The Bible is sufficient evidence for the belief in Chrisitanity

I will acknowledge the request regarding errors in the bible, but I don’t want to muddy the waters herein too heavily. For the purposes of this argument I will be using the King James Version (KJV), and there are two classifications of error I will point to: Contradiction 2nd Kings 8:26 – “Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign” 2nd Chronicles 22:2 – “Forty and two years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign” Classification Error Leviticus 11:20-21 – “All fowls that creep, going upon all four” Fowls do not creep, on all four. The closest are the flightless birds which are still only on two legs. There are refutations of the classification error I have put forth arguing that this was a mistranslation meant for insects, but it has not been corrected even in the later editions of the KJV. In either case, contradictions are not the base of the debate, so it is not necessary to go into them here. “Sufficient” is defined by a quantity that can fulfill a need or requirement but without being abundant; enough or ample, and I put it to my opponent that not only is the bible insufficient evidence for anything short of believing the bible exists and has words it. The purpose of this debate is not to use hand wavy feel good arguments for why it’s okay for people to skip math class and believe in god because they are destined for a menial labor job, it is to discuss the sufficiency of the bible in regards to supporting ones beliefs. Since you are saying that it does, I would like to understand why and am looking for a well-reasoned argument for it. It needs to be shown that the bible is able to support the Christian beliefs in and of itself. We have not yet defined the Christian beliefs. Per the fundamentalist belief structure (A) a Christian must believe in 1) the inerrancy of the bible, 2) the literal nature of its accounts, 3) the virgin birth of the Christ, 4) his resurrection and 5) the atonement for our sins. Even if I ignore the last three, the bible is part of the first two, and if you use the bible as your evidence to believe in the bible you are using circular reasoning. Re: ”Nothing is perfect” That is not entirely true. The fundamentalist belief structure holds the bible to be inerrant and as such flawless and perfect. It is also a popular position to hold god as being a perfect being, and if the bible is his inspired word it doesn’t really make sense for him to allow his perfect dictation to be muddled over the last 2000 years. Scholars state that the bible has gone through many phases of revision and editing, to correct for cultural norms and just through mistaken copies. Ex. Asherah (B). Even if you believe that original copies exist, the Christian bible has undoubtedly been translated from Hebrew to Greek to English, and not necessarily in that order (C). Re: Science works on average The things science may have been incorrect about are irrelevant and moreover, wrong. Science is, by definition, a repeatable and self-correcting process by which we unearth facts and figures about the nature of our cosmos. Scientists may put forth arguments or positions, but they do not become part of the body of science without scrutiny and insight. Re: Popularity & Tradition Your position up to now seems to hinge on two fallacies, an appeal to tradition and an appeal to popularity. Just because the bible “worked” in the past does not mean that it works. “Does it explain the universe to a non-specialist,” no. It attempts to, but that does not answer the sufficiency argument in the slightest. I am not a specialist, and even in my youth, I never found the bible to be sufficient evidence of anything, apart from what I have already shared. It doesn’t matter if the number of people is 1 or a million; its ability to be used is both irrelevant and non-consequential. Re: A lack of rationality in humans I would agree with my opponent except for one issue – from my opponents example “what I eat is not determined by logic, rather by subjectivity.” When was the last time you saw someone eating a boat, or drain cleaner. In spite of the statement that humans are not rational, they have the ability to reason what is and is not food. Even the donkey paradox is actually a misapplication, because a reasoning being would simply reason that it is more important to make a choice than to die. Re: Intelligence Appealing to intelligent people does not mean anything significant herein, because the intelligent people do not believe in Christianity strictly because of the bible, and it would be an error to believe as much. I read through that Asimov story and I’m not sure how that fits into your argument. Would you mind expanding that thought a bit? Re: Study habits In my science classes we were taught not to take anything for granted, including the contents of the air we breathe. It is common practice in all of my mathematics courses to rely only on what has already been proven, and occasionally taking half steps into lemmas before attempting a proof. There are of course things and times that we take things at face value (as when I see someone running away from something I will likely think about whether I should be running as well) but I would like to hear more about what it is that allows the leap from accepting something at face value and accepting something as important as your religious views at face value. A) http://en.wikipedia.org... B) http://news.discovery.com... C) http://www.greatsite.com...