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Errors and Contradictions in the Bible
- 01/14/08
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This is the third and final article in this short series dealing with inerrancy and with the Bible’s supposed errors and contradictions. In the last article we defined what inerrancy is not and then attempted to adequately define the term. I suggested the following definition: The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact. Today we will look at some common objections to this doctrine as well as some problems that may arise if we deny it. Here are links to the first two articles: Are There Errors in the Bible? and What Does “Inerrant” Mean?
Problems With Denying Inerrancy
We turn first to problems that may arise when we tacitly or expressly deny inerrancy.
First, if we deny inerrancy, we make God a liar. If there are errors in the original manuscripts, manuscripts that testify they were breathed out by God, one of two things must be true: either God purposely lied or he mistakenly lied. Either way this would indicate that God is capable of making or of producing errors. Needless to say, this would destroy our ability to trust any of God’s revelation and cause us to doubt God Himself.
Second, if we deny inerrancy we lose trust in God. If there are errors in Scripture, even if in the smallest detail, and these were placed there intentionally by God, how are we to maintain trust that He did not lie in other matters? When we lose trust in the Scriptures, we lose trust in God Himself and we may consequently lose our desire to be obedient to Him.
Third, if we deny the clear testimony of Scripture that it is inerrant, we make our minds a higher standard of truth than the Bible. At the outset of this series I indicated a concern I felt towards those who deny inerrancy is when they indicate that the doctrine does not “feel right.” But nowhere does the Bible appeal to our feelings or our reason for its authority or inerrancy. We must submit to the Word, for it will not submit to us. We must give to the Bible the place it claims for itself. We cannot stand in judgment over it.
Fourth, if we deny inerrancy, and indicate that small details are incorrect, we cannot consistently argue that all the doctrine the Bible contains is correct. Admitting error in even the smallest historical detail is only the thin edge of the wedge, for we then allow the possibility that there may be error in doctrine as well. And when we allow this possibility, the Christian faith soon crumbles into a mess of subjectivity and personal preference.
So inerrancy is not an optional doctrine—one we can take or leave. Rather, it is a doctrine at the very heart of the faith and without it we impoverish our faith and destroy our ability to trust and honor God.
Objections
There are many objections that are commonly raised against inerrancy. For the sake of brevity I will address only the most common objections, and the ones I have encountered in recent discussions on this topic.
We Do Not Have The Original Manuscripts - The first objection has to do with the transmission of Scripture. Many people argue that since we no longer possess any of the original manuscripts, it is irresponsible to speak of inerrancy. What is the purpose in affirming an important doctrine based on documents we no longer have? I answered this, in part, in the first article of this series, when I quoted John MacArthur. “We possess a wealth of biblical manuscripts in the original languages of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. John MacArthur writes, “With this wealth of biblical manuscripts in the original languages and with the disciplined activity of textual critics to establish with almost perfect accuracy the content of the autographs, any errors which have been introduced and/or perpetuated by the thousands of translations over the centuries can be identified and corrected by comparing the translation or copy with the reassembled original. By this providential means, God has made good His promise to preserve the Scriptures. We can rest assured that there are translations available today which indeed are worthy of the title, The Word of God.” We can be certain that we have accurate copies of over 99% of the inerrant words as they were first transcribed. When we focus on the less than 1% of the text that contains errors, we must realize that these are human errors and that God is in no way responsible for them. The fact that there are some errors in Scripture as we have it today, does not negate inerrancy which speaks only of the original documents. The Bible as we have it today is worth of our confidence.
Inerrancy is a Poor Term - Generally people who make this objection believe that inerrancy is too strong a term. They believe that such a word demands a type of scientific precision. And furthermore, they may claim that this term is not used in the Bible and was unknown through much of the history of the church.
To the first objection, I point again to the definition of inerrancy, and that it refers to truthfulness and not precision. The Bible claims to be perfectly true, but nowhere does it claim to contain perfect precision. As we saw in the second article, the Bible may round numbers, speak in human terms and contain odd grammatical constructions and still be inerrant. In response to the second objection I would point to any number of terms we use that are foreign to Scripture. The word “Trinity” does not appear within the pages of Scripture, yet the doctrine of the Trinity is clearly affirmed in the Bible and the term is very useful in summarizing the doctrines of the persons of the Godhead. The doctrine of inerrancy is taught within the pages of the Bible as clearly as if the word “inerrancy” was used.
Proving Inerrancy is a Circular Argument - The fourth objection is that we can only prove Scripture’s inerrancy by circular argumentation. After all, we say that the Bible is inerrant because the Bible tells us it is inerrant. This poses a problem for some. In Reason to Believe R.C. Sproul addresses circular argumentation in proving the Bible’s infallibility and we can extend this line of reasoning to inerrancy. Consider the following premises and the subsequent conclusion:
- Premise A—The Bible is a basically reliable and trustworthy document.
- Premise B—On the basis of this reliable document we have sufficient evidence to believe confidently that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
- Premise C—Jesus Christ being the Son of God is an inerrant authority.
- Premise D—Jesus Christ teaches that the Bible is more than generally trustworthy; it is the very Word of God.
- Premise E—The word, in that it comes from God, is utterly trustworthy because God is utterly trustworthy.
- Conclusion—On the basis of the inerrant authority of Jesus Christ, the church believes the Bible to be utterly trustworthy; i.e., inerrant.
Where this model of linear reasoning may break down, is that some of what we accept about the Bible we accept by faith. Faith does not render reason invalid, but the Holy Spirit helps us believe in what our sinful, human minds will not accept. Therefore, I do not believe that an unbeliever—one who does not have the Spirit’s help—can accept the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. But this line of reasoning ought to be sufficient for the believer. I trust that all Christians believe in the first premise, as even most non-Christians, who have made the effort, can see that the Bible is basically reliable and trustworthy. But what the unbeliever cannot do is accept that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is thus an inerrant authority.
The Bible is Full of Errors and Contradictions - This is a common objection that has been leveled at the Bible too many times to count. It has been answered just as often. It is the question that motivated me to post this series.
