This documentary is a skeptical examination of the infallibility of the Bible. It is a pretty honest summary of the assumptions and historical evolution of apologists whose fundamentalism claims that every word in the Bible is inerrant. Sorry to trouble believers of inerrant scripture, but I have some basic logical questions about inerrancy. Why did God breath truth into the Bible at just one time of human history, where various old scriptures believed buy some if not many early Christians were left out of the final Bible? The Bible uses parables and stories of an ancient time. There is much ancient social, cultural and historical context woven into the messages of Bible passages that was understood by the ancient audience of the authors, but are lost to us moderns. Was that an intent of an omnipotent God? ...an oversight? ...or are we missing the forest from the trees in Scripture? God is good and omnipotent, so he could easily breath truthful updates to Scripture as civilization advanced through the arc of time. For instance, Mormonism considers God revisited the Bible for an update, making the Mormon faith the only true reflection of Gods current will. I personally dont buy that, but the concept that God might revisit Scripture is well, a reasonable question. Why not? Wasnt that one purpose of God sending Jesus Christ? Computer software is constantly upgraded to function better as the power and sophistication of the hardware that runs it advances. Consider civilization and science as being the hardware that hosts Mans spiritual being as software. If we dont encounter new burning bushes today where God speaks directly to man as occurred in antiquity, how does God update his operating system for mankind? I consider the life and words of Jesus Christ to be the update God needed to his operating system for humanity. Jesus reiterated many messages of Old Testament Scripture that merit continuation, but deleted outdated code (various scripture messages) as being outdated and in conflict with Gods true purpose, or His current purpose. Early era computer software functioned in a kind of dumb, mechanical fashion. Not any more. Sophisticated software has become adaptive, learning. When you plug into your modern personal computer a new peripheral device you buy, like a camera, printer, scanner or whatever, it notes something new needs a driver to run it and looks for the driver software to install for that purpose. Once installed, your pcs operating system checks for future updates to the driver. Software has become adaptive. In the investment field, it is astounding how adaptive or thinking quantitative analysis software has become for investing, to create investment derivatives and test them in a virtual model before trying it in real markets. Wall Street computer gurus are called rocket scientists because they usually majored in advanced mathematics or physics, and often had earlier careers in the defense industry. The military hires defense contractors which design thinking or adaptive software for what-if war game simulations. Drug companies now do the same, modelling the effect of chemical compounds as on diseased cells and seeing what side effects it causes to healthy cells... all as virtual simulations by computers. I believe that God expects us to use our brain to adapt the messages of Jesus Christ to Scripture and to present, modern challenges. I believe as Red Letter Christians do, that God wants Man to prioritize the message of Jesus Christ when utilizing scripture, whether Old Testament or the post Jesus writings of those like Apostle Paul who interpreted Jesus to shape the early Church. I also am a realist and historian. Broken mankind is not perfect, just like software needs upgrades as its functional defects surface. We struggle using our intellect to adopt the words and life of Jesus to define our Christian faith. As Jacob did in his dream, man continues to wrestle with God to learn his will. The sad history of western civilization shows that laziness and lack of integrity often made Man a lousy wrestler, cheating to gain advantage or shrinking from challenge. Over the arc of human history, power elites abducted and abused Scripture for rather unChristian purposes having tragic consequences to humanity. Again returning to computers and software, there are certainly horrible misuses of ones ability to design or decipher software code. Satan tempted Jesus when Jesus retreated to the desert before his trial and crucifixion. What was Satans tool? Satan tried to trick Jesus into sin by quoting Scripture, just as Satan tricked Eve and Adam in Eden. Scripture, like software, can be abused for evil. It is up to man to perceive the integrity and intent in people who quote Scripture for their purposes, including the authors of the Bible. Some uses of Scripture which fails Gods will expressed through Jesus arise from a speakers good intent but naive interpretation applied terribly wrong... causing horrible consequences to suffering, innocent humanity. On other occasions, the misuse of Scripture is intentionally evil, intent on serving the speakers ego, greed, hate, elitism and narcissistic objectives. Some apologists believe logic (or science) is used as a tool of Satan to pull naive mankind off the narrow path to salvation and to slow the true Christian (whatever is their denomination) from advancing Gods kingdom on earth. The logic of their logic therefore appears that using logic to parse Scripture is the antithesis to Scripture. Nonsense. Logic is like guns. When used for sin, it is used by a sinner which does not make logic itself sin. Logic is part of our mental capacity provided to man by God. It is needed for understanding and interpreting Gods will and applying it to how we live. Mans ego, greed, fears and other instincts can abuse logic just as a criminal uses a gun. Knowing where passages in Scripture are aligned with what Jesus said and did is not that hard to do... when a stable mind uses logic and seeks inspiration for interpreting the Bible. Ill leave the rest to this documentary video and welcome your thoughts. topdocumentaryfilms/divine-inspiration-biblical-inerrancy-failed-hypothesis/
Posted on: Sun, 26 Jan 2014 06:58:30 +0000
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