They've had such an exchange - check out Craig's website for a transcript of their debate. And in the audio surely you see that it wasn't just Craig voicing a difference of opinion?

It's much too kind. WLC is not an authority on anything other than making BS sound authoritative in debates.

If there is so much counter-evidence, why would you pick something that you don't even agree with (not to mention something that has all sorts of counter-counter-evidence)?

So, what would be an example that you do agree with?

That was an addition to what I've already said - gaps in the fossil record and explosions like the Cambrian, as well as the insufficient time for Darwinism to do what it claims. And I don't disagree with the idea of IC - it seems obvious that if it could be shown that something is IC it would be a gigantic monkey wrench in the Darwinian works - I'm just not sure anyone has shown a valid example or even if it can be shown. The idea of irreducible entails the idea of impossible, and I'm not sure humans can validly speak of an empirical impossibility. Even so, the more things that appear to be highly improbable through Darwinism, the more improbable Darwinism - especially unguided.

I have already said what I think. I see WLC simply disagreeing with Ehrman, none of the charges WLC makes against Ehrman truly damage Ehrman's credibility.

I hope you are aware of the political landscape here. Do you realize why WLC needs to go after Ehrman's credibility (even if unsuccessful) and can't simply disagree? Ehrman jumping ship from the evangelical faith pretty well paints a target on his back for people like WLC.

IMO to be a bit more objective we can still appreciate Ehrman's textual criticism without attempting to discredit him because of his lack of faith.

also not sure if this settles anything but just saw it on his wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman

It pains me when I see Christians quickly hand waive away any sources they disagree with. It is easy to maintain your theology if you never let yourself be challenged. This is why I think in this case WLC makes an error. Instead of helping people learn from Ehrman's expertise, WLC spends all his energy trying to discredit Ehrman in an effort to defend a conservative view of inerrant scripture.

Ehrman might not have the respect of WLC but he certainly has the respect of the rest of academia.

EDIT: In regards to WLC's point re scripture being 99% accurate, WLC is talking about words. Ehrman's view is that these percentages are of little value and what we should focus on is meaning. Even if only one word is changed if it is an important word then there can be a significant change in meaning.

You're quite wrong about WLC's motives and quite wrong mentioning hand waving.

I wonder if you've actually paid attention to the criticisms of Ehrman. When he is criticized, and by many more than WLC, after they state the 99% figure they invariably state the fact that the variants that do exist in the NT are inconsequential relative to any doctrine. Please give one singe variant that impacts anything of importance.

I don't deny, nor does anyone else, that Ehrman is good in his field of textual criticism. If he helps you there, fine. But to think that what he says and the way he says it doesn't negatively affect some if not many Christians is naive. And when he is factually wrong I see nothing out of line in calling him on it. WLC does that and with his usual very civil manner, unlike the critics who attack him with slander, slurs, lies and exaggerations.

Edit: I have to add this: If you listened to the audio don't you remember the opening where WLC recounted the story of Ehrman being interviewed on radio in which he admitted that the NT text we have is pretty much what was in the original? If that's the case, how could those 400,000 variants matter?

I am just giving you my thoughts on the context. I surely could be wrong about what WLC's motivations are. While I (obviously) don't think I am wrong I don't claim to be a soul reader or whatever. If you have information to make me think otherwise I am all ears.

okay to back pedal a bit here... I don't mean to accuse you of doing this I was intending to make a more general complaint about Christian culture. I give you credit for likely being more engaged in discussion on difficult topics than the average bear.

It would be a shame IF you saw WLC seemingly discredit Ehrman so now you don't bother to listen to anything Ehrman says. This is the type of mentality I see a lot among my peers which is really frustrating.

It seemed like you may be going in this direction by not really engaging in Ehrman's arguments but simply writing him off because "he has no credibility" in WLC's eyes.

I will give examples in a future post.

I think the average Joe Christian's faith could use some challenging so I don't really see this as a bad thing. If I see a guy questioning the reliability of the bible then its a good thing if it makes me interested and gets me doing some homework.

I see Ehrman as an important catalyst for thought and discussion. What I see as the alternate is just a state of non critical thinking and blind consent.

Yes its fine to call Ehrman out when WLC thinks he is wrong. I have already stated above what my objections are and it goes beyond just saying " hey I disagree with x". I like WLC generally and agree he is usually pretty classy.

Okay thats good. So he does have plenty of credibility in his field right? You just disagree with his theology. I don't think Ehrman claims to be a theologian or philosopher.

