
to say. But only the Bible has fulfilled prophecies-with more fulfillments
still to come. The Bible has _never been wrong_ in the past, and it won't
be wrong in the future. It does not even abrogate itself.

TILL
The Bible has _never been wrong_ in the past? What planet has this guy
been living on? I'll cite just one example of many prophecy failures in the
Bible. Ezekiel prophesied that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy Egypt and
that it would lay waste for 40 years, but this never happened.

The Last Hurrah of the Inerrancy Doctrine

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1990 / Jan.-Feb. Issue:

by Farrell Till

Many fundamentalist Christians sincerely believe that the Bible is the verbally inspired word of God. As believers in verbal inspiration, they see the Bible much differently from those who respect it as a book with only concepts and ideas that were divinely inspired. Christians who believe in the doctrine of verbal inspiration think that God directed the writing of the Bible on a word-by-word basis so that the authors of the original manuscripts were protected from writing even as much as one word that might inadvertently mislead readers or incorrectly communicate the truths God wanted man to know.

How Likely Is It? (1)

The following is a very thought-provoking post by the late Farrell Till (1933-2012) from the Errancy Discussion list from May 2, 1997. I will be posting a lot of the comments of Farrell Till from the Errancy Discussion list and elsewhere. Till was a former Church-of-Christ preacher; and being a former member of the Church of Christ myself, I appreciate his perspective on the errancy of the Bible. I hope to preserve many of his scholarly, insightful thoughts on this blog:
 
The postings I have been sending about absurdities in the stories of the

exodus and subsequent wilderness wanderings have not been intended to
establish contradiction but to show that the stories are so obviously
unreasonable that no rational person can believe that they actually
happened. Since ancient literature in particular is characterized by
widespread references to miraculous events, the only reasonable way to
assess the events is to critically examine each one in terms of how likely
it is that such events did indeed happen. When this principle is applied to
the conduct of the Israelites throughout the exodus and the wilderness
wanderings, rational people must conclude that it is not very likely that
most of these stories happened as recorded in the Bible.

A detailed analysis of Israelite behavior during and after the exodus may
take as many as two or three postings, but before I begin them, let's first
make a comparison that will help illustrate the problem. [Note: Please find 
under the label, *How Likely Is It?*, a 13-part series entitled *Tall Tales of 
Wilderness Wanderings*, kwh] On this list, we have seen that biblical 
inerrantists will cling to their belief in their god and the inerrancy of the 
Bible no matter how much compelling evidence to the contrary is presented. 
When confronted with glaring biblical inconsistencies or discrepancies, 
they will simply fabricate some how-it-could-have-been interpretations and 
stubbornly insist that biblical errancy has not been proven. Not a one of 
them has ever seen their god, talked to him, or seen him perform miracles 
like the parting of the Red Sea, bringing water from rocks, sending manna 
from heaven, and such like, yet despite the absence of such convincing 
evidence as this, they still maintain their belief that this god exists and that 
he verbally inspired the Bible.

Only very rarely is the faith of an inerrantist shaken badly enough to cause
him to reject his belief. On the other hand, we have the Israelites who had
their god going before them in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
coming down and speaking to them, and performing all sorts of wondrous
miracles. Despite these amazing demonstrations of their god's presence
in their midst, they were constantly bellyaching and rebelling. My postings
that follow this one will be designed to show that it is not at all likely that reasonable people would have behaved as the Israelites did; hence,
it is not at all likely that these stories happened as they are recorded in
the Bible.

Farrell Till

The Tree Of Knowledge

Farrell Till  discovers a little problem for biblical inerrantists. From the Errancy Discussion list, Nov. 12, 1995.

RH 

It is not correct to say that in order to sin, you have to know the difference between good and evil. To sin requires that one disobey God which itself only requires that one know what God has commanded. Knowledge of good and evil doesn't enter the equation. You cannot say that Adam and Eve did not know what they were doing. They knew. Eve stated what God had commanded to the Serpent. Adam and Eve knew the consequences.

