There is only one question regarding a candidate's religious beliefs that I would like to see asked (and honestly answered, if that is possible):
"You are required to make a decision that will profoundly affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. All of the available evidence suggests you should choose option 'A.' But, in your inner-self, you have a spark of revelation of the divine that tells you to choose option 'B.'
Which way do you decide?"
I think this is a fair question. Do I think it will ever get asked?
Probably not.
Do I think if it is asked it will get honest answers?
Definitely not.
But, would I love to watch ALL of the candidates sweat answering it.
I am, I must confess, also agnostic about the word "letteth." Does it mean "letteth" or "not letteth." Scholars are divided on this. The 3rd school of the 4th West Wing of the second Caliphate think that it meaneth "not letteth" but that brings us inextricably back to "pisseth" "biteth" and "eateth" which, as I mentioned before, I don't believe. This may be an issue for the scholars to work out.
My Pastor says that "letteth" when construed to mean "not letteth" might actually be of the Devil. So may all the "not letteth" people burn in HELL forever, amen.
Not that this is pertinent, but since there are other word freaks here who may not know this:
"let" now means "allow", but in Middle English, and up through Shakespeare's time, it meant nearly the opposite: "hinder". This is one of a couple of such pairs of homonyms with nearly opposite meanings. A few others:"
"cleave": divide "cleave": join (Matthew 19:5)
"raise" "raze"
"sucker" "succor"
"fast" as in "stuck" "fast" as in "speedy"
sorry for the thread drift. I'll just add that I don't believe every word of the Bible either.
Oh good grief. Words can't be believed or disbelieved. Propositions can.
Biblical inerrancy has been thoroughly defined by the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I probably don't accept all the provisions of that statement, but if you could sit the candidate down long enough to explain what you meant by inerrancy, it might be possible to get a meaningful answer from them. Probably only Mike Huckabee has a strong enough theological background to understand what the doctrine means without extensive explanation.
>>>>Oh good grief. Words can't be believed or disbelieved.
The fundamentalist idea comes from the red ink:
Mt 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
A "jot" was a small Hebrew letter made in the shape of a "jot" while the "tittie" was made by placing a dot in the middle of a circle. Hence, Jesus affirms that not only are the general propositions significant, the letters were significant.
Mt 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
So presumably the actual words of Jesus, down to the actual letters, have been preserved. Of course, this does not seem to be the case.
So is this the position of the Chicago group? From what I understand, Chicago did not appear on the map of the Middle East until Al Capone fought the Loch Ness monster in "The Untouchables." In which case, their modern, liberal ideas, may not trump the words in red ink.
However, the real confusion is probably largely because the Hebrew and Greek words transated as "word" can also mean "sayings" and the fundamentalists don't get that, despite the Westminster ideas of the "perspecuity" of the scriptures in the "vulgar" langauge (that is, with lots of cuss words, like "pisseth.")
So if Jesus affirms the Hebrew letters, what are we to make of the fact that Paul et al, when quoting the Torah consistently use the very different readings (and meanings) of the LXX? Huge problemo.
>>>...Biblical inerrancy has been thoroughly defined by the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I probably don't accept all the provisions of that statement,
Here is the statement:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago1.html
Note that it does not even refer to the "jots and titties."
So, the whole thing is a silly exercise in futility.
>>>but if you could sit the candidate down long enough to explain what you meant by inerrancy, it might be possible to get a meaningful answer from them.
I can't get a meaningful answer from you, since you refer to some 21st Century CE group but you don't subscribe to all of it, or say why this view is the correct view, etc... And the document refers to "the inspiration of the Holy Spirit" - whereas neither the Hebrew nor the Greek CONTAIN a word for "spirit" - only for breath. "Inspiration" in the Greek is actually "god-breathed."
>>>Probably only Mike Huckabee has a strong enough theological background to understand what the doctrine means without extensive explanation.
LOL. What he SAID was this:
“As the only person here probably on this stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don’t fully comprehend and understand, but I’m not supposed to, because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite God, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their God is too small.” http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/mormons-and-the-bible/
So for Mike, the Bible is in the shape of Michael Jackson's nose. That is, no one really knows. It is intended to be inscrutable.
Of course this is not a Biblical idea, nor does it conform to the Protestant doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture.
So, the bottom line is:
* watch your jots and titties * claiming that you believe the inerrancy of the Bible is a meaningless confession, since the Bible does not exist in time and space, only in theory * you don't understand the Bible or the issues, and the ones you think are qualified to describe its reliability, you claim not to agree with, or, they claim to not know.
Bill, what Vic said cannot be disputed. He wasn't talking about texual transmission. Only propositions can be believed, since the basic unit of meaning is the sentence, not any given word.
The word KARDIA refers to a specific organ. So the words say something false, since the heart is not the organ of intelligence - something the agents did not know.
So, this is patently a false assertion.
The person who asked "Do you believe every word" would certainly assert that there is no error in these words, and somehow provide "scientific evidence" that the heart actually does believe, or "linguistic evidence" that "heart" can also mean "brain." There will be a host of derelict scientists and linguists willing to serve this just cause.
But Chicago would probably do a different dance. They would say that the "accuracy exists" if we adjust for the language of the day, or something like that.
