Yes atheist polemics can be wrong

Last updated on: August 26, 2013 at 12:18 pm by Dave Griffey

Yes atheist polemics can be wrong 2013-08-26T12:18:00-04:00 Dave Griffey

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

As in this. This is from a graph that was posted and celebrated on the ironically titled Friendly Atheist blog some days ago. The gist is that it’s a graph showing the contradictions of the Bible. When you look at the lines, it takes your breath away. Wow! There are that many contradictions! It reminds me of Bart Erhman’s breakout book Misquoting Jesus. In that book, Ehrman turns biblical scholarship, if not all literary scholarship, on its head.

First, he suggests that it’s absurd to think just because a source is closer to the time it describes that it’s necessarily more accurate. Which is odd, since skeptics often say the NT can’t be trusted since the letters were written so long after the events. Second, he loved to say that there were more mistakes than there were words in the entire NT! That is true, if you take all the the hundreds or thousands of fragments, codices, parchments and combine them and add up all the mistakes. But then, you’d have more than just the number of words in the NT. You’d have all the words in all the combined manuscripts. Which wouldn’t make much of a case.

Most importantly, he also conveniently dodged the fact that the lion’s share of “mistakes” are in fact slight and insignificant differences. A variant geographical spelling, a shifting in position of a preposition, a change in someone’s tittle (did John come baptizing, was John the one who was baptizing, did John the Baptist come to the Jordan?, etc.). There are some significant differences in some of the account, but they are few and far between (and worthy of much scholarly debate).

Finally, he would always end by pointing out the fact that the story of the Woman caught in adultery was not in the original manuscripts! Oh no! It can’t be! Except every Bible on every bookshelf in every Christian store has that footnote next to the 8th Chapter of John: This story is not found in many of the earliest manuscripts. It doesn’t mean a thing. And yet, Ehrman, who says it’s his goal as a professor to get his students to question their faith, is more than happy to play fast and loose with the inconvenient facts he ignores in order to make points that really don’t exist.

I like Dr. Ehrman, don’t get me wrong. He was a fundamentalist who got burned when he realized just how skewered scholarship has to be in order to accommodate a fundamentalist world view. But as we see, that holds true for fundamentalism in anything: Catholicism, Liberalism, and yes, Atheism.

So we have the above mentioned graph, that was supposed to show ‘the contradictions of the Bible!’ Except it doesn’t. Oh I’m sure there are a few. We all know the Passion narratives aren’t exactly the same word for word, or that there are two creation accounts. And yes, there are some differences in the manuscripts that have some weight to them. But for how massive the Scriptural canon is, compared to other writings of the ancient world, they’re beyond solid and almost amazing in their inner consistency and accuracy.

So the ones pushing that graph have to rely on the most hilariously ignorant take on the Bible and what it says, suggesting strongly that they have never even read the biblical texts, if they believe what this graph says is contractions. When Jesus says if you believe in Him you will never die, and the author of the letter of Hebrews says it is appointed that we all die, that is NOT a contraction. But guess how it showed up on the graph.

It reminds me of a humorous anecdote we used to hear in my Protestant days. It was used to illustrate a person who didn’t understand the Bible, even if they believed in it. He decides to just let the Spirit guide him through opening the Bible and pointing to two verses, and that’s what the Spirit wants. So he opens up and puts his finger on Matthew 27.5: Judas hanged himself. He then flipped the page and put his finger down on Luke 10.37: Go and do likewise. A point our good intellectually superior atheists appear to have missed.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

August 26, 2013

Liberalism is hard to beat

Next Post

August 31, 2013 Happy belated Birthday Mister Fifteen

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Abortion Atheism Awesome things Bigotry for the hip American Blogging Books Catholic Catholic Teaching Catholics on the Internet Christian Persecution Christian Unity Christianity and America Christianity in the Post-Modern World Christianity in the world Culture of Death Culture of Life Current Events Decline and Fall of the Christian West Defending Liberty Fun Stuff Global Warming Good Causes Good News Gun Control Health Care History Holidays Homeschool Humor Important things Inspiring Stories Interesting Insights Interesting Stories Islam and the West Liberal "Tolerance" Liberal observations Life in a post-Christian world Memorial Movies Musings News Other Blogs Our Big Politically Correct Bother Politics Popular Culture Post Modern Values Prayers Pro Life Promoting LGBT Protecting Liberty Racism in the world today Scientism Social Observations Sports Strange Stories The Boys The Catholic Church and the Left The Decline and Fall of the American Dream The end of liberty The Faith and the Left The Faith and the Right The Family The Greatness of God The Internet The Leftist Juggernaut The LGBT Question The Media The Pope The post-liberal Left The Power of Propaganda Tributes Twilight of the American Experiment Uncategorized Uneducating Postmoderns When the Church is wrong Why learn from history when we can repeat it instead Wisdom in the Post Modern Age World Events

Select a Month August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was forbidden after the conquest of Jericho?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Celebrating with a feast Taking plunder Offering sacrifices Rebuilding the city