TILL 

When the spies that Moses sent ahead to Canaan returned with a report of giants being in the land, the people were afraid (Num. 14). Yahweh punished the people by decreeing that they would wander in the wilderness until they were dead, but he made an exception for Joshua and Caleb, who had not believed the report of the spies. He also made an exception for the children (v: 31). Deuteronomy 1:39 explains why Yahweh made an exception for the children: "Moreover, your little ones that ye said should be a prey, and your children , *that this day have no knowledge of good or evil,* they will I give it, and they shall possess it." Hence, we can only conclude that the Bible teaches that children are not guilty of sin if they have no knowledge of good or evil. The Genesis story of the "first sin" clearly states that eating of the tree of knowledge would make one know the difference in good or evil (3:5). After Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, Yahweh said, "Behold the man is become as one of us, *to know good and evil*; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, therefore Yahweh God sent him forth from the garden of Eden" (3:22).

Sorry, Roger, but you have a lot of explaining to do. The Bible teaches that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was what made Adam and Eve to know the difference in good and evil. Yet Yahweh punished them for something they did before they ate of the fruit that gave them this knowledge.

F. 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.

Yahweh, The Embarrassment Of Christianity

Anyone who has done an honest critical analysis of the Bible has to be shocked at the portrayal of God in the form of Yahweh. Thomas Paine called it blasphemy to attribute to the Creator the behavior found in the Bible's god Yahweh. 19th century deist, Elihu Palmer observed that there are commands "which are said to come from God, which would disgrace the character of any honest man, and make him a candidate for prison." (Principles of Nature--1801). 

I plan to give some examples of this "behavior" by the god of Christianity in the coming weeks.

An Example Of Rational Thought

“If one wants to insist that God inspired the very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don't have the very words of scripture? ... It's a bit hard to know what the words of the Bible mean if we don't even know what the words are! This became a problem for my view of inspiration; for I came to realize that it would have been no more difficult for God to preserve the words of scripture than it would have been for him to inspire them in the first place. If he wanted his people to have his words, surely he would have given them to them... The fact that we don't have the words surely must show, I reasoned, that he did not preserve them for us. And if he didn't perform that miracle, there seemed to be no reason to think that he performed the earlier miracle of inspiring those words."

--Bart Ehrman, "Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why"

Luke, A Historian "Par Excellent"[sic]? (2)

From the Errancy discussion list, August 18, 1997:

TILL
Otsen has cited the amazing historical accuracy of Luke as an argument
for biblical inerrancy, as if he somehow believes that because one
biblical writer was accurate in some geographical, political, and social
matters, he was therefore right in everything he wrote and that the entire
Bible must, as a consequence, be inerrant. In an earlier posting, I listed
over two dozen references that Luke made in the book of Acts to
extraordinary events. I challenge Otsen to present to us some kind of
extra-biblical evidence to prove that at least some of these events actually
happened. Until he can do this, he is in effect arguing that because Luke
knew the geography of the region he wrote about and the names of some
public officials and such like, we can thereby know that Luke was also
accurate in his reporting of the various miracle claims found in his gospel
and the book of Acts.

Luke, A Historian "Par Excellent" [sic]? (1)

From the Errancy discussion list, August 17, 1997:

TILL

Otsen has posted the trite fundamentalist argument about Sir William

Ramsay, who was presumbably a biblical skeptic until he studied the

writings of Luke, after which he was so impressed by Luke's historical

accuracy that he became a dedicated Christian.  When Ramsay was

discussed earlier on the list Steve Carr noted in a posting to Errancy

date May 10th that Ramsay was actually a "Bible-believing historian." 

Carr made the following statement in his posting:

"In Ramsay's book, he describes how as a young man at Oxford ( a place

which *did* not accept religious sceptics), he studied the 39 Articles

of Faith for his Divinity exam. He corresponded with Bishop Lightfoot.

He spent months studying the NT and the OT (which he described as life-

giving). He describes the Epistle to Galatians as especially moving. He

was reminded often of his mother's love for Paul."

The Uniqueness Of The Bible

Farrell Till answers Josh McDowell's, "The Uniqueness of the Bible", link.