So the fundie more honestly states the claim of the dogma of inerrancy while less honestly admits to the facts on the ground, while the sophisticates fudge on the burden of accuracy, but more honestly admit to how accurate the assertions are when taken at face value.
But the honest person (me, in this case) says that the assertion being made is patently false.
And this exercise is repeated over and over. For example:
Pr 20:5 Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.
Counsel is not in the heart of a man at all, but in the brain.
Ps 7:9 Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.
The examination of a pump and a pair of urine filters could tell you things about a person, certainly, but the textt is not referring to a physical exam but rather to the discovery of thoughts and motives by a trial of ordeal, which he points to in the previous verses:
3 O LORD my God, if I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands; 4 If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:) 5 Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah.
In other words, show your verdict through whether or not I win the victory - not via an autopsy.
But regardless... it is clear that the text asserts that the heart and kidneys are the organs that contain our thoughts and secret motives, and this is factually incorrect, at both the word level and proposition level.
Paul refers to "sin" that "dwells in his members" - particularly his "muscles" (or "flesh").
And breath is thought to be an intelligent organ as well, though modern Bibles have changed the word "breath" with a new word - "spirit" (as they are changing "flesh" into "sinful nature" and "heart" into "mind.")
Well, it would be funny if Chris debated a presuppositionalist (such as Bahnsen). Each convinced the other didn't believe what he claimed to. I think statements like this are akin to mind-reading and are not valid points.
I hate to quibble, John, but the word is the basic unit of meaning--many linguists would disagree with me and say phonemes are the basic unit of meaning in the written language (the letter "s" effectively communicates a hissing sound) but that may be splitting things to finely. If I say "dog" I have effectively communicated an idea to you--that of a four-legged mammal with a particular set of features. It may not be as complete and detailed as you like, but nothing ever is. So the meaning of each word must be inerrant to preserve the inerrancy of ideas.
And, of course, the correct transmission of words in all alphabet- and syllabary-based languages requires the correct transmission of letters and punctuation. So, if one letter of the words has changes, the idea has also changed. I'm not just talking about translation here, I'm talking about transmission as well from the idea to the oral word, the oral word to the oral tradition, the oral tradition to the written book, copying book to book, and translating (and often back-translating) from language to language.
But it's inerrant. Really. The Lord of the Rings is also inerrant, for some value of inerrant. This is the kind of reasoning a mathemetician would be proud of.
Never outside of Orwellian fiction have I seen a group more adept and eager to change the meaning of words than the religious.
I hate to quibble with you myself, Shygetz, but have you looked at the meaning of the word "dog"?
dog [dawg, dog] n (plural dogs) 1. domestic animal: a domestic carnivorous animal with a long muzzle, a fur coat, and a long fur-covered tail, whose characteristic call is a bark. Latin name: Canis familiaris 2. male dog: a male dog, wolf, fox, or other member of the dog family 3. wild animal: a wild animal such as a wolf, fox, dingo, or coyote that resembles a domestic dog and belongs to the same family. Family: Canidae 4. contemptible person: somebody regarded as unpleasant or contemptible (insult) 5. offensive term: an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody's looks (slang insult) 6. person: somebody of a particular type (informal) You lucky dog!
7. something useless or inferior: something useless or of a very poor standard (informal) 8. household Same as andiron 9. meteorology Same as fogbow 10. mechanical engineering gripping tool: a device for gripping or holding things
Since the meaning of nearly all words (maybe all of them) has so many different definitions, the sentence is the basic unit of meaning. It is the basic context for us to know out of the many definitions possible which one applies. The wider context helps us narrow them down further. The last time I checked all linguists agree.
Glad to know I teach you about a few things since you teach me so much!
As a quadraplegic dyslexic agnostic, I often find myself lying on my back, wondering if there is a dog!
There was a really fun fight between the members of a church regarding whether the church should recite "Forgive us our debts" or, "Forgive us our trespasses." Obviously, the word was important. These are the kinds of entertainment you will find in the book "Great Church Fights!"
Note that one of the greatest battles in Christianity involves a single letter!:
HOMOOUSIOS VS. HOMOIOUSIOS
"Same substance" versus "Similar substance" (Greek).
Constantine, the Roman Emperor, wanted HOMO, while Arius insisted on HOMOI... Not wanting to contradict the Emperor, the bishops signed on and the first Roman dogma was born! This was Nicea, the Emperor's summer home... and the Creed became the birth certificate of the Roman Catholic debacle.
So, watch your jots and titties, folks....
Also, there is Martin Luther's strong support of transubstantiation during the mass... the idea that the bread and wine of communion actually become the body and blood of Christ and are sacrificed anew by the priests because he said "This IS my body..."
Other reformers saw it as silly to make so much of one little word, but he said "Yes, but it is GOD's word!"
So, much hangs on the words and even the letters - and even the punctuation!
So, in this fundamentalist tradition of controversy, I think I should object to a word, and for me, that word is "pisseth."
"I don't believe God inspired the word PISSETH" - that is my platform. Yesss sireee.
I am not saying that words are not important. No sireee bob. They indeed are important, as are the letters, but only as used in a sentence. When it comes to meaning, the basic unit of meaning is in the sentence. All linguists agree.
