My first affirmative manuscript was written five months before McDonald sent me his rejoinder to my final negative manuscript, so I have been unable until now to comment on his last affirmative effort. To show the falsity of his syllogisms (I still think silly-gisms is a more appropriate term), I have applied some of them to the Koran and the Book of Mormon to show that if they prove the inspiration of the Bible, they would also have to prove the inspiration of other allegedly inspired books. Now he is telling us that he "destroyed [my] objections [to his syllogisms] by showing that these books [Koran and Book of Mormon] did not make the claims that the Bible makes" (rejoinder, p. 1). If McDonald has "destroyed" any of my arguments, that destruction has certainly eluded me. Readers may check my third rebuttal manuscript in particular to see that on pages 3-4, 9-10, and 13, I took three of his syllogisms and applied them almost word for word to either the Koran or the Book of Mormon to show that the same arguments he was using to "prove" the inspiration of the Bible would also prove the inspiration of these books.
Despite his claim that he "destroyed" my counterarguments, all he actually did, as anyone can see by reviewing his fourth affirmative, was simply to declare arbitrarily that the Koran and Book of Mormon do not make the same claims that the Bible does. However, to say that the Koran and Book of Mormon do not claim divine inspiration is too ridiculous to deserve serious comment. In my oral debate with him, I suggested that he might want to go to Teheran and stand on a street corner and declare that the Koran was not inspired by God. Before he had said too much, I suspect, someone would make him painfully aware of such Koranic passages as III.3.2-3, 17-19. In this country, McDonald can just arbitrarily declare that these passages don't teach inspiration, but I doubt that he could get away with such a denial in a radical Islamic nation. If he lived long enough to hear it, someone would surely call his attention to what is said in the last of the passages cited above:
Surely the true religion with Allah is Islam. And those who were given the Book differed only after knowledge had come to them, out of envy among themselves. And whoever disbelieves in the messages of Allah--Allah indeed is quick at reckoning.
Claims of divine inspiration can also be found in the Book of Mormon (2 Nep. 27:6-22; Alma 5:1-3, 44; Omni 1-25; Mor. 8:33; Moro. 7:13). So if the mere fact that the Bible claims divine inspiration is enough to prove that it was inspired, McDonald should explain to us why we should not believe that the Koran and the Book of Mormon were also divinely inspired. Also, if just the claim of a book is enough to prove the truth of whatever it claims, then why doesn't McDonald believe that "the true religion with Allah [God] is Islam," as the Koranic quotation above says?
I addressed this very issue at considerable length in my third rebuttal (pp. 13-14), so I question the propriety of wasting more space on it. However, so that no one can accuse me of evasion, I will take the time to look once more at an example of McDonald's illogical thinking. To prove his claim that "the Bible is either of divine origin or it is of human origin," he applied his bad-men/good-men argument and concluded that "bad men" could not have written the Bible, because it condemns evil and "bad men" would not have written something that condemned their "evil-doings." From this, he concluded that good men must have written the Bible, because if bad men didn't write it then only good men could have written it. (As I pointed out before, he commits the black-or-white [either-or] fallacy by putting all people into just two groups--good or bad.) The Bible claims inspiration, the argument continues, so if it is not inspired, then the men who wrote it lied, and good men do not lie. So, presto, just like that, McDonald thinks he has proven the inspiration of the Bible.
I don't wish to speak disparagingly of McDonald's intelligence, but if ever there were such a thing as an utterly stupid argument, this has to be it. On what grounds does he conclude that "bad men" could not write a book that condemns evil? Jimmy Swaggart stands in the pulpit of his church every Sunday and condemns evil, yet look at the man's own personal life. Instead of speaking (orally) against evil, would it be possible for Swaggart to write his sermons and publish them in book form? If so, wouldn't we have a clear case of a "bad man" writing a book in which "evil-doings" were condemned? Quite often newspapers carry stories of clergymen who are involved in sex scandals, con schemes, murder, and all sorts of "evil" conduct. Surely many of these men, when they stand in their pulpits, condemn "evil-doings," so there is no empirical evidence whatsoever to support McDonald's claim that "bad men" would not write a book that condemns evil. Hypocrites have always lived morally bad lives while outwardly condemning evil, so how does McDonald know that this was not the case with the men who wrote the Bible?
