One netfriend:

I consider them the weakest avenue by which to attack the bible, since they can typically be answered, if rather unconvincingly, with one of a few broad catchall answers. Typical catchalls are “copyist error,” “the historical context nullifies the contradiction,” or “BOTH of those dramatically different accounts of an event could have happened, since neither explicitly denies the other.” These answers, such as they are, stretch credulity to the limit, but they exist in most situations. Arguments that strike directly at the credibility of the infallible-bible concept, such as unfulfilled prophecies or textual criticism, I regard as far stronger arguments.

Another:

The responses to the so-called contradictions in the Bible only stretch credulity from your POV. Your world view (anti-God, anti-Christianity) informs your ability to accept Christian responses to your challenges. You claim to have been victorious in your debates

with Christians because they haven’t convinced YOU of their POV. That

is why at the beginning of this challenge to you, my goal wasn’t to convince you, but to respond to your claims for the benefit of others.

Your a priori acceptance of a naturalistic materialism already prejudices you against Christianity. Again, and I may be making a broad generalization, all of the atheists I’ve debated refuse to accept the fact that they operate on the basis of preconceptions and prejudices; JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. They feel they’re the open-minded ones, yada-yada. I’ll admit the sample size of my statement is small, but I would imagine that it is representative of the whole.

This whole thing revolves around two simple observations: there are facts and there are interpretations of those facts. The fact is there

is a collection of documents called the Bible. There are two basic interpretations of that fact. One claims that it is the divinely inspired word of God, the other rejects that claim (this camp can be further broken down into those who completely reject the Bible and those who see some worth and value in the book, but don’t ascribe divine authorship, etc.).

Your worldview leads you to reject arguments that favor divine authorship (no matter how credible) and accept arguments that favor the opposite (no matter how incredible). If you were to actually list

for me even your five best claims of Biblical contradictions, and if I

were to answer each one of those claims, it wouldn’t really matter because I doubt if I, or anyone else, could answer your claims to YOUR

satisfaction. Your worldview won’t allow you to accept the possibility that God wrote a book.

Netfriend one again:

You have even eliminated a significant swath of the remainder of contradictions by excluding the large (and undeniable) category of “copyist error.”

Two again:

From my POV copyist errors would be the weakest arguments solely based

on the huge amount of manuscript evidence the supports the Bible. No one questions the authenticity or reliability of Homer’s Illiad, yet the manuscript evidence supporting that work is a far distant second to the New Testament.

One:

To express it in terms of a simile, your challenge is rather like one boxer challenging another to a bout, but stating that flat-footed right jabs are the only punches allowed.

Related Articles:

• Greece: can you believe this/them?
• Syria February 2012: Two Perspectives
• EGYPT: THE GROSS INSECURITY OF THE DHIMMI
• Female Circumcision in the Maldives, the Islamic Movement and Islamophobia
• Australia Day message

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.