To relate it to a point about the difference between the words HOMOOUSIOS VS. HOMOIOUSIOS, there wouldn't have been any debate about those words unless they were first used in a specific sentence having to do with Jesus. Those were fairly useful words in other contexts and provoked little or no debate when used in those contexts. The basic context is the sentence and the sentence is the basic unit of meaning. I could list a whole bunch of isolated words below and you wouldn't have a clue what they specifically mean without me first using them in a sentence.
Oh, the reason why specific words in the Bible are indeed important is because of the concept of inerrancy where every word is supposed to be from God. As to whether ot not God wants Christians to pray "forgive us our debts," or "sins," that is a problem for what God said unrelated to the meaning of those words, which I've dealt with here.
There is a fundamental fallacy in the notion of the Bible being "inerrant." It presumes that communication can be effected by one side of the conversation. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Only mathematics involves "perfection." 1+1=2 - this is a perfect fact. But, to the degree that it is perfect, as Einstein opined, it does not reflect the real world. One can only speak of accuracy and efficacy in the real world, where nothing is exact.
Consider the words I have written. Let us presume for the moment that they are inerrant. They are completely, divinely factual, and divinely stated. What will they communicate to a non-English speaker? A three year old child? A person from the Elizabethan period (English, but different)?
Communication is an INTRINSICALLY and UNCORRECTIBLY IMPERFECT affair. What I say and what you hear are never identical and are usually extremely different.
Consider a passage being read in Asia, as compared to being read in Israel. Consider the same passage read to the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the black, the fourth generation Pentecostal...
What about the poetic versus the literalist types of minds?
Consider this verse:
Jer 23:29 Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
What is the meaning of "word?" Does it mean a particular word, like for example, "pisseth?"
Does it refer to Jesus?
To the Bible?
To a spoken or written word?
A saying?
All sayings?
Even if that is a "perfect" verse from the Bible, "inerrant" - what is to stop it from being misunderstood?
So the whole notion of inerrancy is like that of "perfect music" - it is ignorant of the subjective nature of communication.
Since the meaning of nearly all words (maybe all of them) has so many different definitions, the sentence is the basic unit of meaning. It is the basic context for us to know out of the many definitions possible which one applies. The wider context helps us narrow them down further. The last time I checked all linguists agree.
"The dog is blue and the house is green."
This is a single sentence. Yet, it contains two entirely different meanings. You could easily break it down to "The dog is blue", a clause, without losing any meaning in regards to the dog. Therefore, the sentence is not the smallest unit of meaning.
"The dog is blue." is a proper sentence. However, this sentence does not rule out any of the definitions of dog; thus, you must agree that absolute clarity of communication is not necessary for transmission of meaning.
"Dog" is a word; it does not rule out any definitions of "dog", but it does convey "dog" meaning as much as the sentence "The dog is blue." The sentence does tell you more about the dog (it exists, it is blue), but the meaning of "dogness" is fully encapsulated in the single word "dog".
In linguistics, morphemes are the basic indivisible unit of meaning, and they are agreed to consist of words or, in some cases, parts of words (especially in compound nouns and prefix/suffix words--"un" is "uncertain" is sufficient in and of itself to convey the meaning of "not").
Of course, meaning is altered strongly by context ("un" in the context of "uncertain" is a morpheme, but in the context of "underwater" is not), but that doesn't stop at the sentence level--"I am gay." changes meaning drastically depending on if it is followed by "My male life partner is too." or "My heterosexual wife is too." So the sentence is certainly not the basic independent unit of meaning. Memetics has been trying to figure out what the independent unit of cultural information is for a while, and still can't agree (that's how I got interested in units of meaning; I used to study memetics before I decided it was a hopeless discipline).
I also disagree with Victor that words cannot be disbelieved; if I wrote "phodly", you can disbelieve phodly, as it has no linguistic referent and is therefore meaningless. It doesn't matter if it is in the context of "Phodly is." or "Phodly is not."; phodly has no referent in your thought (fictional or otherwise) and so must be disbelieved. While you may state that this is splitting hairs, let me remind you that the Bible has many words that have no known referent. We assume that there was a referent at some point and time, but it may be another phodly--a word made up by the author that refers to a thought in the author's mind but not in anyone else's, and therefore meaningless outside of self-conversation.
Now (this is about to get esoteric) does the fact that a reference probably existed at some point matter today? I argue no; any word with no known referent is a phodly and MUST be disbelieved. Words can only be believed if they are connected to a thought in the reader's mind. It doesn't matter that the author knows exactly what phodly means; you don't (and you can't learn unless the author tells you) so you MUST disbelieve phodly--it is impossible to believe it as an abstract, as it has no referent to an abstract. The Bible translators got around this by guessing what phodly meant. However, they have no way of knowing what phodly meant; they looked at scant context clues and at their own theological beliefs and communicated their thoughts. You could justly call this the "Impressionist" period of Biblical translation; they wrote the impression they got from the passage rather than the thoughts of the author. Why? Because they could not believe phodly, as it had no referent, and thus had to replace it with something they could believe. Were they interested in making an accurate translation, they would have simply written "phodly" instead of their Impressionist substitutions.