McDonald preaches for the Church of Christ, a church that believes it is the church, the only church. He would say that all who are not members of this church are going to hell no matter how sincere they may be in their religious beliefs. To his black-or-white way of thinking, then, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Adventists, Pentecostals, Mormons, Moslems, Jews, Zoroastrians, etc. are "bad people" who are going to hell (unless, of course, he wants to take the position that God is going to send good people to hell). Every Sunday the pulpits across the land are filled with Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, and various other sectarian preachers who very forcefully condemn evil. Many of these men write books that oppose the evil that they preach against in their pulpits, and many lay members of their churches likewise speak out against evil, yet McDonald will say that all of these people are going to hell, because they have not been dipped in water by a Church-of-Christ preacher.
So what does all this do to McDonald's claim that "bad men" could not have written a book that condemned evil? Talk about destroyed arguments! This bad-men/good-men argument of his has been completely destroyed. I would think that he would be too embarrassed to make such a ridiculous argument as this, but I have debated him enough (in both written and oral format) to know that nothing can be too absurd for him to drag out and throw into the forensic arena.
In his rejoinder, McDonald wasted a lot of time on the issue of a David-Solomon co-reign. I have never denied that such a co-reign occurred, so the only point of difference between us is the matter of duration. McDonald seems to think that their co-reign covered a considerable period of time, but the biblical record indicates that it spanned only a few months at best. When David was "old and full of days," he decided to make Solomon king over Israel (1 Chron. 23:1). Such an occasion called for an elaborate ceremony, so David summoned all the princes, priests, and Levites to tell them that Solomon would become their king and would build a special house for Yahweh. The Chronicle writer began in chapter 23 to list the names of all those that David set apart to participate in the ceremony and to serve in the house that Solomon would build for Yahweh, and in the typically boring fashion of much of the Old Testament, the listing was extended through the 28th chapter. (Six chapters of little more than names and genealogical data; it's the inspired word of God, folks!) It was in 26:31, amidst all the listing of names, that we were told that this was happening in the fortieth year of David's reign, so if after deciding to make Solomon king, David began calling the people together for the ceremony, and if the calling together occurred in the fortieth year of David's reign, we can only conclude that Solomon was not made king until the fortieth year of David's reign. Since David reigned for only forty years (1 Chron. 29:27; 1 Kings 2:11), we have to conclude that Solomon co-reigned with David for less than a year. McDonald claimed that nothing in any passages that I cited "nullify the idea of Solomon [sic] co-reigning with David before his death, and even some time before his death" (rejoinder, emphasis added, p. 3), but unless he can show where I have erred in my math, he is dead wrong--as usual--about a David-Solomon co-reign that lasted for "some time."
Furthermore, the parallel account in 1 Kings 1-2 clearly agrees with my conclusion. "David was old and stricken in years" as the book opens, so his servants secured the services of a young virgin named Abishag to lie in the king's bed to keep him warm. At this point, upon hearing that David's son Adonijah had declared himself king, Bathsheba and Nathan the prophet intervened to have David pass the scepter to Solomon. At the time of their intervention, David was "very old" (1:15), but their plan worked. David ordered Zadok the priest to anoint Solomon king, after which David himself said, "Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Israel, who hath given one to sit on my throne this day, mine eyes even seeing it" (1:48). That all of this was occurring in the final days of David's life is apparent from the fact that his death was recorded just a few verses later (2:10). There is absolutely nothing in either record (1 Kings or 1 Chronicles) that even suggests a lengthy David-Solomon co-reign. Their co-reign was quite short, nothing at all like the 20-year co-reign of Jehoram and Ahaziah that McDonald has conjured up out of nowhere so that he would have a "solution" to a troublesome Bible discrepancy.
