Bible God Wants Everyone Saved?

The "inerrant" Bible is contradictory on the very important matter of whether its god wants everyone saved or not. Farrell Till responds to a Christian in the May-June, 2002,  mailbag section of *The Skeptical Review* concerning this confusing biblical issue:

Editor’s note: Oh, boy, just what I need-another Christian praying for the salvation of my soul. In the Spring 1995 issue of TSR, Judith Hayes exposed the absurdity of the belief in the efficacy of prayer, so I have sent a reprinted copy of this issue to Mr. England for his consideration. Somewhere else in the back issues of TSR is a logical argument that I presented to show the folly of the notion that praying for the salvation of another person will bring the desired results. The argument is simple enough that I'm going to present it here rather than search through the archives to find the article.

Showing that prayer for the salvation of others is illogical, all one needs to do is look at what the New Testament teaches about prayer and then apply common sense to it. First John 5:14-15 says, "And this is the boldness we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him." If Mr. England is praying for the salvation of my soul--as hundreds before him have told me they are doing--the only reason I won’t be saved would have to be that my salvation either is not the will of God or else Mr. England doesn’t believe in what he is praying for, because Jesus promised elsewhere in the New Testament that whatever one prays for believing it will happen he will receive it: "Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive" (Matt. 21: 21-22). I’m not trying to be facetious about Mr. England’s incarceration, but I have to wonder why, if he really believes what Jesus said here, he doesn’t pray for the prison doors to swing open (as they sometimes did in biblical times) so that he can walk out a free man. Perhaps he doesn’t believe that it would happen if he did pray for this, so in that case the fault would lie in his lack of faith. If he isn’t willing to accept that conclusion, then about the only alternative left to him is to accept that what the Bible teaches about prayer isn’t necessarily true.

What Men With David?

From the Topica II Errancy discussion list, February 22,  2002:

DAVE G. What ultimately led Matt Bell to concede the Bible wasn't  inerrant? TILL He made the announcement after I posted an article that showed error in Mark 2:25, where Jesus allegedly said that David had men with him when he went into the house of God and ate the showbread. DAVE G. What is the OT cross-reference?

TILL
First Samuel 21:1-10, but my affirmative arguments involved analyzing
chapters 20, 21, and 22 to show that no men were with David until he
reached the cave of Adullam, where he was joined by men loyal to him.

Farrell Till

Logistical Improbabilities in the Wilderness-Wandering Tales-When Nature Called

By Farrell Till 
We have seen some of the logistical problems that would have been involved in setting up encampments for 2.5 to 3 million people and carrying out the sacrificial ceremonies that the Levitical law required. Probably few inerrantists have ever considered a wilderness problem that all densely populated areas must solve, and that is the problem of human-waste disposal. The following passage made some stipulations in this regard that would have posed some special hardships on the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings.

Deuteronomy 23:12 You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go. 13 With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement. 14 Because Yahweh your God travels along with your camp, to save you and to hand over your enemies to you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.

This passage clearly indicates that latrines were not allowed inside the encampment, and so when nature called, one was required to go outside of the 9-square-mile camp to attend to it. He/she was to take along a "trowel" (paddle in some translations) to dig a hole in which to bury the excrement. It is hard to imagine how large this "designated" area would have had to have been to accommodate 2.5 million people digging their individual holes to attend to their business. If each hole were only 6 inches by 6 inches, a "designated area" of 625,000 square feet or 69,444 square yards would be needed to provide a hole for each person. Since there are 4,840 square yards in an acre, this "designated area" would have had to have been 14.35 acres in size to accommodate each person's going "outside the camp" with his/her trowel just once per day.

