Did I miss something somewhere? In the entire debate, Jackson has never attempted to support his affirmative claims with evidence or to establish plausibility for his "counterarguments," yet, for some strange reason, he seems to think he has sent me down to a crushing defeat. Having had my participation in the debate interrupted by five weeks of recuperation from surgery, I even took time to reread all of the manuscripts--both his and mine--and all that I found in his were unsupported assumptions, speculative assertions, flagrant question begging, and, of course, the ever-present ad hominem harangues. He seems to believe that sarcastic appellations, such as "Mr. Cold Spit" or "Mr. Professor," are all that he needs to discredit my arguments. I suspect, in fact, that he has made the ad hominem harangue his debating trademark. When truth, facts, and logic are not on his side, he apparently finds face-saving security in hurling derisive epithets.
Such tactics as these don't bother me; I have been called much worse than anything he has come up with yet. I mention it only to urge the readers not to let themselves be blinded by the ad hominem smokescreen that he keeps laying down. In debating, name-calling has never been an acceptable substitute for logic, a fact that seems as unfamiliar to him as watermelon to an Eskimo. Open-minded, objective readers will have recognized Jackson's tactics long before now, but to those who want so desperately to believe the Bible is God's verbally inspired word, I issue a word of caution. Don't be misled by emotional desires. You may find comfort in believing there is a deity so personally interested in you that he inspired the writing of a book intended to guide you into an eternal paradise, but if that belief is in fact not true, no amount of faith in it will ever make it true, and neither will Bill Jackson be able to shout, "Atheist! Infidel! Agnostic!" at enough skeptics and free-thinkers to make it true. If it isn't true, it just isn't true. You may not like that or you may passionately wish it was true, but if it isn't true, it just isn't true, and nothing you or Bill Jackson or anyone else can ever say or do will ever make it true. So I urge you to read carefully everything that Mr. Jackson has said and will yet say on this issue and give him an unbiased hearing. Then do the same for me. If you will do that, I know what conclusion about the Bible (if not immediately, at least eventually) you will reach.
Jackson has complained about my promising much in my proposition but delivering very little in defense of it. My proposition is a simple one: "The Bible contains materials that disprove its claim to be divinely inspired." It is, in fact, worded exactly as he insisted during our preliminary correspondence. What have I done to defend this proposition? I have identified and explicated eight specific cases of contradiction or discrepancy in the Bible text, none of which he has satisfactorily explained. If I have established the existence of eight discrepancies in the Bible text, then I have sustained my proposition as per my modus ponens syllogism. I have established that "the Bible possesses properties so obviously erroneous as to exclude all possibility of omniscient participation in its authorship." As I have tried unsuccessfully to get Mr. Jackson to admit, the existence of just one discrepancy in the Bible, no matter how trivial, would exclude all possibility that it was inspired by an omniscient deity. I have twice asked him (pp. 36 and 41) to tell us if that is not so. Would the existence of just one trivial mistake in the Bible be enough to exclude all possibility of verbal inspiration? True to form, however, he has evaded answering the question, even though we both agreed before the debate to answer all questions asked by the opposition. In his last rebuttal, he claimed (p. 44) that he had answered the question on page 40, but all he did here was ramble incoherently about a "variance" not necessarily being a contradiction. He never answered the question.
Originally, I intended to discuss several other discrepancies as I progressed in defending my proposition, but, recognizing as I read his first rebuttal that Jackson could not even begin to "explain" the rather simple ones I had begun with, I decided to focus my defense entirely on these eight in order to underscore his inability to build even a halfway convincing case for the inerrancy doctrine. Much to his regret, I have accomplished that goal. He will, of course, claim otherwise. He rants and raves about how pitifully I have performed and how thoroughly he has defeated me, but, with my apologies to Shakespeare, "The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks." He is into water over his head and knows it, so all he can do is "pound the pulpit" and hope that the noise and his theatrics will divert reader attention from his failure to deal with the issues being debated.
There is no need to restate my eight contradictions. I have already plowed that ground enough for fair-minded readers to see that they have completely hamstrung Mr. Jackson, so I will use the few remaining lines I have left in the debate to analyze some typical Jackson "counterarguments." He has repeatedly claimed "plausibility" for the-way-it-could-have-been scenarios that he has presented as "explanations" of the contradictions I have identified, but just look at what he considers "plausibility." Second Kings 8:26 declares that Ahaziah was "two and twenty years old when he began to reign," but 2 Chronicles 22:2, in identical language except for the numbers, states that he was "forty and two years old when he began to reign." How did Jackson "explain" this discrepancy? He rambled about "writing from a different basis" or using "differing methods of calculation," and then he said, "Others hold that Jehoram co-reigned with his father for most of the father's reign, and that those years, during both reigns amount to the 42-year calculation--not the age of the man himself..." (p. 40). Okay, if these are "plausible" explanations of the discrepancy, why can't he give us the books, chapters, and verses of other examples that would confirm that these different "writing bases" and "methods of calculation" were indeed used in Ahaziah's era? And just who are these "others" who "hold that Jehoram co-reigned with his father for most of the father's reign," etc., etc., etc.? What is their basis for holding to this explanation? Why does he expect us to accept his mere word, without proof or documentation, that these are "plausible explanations"?