Take Your Pick

The late Joseph Crea was a fixture on the old alt.bible.errancy discussion list. He along with Farrell Till and a few others brought rationality and common sense to their discussions with die-hard inerrantists--pointing out with clarity the many discrepancies in the Bible. The following from May 17, 2000, is one of those instances:

frixen3 wrote:

Christians then do not pray to the cross. The cross is a reminder 

to us what was done there. We must also remember that "without 

the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin." (Hebrews 9:22).

CREA
Funny, that's not what YHWH tells the Israelites back in the 
Old Testament. Take a look at Leviticus chapter 5, which 
covers the sacrifices needed to expiate sins. Starting at verse 

5 we read that the optimal sacrifice is a female sheep or goat, 

but [continuing at verse 6] if the contrite sinner can't afford 

such, then two doves will do. Proceeding to verses 11-13 we 

learn that if the repentant sinner can't even afford 2 doves, 

THEN AN OFFERING OF FLOUR would suffice to produce 

forgiveness of his sins. Blood, we can therefore see, is NOT 

A NECESSITY for the forgiveness of sins. Either the writer of 

Hebrews got it wrong, or else the author of Leviticus did. 

Take your pick.

  With Mettaa,
  Joseph Crea

The Communicator's Responsibility

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

"It is always the writer's duty to communicate. It isn't the readers' responsibility to try to figure out what the writer meant."  Farrell Till (college English teacher for over 30 years).

I had a Church of Christ preacher tell me one time that the apostle Paul wrote the book of Romans using the language of a lawyer. The preacher seemed to look with pride upon Paul who was so educated that he was able to write like this. But why would Paul (allegedly guided by the Holy Spirit) do such a poor job of communicating to the average person who doesn't understand such difficult language? Especially considering whether one winds up in heaven or hell depends on understanding such writing.

With heaven and hell in the balance, one would think that the alleged omni-God Yahweh would have incontrovertibly proven his existence to each person individually. Then, after that was done, at the very least, communicated his will in writing with no errors and so plain and clear that there would be no need to try to figure out what he meant. An omni-God should have wanted to and been able to do this.

But, alas, such is not the case, adding more proof that Yahweh can not be God and  that the Bible is purely a work of man.

The "Witnesses-To-A-Car-Wreck" Quibble

A discussion between a Christian (TUFLY) and Farrell Till concerning the 
alleged evidences for Christianity from the Yahoo group, errancyn, from 
July 10-15, 1999:

TUFLY
Hi guys!
I don't claim to know much, but I do know that if ten people see an
accident in the street, you will hear ten different accounts about how it
happened. This simple fact, which you would be foolish to argue, points
to the authenticity and the fact that not only did Jesus rise from the dead,
but that the separate accounts are merely different perpectives on the
same incident. If we were to have two or more exactly matching eye-
witness accounts, that my friend, would be highly suspect.

TILL
First of all, you are committing the fallacy of false analogy by using
this worn-out example of different people who witness an automobile
accident. Witnesses to automobile accidents are not verbally inspired
by an omniscient, omnipotent deity as they write their accounts of
the incident. If they were, then we could reasonably expect agreement
in what they say. Another point of false analogy is that automobile
accidents are common occurrences and are known to happen. There are
probably few people who have never seen either an automobile accident
or the aftereffects of one.

Resurrections from the dead, however, are an entirely different matter.
There has never been a verifiable case of someone who died and
returned tolife, so there is a world of difference in testimony to an
ordinary, everyday event and testimony to an extraordinary event, the
likes of which has never been known to happen. Second, if the witnesses
to an automobile [accident] are inconsistent in various major points,
then their testimony becomes worthless as evidence of what happened.
If one witness indicated that the accident had happened at night but
another that it had happened after sunrise, if one witness indicated that
she was alone at the scene when the accident occurred but another
indicated that there were two people there and another indicated that
there were several on the scene, and if one witness said that a policeman
arrived on the scene quickly but another said that two policemen arrived
on the scene, and if one witness said that the accident happened in
Podunk but another witness said that it happened in Hicktown, and if
the police didn't even have the firsthand testimony of those who had
allegedly seen the accident but only the testimony of three or four
different people who said that so-and-so had said that she had seen
this or that, what kind of investigators or jury considering the evidence
to try to determine the facts in the case could make a reliable
determination of what had happened?