In Yahweh's inscrutable wisdom that led him to choose this method of waste disposal rather than ordering the construction of pit latrines, special problems would have necessarily ensued. In a time, for example, when there was no Imodium A-D, diarrhea would have seriously complicated the problems. It's hard to imagine how 2.5 million people trekking throughout the day to this "designated area" could have attended to their needs without at times uncovering the holes that others had used. This must have caused many unpleasant moments. Yahweh may, of course, have anticipated this problem and instructed Moses to make the designated area much larger than 14.35 acres. Indeed, this would surely have been necessary, since the 14.35 acres would have provided for only one 6-inch by 6-inch hole per person per day. Since the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and since Numbers 33 listed only 41 encampments for them, they would have averaged spending almost a year at each camp site. Unless a big chunk of land outside these camps was set aside as the "designated area," there would have been a lot of unpleasant digging experiences.

Other than that is the problem that would have confronted those who felt nature calling during the night. Those in the middle of the encampments would have had to trek at least 1.5 miles just to reach the "designated area." Men with prostrate problems surely suffered from sleep deprivation but would have otherwise been in good physical condition from the exercise they got from walking back and forth to the "designated area." Inerrantists will no doubt pooh-pooh (pun intended) this posting, but I didn't put Deuteronomy 23:12-14 in the Bible; I have merely critically analyzed what it says and found that it presents another problem of logistics that biblicists need to explain if they expect rational people to believe that their Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of an omniscient, omnipotent deity.

Some inerrantists will claim that this requirement concerning waste disposal applied only to the Israelite army when it was engaged in campaigns against the enemy, because verses 9-11 say, "When you are encamped against your enemies you shall guard against any impropriety. If one of you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp; he must not come within the camp. When evening comes, he shall wash himself with water, and when the sun has set, he may come back into the camp."

This is more of a quibble than an argument, because when the entire 23rd chapter is read, it should be apparent that the commandments it contains were intended to apply to all Israelites and not just to the soldiers. I'm sure that even inerrantists would not argue, for example, that a man with crushed testicles or an amputated penis (v:1) should be allowed into the assembly as long as he wasn't a soldier. Did the commandment against sodomites (v:17) apply only to soldiers? Could an Israelite lend money for interest as long as he wasn't a soldier (v:19)?

Leviticus 26:11-12 states that Yahweh had set his tabernacle among the Israelites and walked among them. The tabernacle was set up in the center of the general encampment of the Israelites (Num. 3), so if Yahweh walked among the Israelites where the tabernacle was, that would have to mean that he walked in the general encampment of the Israelites. If he didn't want to be repelled by the sight of excrement in an encampment of soldiers, why would he feel any differently about encountering it in the general encampment? The statement in Leviticus 26:11-12, by the way, is in a larger context that speaks of Yahweh's being with the Israelites to drive their enemies out of the land. In other words the language here is very similar to Deuteronomy 23:14, which speaks of Yahweh walking "in the midst of the camp."

At any rate, very little is solved by quibbling that the policy on waste disposal applied only to soldiers and not to the Israelites in general, because the Israelite army numbered 600,000, so if the calculations above are divided by four in order to limit this commandment just to the army, the logistical problems would still exist. Can you imagine an army of 600,000 that did not provide latrine facilities within its camp, but every soldier was required to trek without the camp?  Go to the last article in the series.

Who's Really Looking At The "Narrow View"?

Farrell Till takes a biblical apologist to school. From TSR, 1998: March/April:

By Farrell Till 

After what amounted to a sermon more than an attempt to address the inconsistency of the Bible on the issue of whether God punished the innocent for the "sins" of their fathers, Dr. Righter accused me of looking only at the "narrow view and not the 'larger picture,'" but no view of the Bible could be any narrower than the one he reflected in his article. That view is that regardless of how inconsistent, contradictory, absurd, or incomprehensible the Bible may appear in places, it is nevertheless the inspired word of God, and so any textual problems in it have to be just apparent. Dr. Righter has proposed to explain the sins-of-the-fathers problem by what he calls the "larger picture," but as we will see, the only thing larger than the "picture" he speaks about is his naivety in accepting a thoroughly discredited view of the Bible. That the Bible is not the "inerrant word of God" has been demonstrated so convincingly that only diehard fundamentalists like Roger Hutchinson, Dr. James Price, and now Dr. Righter continue to cling to the view. Biblical inerrancy is an outdated view of the Bible that survives in fundamentalist Bible colleges and churches pastored by the products of these colleges, but it is no longer taught in responsible seminaries or believed by scholars who put academic integrity above religious bias.

