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[Future Cowboy]

> The Internet is full of biblical misunderstandings, untruths, distortions, and outright incorrect information.

If only God were smart enough to come up with a more precise way of conveying this all important information than a book that relies on copies upon copies upon translations of copies.

Or too bad He didn't forsee the internet coming along to ruin all his really smart plans by having a way to combat all this apparent misinformation to convey what is actually true.

[jimwalton]

> If only God were smart enough to come up with a more precise way of conveying this all important information than a book that relies on copies upon copies upon translations of copies.

Your cynical view of making copies before the Xerox machine was invented is reductionistic. How are copies supposed to be made when writing them by hand was the only option? We have learned at least two things from history, though: (1) History proves to us that their diligence in making accurate copies is astounding, and (2) It is precisely the plethora of manuscript copies that allows us to decipher what the original text said. As a result, we can be confident that the New Testament we hold in our hands is better than 98% accurate to the autographs.

> Or too bad He didn't forsee the internet coming along to ruin all his really smart plans by having a way to combat all this apparent misinformation to convey what is actually true.

There have always been people willing to distort the truth. God combats such things with a written document so all such fallacies can be checked against the plumb line of the original revelation.

[Vice Grips]

> Is it peer reviewed and checked for accuracy? Not in the least.

> Anybody can say anything they want, blog anything they want, publish anything they want with no fact-checking and no peer review.

Wait, what? You want peer review? FANTASTIC!!! I've been arguing for years that churches, which control numerous institutions of higher learning, should be sponsoring hundreds of studies on the effectiveness of prayer and the physics of Jesus' flight into the sky, the location of heaven and hell, etc. There is so much work to do. I can't wait to read the peer reviewed studies of the effectiveness of faith healing.

For the record, I'm 100% serious. Churches have the resources to prove such claims. Get on it. Use science to prove religion. Really.

[jimwalton]

Excellent. I'm in. If you want to scientifically verify the effectiveness of prayer, please devise an experiment that will accomplish it. Make sure that your study includes and allows for:

1. What you can guarantee would have happened in the situation if no prayers were offered. To do this you must be able to effectively predict the future without flaw.

2. A list of all the people on the planet who were praying about a particular issue, and exactly what any particular person was saying in their prayers.

3. A catalog of prayers that people were even thinking and not necessarily saying.

4. A predictable analysis of what God would have done, if anything, had no one prayed, and how his baseline behavior was changed on the basis of each prayer that was offered.

5. A control group, of course, where we can reliably predict the outcome of someone's situation without prayer. To do this, of course, we need to know with certainty that absolutely no one on the planet is offering prayers for this particular individual in the course of the experiment.

FANTASTIC! I look forward to your proposal. Since you seem to feel that all of this is within the scope of science, and that churches have the resources to prove such claims, please offer your design. Oh, and don't forget about repeatability and reproducibility of the experiment and results so your analysis can be peer reviewed and confirmed by others.

Hopefully you understand the absurdity of your comment. The issue of answers to prayer is far outside of the scope of science. We don't use science to prove a person's guilt in the courtroom (though we do let science contribute to the case); we don't use science to predict who will win the Super Bowl (though we can use science to make educated guesses and give odds); we don't use science to prove that I am madly in love with someone, or to evaluate whether I have forgiven a person for their nasty comment. There are many aspects of life outside of the purview of science, and the effectiveness of prayer is one of them.

[Introverted Intuit]

> The Internet is full of biblical misunderstandings, untruths, distortions, and outright incorrect information. The lies are so effective and pervasive that many are being deceived.

Ok, great. Now please direct people to the source of information that will correct this problem.

The thing about what you are saying is... well... the people who you are calling "misinformation" are calling you misinformation. For example there are the Jehovah's witnesses, there are the young earth creationists, the old earth creationists, protestants, catholics, orthodox, etc. Some have minor differences, some have major differences.

So with all these people using the shared label of "Christian", saying that they have the truth and other people have misinformation, who am I to trust? The answer is that I end up having to trust my beliefs and this is what all Christians do, so Christianity ends up being a belief system rather than a truth system. Who knows if Jesus actually rose from the dead or not? No one can prove if he did or didn't. So people form various beliefs about that. Christianity has no choice but to be "fake news" to use the term floating around here. I don't know how many times the rapture was advertised and then didn't happen...

There simply is not very much evidence to go off of... certainly not enough evidence to settle any debate about Christianity. And until there is evidence found, this statement holds.