As often as not, this objection is made by people who really have no clear idea of where these errors can be found, as they are merely passing along what they have heard from others. They read a web site with a long list of contradictions and allow that to feed their disgust for the things of God. For those who are honestly seeking information on the alleged contradictions, there is a wealth of resources available to prove that there are no errors or contradictions within the text of the Bible. For example, Answers in Genesis answers many of these objections. So many of the objections can be answered so easily. For example, here is one I have seen on some sites:
[The Bible claims that] one day can last 930 years.
- "And YHWH God commanded the human, 'You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die'" [Genesis 2:16-17]. The original text makes it clear that God is not speaking metaphorically or spiritually. Isn’t it lucky that since death hadn’t been invented yet, the human (“ha’adam,” pronounced “ha ah DAHM”) had no idea what God was talking about! "When Adam had lived one hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years."-- Gen. 5:3-4
This, of course, ignores the obvious—that humans really did die on the day they ate of the fruit. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit they died spiritually and made physical death a horrible reality. They did not drop dead at that very moment, but already, at that very moment, death had begun to stalk them. And their perfect communion with God had been killed. When we see that inerrancy allows for normal human speech and that it relates to truthfulness more than precision, we see that it can easily account for such “errors.”
Many of the alleged errors within the Bible have to do with historical facts. Allow me to provide one example. Only a couple of generations ago, scholars pointed to the Bible’s claim that there was a king of Assyria named Tiglath-Pileser as an obvious error, for archaeological evidence had not proven that any such king existed. But a few years later, archaeologists excavated Tiglath-Pileser’s capital city and found his name carved into bricks which read, “I, Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria…” It is a fact that “the results of sound scholarship have not tended to uncover more and more problems…Rather they have tended to resolve problems and to show that what were once thought to be errors are not errors at all” (James Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace). R.C. Sproul writes, “The Christian has nothing to fear from rigorous historical research. Rather, we have everything to gain” (Reason to Believe, page 27).
Consider the following quote from Dr. William Foxwell Albright. “For much too long a time the course of New Testament scholarship has been dictated by theological, quasitheological, and philosophical presupposition. In far too many cases commentaries on New Testament books have neglected such basic requirements as up-to-date historical and philological analysis of the text itself…The result has often been steadfast refusal to take seriously the findings of archaeological and linguistic research. We believe that there is less and less excuse for the resulting confusion in this latter half of the twentieth century. Closely allied with these presuppositions is the ever-present fog of existentialism, casting ghostly shadows over an already confused landscape. Existentialism as a method of interpreting the New Testament is based upon a whole series of undemonstrable postulates of Platonic, Neo-Platonic, leftwing scholastic, and relativistic origins. So anti-historical is this approach that it fascinates speculative minds which prefer cliches to factual data, and shifting ideology to empirical research and logical demonstrations” (emphasis mine). The Christian has nothing to fear from scholarship, science or archeology.
Truly, in my experience, the vast majority of supposed errors and contradictions fall into the realm of what we saw in “What Inerrancy is Not.” They point to a lack of precision that may be found in ordinary language or in a language that had no capacity to provide verbatim quotes. Those that do not fall into this category, most often simply reflect a misunderstanding of the Bible’s historical context or language. There are some that really are difficult and for which there are no easy answers. But even then, they have been dealt with by scholars and have been answered well.
So how do we answer charges of error and contradiction? First, I think we assure ourselves that the Bible is inerrant and then we ensure that what we believe about inerrancy is correct. We read what the Bible says about itself and express faith that what God says in Scripture is true. Having done that, it is often valuable to turn to the many resources available for those wrestling with apparent errors or contradictions. Most of these questions have been dealt with very well in the past—well enough to give you assurance that they reflect contemporary arrogance or misunderstanding more than error. When challenged with a list of contradictions I believe there is often little value in answering the charges of error point-by-point and engaging in lengthy dialog about each of them. Anyone who is really seeking the truth will find not only the contradictions but the many answers to them. Rather, it is better, I think, to point people to what is true. Point people to the Bible’s claims of truth—what it claims about us, as humans, and what it claims about God. Point people to the gospel and ask God to do His work in them.
Conclusion
My intent for this series was to do two things. First, I wanted to define inerrancy and separate it from the other doctrines of Scripture such as authority, inspiration and transmission. While the basic sense of the word “inerrancy” is clear, the theological meaning is not always so easy to grasp. Second, I wanted to answer some objections to inerrancy and show why this is a critical doctrine and why it is important that the church continues to affirm it.
Ultimately, inerrancy is true because perfection is consistent with God’s character and because He has told us it is true. We must be careful with any objections to this doctrine, for if we indicate that we believe there are errors with the original manuscripts, we strike at the very character of God. The Bible is inerrant because it was breathed out by an inerrant God. Because of this we can have full confidence, today and always, that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact.
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Comments (62)
I needed to take this into account in my preaching yesterday.
In Luke 9, the chapter begins with the twelve being sent out to preach. The parallel passage is Mark 6.
In Luke 9 we read that the twelve are not to take a staff (walking stick), but in Mark 6 a staff is allowed. Can you posit an explanation for this apparent contradiction except that both passages agreed in the autographs and that one or the other has suffered a scribal error?
“The Bible as we have it today is worth of our confidence.”
God is so good to give us His Word. He is way too gracious.
Thanks for this encouraging post.
I just wanted to point out that your writing skills have really been polished over the past few months. You were always talented, but you now write like a true author (I guess writing a book will do that to you!).
This is a matter which I feel I have some, though still very little, background and understanding to speak on. I would affirm with you that the Bible is God’s revealed word, authoritative on the matters to which it speaks, a double-edged sword, dividing bone from marrow, and is the most important witness for us to know about Christ and spiritual truths. But that said, I cannot hold to biblical inerrancy, and so that you may know where I am coming from, my theological views on such things have listed, from what I understand of him, closer to Karl Barth than Francis Schaeffer.
Firstly, you make some presuppositions which I cannot take at their face value: notably that denying inerrancy makes God out to be a liar, which in turn rests on the supposition that Scripture claims for itself inerrancy. I do not think that 2 Tim 3:16 is a claim for inerrancy as you are using the term, and a less than inerrant Scripture casts doubt not on God, but on how he works out his sovereignty, and the matters with which he is most concerned.
