To what extent is the Bible infallible and inerrant?

"Most of the primates"?

So if I build a chair with 1/2" wood screws and a dog house with 1/2" wood screws that means they must have come from the same tree?

The first thing you have discounted is what the Bible claims... a common Creator of primates.

Or if the common Creator had a specific purpose that we haven't discovered.

A common ancestor? Forget the infallible authority of our vitamin C deficiency... what does that do to God's claim of having formed Adam from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life?

Why would we assume "accidently" instead of providentially or directly due to the curse?

Why must the first casualty in any discussion of this issue be the ability and authority of God to act supernaturally to accomplish the things that meet His will?

Actually, your rebuttal isn't complete and you probably know that whole books have been written on intelligent design and irreducible complexity that answer the "old canard" that you used above.

God didn't call the world "chaotic" prior to the fall... He called it "good".

 

Next to "do not judge," that verse about one day being a thousand years is probably one of the most misused verses in the Bible. You have to look at what God says in context.

In Genesis, it is narrative and it is a straightforward account of an event.

In 2 Pet 3.8, it is a completely differenct context, and I think you know that. Peter is talking about the last days and trying to encourage believers. "To the Lord" a day is as a thousand years because God is outside time; time does not matter from God's view. The point Peter was making was that God was patient, not willing for anyone to perish, but the day of judgment will be coming. This is obviously not a literal statement that a day can be a thousand years, or that whenever God says "day" it can mean a thousand years. You always have to consider the context.

 

Bill,

" I will say however as time goes by science lines up more and more with the Bible.

I'd have to disagree with this statement somewhat. I think that nature will never "prove wrong" anything that God has made plain. As you know since I don't interpret genesis 1 literally science does not contradict the Bible in my eyes.

I would actually love nothing better than to report that all of science clearly upholds a young earth - but is just doesn't. 99% of natural scientists agree that it doesn't.

Now I'm not saying that I have any problem with the young earth position. I wouldn't even question the believer who says, "I just believe the Bible becasue it says so."

But it seems clear that AT THIS POINT science supports an old earth. And my problem is more with those authors who try to show how science actually supports a young earth when this isn't the case. This teaches people to believe the Bible because it can be proven and not because it's God's word! That's what I disagree with!!

Let's be honest - science say the earth is probably old. No one has to believe that - but I would rather acknowledge the fact and disagree with it than try to assert that science says what it actually does not say.

 

Scott,

" The problem for me is that the science does not make a young earth seem likely."

Let me qualify me statement.

I assert that science suggests an old earth. That doesn't mean that future discoveries would suggest otherwise - but I object to the authors who say science actually supports a young earth because I see this as intellectually dishonest.

God could have easily created everything in 6 days. And he may have! He could also easily (as you suggest) created it as is, with features that merely suggest older age.

Both of these arguments are fine!

I just object to the arguments about the second law of thermodynamics, and light slowing down because they seem wildly implausible and because they seem rooted in a desperate desire to SOMEHOW make science seem to show a young earth.

Regarding your questions about evolution and day-age creationism:

Their disagreement with the language of the Bible is contingent upon the veracity of your literalist hermeneutic, which I would call into question.

Evolution WOULD explain alot of what we see around us - but is itself far from proved in all of its claims.

Day-age creationism has no support from textual, cultural, or scientific sources and should be rejected outright.

 

To the extent that it it is infallible and inerrant on matters of truth.

There is no scriptural requirement for scripture to be infallible on matters of fact.

The problem is, as is demonstrated by the copious posts on this thread, that discerning between truth and fact is a train that many Christians are not good at practicing.

 

"Science" doesn't actually suggest anything. The facts simply exist until someone interprets them.

The earth can be old or young. But it is not a purely scientific endeavor to claim either. No matter what side of this issue one stands on they ultimately appeal to a core set of unproveable assumptions.

I assume that the Bible is speaking literally because there are no internal indicators nor conclusive external proofs that it is not. I assume that God has acted supernaturally in the past with the miracles recorded in the Bible being actual events that occurred as given. I assume that God could have taken as much or as little time as He willed to create the universe... but when the dust settles and I am asked to choose between the creative theorizing of secular science or God's Word, I believe God's Word.

I have come to the point that I attempt to lead all of these arguments back to the fundamental premises and assumptions. It is neither valuable nor constructive to get bogged down in endless rangling over details until a foundation is set.

Regarding your questions about evolution and day-age creationism:

Actually, it really isn't. They fail on the fact that they are incongruent with any but the most radical treatment of scripture. You basically have to say that the Bible doesn't mean anything like what the words actually say.