All of this is really beside the point--just another straw man for McDonald to fight with--because Solomon's co-reign with David (even if it had undeniably lasted for "some time") would not prove that Ahaziah co-reigned with Jehoram. We have specific passages that tell about Solomon's co-reign with David, but where are the specific passages that speak of a Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign? There are none! Where are the book, chapter, and verse that even hint of a Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign? There are none! As I have reminded our readers before, McDonald belongs to a church that constantly boasts of "speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent," so when is he going to practice what he preaches? If the Bible doesn't speak of a Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign and if the Bible is completely silent about a Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign, by what logic does McDonald conclude that the discrepancy in 2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 22:2 can be resolved by postulating a 20-year co-reign for which there is neither biblical nor extrabiblical evidence? Is this what he calls speaking where the Bible speaks?
I stress that there is no extrabiblical evidence for this imaginary 20-year co-reign. Jerry again referred to Kimchi and Abarbinel, two rabbinic commentators of the middle ages, who postulated a Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign as a way to "explain" this discrepancy, but he did not cite any evidence that they advanced to give credibility to their postulation. In my last rebuttal, I said, "If Kimchi and Abarbinel have any proof that supports their 'solution' to this discrepancy, let's see it" (p. 6), but despite that challenge, Jerry did nothing except repeat what they had claimed (p. 2). Unsupported speculations! That's the only kind of proof that Jerry has. Every generation has had its Jerry McDonalds to defend the indefensible claim of Bible inerrancy. That is all that Kimchi and Abarbinel were, the Jerry McDonalds of their time, men who would advance any kind of preposterous hypothesis to try to save the untenable doctrine of Bible inerrancy. Quoting men like these is about as convincing as quoting the National Rifle Association to support the belief that the ownership of firearms is a constitutionally guaranteed right.
While we are on the subject of medieval rabbinic commentators, I suggest that Jerry familiarize himself with the midrashic literature (rabbinic commentaries) that came out of the period that Kimchi and Abarbinel lived in. Belief in some of the most outlandish myths imaginable was expressed in much of that literature. (Hebrew Myths by Robert Graves and Raphael Patai would be a good source of information for readers who want to investigate this subject.) This, of course, wouldn't matter too much to Jerry McDonald. He would simply accept that which suited his purpose and reject all of the fantastic stuff. I must insist, however, that he at least cite Kimchi's and Abarbinel's reasons for claiming a lengthy Jehoram-Ahaziah co-reign as the solution to this discrepancy. If they had no reasons except conjecture and speculation, then their explanation is as worthless as the far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios that McDonald has been trying to sell us.
In my last rebuttal manuscript, I quoted Jerry's beloved Josephus who said in Antiquities of the Jews that Jehoram "lived forty years and reigned eight" (Book 9, 5:3), which is exactly what the Bible indicates in 2 Kings 8:17 and 2 Chronicles 21:5: "Thirty and two years old was he (Jehoram) when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years." McDonald wanted to know where the Bible says that Jehoram was forty years old when he died. Well, this is where it says it. If he was thirty-two when he began to reign and if he reigned for eight years, then he was forty when he died. There is really nothing wrong with Jerry that a course in simple arithmetic wouldn't cure. He would be tickled pea-green if he could find a passage in the Bible that is as clear on the subject of instrumental music in Christian worship as these verses are on the age of Jehoram of Judah when he died.