Shygetz, some time ago I wrote the following. I am not talking to you in it, but I think it applies:
I am typing in these English letters that have a usually agreed upon placement in English words we generally understand into complete sentences that more or less make sense.
Who came up with the English alphabet or the Greek or Russian alphabets and later made them into words we can read? Linguists, that's who. Pioneer Translators around the globe are doing this all of the time. They're taking sounds and putting an alphabet to them.
The creation of the English language involved a long process and can be traced to the German language, which also includes Greek Koine words and so forth. New words are created everyday, not just by Snoop Doggy.
There are scientific words that describe any new discoveries, any new periodic elements, and any new stars. [This happens in every field of learning...The medical community names any new diseases. Philosophers come up with new terms to describe new viewpoints, etc]. Someone usually puts their name on the discovery and says "this describes is that." Someone else might claim she discovered it before the other person and may want to name it after her daughter. That's how every single word we have in the English language began (although it's more complex than that).
"Gay" used to be "happy" now it means homosexual, although people still use it to mean 'happy," so the dictionary gives that definition too. But if no one in the future uses it to mean "happy" anymore, then that definition will be dropped from the dictionaries. And being dropped from the dictionaries doesn't mean there aren't people who use the word that way any more. It just means the word doesn't usually mean happy by the dominant number of people using it. There are always subgroups of subgroups who may use any word and choose any meaning they want to for the word.
"Nice" used to mean stupid, now it means pleasant. "Nice is one of the more celebrated examples in English of a word changing its meaning out of all recognition over the centuries." Dictionary of Word Origins, by John Ayto, p. 364.
There is a debate going on about the meaning of words within the politically correct crowd. I have a dictionary called The Official Politically Correct Dictionary & Handbook. Word definitions are fought for in some eras. The crowd that can effectively argue for its definition of a word wins.
There is no objective meaning to any word, English, Japanese, German, Latin or Arabic.
Think on this. Let's define the word "yellow" to mean stupid. I can do that so long as I specify my particular and unique definition. I define it that way because I think a coward (hence yellow) is stupid. Whether I'm right about this doesn't even matter, either. I can create a whole new language if I want to, and if I get a following they will learn to speak Johnese. What if my community of people who speak Johnese grows larger and larger until it becomes a country with its own language? That's sort of what happened to every language we have on earth. But suppose there already is this community of people who speak my language. Then YOU come along and say the meanings of our words are all wrong. You know what we'd all call you.....that's right.....YELLOW.
Now let me clarify and see where we are. Words have meaning and so do morphemes. We create them and then we define them. But how do we define them? We do so in sentences. Without sentences to define them we have no words that have meaning. Meaningless sentences do not apply, since they have no specific content. Grammatically incorrect sentences can also have meaning, like the word, "Stop" only because we supply the missing words: "I want you to stop right there!"
Ro 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
If we "believe every word" then it is the "heart" that does the believing (though this is anatomically incorrect).
The burden "do you believe every word" makes it impossible to fudge on this and say "I believe the general idea... that with the **mind** mand believes or with the **brain**. There are those who would be spared the embarrassment of owning up to the word KARDIA and embrace the general idea.
But the question was "do you believe every word." I'm wondering, in light of that, if there is ANYONE within the sound of my typing who would be so SILLY as to claim inerrancy of the Bible (scientific, historic, etc) at the "word" level.
Let me make that a challenge:
"I challenge anyone to defend INERRANCY in the Bible's scientific information in light of Romans 10:10."
So, the fundie's are silenced.
But what about the liberals? Those who allow that the Bible is not accurate scientifically, but defend its teachings about God? Well, the Bible, in the red ink, forbids that as being foolish:
Joh 3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
That is, if you don't believe what I say about the things that you CAN falsify, how could you be so foolish as to believe things those things of which you have no evidence whatsoever?
shygetz, john- I don't mean to butt in here, but it seems to me that your discussion is faltering on definitions. Since you agree that words have meanings, and sentences have more focussed meanings than words, it comes down to what you consider the "basic unit of meaning" to mean.
I will play the Devil's advocate and say that meaning goes back a lot further than sentences or words: think about the meaning of a wordless cry of distress, or the meaning of a bowerbird's bower, or the meaning of a smile. Unless you say how much meaning an expression must have, and how precise it must be, then there is no point in debating what constitutes the "basic" unit of meaning, imho.
Speaking of words changing their meanings: my personal favorite is "silly". From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
The word's considerable sense development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable" (c.1280), to "weak" (c.1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" (1576).
Interesting aside: "silly" is cognate with German "selig", which still has the old meaning of "blessed". Another example of how much more conservative the German language is than English.
24 comments:
Hurray for Chris.
I believe every word in the Bible except "pisseth" and "biteth" and "eateth."
Bill Ross
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
There is only one question regarding a candidate's religious beliefs that I would like to see asked (and honestly answered, if that is possible):
"You are required to make a decision that will profoundly affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. All of the available evidence suggests you should choose option 'A.' But, in your inner-self, you have a spark of revelation of the divine that tells you to choose option 'B.'
Which way do you decide?"
I think this is a fair question. Do I think it will ever get asked?
Probably not.
