The Absurdity Of Biblical Inerrancy

Tony Cartledge has an interesting article on inerrancy on his Blog.

An anonymous poster raised these valid questions---

Anonymous said...
Well, at the risk of starting the fight all over again, here are the questions I asked then and have never heard an "inerrantist" answer yet:

1. How do you KNOW "the Bible" is without error?

Which "Bible" are you talking about? Which translation? Which set of manuscripts?

A. No one alive has ever examined a single one of the original manuscripts.

B. And if you did have one of the original manuscripts, just exactly to what would you compare it to establish that it contains no error?

What is the available standard by which accuracy would be judged?

It seems to me that if "the Bible" was inspired by the Holy Spirit, you'd have to take that original manuscript to the Holy Spirit and ask Him, "Would you please check this to see if the writer got it right?"

The whole question of "inerrancy" is specious. It is a question that is impossible to answer. And if a question is impossible to answer, then it is not a reasonable question in the first place.

That's about like asking, "Can God create a boulder so big that He can't move it?"

As a statement of faith, I can accept someone's declaring that he BELIEVES the Bible to be inerrant.

But when it comes to someone's "proving" that the Bible is inerrant, he has absolutely no available tool with which to perform the analysis and evaluation.

Therefore, for one to demand that SOMEONE ELSE subscribe to HIS BELIEF about the inerrancy of the Bible, especially in order to qualify for or be retained in a position of employment, that is absolute arrogance and presumptuousness. And it's done as a demonstration of power in order to control.

How does one person DARE to demand that another person subscribe to a postulate that the first person cannot PROVE?

What EVIDENCE has ever been produced that the Bible is without error?

Just as a personal observation, one of my Bibles has a misspelled name in it--twice. At least it is misspelled in comparison to the other Bibles of the same translation I've examined. But I must admit, I haven't checked it against the original manuscripts.

Still, I'm fairly confident that this is ONE BIBLE that is not without error!

And if this one is not, how do you propose to be certain that all of the others are not?

IMHO.

Brother Deaux

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Additionally I'd like to ask inerrantists:

Where is the support for Mosaic authorship of the Torah in the Torah itself?

If then the theory of Mosaic authorship doesn't come from the canon itself but Apocryphal sources, does that mean that those sources are inerrant, too? Why or why not?

If Apocryphal sources then are errant but contain truth in them---why not the canon itself?
Additional questions: How can mere humans decide what God's truth looks like?

Is God's truth something that we can vote on?