Supernatural Claims

Farrell Till responds to a believer in biblical supernatural claims (from the Errancy discussion list):

I accept historical records for which there is no good reason to think that they are inaccurate. When historical records claim the occurrence of the supernatural, I do not accept the claims, because it is more reasonable to believe that the records have exaggerated or lied or passed along unconfirmed tradition or rumors than that these occurrences actually happened.

Now I predict that this is exactly what you do EXCEPT for supernatural claims recorded in the Bible. Tell me if you accept the Mormon claim, for which firsthand testimony exists, that an angel delivered to Joseph Smith golden plates on which the Book of Mormon had been transcribed in "reformed" Egyptian characters. Now if you reject this claim, please tell me why you accept the NT claim, for which there is NO firsthand testimony, that an angel came down and rolled the stone away from the tomb of Jesus.

Farrell Till

The Absence Of Evidence (1)

Farrell Till responds to inerrantist Dave Miller's article in the Skeptical Review:

I commend Mr. Miller for an excellent definition of the Bible inerrancy doctrine and perhaps an even better explanation of the importance of the doctrine to Christianity. Maybe it is a carry-over from my own fundamentalist background, but I have a much deeper admiration for Christians who believe in a divinely inspired inerrant Bible than those who believe in a divinely inspired errant Bible. To the latter, I can only repeat what Mr. Miller said in the foregoing article: "If the Holy Spirit is responsible for what the biblical writers wrote, and if the Bible contains errors in historical details, then the Holy Spirit is the author of error" (p. 2). As Mr. Miller effectively argued, for the Bible to be authoritative, it must be inerrant; otherwise, man is left with an impractical moral guide, for what good is a moral guide that is blemished with errors? If the Bible says X, and one can establish that X is an untruth, then how can he trust anything else it says? 

Mr. Miller may have been on track in recognizing the absolute necessity of an inerrant, "trustworthy" revelation in order to give credibility and authority to a religious system, but he wandered far afield in his attempt to prove that the Bible provides Christianity with such a revelation. An entire section of his article was devoted to a discussion of "the biblical claim for inerrancy," but I have to disagree with his contention that the Bible claims inerrancy, because it doesn't. Every scripture that Miller cited in this section concerned either promises to send the Holy Spirit to guide the disciples in what they should say or claims that the scriptures were inspired of God or that prophets had spoken as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. However, to say that the Holy Spirit was sent to guide men in what to say or that men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit is not to say that whatever these men said or wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit was inerrant. To arrive at the doctrine of inerrancy, one must go through the logical process that Miller took us through in his article. A basic premise of this process is that if the Holy Spirit is omniscient and omnipotent, then any document that he verbally inspired would have to be inerrant, because an omniscient, omnipotent deity would be incapable of error.

I would agree with Miller's logic if he could prove three things: (1) an entity known as the Holy Spirit actually exists, (2) this entity known as the Holy Spirit is both omniscient and omnipotent, and (3) this Holy Spirit verbally inspired all of the writers of the Bible in everything that they wrote. Unfortunately for Miller's confidence in Bible inerrancy, these are all very big ifs, none of which he could actually prove if his life depended on it. This underscores the major problem in the Bible inerrancy doctrine: it is based on unprovable assumptions. Any belief founded on assumptions is worthless.

Even if we grant Mr. Miller the first two of his assumptions, he would still have a very high hurdle to clear in the third one. That hurdle, of course, would be to establish the truth of the biblical claim that its writers were inspired by the Holy Spirit. A claim is only a claim and must therefore be examined before its truth can be confirmed. Mr. Miller can never prove the truth of the biblical claim of divine inspiration. Claims of divinely inspired books are almost a dime a dozen. The Book of Mormon claims to be a "latter day" revelation from God; the Avesta claims that it was divinely inspired; the Koran claims that it was revealed to man by the angel Gabriel. So what evidence can Miller give us to prove that we should accept the biblical claim of inspiration over all the many others? Christian apologists have tried to give us such proof, but Miller made no attempt to do so in his article. Like so many Bible fundamentalists, he just made the claim and expected his readers to accept it. In the publication in which his article originally appeared, he could get away with this, because the paper is aimed at a predominantly fundamentalist audience. However, more rational readers, which we believe The Skeptical Review has, will insist on much more than what Mr. Miller gave them in the reprint of his article.

Dedication Of This Blog

The Bible claims to be the inspired word of God. But is it? The goal of this blog is to critically examine the Bible and its extraordinary claims. We attempt to look at these claims through the clear light of reason not through the irrational fog of wanting to believe and only looking for reasons to believe.

With these thoughts in mind, I am proud to announce the dedication of this blog to the memory of the late Farrell Till (1933-2012). Till was a Church-of-Christ preacher who realized he could no longer preach what he finally had to admit were unverifiable ancient superstitions. Till knew the Bible better than most Christians and with impeccable logic, and a very clear and understandable writing style, relentlessly showed the Bible to be the uninspired book that reason proved it had to be. It is my firm belief that he was in a class by himself in his abilities in combating the superstition that is Christianity. I hope to save for posterity many of his key articles and comments that he had with Christian apologists especially on now defunct internet discussion lists.

