The Bible is of Divine Origins

Thanks Pro.=Framework=Thankfully, Pro presented positive arguments last round, so I do have the chance to respond. I intend on focussing specifically on my third contention this round, as I believe I have strongly affirmed the former two contentions.Pro’s only argument for the Bible being of Divine origin is:“The Bible is of Divine Origin because it hasn't been successfully proven fallible, yet has been proven right scientifically, geographically, and even prophecy wise.”So I will be attacking both the presuppositions and the evidence for this.Pro’s PresuppositionsPro at many times presents Bible verses as evidence of what the rest of the Bible means and intends. For example:“ I have provided evidence that the Bible can be clearly interpreted by one who, searches the scriptures(John 5:39), studying(2 Timothy 2:15), by comparing spiritual with spiritual(1 Corinthians 2:13).(relevance) ““God's Word is designed for one to understanding who strives to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ(2 Peter 3:18).”However, at best Pro can only affirm that all the writings of the Bible written AFTER the verses he quotes would be ‘bound’ to this, since only those authors we can soundly say know anything about the quoted verses. So when Pro quotes the Gospel of John which might (via. whatever interpretation) state that the Bible was intended for something, he cannot use that as evidence for the intentionality of ANY of the books of the Old Testament, as they predate John.The only way I see that Pro can actually affirm his use of these verses is if he can prove the Bible was directed by a universal author (or some sort of entity) in the first place…. Which is the very thing in contention in this debate!!! Who is to say that every single author of the books of the Bible wrote with a uniform intentionality, with the same goal in mind and style of writing. It is patently false, the authors of the books of the Bible clearly had their own theological aims, for example the author of the Gospel of John had a very different view of Jesus (his being divine, and the lamb of God) to the other synoptic Gospel authors.Thus we simply cannot take Pro seriously when Pro quotes the Bible to justify the Bible, as this ignores the Bible’s composition (1,500 years in span, in an assortment of languages and cultures), and presupposes that each part of the Bible is authoritative over the other, which is begging the question.C1. What we would expect if the Bible were of divine originsPro completely ignores my argument which depicts what we would expect of the Bible if it were of divine origins (inerrant, singular, explicit). They, like all my beliefs are personal beliefs, but they are of a logical progression. Pro has not attempted to demonstrate any of the premises unsound, or even unproven.So we can accept that we would indeed expect the Bible to be singular, explicit and inerrant. A. Explicit Pro’s only defence is:Individuals may not be aware of God's correct interpretation, but when it's brought to their attention you will be held to some measure of accountability.”Which basically concedes my point. Thanks Pro. We would not expect *any* controversy whatsoever over the ‘correct’ interpretation IF the Bible was divinely directed in any way. B. Single Book Pro provided reasons for why each of the Gospel accounts exist, however NONE of this would not have been achieved (and achieved more effectively) with a single perfect commission. That’s the point, these extra books were unnecessary and are vulnerable to inconsistencies (which I already argued for). All the Gospels were written in Greek, so Pro’s justification for Luke fails out of the gate. C. Inerrancy Pro ignores virtually all my arguments here. He did provide one logically valid argument however..P1: If there was an Ark, there was a flood P2: There was an Ark C1: There was a floodGreat. Now why should we believe wither P1 or P2 are true. So far these are bare assertions. No Ark to my knowledge has ever been recovered, not does an Ark necessarily entail a flood occurred. Pro made the argument in his opening that the Ark was built in the same proportions as a US launches concrete ship…. But what does this prove. Finding one ship in thousands which match up to the specifications of Noah’s Ark only proves that much, nothing more.Pro fails to defend against any of my attacks on Genesis, which clearly demonstrate blatant errancy.RebuttalsPro affirms:“The Bible is of Divine Origin because it hasn't been successfully proven fallible, yet has been proven right scientifically, geographically, and even prophecy wise."I argued in my third contention that this is not sufficient to demonstrate the Bible is of divine origins, as it ignores all other explanations for these observations (even assuming every single one of them is true).God by default is the least likely explanation for these observations because it is far outside our common experience and knowledge. It is appealing to an additional mystery to solve something which is well-within the capacity of naturalistic explanations. Even frivolous ones such as intelligent aliens inspiring the writers to worship things that don’t exist.Even if we assume each and every argument, it would be more rational to take an explanation that is naturalistic, since we can easily argue that any naturalistic explanation is metaphysically possible. However we cannot anywhere nearly as easily argue that a supernatural explanation (a divine one) is even metaphysically possible, let alone possible in this world we have now.I will not be rebutting each of Pro’s individual statements, but the general ideas behind them. 1. The inspiration that brought forth the scriptures came not from the genius of men, but from God Pro gives several Bible verses that affirm this. It might be true that these verses claim this (subject to interpretation, which I already shown is extremely problematic), but that is all it is, a claim. It’s simply not evidence any more than the claims of Harry Potter is evidence of Hogwarts existing. Also only certain books claim this, Pro cannot apply these statements to *each and every single book* of the Bible, for reasons already given. 2. Prophecies I am not going to address a Gish Gallop directly. Pro has yet to demonstrate a single prophecy has been fulfilled. He actually needs to present the evidence it occurred for it to count in this debate.Pro argues it proves that the Bible is a related Book, however at best it only proves that the later authors writings have knowledge of the earlier author’s writings. Which isn’t particularly surprising or unexpected naturally. 3.Scientific Foreknowledge Pro Gish Galloped this points out so I cannot respond in detail. But then we can dismiss most of these out of hand since we have the following points in contention: 1. Was the interpretation of the verse the correct one 2. Is the statement scientifically true 3. Was this interpretation of the passage originally intended 4. Is it something that would only be or best explainable by a divine originator For example, Pro asserts evidence of the Genesis flood account, yet provides none, and Jeremiah 33:22 reads: “ I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars in the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore”Neither of these statements are ‘scientifically’ accurate, and is clearly written in an offhand metaphorical sense. Given that either of these numbers exceed a sextillion, which is many more than humans that are physically possible to live on Earth over its entire lifetime then it follows that this passage is scientifically false.If Pro was only affirming that “there are lots of stars”, well this was blatantly obvious at the time for anyone who looks at the sky…I will not go over the remainder, and these should all be dismissed anyway via. Hitchen’s Rasor. On closer examination some of these are false. That is enough to demonstrate a frivolous Gish Gallop. 4. The Bible is true in every regard. All four claims given by Pro are bald assertions… And thus can be dismissed out of hand. 5. The miracles confirmed its message, and the inspired penman confirmed each other.Runs into problems already mentioned (Pro’s presuppositions). Simple acknowledgement of previous books (remember the population was largely Jewish, so these customs were already worshipped to an extent) is not evidence of the Bible’s unity. Much more reasonable to assume is that the writings of past authors influences the later authors, and not that all the books of the Bible were directed by a singular entity (God). 6. It has been copied faithfully. We have over 25,000 mss. That corroborate the text of the New Testament. Pro ignores my arguments that we know there are massive problems within the Bible BECAUSE we have so many manuscripts, which all differ from one another, with entire stories clearly manufactured (Last twelve verses of Mark for example). We have very few complete manuscripts from the early era (~ 400 A.D.), and later manuscripts are largely many generations of copies younger, with all the errors of previous scribes included. Having a large number of manuscripts is not the ‘corroborating’ thing that Pro seems to think it is, and I argued this in detail in my opening round.ConclusionVoters should vote Con purely from Pro’s failure to uphold his share of the BoP. Moreover Pro has not acknowledged his plagiarism in R1, not apologised, as such should be considered when voting for conduct. Thanks Pro.