Introducing A Christian To Rational Thought

Farrell Till introduces a Christian to rational thought. From the Errancy Discussion List, 8-9-99:

TILL
Well, okay, Eric, let me revise the answer that I gave to your question, because I can now see that your answer is much better than mine.  In order for me to believe that the Bible is the word of God, God himself would have to tell me that it is. So all he has to do is appear in a POOF here in my office, and then he'll have me on your side. When can I expect this to happen?

(DAVE 8/7)
Does this mean that for you to accept that anything exists it must appear in your office? (POOF). With that kind of criteria you: (a) don't accept that very much exists or (b) you have faith in an awful lot.

TILL
What a stupidly false analogy. I have never seen Tokyo, Japan, but I have seen countless cities and towns, and I have known people who have been to Tokyo and tell me that it is there. Hence, there is nothing irrational about thinking that Tokyo is a real city.

(DAVE 8/8)
You rely on eyewitness accounts for your beliefs and except them as fact (as well as accepting the reliability of the witnesses). Does this mean that you accept everything you are told just because you have seen a similar occurrence or phenomenon?

TILL
Certainly not. There are some people I wouldn't believe if they told me the sun rises in the east. You're simply setting up a straw man with another false analogy in which you are trying to compare the acceptance of testimony to the commonplace and ordinary with the acceptance of testimony to the extraordinary. Try to get this through your thick skull, Dave. There is a difference in accepting the report that John Doe died and in accepting the claim that he later returned from the dead. When a claim is entirely contrary to reality as one knows it to be from his lifetime of experiences, then he is being entirely reasonable to reject the claim. That is entirely different from believing Jane Doe when she tells me that she saw a car wreck on her way to Peoria this morning. I have also seen car wrecks on the way to Peoria, so it is reasonable to accept her claim as truth. If she is lying about it, so what? That wouldn't be the first time that I believed a lie that could easily have been the truth. If, however, I believe my former student, whom I think I have mentioned on this list, who claims that she is routinely visited by alien beings and has an alien living inside her body to guide and direct her in her crusade to enlighten the public about alien visitations to earth, then I will deserve every bit of ridicule that is heaped onto me for being so gullible.

The Moabite Stone

From Alt.Bible.Errancy, 2-24-02:

GEISIK Greetings all. Traffic is slow so I will not feel too guilty asking this. It appears that there are many similarities between the Moabite god Kemosh and the god of the bible YHWH. I will not detail them here, but would like to ask if anyone has suggested references to pursue this amazing parallel.

TILL
Yes, read the inscription on the Moabite Stone. It purported to be a message from King Mesha, the Moabite king mentioned in 2 Kings 3:4-27. If the name Yahweh were substituted for Chemosh, it would read like a page out of the OT.

Farrell Till 

[Here is a link to information about The Moabite Stone, including the text of inscription, kwh]

The Slave Is His Money?

And people actually believe this Yahweh  beast is God. Amazing. From the Errancy Discussion List, 8-4-99 (comments welcome):

Gaudreau:
Ex. 2-13 Thou shalt not kill.

Ex. 21:20 And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a
rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21
Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be
punished: for he is his money. (KJV)

If you beat a slave to death and he/she dies straight away,
you're punished. But if it takes the slave one or two days to
die, you get away scott free. Now there is a fine example of the
absolute morality of the Bible, the high moral road Xians keep
telling us about. Slaves are MONEY and they can be beaten to
death, just as long as it takes them a lot of time to die. God
certainly does move in a mysterious way.

TILL
Yeah, if the slave dies right away, the slave owner was punished, but if the poor slave lingered in pain a day or two and then died, the slave owner was not punished. What can I say except that this sounds just like something this god Yahweh would have decreed?

Farrell Till