Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: tlijy@cc.curtin.edu.au Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Is the Holy Bible 100% correct?? Message-ID: Date: 24 Dec 90 23:41:29 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Curtin University of Technology Lines: 51 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu G'day, I have many friends who are christians. We have had a lot of conversations (argument to be exact) over the issue: Is the Holy Bible 100% correct? (excluding the errors due to translation) ================================ They said yes because their faith is all based on the Bible and they said the Bible is God's word and was written by men who had holy spirit with them. I do not think the Bible is error free. If it is written by men, then those people must be limited by the level of knowledge at their time which was very primitive. For instance, in Genisis, the universe is said to have been created in only seven days. Well, everything is possible for almighty God and he could have created the universe in 7 days (if 1 day = 24 hours). But according to scientific observations and the physical laws which governs the observable part of the universe, the universe is certainly not formed in the way which is described in the Bible. My friends' argument was: Bible is not a scientific book. Can any one comment on this? Thank you and merry Xmas to you all ! Jason Li ================================ Department of Applied Physics Curtin University of Technolog Perth, Western Australia [As usual, let me note that I am not going to accept responses that take up the scientific acceptability of creationism. That should be dealt with in talk.origins. However the interpretation of Scripture is certainly appropriate for this group. My first reaction is that Jason's friend seems to be getting at something very much like the Catholic concept of Biblical inerrancy. As I understand it, the Catholic view is that the Bible has no errors in what it is trying to teach. But the Biblical authors may not have had a complete understanding of science, etc. This would allow one to say that the point of Gen. is God's responsibility for creation, etc. But since what it was trying to teach was not science, one might conceivably say that the views on cosmology shown in Gen. are not guaranteed to be true, and a Christian can consider evolution, etc. Outside the Catholic Church, if someone believes that the Bible may contain errors on scientific issues, they normally just say that they reject Biblical inerrancy. --clh]