Can we trust the Bible? (last updated: 18th August 2024)
The reliability of the Bible
The issue of whether the Bible is in it's entirety the word of God and can therefore be trusted to reveal the truth to us is clearly imperative. Are parts of the Bible merely symbolic, metaphorical or allegorical, or purely the contrivance of man rather than God? How are we to know which parts are, and which parts are not, from God? Would God want to leave us indefinitely in doubt in this way?
Would an all-powerful, righteous God allow His Bible to fail in any way to accurately convey His message to mankind, and do nothing about it? This must surely be highly unlikely as it suggests incompetency and/or lack of care on His part!
You could argue that people in the early days of mankind were intellectually inferior, unable to discern truth from fiction,
and probably didn't have a clear view of reality because they lacked education? There is in fact no reason to suppose that the
minds of early people were less capable of discerning the truth than those of people today, in fact the opposite may well be true.
The evidence for this is not difficult to uncover? The Psalms of David in general are masterpieces of the written word.
His success was without precedent and has never been rivalled since. He wrote the majority of the Psalms over 3000 years ago
and it makes no sense to suggest that the rest of civilisation at the time were any more intellectually inferior than people
today are compared to, say, university professors. The understanding is there for most people but the education, will and/or
opportunity to learn might be lacking.
Our distant ancestors didn't suffer either from the distorting influences of modern media that perpetually promotes naturalism, and a materialistic
World view. That their minds were incapable of distinguishing between sense and nonsense, fact and fiction cannot be justified.
Some may argue that God inspired the writing of the Bible for early people to understand and had no thought for the needs of future generations.
Perhaps He didn't realise that we would become an advanced civilisation (doubting His word) with use of complex language? Can we really believe such arguments? To do so implies that God is somehow uncomprehending, grovelling around in the dark!
Clearly parts of the Bible are intentionally allegorical including the Parables but we easily recognise them for what they are. God would not allow His Bible to contain large tracts of information which people would be unable to fathom, and therefore be unable to benefit from. Surely, the most important part of the Bible is Genesis because it lays the foundation for our very beginning, and our future relationship with God. Would God not want the meaning of this to be crystal clear? We contend that it could not be clearer! There is no hint of allegory or symbolism, it uses simple, easy to understand language that all people both great and small are able to comprehend, telling it as it is in a straight forward manner.
We find it difficult to understand why the Church accepts the resurrection of Jesus as fact when this is arguably as unfathomable as the Genesis account of Creation which in its wisdom it is inclined to label allegorical.
Both are equally outside the bounds of normal human experience being manifestations of The Almighty, so why is one believable whereas the other is not?
Genesis 2:7:
'Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.'
On the face of it creating Adam from dust seems highly implausible, but in reality our bodies are made of commonly occuring
raw materials such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc, as are molecules to be found in dust on the ground, so perhaps
it is not so fanciful a pronouncement after all.
In Genesis 3:19 God enlarges further:
'By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.'
In reality God could not have explained how he accomplished this astonishing feat
from a scientific perspective as the account had to be made simple enough for everyone to appreciate. The Bible is not intended as
a scientific text but as a guide to enable us to live out our lives in the best way possible.
Many scientists would of course scoff at our suggestion but at the same time expect us to believe their theory that the
entire Universe emerged from nothing at all, in the blink of an eye, at the 'Big Bang'. What could be more preposterous than
that, another 'just-so story' to whet the appetite of atheists, and completely at odds with the Bible?
To put this into perspective, there are a mere 10^80 atoms in the entire visible Universe,
so their widely accepted theory if played out, would entail creating 10^53 kilograms of matter from nothing, in a flash,
instigated by some unknown agent. Also, judging by their enthusiasm for the concept the entire episode amounted to little more than
'a stroll in the park'. Can anyone really believe this unverifiable nonsense?
We are unable to construct even one of these tiny atoms in a laboratory from scratch, and never will be able to. Believing 10^80
of them, existing in 118 different formats, materialised from nothing is preposterous in the extreme. Dark matter constituting 85%
of the matter in the Universe, and dark energy, has been under investigation for a period of 3 decades and has not been found. It does
not seem to have occured to scientists that it (more than 5 times the matter in the visible Universe) simply does not exist!
Of course to admit this would bring God back into the equation which must be avoided at all costs!
The total amount of Dark Matter is estimated to be approximately :
600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms
and we are unable to find any of it. Wow! Suggest dropping the 6 and we get to the truth!
If these
entities that are needed to prop up the failing Big Bang theory do not exist as seems increasingly likely, the theory lies
in shreds, and so are the billions of years that are associated with it. Without billions of years Darwin's theory also lies
in tatters.
Soil is one of the fundamental supports for life on this planet. Its physical and chemical constituents supply plants with a stable rooting medium from which they draw essential major and micro-nutrients, water and oxygen.
In reality it is only fair to say that Genesis does not entirely rule out the possibilty of a Big Bang start to the physical
Universe:
Genesis1:1 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth'
God makes no attempt to explain in the Bible how He achieved the beginning. What matters is that He was the designer and initiator,
not how He achieved it, as that would definitely be 'beyond our Ken'.
In conclusion, the only possible way forward is to accept Genesis is indeed the inerrant word of God, along with other passages such as the
Noah flood, otherwise the authenticity of the entire Bible is called into question which risks casting Christianity into oblivion.
So where next?
It is easy for us to speak about Genesis with confidence knowing that it is an entirely believable interpretation of what took place. We have the results of recent research in moleculer biology to thank for this conviction, yet many still contest its findings.
Think about what atheist leaning scientists have foisted on society, including the Church with it's acceptance of Theistic Evolution, and conduct a re-assessment in the light of the discoveries in ID. It is surely better for the Church to do this than relying on society to lead the way.
There is an argument for saying we should accept the Creation story like a child. I suspect that most adults accept God is superior to them in every way, so the relationship is akin at least in part to the parent-child one.
Perhaps we should try it for ourselves:
Jesus himself said, 'Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. (Mark 10 verse 15)'
