Thursday, November 28, 2013

The Bible needs constant reassurance

Have you noticed how so many Christians, especially apologists, are constantly repeating the same mantras about how "the Bible is the perfect word of God", how it's infallible and unchanging, how there are no contradictions, how it's morally absolute, and so on? Likewise Christians are constantly repeating how God is good, God loves you, etc.

Many people have noticed, and they make a quite good point, that this is quite telling about the Bible.

Normally a work or other source of information does not need constant reassurances because it can stand on its own. You don't see people constantly reassuring that, to take a completely random example, "Euclid's Elements is full of correct and useful mathematical proofs." They don't have to do that because Euclid's Elements can stand on its own merits and does not need people to be constantly reminding you how good it is. You can check the veracity of what it says and come up with your own conclusions about its validity.

Not so with the Bible. It cannot stand on its own merits (given how many morally questionable rules and advise it gives, how many contradictions it has, how heinous the crimes of the god it depicts are, and so on) and thus Christians need to be constantly reassuring and reminding themselves that it is good and valid.

If the Bible were indeed the perfect, infallible word of a perfect omniscient God, then it would need no such reassurances because anybody would be able to check its validity on their own.

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