You have made some fine arguments about the nature of God, epistemological at their root, but fail, I fear, when it comes to specific objections (you have chosen the more easily answered and less serious specific problems to address). But an epistemology means nothing if it cannot stand up to scrutiny. The simplest thing to point out is Synoptic disparities, the simplest of which is the sending out of the Twelve (Seventy-Two in Luke), where Christ gives an explicit list of items the disciples ought to take with them, each contradictory with the other (Matt 10:9-10; Mk 6:8-9; Lk 10:4). Or take the infamous Mark 2:26 historical mistake, almost certainly original if textual criticism is correct at all in its reconstructions. Now it is clear that none of these matter on doctrinal issues or touch the truths to which Scripture testifies, but it is a sore in the doctrine of inerrancy which I have not seen removed. Rounded dates and quoting sunrises are weak and foolish things to bring against this doctrine, but are by no means the only problems. More than these, there is the hairy sovereignty issue of an inerrant text, transmitted with errors (but canonized correctly) and then only reconstructed back to its near-inerrant state with the advent of textual criticism in the past two hundred years.
I appreciate your zeal for the Scripture, but to assert things like inerrancy one cannot only argue about epistemology but must also wrestle seriously with all the boring, dry, and largely theological irrelevant discrepancies that occur in the document; otherwise you are left open to the charge of believing that which is convenient for the religion that you hold to, rather than seeking what is true. You are not, I trust, advocating for the inerrancy of the Textus Receptus or the Byzantine manuscripts, and so the epistemological argument also seems to me to be lacking in ecumenism, glossing over the centuries and centuries of church history before the Nestle-Aland popped into existence, for if inerrancy is the only way to know and trust God, how did these believers know their savior and his will? This hardly God’s preservation, but the application of scientific techniques to correcting human errors.
I realize this brings up a lot of the specific issues of the opposing view, and that you are quite busy, and so don’t expect to receive a detailed response (though I’d love friendly disagreement). But I wanted to present the other side just a bit.
Jerry - I’ve never really studied that particular one, but AIG links to an interesting article. I’d have to verify it with some other scholars but on the face of it it sounds reasonable:
see it here
For the benefit of other readers, I’ll simply say that the Mark 2:26 “error” problem has been quite satisfactorily resolved. Interested persons may see Gleason Archer’s short article; it has also shown up on several blog sites.
“For truly I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot [iota] or one tittle [keraia] shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled.” Matt. 5:18
The Sovereign Lord will see to it His Word shall ot pass; He promised; not the smallest letter, not mark.
I believe in inerrance, but I have to take issue with your argument here.
“if we deny inerrancy, we make God a liar” and “we lose trust in God”
If we deny inerrancy, the first thing we do is give up on inspiration. If the Bible is not inspired, then God’s not responsible for the errors of the people who claimed to be writing in His name.
We do lose trust in the Bible. It becomes a collection of writings by sometimes wise men, and it’s left to us to figure out what’s correct and what isn’t. It’s a bad place to be, but it’s not the same as saying we can no longer trust God.
Rhetorically, your argument has great emotional appeal, but if it’s going to actually pursuade, it needs to address what people who don’t believe in inerrancy actually think.
There is one thing I continue to wrestle with about inerrancy: why must we have absolute certainty when it comes to the autographs but we do not have to have that same level of certainty about our modern editions of the Bible? Let me illustrate.
Regarding the the autographs, you said that “if we deny inerrancy, and indicate that small details are incorrect, we cannot consistently argue that all the doctrine the Bible contains is correct” (emphasis original). So is it all or nothing then? If there is one true error in any autograph then is there doubt about the doctrine taught in all the autographs? If this is the case, then we have a serious problem in the fact that we don’t have the autographs. Not because we can’t get close to the original text (I think we can), but because we can’t get exactly close. We do have some errors in the copies we have today, as you admit.
So why doesn’t this throw doubt on all all the doctrine we find in the copies that we use today? What I’m saying is that there are small details in the copies we have today (even the reconstructed copies of our critical editions) that are incorrect. Should this not then keep us from consistently arguing that all the doctrine the Bible contains is correct? You said, “The fact that there are some errors in Scripture as we have it today, does not negate inerrancy which speaks only of the original documents.” But earlier you said that “if we … indicate that small details are incorrect, we cannot consistently argue that all the doctrine the Bible contains is correct.” So should we say that all the doctrine we glean from Scripture as we have it today is incorrect since there are small errors in that? I don’t think so.
It seems to me that small errors in the autographs should not cast doubt on all the theology contained therein any more than small errors in our modern Bibles should keep us from trusting the doctrines they teach. If my King James Bible translates a few dubious words in 1 John it doesn’t throw doubt on the whole book of 1 John for me. Likewise, if my critical edition of the Greek New Testament has some dubious readings it doesn’t throw doubt on the whole thing. Finally, if there were errors in Paul’s letters when he wrote them that wouldn’t throw doubt on everything he wrote (even though what he wrote was inspired by God).
I would really appreciate any discussion on this. I really think the doctrine of inerrancy is important, but I see this as a glaring flaw in how the doctrine is usually articulated.
About circular logic:
This is something I haven’t figured out how to resolve myself, but your section “Problems With Denying Inerrancy” commits the circular logic problem and contradicts RC Sprouls defense against it.
You state: “Third, if we deny the clear testimony of Scripture that it is inerrant, we make our minds a higher standard of truth than the Bible.” and also “We must submit to the Word, for it will not submit to us. We must give to the Bible the place it claims for itself. We cannot stand in judgment over it.”
The problem here is that by not allowing us to make any judgment about the Bible from any authority but the Bible, you run into circular logic. In RC Sprouls line of reasoning he violates your prohibition by first judging the Bible using his mind and the standards of historical reliability and other non-Biblical truth measures. By doing this, he is placing himself “in judgment over the Bible.”
You must allow the Bible to be judged by outside standards or you can give me no reason to believe it other than “well, the Bible says you should believe it, so you should.” Either I accept the Bible with no reason except that the Bible says I should (as would the Qur’an), or my acceptance of it must be logically dependent on outside information and thus I remain standing “in judgment over the Bible.” Of course, the problem happens with my belief in God, and I still don’t know how to think about that one either.