Do I think if it is asked it will get honest answers?
Definitely not.
But, would I love to watch ALL of the candidates sweat answering it.
You bet ya!
I am, I must confess, also agnostic about the word "letteth." Does it mean "letteth" or "not letteth." Scholars are divided on this. The 3rd school of the 4th West Wing of the second Caliphate think that it meaneth "not letteth" but that brings us inextricably back to "pisseth" "biteth" and "eateth" which, as I mentioned before, I don't believe.
This may be an issue for the scholars to work out.
Bill Ross
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
My Pastor says that "letteth" when construed to mean "not letteth" might actually be of the Devil. So may all the "not letteth" people burn in HELL forever, amen.
Bill Ross
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
Not that this is pertinent, but since there are other word freaks here who may not know this:
"let" now means "allow", but in Middle English, and up through Shakespeare's time, it meant nearly the opposite: "hinder". This is one of a couple of such pairs of homonyms with nearly opposite meanings. A few others:"
"cleave": divide
"cleave": join (Matthew 19:5)
"raise"
"raze"
"sucker"
"succor"
"fast" as in "stuck"
"fast" as in "speedy"
sorry for the thread drift. I'll just add that I don't believe every word of the Bible either.
Oh good grief. Words can't be believed or disbelieved. Propositions can.
Biblical inerrancy has been thoroughly defined by the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I probably don't accept all the provisions of that statement, but if you could sit the candidate down long enough to explain what you meant by inerrancy, it might be possible to get a meaningful answer from them. Probably only Mike Huckabee has a strong enough theological background to understand what the doctrine means without extensive explanation.
>>>>Oh good grief. Words can't be believed or disbelieved.
The fundamentalist idea comes from the red ink:
Mt 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
A "jot" was a small Hebrew letter made in the shape of a "jot" while the "tittie" was made by placing a dot in the middle of a circle. Hence, Jesus affirms that not only are the general propositions significant, the letters were significant.
Mt 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
So presumably the actual words of Jesus, down to the actual letters, have been preserved. Of course, this does not seem to be the case.
So is this the position of the Chicago group? From what I understand, Chicago did not appear on the map of the Middle East until Al Capone fought the Loch Ness monster in "The Untouchables." In which case, their modern, liberal ideas, may not trump the words in red ink.
However, the real confusion is probably largely because the Hebrew and Greek words transated as "word" can also mean "sayings" and the fundamentalists don't get that, despite the Westminster ideas of the "perspecuity" of the scriptures in the "vulgar" langauge (that is, with lots of cuss words, like "pisseth.")
So if Jesus affirms the Hebrew letters, what are we to make of the fact that Paul et al, when quoting the Torah consistently use the very different readings (and meanings) of the LXX? Huge problemo.
>>>...Biblical inerrancy has been thoroughly defined by the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I probably don't accept all the provisions of that statement,
Here is the statement:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago1.html
Note that it does not even refer to the "jots and titties."
So, the whole thing is a silly exercise in futility.
>>>but if you could sit the candidate down long enough to explain what you meant by inerrancy, it might be possible to get a meaningful answer from them.
I can't get a meaningful answer from you, since you refer to some 21st Century CE group but you don't subscribe to all of it, or say why this view is the correct view, etc... And the document refers to "the inspiration of the Holy Spirit" - whereas neither the Hebrew nor the Greek CONTAIN a word for "spirit" - only for breath. "Inspiration" in the Greek is actually "god-breathed."
>>>Probably only Mike Huckabee has a strong enough theological background to understand what the doctrine means without extensive explanation.
LOL. What he SAID was this:
“As the only person here probably on this stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don’t fully comprehend and understand, but I’m not supposed to, because the Bible is a revelation of an infinite God, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If they do, their God is too small.”
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/29/mormons-and-the-bible/
So for Mike, the Bible is in the shape of Michael Jackson's nose. That is, no one really knows. It is intended to be inscrutable.
Of course this is not a Biblical idea, nor does it conform to the Protestant doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture.
So, the bottom line is:
* watch your jots and titties
* claiming that you believe the inerrancy of the Bible is a meaningless confession, since the Bible does not exist in time and space, only in theory
* you don't understand the Bible or the issues, and the ones you think are qualified to describe its reliability, you claim not to agree with, or, they claim to not know.
Big mess. Huge.
Bill Ross
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
Bill, what Vic said cannot be disputed. He wasn't talking about texual transmission. Only propositions can be believed, since the basic unit of meaning is the sentence, not any given word.
Bill, Vic wasn't talking about translation either, although, outside of what he was addressing you have valid points.
Case in point...
"With the heart, man believes..." Romans 10:10
The word KARDIA refers to a specific organ. So the words say something false, since the heart is not the organ of intelligence - something the agents did not know.
So, this is patently a false assertion.
The person who asked "Do you believe every word" would certainly assert that there is no error in these words, and somehow provide "scientific evidence" that the heart actually does believe, or "linguistic evidence" that "heart" can also mean "brain." There will be a host of derelict scientists and linguists willing to serve this just cause.
But Chicago would probably do a different dance. They would say that the "accuracy exists" if we adjust for the language of the day, or something like that.
