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How to tell if the Bible (or any other holy book) is or isn't inspired

TimCallahan

Philosopher
T
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Mar 11, 2009
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What's written below is taken from another thread. I thought that if apologists for the Bible answered the post on that thread, it would be off topic; hence this new thread:

There are a number of tests to which we might subject an alleged holy book to find out if it is genuinely inspired:

1) Does it hold and expound on scientific knowledge well beyond anything the culture that produced the book could have known?

While various religious apologists have claimed the Bible does so, when one examines those claims they turn out to be baseless I've even seen a few such claims for the Qur'an that are simply absurd.

2) Does it make prophecies before the fact that come true?

Again, many apologists make such claims about Bible prophecies. However, as I explain in my book Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment?, every biblical prophecy that can be pinned down turns out to be either something that was predictable in human terms, such as the fall of Nineveh as the Assyrian Empire was crumbling, or is just plain wrong.

3) Does it espouse superior ethics, in many cases beyond what we would expect from the culture that produced the book?

Here, I would say, the Bible is something of a toss up, varying from book to book. The fact that even the New Testament has no problem with slavery says to me that the ethics espoused by the Bible are all too human. Again, another thread would be required to discuss this.

For all these reasons, I reject the assertion that the Bible is divinely inspired (ditto for the Qur'an and all other "holy books").

DOC, Edge, Avalon XQ, your thoughts?
 
Not to quibble but this...

3) Does it espouse superior ethics, in many cases beyond what we would expect from the culture that produced the book?
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Even if any of the books did espouse what one person might consider to be superior ethics, it would prove nothing at all.

1. The value of specific ethics tends to vary between individuals.

2. Ethics tend to change with culture, time period and specific circumstance.

I don't think you can claim that any book has "superior" ethics... unless you are God.

If you are... a Deity named Tim is a bit... well... you know...
 
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RobDegraves said:
Not to quibble but this...



Even if any of the books did espouse what one person might consider to be superior ethics, it would prove nothing at all.

1. The value of specific ethics tends to vary between individuals.

2. Ethics tend to change with culture, time period and specific circumstance.

I don't think you can claim that any book has "superior" ethics... unless you are God.

If you are... a Deity named Tim is a bit... well... you know...
Click to expand...

Yes but if it was divinely inspired by an omni whatever deity (again : the claim), then your point 1 and 2 would be invalid as a divinity would be able to give an ethic which would be superior or equal to whatever human could come up with at any time. Slavery ? Would be against in the book. The book would be for equality of sex, equality no matter the race, etc...

The fact that it does not, is like an elephant in the room.

Furthermore I take the point of tim as a minimum condition. If the books FULLFIL this condition this does not mean they are divinely inspired this could be a human very enlighted, but when they DO NOT fullfil the condition then we can clearly point at it and say it is highly improbable they were divinely inspired.

Take it as a minimum condition and it make sense.
IF rule 1/2/3 THEN maybe GOD OR HUMAN
ELSE DEfinitively NOT GOD.
 
Does "divine inspiration" equal "must be 100% accurate"? Could a scribe be "inspired" and then, through the generations, other scribes producing copies get the information wrong; say, by mistranslation or transcription errors?
 
Is your rule on ethics specific to what people (want to) think about the Abrahamic faiths? Omnibenevolence is not a feature of all deities.

CT
 
Squid said:
Does "divine inspiration" equal "must be 100% accurate"? Could a scribe be "inspired" and then, through the generations, other scribes producing copies get the information wrong; say, by mistranslation or transcription errors?
Click to expand...

You have to wonder why a God would bother to dictate a book, if it will get mistakes, changes, omissions and additions within a couple of generations anyway. It's a bit like "publishing" the theory of relativity by a big game of telephone, only to watch it come out the other end as "go to catholic church on sunday, 'cause the Mass is full of energy!!!"

And that goes double for a dude like Jesus. If it was so important for God to send down Junior to give rules and lessons and wise parables, then shouldn't it be important to also tell him, "oh, and for My sake, please write them down and give your apostles exact copies"? Because what we see there is a surrealistic game of telephone, where some stuff doesn't get written down for another 50 years, and when it does, it's by people who weren't even there and at best heard some distorted 200'th hand story. And some stuff isn't actually written down until the middle ages (see the story of the adulteress, or the long ending to Mark.)

Not to mention stuff like the "oral Torah", which is supposed to have been in circulation orally for half a frikken millennium before someone actually wrote it down.

Surely and omniscient God would know that stories do get distorted with each retelling in oral traditions. Why bother giving laws and divine wisdom, if they're going to get distorted beyond belief over time anyway?

And for that matter, why not tell those guys about the printing press?
 
Even the current world supports slavery. Just it is called 'Work' now. Ask any hooker with a pimp.

I too have thought about the distortion of time, people are fallible and all that. All i can say IMO, is God had a plan. If it did indeed get distorted over time, due to lairs, power/control seekers, fallible man, you can only say that was also apart of God's plan. Down to saying, it was worded this way for this generation to understand, then worded this way for another to understand, again assuming it has been distorted by fallible men.
 
But that then actually screws up free will. If a certain scribe had no choice but to add the long ending to Mark because it's part of God's plan to sprout those extra verses in Mark, then that's not exactly free will, is it?
 
Oh and i have to say, i haven't finished the bible yet. But the words "i have overcome this world" shows science to me back in Year 1 AD.

HansMustermann said:
But that then actually screws up free will. If a certain scribe had no choice but to add the long ending to Mark because it's part of God's plan to sprout those extra verses in Mark, then that's not exactly free will, is it?
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It does seem like that doesn't it. But to start with, God in a sense took away their 'free will' to write it initially how he told them too, same with Jesus and the visions. They can only write what they were told or saw. Who knows the butterfly effect which was created by that, presay to generation to generation. But if you think God took someone's free will away to edit the bible on purpose, the way they intended to edit it. That is wrong thinking. Again it says in the back of the back, all through time. something like anyone who edits this book, is doomed.
 