"But this passage says that Jehoram reigned in Jerusalem for eight years," McDonald insists. Indeed it does, and I showed in my last rebuttal (pp. 7-11) that the Bible, in reporting their deaths, said of all Judean kings that they had reigned in Jerusalem for x number of years. David was the only king of whom it was said that he reigned in two different places (2 Sam. 5:5; 1 Kings 2:11; 1 Chron 29:27), and that was because David had reigned seven years in Hebron before he secured Jerusalem as his nation's capital. McDonald cannot cite a single case--and prove it by a specific biblical or extrabiblical text--of a Judean king after David whose reign was split between different localities. This was all explained in my last rebuttal, so there is no need to rehash it now. McDonald didn't deal with it then, and he can't deal with it now. All he has done is to offer us nothing but ridiculous speculation that has neither biblical nor extrabiblical evidence to support it.
He has imagined "implications" in 2 Chronicles 21:11 that Jehoram divided his reign between Jerusalem and some other place, but all that this passage says is that Jehoram "made high places in the mountains of Judah, and made the inhabitants of Jerusalem to play the harlot." This is saying nothing more than that Jehoram built pagan worship sites in the mountains of Judah, so in saying that "when Jehoram took Judah up to the high places to worship, this is where he resided" (rejoinder p. 3), McDonald is reading something into the text that is not there. When is he going to start speaking where the Bible speaks and being silent where the Bible is silent?Is there anything in the Bible text that even hints that Judean kings who encouraged either pagan or Yahwistic worship in "high places" resided at the worship sites they had built? Nothing at all! Solomon went to the high place at Gibeon to offer a thousand burnt offerings (1 Kings 3:4), but he returned to Jerusalem after the ceremony (v:15). Later in his reign, Solomon built high places to Chemosh and Molech (1 Kings 11:6-8), yet when he died, it was said that he had "reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel" for forty years (1 Kings 11:42). In all the verses that tell the story of Solomon, a frequent worshiper at the "high places," not a one even hints that he reigned anywhere but in Jerusalem, so just where does McDonald get the idea that where the kings worshiped was where they resided? I'll tell you where he got it. He has arbitrarily declared it--without as much as an iota of evidence--to try to get himself out of an embarrassing predicament.
King Ahaz sacrificed at the "high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree" (2 Kings 16:3), but when he died, it was said that he had "reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem." King Manasseh "built again the high places" that his father Hezekiah had destroyed, yet when he died it was said that he had "reigned in Jerusalem for fifty-five years (2 Kings 21:1-3). Obviously, then, saying that so-and-so had reigned in Jerusalem was simply the biblical way of recording the number of years the Judean kings had reigned, and McDonald can't produce one shred of evidence to dispute that. If he could, don't you know that he would do so? He would dearly love to do it.
So pressed is McDonald for something to shore up this flimsy argument of his that he is claiming that 2 Chronicles 22:6-9 implies that Ahaziah probably spent a long period of time in Samaria. All that this passage says, however, is that Ahaziah, who was visiting his brother-in-law in Jezreel,was wounded in Jehu's massacre of the Israelite royal family and then fled to Samaria for refuge. The parallel text in 2 Kings 9:27-28 states that Ahaziah fled to Megiddo after he was wounded. Megiddo was a city in Samaria only a few miles from Jezreel, where Jehu's massacre occurred, so it wouldn't have taken Ahaziah long to flee there. Neither passage that records the death of Ahaziah in Samaria (2 Kings 9 and (2 Chron. 22) even suggests that he was there in any sense except to visit his wounded relative Joram, the king of Israel. While he was in Samaria, Ahaziah was still king of Judah, but he was not reigning in Samaria any more than a U.S. president who makes an official visit to Moscow is "reigning" as president in Moscow.