I will give examples in a future post which may qualify as "mattering". This is a perfect quote of where I think a conversation would be more profitable than a one sided critical monologue. I am sure if Ehrman was there to explain his contrary statements he would do so.

In short, the variants do matter to meaning to some extent. More broadly the variants directly conflict with the doctrine of scripture being inerrant. How can we say the bible is inerrant when we don't even have the originals or have copies that confirm each other. I think the absolutist doctrine of biblical inerrancy is untenable for the reasons Ehrman posits.

How can we say these are the absolute exact inspired words of God when we don't even know some of the words? or we don't even know if some verses should be in there or not?

Continuation of the post Atlantean cultural ages,as noted:
1) Old Indian
2) Old Persian
3) Egypto-Chaldean
4) Greco-Roman
5) present age

The Greco-Roman age began at about 600 BC and continued until our present age into the 15th century. As one might suspect the wonderful art of the Greeks is muchly appreciated in the western world and in fact by all of mankind. For such a small group of people to bring forward great cultural, artistic, philosophical, scientific, presentations is truly humbling.

Attempting to stay on point whereas during the previous age the Egyptian saw the stars as a signature of the gods , or the laws inherent, the Greek furthered the intellectual process as apposed to the sentient process of the Egyptian. With the advent of Greek poets, playwrights, philosophers, and scientists the "intellect' was brought to fruition. Human beings now began to "think", intellectually. the culmination of this intellectual process was the philosopher Aristotle who brought forth the logical rule, that which is so much admired even into our day.

Prior to and especially into the Grecian age the Greek thinker did not think that he had his own thoughts but they were a gift of the divine. the thoughts of an Archimedes or Plato were not considered an ownership but a gift from a higher realm of existence. It was for him to receive these thoughts appreciatively. Of note is that there were ,in existence, a significant number of atheists during this age as would be expected with the advent of the intellect which progressed in the next paragraph.

The intellect "forms" the concept in the sense of, for example, the periodic table of the elements. This was , of course, not conceived during the Grecian age, but the "forming" process of the intellect is apparent. The connections between that which is formed enters into the realm of Reason.

The Greek saw the intellect as supersensible but due to the development of the individual man , as an individual personality, the work in the intellect became to be considered a possession, each man with his own intellectual abilities. Every man became clever and indeed he is; this is more relevent to our times which has continued to develope the intellect. This is getting a little ahead of the story.

The difference between the Roman and Greek perspectives was apparent. Rome was given up to power and the legalistic mind. Evidence of this is that the "individual" was recognized by Roman law as an entity whereas in the Greek city states irt was more of a tribal or racial grouping, not by choice but by nature. True, the Romans only recognized a Roman citizen, with rights and privileges but none the less there is the beginning of the legal individual. this individuality became manifested within Roman law consequential to or in tandem with, the progression of the heavenly intellect to the individual man. We now had "last will and testament" from the roman legalities.

During the Roman hegemony mankind had reached a nadir of sorts, in which he had entered into the earthly, a world of darkness (consider Zarathustra). At this point we have the Christ Being entering the earthly world at the Baptism by John in which, at Golgotha this second person of the Trinity entered into the earth and became Spirit of the Earth. We do indeed drink His Body and His Blood and He lays underneath our feet.

Meanwhile the progression of the western intellect, individualized, continued to the present times. One aspect of our present age is to appreciated the realities of the intellect and "give back" (there are better words) our intellectual , to which we think we own, to the heavenly rulers of the intellect. This is another way of saying that we have for a period of time thought only or mainly upon earthly happenings and it is now our work to signify the spiritual within the earthly. (again note Zarathustra)

Have to stop. Finis

John 1:1, "The word was a god" (NWT)

John 1:1, "The word was god" (NASB)

A one-letter-word that JW's use to demonstrate that Jesus is not divine! That seems important.

I'm only going to address this now. You don't seem to have a full understanding of what inerrant means. In conservative Christianity it only applies to the original text. I know, we don't have the originals. Nevertheless, if a variant is obviously not from the original then it is unimportant. So 99 % of what we do have is inerrant. The other 1 % is inerrant in the originals.

