From: lbarrass@phillip.edu.au
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Question for fundamentalists
Date: 15 Sep 92 08:20:28 GMT
Organization: RMIT (Bundoora Campus)

In article <Sep.12.23.57.38.1992.13105@athos.rutgers.edu>, boe@cadsun2.slac.stanford.edu (Robert Boeninger) writes:
>As a serious sceptic, I have a fundamental question for so-called Christian 
>fundamentalists.
> 
>Concerning the claimed inerrancy of the Bible, how is it possible to 
>accept as true, facts about the nature of the Bible, such as its inerrancy,
>its being inspired by God, and so on, based on the Bible making such claims
>for itself?  That would appear to be a a case of circular reasoning.  Any 
>supposed corroboration of such claims by independent evidence all appears to 
>me to be cases of wishful thinking, arguing after the fact.  You like to think 
>of the Bible as being God-inspired, and therefore you go to great pains to 
>bring up supporting evidence from within the Bible itself.  From a purely 
>logical standpoint, it seems to me that no amount of claims in the Bible about 
>the Bible itself can ever be taken as a validation of those claims. 
>Predictions
>of supposed miracles are again always referred to after the fact, when it's 
>easy to interpret the original statements however best suits the events that 
>supposedly fulfill the prediction.  Look at the difficulty fundamentalists are 
>having predicting the end of the world based on statements in the Bible.
>Do any of you have a sensible response to these issues, one that does NOT
>consist of simply quoting the Bible some more?
> 
>Bob Boeninger

  I as a fundamentalist have also seen this problem of circular reasoning (yes
fundo's do think!!) and still haven't come up with anything emperical to use as
absolute fact regarding biblical inerrancy, and I don't think I will either. If
we look for sources external to the bible itself,what do we need to convice us,
and indeed what is available to convice us that the Bible is true?? Of course
there is evidence that parts of the Bible are true, but there is not eveidence
for all of it. Does this mean that parts are true and others are not. To claim 
errors using lack of evidence is silly and illogical.

  As a historical document (ignoring creation, thats another ballgame) the
Bible seems to have withstood the test of time. I haven't heard of any
historical data being absolutely refuted.

 The only help I can give you on the inerrancy of scripture is faith. As
nebulous as faith is, that is what it comes down to. It is not a quantum leap
if you have faith in God to have faith in the Bible. Apart from faith, there is
the experience of any Bible believer that the Bible is true , which cannot be
proved apart from *faith* in a person's testimony.

    - how am I going so far (no Bible quotes!!)??

  You also mentioned about miracles and the fact that the texts were written
after them and can be made to "predict" them. I assume in this you mean
prophecies, rather than miracles such as water into wine etc. In answer to
this, the problem of the self fulfilling prophecy or post event prophecy needs
to be addressed, as well as causing an old prohecy to occur by manipulation of
events. You firstly need to look at the historicity (did I spell it right?) of
the prophecy ie. age, location etc. It is a historical fact that the books of
prophecy were written well before the time of Christ.This is regardless of
their accuracy.As Christ (according to biblical writings) fulfilled many
prophecies it seems relevant to look at the prohecies concerning Him. There are
some He could have manipulated eg. Riding the Donkey into Jerusalem, but there
are others He couldn't have eg. His place of birth (Micah 5:2). [sorry but I
had to quote!!] which was from about 750 B.C. I can't remember the figures but
there are at least a couple hundred OT prophecies Jesus fulfilled.

  You also mentioned about fundo's having trouble predicting the end of the
world. I have no trouble -- it will end one day :-). Seriously, the Bible tells
us that no man will know the day or the hour so it is futile trying to predict
it. Just because fallible man makes a claim about something the Bible says and
is later proven wrong, doesn't take away from the veracity of the Bible. If I
make a plausible claim about an aspect of Chemistry (which I don't study!)
because I read a textbook I didn't really understand, and am later proven wrong
, I have not destroyed the science of Chemistry.


  Sorry I can't give you anything more concrete on the truth of the Bible,
maybe somebody else can.

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                                               []   2Chron 7:14
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lbarrass@phillip.edu.au                     Lindsay     
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