The Bible is of Divine Origins

=Framework=To assert the Bible is of divine origins is to assert that God himself played some role in its production, which seems rather obvious given that the Bible itself is a testament to God, and what God has done over the course of Earth’s history (and to some extent, creation). Given that the purpose of the Bible is to bear witness to God (John 5:39) or to provide some sort of historical account (Genesis), we can assume that if the Bible is of divine origins, that this was the intent of God’s hand in it. [1]Therefore I will be arguing from several points: 1. Bible is not what we would expect if it was of divine origins 2. The Bible has not been preserved as we would expect if it was of divine origins 3. Divine origins are not a good explanation of the Bible After these three contentions, we should be able to draw the conclusion that the Bible is not of divine origins. C1. What we would expect if the Bible were of divine originsAll good theories need to begin with a hypothesis, so assuming the resolution is true, what would we expect is the Bible is from God ? A. Unambiguous The best way to convey information accurately is to use explicit language with direct and specific interpretations. One way to do this is to ditch generalised words and refer only to concepts, for example where a ‘chair’ might cause ambiguity (there are several interpretations what the word ‘chair’ could mean in English), if it was referred to as ‘a one-person stool with four legs’, the concept becomes crystal clear and direct. Alternatively the use of language with highly specific meanings would preferably be used. The reasoning for this is that IF God wanted to tell us something, then he would have no reason for us to receive a message without a clear meaning, as it would lead to mis-interpretation and hence people acting according to faulty instructions. Given that the Bible is meant as a total solution which governs how we ought to act within our lives, and gives information about God himself and his nature and the grand scheme of things, it is implausible, and arguably absurd that God would give us an ambiguous message subject to both mis-interpretation and disbelief given the intentions of the narratives. This however, is exactly what we do not find in the Bible, and the current state of Christianity, with over 30,000 denominations with very different takes on moral issues, such as dealing with abortion, homosexuality, marriage, war. There are also very different takes on salvation and even the divinity of Jesus and the validity of the Holy Trinity. [2] Moreover on creation, there are sects that take the accounts of Genesis literally, which literally entails a 6 say creation myth and a 6,000 year old Earth, and others which do not take the days to mean 6 literal days. [3]IF the Bible was explicit and unambiguous, then we would expect a significantly stronger consensus on these basic issues than we observe. B. Fewer Books If God really had a hand in the composition of the Bible, then we would expect one, or at most a handful of writings directly attributed to him. While an argument can conceivably be made for events before and after Jesus’ existence (enlightenment of God’s existence and deeds, original sin etc. ) which would make a pragmatic case for two Books, the same cannot be made for the fact that there are 27 separate books within the New Testament and 39 within the Old Testament. [4] I will direct my arguments against the New Testament because we have more information on their origins. Given that these books were written many years after the death of Jesus, and many years after the last possible events recorded, the commission of more than one book is wholly unnecessary. If God was to commission a recording of the events of Jesus’ life there would be one and only one recording, it would be written explicitly in a way in which misinterpretations are impossible, and it would be written in a way which would be the most direct text possible with words. This is not what we see, however. What we see are multiple books, written by multiple separate authors, some of which clearly borrowed significantly from internal sources (cf. two source hypothesis of Gospels of Matthew & Luke). God would have had absolutely no reason to commission so many separate writings if one perfect text is all that is required. C. Inerrant A book commissioned by an omniscient, and omnipotent being with the intention of giving a direct factual message to mankind would implausibly be errant, why would it be> It would mean God deliberately gave false information (meaning God is lying), or the text was corrupted after commissioning (I will argue against this later). Given that it is implausible that God would lie to us, then we would expect the text to be. The Bible however, is clearly errant on multiple accounts. In the Genesis creation mythologies, the events of creation are organised into day-periods. While it is possible debatable how long these days are in absolute timescales, the ordering of events are not. By taking the ordering of events into consideration, we are left concluding that the Sun was created after the Earth which is false. We are also left concluding that trees (day 3) appears on Earth before the creation of the Sun, Moon, Stars and complex lifeforms (day 4), despite trees not evolving until 400 million years ago, with the former examples significantly earlier (Cambrian explosion was 600 Mya, Sun & Moon 4.5 BYa). [5,6] I may expand on these in later rounds. To attack the Noachian flood mythology, accepting a literal geneology places the Noachian flood around ~4400 years ago, however the expected evidence of this is completely absent from geological records. [7] Moreover evidence is also absent from dendrochronology, and is even weaker in light of the fact we have extant trees known to be greater than 4,400 years old. [8]C2. Preservation of the BibleIF the Bible was intended by God as an accurate narrative with specific information about God, morality, and instructions regarding salvation and worship, then we would expect that God would ensure that the message of the Bible was preserved. Otherwise this would entail that the message would become corrupted and we would have people holding incorrect ideals and values for such. Much of the most important information regarding salvation and repentance is contained within the Gospels of the New Testament, and it’s these in particular that we have abundant evidence of corruption since it’s composition. We simply do not have the original manuscripts which were written ~70-100AD, and our earliest complete manuscripts don’t appear until nearly 300 years later. [9,10]Printing did not exist during this period, and copying of manuscripts was performed manually by scribes, letter by letter, and as such many, many mistakes were made. While most mistakes were minor and don’t translate, others are very significant (more on this later). Each manuscript is copied, and the copy is copied, and that manuscript is copied, and so on and so forth. Each generation of manuscripts will contain all the errors of the predecessor, plus the errors the scribe makes and other changes. Approximately 6000 fragmented/complete manuscripts are known to exist they all differ from each other, with more mistakes contained within them than there are words in the new testament. The serious errors that are known, include the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark, which are now regarded as unauthentic, and the famous story of “Pericope Adulterae”, is also known to have been an evolution on earlier manuscripts, as scribes made changes to the story which made the narrative fit Jesus’ perceived character. [11]While Pro may argue that we can possibly hope to recover the original message of the Gospels via. scholarship, or that it doesn’t directly mean the Gospels were not of the divine origins he would be correct, but it would miss the point. IF the original message was of divine origins, then the divine ‘originator’ would not have put us in a position to require fallible human methodologies to recover it. As New Testament textual critic Bart Erhman asserts:“If the gospels were reliable we wouldn't need scholarship”C3. Divine Origins are by default the least likely explanationNote that IF Pro could completely refute every single one of my arguments above, he still would be no closer to demonstrating the bible is of divine origins, since the method of argumentation is invalid. I will demonstrate this by formulating the structure of my above arguments in modus tollens format:P1) IF the Bible was of divine origins, then we would expect ‘X’ P2) Not ‘X’ C) The Bible is not of divine originsThis is a valid method of deductive argumentation (Modus Tollens, Denying the consequent), where can substitute ‘X’ for ‘inerrancy’, ‘unambiguous’, ‘concise’ etc. that I have argued for already. If Pro really could prove the Bible was inerrant then we would be left with the following argument:P1) IF the Bible was of divine origins, then we would expect XP2) ‘X’ (Is true)C) The Bible is of divine origins This is invalid (affirming the consequent), the reason for which is that the argument ignores all other possible ways in which ‘X’ could be true. For example, if I go to the shop I will buy milk, but me possessing milk does not demonstrate I went to the shop, as I could have obtained milk from other sources. The best Pro could possibly do by affirming this line of argumentation is an ‘appeal to the best explanation’, but this is essentially impossible, since God is beyond experience, and hence would violate Occam’s rasor. 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