Looking For The Truth About The Bible

"The interest I have in believing a thing is not proof of the existence of that thing." Voltaire

"A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be." Albert Einstein

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne

If you haven't already guessed, the "it" in the blog title is the Bible. I named this blog after the 1926 classic by Joseph Wheless, Is It God's Word?, and I'm afraid most Christians have not done a real investigation into the answer to this question.

I was indoctrinated from an early age and always just accepted that the answer was yes, and as I got older I only looked for evidence to confirm what I already believed. Uncritical acceptance of the Bible as the verbally inspired word of God was strongly encouraged, and I accepted it as true doing a nominal rather than an actual investigation of the claim. Any of this sound familiar?

The Faith Of The Invisible Pink Unicorns

“Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of awesome mystical power. We know this because they manage to be invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.”
- Steve Eley 

What Have These Sheep Done?

This article from *The Skeptical Review* , 1999 / July-August, is simply devastating to the biblical inerrancy claim. Comments are welcome:

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.

Extraordinary Evidence

Farrell Till comments on a debate that he had with 
Michael Horner concerning extraordinary claims requiring 
extraordinary evidence. From the Errancy Discussion list 
18 Oct., 1995:

...you will remember that Horner would not agree that any of the nonbiblical miracles that I questioned him about had actually happened. He kept saying, "I would have to research that." Finally, you may recall, he simply said, "No," when I asked him if he could think of a single miracle not recorded in the Bible that he believed happened. So even though he chided me for saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof," it turned out that he himself apparently accepts this principle as long as it is not an extraordinary claim that the Bible makes.

How, for example, could Horner possibly "research" to see if he can believe that a heifer being led to the temple altar in Jerusalem gave birth to a lamb or that a light glowed around the altar in the middle of the night so brightly as to give the appearance of daylight? Josephus made both extraordinary claims, along with others, but the only evidence for them is the mere fact that Josephus said that they happened. He, of course, *said* that others saw them, but I doubt if Horner would accept this, although he thinks it is "good" evidence when Paul said that Jesus appeared to 500 brethren at once. He will argue that Paul wouldn't have said this if it weren't so because people could have asked the 500 and caught him lying if the claim had not really been true. How exactly one could have gone about questioning 500 anonymous witnesses is a mystery, but, anyway, one could make the same argument about the claims of Josephus. If these miracles had not really happened, would he have said that people had seen them at a time when these people were still alive and could have been questioned?

My point is that what Horner et al consider "good" evidence in terms of "proving" the resurrection, they won't consider good evidence as they "research" the claims of Josephus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and others to decide if their miracle claims should be believed. I think that the criterion that I stated in the debate is valid: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And I have kicked myself a thousand times for not nailing Horner to the wall when he came at me with his counterargument that said, in effect, that my criterion makes it impossible to prove a miracle ever happened, because I was demanding miraculous proof that the miracle had happened. In other words, his admission that providing miraculous proof that a miracle had happened is impossible was an admission that miracles don't happen and so no such evidence would be possible. If no such evidence is possible because miracles just don't happen, then why is it logical to argue that the original miracle for which the evidence is being demanded had happened? His own argument would have backfired in his face if I had recognized the implications of it soon enough, but that is one of the hazards of public debating. The debater always thinks of things later that he should have said.

I really think that it is not at all unreasonable to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. An extraordinary claim doesn't necessarily have to be a miracle claim, but if it is, I think it is reasonable to argue that such a claim can never be proven. That claim is justified by the simple fact that the past is inaccessible. If a miracle ever did happen, how could one possibly prove it because it would have happened in a past that is inaccessible to the present?

F. Till

Was The Amalekite Massacre A Moral Atrocity?

It's just hard for me to believe that the average Christian sitting in a pew on Sunday morning knows anything about the following little story in the Old Testament. At least I hope not. How could they know about such and still believe their god, Yahweh, is a God of love--and actually continue to worship such an animal? From *The Skeptical Review*, 1994 / January-February:

by Farrell Till

The story of the Israelite massacre of the Amalekite nation is recorded in 1 Samuel 15 . The facts of the case, as claimed in this chapter, are these: Yahweh sent the prophet Samuel to command Saul, the first king of Israel, to "go and smite Amalek" and to " utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not" (v:3 ); the command explicitly stated that Saul was to kill "both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" (same verse). According to the story, Saul took "two hundred thousand footmen and ten thousand men of Judah" (v:4 ) against the Amalekites and "utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword" (v:7 ), except for Agag their king, whom he kept alive to take back as a prisoner. This act of mercy, of course, was a clear violation of Yahweh's instructions, which were to kill everyone and spare no one. In addition to this act of disobedience, Saul also kept alive "the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them" (v:9 ).

No Contradictions In The Bible?

From Alt.Bible.Errancy, August 2, 1998:

"Paul Russell" <prussell@...> wrote:
I just joined the news group and I see where people 
are so uninformed about the word of GOD. The bible 
never counterdicts itself, it's just you don't understand 
it.

CREA
OK, Paul, if "[t]he bible never counterdicts [sic] itself", as 
you assert, would you please be so kind as to tell us where 
King Josiah died?

At 2 Kings 23:29-30, we are told that he died at 
Megiddo and he was carried from there DEAD in a 
chariot to Jerusalem (where he was buried), but over 
at 2 Chronicles 35:23-24, we are told instead that he 
was grievously wounded at Megiddo and carried ALIVE 
from there in a chariot to Jerusalem, where he died 
and was buried. This appears to be a contradiction to 
this poor old country-boy...

How Did David Kill Goliath?

Did David kill the giant, Goliath, with a sling 
and stone or with a sword? From the Topica Discussion list, 8 Feb. 2002:

Re: David and Goliath revisited Feb 08, 2002 

GEISIK
Greetings all.

(NRSV)
1 Samuel 17
49 David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, 
and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into 
his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground.
50 So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone,
striking down the Philistine and killing him; there was no sword in
David's hand.

GEISIK
Pretty clear, right? The standard yarn about David killing him with 
the stone. Well, perhaps Goliath was resurrected because we next 
read:

(NRSV)
1 Samuel 17:51 Then David ran and stood over the Philistine; 
he grasped his sword, drew it out of its sheath, and killed him; 
then he cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that 
their champion was dead, they fled.

TILL
The OT is filled with examples of vague pronoun-antecedent 
references, and this could be one of them. The sentence that 
seems to say that David had a sword, which he drew to kill 
Goliath, could have meant this: "He [David] grasped his 
[Goliath's] sword, drew it out of its sheath, and killed him."

If this is what the writer meant, it would still be a mistake in 
my opinion, because I would think that a writer inspired by 
an omniscient, omnipotent deity should have been able to 
write with more clarity than that.

GEISIK
In any case, it does not answer my questions. Exactly how 
did David kill Goliath, stone or sword. 

TILL
Well, you should know that if "dead" didn't always mean dead, 
then "kill" wouldn't always mean kill.

Farrell Till