Front PageInfallibility/Inerrency Doctrine Is a Red Herring
Submitted by bill on Mon, 12/11/2006 - 19:01. fundamentalism Inerrency Infallibility religion
I'm wondering out loud why biblical infallibility/inerrency doctrine is important to some folk. The claim is that scripture needs this doctrine to stave off tangential theologies, but these come along anyway. The truth is that no writing can claim absolute perfection for all time, in all circumstances, in the hands of all people. Nor should it.
I am sort of frustrated with leaders and teachers who continue to pass down nonsensical notions that neither add clarity to scripture, nor help people apply teachings to their lives. The only use I can think of for this doctrine is to transfer the power of interpretation from general readers, into the pens of those who write official doctrine. It allows them to continue claiming what they've always claimed, even though real live results prove them to be wrong.
When your life doesn't feel happier, and you don't feel “saved,” they can merely claim that the book never lies. I know this doesn't seem to follow directly from the infallibility doctrine, but it does indirectly.
Let's try something new. Well, it's really something old. Let's require religion (and education too, for that matter) to either deliver its claims, improve on its second attempt, or admit its failure. Do we not require this of products and government? Well, we do let government get away with too much. But is it not normal practice in an enlightened culture to require proof?
If we look back at each religion that humankind has developed throughout history, we'll find that most came about because the existing religion of the surrounding culture had failed. We are at a similar time in history, today.
What so you think? Is it time for religion to put up or shut up?
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Being Saved
Submitted by BLG2319 on Tue, 12/12/2006 - 23:41.
Quote:
When your life doesn't feel happier, and you don't feel “saved,” they can merely claim that the book never lies. I know this doesn't seem to follow directly from the infallibility doctrine, but it does indirectly.
This is certainly where things fell apart for me. I never felt saved. Not even for a moment. The problem was that I was too honest with myself. I knew that I could never be good enough or want to be good enough or sorry enough for the things I did and felt. Praying to God to make me want to be good or even repentent did little to help.
Sometimes when I drive home from work and see an awful accident I think of my inevitable death. I think about the strange twists and turns my life has taken and how I really don't know what to expect in the afterlife. For 28 years I did, but now I don't. I don't really know what to make of it. It scares me a bit I must confess. Not enough to believe in fairy tales though.
Brian
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Go Ask Alice
Submitted by reido on Fri, 12/15/2006 - 17:36.
Brian
This sounds like some of my own agnosticism. Did I rub off on you?
(+-)
reido
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Good New/Bad News
Submitted by bill on Sat, 12/16/2006 - 10:19.
Brian quipped:
Sometimes when I drive home from work and see an awful accident I think of my inevitable death. I think about the strange twists and turns my life has taken and how I really don't know what to expect in the afterlife. For 28 years I did, but now I don't. I don't really know what to make of it. It scares me a bit I must confess. Not enough to believe in fairy tales though.
Brian,
Increasingly, I'm convinced that Jesus' message was an answer to perspectives like yours (and mine, for that matter), I just can't put it all in a logical argument yet. But I think it was a message of comfort to the regular people like us, with some gentle reminders about loving one another, etc.
Can we ever learn to hear the “good news” after so many years of listening to the “bad news?”
bill
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Truth at the Crossroads
Bill
Many feel that it IS time. We live in an age of question, and religion is first and foremost in line. Consider...if one were to encourage people to smoke tobacco for well-being, all kinds of studies would come down against such a claim. What then of claims that have absolutely no footing whatsoever but for the claim itself?
The "Authority Totem" as Carl Ketcherside termed it in years gone by is just that. The claims to Truth and the substantiation should be called into question. How can it be that a claim to absolute objective truth is made for multiple doctrines that people who actually walked with Jesus never heard or, nor would they comprehend them if they heard them?
What harm is there in staking your claim to faith on such things? None, so long as others don't get hurt in the process. But consider that for nearly 800 years the Muslim faith came under the sword of Christianity under the banner of Truth. Then it came time for 400 years of putting an end to heresy, during which thousands upon thousands of lives were ended in the name of Truth.
And yet, in all of history of the claims to Truth, I have yet to see the Jesus that bears the name, conform to such teaching and practice. By all rights, he was a heretic and and an ungodly friend to the sinners of the world. His words and deeds would not stand the test of Truth in today's churches.
Paul was a heretic of the first degree, but do not do as he did, lest you come under condemnation of the Pharisees.
reido