Agnostic75
Well-Known Member
If the Bible did contains errors, what would be a hypothetical example?
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If the Bible did contains errors, what would be a hypothetical example?
I imagine you're asking this in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, but I figure I'll answer this on behalf of biblical inerrantists.
Your qestion is nonsense to the inerrantist.
If the Bible did contain errors, it wouldn't be the Bible.
To reduce away from questions of theology and to frame logically, you're asking "If the set S of statements contains only true, non-false statements, what might a hypothetical false or non-true statement that it contains be?" By definition, your "hypothetical" criteria precludes it from existing in the set. It's pure logical nonsense.
Nope. I'm not even a Christian.Are you one yourself? An inerrantist, that is.
Why? As I see it, he's testing the intellectual honesty of inerrantists. I put forth a similar OP, which I titled "The Errancy Challenge". I showed a discrepancy between two texts in the Bible and challenged inerrantists to show how it would have to be worded in order for a discrepancy to actually exist if they disagreed with me that one existed. So far, no inerrantists have accepted my challenge. I suspect I know why.
It's not really nonsense at all. It's actually a perfectly sensible question. What he's asking, expressing it as I am in different words, is what would it take to convince believers that the Bible has an error in it? I don't understand how his "hypothetical" criteria precludes it from existing in the set. You'd have to explain this one to me
If the Bible did contains errors, what would be a hypothetical example?
It might be simpler if I change the topic title to "What specific evidence convinced you to become an inerrantist?" Let's try that for a while.
You run tail tucked with practiced ease.That's a better question. Of course, it totally ignores the point and nature of faith. But I'll buzz off and let your confirmation bias carry on.
Perhaps Agnostic 75 can't believe any thinking person would accept such a notion on faith alone: "The Bible is inerrant because I have faith that it is."That's a better question. Of course, it totally ignores the point and nature of faith. But I'll buzz off and let your confirmation bias carry on.
Honestly, I explained this really quite well. Let me frame it for a secularist:
Einstein's Theories of Relativity predict that no particle with mass can accelerate faster than the speed of light. If a massed particle DID accelerate faster than the speed of light, what kind of particle would it be?[
This is the kind of question you're asking.
The question I've emboldened and the one presented in the OP are NOT the same, at all. If that's what the OP meant, then we can change the course of this whole conversation. But what the OP asked was "What kind of error might an Inerrant Bible contain?". The correctly logical answer to this is "none."
I guess this gets to the root of the expression of the nonsense. Let us suppose that a hypothetical object exists such that it is false and exists in the Bible in a universe where the Bible is presumed to be Inerrant. If this is the case, then the object is false (by definition) and true (by being contained in an Inerrant Bible). This is obviously contradictory.
wmjbyatt said:That's a better question. Of course, it totally ignores the point and nature of faith. But I'll buzz off and let your confirmation bias carry on.
Wikipedia said:Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias, myside bias or verification bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. For example, in reading about gun control, people usually prefer sources that affirm their existing attitudes. They also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions.
Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human
capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way.
Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in military, political, and organizational contexts, as well as in the process of getting to know other people.
wmjbyatt said:Your question is nonsense to the inerrantist.
If faith alone is reasonable evidence, why would the "faith only" group of Christians ever have discussions with anyone?
If faith alone is all that matters, then one worldview is as reasonable as another.