So the fundie more honestly states the claim of the dogma of inerrancy while less honestly admits to the facts on the ground, while the sophisticates fudge on the burden of accuracy, but more honestly admit to how accurate the assertions are when taken at face value.
But the honest person (me, in this case) says that the assertion being made is patently false.
And this exercise is repeated over and over. For example:
Pr 20:5 Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.
Counsel is not in the heart of a man at all, but in the brain.
Ps 7:9 Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins.
The examination of a pump and a pair of urine filters could tell you things about a person, certainly, but the textt is not referring to a physical exam but rather to the discovery of thoughts and motives by a trial of ordeal, which he points to in the previous verses:
3 O LORD my God, if I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands;
4 If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:)
5 Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Selah.
In other words, show your verdict through whether or not I win the victory - not via an autopsy.
But regardless... it is clear that the text asserts that the heart and kidneys are the organs that contain our thoughts and secret motives, and this is factually incorrect, at both the word level and proposition level.
Paul refers to "sin" that "dwells in his members" - particularly his "muscles" (or "flesh").
And breath is thought to be an intelligent organ as well, though modern Bibles have changed the word "breath" with a new word - "spirit" (as they are changing "flesh" into "sinful nature" and "heart" into "mind.")
Sigh.
Inerrancy is a fantasy - a delusion.
Bill Ross
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
Well, it would be funny if Chris debated a presuppositionalist (such as Bahnsen). Each convinced the other didn't believe what he claimed to. I think statements like this are akin to mind-reading and are not valid points.
I hate to quibble, John, but the word is the basic unit of meaning--many linguists would disagree with me and say phonemes are the basic unit of meaning in the written language (the letter "s" effectively communicates a hissing sound) but that may be splitting things to finely. If I say "dog" I have effectively communicated an idea to you--that of a four-legged mammal with a particular set of features. It may not be as complete and detailed as you like, but nothing ever is. So the meaning of each word must be inerrant to preserve the inerrancy of ideas.
And, of course, the correct transmission of words in all alphabet- and syllabary-based languages requires the correct transmission of letters and punctuation. So, if one letter of the words has changes, the idea has also changed. I'm not just talking about translation here, I'm talking about transmission as well from the idea to the oral word, the oral word to the oral tradition, the oral tradition to the written book, copying book to book, and translating (and often back-translating) from language to language.
But it's inerrant. Really. The Lord of the Rings is also inerrant, for some value of inerrant. This is the kind of reasoning a mathemetician would be proud of.
Never outside of Orwellian fiction have I seen a group more adept and eager to change the meaning of words than the religious.
I hate to quibble with you myself, Shygetz, but have you looked at the meaning of the word "dog"?
dog [dawg, dog]
n (plural dogs)
1. domestic animal: a domestic carnivorous animal with a long muzzle, a fur coat, and a long fur-covered tail, whose characteristic call is a bark.
Latin name: Canis familiaris
2. male dog: a male dog, wolf, fox, or other member of the dog family
3. wild animal: a wild animal such as a wolf, fox, dingo, or coyote that resembles a domestic dog and belongs to the same family.
Family: Canidae
4. contemptible person: somebody regarded as unpleasant or contemptible (insult)
5. offensive term: an offensive term that deliberately insults somebody's looks (slang insult)
6. person: somebody of a particular type (informal)
You lucky dog!
7. something useless or inferior: something useless or of a very poor standard (informal)
8. household Same as andiron
9. meteorology Same as fogbow
10. mechanical engineering gripping tool: a device for gripping or holding things
Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Since the meaning of nearly all words (maybe all of them) has so many different definitions, the sentence is the basic unit of meaning. It is the basic context for us to know out of the many definitions possible which one applies. The wider context helps us narrow them down further. The last time I checked all linguists agree.
Glad to know I teach you about a few things since you teach me so much!
Cheers.
As a quadraplegic dyslexic agnostic, I often find myself lying on my back, wondering if there is a dog!
There was a really fun fight between the members of a church regarding whether the church should recite "Forgive us our debts" or, "Forgive us our trespasses." Obviously, the word was important. These are the kinds of entertainment you will find in the book "Great Church Fights!"
Note that one of the greatest
battles in Christianity involves a single letter!:
HOMOOUSIOS VS. HOMOIOUSIOS
"Same substance" versus "Similar substance" (Greek).
Constantine, the Roman Emperor, wanted HOMO, while Arius insisted on HOMOI... Not wanting to contradict the Emperor, the bishops signed on and the first Roman dogma was born! This was Nicea, the Emperor's summer home... and the Creed became the birth certificate of the Roman Catholic debacle.
So, watch your jots and titties, folks....
Also, there is Martin Luther's strong support of transubstantiation during the mass... the idea that the bread and wine of communion actually become the body and blood of Christ and are sacrificed anew by the priests because he said "This IS my body..."
Other reformers saw it as silly to make so much of one little word, but he said "Yes, but it is GOD's word!"
So, much hangs on the words and even the letters - and even the punctuation!
So, in this fundamentalist tradition of controversy, I think I should object to a word, and for me, that word is "pisseth."
"I don't believe God inspired the word PISSETH" - that is my platform. Yesss sireee.
