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{"id":1791,"date":"2013-08-26T12:18:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T12:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/08\/yes-atheist-polemics-can-be-wrong.html"},"modified":"2013-08-26T12:18:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T12:18:00","slug":"yes-atheist-polemics-can-be-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2013\/08\/yes-atheist-polemics-can-be-wrong.html","title":{"rendered":"Yes atheist polemics can be wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

As in this<\/a>. \u00a0This is from a graph that was posted and celebrated on the ironically titled Friendly Atheist blog some days ago. \u00a0The gist is that it\u2019s a graph showing the contradictions of the Bible. \u00a0When you look at the lines, it takes your breath away. \u00a0Wow! \u00a0There are that many contradictions! \u00a0It reminds me of Bart Erhman\u2019s breakout book Misquoting Jesus<\/i>. \u00a0In that book, Ehrman turns biblical scholarship, if not all literary scholarship, on its head.<\/p>\n

First, he suggests that it\u2019s absurd to think just because a source is closer to the time it describes that it\u2019s necessarily more accurate. \u00a0Which is odd, since skeptics often say the NT can\u2019t be trusted since the letters were written so long after the events. \u00a0Second, he loved to say that there were more mistakes than there were words in the entire NT! \u00a0That is true, if you take all the the hundreds or thousands of fragments, codices, parchments and combine them and add up all the mistakes. \u00a0But then, you\u2019d have more than just the number of words in the NT. \u00a0You\u2019d have all the words in all the combined manuscripts. \u00a0Which wouldn\u2019t make much of a case.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, he also conveniently dodged the fact that the lion\u2019s share of \u201cmistakes\u201d are in fact slight and insignificant differences. \u00a0A variant geographical spelling, a shifting in position of a preposition, a change in someone\u2019s tittle (did John come baptizing, was John the one who was baptizing, did John the Baptist come to the Jordan?, etc.). \u00a0There are some significant differences in some of the account, but they are few and far between (and worthy of much scholarly debate).<\/p>\n

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! \u00a0Oh no! \u00a0It can\u2019t be! \u00a0Except 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. \u00a0It doesn\u2019t mean a thing. \u00a0And yet, Ehrman, who says it\u2019s 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\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

I like Dr. Ehrman, don\u2019t get me wrong. \u00a0He was a fundamentalist who got burned when he realized just how skewered scholarship has to be in order to accommodate a fundamentalist world view. \u00a0But as we see, that holds true for fundamentalism in anything: Catholicism, Liberalism, and yes, Atheism.<\/p>\n

So we have the above mentioned graph, that was supposed to show \u2018the contradictions of the Bible!\u2019 \u00a0Except it doesn\u2019t. \u00a0Oh I\u2019m sure there are a few. \u00a0We all know the Passion narratives aren\u2019t 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. \u00a0But for how massive the Scriptural canon is, compared to other writings of the ancient \u00a0world, they\u2019re beyond solid and almost amazing in their inner consistency and accuracy. <\/p>\n

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. \u00a0When 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. \u00a0But guess how it showed up on the graph. <\/p>\n

It reminds me of a humorous anecdote we used to hear in my Protestant days. \u00a0It was used to illustrate a person who didn\u2019t understand the Bible, even if they believed in it. \u00a0He decides to just let the Spirit guide him through opening the Bible and pointing to two verses, and that\u2019s what the Spirit wants. \u00a0So he opens up and puts his finger on Matthew 27.5: Judas hanged himself. \u00a0He then flipped the page and put his finger down on Luke 10.37: Go and do likewise. \u00a0A point our good intellectually superior atheists appear to have missed.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"