Knowledgeable Bible students know that much of the information in the books of Samuel and Kings was also recorded in parallel accounts in 1 and 2 Chronicles. They know too that most of the numbers used to calculate the length of lives, reigns, dimensions, etc. are usually the same in both accounts. First Kings 6:1, for example, says that construction on the temple began in the fourth year and second month of Solomon's reign; 2 Chronicles 3:1 gives the same date for this event. First Kings 11:42 states that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem for 40 years; 2 Chronicles 9:30 says that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem for 40 years. First Kings 14:21 says that Rehoboam was 41 when he began to reign and that he reigned in Jerusalem for 17 years; 2 Chronicles 12:13 states that Rehoboam was 41 when he began to reign and that he reigned for 17 years. I could fill several pages with examples of other parallel accounts in these books that give the same ages and dates in both places, but these are sufficient to show that the writers of Kings and Chronicles obviously used the same "writing basis" and "methods of calculation." In fact, both accounts state that Jehoram began to reign when he was 32 and reigned for eight years (2 Kings 8:17; 2 Chron. 21:5). So now let's see if Mr. Jackson can give us a "plausible" explanation for why one of two writers who obviously were using the same system of calculation would suddenly decide to switch to a different system just to record the age of Jehoram's son Ahaziah. You won't forget to do that, will you, Mr. Jackson?
Mr. Jackson has felt free to use made-up examples of how things could have been, so I will give him a real-life example to illustrate the absurdity of what he has offered us as a "plausible" explanation of the discrepancy between the ages of Jehoram and his son Ahaziah. I was 32 years old when I began teaching at Spoon River College, and I have taught there for 25 years. So how old am I, Mr. Jackson? That's not at all hard to figure out, is it? So if Jehoram was 32 years old when he began to reign as king of Judah and if he reigned for eight years and died (2 Chron. 21:19-20), how old was he when he died? The only answer you can arrive at is 40. How, then, could he have had a 42-year-old son--the youngest of his sons even--who was "made king in his stead" (2 Chron. 22:1)? No wonder Jackson has wanted me to go on to other things? He can't even explain a simple contradiction like this. What would he have done if I had heeded his plea and concentrated on complex matters like plagiarisms, stylistic variations, and genealogical discrepancies?
Luke indicated three times that Paul went directly from Damascus to Jerusalem after his conversion (Acts 9:25-26; 22:16-21; 26:19-20). The first reference was Luke's own narrative account of events following Paul's conversion; the other two references were presumably Paul's own statements in sermons he preached. All three accounts give the same itinerary: Damascus and then Jerusalem. Yet Paul said in Galatians 1:17-18 that he had gone to Arabia after his conversion and neither visited Jerusalem nor conferred with any of the apostles until three years later. Mr. Jackson says it is "plausible" to believe that Luke simply omitted the references to Paul's Arabian sojourn in the same way that one who had lived in Colorado, then South Dakota, and finally California might later say to someone that he had moved from Colorado to California. Mr. Jackson wants to know if such a statement, under these circumstances would be truthful, and the answer is definitely yes; it would be truthful.
Why then can't we accept this as a "plausible" explanation for Luke's omission of Paul's trip to Arabia? We can't, because the explanation in this case is far more incredible than plausible. Paul led "a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem" (Acts 8:1), and word of that persecution had preceded Paul to Damascus: "All that heard him (Paul preaching the gospel in Damascus) were amazed, and said, Is not this he that in Jerusalem made havoc of them that called on this name" (Acts 9:21)? Yet when Paul returned to Jerusalem after his conversion, he tried "to join himself to the disciples," but, "they were all afraid of him, not believing he was a disciple" (Acts 9:26). Even the apostles, who had received "the Spirit of truth... to guide them into all the truth" (John 16:13; Acts 1:8) didn't know of Paul's conversion (Acts 9:26-27). After three years! Is it plausible, even remotely, to believe that word of Paul's persecutions reached Damascus almost immediately, but three years wasn't time enough for news of his conversion to get back to Jerusalem? Let Mr. Jackson explain this problem, and this time let's hope for more than just a flippant remark about "Till telling Luke and the Holy Spirit how it must be done" (p. 48).
To underscore the extent of Jackson's predicament, let's suppose that the person in Colorado in his example was a militant white supremist who had become notorious for persecuting non-Caucasians after which he went to North Dakota, where, seeing the error of his way, he became such an outspoken advocate of racial equality that he left mouths gaping open in people who knew about his former beliefs; then let's imagine that he left North Dakota, went to California for three years, proclaiming all the while his belief in racial equality, and later returned to Colorado, and everybody there still thought that he was a white supremist. In other words, if Mr. Jackson is going to use examples to illustrate his "plausible explanations," let him at least make the examples parallel. You have a big problem on your hands, Mr. Jackson. We will await your "explanation." And I suspect we will have to wait a long time.
Jackson claims that I have run out of soap. Well, to show him that I haven't, I'll resort momentarily to his style of "affirming." Deuteronomy 10:6-8 contradicts Numbers 20:25-29; 33:37-38; and Deuteronomy 32:50. Exodus 12:40 contradicts Exodus 6:14-25. Exodus 6:2-3 contradicts Genesis 22:14; 4:26; 15:2; 16:2; 18:14 and many other passages in Genesis. First Kings 6:1 contradicts Paul's chronology in Acts 13:17-22; 2 Samuel 24 contradicts 1 Chronicles 21 in at least four significant points; 2 Samuel 24:10 and 1 Chronicles 21:8 contradict 1 Kings 15:5. Mark 16:8 contradicts Matthew 28:8-10 and Luke 24:9.
I could easily fill another page with listings of discrepancies and contradictions in the Bible text, but I know that the mere listing of alleged contradictions does not constitute proving. On the other hand, Mr. Jackson believes that to list or to allege, without explication, is the same as to prove (see pages 1-2, 6-7, 11-12, etc., etc., etc.), so, having his assurance that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, I would dearly love to see him take all of the alleged contradictions in the paragraph above and, in addition to responding to my counterarguments in this manuscript, explain to us (in just six short pages) how they are not really contradictions. If he doesn't do that--and of course he can't--he will have to admit that his debating methods have been ridicuously unsound.
Go to Jackson's Final Rebuttal.
