Since it concerns biblical inerrancy, I am posting my private response to Davis on this list. Several weeks ago, Davis and I thrashed out this issue through private mail, and I had thought that he had agreed that he had neither understood the inerrancy doctrine nor the basis for this particular argument against it. Apparently, I was wrong. If Mr. Davis wishes to discuss such matters as these, I would invite him to subscribe to Errancy, where they can be responded to, rather than sending his postings to a list that will not allow responses. ****************************************************************************** *
Someone is forwarding to errancy@atheist.tamu.edu your postings on apologia about my claim that the existence of four inspired gospels would be inherently inconsistent with the concept of biblical inerrancy. I don't know if these are recent postings, but Paul Nanson will not permit me to subscribe to apologia, so there is no way that I can respond to them. In other words, he doesn't mind letting you attack my arguments on his list, but he doesn't want his subscribers to have the opportunity to see my responses. Since you and I have already thrashed this out in private messages, I don't see any need to reopen the discussion, especially since I am trying to cope with carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist.
I will comment on a couple of your remarks.
<<I say `presumably', since Till is not at all clear in the expression of his challenge. Even worse, he seems to use the term `inconsistent' in a non- logical, layman's sense, which isn't obviously relevant to the epistemic charge of irrationality he so desperately wants to apply to the inerrantist.>>
As I have already explained to you, I post (and debate) for the lay person, so therefore I try to write (and speak) on a level that the lay person can understand. I taught college writing for 30 years, and one point that I absolutely hammered into the heads of my students was that the skilled writer will do certain prewriting steps before he actually begins writing his essay (composition, research paper, etc.). One important prewriting step is the analysis of one's audience. I used this as an example: if I invited a heart surgeon to speak to the class, he would necessarily have to bring his comments down to our level; however, if he addressed a convention of surgeons on the same subject, his approach would obviously be different.
Now if I may say so, there are some on the net who need to learn this lesson, and I have noticed that they are usually Ph D's in philosophy. Rather than presenting their material on a layman's level, they lay it out in a Michael Martin style that goes right over the head of the average person. They may be having fun writing to each other, but they are receiving very little attention from most readers on the lists. They have studied philosophy for years and are therefore familiar with the specialized vocabulary in their field, but they unfortunately forget that this is not true of most people.
In this respect, they are like the computer experts who write instruction manuals. They understand what they are saying because they are computer experts, but they apparently don't see that the average person trying to learn how to use a computer is wandering through a maze of confusion as he tries to make sense out of instructions that are incomprehensible to him. I recall a posting on Sechum where a young lady asked, "Who are you people anyway?" She went on to say that she was an atheist and that she had subscribed to the list in hopes of learning something, but instead she was finding most of the people on the list writing over her head. And this was on a list that had no philosophy teachers demonstrating their logical skills!
My point is that I try to avoid this mistake when I write on biblical inerrancy, because I am addressing my messages to people who aren't well informed in logic. Let's face it; if they were, would they be biblical inerrantists? Therefore, I am satisfied that when I say that Matthew's gospel account contains statements that contradict the other gospels, most readers will understand that I am saying that some of the things that Matthew said cannot be reconciled with things that were said in the other gospels. If someone should write an article stating that Farrell Till is 59 years old, and someone else should write an article that says that Farrell Till is 61 years old, people are going to understand what is meant when someone points this out and calls it a "contradiction." Since I am actually 62 years old, a philosophy teacher who might know this could delight in explaining at length that neither statement can be a contradiction, because the statements do not express opposite ideas. A "layman," however, would find this analysis boring, because he has enough sense to see that the same person cannot simultaneously be both 59 and 61 years old, so he knows that this is a discrepancy that can legitimately be called a "contradiction" in the sense that people use language.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have spent my life teaching language, and as a linguist, I know that language is flexible and that it is constantly undergoing change. I know too that the purpose of a skilled debater is to reach people with his message. If he accomplishes that and is understood by the audience he addresses, that is a much better achievement than the person who revels in technical terms and uses major terms only in their strict philosophical sense but winds up not being understood.
