the double standard that's a chapter heading in this book the human faces of god
what scripture reveals when it gets god wrong and why inerrancy tries to hide it by
tom stark tom stark is a scholar at the emanuel school of religion a seminary in the united
states and he's written this book which i do recommend he is a christian but the whole book
is a a polemic against inerrantists and inerrantism ineritus inerrantists are people
who believe that the bible is without error that it is perfect in everything that it states there
are no factual contradictions or discrepancies or mistakes whatsoever and they believe this
they argue for this christian fundamentalists usually on the basis of a verse they wheel out
found in 2 timothy 3 16 which reads all scripture is inspired by god and is useful for teaching
for reproof for correction and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to
god may be proficient equipped for every good work now the key phrase there in this verse is
all scripture is inspired by god or god breathes as it says in the niv and this for fundamentalists
and very conservative christians means the bible is inerrant it means without any error
and this is uh the thing that he criticizes at some length but in doing so he actually mentions
the quran and the way conservative christians and fundamentalists view the bible and the quran and
the double standard that they use and he explains it very well and i just wanted to share uh what
he says so there's a bit of preamble here about christian fundamentalists he talks about the claim
to the christians fundamentalists makes in the bible is inerrant what would such a claim amount
to he says on page 56 of his book essentially this that the bible is inerrant because the bible says
that it is inerrant this is of course a very definition of circular reasoning it is a dogmatic
claim and not a rational one it is not a claim that can be supported by any external evidence
it begins with the assumption that the bible is the direct word from god
and then concludes that it must be a direct word from god because that it was that is what it says
about itself and i've already read to timothy 3 16 which apparently says that to question the
veracity of some biblical text is seen as sheer arrogance by denying that this particular text
is accurate i am setting myself up against god declaring that i myself know more than god
but this is pure sophistry and it quickly becomes a flagrant double standard it is rebellious pride
when it when one questions the bible it is common sense when one questions the quran yet the quran
similarly claims to be inerrant surah 4 82 says that if the quran had come from anyone other than
god then most certainly many discrepancies would have been found within its pages according to the
logic of christian fundamentalists then that must mean that the quran is inerrant after all
it says it is but christian apologists will argue that the quran is full of contradictions and lies
on the other hand muslim apologists will argue that the bible is full of contradictions and lies
and in point of fact he says muslims do a splendid job of pointing out precisely
what those contradictions are in the bible it is much more difficult to find contradictions
in the quran predominantly because it was written over a very short period of time and almost
exclusively by one person whereas the quran was written over a period of upwards a thousand years
at minimum by dozens of different authors as a result if internal coherency
constitutes evidence for the divine origins and inerrancy of a sacred text as
christian fundamentalists claim then the quran wins over the bible hands down now this is a
christian author saying this about the quran and the bible and he goes on at this point
christian apologists will begin a campaign of character assassination against muhammad
this is so true he was a liar he was violent etc again this introduces a double standard after all
moses the alleged author of the pentateuch that's the first five books of moses was a liar and an
extraordinarily violent man that's in the bible of course in fact if the bible is accurate then
moses was exceedingly more violent than muhammad moses killed women and children in the name of god
whereas muhammad condemned the killing of women and children for any reason
this is true it does no good either to argue that many of the traditions in the quran are
dependent upon traditions from the bible this is a favorite argument of christians
because the same thing is true of many of the traditions in the bible the story of the flood
depends upon much earlier traditions such as the epic of gilgamesh the laws of moses depend upon
early upon the earlier code of hammurabi hammurabi was a law code that predates moses and some of the
some of the the many of the laws uh are pretty much the same in this ancient non-israelite law
code the vision of one like a son of man in daniel chapter 7 borrows closely from the ugaritic baal
cycle and so on and so on much of the bible is a patchwork pastiche of broader ancient near eastern
law pointing out the differences between the bible and these earlier traditions is irrelevant since
there are also differences between the quranic traditions and their predecessors in the bible
in some therefore in their criticisms of other sacred texts outside of judaism and christianity
fundamentalists display that they do not accept their own arguments in favor of
biblical inerrancy in fact the same arguments work much better in favor of the quran than they do
of the bible since the quran is by far the more internally coherent document
so there we have this stunning endorsement of the quran by a christian scholar uh whose
loyalty is to the christian faith and to the bible pointing out the the double standards uh
which we all see uh employed by missionaries conservative christians and fundamentalists
when they attack the koran and they don't apply the same standards to their own bible
there's an interesting point there which i might uh i was actually thinking earlier of um doing a
separate video on as someone uh one of the people who i interact with through blogging theology
a professor in uh in egypt actually i won't mention his name but that permission
suggested that i might do a video on the way the bible portrays the great prophets of god
like moses abraham david and so on often they are portrayed as committing terrible sins terrible
crimes and uh and obviously the quran refuses to absolutely refuses to acknowledge that it's
true it has a very different story so how do we explain that the bible has said this and the quran
is saying something quite different about the prophets their lives and their apparent
sinlessness so i think that's a really really interesting question it's not an
easy question to answer but there are i think ways of approaching that question
which i'm not going to do here but hopefully in a separate video so um i'll see you then