Biblical contradictions

In the "Islam is Foul" thread [threadid]116706[threadid] josephw makes the following claim:

Originally posted by josephw
It has never been proven by anyone, including anyone eminently more qualified than anyone posting in this forum, that the Bible is false or contradictory in anyway. The Bible clearly makes the claim that it is what it is. TRUTH.

Clearly there is some serious miscommunication going.
I would like to know who agrees with josephw.

I would also like to know what you understand in the above claim to be meant by:
1. Contradictory.
2. "The Bible".
3. Proven.

At face value, if I take "The Bible" to mean a printed copy in English which is obviously translated from other languages, then I can pick out quite a number of verses which are undeniably contradictory. In past discussions there have been various defenses for these obvious and undeniable contradictions. The defenses include:
1. "The Bible" only refers to the original text to which we are not privy. The available versions contain copying or translation errors.
2. The contradiction is contained in quoted text and therefore does not count. eg where the Gospels differ, it is taken that the story is taken from eye witnesses and thus is quoted information and not required to be accurate.

I still find it interesting however that people frequently blatantly make the claim as josephw did without qualifying it with an explanation of what is really meant. At face value it is clearly false as I am sure josephw is fully aware - so why doesn't he qualify it up front?

Originally posted by twhitehead
In the "Islam is Foul" thread [threadid]116706[threadid] josephw makes the following claim:

Originally posted by josephw
[b]It has never been proven by anyone, including anyone eminently more qualified than anyone posting in this forum, that the Bible is false or contradictory in anyway. The Bible clearly makes the claim that it is what it is. arly false as I am sure josephw is fully aware - so why doesn't he qualify it up front?

[/b]

I believe that there are some contradictions in the Bible. There are paradoxes in the Bible. And the Bible eludes total theological systemization.

Thank God for that.

the truth is in the bible, but the words may be used by the devil just to decive, its up to the reader to seek and understand, but the bible is only some books put together not all. A BASIS from which to grow.

Originally posted by stoker
the truth is in the bible, but the words may be used by the devil just to decive, its up to the reader to seek and understand, but the bible is only some books put together not all. A BASIS from which to grow.

I totally agree. Behind the Bible is the living Spirit of God, guiding, impressing, enlightening (if you are humble and opened to God).

The Bible is not here in a vacuum. "You're on your own buddy !"

The Bible has the living God behind the sense speaking personally and intimately to your exact situation, as God deems right to disclose.

It is man's boast to always bring consistency to everything. That is to find the common thread, to eliminate all contradictions, to theorize the underlying law, to unite all knowledge.

This is just man's tendency. You cannot totally and 100% systematize the Holy Bible. Systematic Theology can be helpful. But the Bible's teaching cannot be totally systematized with no paradoxes and no contradictions.

As for contradictions in the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus, they tend to convince some experts on evidence as indications of the veracity of the accounts.

Collaboration is not detected. And slightly varied details is not at all unusual in multiple eyewitness account.

For example, I once read through the court case proceedings of the so called "Gunfight at OK Coral".

Many witnesses came forward. They could not determine who fired first. It was obvious that there was a gunfight and people were firing and dying between the Earps group and the Claytons and thier group.

Eyewitness testimony was varied. The basic veracity of the event was unambiguous.

bible:

Basic
Iinstructions
Before
Leaving
Earth

one of the most interesting things I've heard.

Originally posted by twhitehead

I would also like to know what you understand in the above claim to be meant by:
1. Contradictory.
2. "The Bible".
3. Proven.

A set of propositions is contradictory when a proposition of the form (A AND NOT-A) can be derived from its propositions using the rules of logical deduction.

A set of propositions is proven to be contradictory upon construction of a sequence of applications of rules of logical deduction upon the propositions which produces any proposition of the forum (A AND NOT-A).

Given any set of propositions, there should be no ongoing dispute between two people as to whether they are contradictory, since such a determination is mechanical and objective. Disputes about Biblical contradictions arise because people do not agree on the propositional content of the claims made in the Bible; that is, they do not agree upon which set of propositions should be inspected for contradictory entailments.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
A set of propositions is contradictory when a proposition of the form (A AND NOT-A) can be derived from its propositions using the rules of logical deduction.

A set of propositions is proven to be contradictory upon construction of a sequence of applications of rules of logical deduction upon the propositions which produces any proposition of the ...[text shortened]... y do not agree upon which set of propositions should be inspected for contradictory entailments.

How do you account for the existence of the laws of logic ?

Originally posted by stoker
the truth is in the bible, but the words may be used by the devil just to decive, its up to the reader to seek and understand, but the bible is only some books put together not all. A BASIS from which to grow.

So your saying the devil had a hand in writing the Bible?

Originally posted by jaywill


I believe that there are some contradictions in the Bible. There are paradoxes in the Bible. And the Bible eludes total theological systemization.

Thank God for that.[/b]

Amen

Originally posted by galveston75
So your saying the devil had a hand in writing the Bible?

Not necessarily, I think he was implying that the Devil can get between you and your understanding of the words in the Bible. Of course this begs the question of how you avoid this and how you know when it has or hasn't happened.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Given any set of propositions, there should be no ongoing dispute between two people as to whether they are contradictory, since such a determination is mechanical and objective. Disputes about Biblical contradictions arise because people do not agree on the propositional content of the claims made in the Bible; that is, they do not agree upon which set of propositions should be inspected for contradictory entailments.

A nice analysis. So would you agree that josephw would have done better to state that anyone who finds logical contradictions in the Bible is mistaken about its propositional content?

So, so far we have no one else who believes the Bible is free from contradictions? I am surprised as it is a fairly common claim on these forums. Maybe it is only a few who make the claim over and over.]

My biggest concern with any statements of that nature concerning "The Bible" is that there really is no such thing as a concrete "The Bible" with every word and sentence open to analysis. What we have instead is a multitude of copies all with slight differences, we have various translations and various opinions on the original meaning of the texts.
So if the 'real' Bible is some unknown text, can we really make any concrete statements about it anyway? But josephw cannot hide behind that defence as he states "The Bible clearly makes the claim that it is what it is. TRUTH." implying that at least part of the Bible is readily available to us and in a form that cannot be disputed.

Originally posted by twhitehead
A nice analysis. So would you agree that josephw would have done better to state that anyone who finds logical contradictions in the Bible is mistaken about its propositional content?

Pretty much anything would have been better than "the Bible says it is true, so it is true." That's just about rock bottom.

I have argued (quite sucessfully) with christians using the same scource of reference as they were using,ie.the bible.
The contradictions are not a problem if you are trying to get the gist of something. However if you want to pinpoint literal facts then the water becomes muddy.

Originally posted by karoly aczel

The contradictions are not a problem if you are trying to get the gist of something.

Contradictions are always a problem, because any proposition whatsoever can be validly deduced from a contradiction.

For example, this argument is valid for any proposition P:

P
Not-P
Hence, Jesus is not divine.

So, you should be able to see that no matter how trivial or irrelevant the constituent propositions of the contradiction may be individually, their conjunction has devastating effects that spread globally throughout the universe of discourse. In short, once you accept contradictory propositions, the gist G of something cannot be got since Not-G can be validly deduced from the contradiction.