Is there anyone in this group that can offer reasonable evidence for
the resurrection without regurgitating hackneyed arguments that have
been answered hundreds of time? Is Tufly so naive that he thought we
had never before heard this witnesses-to-a-car-wreck quibble.

TUFLY
The bible is reasonable evidence, as a matter of fact, there are far
more ancient writings of it than anything else including authors like
Plato, etc.. Why do you believe that Plato wrote anything? Perhaps I
say he was an illiterate who had a vivid imagination and his best friend
wrote down his wonderings? Well, that would put me in your camp, and
I do not prefer to be there.

TILL
It isn't a matter of how many "ancient writings" of the Bible may exist or
whether Plato wrote anything. The issue is whether everything said in all
of those ancient writings is true. Just because Plato may have written
something, for example, would not make what he said true, even if it
had been copied a million times. The same is true of biblical writings
and any other documents. Your argument seems to be this: Ancient
biblical writings were copied several times; therefore, everything these
writings say must be historically true. Do you know what non sequitur
means?

Now do you have any evidence to offer in support of the NT resurrection
claim besides false analogies.

TUFLY
IF we cannot use the ancient writings and their near perfect copies over
the millenia, then what may we of faith use?

TILL
Near perfect copies? You've been reading too much apologetic
propaganda. What may you of faith use? Just look at what you're
asking? Faith or belief is something that a person should have as a
result of having examined reasonable evidence to justify the faith.
If there is no reasonableevidence to justify the basic tenets of
Christianity--and there isn't--the intellectually honest person will
not believe those tenets.

TUFLY
The testemony of the Holy Spirit definately will not hold water with
you.

TILL
Well, don't look now, but you are begging the question of whether the
"Holy Spirit" (1) exists, and (2) has given any "testimony" to anything.

TUFLY
Suppose I told you that you would gain an "inner" knowledge and a
vastly deeper understanding of the scriptures when you accept Jesus
Christ into your heart?

TILL
In other words, you are telling me that if I will believe first, then I will
believe the scriptures. Suppose I told you that you would gain an "inner"
knowledge and a vastly deeper understanding of the Qur'an when you
accept Allah into your heart?

TUFLY
I think you would laugh,

TILL
You're right, just as you would laugh (at least inwardly) if a Muslim
told you that you would gain an "inner" knowledge and a vastly deeper
understanding of the Qur'an if you would just accept Allah into your
heart. Don't you ever bother to critically examine such tripe as this
before you try to pass it off as "evidence"?

TUFLY
however you cannot possibly understand what the scriptures say untill
you do so.

TILL
And that's exactly what is wrong with you. You cannot possibly
understand the Qur'an until you "do so."

TUFLY
To the likes of you, unfortunately, the scriptures are a meaningless
prattle.

TILL
To the likes of you, unfortunately, the Qur'an is a meaningless prattle.

TUFLY
Proverbs 14:6 reminds me of you.

TILL
Sura 4:106-109 reminds me of you.

TUFLY
I highly suggest you read 1Cor 1:18, and if you can manage read on
through verse 23.

TILL
No need to. I know what it says without even looking. The fact
that you think that an ancient document that glorifies stupidity should
be recommended reading speaks volumes about your own stupidity.

Now do you have any arguments that you want to post in favor of your
inerrancy beliefs? If so, post them. If not, why don't you go peddle your
question-begging nonsense somewhere else? You'll probably find a
reception for it on just about any Christian list.

Farrell Till

You Do The Math

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Herein is the problem stated in simple terms so that you may easily understand it and easily remember it. You do the math. The Bible teaches that Yahweh is:

1. All loving--He doesn't want people to go to hell.
2. All knowing--He knew most people would go to hell.
3. Complete--He didn't need to create man in this situation.
4. Sovereign--Nothing could have forced him to create man in this situation.
5. All Powerful--He could have created man like him with the inability to sin.