A so called “contradiction” that is always brought up whenever I get into a discussion about them with unbelievers (which is rare btw), is a passage in the Old Testament about a “sea” that was built that held water. I don’t even know what the claimed contradiction is, but it had something to do with geometry in that the “sea” was said to be circular in shape, but the measurements given in Scripture aren’t inaccurate. Personally, I think that is one of the worst examples to give for someone arguing against Scripture, but has anyone else heard of that argument with that particular passage (it’s in 1 Kings I think) and what they’re talking about, as well as how to counter it?
Thanks for the series Tim. Evangelicalism definitely needs to think about these topics on a regular basis so that we can continue to be more precise in our theology.
I disagree with your statement that denying inerrancy makes God out to be a liar. I personally don’t hold to this view, but I know many conservative believers within evangelicalism that hold to a belief of limited inerrancy, or deny inerrancy altogether, yet still believe that the Scriptures were “breathed out by God,” and would take great offense at your contention that they are calling God a liar.
They believe that God chose to convey his message to mankind through frail, and imperfect messengers, and that God empowered their messages in a special way so that the messages are both human and divine displaying God’s powerful message through limited and sometimes mistaken documents. In their view having a Bible that may contain errors by modern standards does not make God err any more than God creating people capable of falling into sin means God erred. They often use the jars of clay illustration to show that God can use imperfect things to display his work.
These are not people who are trying to make God a liar. They believe Him to be as holy and just and perfect as you and I do. They are not trying to discredit the Scriptures or throw out sections that they disagree with. In their words, they simply do not want to “run Scripture through modernist filters that were foreign to the 1st century world.” That’s their view, and I believe that they firmly believe that Scripture is inspired and trustworthy, but would take great offense at your contention, which I likewise believe is unnecessary.
Personally, as someone who does hold to the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, I struggle using the term when referring to my beliefs of the Scriptures simply because the terms means so many different things to so many different people even within evangelicalism. There are even different beliefs among those of us who hold to the Chicago Statement, simply because it is vague at points. One of the biggest problems with using a term such as inerrancy is that for the word to have any precise meaning, we are required to tag on a series of qualifiers (such as those listed in your last post about what inerrancy is not, or much of what is contained in the pages of the Chicago Statement). Therefore, even though I believe in inerrancy, it may be very different than the inerrancy that my fundamentalist friend claims to believe in and very different than my friend who is a seminary professor.
” In their view having a Bible that may contain errors by modern standards “ -Ranger
You couldn’t give a couple examples could you? It would be helpful to know what errors some think are in the Holy Scriptures. And could there be many errors?
Blessings to you.
Hey Don,I’m sure there are many people more qualified to answer this question than me since it’s not a view that I personally hold. I have friends that hold this view, so if I have time tomorrow I’ll contact them and ask.
I will give an example of my final point though which may be an answer to your question. A lot of the struggles that we have when we call ourselves inerrantists comes from the lack of precision in the word “error.” For instance, many inerrantists (including myself) believe that the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17-49) are the same sermon despite Matthew’s telling of the story calling the area an “horos” or mountain, and Luke calling it a “pedinou” or level ground. In my understanding of inerrancy that’s not a contradiction but simply two tellings of the story with differing viewpoints of the locale.
I have friends who say that my interpretation is not in line with inerrancy because the Gk. words are too different that it necessitates that these are two separate events despite the vast number of other similarities in the pericope. From their viewpoint, my taking the two stories to be differing tellings of the same event means that I admit to an “error” within the text since the terms for mountain and plain are so different.
According to the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy my understanding falls under inerrancy because inerrancy allows for “variant selections of materials in parallel accounts” as well as “observational descriptions of nature.” Therefore, if one writer’s source remembered a plain and one remembered a mountain it does not cause God to be a liar, but simply gives us two unique tellings of the same account. Both are inspired and both are inerrant.
I hope this clarifies my point that even within evangelicalism there are vary different understandings of inerrancy. Whereas my friend would disagree with the Chicago Statement’s allowance for variant parallel accounts, I would not disagree. Yet we both claim to hold to inerrancy.
The problem is that to make the claim that we are inerrantists we must add qualifiers to the statement, and to add qualifers we too often have to speculate outside of the parameters for understanding Scripture that it uses to describe itself.
Maybe that clarifies my point for you, and maybe it doesn’t. I’m by no means a scholar of any kind. I will try to contact a friend or two today who deny inerrancy, yet believe God to be sovereign and without error, and ask them to give some examples of what they believe to be errors in the Bible.
“The problem is that to make the claim that we are inerrantists we must add qualifiers to the statement, and to add qualifers we too often have to speculate outside of the parameters for understanding Scripture that it uses to describe itself.”
Let me attempt to clarify this statement.
Since “inerrancy” was a word not used before the 20th century it needed a definition. Whenever it came into more common use in the 1970s, many opposed the term due to disagreements over what could be termed an error. Thus, using a term necessitated statements defining inerrancy such as the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, which came about in 1978.
The problem then becomes that to use the term accurately we need a statement that contains many affirmations and denials that are necessitated for our modern understanding yet require addressing issues that Scripture itself never specifically outlines. For instance, the Chicago Statement says “WE AFFIRM that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.” Furthermore, the statement says, “We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.”
The problem with these statements is not in their content, but in the means of achieving these points. These points may be true (and I believe them to be true), but to come to these points one must speculate about the nature of the Scriptures. I do not believe either of these points to ever be addressed within the Scriptures when exegeting the text in its proper context.
Therefore, to accurately use the term inerrancy, we need a statement such as the Chicago Statement, but to use a statement we need to speculate on topics that the Scripture does not directly address.
I hold to inerrancy, but I also understand the challenges associated with using the term. I agree with those who oppose inerrancy that this is a valid argument against the usage of the term. As they see it, we are using a term that Scripture never uses for itself, and to use it accurately and agree to it, we need statements that require speculations about the nature of Scripture that Scripture itself never addresses.
I want to thank Tim Challies and those in this discussion for their work and comments.
