The Words in the Bible are Divine

I will try to respond to each of the points that you raised to the best of my abilities. C1.1) To begin with, the prophecy of King Cyrus in the OT is under great scrutiny based on the fact that the majority of biblical scholars believe the latter part of Isaiah (from chapter 40 on) is a different author than the original, written much later, during the time of King Cyrus [1]. The timing of the writing makes all the difference in the world to many of the prophecies and there is little evidence to prove that the prophecies were made prior to the events taking place. Considering that your side is making the extraordinary claim of supernatural powers, the onus is on you to prove that it actually happened. And the "historical facts that you claim are in no way historical facts for many of them. Where Jesus was born, what he did for a job, who his parents are, etc. are not historical fact. That is purely based on biblical references and scholars only agree simply that Jesus likely existed, had some ties to John the Baptist and was a preacher in Galilee and Judea. Beyond that, the rest of his stories are not accepted as historical fact, as you claim [2]. C1.2) The fact that you use the terminology "nearly identical" shows that they are not identical. Considering that these words are intended to be, as you said, "the infallible words of a living God," anything differing from the exact words would make them no longer infallible. If flawed, sinful human beings have manipulated the words in any way, their infallibility and divinity are stripped away. That the words don"t translate nicely across should be enough to show that anyone working from an English translation is not receiving God"s word in it"s perfect, infallible form. And if humans are expected to interpret the ideas, the fact that we are fallible puts into question whether or not our interpretations are capable of preserving the divinity of the words. C1.3) If you want to get into a debate about whether or not killing children of sinful people is murder, that could be a lengthy debate in its own right, but I would put forth that it is in fact still murder and the fact that God told them to do it does not make it any less murderous. But even if my previous example is merely just another example of how mistranslations strip away the divinity, rather than an example of a contradiction, that does not ignore the other many, many contradictions in the bible. Another example is the issue of unforgivable sin. Mark 3:28-29 "Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin." 1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." Colossians 2:13 "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins" These examples show another complete contradiction in that there are some sins unforgivable but that God will forgive all sins. A full list of these and many other contradictions can be found at my source below [3]. C2.1) Your arguments here seem to lose some of the strength of your earlier points. You are claiming that because people are willing to die for something, that it must mean they are true. I cannot comment on the sanity of any of the prophets, nor of your friend, but I can comment that many people are willing to die for many causes, but that does not, in any way, make their argument any stronger. To try and argue that Christian martyrs prove the divinity of the bible is to argue that anyone willing to die for a cause legitimises their cause. That claim would open up an entire can of worms that would contradict itself over and over. Anyone who fights and dies in a war legitimises what they are fighting for? The willingness to die for a cause merely shows that the individual believes strongly in it, but individual belief does not constitute proof of divinity. C2.2) The fact that the bible has had an impact is no more an argument than your previous attempt. The bible has had an impact because it is a very useful tool for establishing power over a very large group of people and the way it has been used throughout history (ie. Indulgences, Crusades, etc) has shown it to be a very effective tool. I am not arguing that the bible had an impact, because it clearly has, but your argument in no way supports the claim that the bible is divine. C2.3) This point is purely based on false information. As I responded in C1.3, there are hundreds of contradictions in the bible and to ignore them completely and make the claim that there are no contradictions in the bible proves that you are picking and choosing what you want to see in the bible. Interpreting the book how you want it is fine, but you then must acknowledge that there is no divinity in what you are doing because your own fallible mind is what is controlling the information that you take in. C2.4) Again, this is purely false information. The bible is not constantly right about history, unless of course you use the bible as your only history book. The fact that there is some historical accuracy in the book in no way confirms that every word in the book is based on actual events. That a group mentioned in the bible exists does not prove that every miracle mentioned is an historical event. I have read many books that overlay historical events with fantasy or science fiction, but knowing that the historical events actually happened does not make the fantastical elements also true. Your job in this debate is to prove that the bible is divine and I have yet to see any convincing proof that it is. The prophecies can be easily explained based on when the books were written. The fact that the majority of the books have a massive debate regarding the authorship and timelines suggests that there is no proof that the prophecies were written prior to the events. In the case of the messianic prophecies, the fulfilment of them is only backed by an assumption that the bible offers a perfect historical record of the birth, life and death of Jesus Christ, something which is in no way proven. Those prophecies could very well just be fulfilled by a man with the ability to work a story around an open-ended prophecy. I would argue that you still have much proving to do if you wish to prove that the bible is in fact divine. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org... [3] http://www.thethinkingatheist.com...