Christian apologetics Objections to Inerrancy- part 1
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This document discusses objections to the idea of biblical inerrancy, particularly from skeptics who argue against its authority. It presents various examples of scientific knowledge, including insights on astronomy, oceanography, and hygiene found in the Bible, suggesting they reflect divine inspiration. The author claims these insights predate contemporary scientific understanding, providing evidence for the Bible's truthfulness and relevance through history.
Christian apologetics Objections to Inerrancy- part 1
- 1. OBJECTIONS TO INERRANCY IN THE BIBLE- PART I Christian Apologetics
- 2. People who don’t believe in the authority of the Bible find the idea of Inspiration, inerrancy hard to swallow and come up with all kinds of arguments why they don’t have to believe that. Here are some of the objections that need to be addressed.
- 3. The Bible doesn’t teach inerrancy – it is a recent invention.
- 5. The Bible contains accurate scientific information about things that the writers could not have known. Some of these concern fairly recent scientific discoveries or insights, so even a skeptic’s dating of biblical sources can’t explain this type of evidence away.
- 6. Astronomy
- 7. In Isaiah 40:22 we read “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth”. The Hebrew word Isaiah used for circle is the word khug, which means literally something with roundness, a sphere.
- 8. But the people of Isaiah’s day thought the Earth was flat– actually they did so until the late middle ages, 2000 years after Isaiah was written. Later it was discovered that the Earth was not flat; rather it was a khug. Isaiah had been correct all along, even when the people of his day emphatically stated the opposite.
- 9. In Job 38:31,33 God asks Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades - can you loose the cords of Orion? . . . Do you know the laws of the heavens?. For a long time people didn’t really know what God was trying to tell Job here.
- 10. Only in the 20th century astronomers discovered details about the stars that we see as constellations in the sky. And in fact, the Pleiades are just a bunch of stars that appear to be in the same spot in the universe – but in reality they are extremely far away from each other and not connected at all: you can’t bind them together because there are lots of other stars “in between”
- 13. In contrast to that the stars in Orion are quite close to each other, and in fact linked in the sense that they move along the same path through space.
- 14. Oceanography
- 15. In Ecclesiastes 1:7 we read all streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams come from there they return again. This statement, considered by itself, may not seem profound at first glance. But when considered with additional evidence and other biblical passages, it becomes all the more remarkable.
- 16. Ecclesiastes 11:3a states that if the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth. Amos 9:6b tells us that He...calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth; the Lord is His name.
- 17. What is explained here is what science calls the hydrologic cycle: water is dumped into the ocean, condenses into clouds, which bring rain mostly to the mountains, from where the water then flows back into rivers and into the oceans.
- 18. The idea of a complete water cycle was not fully understood or accepted until the 16th and 17th CE. The first substantial evidence came from experiments of Pierre Perrault and Edme Mariotte. More that 2,000 years prior to their work, however, the Scriptures had indicated a water cycle.
- 19. God told Noah in Genesis 6:15 to build an ark that measured 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in width, and 30 cubits in height. This is a ratio of 30 to 5 to 3, length to breadth to height. Until approximately 1858 the ark was the largest seagoing vessel of which we have any written record.
- 20. As it turns out, the dimensions 30:5:3 are the perfect ratio for a huge boat build for seaworthiness and not for speed. In fact, shipbuilders during World War II used that 30:5:3 ratio to build the boat that eventually was nicknamed the ugly duckling a barge-like boat built to carry tremendous amounts of cargo. It had the same ratio as the ark.
- 21. How did Noah know the perfect seagoing ratio to use in building the ark? Upon whose knowledge did he draw? Brunnel and others like him had many generations of shipbuilding knowledge upon which to draw, but Noah s literally was the first of its kind.
- 22. Medicine & Foods
- 23. Moses told the Israelites (Leviticus 17:11-14) that the life of the flesh is in the blood. He was correct. Because the red blood cells can carry oxygen (due to hemoglobin in the cells) life is made possible. We know today that the life of the flesh is in the blood. But we didn’t know that 200 years ago.
- 24. Think of how often blood transfusions have made life possible for those who otherwise would have died. Today we know the truth of the matter. How did the biblical writer know it?
- 25. While the Old Testament placed no restrictions on the eating of fruits and vegetables, severe limitations were given for the eating of certain meats.
- 26. Among land animals, only those that had a split hoof and chewed the cud were approved as edible (Leviticus 11:3). Of the water-living animals, only those with fins and scales were acceptable (Leviticus 11:9; of interest is the fact that poisonous fish have no scales). Birds of prey were prohibited, as were almost all insects.
- 27. Perhaps the best known among these biblical injunctions was eating the meat of a pig. To the Jew, pork was considered unclean, and thus was inedible. Today, we know there is good scientific reasoning behind such a prohibition.
- 28. The pig is a scavenger and will eat almost anything. In so doing, on occasion it ingests the parasite, Trichinella spiralis, which is the cause of trichinosis in humans. Left untreated, this disease can be debilitating and even deadly.
- 29. Pigs also are known carriers of the tapeworm Taenia solium, and of the parasite Echinococcus granulosis, which causes tumors in the liver, lungs, and other parts of the body.
- 30. Hygiene
- 31. In Deuteronomy 23:12-14, Moses instructed the Israelites always to bury human waste products. Today, of course, with centuries of experience behind us, we know that this is an excellent sanitary hygienic practice. But the common course of action in Moses day, and for centuries to follow, was to dump waste products in any convenient place.
- 32. History has recorded the folly of this kind of action. In Europe, during the Middle Ages, Black Plague swept over the continent on two different occasions, slaughtering more than 13 million people in the process. Europeans routinely dumped waste of all kinds out their windows and into the public streets where decomposition took place and microorganisms flourished.
- 33. It is evident 1. SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE 2. OCEANOGRAPHY 3. ASTORNOMY 4. HYGIENE are completely out of their time thinking which gives us clear evidence that it is divinely inspired