After reading through these posts and comments and taking some time to digest them, I wrote and posted a response on the Conn-versation blog http://connversation.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/tim-challies-on-inerrancy-my-attempt-at-conn-versation/ .
When I started writing this comments 12-15 had not been made.
Thank you for your time.
ChrisB is right. Your logic is weak when you say that denying inerrancy makes God a liar.
Inerrancy is not merely rationally untenable, it is theologically unproductive as an argument. If I produce a text which attributes its words to a Deity it does not mean that the Deity wrote it. The Scriptures are made up of truly inspired texts mingled with less inspirational material and theology has arrived at the term hermeneutic to suggest that there is inevitably human choice involved both in the creation and the reading and understanding of Scripture.
I have spent a lifetime steeped in Scripture and have turned a good deal of it into song. My understanding of gospel good news i would be impossible without Scripture.
I have enough belief in the mysterious power to which which Scripture points to assume that the reason things go as they go is that we are supposed to learn by our experience. I think to the extent that Christianity functions as cults do and imposes on the world fatuous notions about its texts, it helps to confirm people’s alienation.
We are moving from religion to spirituality and part of that movement is to allow our texts to pass muster on the terms and grounds that other texts are evaluated. I think these texts are of ultimate importance. To say they are inerrant is to pull the rug out and marginalize the subject.
“I will try to contact a friend or two today who deny inerrancy, yet believe God to be sovereign and without error, and ask them to give some examples of what they believe to be errors in the Bible.”
That would be helpful. And could you ask them how many errors, ball park, they might think are throughout the Bible; 100’s, 1,000’s, or perhaps 10’s of thousands?
Thanks.
donsands, not to plug my response too much : ), but I work through a couple things in one part of the Bible that do not sit well with traditional conceptions of inerrancy.
That said, I do not deny inerrancy, everything in the Bible is doing exaclty what the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ wants it to be doing.
http://connversation.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/tim-challies-on-inerrancy-my-attempt-at-conn-versation/
“We are moving from religion to spirituality and part of that movement is to allow our texts to pass muster on the terms and grounds that other texts are evaluated.” (comment # 18)
It’s very enlightening to read what David Wells has said about this transition from “religion” to “spirituality.” That is indeed a large part of the explanation for how people are coming to view absolute truth..
“If there are errors in the original manuscripts, manuscripts that testify they were breathed out by God, one of two things must be true: either God purposely lied or he mistakenly lied.”
Or the testimony is false, and the manuscripts were not “breathed out by God” but created by man. Why is this not among the possibilities?
“The Bible is inerrant because it was breathed out by an inerrant God”What utter nonsense. Your premise has to be that a perfect being created imperfect beings, a contradiction in terms if I may say. Perfection cannot create imperfection. And if perfection creates imperfection on purpose and then punsihes the imperfection what does that say about the so called Creator?You are postituting the intellect of man by choosing to believe in a tyranny that cannot be challenged, judged or defended against. Pathetic, I reject your entire reasoning on the basis that there is none.
Hey Don,Sorry, I live in overseas so I just read your message about the number of errors this morning. I sent out the e-mail request to two friends last night asking them if either of them believed denying inerrancy made God out to be a liar, and also if they could list some of the errors that they believe to be in Scripture. Only one had written me back this morning, and since I didn’t ask permission to quote his e-mail I will summarize his comments.
1. He does not believe in any way shape or form that denying inerrancy makes God out to be a liar. The point is not that he believes the Bible is full of errors, but that if it did contain what our modern minds would term an error that it would not minimize his view of God in any way shape or form. Furthermore, he believes listing out errors or counting errors to be extremely unhelpful. In his opinion the whole idea of counting or listing or denying that there are errors is completely foreign to the first century mindset and should therefore be rejected by our modern interpretations of Scripture as well.
2. He’s never tried to convince anyone who believed in inerrancy that there are errors, and thinks it would be pointless to do such a thing.
On a side note, at this point he did mention something he sees as an error. He mentioned that in John 2:1, it says that Jesus was in Cana either on the third day of the week following his baptism or three days after his baptism (depending on how you interpret the Gk.). In both Mark and Matthew the story is that Jesus was immediately in the wilderness to be tempted by Satan (after 40 days). The parallel accounts are not only different (which the Chicago Statement allows), but there are dates attached which force either one to be correct or the other to be correct. In his understanding it is unnecessary to resolve these because they are not the point of the text or the story. His point in using this example was to tell me that he would never try to use an example such as this to make someone believe that the Bible has errors. I included it simply because you wanted examples and that is the only one he gave.
3. He feels that believing in inerrancy minimizes God in the sense that it seemingly binds God’s character to what he sees as a divinely inspired, human document. He didn’t state this, but I think his point is somewhat made by this post, and the comments that I and others have made thus far tying God’s character into our understanding of whether or not the documents that He chose to use have errors. I think my friend’s point is that God’s character is not bound to the documents in any way shape or form.
4. He was a pastor for many years before he had ever heard the term inerrancy. He struggles understanding why as a Southern Baptist his view that the Bible “has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter,” (quoted directly from the Baptist Faith and Message) is no longer good enough. From his perspective he has been made a villain for choosing not to use a term that was created in the latter half of the 20th century.
I hope this helps, it’s definitely interesting to me to get another perspective that I haven’t dealt with that much. I’ll summarize my other friends response when and if I get one.
Please, stick to faith. Don’t try to bring logic into this. Your premises would fail a freshman philosophy course, and your leaps of logic, while acrobatic in their scope, will break each of your legs on the dismount. But thanks for the laugh!
Sven,You say, “Your premise has to be that a perfect being created imperfect beings, a contradiction in terms if I may say.”
Your reasoning is incorrect, and your demeaning tone is unnecessary.
Perfect necessitates many categories of infiniteness. For that which is perfect to create anything at all, it will always be imperfect unless it is creating itself, for the concepts themselves demand it.
For a perfect God to create the world, that world must be imperfect in some senses for the world is not omniscient or omnipotent, etc. If it were it would be identical to the perfect God who created it, and would in effect be no creation at all.
If one believes that it is possible for a God to create something less than Himself, which I think we can all agree on if we believe in the concept of God at all, then we must admit that doing so does not in anyway minimize the perfection of the one who creates it.