Since we are on the subject of Ahaziah's death, I will use the occasion to point out another Bible discrepancy. The account in 2 Kings 9:27-28 says that Ahaziah, upon realizing that he too was in danger, fled the scene of Joram's murder, but Jehu pursued him and told his men to smite Ahaziah in his chariot. This was done "at the ascent of Gur, which is by Ibleam," but Ahaziah, although wounded, continued his flight and went to Megiddo "and died there" (v:27). His servants "carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem, and buried him in his sepulchre with his fathers in the city of David" (v:28). When we compare this passage with the account of Ahaziah's death as recorded in 2 Chronicles 22:7-9, we see some very glaring discrepancies. In this version of the story, Jehu's men found Ahaziah hiding in Samaria after his flight, "and they brought him to Jehu and slew him" (v:9). Now which way did it happen? Did Ahaziah flee to Megiddo and die there, or did Jehu's men find Ahaziah and bring him back to Jehu, where he was then killed? I'm sure McDonald can come up with some far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenario to show us that there is really no discrepancy.
Furthermore, the account in 2 Chronicles says that "they [Jehu's men] brought him [Ahaziah] to Jehu, and slew him; and they buried him" (v:9). We have to assume from this that the they who buried Ahaziah were Jehu's men who found him and brought him back to Jehu. (If not, there is an obvious pronoun-antecedent problem in this verse [as there is in many biblical verses], and that would make us wonder why Yahweh couldn't direct his "inspired" ones to write more clearly than this.) The account in 2 Kings, however, clearly states that Ahaziah's servants "carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem" and buried him there. So which version is right? Did Jehu's men bury Ahaziah after they had killed him or did Ahaziah's servants take him to Jerusalem and bury him there? Perhaps McDonald can clear the matter up for us. While he is at it, he might also explain where these "servants" of Ahaziah came from, because the account in 2 Chronicles 22 says that when Jehu's men found Ahaziah, they killed those who were ministering to him (v:8). McDonald can confront problems in the Bible text like these and still look at us with a straight face and say, "There are no errors in the Bible." Amazing!
In his desperation to salvage something for his precious inerrancy doctrine, McDonald has even tried the different-methods-of-calculating argument to explain the discrepancy in the ages given in 2 Kings 8:26 and 2 Chronicles 22:2 for Ahaziah when he began to reign. One passage says that he was 22; the other says that he was 42. McDonald wants us to believe that "different methods of calculation" being used by the two writers could be the explanation for this discrepancy. In one place, he tells us that a possible 20-year co-regency could be the explanation, and in another, he says that "different methods of calculation" could account for the difference. So which was it? Was it the 20-year co-regency that caused the discrepancy or was it "different methods of calculation"? Which?
Readers who are unfamiliar with the inerrancy controversy may not recognize the any-interpretation-will-do game that McDonald is playing here. All he wants is to preserve the inerrancy doctrine, so when he encounters "variations" in the Bible, he rejects face-value meanings and begins a frantic search for interpretations that will provide a basis for seeing possible agreement in the variant texts. If the interpretations are ridiculous and far-fetched, it doesn't matter, because preservation of the inerrancy doctrine is more important than understanding the probable meaning that the writers had in mind. Jerry McDonald wouldn't allow a clergyman from the Baptist, Methodist, Mormon, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, or any other denomination within a country mile of his pulpit on Sunday morning, but if any of them can dream up an interpretation that offers a possible explanation of a textual discrepancy, he will instantly grab it and run with it. That's the kind of mentality I am having to deal with in this debate. It is a mentality that refuses to recognize that the mere existence of a possible resolution of a discrepancy doesn't mean that it actually is a resolution. It is a mentality that won't admit the possibility that the discrepancy is in fact a discrepancy.
McDonald's different-methods-of-calculating argument is the same dodge that Bill Jackson tried on this same issue in my debate with him, so what I said in response to his "argument" will apply equally well to McDonald's:
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? (Jackson-Till Debate, pp. 61-62).
Apparently, Jackson did forget, because he didn't mention any of this in his next rebuttal. I predict that McDonald will at least mention it, but whatever he says will be typically far-fetched. After all, the writers of Kings and Chronicles agreed so often in their chronology that there can be no "plausible" reason for anyone to argue that in this one case of variation in the ages attributed to Ahaziah when he began to reign, the writers were using "different methods of calculation." The Hebrews used a base-ten math in which 22 and 42 had the same values that they have in our system of calculation. McDonald has a problem but just won't admit it.