An Omni God And His Eternal Hell? (revised 8-4-12)

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

On July 12, 2011, I presented a challenge (see here "...[God] Doesn't Want Us to Go [To Hell]" ) for readers to come up with questions that might come to mind as a result of the incompatible New Testament doctrine of an all powerful, all knowing, all wise, loving, compassionate, merciful, sovereign, complete and perfect God, who created man with the knowledge that he would be sending the vast majority (Matt. 7:13-14) of his beloved humans to his eternal hell. With consideration given to this claim from a church-of-Christ website: "God has told us about [hell] because He doesn't want us to go there".

We didn't have any takers, and after a few days I posted some questions of my own--no comments have been received on those original questions. All 15 of the original questions had been presented to the preacher from the church website before I posted them to the blog, with no response. I have replaced those questions with the following basically same 15 questions, but with many of them revised to be even more incisive, informative and thought provoking. The first 5 questions were presented in their unrevised form before the above quote from the church-of-Christ website:

1. To what purpose does the New Testament teach that Yahweh created man, knowing that he would be sending the vast majority (multiplied billions) to suffer eternally in hell? (note: the word Yahweh is a transliteration of a Hebrew word for God).

2. How do you explain that an allegedly perfect and complete God (therefore, needing nothing) would allow this ghastly eternal misery to happen for a purpose that was not necessary?

3. Do you think Yahweh made a responsible choice in allowing this horrendous eternal tragedy to happen?

4. You were asked, do you believe that it could be said, with any believability, that I loved a child I allowed to come into the world knowing ahead of time this child would be tortured for eternity? You answered, "No." Do you believe that it could be said, with any believability, that Yahweh loved billions of children he allowed to come into the world knowing ahead of time these children would be tortured for eternity?

5. You correctly said that the Creator is greater than the creature. But since Yahweh allowed this inconceivably horrific tragedy to happen to multiplied billions of children, how can it be said, with any believability, that he is better than a human who wouldn't allow even one child to come into the world knowing ahead of time that child would be tortured for eternity?

The following 10 questions were presented in their unrevised form subsequent to and with consideration given to the quote from the church-of-Christ website, "God has told us about [hell] because He doesn't want us to go there":

1. You say that "God has told us about [hell] because He doesn't want us to go there." But he didn't tell Israel in the Old Testament about hell. Does that mean he wanted them to go there?

2. Since Yahweh knew, before he created the first human, that the overwhelming majority of his flawed human creation would be going to his eternal hell, and you say he told us about hell because he doesn't want us to go there; considering the New Testament (NT) teaching that few will miss going to hell, how much different would it have been if he had wanted us to go to hell?

3. If he doesn't want us to go to hell then why did he create man in the first place, knowing the vast majority would go to hell?

4. The Bible teaches that Yahweh has the following attributes: all powerful, all knowing, all-wise, loving, compassionate, merciful, sovereign, complete and perfect. You said that Yahweh doesn't want us to go to hell. If this is true and he has these attributes, he not only wouldn't have wanted man to go to hell, he couldn't have wanted man to go to hell and could have and would have come up with a plan whereby no humans would have wound up in an eternal hell. However, the NT teaches that Yahweh didn't do this, rather, he chose to create man, knowing that he would be sending the vast majority to suffer in his eternal hell (his "ultimate will", as you have called it). What is your explanation for this obvious inconsistency?

5. If Yahweh knew that the vast majority of his weak, error prone human creation would wind up in his eternal hell if he went with the "plan of salvation" revealed in the NT, and if Yahweh is the sovereign God (def., sovereign: 6. having supreme rank, power, or authority. Dictionary.com), therefore answering to no one, he can't be forced to do anything against his nature, and if he doesn't want us to go to hell, why didn't he create only those he knew would go to heaven and avoid the catastrophe of multiplied billions of his beloved creation suffering eternally in his hell?

6. If Yahweh is the sovereign God and he doesn't want us to go to hell, why didn't he truly create man in his image with the inability to sin, and thus avert an unbelievable eternal tragedy? If it doesn't detract from Yahweh's character to be unable to sin, why would it detract from man's?

7. When a choice is made, it tells us something about what is wanted and what is valued by the one making the choice. Since Yahweh chose not to do either one of these but could have--because of his sovereignty--what is a rational person to understand about what Yahweh wanted?

