The Bible is of Divine Origins

Burden of ProofNote that Pro has still yet to present his arguments for his case. If one recalls my third contention, it is readily apparent that complete rebutting my points (assuming all my opponent’s points last round were sound) does not in any way demonstrate that the Bible is of divine origins. Even assuming an equal BoP, I am still ahead because Pro has yet to present a case.Hence Pro still has all his work still ahead of him.PlagiarismOpponent has plagiarized extensively from “http://www.gravelhillchurchofchrist.com...; which includes significant sections copied and pasted verbatim, such as in reference to the ‘day’ interpretation of ‘yom’ (“The ‘day’ of Genesis” section of the article). Absolutely no attempt has been made to rephrase or even reference anything this article mentions with consecutive paragraphs pasted in the order they were originally written.So, not only is this a clear case of plagiarism, it’s an embarrassingly bad attempt at it as well. For the sake of not wasting time with this debate, I would request Pro to refraining from plagiarising in future rounds, and an apology is probably in order.Rebuttals:C1. What we would expect if the Bible were of divine originsI am not sure what pro is insinuating with the following statement:“First of all, Con's claim is only an assumption. The Bible is not what HE would expect if it was of divine origin.”Well, yes, it is, obviously. That’s why we are debating the issue. If Pro was attempting some sort of ad hominum by asserting that such assumptions are worthless because I made them then he will fail because I actually provided the logical progression towards accepting those assumptions.To hammer this point home, I will even use well-formed formulas.P1) IF the Bible was of divine origins, it would be written in a manner in which it best convey information to humansP2) The best manner of conveying information to humans is to be unambiguous, explicit, and inerrantP3) The Bible is not unambiguous, explicit or inerrantC) The Bible is not of divine origins.To give this symbolically we have:P1) B, then IP2) I is xP3) Not xC) Not BTherefore in order to avoid the conclusion we have to contest one of the premises. P1 I take to be obviously true, and I justified this further by arguing about the intent of the Bible, it’s target audience (obviously humans), and the consequences of what would happen if information were not conveyed well to humans (we would have humans adhering the wrong values, practices etc. by no fault of their own).P2 follows from the same reasoning as P1 and obviously P3 is true from the evidence of both the consequences (we have 30,000 sects with a wide variety of core beliefs regarding Christianity) and internally.In comparison, Pro literally asserts we much compare spiritual to spiritual, because the Bible says so. I have absolutely no idea where the logical progression of this comes from, nor do I see where the relevance is to my arguments, as this in no way attacks my points about requiring the Bible to be explicit, inerrant, uniform, etc. A. Explicity Pro completely misses the point with his (entirely plagiarized) justification for the 24 hour interpretation of ‘day’, the point was that we have people who clearly do not, by no fault of their own, accept Pro’s interpretation, which would be the case if it was absolutely explicit that it was the case. Moreover it does not in any way address the more central issues regarding the Christian doctrine (is salvation by faith or works, was Jesus actually divine, etc).However, in affirming a literal 6 or 7 day creation, Pro hangs himself on the noose regarding the inerrancy of the Bible (more on this later). B. Fewer Books Pro strawmans my position, I never made the argument that the Bible was “too long”, I made the argument that the Bible we would expect to be uniform, singular (since there is no reason to have multiple commissions of it), and hence authoritative. One practice example is the Qu’ran, which is a singular text which is highly explicit and direct, and did not require multiple books in order to be composed.[1]For example, the Gospels of the New Testament are four accounts of many of the same events of Jesus’ life and death, especially the Gospels of Matthew Mark and Luke. There was absolutely no reason to have three separate accounts of the event if the Bible was from God since one divinely inspired narrative that is perfect in its detail would have been easily sufficient. This is not helped by the fact that these narratives clearly contain a plethora of contradictions with each other (e.g. day of Jesus’ death is different in John than the synoptic Gospels).[2] This would indicate that the Bible had no divine influence. C. Inerrancy Pro’s argument about launching concrete ships is completely irrelevant to my arguments (which were arguments about the expected geology of a Noahchian flood), not to mention completely plagiarized.[4]Hence Pro has still yet to address these points.Genesis:Perhaps Pro would have done better to actually define the terms he is contesting (“create” vs “make”). An object either exists, or does not exist; it cannot be both as that would violate the law of non-contradiction. Given this, Pro is left with affirming things both exist and do not exist, are both created and not created by accepting his dubious interpretation of what these words mean:Create: “to makesomething which did not previously exist”Make: “forming from existingmaterials”The only difference that is apparent is that the word ‘create’ just means creation ex nihilo, or from no existing materials. Both entail the coming into existence of something that did not previously exist. For example I can “make” a car, but that car did not exist before I “made” it. So for the purposes of my arguments, this is completely irrelevant, the materials may have previously existed, but the object itself did not.In other words, the Sun, Moon and stars did not exist before they were made (otherwise they were never made…. They always existed), so unless Pro wants to contend the law of non-contradiction, then his entire rebuttal here fails.To add wood to the fire, if we look at the verses regarding human creation:“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”God both “made” and “created” man, however these terms are mutually exclusive (since one implies creation ex nihilo, and the other the opposite), which means the Bible is self-contradictory.To make things worse still, Pro argues that Genesis implies a 7 day creation myth. However this implies that both the Earth, and life upon it were created within a week of each other. This contradicts what I argued in the last round, that we know of many lifeforms which did not exist when the earth was created. Humans for example can only be argued to exist a maximum of ~10 millions years (being very generous with the numbers here), Trees 500 million, vertebrates 700 million years etc. The Earth itself is 4.5 billion years old, so we have a massive discrepancy between the Genesis account and the facts as they stand.[3]C2. Preservation of the BiblePro completely ignores (and therefore concedes) my arguments regarding the preservation of the Bible. Moreover Pro is operating under the assumption that everything within the Bible is true if he is attempting to make arguments from Bible quotes. The Bible *claims* that God will preserve the Bible (assuming that this is even the right interpretation of that passage), but claims are not evidence. We have no positive reason to believe the Bible was actually preserved, and I gave extensive evidence of just the New Testament Gospels being of questionable reliability.Pro essentially concedes my arguments when he agrees:“Though scholars will never fully comprehend the message, little children can understand its basic message”The Bible would be written in a manner that Humans WOULD fully comprehend if we were its intention. That’s the point. If Pro is conceding that the Bible cannot be comprehended then he will need very good reasons to accept that this is compatible with a divine, omniscient, omnipotent and all-intelligent commissioner would write it in a manner in which humans cannot fully comprehend it. Remember, God’s message is critically important for salvation, morality, how to live one’s life, etc. so the stakes are very high.ConclusionThere’s not a whole not I can say if Pro completely ignores half my arguments, and is unpersuasive against the rest. Pro has all his work ahead of him still.References 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium – Bart Erhman C3 3. http://en.wikipedia.org... 4. http://www.lgchurchofchrist.com...