″ we should believe the Bible because the Bible is correct about many things that can be proven independently, this vouches for the veracity of the whole book, and therefore we should believe it even when it can’t be independently proven”
.. which,even as the improved version of, a straw man argument is still pretty weak. The Bible is a compendium of short books written by a number of people at disparate periods of time. The argument would work much better about a more cohesive work, such as the Koran....
(No, Kawoomba, I did not admit to being a Muslim...)
Well, it’s not an argument I’d personally make in this case (for roughly the reasons you outline) but it’s not an argument that’s trivially wrong from the outset; you have to actually engage in biblical scholarship to understand the flaw.
I did. But I was a bit puzzled by this,..
″ we should believe the Bible because the Bible is correct about many things that can be proven independently, this vouches for the veracity of the whole book, and therefore we should believe it even when it can’t be independently proven”
.. which,even as the improved version of, a straw man argument is still pretty weak. The Bible is a compendium of short books written by a number of people at disparate periods of time. The argument would work much better about a more cohesive work, such as the Koran....
(No, Kawoomba, I did not admit to being a Muslim...)
Well, it’s not an argument I’d personally make in this case (for roughly the reasons you outline) but it’s not an argument that’s trivially wrong from the outset; you have to actually engage in biblical scholarship to understand the flaw.
And at least it’s not circular.