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.

 

 

What Would It Take?

What would it take for a skeptic to believe in Yahweh, the god of the Bible? I know the following would do it for me. So, is it Yahweh's will that I perish or not, 2 Peter 3:9? I'm ready to believe and repent. (From the Errancy discussion list, January 2, 2007):   SPENCER-DAVIS God could move stars around in the galaxy to create a new constellation that plainly spelled out "JESUS IS LORD", visible throughout the northern hemisphere, say. If God did that, which sceptic would dare to say that there was a naturalistic explanation? I'm sure I could think of a great many miracles that would be accepted by every sceptic on the planet (even Farrell!) as evidence of God's existence. Couldn't you?

 

TILL
I could. I have lived in the same house for 40 years on the edge of town. There is an empty field of about 30 acres behind my house, which is planted each year in corn or soybeans. If I woke up one morning and found all of this acreage filled with skyscrapers 40 to 100 stories high and clouds in the sky shaped to spell,"God did this," I think that would be pretty compelling evidence that a miracle had happened during the night, because common sense would tell me that all of these buildings could not have been put up overnight by natural means. An even better miracle would be if the skyscrapers suddenly appeared out of nothing while I was standing in my back yard looking over the empty field.

Farrell Till



David Killed Goliath Twice?

1 Samuel 17:49-51

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁴⁹ Then David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone; and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead, so that the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the earth. ⁵⁰ So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in the hand of David. ⁵¹ Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him, and cut off his head with it. And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

1 Samuel 17:49-51

English Standard Version (ESV)

⁴⁹ And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground.
⁵⁰ So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David. ⁵¹ Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

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"