I can be wrong on any detail, especially that which is not written in the scriptures. I don’t test any of those comments. They are irrelevant to my “scientific method” approach. I am trying prove there are errors in the Bible.
That’s already been done.
This really makes no sense to me. Faith is belief without evidence. If you don’t have any evidence then you have absolutely no basis to judge whether something is true or not.
Pretty sure the scientific method requires some level of testing. Not to be offensive but it seems like you’re playing mental gymnastics to justify your belief.
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One of my favorite verses, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)
So please allow me to explain my reasoning from an inferential statistics perspective. (I am assuming that you are reasonably knowledgeable about hypothesis testing.)
My assumption for the null hypothesis is that the Bible is accurate in its text and its context. I am testing for the alternate hypothesis. I was taught that if the test fails to prove the alternate hypothesis, we must accept the null hypothesis (fail to reject the null). Through my years trying to assist fellow employees with Six Sigma projects I found that “fail to reject the null” was a difficult concept to get across. I began teaching them a better understanding to “there isn’t enough data to reject the null”.
This is not mental gymnastics. It is an analytical approach to testing the accuracy of the Bible. My problem is that for me to believe any of the Bible, all of the Bible must be accurate. That is my “unbelief”, hence in prayer I say “Lord, I believe, help thou me mine unbelief” when testing passages.
Once again, I am not trying to prove that the Bible is accurate. If you are not STEM educated this might seem a strange approach.
Where I’m struggling is how you’re conducting any sort of test. An example would be helpful, but maybe not here as we’ve completely gone off topic in this thread.
If you start a topic like Old Earth vs Young Earth: What Does the Bible Say? That might interest the most people?
What would happen if you did the reverse?
That cannot yield any meaningful result, because I cannot prove anything happened. It would a wasted exercise. I would always get that there isn’t enough data to reject the null hypothesis.
You don’t need to, just assume it’s accurate.
That’s exactly what I do, and then try to prove it is a contradiction or impossible accomplishment.
What could possibly be wrong with that?
The fact you base it all on an assumption of truth. If you assume the Bible is true, then the alternative is that it is not true. Well, you can’t prove it’s true, people have tried and failed for centuries, so you assume it’s true. Then you try and prove it’s not true and although proving a negative is possible, it’s still considered a logical fallacy. In science you can prove something is false via testing. But this isn’t science which is why you need to assume something is true because you can prove it via testing.
Your understanding of my methodology is greatly lacking.
Here is an example. You will need to look these up:
Many state that Gen 22:1 and James 1:13 is a contradiction. I assume the Bible is accurate. If in my research I find that this is actually a contradiction, then I conclude that the Bible is not accurate. (My research might take a couple days. I have a small group to bounce ideas around.)
Can you explain their viewpoint? Because I don’t see a contradiction.
Gen 22:1, “…God did tempt Abraham…”
James 1:13, “…Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.”
James says God does not tempt man.
God tempted Abraham. Many say this is a contradiction.
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It seems obvious there are different contexts, to me.
Many see that James states God does not tempt man, yet God tempted Abraham.
God did not tempt Abraham, He tested him.
I only use the KJV. PERIOD
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Well, one needs to know what a particular word meant at the time it was written. Tempt, at the time the KJV was written, also meant test.
I can see how someone would find the two passages contradictory, in the same way I can see how some would interpret the Second Amendment this way:
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