[jimwalton]

You obviously want to discredit Christianity because thinking people hold a variety of opinions. But this is obviously true in every discipline. There is great disagreement among historians about the causative factors of certain movements, the place of institutions in the process, and even about the events themselves. Scientists disagree about dark matter, global warming (human causation vs. cycles of change), cold fusion, electromagnetism vs. gravity as an organizing structure of the universe, the origin of our moon, etc. Economists disagree about an overarching model. Psychologists debate the causes of depression and even the origins of same-sex orientation. These differences pervade every discipline and field of learning. Some have minor differences, some have major differences.

Who am I to trust? The answer is that we end up have to weigh the evidence, infer the most reasonable conclusion, and trust our guts about many things. If Christianity is a belief system rather than a truth system, so is almost all of epistemology.

> There simply is not very much evidence to go off of... certainly not enough evidence to settle any debate about Christianity.

As it turns out, there is plenty of evidence to go on. Archaeologists have dug up multiple millions of artifacts that we can weigh against the record of the Bible. The resurrection itself is discussable based on the evidence at hand. Certainly people's experiences can be assessed in religion as no different than in psychology, sociology, anthropology, jurisprudence, and even medicine. A doctor has to ask you, "Does it hurt when I push there," because there is no scientific test for pain. He has to rely on anecdotal evidence and personal testimony based on personal experience. Does that mean my pain is a belief event rather than a truth event?

In other words, your examples and criteria don't hold. If we are not able to arrive at truth, we shouldn't be having this conversation, or any other conversation, for that matter, because reason is meaningless. If we are able to arrive at truth, then that truth has to be able to include deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, abductive reasoning, abstract reasoning, memory, intuition, personal experience, and personal testimony.

Epistemological philosophers will tell us that all knowledge is belief rather than truth. I don't go that far. I believe truth is objective and can be known, or else all reasoning is suspect. But it's clearly a mistake to say "All science is objective truth" and "All religion is belief, viz., opinion."

[MIA]

> Yeah, I understand your anger, but your anecdote doesn't necessarily support the broad generalization that Christianity thrives on bubbles of misinformation.

I am more than just an anecdote, I'm a human who experienced all this standing here, ready to prove my story with whatever evidence you want.

I am not supporting generalizing about christianity, but how you painted the internet as a source of rampant distortion of scripture is horseshit.

> While there is some misinformation (as you say you were never informed as a child that John 8.1-11 was added later)

Were you? When did you find out? What was the justification presented for honoring the canon as is?

> In specific about John 8, though, the earliest manuscripts don't have it, and the earliest it appears is in about 400. You're right that it's unknown where it came from, but we can't generalize that the whole Bible is unreliable because 11 verses got added later.

But clearly there are unanswered questions about the reliability of scripture. One passage being bullshit does not invalidate the rest. But the view that the biblical canon is reliable and it does not omit anything apocryphal is dead...that is huge.

> The end of Mark (vv.9-20) were also added later. But we don't judge the whole because of these two pieces.

The thing is, once the canon is compromised...all bets are off in regards to justifying why other gospels are not reliable.

> Ironically, since we're talking about it, the Roman Catholic Church itself added all of the Apocryphal books after Martin Luther's Reformation.

Added?

> You have a completely biased attitude towards churches and the internet, as well as towards christianity in general. ... I don't think so.

It's extremely evident.

> Instead, after a great amount of study and reflection, I have come to conclusions, and I think reasoned conclusions are to be distinguished from bias. I have done a great amount of biblical research in books and on the Internet, and through the years I have discovered vast storehouses of misinformation on the Internet. There is also very reliable information, but one must be discerning.

Wanna go look at what you said before?

> "I am living proof that the internet contains truths that are otherwise lied about and I spent the majority of my life believing such lies...then people wonder why atheists are so angry." Yeah, and I feel bad about that. But because the Church didn't tell you, as a child, about the historicity behind the manuscript evidence for John 8 doesn't mean we throw out everything as "bubbles of misinformation." It's very possible that 90% or better of what you were taught is accurate (I can't be the judge of that). ... Instead of rejecting the whole movement, a better approach would be discerning where you were rightly educated, where certain aspects were kept from you as a child, and where you were deliberately misinformed with apparent malicious intent.

Why is it that it's acceptable for me to have been taught 90% accurate things and 10% lies in your eyes?

As for this whole "bubbles of misinformation" thing...where do you think fundamentalist churches came from?

[jimwalton]

> i'm a human who experienced all this standing here, ready to prove my story with whatever evidence you want.

I know you are, but what I'm saying is that it's not wise to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I'm sorry you were misinformed about some things, but that doesn't mean the whole thing is unreliable, nor does it mean that you were misinformed about everything, or even most things.

