October 12, 2005

challenging_god is having a Biblical contradictions thread. For people unfamiliar with how this works, here’s my step-by-step guide:

First, a nutty creationist rants about the atheistic cult of humanism, and throws out a challenge to prove that the Bible contains errors, contradictions or what-have-you.

Next, bitter atheists descend upon the thread and interpret single verses as free-standing statements of propositional logic, and show how they contradict each other.

Occasionally, someone makes a valid point, like the differing genealogies of Jesus in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels (both designed to show Jesus as the Jewish Messiah; both, alas, different). When this happens, the inerrantists trot out their standard counter-argument, which involves relying on things the text does not, in fact, say, or on ignoring the hard bits in favour of what is actually a more liberal Christian interpretation. I’ve not seen the one where they say “Hmmm… yes, this is a difficult passage[this being the approved terminology], but I’m still going to be an inerrantist, if it’s all the same to you”. I feel that it can’t be long in coming, though.

Anyhow, I have a favourite contradiction (a contradiction with external reality, rather than an internal contradiction, but still, it about waps it up for that wascally inewancy). I successfully used my contradiction to “turn” robhu (note: sarcasm). It has not yet been banned for its mind-melting power, so I’ve given it another outing on this thread of the discussion. Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to engage ikefriday, the original poster, in debate. Instead, triphicus has turned up, and insists on being sane and reasonable. Standards are falling in evangelicalism, let me tell you.

I’ve also e-friended mr_ricarno after an interesting conversation about CICCU.

And so to bed.