bible has no siginficant contradiction in it

In your opening statement for this debate you said :"all it takes is one blatant contradiction to show the bible has error." I have shown one blatant contradiction and now you say I should have picked something MORE blatant. I have already satisfied your challenge, but I can do that! First I want to revisit a couple of my points from Round 1. You ( I mean your copy paste job) said "A fifth factor that must be recognized is that the two lines (paternal and maternal) link together ".. This is incorrect information. There is no maternal lineage given for Jesus in the Bible. Both Matthew and Luke are giving the lineage of Joseph. That is a point I had made in round one and I specifically mentioned that apologists try to make that false argument. I will show the relevant passages here since you seem to have missed them: "Matthew 1.... 15 and Eli'ud the father of Elea'zar, and Elea'zar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. " Matthew clearly states that Jacob is the father of Joseph. "Luke 3: 23 Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, "." Again the Bible in Luke expicitly states that this is the lineage of Joseph being given. In your response you stated that Mary was the daughter of Heli. That is NOT what the Bible says. All of the convoluted arguments you put forth to try to justify the use of the word son in application to Joseph"s relationship to Heli are attempts to make the passage say something it does not say. Additionally, your statement: "(5) in the sense of a step-son who took on the legal status of his step-father"the relationship sustained by Jesus to Joseph " would apply to the relationship between Joseph and Jesus, not between Joseph and Heli. Heli was NOT Joseph"s stepfather or Mary"s father. The Bible in Luke says "Joseph, the son of Heli". You stated "the precise purpose of Matthew"s genealogy: it demonstrated Jesus" legal right to inherit the throne of David" a necessary prerequisite to authenticating His Messianic claim. " I agree that this is the precise purpose BUT "Matthew and Luke both FAIL because Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus. You copied and pasted that "Notice carefully that Joseph was a direct-line, blood descendant of David " " But Jesus is not a direct blood " line descendant of Joseph or David. This is a BIG DEAL. It means that Jesus does not fulfill that prophecy. If a contradiction that invalidates "a necessary prerequisite to authenticating His Messianic claim" isn"t significant enough, I surely do not know what would be! While I appreciate your coaching me on my second contradiction, I will pick my own. My only source again is the Bible. I realize that in the voting points are given for "most reliable source" " I hope I don't have to forfeit all of those points because I am arguing against the Bible being a reliable source, but I think it is the best evidence against itself. In this round I will show both irreconcilable internal conflicts and external conflicts. Birth Narratives Both Matthew and Luke knew that Jesus was from Nazareth, but they wanted him to have been born in Bethlehem. So both told stories to make this happen. There are many differences between the two stories . Some are just differences that we could say both happened and either Luke or Matthew just left those details out of their story, but there are some important areas of not just differences but actual discrepancies, which cannot be reconciled. In Matthew, Joseph and Mary are residents of Bethlehem and relocate to Nazareth only after Jesus is a couple of years old after fleeing to Egypt to escape the "slaughter of innocents" allegedly ordered by Herod. There is no external evidence that this slaughter ever really took place and no other Biblical source either. If this slaughter had actually happened it would have been noted by historians of the time. In Luke, they make a journey there when Mary is great with child. As this story goes, Joseph was required to register in Bethlehem because his ancestor, King David was from there. There are 1,000 years between David and Joseph. (Are we to believe that everyone in the Roman Empire had to return to a place where an ancestor lived 1,000 years prior? ) Matthew says Jesus was born when Herod was King. Luke says that Jesus was born at the time of the tax under Cyrenius. The historical problem is that Herod died in 4BC before the taxing under Cyrenius. So if Matthew is correct, then Luke is not. If Luke is right about the timing of the birth, then King Herrod was dead and the stories in Matthew about the killing of infants is not true. "The Gospel of Luke links the birth of Jesus to a "world-wide" census ordered by Augustus carried out while Quirinius was governor of Syria. This is thought to be a reference to the census of Judea in 6/7 AD; however Matthew, dates the birth to the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BC, ten years before the census of 6 or 7 AD. According to Raymond E. Brown, most modern historians suggest that Luke's account is mistaken. Scholars trying to reconcile the Biblical accounts have speculated about alternative explanations, such as a different census before Quirinius was governor.[13] The majority view, however, among modern scholars is that there was only one census, in 6, and the author of the Gospel of Luke deviated from history in connecting it with the birth of Jesus. "http://en.wikipedia.org... In Matthew wise men from the Orient follow a star to find Jesus. Evidently they inform Herod that the trip has taken about 2 years, since Herod orders the slaughter of all boys 2 years and under. When the wise men arrive they find Jesus and Mary in a house in Bethlehem. Joseph and Mary flee Bethlehem and go to Egypt unitl they hear that Herod has died. After that they go to Nazareth, not because it is home, but because Joseph decided that Bethlehem is still not safe for them. In Luke Jesus is born, laid in a manger, visited by shepherds who were alerted by angels, and about 32 days later after all the religious ceremony is performed Mary and Joseph go back home to Nazareth. These stories (both made up in my opinion) cannot both be accurate. Why does it matter? For me the significance is that we have clear evidence in these stories of falsehoods being told in the Bible about Jesus himself. If one or both of these writers was willing to make up lies about his birth, (and his genealogy) how can we trust their testimony about Jesus at all? Once a witness has demonstrated willingness to fabricate stories to promote their own goal ( in this case fulfilling prophecies) I am not willing to accept them as reliable sources. In court when a witness does this it is called perjury. Shouldn"t it be against god's law to lie when supposedly relating his word. Finally regarding the supernatural claims woven throughout the narratives of Matthew and Luke about virgin conceptions, dreams and visits from angels explaining the role of God to Mary and Joseph. It was common at the time when these stories were being told that Roman and Greek gods were thought to mate with humans and their offspring were demigods themselves. So even though these claims seem unique to us, it was not the case then. We have dismissed the myths of the Roman and Greek gods as nonsense. Why shouldn"t the supernatural claims made by the anonymous writers of the Bible fall to that same fate? The internal evidence demonstrates that the writers of the Bible were not inspired and that they did not produce an inerrant manuscript worthy of being called the word of god.