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
I am not saying that words are not important. No sireee bob. They indeed are important, as are the letters, but only as used in a sentence. When it comes to meaning, the basic unit of meaning is in the sentence. All linguists agree.
To relate it to a point about the difference between the words HOMOOUSIOS VS. HOMOIOUSIOS, there wouldn't have been any debate about those words unless they were first used in a specific sentence having to do with Jesus. Those were fairly useful words in other contexts and provoked little or no debate when used in those contexts. The basic context is the sentence and the sentence is the basic unit of meaning. I could list a whole bunch of isolated words below and you wouldn't have a clue what they specifically mean without me first using them in a sentence.
Here's a few examples:
gay
bike
key
point
book
tree
Oh, the reason why specific words in the Bible are indeed important is because of the concept of inerrancy where every word is supposed to be from God. As to whether ot not God wants Christians to pray "forgive us our debts," or "sins," that is a problem for what God said unrelated to the meaning of those words, which I've dealt with here.
There is a fundamental fallacy in the notion of the Bible being "inerrant." It presumes that communication can be effected by one side of the conversation. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Only mathematics involves "perfection." 1+1=2 - this is a perfect fact. But, to the degree that it is perfect, as Einstein opined, it does not reflect the real world. One can only speak of accuracy and efficacy in the real world, where nothing is exact.
Consider the words I have written. Let us presume for the moment that they are inerrant. They are completely, divinely factual, and divinely stated. What will they communicate to a non-English speaker? A three year old child? A person from the Elizabethan period (English, but different)?
Communication is an INTRINSICALLY and UNCORRECTIBLY IMPERFECT affair. What I say and what you hear are never identical and are usually extremely different.
Consider a passage being read in Asia, as compared to being read in Israel. Consider the same passage read to the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the black, the fourth generation Pentecostal...
What about the poetic versus the literalist types of minds?
Consider this verse:
Jer 23:29 Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
What is the meaning of "word?" Does it mean a particular word, like for example, "pisseth?"
Does it refer to Jesus?
To the Bible?
To a spoken or written word?
A saying?
All sayings?
Even if that is a "perfect" verse from the Bible, "inerrant" - what is to stop it from being misunderstood?
So the whole notion of inerrancy is like that of "perfect music" - it is ignorant of the subjective nature of communication.
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
Since the meaning of nearly all words (maybe all of them) has so many different definitions, the sentence is the basic unit of meaning. It is the basic context for us to know out of the many definitions possible which one applies. The wider context helps us narrow them down further. The last time I checked all linguists agree.
"The dog is blue and the house is green."
This is a single sentence. Yet, it contains two entirely different meanings. You could easily break it down to "The dog is blue", a clause, without losing any meaning in regards to the dog. Therefore, the sentence is not the smallest unit of meaning.
"The dog is blue." is a proper sentence. However, this sentence does not rule out any of the definitions of dog; thus, you must agree that absolute clarity of communication is not necessary for transmission of meaning.
"Dog" is a word; it does not rule out any definitions of "dog", but it does convey "dog" meaning as much as the sentence "The dog is blue." The sentence does tell you more about the dog (it exists, it is blue), but the meaning of "dogness" is fully encapsulated in the single word "dog".
In linguistics, morphemes are the basic indivisible unit of meaning, and they are agreed to consist of words or, in some cases, parts of words (especially in compound nouns and prefix/suffix words--"un" is "uncertain" is sufficient in and of itself to convey the meaning of "not").
Of course, meaning is altered strongly by context ("un" in the context of "uncertain" is a morpheme, but in the context of "underwater" is not), but that doesn't stop at the sentence level--"I am gay." changes meaning drastically depending on if it is followed by "My male life partner is too." or "My heterosexual wife is too." So the sentence is certainly not the basic independent unit of meaning. Memetics has been trying to figure out what the independent unit of cultural information is for a while, and still can't agree (that's how I got interested in units of meaning; I used to study memetics before I decided it was a hopeless discipline).
I also disagree with Victor that words cannot be disbelieved; if I wrote "phodly", you can disbelieve phodly, as it has no linguistic referent and is therefore meaningless. It doesn't matter if it is in the context of "Phodly is." or "Phodly is not."; phodly has no referent in your thought (fictional or otherwise) and so must be disbelieved. While you may state that this is splitting hairs, let me remind you that the Bible has many words that have no known referent. We assume that there was a referent at some point and time, but it may be another phodly--a word made up by the author that refers to a thought in the author's mind but not in anyone else's, and therefore meaningless outside of self-conversation.
Now (this is about to get esoteric) does the fact that a reference probably existed at some point matter today? I argue no; any word with no known referent is a phodly and MUST be disbelieved. Words can only be believed if they are connected to a thought in the reader's mind. It doesn't matter that the author knows exactly what phodly means; you don't (and you can't learn unless the author tells you) so you MUST disbelieve phodly--it is impossible to believe it as an abstract, as it has no referent to an abstract. The Bible translators got around this by guessing what phodly meant. However, they have no way of knowing what phodly meant; they looked at scant context clues and at their own theological beliefs and communicated their thoughts. You could justly call this the "Impressionist" period of Biblical translation; they wrote the impression they got from the passage rather than the thoughts of the author. Why? Because they could not believe phodly, as it had no referent, and thus had to replace it with something they could believe. Were they interested in making an accurate translation, they would have simply written "phodly" instead of their Impressionist substitutions.