<< Now the first thing to note about set A is that it's not _explicitly_ contradictory. A set of propositions is explicitly contradictory only if one of the members of the set is the negation of another. But if you look at (A1)- (A3), you will quickly observe that none of these propositions is the denial of the other.>>
Let's just shuck this matter to the cob and get to the heart of the issue.
If you should write a biography of Margaret Thatcher that is completely perfect, would you later write a second, and then a third, and than a fourth?
Wouldn't the writing of subsequent biographies of Thatcher be an admission that some kind of improvement over the first attempt was possible? If so, then the first attempt wasn't perfect. What's so difficult to see about that?
You don't seem to understand the inerrantist position on the Bible, and I seem to recall that in our personal e-mail you acknowledged surprise at some of the things that inerrantists claim for the Bible. They argue that by logical necessity this book must be totally and completely free of errors because (1) it was written by an omniscient, omnipotent deity and (2) omniscience and omnipotence are logically incapable of error, even minor ones. There are scriptures that claim perfection for all that god does, and the inerrantist will spice his "arguments" for biblical inerrancy with reference to these scriptures. So now please try to understand this next point. I am not trying to convince professors of logic and philosophy that this line of reasoning is in conflict with the obvious realities of what the Bible says; I am just trying to get believers in inerrancy to see that it is a position that is inconsistent with the realities of what the Bible says.
I simply try to ask Bible inerrantists a simple question: if what you say is true (omnipotence and omniscience cannot make mistakes, so therefore everything done by a deity with these characteristics would necessarily be perfect), then why did such a deity inspire the writing of four separate biographies of his son? If the first one was perfect, why the need for even the second one? This is something that they cannot explain, and I see nothing in your postings that explain it either. I think the reason for that is that you didn't really want to address the inerrantist argument; you simply wanted to show that my argument against the inerrancy doctrine was not laid out the way it should be done if it was an assignment to complete in a philosophy course. Now be honest; weren't you really saying to your readers, "Hey, look at what I know about logic?"
<< Even so, set A might be contradictory in some weaker sense. Perhaps this set is _implicitly_ contradictory. Perhaps there is some _necessarily_ true proposition(s) such that if added to set A would produce an explicitly contradictory set. (Note: the requirement that the added proposition(s) be _necessarily_ true is not superfluous. For if the proposition(s) in question were only contingently true, then it would still be possible that all of the members of set A be true together, in which case set A would be consistent.)>>
Take my word for it (as a linguist), your average reader was lost before he was even halfway through this paragraph. If I didn't have carpal tunnel syndrome (and if I had the time to spare to do it), I would rewrite the paragraph and have it say the same thing in simpler language that most laymen would be able to understand.
As the text of your posting continues, this situation gets even worse, and I really doubt if many subscribers to apologia stuck with you till the end.
Probably the only ones who did were those (like Paul Nanson) who would desperately like to see me get a good shellacking. Let's shuck it to the cob again. In the last several paragraphs of your posting you were simply saying this: For Till's argument to prevail, he must show that any document verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity would necessarily be textually perfect, and he has not done that.
In response to that, I would say that I have not done this because I am addressing an audience that already believes this premise. I have already quoted to you the "authorities" on biblical inerrancy who say as much in their published articles and books, so I won't take the time to run the quotations by you again. (Remember? This is what surprised you so much in our private exchanges. You seemed not to know that some inerrantists took the doctrine to that extreme) I do wonder, however, why you didn't inform your readers on apologia that I had presented you with documented proof that this is indeed what true Bible inerrantists believe.
I hope you will understand the "spirit" in which I have said these things.
I'm really not interested in debating philosophy professors or students (who very likely don't believe in biblical inerrancy anyway); I want to address those who believe the inerrancy doctrine.
Farrell Till