Second, the doctrine of inerrancy itself is not a requirement for salvation or sanctification. I'm not even sure it's ever been part of any creed or confession, but I'm certain it isn't necessary to accept for salvation. WLC has himself made this clear - one can believe in some errors in the text and still be a fully committed Christian. C.S. Lewis thought that Jesus himself made an error about the timing of the second advent and, though I think he was wrong in his interpretation, that didn't affect his view in any way about the major Christian doctrines. If some Christians make it a necessary part of being a Christian they do so without Biblical authority.

Do some research. I'm not going to waste my time answering every allegation you find on the internet.

Edit: It took me 10 seconds to find the refutation for this. That's 10 precious seconds lost forever.

Refutation? I was pointing out that the most trivial difference in text can have an impact on its meaning.

I am aware that technically the doctrine of biblical inerrancy refers to original manuscripts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy

In a way I think a belief we hold about what the originals said is meaningless. There is no way to verify what was said in the original manuscripts. I think the real question is how highly do we value our current translations of the bible.

Here is one of the passages Ehrman alludes to:

Mark 16 ESV

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...16&version=ESV

I think it is clear that these passages would have theological impact. Are verses 9-20 part of the bible or not? It is fine and dandy to say "oh well the originals are inerrant", but do we know what is in the originals?

okay

Ehrman is fairly repetitive in his presentations. In any case I like this video and Ehrman touches on many good points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfheSAcCsrE

Here's a good discussion of that passage:

https://www.apologeticspress.org/apc...13&article=704

A couple quotes:

The link goes on to show that even the early church fathers were probably aware of the textual problem here - I've known about it since I've been a Christian as every Bible I've owned has noted it in the margin.

The most important point however is this:

So if you dropped the passage in its entirety you would still have all the information it contains in other passages. If you included it you would have no doctrine that isn't contained elsewhere.

I'll watch it and report later.

Ok, watched it all.

I enjoyed it and will say he is clearly very knowledgeable about the NT and other related topics. I didn't doubt that but I was impressed with how easily and expertly he handled various subjects. I can recommend this video to any Christian but for anyone who is recently converted I would caution that he does raise some controversial issues that you should research to see what the other side has to say. He did give a lot of interesting information on the text and how it was copied over the centuries. He also was clearly not interested in crackpots like Dan Brown and other "independent researchers", or Gnostic gospels and other bogus "scriptures". Kudos for that.

One quote I thought was interesting:

For me that completely settles the issue of textual variations - they simply aren't important to Christian doctrine.

What does concern me is that he seems at times to think the textual variations are important and at other times, like above, that they aren't. I did say in an earlier post that he seemed confused and says different things to different audiences. So my conclusion is that I would take anything he has to say with a grain of salt.

BTW, one thing I noticed, at least it seemed so to me. When he discussed the story of the woman taken in adultery he seemed to be having some kind of emotional reaction, like he was struggling to maintain control. Maybe just my imagination, and he then told a joke about it, but it was an odd episode.

Edit: One correction, he did mention the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, clearly not canonical, but he did say it was important, though he didn't explain why.

A followup:

In the video Ehrman made a point about John 3:3, the born again verse, and made the following argument:

Jesus spoke Aramaic and the NT is in Greek. The statement "You must be born again" can't be made in Aramaic in such a way that Nicodemus would misunderstand and ask about having to return to the womb, etc. Therefore, says Ehrman, that conversation could not have taken place as reported in John. I thought that was odd and didn't follow his reasoning, so I did a little google and came up with this:


http://katachriston.wordpress.com/20...ility-well-no/

Like I said, take Bart with a grain of salt.

Your linked article on the end of Mark 16 was interesting. The conclusion seemed bias but there was plenty of good stuff covered there. IMO that last verses in Mark were added by a scribe. Whether or not the contents of those verses conflicts with other doctrine in scripture I still find this problematic.

Even snake handling?

Glad you enjoyed the video:

This video is from 07 I think. Since that time Ehrman has become a bit more pointed in his views. I am not sure if he would still affirm the above. In any case his emphasis is definitely going to be more on skepticism but that may be more about his personal journey.

Variations matter if you have a very high view of scripture and a strict view concerning inspiration/inerrancy. If you are a liberal Christian then you likely won't care. The reason Ehrman (IMO) emphasizes different sides of the same coin is based on varying views people hold.

Well I take most peoples comments re religion with a grain of salt. The blog you posted re John 3 doesn't have a corner on truth either, its just a differing opinion. After all we are talking about one misunderstanding in a conversation that happened thousands of years ago. Ehrman could be wrong or he could be right.

Um, that's not what you think it is.

Show us where the variant is in the Greek text.

.