He has complained again that I object to his quoting the scriptures, so I guess I will have to waste more space to say what I have said before. I don't object to his quoting the scriptures; I simply object to an inerrantist who quotes the Bible and expects these quotations to settle the issue being debated. The inerrancy of the Bible is the issue in this debate. Does the Bible claim inerrancy? Indirectly it does through its claim of divine inspiration. So what would we expect it to say on this subject if we allowed the Bible to testify for itself as McDonald has insisted that we must let it do? Even he has quoted the passage where Jesus said, "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true" (Jn. 5:31), so now I must insist that he recognize this biblical principle and concede the fact that the Bible's own testimony that it is the inspired word of God is worthless evidence in this debate. It proves no more than a defendant's testimony in court that he is innocent. So the Bible's testimony that it was inspired of God proves no more than the Book of Mormon's testimony that it was inspired of God. If McDonald can't see that, there is something seriously wrong with his reasoning ability.
He obviously has a lot to learn about the quality-of-references factor that all good communication textbooks advise writers to respect when they are presenting supporting evidence. Someone writing in opposition to the enactment of gun-control laws, for example, would be ill advised to quote the NRA Journal in support of his case, because this publication is so biased on the subject that no objective reader would consider it a reliable source of information. In the same way, the Bible is too biased on the issue we are debating for anyone, except brazen-faced fundamentalists, to consider it a reliable source of information.
In his desperation, McDonald has also resurrected the matter of God's existence. "If it [the Bible] is inspired by God," he said, "then God must necessarily exist, right?" Well, of course that is right. I have never denied that it is right, so there is no need to examine the silly-gism he presented to prove it. I freely admit that God could not have inspired the Bible unless God existed, just as I would admit that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) could not have written Huckleberry Finn unless Samuel Clemens had once existed. I wonder why McDonald continues to waste our time on such inanities as this instead of dealing with pertinent issues. What I have argued, as anyone can see by checking my first (p. 1-2) and second (pp. 1-3) rebuttals, is that I do not have to prove that God does not exist before I can prove that God did not inspire the Bible. If, for example, I should claim that I, and not Margaret Mitchell, was really the one who wrote Gone with the Wind, would McDonald have to prove that Farrell Till never existed before he could prove that I did not write Gone with the Wind? Certainly not! He could prove that I was only three years old when the book was published and establish other facts about me and the book that would convince any rational person that I could not have written it. In the same way, without even broaching the subject of God, I can present evidence, and have been presenting evidence, that should convince any rational person that God, if he exists, had nothing to do with the authorship of the Bible.
On this particular issue, McDonald has tried to equate the propositions we are now debating with the ones we debated in our oral discussions at Sullivan, Missouri, in July 1991. In that debate, which was concerned with the subject of Bible morality, I knew that McDonald would take the position that an "objective morality that emanates from the nature of God" exists to bind all people to an absolute standard of morality. In order to prove the existence of such a standard of morality as this, he would first have to prove that God, the source that objective morality emanates from, also exists. Objective morality, as McDonald sees it, is absolutely dependent upon the existence of God. If God doesn't exist, there can be no objective morality. On the other hand, my task in the Sullivan debate was to prove that moral atrocities can occur independently of any standard of objective morality. To do that, I needed to prove nothing about either the existence or the nonexistence of God, because nonobjective morality does not depend on the existence of a god. Nonobjective morality emanates from intelligence and reason, not from some hypothetical deity that no one has ever seen. In the Sullivan debate, I think that I proved my position and in so doing established that the Bible encourages and even sanctions atrocities as morally repugnant as the killing of babies. The fact that McDonald would bring this subject up in his first rebuttal manuscript in this debate suggests that he might still be smarting from the beating he took on it last summer.