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Not really. People can and routinely say or write something else than they saw. Even Peter says 3 times in one morning he doesn't know Jesus although he does. And, hey, we can take that as gospel, because it totally is ;)

Anyway, just showing someone something still gives them the choice to write it or not or change it a little or whatever. That's free will. But if God's plan involves a certain edition containing a certain text, then there is no choice there at all. Some scribe MUST make that addition and gets no choice there. Otherwise God's plan is fallible and can be thwarted by the mood of one mortal.

And if one guy can change God's plan, then, hey, nice, maybe we can delay the rapture too if we just follow the right person. That 666 dude sounds nice ;)
 
Novest said:
If it did indeed get distorted over time, due to lairs, power/control seekers, fallible man, you can only say that was also apart of God's plan. Down to saying, it was worded this way for this generation to understand, then worded this way for another to understand, again assuming it has been distorted by fallible men.
Click to expand...

This is a great way to create an unfalsifiable, but predictively useless, claim about God.
 
HansMustermann said:
Not really. People can and routinely say or write something else than they saw. Even Peter says 3 times in one morning he doesn't know Jesus although he does. And, hey, we can take that as gospel, because it totally is ;)

Anyway, just showing someone something still gives them the choice to write it or not or change it a little or whatever. That's free will. But if God's plan involves a certain edition containing a certain text, then there is no choice there at all. Some scribe MUST make that addition and gets no choice there. Otherwise God's plan is fallible and can be thwarted by the mood of one mortal.

And if one guy can change God's plan, then, hey, nice, maybe we can delay the rapture too if we just follow the right person. That 666 dude sounds nice ;)
Click to expand...

Peter saying that is in different context, he said that to save his life*.

Indeed it does, things could have not got written, but for say 1500 years after it happened, the lairs who wanted to manipulate the world, actually put what was left out, in, by there free choice. hence the butterfly effect.

(example if john was shown a 2 headed lamb in his vision/version, but didn't put it in or forget, the lairs could have made up with their imagination, the 2 headed lamb and added it to the book)

A true scribe, would have never made a changed, but to change it to a language, in our case English. Still having free choice, but again maybe some translation lost in the translation, but brought back into fruition now. You'd have to say, since there is the biggest population at any given time on earth as we speak, the bible is perfect.
 
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Novest said:
(snip) . . . If it did indeed get distorted over time, due to lairs, power/control seekers, fallible man, you can only say that was also apart of God's plan. Down to saying, it was worded this way for this generation to understand, then worded this way for another to understand, again assuming it has been distorted by fallible men.
Click to expand...

Of course, if God inspired the writers of his divine word, he could - and would - inspire the scribes copying the work. There seems to have been very little distortion of the biblical texts between when they were written at Qumran between the first century before Christ and the first century after. So, over a period of about one thousand years there was little distortion It would seem that, once the texts were considered divinely inspired, the scribes were extremely careful with their transmission.

BTW, I just thought of another criterion by which we might discern divine vs. human inspiration: historical accuracy. Both the Bible and the Qur'an fail this one.

Consider Exodus and Joshua. Both books are at variance with history. Whether we place the Exodus at ca. 1400 or ca. 1200 BCE, we can't make if fit either history or archaeology. Neither time period shows either a devastation of Egypt or a massive destruction of number of important walled cities in Canaan.

Likewise, had an Assyrian army of 185,000 been destroyed to the last man, as Sennacherib's army was supposed to have been, by the angel of the LORD, the many enemies of Assyria would have raised revolts and overthrown the empire. It's doubtful the Assyrians could have raised a new army to replace the 185,000 lost. Yet history tells us that the Assyrians kept expanding there empire for two generations after Sennacherib.

As for the Qur'an, Surah al-Kahf (# 18) says that a king called Dhu'l-Qarnayn (the spelling varies with different translations), meaning "Two Horns," built an iron barrier between two mountains to keep Gog and Magog out of the civilized lands and that this barrier will stand until the last days. This is based on a legend that Alexander the Great built such a barrier or gate in the Caucasus mountains. Josephus refers to the gate in his Wars of the Jews. Of course, there is no such barrier, making the Qur'an at odds with history.
 
At the moment I am very reluctant to quote even one word from the Old Testament and feel it crawling with demons.
 
Novest said:
Even the current world supports slavery. Just it is called 'Work' now.
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I can change jobs. I can tell my boss to go to hell. I can't be beaten or sold or forced to do types of work I don't want to. I can relocate or take schooling to educate myself. Survival is a form of slavery but slaves from the Bible didn't get to call in sick, take a two week vacation or swap shifts. The Bible details how to beat a slave to the point of death or how to sell a slaves children. In America you can go to prison if you try that. The morality of the Bible was barbaric.
 
Novest said:
But the words "i have overcome this world" shows science to me back in Year 1 AD.
Click to expand...
?

It does seem like that doesn't it. But to start with, God in a sense took away their 'free will' to write it initially how he told them too, same with Jesus and the visions. They can only write what they were told or saw. Who knows the butterfly effect which was created by that, presay to generation to generation. But if you think God took someone's free will away to edit the bible on purpose, the way they intended to edit it. That is wrong thinking. Again it says in the back of the back, all through time. something like anyone who edits this book, is doomed.
Click to expand...
Just make stuff up?
 
That the "revealed" texts differ from one another is a pretty good indication there is no one watching the redactions, omissions, and additions to the "original", which is up to the eyebrows in error, no matter which version is examined.
 
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