I can live with OECs that say there was a period prior to Genesis 1:1 where though the world was void the universe was developing. To speculate what might have occurred prior to God's witness is OK.

I think evolution does a very good job of speculating explanations for the natural world and its history. It is a logical progression from its core assumptions... which I believe to be false and inherently illogical. Evolution cannot produce a prime cause. At some point, it has to say that "somehow" this or that happened and caused everything else. The problem is that bodies at rest tend to remain at rest. They require an outside force. Evolution cannot say "well this is where the creator comes in" because that violates its own premise that all things must have a naturalistic cause.

So what is it that you believe?

 

DNA suggest something? What did it sound like?

And no that is not just a sarcastic, rhetorical question. It points to a most important point. The facts of DNA as interpretted by someone is where the suggestion comes in.

I am going to violate my own rule and deal with this detail just briefly. It was on my mind as I drove past thousands of acres of crop land on the way home yesterday.

You build this case as if the only conclusion is that primates have a common ancestor. Let me suggest another scenario that has real world comparisons.

Perhaps primates, which can still suffer from some of the same diseases, were at some time hit with a significant plague and only those with the deficiency you cite could survive it.

This is the case to a lesser extent with the sickle cell. It allows people greater resistance to malaria.

It is also the case with insects and agricultural pesticides. Insects usually adapt by losing genetic information. IOW, only those in the population without certain gene characteristics survive. These deficiencies may manifest themselves as a disadvantage elsewhere but they allow the survival of a remnant.

If I were researching this, I would look for the other common characteristics shared by the primates with this deficiency then study what types of diseases might account for the data.

You have leapt to the conclusion that it must be a common ancestor when all the evidence really requires is that we have some common genetic attributes and have been exposed to similar environmental conditions.

But why? Why must it be a common ancestor? Because it agrees with the assumptions.

 

No.

Discerning between truth and fact is important, whether the topic is scripture or something else.

There are many who can discern here on the BB, that I have agreements and disagreements with all the time.

 

OK fair enough in a way but remember I was responding to a post where an anti-evolutionist stated DNA suggests (his word) that it was created uniquely for each species, and using that form of speech in my reply.

And I want to thank you for taking the time to actually address this issue, which has been raised many many times in this board and in other places and I have yet to see an attempt at a substantive reply to this important piece of evidence, until now.

You've made a nice try but you've missed the point. The point is that this non-functioning gene exists in exactly the same form over multiple species. So how would the damage to this gene - as specific as saying of your car that it was stopped by removing left rear wheel - occur over multiple species?

In order to make your suggestion credible, some investigation would be in order. The gene at present is non-funtional. Is that determination in error? Are there ways in which the gene can perhaps express itself in some circumstances?

Why is the damage always the "left rear tire"? Wouldn't the right rear tire or the crankshaft give similar results?

The idea that the gene broke but that didn't matter because there was plenty of vitamin c in the diet is a very simple, easily understood idea.

You can try to place another reason for the broken gene in there, as you did, but that misses the evidential point, which is that the exact same defect occurs across multiple species. How did THAT happen in the absense of a common ancestor that started the defect off in the beginning?

I'm sorry, but I regard learning how to live with a poisen that used to kill my ancestors as a gain in information not a loss in information.

Common genetic attributes are routinely regarded as evidence of ancestry in matters of legally establishing paternity. Do you think all our courts are misguided by relying on this evidence, or are we perhaps at last really on the track of something that is reliable? I submit the latter is the case.

OK Nice try, but in my opinion the argument that there might be a hidden purpose behind the mutation fails to explain the exact uniformity of the mutation within species that exactly matches the postulated evolutionary pattern. This omission in your argument, coupled with the complete out of the blue speculation for an unknown and unknowable purpose based on merely assuming there has to be a purpose, leaves your arguement, in my opinion, out in the cold.

Primates are not the only creatures that fail to make vitamin C - guina pigs also fail, and they have (surprise!) a different mutation that causes their problem. Not surprising to the evolutionist, they're not in the same closely evolutionary related family tree.

 

There are shared attributes between all living things. This can mean that we share a common ancestor or that we were all specially made by a common creator who chose to use similar building blocks.

I made an illustration earlier that you may have missed. If I make a chair using 1/2" wood screws and a dog house with 1/2" wood screws, that doesn't mean that they came from the same tree. Showing that things have common traits does not show that they are directly related especially if a willful creator is involved.

 

Huh? This isn't speculation on my part. This is how insects survive many pesticides. The ones who have a loss of information or a non-functioning gene survive by denying the chemical process that kills the bug.

