Biblical Studies v Philosophical Studies

This post is a continuation of the DC Challenge. This will be brief...

Christians do NOT claim to affirm the grammatical-historical interpretation of the historic Christian creeds based upon reason. That is, they do not reason to their specific beliefs. Deists claim to reason to their beliefs, but Christians who affirm these historic creeds do not. The Christian affirms these creeds based upon accepting revelation from the Christian God, whether they find it in the Bible, or in church tradition. Christians will simply argue that it’s reasonable for them to accept God’s revelation, regardless of where they claim to find it.

However, if what I argue here at DC is true that the Bible is a collection of unwarranted superstitious beliefs, then it's likewise not reasonable for them to accept church tradition as authoritative. For if the Bible is shown to be a false revelation, then the historic church was wrong to proclaim it, and if that’s the case we have no assurance the church isn’t wrong in whatever it proclaims today. If church tradition isn't authoritative, then neither can we trust their selection of the books that go into the canon, since the church created the canonical Bible in the first place. [Protestants, especially evangelicals, claim the Bible created the church, but I cannot make any sense of this claim of theirs].

My point here is simple. In the area of the Philosophy of Religion religious beliefs are scrutinized according to reason to see if said beliefs are consistent and reasonable to believe. It is not a branch of Apologetics where the sum total case for Christianity is examined, nor is it a branch of Theology, where a believer isn't defending his faith so much as explicating it.

For the Christian, all of these areas are important and can be considered on some kind of continuum for defending and understanding their beliefs. But the source of their beliefs comes from the Bible, in one fashion or another. That's why I focus on Biblical studies and Biblical scholarship, because I think with Hector Avalos that Biblical studies should end. The Bible is irrelevant to the needs of modern people. The focus of Biblical studies should henceforth be on debunking them, according to Avalos. I agree.

Those Christians who focus on the Philosophy of Religion must first do the dirty work of investigating the results of Biblical scholarship, since that forms the basis of what they believe, and here is where their arguments cannot get off the ground. What these philosophers have succeeded in doing is to take certain beliefs, as if those beliefs can be defended in the Bible itself, and they try to work out why it's reasonable to believe them. But that gets the cart before the horse. Many smart people can defend stupid and ignorant beliefs that have little or no evidence to them. There are some pretty intelligent Holocaust deniers, Mormon scholars, and militant Muslim scholars, so we all know that people can defend beliefs which have little or no actual evidence for them.

What is the source of your beliefs and what's the evidence for them? That's where these philosophical scholars must start. But since they are in a highly specialized field of learning, they just assume (outside of their specialization) the results of Conservative Biblical scholars to begin with. But they themselves have not done the prerequisite Biblical study.

So my debate challenge is to get down and dirty inside the area of Biblical studies. I think the Bible itself debunks Christianity more than effectively.

Cheers.