> how you painted the internet as a source of rampant distortion of scripture is horseshit.

My experience is that there's a lot of misinformation on the Internet. There is a lot of good information, too. We have to be discerning.

> Were you? When did you find out? What was the justification presented for honoring the canon as is?

As a child I was never told that Jn. 8 or Mk. 16.9ff. were not authentic. I have a memory that I was taught that in high school. We were taught the truth about them: They're most likely not authentic, and so they're interesting but not original. That doesn't call into question the whole canon by any means.

By the way, I also found about about the truth of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy when I was about 7-8, but that didn't make me disregard everything my parents said.

> The thing is, once the canon is compromised...all bets are off in regards to justifying why other gospels are not reliable.

Not at all, because we know these two texts are additions. There is so much manuscript evidence that the text was have is credibly reliable.

> Added?

Yes. The books of the apocrypha don't appear in any early versions of the canon. The RC Church added them in 1546, about 30 years after the Protestant Reformation.

> It's extremely evident.

Sorry you feel that way. Bias is an unreasoned slant, and that's certainly not me.

> Wanna go look at what you said before?

I would love to. Let's talk.

> Why is it that it's acceptable for me to have been taught 90% accurate things and 10% lies in your eyes?

It's not acceptable. My point is that even if you were misinformed about the 10%, you should be astute enough at this point to see that you were possibly correctly informed about the vast majority of it, and yet you have chosen to discard the reliable with the counterfeit. That's unfortunate.

> As for this whole "bubbles of misinformation" thing...where do you think fundamentalist churches came from?

Fundamentalist churches came about as a response to the theological existentialism of the beginning of the 20th century, where German theologians were discrediting the integrity of the Bible. Fundamentalism was an American refutation to their slurs on the Scripture. Later fundamentalism splintered into other subgroups, primarily in the American Southeast where even some radical fringe groups evolved.

But Fundamentalism was certainly not a "bubble of misinformation." It was a movement to continue to subscribe to the inspiration (and, for some, inerrancy) of Scripture as an apologetic against its critics. But that doesn't mean, as a movement, that it indulged in misinformation.

[Future Cowboy]

> Your cynical view of making copies before the Xerox machine was invented is reductionistic. How are copies supposed to be made when writing them by hand was the only option?

I'm not expecting technology to make the copies. That's not the point. The point is that supposedly there is nothing more important to human's eternal soul than the "good news of christ", and yet the all-powerful, all-knowing god can't come up with a better way of conveying this all important information beyond a book that requires translating and copying. Have you played Telephone?

> History proves to us that their diligence in making accurate copies is astounding

This statement alone shows you really don't know much about the accuracy of the New Testament or how the bible was put together.

> 98% accurate to the autographs

What do you mean by "autographs"? You do realize that the gospels were not written by the names attributed to them, yes? We don't know the authorship of nearly ALL of the bible.

[jimwalton]

> Have you played Telephone? This statement alone shows you really don't know much about the accuracy of the New Testament or how the bible was put together.

I know a TREMENDOUS amount about how the Bible was put together. I don't need your link. Scribes were professional copyists. The rules of their profession were stringent and obsessive. Evidence of their trade come in comparing the Dead Sea Scroll copy of Isaiah with the Masoretic text of Isaiah 1000 years later, and we are awed by the accuracy.

The New Testament follows in form. We have close to 6,000 manuscripts or partial manuscripts of the Greek NT, and our accuracy rating (with all those contributing components) is astounding. There's nothing from the ancient world that comes even remotely close: 10 copies of works about Caesar, the earliest of which is 900 AD, 20 copies of Livy, 7 of Plato, etc. But we have 5800 of the NT. It's a fantastic resource, all within 40-60 years of Jesus' life, that gives us outstanding reliability and remarkable accuracy. Once again, my friend, with your link you have fallen prey to a lot of misinformation that is on the Internet.

> What do you mean by "autographs"?

The original written documents of the NT by their authors.

> You do realize that the gospels were not written by the names attributed to them, yes?

I have studied this issue deeply. To me the evidence is much stronger for the traditional authorship of the Gospels that any other theory. I have pages and pages of notes. The case is powerful.

> We don't know the authorship of nearly ALL of the bible.

Actually it's not as straightforward and obvious as you think. I have also studied this quite a bit. The evidence for traditional authorship of many of the books is more substantial than the arguments against. If I'm going to infer the most reasonable conclusion, most of the time I throw my weight after considerable study in the direction of the traditional conclusions. They're traditional conclusions for a reason: there is evidence to back them up.