Still doesn't make any of them inerrant.
False.
Why are you asking when you don't understand what being inspired by God means?
Why do you assume I do not?
Who?
The only famous Martins I know of are Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
was clearly a man inspired by God. He was truly a light unto the world. Yet he was certainly not inerrant.
Duh.
Ghandi was evil and manipulative.
Good works won't pay anyone's way into heaven.
or anyone else who has clearly lived their lives inspired by God.
Wrong definition of inspired, somewhat.
Sure, I can be inspired by an experience I had and write something, but inspire also means "(of air or another substance) that is breathed in," which is more of a literal description, but in the case of the authors of the Bible, it's more of a figurative description of what happened. They were filled with the Holy Spirit (inspired), and drew inspiration from that indwelling.
And lets not forget that in certain circumstances (for example, Moses, writing about the creation of the universe when no one but God existed), God could have also told His authors what they needed to write down when certain details might have been unavailable.
Why do you think that matters?
Because you seem to think that there have been many steps of translations between the original Hebrew and Greek, to our current English versions, and it's simply not the case.
There is only one translation step from the Hebrew/Greek to English.
It was still men writing them,
Again, only the original manuscripts were inerrant, inspired by God. The copies were not.
still men interpreting them,
Why would they need to interpret them?
We're talking about records of events that were WELL understood (and not to mention, well preserved) at the time of writing and even several centuries later. We're talking about letters sent from Paul to the churches he founded.
There's very little to "interpret."
and still men copying, editing, and assembling them.
The reason I brought up the Dead Sea Scrolls was that you can compare the Dead Sea Scrolls (which contained most of the Hebrew Bible (what we today consider the Old Testament)) with a modern copy of the Hebrew texts, and they will be, for all intents and purposes, identical, the only differences being spelling differences and maybe the occasional change in grammar.
And before they were written down and assembled, it was still men passing the stories to each other verbally.
First of all, you underestimate how capable the minds of ancient men were.
I recommend checking out Don Landis's
The Genius of Ancient Man.
Second, Moses, the first author of the Bible, wrote, not verbally passed down, the first five books of the Bible (barring the last chapter or so of Deuteronomy after He passed, which was written down by Joshua.
Sure, stories could have been passed down verbally, but the scriptures were written down.
And today it's still men reading them and determining for themselves what they think the stories mean.
There's nothing wrong with trying to find hidden meaning in what Scripture says, so long as you don't completely ignore what it plainly says.
On the other hand, there's people like you who just outright reject the Bible, not even considering what it actually says.
There's nothing "inerrant" about any of it.
Again, quit with this straw man. It's not going to get you anywhere.
Are you now claiming that "God's Word" contains human flaws and errors,
No.
I'm claiming that the Bible we have today contains errata that cannot be rectified without the original manuscripts to compare to. All one has to do is look up "list of bible errors" and go to the first atheist site and they list plenty of discrepancies between parts of the Bible.
However, I'd like to remind you that despite ALL of those discrepancies, NONE of them change the overall meaning of the text, nor the overarching message of the entire Bible.
like ignorance, bias, bigotry, egotism, and so on?
That's not what "inerrant" refers to.
"Inerrant" means "incapable of being wrong."
The Bible was inerrant in its
original manuscripts. There were no errors, nor was there anything wrong, in the original text.
So being errant, yourself . . . , and reading a now errant copy of the text . . . , how do you surmise that anything you read there is "inerrant"?
Supra.
The only way I would know how to tell "God's words" from men's words would be to hold them up to the light of that divine spirit within;
So you claim to be the judge of what is and is not God's word?
Talk about arrogant.
that spirit of love, and forgiveness, and kindness, and generosity; that heals and saves us all, to see if the words are reflecting that light, or impeding it.
Sounds like more new age gobbledygook.
And when I do that I find proclamations about homosexual abomination to be impeding that light.
Must be the light from Lucifer then, because it isn't the light from God.
To be antithetical to God's love, forgiveness, kindness, and generosity.
Telling people it's ok to be gay is antithetical to being loving, because it only affirms them in their sin.
Just like telling people it's ok to keep driving towards that cliff up ahead and if they keep going, they won't die.
And so I can see that those are men's words, born of men's ignorance,
There's nothing ignorant about warning the wicked that they're going to hell.
There's nothing unreasonable about warning the wicked that they're going to hell. Thus, it's not bigotry.
and of men's egotistical desire to feel superior to others.
You REALLY need to look in a mirror.
And I can learn from this, just as I can learn from the words that DO reflect the light of God's loving spirit.
Which you can't possibly know because you reject the Bible as God's word.
So the Bible IS profitable for teaching and for spiritual soul-searching even without pretending that God wrote it.
The only one pretending here is, again, you.
In fact, partly BECAUSE we can't pretend that God wrote it.
We can't pretend that He wrote it because we KNOW that He did, in fact, write it.
God exists, and is the ultimate author. Yes.
Not what I said.
But I don't see how that really matters to us except to show us that WE are not anyone's ultimate authority. Not even our own.
What you see or don't see isn't relevant. What matters is what IS.
I cannot even imagine how God would be that foolish.
Why is it foolish for God to write a book that outlasts any of them?
What would be the point of engaging in such an inevitably failed exercise?
Failed?
Last I checked, the Bible is literally the world's best seller!
Why, then, allow other religions to create their own scriptures to compete with God's?
Because God created man to have the freedom to reject Him.
Appeal to the stone is a logical fallacy.
However, that divine spirit that exists in the hearts of men (and women, of course)
Look, you don't have to specify women when talking about humanity.
In this context, it's clearly understood that "men" refers to all of mankind, which by definition includes women.
can inspire us to write amazing things. Beautiful things, and wise things, and things that can then inspire other men and women to realize their own divine spirit within.
Yawn.
The single greatest failure of religious Christianity has been the teaching that blind pretense, is 'faith'. It's not. Blinding oneself to doubt, and/or to contrary evidence, and/or to ill results just to dogmatically maintain some idea of God is NOT FAITH. It's just blinding pretense. And blinding pretense is bad for several reasons, the main one being that it's DISHONEST. To ignore the truth of actual reality is dishonest. And any religion that teaches people to do that, and calls doing that 'faith', is lying. It is being dishonest, and it is encouraging others to be dishonest, too.
That's nice, but that's not the kind of faith I have.
kgov.com
Faith accepts the evidence of actual reality.
Something which you reject.
Faith does not deny common sense or reasonable prognostication.
No idea what you're referring to here.
Faith looks at and consider all of these things, and then CHOOSES to act in accord with what one HOPES to be so, even though one cannot know it to be so at the present time.
False.
Faith is hope turned into action. It is not blind. It is not falsely arrogant. And it is not willfully ignorant.
That doesn't sound like you.
Faith does not need the delusion of an inerrant Bible.
You keep knocking down that straw man. It must feel good.
It's exactly when things are uncertain that we can choose to put our faith in what we hope to be true. Without uncertainty, there is no need for faith.
Wrong.
Actually, I'm not ANY of those things. I'm an artist!