It is in the limitedness of the creation that the possibility of error arises, not in the Creator. It in no way makes God out to be imperfect because he created human beings less than Himself that were naturally limited in some capacities and therefore capable of sin.
The bible is the word of God? And we must accept that BEFORE the rest of your argument? Within your circle of believers, fine. But within the wider world of logic and reason, you must be kidding.
For thinking Christians, especially those who employ fundamental reason, this should be truly embarrassing.
Remember, if being breathed out by God necessitates perfection, why aren’t us humans perfect. Bad reasoning, there, sonny.The scriptures are enough, they are inspired, profitable for several things, as Paul wrote. They are authoritative; even Jesus quoted them.But quite squirming on the hook of inerrancy; it’s wrongheaded. Like saying we have to be perfectly sinless, or sinlessly perfect, to please the Lord. We be saints AND sinners simultaneously. The human aspect of the scriptures doesn’t wreck or ruin them. And always remember the primary meaning of the phrase, ” the word of God,” is Jesus Himself, and the expression of God and the utility knife of creation; a distinct meaning from “the writings,” or scripture,which are more “the word ABOUT The Word.” .
“And when we allow this possibility [admitting error], the Christian faith soon crumbles into a mess of subjectivity and personal preference.” This already happened, it was called The Reformation
John 2:1 and Jesus’ temptation don’t seem to be an error to me.I simply went and read over the text, and the way it is written it seems Jesus was surely tempted immediately after His baptism for 40 days, and then afterwards he had a two day journey to Cana, and on the third day he arrived.
I believe for the Holy Scriptures to be inspired, which they are, they need to be without error, in the original manuscripts. If there is error, even one in what God has written through His Spirit, then God is fallible. And if He is fallible, then surely He has no right to judge, for He may be mistaken, and in error.
“May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written, “THAT YOU MAY BE JUSTIFIED IN YOUR WORDS, AND PREVAIL WHEN YOU ARE JUDGED”
The bible is the word of God? And we must accept that BEFORE the rest of your argument? Within your circle of believers, fine. But within the wider world of logic and reason, you must be kidding.
For thinking Christians, especially those who employ fundamental reason, this should be truly embarrassing.
That is what an unbeliever would think, and there is really nothing we can do about it but continue to preach it.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: 23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; 24 But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians 2:12-16 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
This is why Paul had reason to declare that he was not ashamed of the Gospel — because by any standard of worldly wisdom, it is a ridiculous story that any rational person would be embarrassed to tell. “But we have the mind of Christ.”
I really can’t believe that someone is trying to claim inerrancy for the bible. The bible says Jesus was without sin. Jesus cast demons into a herd of swine causing them to drown themselves in the Sea of Galilee. Since Jesus could have done otherwise (he could have cast the demons into a rock for instance), he was gratuitously cruel. Gratuitous cruely is a sin.
Obviously, the bible was wrong when it said Jesus was without sin.
Look, there’s some good moral advice in the bible. Grown ups should take the good and make use of it and discard the junk and there’s a lot of junk that should be discarded like the idea that slavery was ever okay, or that touching the skin of pig should be a captial offense.
You’re obviously a bright guy. The parable of the talents was one of the good parts. Don’t sqaunder your talent on this sort of sophistry simply to delude yourself into a certainty that simply cannot, in reality, exist for a sentient being.
If the Bible is inerrant, how do you explain the two overlapping and contradictory versions of the creation in the first three chapters of Genesis?
Was woman created separately from man, or was woman created from man’s rib?
Next question: Did Noah take only a pair of each animal into the ark (Genesis 6:19), or did he take seven pairs of all “clean” animals and all birds (Genesis 7:3)?
Gordon
Post 33: Check www.answersingenesis.org
Post 34: Yes
s wells,
Do you believe in the Son of God? Do you believe that Jesus Christ died on a Cross, and rose from the dead on the third day?
This is the Gospel truth. This is the power of God, that saves a sinners soul from his sin and God’s judgment.
Fortunately, one can hold to inerrancy (as I do) but not hold to young-earth creationism as taught by Answers in Genesis or the Institute for Creation Research. The authors of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, one of the standard statements of what is meant by the term, purposefully avoided the issue of the age of the earth, and their decision to do so was almost unanimous. Scientifically, young-earth creationism and flood geology don’t work, and the Bible isn’t as clear on the age of the earth as AIG/ICR would have us believe.
I believe that we do a great disservice to our young people to tie a highly questionable apologetics system to inerrancy. Some of them will figure out that creationism doesn’t work. They will then leave the Christian faith, not because the Bible is in error, but because they have been led to believe that the Bible teaches all sorts of things about earth history that it really doesn’t.
Grace and Peace
Gordon (#33, 34):
There are other options than those given by young-earth creationists such as those at Answers in Genesis, so don’t reject Christ or Christianity just because some Christians give inadequate answers.
I see no contradiction between the accounts of creation given in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. They are complementary to each other; one gives an overview, the other gives more specifics.
Among conservative Bible scholars—-conservative as in holding to the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible—-there are a number of different understandings as to the relationship between the opening chapters of Genesis and earth history. The one I like is called the analogical days interpretation. The days described in Genesis One are God’s work days, which are analogous to, but not identical with, days as perceived by humans. When looked at in this way, the age of the universe is no longer an issue. There are other options, such as the day-age interpretation given by Reasons to Believe, which I think is also a solid interpretation of the meaning of Genesis.
Again, don’t reject Christianity because of Genesis. I have an M.S. in geology and yet see the Bible as true, and Jesus Christ as Son of God and savior, so it is possible to be both a good scientist and have faith.
(I won’t get involved in a debate about the age of the earth here)
Unregenerate man loves to worship creation, but hates the idea that there is a creator.
Unregenerate man loves a Jesus who espouses relationships and promises good things, but hates the Jesus who will judge the world in righteousness.
Unregenerate man loves to proclaim his own goodness by trying to live up to his perception of the morality in the bible, but hates the idea that the bible is absolute truth.
To me, one of the most telling evidences that the bible is inerrant is that unregenerate man hates the idea of biblical inerrancy so much.