8. Why do you think Christians extol the virtue of Yahweh for "...lov[ing] the world so much, that he gave his only son..."(John 3:16 Phillips Translation), when he knew that it would be a failed mission, irresponsibly allowing the vast majority of humanity to suffer eternally, when if he has all of the divine attributes the Bible alleges him to have, and if he really loved the world so much, he could have and would have willed that no human be sent to an eternal hell?

9. If Yahweh doesn't want us to go to hell, and he is infinitely "holy" and finite sinning against him is such an infinitely terrible thing deserving punishment in his eternal hell, then how could he, with all of his alleged divine attributes, put what he knew was a humanity that was so flawed and so ill equipped to react to such "holiness" in such an eternally precarious situation--a situational "test" that he knew the vast majority would fail and therefore wind up in "his infinite holiness's" eternal hell?

10. What all of this proves is that the NT has at least one major contradiction in it, and this contradiction involves the impossibility of its god Yahweh being the true God. And because of this, shouldn't a reasonable person believe that Yahweh is, in reality, merely a fictitious product of the superstitious imagination of barbaric, ancient man?

These questions, and more, must be satisfactorily answered if any rational person is expected to even begin to consider Yahweh as the true God. Yahweh's alleged divinely superlative and omni characteristics, and his eternal hell that he will allow the vast majority of his beloved (?) humans to go to are not compatible. It is the most troubling error recorded in the Bible, and it exposes the Bible (at least the New Testament--there are other reasons why the Yahweh of the Old Testament can't be God) as an obvious work of man and man only, laying bare its god Yahweh as a contradictory impossibility.

Addendum:
It is apparent that the New Testament doctrine of an eternal hell is an evolved concept. The fact that there was no warning by Yahweh in the Old Testament of such a place that man was in jeopardy of being sent to, should make this obvious to even the most closed mind (the only hint of such a place in the Old Testament occurs late, in Daniel 12:2. Pre-Babylonian-captivity Jews believed only in a shadowy existence after death in a place called "Sheol", but in Babylon they were introduced to the Persian concept of a final resurrection, followed by everlasting life for the righteous and everlasting contempt for the unrighteous). Writers of the New Testament progressed with this rather recent idea that some Jews had incorporated into their faith. But they forgot that it had not even been mentioned in the Old Testament (until the hint in Daniel). And they didn't think about the contradiction it would present between it and their god Yahweh and his alleged divinely superlative and omni characteristics. 

If anyone thinks they have reasonable answers to these questions that would successfully defend Yahweh's conduct and alleged characteristics, please, let's see them. Your silence will lead us to conclude that you don't. And if you don't, why do you remain a fundamentalist Christian?

(note: Over 3 weeks ago I sent this revised article to the church-of-Christ preacher who is quoted above,  with no reply from him as of this posting.)

Bible "Prophecies" Of Jesus Christ

It is claimed by fundamentalist Christian apologists that there are over 300 prophecies about Jesus Christ in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the New Testament. One Church-of-Christ preacher even had this as his number one reason that one should consider the Bible the inspired word of God. But when one critically examines this extraordinary claim one finds that it, like all other miraculous claims by these fundamentalist Christian apologists, is all wishful thinking. The following post is taken from chapter 13 of Joseph Wheeless's, *Is It God's Word?*:

THE "PROPHECIES" OF JESUS CHRIST

The Miraculous "Virgin Birth" of Jesus

Matthew, whose gospel was written later, comes first in the order of gospels in our printed collections, for the reason that he gives a detailed "revelation" of the manner of miraculous conception and virgin birth of the Subject of his biography. He begins his book with the genealogy of Jesus, which we elsewhere take notice of. He then proceeds with inspired pen to record:

"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. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of Yahveh appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins." (Matt. i, 18-21)

The foregoing is pure fiction; here follows the crowning instance wherein "the false pen of the scribes hath wrought falsely":

"Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord [Heb., Yahveh] by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."

An Answer To A Friend

The following is a letter Thomas Paine sent to a friend in response to a letter his friend had sent to him concerning Paine's book The Age of Reason. From, The Online Library of Liberty:

AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND.

Paris,

May 12, 1797.

