Why the Bible At All? - New Evangelizers

I’ve had two very different people this week tell me that they don’t believe the Christian faith because the Bible is “written by the hands of men.”

Think about what that statement says. If you don’t believe in something merely because it is written by the hands of men, you are stupid. I don’t say that just to sound provocative, but literally. Because what knowledge is there that hasn’t been written by the hands of men?

Pick up a science textbook. Oops, written by the hands of men. Gotta throw all that out. Math? Hand of men. Literature? Men. Philosophy? Men. The news? Men. No point in even learning to read, because everything you will ever read will have been written by the hands of men.

But I suspect that neither of the people who said this to me actually meant it. What they really meant was that they don’t believe the Bible because they don’t believe in the Christian faith. Because, truth be told, the Bible sprang from the faith, not the other way around.

This kind of “reasoning” is called the genetic fallacy. It means to reject an idea merely because you don’t like the source of the idea.

Conversely I have had people tell me that they are Christian because the Bible is the Word of God. That’s just as false a statement as the ones made by non-Christians. Until you believe the Christian faith, there is no reason to believe the Bible is the word of God. This is another fallacy, circular reasoning. Nobody picks up a book and upon reading it decides on their own, with no other references, that it is the Word of God.

As Catholics we should not rely on just claiming that the Bible is the Word of God. We should not shy away from tough questions about the Bible or other aspects of our faith. Always be willing to look for the truth, knowing that Jesus is the truth, and that an honest search for truth leads us to Him, not away.

So what can we say to those who don’t believe the Bible? We’ll get to the “is the Bible the Word of God” part later, but let’s start with the first premise – why should we believe anything the Bible says at all? Well, the primary reason to believe in anything is because you believe it to be reliable. Is the Bible reliable?

The three major factual objections (as opposed to arguments like “the hands of men” or “I just can’t believe it”) as to why the Bible is not a reliable source are:

• The Bible contradicts science, so it is clearly false.
• The Bible contradicts history, so it is clearly false.
• The Bible contradicts itself, so it is clearly false.

Certainly there is one truth, and if two things are contradictory, and the claims of one exclude the claims of the other, then either one is true and the other is false, or both of those things are false.

For instance, if I say my friend’s dog is a purebred German Shepherd and you say his dog is a purebred French Poodle, we can’t both be right, because each of those claims excludes the other. Either one of us is right and the other is wrong, or perhaps we are both wrong (if his dog is a Border Collie).

So, does the Bible make claims that are contradictory to science, history or the Bible itself? Each of those questions is a long topic, which I’ll be covering in future posts.

In the meantime, what do you think about the reliability of the Bible? Can you make your case without presupposing it is the Word of God?

Copyright 2014, Michael Lindner

Michael Lindner

Mike is a scouter, a science geek, a dad, a husband and a Catholic. He earns a living as a software engineer in beautiful New Jersey. In his spare time (ha ha) he muses at his blog What Does Mike Think? He is not a writer (which will be painfully obvious after reading his posts) but feels called to apologetics and evangelization anyway. You have been warned.