I have thought about this issue of inerrancy a lot over the last few years. Even though I enjoyed reading these articles, I think the issue of inerrancy is more complex than the presentation in the articles.
I just have a few observations. I would appreciate any comments.
1. Inevitably when we approach the text we do try to distinguish between metaphor, history, profecy, poetry etc. For some Gen 1-9 may be seen metaphorically. They would also hold that the text is inerrant in its intended meaning, but would deny say 7-day creationism.
2. I would not deny for a moment that the scriptures are God-breathed (that in itself is a metaphor). If incidental details do not match, does it mean that the text has errors in it, in the sense that would deny inerrancy? Why do we need to harmonise these, or explain them away? Do the different texts that have incidental discrepancies make a different theological point that flow from these ‘errors’? I think not. So in essence the text is inerrant in that it conveys truth despite the ‘errors’.
Eg. there is a view that Jesus cleansed the temple twice because the incident is recorded in different places in Jesus’ ministry by different gospel accounts. Is this necessary to preserve inerrancy? Again I think not. Both teach the same truth message as intended.
3. Can the divine aspect ot the scriptures be overemphasised? It may be wise to take a step back and judge whether we are over-reacting against liberal readings of the text that overemphasise the human element and often denies the divine element in how they were created.
4. The scriptures are faithful witnesses to history, but may contain incidental historical errors. Again, I cannot see any objections to inerrancy in the sense that it conveys truth or tries to bear witness of the important events that really happened.
Finally, we should affirm the absolute trustworhty witness of the scriptures to the truth, and its witness to the living God. We should also correct myths and incorrect facts about the scriptures. But we should not, in our pursuit of firmer ground that is given us, deny obvious features of the scriptures like incidental errors.
In answer to your question, I’m reasonably confident that there was a figure named Jesus and that he was crucified to death. I think it’s silly to believe he came back from the dead just as it’s silly to believe Mohammad rode a winged horse to Mecca or that some angel named Moroni appeared to some guy named Joseph Smith. These are just fairy tales grasped at by people who so ache for a certainty that comports with their psychological deficiencies that they will believe anything.
I don’t believe in an omnipotent, omniscient god that created the universe because I don’t believe the universe had a beginning or will have an ending. No creation, no creator.
Besides, any entity possessing the attributes of omniscience/omnipotence entails logical contradictions and any premise that necessarily entails contradictions can’t possibly be valid. It might be possible to have some valid concept of a god but not if that concept includes omniscience/omnipotence as attributes.
s wells (#41) said, “I don’t believe the universe had a beginning.”
You are not on solid ground, scientifically or logically. Scientifically, one of the most significant discoveries of the 20th century was that the universe had a beginning, i.e. the big bang. Logically, if there was no beginning, we would have had to pass through an infinite amount of time to get to the present, which is impossible.
The basic question of philosophy is, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Either the universe has existed forever (scientifically invalid), the universe created itself (absurd) or it was created by something outside of itself. I’ll take the third answer, and you should too, if you really want to be rational. If there is a creator, then to believe in things like the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ are not difficult to accept.
Kevin, you might try keeping up with cosmology if you are going to pronounce what it affirms or denies. There is nothing logically inconsistent in holding the view that the “Big Bang” was a local phenomenon. In fact, many cosmologists hold the view that our observable universe is just one “bubble” in a sea of cosmic foam. Many string theorists posit, at present, that the big bang might well have been the result of adjacent universal membrances touching as they waver harmonically with that collision providing the requisite energy.
Funny thing about infinity is that all points in it are “midway” as there is an infinity of points either side. No point is priviledged over others as to it’s here and now. The premise that the universe had no beginning; i.e., that it is infinite doesn’t entail contradiction. Does it boggle my human mind? Yep, more than a little but that says far more about the limitations under which my little pea brain must labor than it does about logical necessity.
Here’s a quick link to an article about chaotic inflation theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaotic_inflation
You can do the research for yourself if you like, just go to google and type in bubble universe. Be careful though, it’s a theory that has attracted a lot of attention from nutjobs as well as people who have expertise in the subject so you have to do a bit of winnowing the wheat from the chaff to get the best current appreciation of the subject.
s wells,
I have read some of the stuff on membranes and multiple parallel universes. I’ll admit that I’m a geologist, not a cosmologist, so I’ve read at a popular level. It comes across as highly speculative and not subject to experimental verification.
Even if there are multiple parallel universes, and our universe spawned off of one of those, that doesn’t answer the questions: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “Where did the laws come from that enable universes to spawn off of a multiverse?” There are still only three options: the universe/multiverse is eternal, the universe/multiverse created itself, or God created the universe/multiverse. I think we can eliminate the middle option, so either the universe/multiverse is eternal, or something outside the universe (God) is eternal. I’m not sure that any of us decides on an answer to this sort of question purely on scientific grounds. Many decide their answer on moral grounds; not wanting to be accountable to a creator they opt for an impersonal universe.
I’ll take a personal, law-giving God as the originator of a law-obeying universe over a self-existing universe that has no explanation.
Don’t rule out the God of the Bible so easily.
Kevin, thanks for your reply. I’ll try to be straightforward here. I didn’t rule out the God of the Bible so easily. I was reared a Southern Baptist. The indoctrination took and I believed it for some time. I was disabused of it by the problem of evil. When I was about 12, I saw a white policeman beat a black man half to death for having the temerity to want to eat in a restaurant in my home town. This was during the American Apartheid in the rural south. The white policeman was a deacon in my Baptist church.
That started me thinking.
I started from the point of accepting that God was omnipotent. The following question occurred pretty early on. If God can do anything, why would he have done this? By definition, God could have accomplished anything he wanted to accomplish in an infinity of ways. That follows from the omnipotence. If God was omnipotent there was no goal he could have wanted to achieve that was only achievable by having a white man beat a black man half to death. He could have accomplished his goal without the suffering. Either that or God wasn’t omnipotent after all.
Initially I concluded since God chose to achieve his end thru misery and brutality that God was simply evil. It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized that God wasn’t evil, God simply didn’t exist.