In your letter of the 20th of March, you give me several quotations from the Bible, which you call the word of God, to shew me that my opinions on religion are wrong, and I could give you as many, from the same book to shew that yours are not right; consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decides any way, and every way, one chooses to make it.

Does The Bible Claim to Be God's Word?

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne
Does the Bible claim to be God's word, and if so, in what sense and to what extent?

Old Testament prophets often made the claim that the words of God had come to them and that they were speaking God's words:

Jeremiah 1:9  Then the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD said to me:"Behold, I have put My words in your mouth."(NKJV)

Jeremiah 2:1  Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2 "Go, and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem saying, 'Thus says the LORD... (NKJV) 

Former Church-of-Christ preacher Farrell Till notes that the words the prophets spoke as well as the words the prophets wrote were claimed to be the words of God:

In addition to hundreds of passages in the Old Testament that refer to the "word of Yahweh" [Yahweh is a transliteration of a Hebrew word for God, KH] coming to so and so and claims of "thus says Yahweh," there are also claims that the words that they wrote were the words of Yahweh.

Exodus 24:3 Moses came and told the people all the words of Yahweh and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, "All the words that Yahweh has spoken we will do."

Moses told the people what he called the "words of Yahweh," and the people accepted them as "all the words Yahweh has spoken." Then the text claims that Moses wrote down the words of Yahweh.

 4 And Moses wrote down all the words of Yahweh....[edited, kh]   7 Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, "All that Yahweh has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient." 8 Moses took the blood and dashed it on the people, and said, "See the blood of the covenant that Yahweh has made with you in accordance with all these words."

Moses wrote down what the Exodus writer claimed were the "words of Yahweh," so that later when he read what he had written, the people understood that they had heard him read not the "ideas" of Yahweh but the WORDS of Yahweh. Jeremiah, whose claim that Yahweh touched his mouth and put his words into the prophet's mouth we have already noticed, later claimed that he wrote down the words that Yahweh had spoken to him: "The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh: Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: ‘Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you’ (30:1-2). (From Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part Two. See link below.)

In the New Testament, the authors of Matthew and Luke have Jesus telling his disciples that when they were brought before kings and rulers not to worry about what to say, that he and the Spirit of the Father would give them the actual words to say:

Mt. 10:19  "But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; 20 for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you." (NKJV)

Luke 21:12  "But before all this occurs, they will take you into custody and harass you because of your faith. They will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will provide you with an opportunity to testify. 14 Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance. 15 I'll give you words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to counter or contradict." (CEB)

Farrell Till notes that if the words that were preached by the apostles were claimed to be verbally inspired by God, then it would necessarily follow that when these words were written down for people who were not able to hear the message, that verbal inspiration must also be claimed for this written message also:

What was said in these passages is not the kind of "inspiration" that is being taught by the new fundamentalists. It is a very clear description of verbal inspiration, so if the apostles were verbally inspired whenever they were preaching or defending the gospel before rulers, when what they said would be heard by their audiences and then gone forever, how likely is it that when they wrote epistles that were allegedly intended to be the "word of God" all through the Christian era, God would simply have given them the "thoughts" and "ideas" they were to write but leave the selection of the words up to them?

Such a premise seems preposterous. It would mean, for example, that the sermon Peter preached on the day of Pentecost was verbally inspired but the account of it that Luke recorded wasn't, that Luke had been given only the "ideas" of what to record or perhaps had learned about it by "oral tradition," whereas Peter had been given the very words that he spoke. Such a view doesn't agree with what the New Testament teaches. (From Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part Two. See link below.)

The author of the book of John has Jesus claiming that his apostles would be guided into all truth by the Spirit of truth who would only speak what he hears from God. And if the Spirit is so careful to speak only what he hears from God, certainly Jesus would not allow his apostles or others who were also inspired to do any less:

John 16:13,  "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come." (NKJV)

The author of I Corinthians claims that he and others who were inspired by God "speak the wisdom of God". And that this wisdom was revealed through the Spirit of God and the words they spoke were not man's words but words the Holy Spirit taught them. And that because of this, "we have the mind of Christ":

I Corinthians 2: 6  However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. ⁷ But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, ⁸ which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ But as it is written:

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,

 Nor have entered into the heart of man

 The things which God has prepared for those who love Him." [Isaiah 64:4]