This is very similar to what you described in the case of vitamin C. We share a defective gene with other primates that will not allow us to process our own vitamin C. At some time in the past, this could have been the route used by a disease to kill the part of our populations that didn't have the defect.

That is apples and oranges. We are talking about paternity within a species.

Neither. A court would never accept evidence as remote and circumstantial as this single shared attribute you cite.

Paternal test have probabilities that are extraordinary.

I didn't omit it. Perhaps you just missed my point.

You suggest that this evidence points to a common set of ancestors... which of course would have been confined to a small locale in order for them to share whatever environmental conditions resulted in this change. Even if you say it came from one ancestor, its descendents would have to remain local for many generations to reinforce the attribute to the point we find it now. This is less probable than my speculation.

I suggest a common creator with an animal population that at two distinct points was confined to a relatively small area in which the same environmental condition could have effected several different species sharing particular DNA characteristics. The critical piece of the puzzle isn't ancestory but location.

The Bible says that God has a purpose. That is neither out of the blue nor speculative. What is speculative is that anything in natural history regardless of one's view has ever happened with a purpose/cause.

I would say that God has a well established purpose for plagues and disease. They are in response to sin.

It wouldn't surprise me either.

We have numerous diseases that result in common symptoms and even common long term damage.

 

JohnV, you and I went throught his before but you never gave a good answer to tell us the difference between a fact and the truth. I asked you how something that is true could have wrong facts. You responded by talking about taking symbolic, hyperbolic, or metaphorical language literally, and about discrepancies in the Bible (and I gave a long answer to one of those to you).

That has nothing to do with "discerning between fact and truth." Give me a fact that is not true, or a truth that is based on wrong facts. If we must discern between facts and truth, as you say, then you are saying they are not the same thing.

 

I think I answered it adequately before. Scriptural topic aside, truth and fact are not symonymous. This is not my opinion. This is an every day reality.

You want a fact that is not true. OJ Simpson was found not guilty by evidence of facts presented by his defense. But the truth is that he killed his wife. You want more examples? Read any tabloid. Most of them contain stories with facts, but the stories are often untrue. As far as scripture, Luke talks about wise men seeing a star in the east. The fact is that it was not a star. It was most likely a specific planetary conjunction that was seen by astrologers as announcing the birth of a monarch. In fact, this very thing was documented as happenning during the time of Jesus' birth, and the conjunction moved in the exact way that scripture describes. So the truth is that they followed a star, but the fact is that they followed a planet.

You want a truth that is based on "wrong facts". You're using incorrect verbage here (which is evidence of the lack of ability to discern between fact and truth). Your correct request would be that you want to know a truth that is not supported by fact. I direct you to Song of Solomon. The whole book is truth, but is generally based on a person's (Solomon) opinions about his lover, and not on fact.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.
- Maya Angelou

 

JohnV, this is not a difference between fact and truth, but two separate things. You have the truth that O J killed his wife (assuming he did), and the fact that the court found him not guilty. That has nothing to do with truth not being fact -- that is the case of a court decision finding someone not guilty, which means there was not enough evidence (in view of judge or jury) to convict the person. There is no difference here between truth and fact. If he did kill his wife, then the truth is still that he killed his wife and the truth is still that he was found not guilty.

That is not an example, either. You not separating the various facts; what you are saying is that some facts are true and some aren't, or implications are made based on some facts.

The facts are that no one knows if this was a planetary conjunction, or the Shekinah (as many believe) or something else. Theories abound. This particular star is something I deal with all the time -- I even something written on it on my site. Most astronomers do not think it was a planetary conjunction because it would not have been bright enough in that place and such conjunctions occur at certain times throughout history, so there is nothing unusually special about them. Several books were written on this a few years ago and the astronomers could not decide what caused this bright light. Furthermore,
the Bible tells us that the "star" led the Magi to a specific place (after leading them to Herod). No conjunction can "stand" over a specific place. Many Bible scholars think this could have been the Shekinah in the form of a star that led the Magi. But the bottom line is we do not know.

The Song of Solomon is God's word, so it's not someone's opinion. This is also poetry -- so there is still nothing here to say truth but wrong facts. There can be truth where we don't know the facts, but that is not the same as saying that something can be wholly true with wrong facts.

Sounds like a New Ager to me! I don't take anything Angelou says as a good basis for a worldview. She's a good poet but her worldview is skewed.

 

The verdict had nothing to do with the facts or the truth, assuming there is a difference. The verdict was pure and simple "jury nullification". That is a fact and that is the truth.