Kevin, this is an attempt to answer a couple of other points in your last post. Why is there something rather than nothing? Let me start from two premises (which might be invalid and they could be invalidated by showing that either of them necessarily entails contradiction. I accept that any premise that entails contradiction cannot possibly be valid based on the logical proofs provided by Karl Popper and Bertrand Russell.)
Premise one is that the universe is infinite. Premise two is that I exist. If I exist, the probability of my existence is not zero. My reasoning is thus (and I’ll be the first to admit that transfinite math is a bit mind boggling): Any non-zero probability multiplied by infinity yields a probability that is not zero; i.e., infinity times any non-zero quantity is not zero.
So, I essentially see myself as someone who has won an evolutionary lottery that simply beggars any powerball jackpot imaginable. Same for the question of why there is something rather than nothing. I don’t pretend to know things I don’t know but I’m awfully glad things are as they are.
I don’t spend much time thinking about how to escape the judgement of a non-existent being. I spend quite a lot of time thinking about what it means to be moral and how to become more so. I was persuaded by Aristotle’s arguments in his Nichomachean Ethics that such is the proper unfolding of that which is human about humans.
A very interesting article on morality is available right now on the NYTimes website. It’s by a person whose work I admire a lot, Stephen Pinker of MIT. The link is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=61b714508a224f25&ex=1200546000
It’s not as easy as taking instruction from some book that lays out the law for all time but it is quite likely to achieve better results in the end in my opinion.
s wells,
I won’t pretend to give the answer to the problem of evil. What you observed with the police man who was a leader in the church beating the black man was deplorable, and I understand how that could lead one to question how a good God could exist. Multiply that one incident by billions, and we get an idea of the evil that exists in this world, with war, genocide, famine, gulags, concentration camps, slavery, child abuse, poverty, discrimination, corruption, and hatred of every kind.
That evil exists is clear, at least to me. Within some religious/philosophical systems, there is ultimately no basis for choosing what is good and what is evil. In atheism, evil has to be defined in term of a social contract or by some pragmatic definition. There is no basis for saying that rape, for instance, is absolutely evil. That bothers me. At least as a Christian, I can say that rape is evil all the time.
Within Christianity, I have a basis for saying that certain things are evil. Not just because they make society run poorly—-Roman society ran just fine with slavery—-but because they are a violation of God’s law. So Christianity affirms that there is such a thing as evil. In the end, I’m not sure that atheism can do so.
Admittedly, Christians fall short on this. That is the nature of being human, whether one is a Christian, Buddhist, or atheist; being a Christian hasn’t made me sinless. Hopefully, I am a better person for being a Christian than if I weren’t, but I still have to confess every day, “God, I have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed; by what I have done, and by what I have left undone.”
So why did God allow evil to occur in the universe? I don’t pretend to know the answer to that. I don’t believe it was because God is weak or imperfect, but I don’t know. I do know two things, however:1. Evil is real. We Christians call it sin, and we all do it.2. God has done something about it through Christ on the cross, and has proven his victory over sin by Christ’s resurrection.
I don’t have all the answers, but I hope this helps.
s wells,
I’m enjoying the discussion.
I do question one of your premises, and that is that the universe is infinite. The universe we live in is almost certainly not infinite in either time or extent. That is my understanding from everything I have read on cosmology. My astronomy books are at the office and I am at home, so I can’t look up the arguments on the universe having limited extent.
I looked at the first page of “The Moral Instinct” at the NYT; it looks interesting.
I am glad you “spend quite a lot of time thinking about what it means to be moral and how to become more so.” I have no doubt you are a decent person.
The question isn’t whether you or I are decent people. Here’s a morality test that I got a zero on: The Bad News of the Gospel. In Christianity, we all get a zero on the test, whether we are Mother Teresa, Bill Gates, or Norman Borlaug. But Jesus got a 100% in our place. Those who trust in Christ get Jesus’ score written in the book of life for them.
Evil is real, not imaginary.God has done something about it.
Kevin, again thanks for your reply. You say that you are a geologist. While I’m not one in any formal sense, I do have an abiding interest in hydrothermal geology. I like to prospect for gold as a hobby and I’ve found I can find more of it by understanding more about geology. Fact of the matter is, if I had my educational endeavors to do over again, I would go into geology. Not to get rich at it, it’s just absolutely fascinating stuff.
I don’t have much trouble explaining the existence of evil these days. Evolution doesn’t select for excellence. It only penalizes that which doesn’t reproduce. If parasitism and anti-social behavior doesn’t pose a barrier to reproduction, then parasitism and anti-social behavior continue. We have to CHOOSE to not do evil. The one thing I think is still best about the bible (and some other religions) is that it makes this point clear. It’s a choice we make and we are accountable for what we choose.
Personally, I’m much more afraid that I’ll squander this wonderful opportunity I’ve been given (existing at all really does simply beggar winning some kind of powerball jackpot by any stretch of the imagination) by trivializing it and not doing the best I can with it than I ever was afraid of going to hell. Going to hell was always something way off in the never never eventual distance. Screwing up the gift I’ve been given by evolutionary contingency and suffering the consequences of that is always right here, right now in my world view.
I don’t know that morality has to be contingent, in the way you suggest, for an atheist. Sure, I can imagine scenarios where I would have difficulty deciding if a particular rape was a sin or not. Let’s say, for instance, that a plague struck earth and there was only one woman left who could conceive and bear children. Let’s further imagine that she was in a brain damaged state from the plague and therefore unable to give her assent. The choices would be to let humanity die out completely or to rape her. I don’t know whether that would constitute a sin or not. But as they say in the legal field, hard cases make bad law. So, I don’t know that going there is particularly useful.
The article I mentioned by Pinker outlines a scientific approach that may yield certainty vis a vis moral judgements after sufficient study. But, it’s still in it’s infancy at present.
Have to go get some work done but I’ll check back later in case of a reply.
s wells,
Additional replies are unlikely for a while. You have to go to work; I’m on a different part of the planet, so I have to go to bed.
Here are some closing thoughts. You want to be moral, but you admit that the normal path we humans take is toward evil; that we must choose to do what is right. In Christianity, there are real, eternal consequences for our evil. Sin (evil) is real, not a product of evolution. God has provided a solution:
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”