¹⁰ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. ¹¹For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. ¹² Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. ¹³ These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. ¹⁴ But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. ¹⁵ But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. ¹⁶ For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" [Isaiah 40:13] But we have the mind of Christ. (NKJV)

Paul, the alleged author of the book of Ephesians, claimed that the Spirit was making revelations to God's holy apostles, of which he claimed he was one, and to God's holy prophets and that he was conveying the message in writing:

Ephesians 3:1  For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for you Gentiles-- 2 if indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, 3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, 4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), 5 which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: (NKJV)

The author of II Timothy claimed all scripture was given by inspiration of God, i.e., literally, God-breathed (referring specifically to the Old Testament scripture, but by logical necessity the New Testament scripture was to be treated the same because the New Testament writers claimed they were speaking and writing the very words of God):

II Timothy 3:16  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.(NKJV)

The following verses from the book of Revelation show how serious the author claims God is about anyone adding or subtracting even one word from this book:

Rev. 22:18  I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; 19 and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book. (NASB)

Farrell Till further notes that if the Bible is the verbally inspired word of God, then it would logically follow that it would be inerrant:

Why would total inerrancy have to be a logical necessity or consequence of verbal inspiration? Well, first of all, an entity that is omniscient would know everything that it is possible to know in matters of science, history, geography, chronology, etc., etc., etc. If this omniscient entity should also be omnipotent, then he would be able to do anything that is logically possible to do. So if an omniscient, omnipotent deity verbally inspired the writing of a text, it would have to be completely inerrant unless deception was a characteristic of the omniscient, omnipotent deity who verbally inspired it. In the case of the biblical god Yahweh, the Bible claims that truth and honesty are features of his nature. If an omniscient, omnipotent deity should verbally inspire an errant text, the errors would have to be intentional, because the inspirer is omniscient (so he would have to know that he was guiding the writers to put errors into the text), and the inspirer is omnipotent (so he would have the ability to keep the errors out of the text). Therefore, if errors are in a text that was verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity, they would have to be there because of an intentional act to deceive or mislead. However, the Bible god is allegedly "omnigood," which would exclude dishonesty and deception from his nature. There is only one conclusion that all of this could lead to: If the Bible was verbally inspired but contains errors, then the entity who inspired it was not omniscient or not omnipotent or not omnigood. It would be logically impossible for the verbal inspirer of an errant document to have all three characteristics. (From Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part One. See link below.)

It is plain to see that the Bible does not claim that God only inspired its writers in the sense of stimulating creative thought in the way a poet might be inspired by a beautiful landscape, or that God only inspired the "ideas" to its authors and left the authors to choose the words, or that the Bible merely contains the word of God. If any of these lesser degrees of inspiration were true it would mean that God would be bringing his declared important message of salvation to man in the form of an untrustworthy, unreliable text. And it would make liars out of the Bible writers who claimed they were writing the very words of God.

If the Bible's authors' claim is true it must also be true that the Bible text is inerrant, because of the omni characteristics they claim Yahweh has. If the Bible is not inerrant then Yahweh is not the omni-God that the Bible and fundamentalist Christians claim him to be, and the Bible is not the verbally inspired word of God. Which would mean that the alleged omni-God Yahweh doesn't exist and the Bible is nothing more than a religious book written by fallible men.

(For further reading see Farrell Till's Traditional Biblical Inerrancy Part One, Part Two, Part Three).

Church-of-Christ preacher Curtis Cates on what is at stake:

The situation is this--remove the inerrant, supernatural Book, and there is absolutely no substance to the claims of Christianity; it is but another world religion without portfolio, without credentials! (The First Annual Gulf Coast Lectures, Church of Christ, Portland, Texas, 1993, pp 34-35. See full quote in Farrell Till's Traditional Bible Inerrancy, Part One--Emphasis added by Farrell Till. See link above.)

If the claim of inerrancy cannot be proven to be true or if the Bible can be shown to contain at least one error then it logically follows that the Bible is not the verbally inspired word of God, and as Church-of-Christ preacher Curtis Cates says above, "there is absolutely no substance to the claims of Christianity."