Shygetz, some time ago I wrote the following. I am not talking to you in it, but I think it applies:
I am typing in these English letters that have a usually agreed upon placement in English words we generally understand into complete sentences that more or less make sense.
Who came up with the English alphabet or the Greek or Russian alphabets and later made them into words we can read? Linguists, that's who. Pioneer Translators around the globe are doing this all of the time. They're taking sounds and putting an alphabet to them.
The creation of the English language involved a long process and can be traced to the German language, which also includes Greek Koine words and so forth. New words are created everyday, not just by Snoop Doggy.
There are scientific words that describe any new discoveries, any new periodic elements, and any new stars. [This happens in every field of learning...The medical community names any new diseases. Philosophers come up with new terms to describe new viewpoints, etc]. Someone usually puts their name on the discovery and says "this describes is that." Someone else might claim she discovered it before the other person and may want to name it after her daughter. That's how every single word we have in the English language began (although it's more complex than that).
"Gay" used to be "happy" now it means homosexual, although people still use it to mean 'happy," so the dictionary gives that definition too. But if no one in the future uses it to mean "happy" anymore, then that definition will be dropped from the dictionaries. And being dropped from the dictionaries doesn't mean there aren't people who use the word that way any more. It just means the word doesn't usually mean happy by the dominant number of people using it. There are always subgroups of subgroups who may use any word and choose any meaning they want to for the word.
"Nice" used to mean stupid, now it means pleasant. "Nice is one of the more celebrated examples in English of a word changing its meaning out of all recognition over the centuries." Dictionary of Word Origins, by John Ayto, p. 364.
There is a debate going on about the meaning of words within the politically correct crowd. I have a dictionary called The Official Politically Correct Dictionary & Handbook. Word definitions are fought for in some eras. The crowd that can effectively argue for its definition of a word wins.
There is no objective meaning to any word, English, Japanese, German, Latin or Arabic.
Think on this. Let's define the word "yellow" to mean stupid. I can do that so long as I specify my particular and unique definition. I define it that way because I think a coward (hence yellow) is stupid. Whether I'm right about this doesn't even matter, either. I can create a whole new language if I want to, and if I get a following they will learn to speak Johnese. What if my community of people who speak Johnese grows larger and larger until it becomes a country with its own language? That's sort of what happened to every language we have on earth. But suppose there already is this community of people who speak my language. Then YOU come along and say the meanings of our words are all wrong. You know what we'd all call you.....that's right.....YELLOW.
Now let me clarify and see where we are. Words have meaning and so do morphemes. We create them and then we define them. But how do we define them? We do so in sentences. Without sentences to define them we have no words that have meaning. Meaningless sentences do not apply, since they have no specific content. Grammatically incorrect sentences can also have meaning, like the word, "Stop" only because we supply the missing words: "I want you to stop right there!"
I used as my example verse the following:
Ro 10:10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
If we "believe every word" then it is the "heart" that does the believing (though this is anatomically incorrect).
The burden "do you believe every word" makes it impossible to fudge on this and say "I believe the general idea... that with the **mind** mand believes or with the **brain**. There are those who would be spared the embarrassment of owning up to the word KARDIA and embrace the general idea.
But the question was "do you believe every word." I'm wondering, in light of that, if there is ANYONE within the sound of my typing who would be so SILLY as to claim inerrancy of the Bible (scientific, historic, etc) at the "word" level.
Let me make that a challenge:
"I challenge anyone to defend INERRANCY in the Bible's scientific information in light of Romans 10:10."
So, the fundie's are silenced.
But what about the liberals? Those who allow that the Bible is not accurate scientifically, but defend its teachings about God? Well, the Bible, in the red ink, forbids that as being foolish:
Joh 3:12 If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?
That is, if you don't believe what I say about the things that you CAN falsify, how could you be so foolish as to believe things those things of which you have no evidence whatsoever?
So... the Bible is patently false.
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
shygetz, john- I don't mean to butt in here, but it seems to me that your discussion is faltering on definitions. Since you agree that words have meanings, and sentences have more focussed meanings than words, it comes down to what you consider the "basic unit of meaning" to mean.
I will play the Devil's advocate and say that meaning goes back a lot further than sentences or words: think about the meaning of a wordless cry of distress, or the meaning of a bowerbird's bower, or the meaning of a smile. Unless you say how much meaning an expression must have, and how precise it must be, then there is no point in debating what constitutes the "basic" unit of meaning, imho.
Speaking of words changing their meanings: my personal favorite is "silly". From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
The word's considerable sense development moved from "blessed" to "pious," to "innocent" (1200), to "harmless," to "pitiable" (c.1280), to "weak" (c.1300), to "feeble in mind, lacking in reason, foolish" (1576).
Interesting aside: "silly" is cognate with German "selig", which still has the old meaning of "blessed". Another example of how much more conservative the German language is than English.
Mark Twain had the right idea about all of this nonsense...
http://lavatoryreader.typepad.com/the-lavatory-reader/2009/10/public-urination-in-the-bible-pissing-against-the-wall.html
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