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Friday, November 18, 2011

The Bible alone is infallible

Isaiah 41:21 “Present your case,” the LORD says.“Bring forward your strong arguments,” The King of Jacob says.

Yesterday we began a new blog series on evaluating claims made by certain religions as to what is the Word of God.  When a document claims this title, it is claiming to be the very words of God communicated to human beings.  In this first test, infallibility, we are concerned with the character of the given revelation.  Will it lead the reader into truth, or error?  Is it trustworthy?  Questions such as these fit under this idea of infallibility. 

So lets briefly look at some religious books and the Bible, and determine, from Isaiah's first test, which book is the infallible Word of God.  A good test case would be whether or not the given book will accurately lead me to an understanding of the world around me as it pertains to history.

1. The Hindu Upanishads.  In Hinduism, one of the major documents claimed to have a mark of divine revelation is what is termed the "Upanishads".  Hinduism of course is not a uniform system of belief, rather it is more a system of "beliefs".  Whenever we begin to examine these documents, we discover that the universe started off from either an egg, non-being or in another instance, creation begins with a great horse sacrifice.  Clearly this will not lead me to a the truth about origins, since all the accounts are contradictory.

The Bible on the other hand has over sixty different passages spread over 66 books that do not contradict in the least.  Genesis 1 and 2, the chief among those texts, tells of God beginning everything from nothing, speaking all things into existence, investing into the creation laws and life.  The universe was originally created good, but then through the disobedience of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, decay entered, resulting in everything running down.   The other 60 or so creation passages in the Bible match exactly with this basic description. 

Science at its most fundamental level matches this as well.  The universe, according to the laws of thermodynamics, had to have had a beginning.  Furthermore, the 30 or so fundamental laws and mathematical equations describing the universe are so finely tuned that the only explanation could be that a Divine Intelligence is behind the universe's existence.  Lastly, if we deny that the God of the Bible created the Heaven's an the earth, we are left with two other alternatives - either the universe created itself or it is eternally old - neither of which is supported by well established laws of physics.   Thus the Bible leads me to a right knowledge of creation. 

2. The Koran.  The Koran claims that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross, but rather someone made to look like Him died in his place.  The question is: does this statement lead me to an accurate knowledge of history?  Did Jesus actually die on the cross?  A quick review of non-Christian secular sources written around the time will verify that is was Jesus, as a man, who physically died on the cross.  Secular historians wiritng shortly after Christ's crucifixion, such as Cornelius Tacitus in his "Annals", chapter 15 verse 44, speak of "one Christus, who was put to death in the principate of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate." 

The Bible. Yet all four Gospels in the Bible speak of such an event taking place.  Clearly the Koran cannot be the word of God, since it leads me to an innacurate knowledge of history. 

3. The Book of Mormon.  In the book of Mormon, the story is told of two tribes of indians descended from tje Jews populating North America.  One of those tribes were cursed, and the other blessed.  In the book of Mormon, Jesus Christ supposedly makes various appearances throughout history to these peoples, with the Mormon's founder, Joseph Smith, being the modern day recipient of such revelation.  The only problem with this story is that it has never been verified.  No genetic test, no Genaeological records exist that concusively ties the Indians of North America back to the Jewish people.  Furthermore, there currently exists over six different accounts of how Joseph Smith founded Mormonism back in the early nineteenth century. 

Thus in surveying these other documents, they have failed the first test of infallibility.  The Bible on the other hand, has demonstrated that it leads me to an accurate knowledge of history, science and eternity.