Kenneth W. Hawthorne

A Better Way To Evaluate Miracle Claims

From the Errancy discussion list May, 1998:

TILL

[The Bible] is filled with miracle claims, some of which were such that had they actually occurred, independent, disinterested corroboration of them would have been left by the contemporaries of those to whom these events happened. But in all of the information ever found that corroborates biblical records, NONE of it corroborates any of the extraordinary information claimed in the Bible. Only extrabiblical confirmation of the very plain and ordinary claims of the Bible has ever been found. Strange indeed!

M.BELL

And of course in F.Till's mind strange equates with false.

TILL

No, not at all.  I think it strange that people who live in enlightened times could read the nonsense in the Bible written by people who lived in prescientific, superstitious times and believe that it all actually happened, yet it certainly isn't false that there are people who have this belief.  

I think this would be a better way to state what is in my mind on this matter: If it is more unlikely that the hundreds of miraculous events claimed in the Bible could have gone unnoticed by independent, disinterested parties than it is likely that the events actually happened, then it is reasonable to doubt the historicity of the completely biased claims that such events happened.

Farrell Till

Questions About Herod's Slaughter Of The Innocents

Farrell Till asks some interesting questions concerning Herod's slaughter of the the male children 2 years old and under in Bethlehem. See the context of this alleged massacre in Matthew 2 (from the Errancy discussion list October, 1997):

[W]hat kind of omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity would cause his son to be born in a place and circumstances that would cause children to be massacred, and why would such a deity take special efforts to see that his son, who is omni-everything himself and therefore eternal, was saved from the massacre but leave the other male children to be killed? Didn't any of their parents merit dreams in which an angel warned them to take children and flee? 

A High Priest Of The Good Things To Come?

This is my reply to an article in a Church of Christ bulletin from 2012. Continuing his policy toward the omni God/eternal hell problem (even until now, 2014), the preacher never attempted an answer to my reply. My comments are in blue:

In eternity past, knowing man would sin, God planned to reconcile man to Himself (that is, bind man anew to Himself in a covenant relationship) in Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God. (2 Tim. 1:8-10)

He knew: 1) man would sin; 2) all men would sin, Romans 3:23; 3) the vast majority would be lost, Mt 7:13-14; 4) therefore, that this "[plan] to reconcile man to himself" would be an utter failure. Yet he created man anyway, with this grotesquely flawed plan though it was not necessary that he do so (he is perfect and doesn't need anything from man, Acts 17:25). He allegedly loves man (as you know, a Bible writer claims that Yahweh is "...not willing that any should perish...", 2 Peter 3:9 NKJV), thus since he is allegedly omnipotent he could have (among other possible humane options) created man truly in his image, with free will and the inability to sin. So that his will that no man go to an eternal hell would have been a reality. And because of his sovereignty, who or what would have told him that he couldn't create man in this way? Please explain how it is that you can continue to believe this god exists with the knowledge of this clear contradiction.

Yahweh's "Plan Of Salvation"

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Here is an excerpt from the local Church-of-Christ preacher's weekly bulletin--showing an amazing absence of any critical thought:
 

3. He [Yahweh] does not know a better plan of salvation

            than His. 

              a.  He didn't spare His Son (Rom. 8:32).

              b.  He had eternity past to plan it (Eph. 3:8-11; 

                          2 Tim. 1:8-9; Titus 1:1-2).

              c.  If He knew a better plan, He would have used it.

So we have an all-powerful, all-compassionate all-loving, full of mercy, complete and perfect Father, Son and Holy Spirit in eternity past. None of the three need anything. There is nothing that they have to do. Only they exist. The Father has the idea that he might do some creating. He, of course doesn't have to create--he doesn't have to do anything. There is no outside force twisting his arm to create man. There is nothing forcing him to create man or create a particular kind of man--he's the sovereign God!

In his alleged ultimate wisdom, he decides to create a human race who has the ability to displease him (he calls it sin). This, despite the fact that he knows he's a bit testy and gets offended at the drop of a...well, at the drop of anything. Now he is a bit of a braggart. He likes to claim that, as we've already noted: he's all-powerful, all-compassionate, all-loving, full of mercy, sovereign, and complete and perfect. And one that I left out, he's also all-knowing. Now here is where it gets a little tricky. He decides to create what he knows is a very flawed humanity.  (Imperfection coming from perfection? yeah, I know what you're thinking) He knows that all--that's right all will displease him (sin). For some reason known only to this matchless, all-loving, all-compassionate, all-powerful, sovereign, all-knowing God who is full, absolutely full, unimaginably full of mercy--he has (?) to create what he calls an eternal hell for all of these beloved humans who die in a state of being unpleasing to this wonderful God.
 

But, he has a plan to rescue these flawed, sin-prone wretches who are bound for his eternal hell. (You know, you just knew the all-loving, all-compassionate, full of mercy part would kick in!) Not to worry, humanity will not have to suffer forever in the flames of hell! He will send the Son to earth to save man. The Son will have to suffer a few hours of pain on earth and then have his spirit separate from his body and return right back to where he was in all his blissful completeness--really not much to ask of the Son to avert the eternal suffering of multiplied billions of humanity--apples and oranges really. But, alas, this "plan of salvation" that he had all eternity past to come up with is a big flop! (Matt 7:13-14). Oh well, these billions of lost souls can take consolation in the fact that this was the best he could do--because [I]f He knew a better plan, He would have used it."

Omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, perfect and complete, omniwise, sovereign? And preachers keep on preaching this old, old story! How sad.