The Bible Contains Scientific Errors

My apologies on missing the round. I'm really only going to say one thing to round out my case, since it's pretty glaringly obvious from my opponent's second case: Nowhere in the Bible does it say you have to read it "literally," that is, "word-for-word true." He equivocates truth with historical happenings, which is false. He's totally non-responsive to the Gray analysis in my first case; for the longest times in history, no one read Genesis as a word-for-word recounting of creation. That's a modern, lazy way of reading the text in hopes of responding to radical Darwinists, who themselves give a weak reading of history. This means that most of, if not all, the major church fathers, including the Apostles, didn't read Genesis as a historical recounting. It doesn't have to be: the fallacy in my opponent's case is that "If the events in the Bible didn't happen in the historico-literal sense, then they aren't true," but this is nonsense. All the analysis in his case about "well if it didn't happen literally, then it isn't a miracle," is nonsense as well. It presupposes a nature/miracle binary that's simplistic. I agree that creation is a miracle, and part of that miracle is that it is indescribable. When he says, *Christians must accept supernatural and unexplainable causes for certain events. *To claim it is symbolic, figurative, or less than historic fact is to compromise the Bible account and defeat the purpose of the miracle as evidence. The first one is right, but the second one is deeply flawed. The presupposition behind this statement is that the only valid truth is literal, historical truth, which is unwarranted in his case and I'd say is false even if he did try to warrant it. Part of miracles is that they are indescribable; does anyone really have the hubris to claim that a human could understand ex nihilo creation just as much as he could understand the Civil War? Surely this view is nonsensical. In fact, his first point here contradicts his second, since he assumes creation must be explainable. How to get something from nothing isn't a "closed" question; it's in fact quite open, and eminently mysterious. I believe God created the world, which is the whole point of the Genesis story, but I don't believe that in order for God to be the one to have created the world it must have happened in the exact literal way as the text describes. That's a jump he never proves in his case. Look to the verses he cites. I'll re-quote all of them: Matthew 15:9,13 - We must not teach man-made doctrine. [This says nothing about reading the Bible literally. Reading the Bible literally is, in fact, man-made doctrine, since the Bible never says that. The 1 Timothy verse that says "all scripture is God-breathed..." doesn't even say it, because it doesn't tell you how to read the Bible, it merely says that the Bible is useful (not the only source, like the faulty doctrine of Sola Scriptura holds) for teaching.] Galatians 1:8,9 - We must not teach differently from the gospel of Christ. [Again, this says nothing about literal v. metaphorical readings. One has to read this into the text to get that analysis off the ground.] 1 Timothy 1:3; 2 Timothy 1:13 - We should hold fast the pattern of sound words and teach no other doctrine. [Again, non-responsive.] John 5:46,47 - Believing Moses leads us to believe Jesus and His word. If we don't believe Moses' writings, we will not believe Jesus' words! [Once again, this requires a reading-into the text to get the literalist account off the ground. My opponent presupposes "believing=literal recounting," which isn't found in the text. One can believe in the Moses story and not believe that every single event literally happened.] Luke 24:25-27 - Failure to believe Moses' writings leads to failure to accept the truth of Jesus and His teachings. [See above. This is yet again non-responsive.] So I apologize for missing the last round, it was a busy week to say the least. But I think it's pretty evident that my opponent's case never responded to my initial argument in the first place; he merely repeated verses with unwarranted presuppositions. Thus, you vote CON for the following reasons: 1. The PRO upholds a myopic reading of Scripture that is ahistorical and textually flattening. 2. The PRO's reading of scripture does not itself come from scripture, which is what he seems to think is crucial in his reading of the text. 3. The PRO's case upholds multiple erroneous, unwarranted assumptions: A. Metaphor and figurative language are always false; historical accounts are the only things that are true. B. Literal readings are the only readings that produce truth. C. Truth is reducible to historical, "actual" happenings. 4. If you uphold the CON side, you're upholding a multifaceted view of scripture that recognizes its metaphorical and historical significance; both of these things, keep in mind, are true. Thus, the question of whether or not the Bible has scientific errors proves to be a pointless one to begin with, and you vote CON. I think the fact my opponent went for my framework (i.e. whether or not we should prefer nuanced metaphorical readings of the Bible) instead of whether or not his errors were actually errors proves this point. I thank my opponent for his remarks. (Again, my apologies on missing the last round. I imagine I'll likely get voted down for it; it is what it is, I guess, but I think my argument still stands.)