Escape between the horns of the dilemma that Jerry believes he has caught me on is as simple as pointing out that his positions in our debates require him to address the matter of God's existence. Mine do not. For God to have inspired the Bible, God would first have to exist, yet God could exist without having inspired the Bible, or, to state it conversely, the Bible could exist without God's having inspired it. Therefore, I do not have to prove that God does not exist in order to prove that God did not inspire the Bible. Likewise, for a standard of objective morality that emanates from the nature of God to exist, God would have to exist, but God could exist without objective morality existing, or, conversely, nonobjective morality can exist without God existing. Therefore, I do not have to prove that God does not exist in order to prove that nonobjective morality exists. So the difference in my responsibilities and Jerry's in this debate (and the other one) is simply the difference in the requirements of our respective positions. Jerry's problem is that he is trying to compare apples to oranges. After making the comparison, he said that he could not see "how [I] can possibly argue [my] way out of that one," but if he has read carefully, he has just seen me do it. Let's hope that this matter has now been put to rest so that we can discuss issues relevant to the proposition we are debating.
McDonald said that I cannot sustain my proposition unless I prove that at least two intertextual contradictions, two inconsistencies, two historical and two scientific inaccuracies, etc. exist in the Bible text. Technically, he is right because all of these are mentioned in my proposition, and I may not be able to get to all of them because of his constant tangents and circumlocutions that I have to deal with. However, my failure to establish that at least two of all of these exist in the Bible text will certainly not prove that the Bible is inspired of God. If I prove only one discrepancy of any kind in the Bible text, whether contradiction, historical inaccuracy, failed prophecy, or whatever, I will have proven that the Bible is not inspired of God for the reason that I repeatedly have had to point out to my Church-of-Christ opponents: omniscience and omnipotence would be incapable of error, so if there is just one mistake in the Bible, no matter how minuscule or insignificant, that is enough to prove that an omniscient, omnipotent deity did not verbally inspire it. My, my, I just love the advantage that my position gives me in these debates. Jerry and his inerrantist colleagues must prove that they are right in every point. I have to prove only that I am right in just one point.
Jerry predicted that I am in "for some hard times ahead [in this debate]" (first rebuttal, p. 4), but what I just said puts the onus of hard times on him. His rationale for making such a rash statement as this was predicated on his showing "plausibility for whatever [I] bring up." If he can do that, he argued, he will defeat me in this debate, "because he [Till] must show that whatever he brings up conclusively proves that the Bible is not inspired of God" (Ibidem ). Well, okay, but just when has McDonald shown reasonable plausibility for any of his ridiculous how-it-could-have-been scenarios? If he has done it yet, I haven't seen it. Furthermore, he requires that "whatever [I] bring up" must "conclusively prove that the Bible is not inspired of God," but he is going to allow himself the leeway of just having to show "plausibility." Plausibility to him, of course, is any far-fetched maybe or could-have-been. At any rate, he should explain his reasons for the double standard. Why is "plausibility" enough for him when conclusive proof is required of me?
The truth of the matter is that the speculative methods of "explanation" that McDonald and his inerrantists colleagues apply to discrepant biblical texts would, if applied to all written works, whether biblical or secular, make contradiction or discrepancy impossible. I have read the efforts of Bible inerrantists to show that the Book of Mormon contains contradictions and errors that prove that it could not have been divinely inspired. In so doing, they use the same common-sense methods of criticism that I have applied to the Bible in this debate. They can see the validity of these critical methods when they want to disprove inspiration of the Book of Mormon, but they reject them when the same methods are applied to biblical criticism. If Jerry doubts this, then I defy him to show us in his next rebuttal an example of contradiction or discrepancy in the Book of Mormon or any allegedly inspired book. If he will do that, I will show him how the contradiction or discrepancy can be satisfactorily explained by applying the same criteria of "plausibility" that he uses to resolve textual discrepancies in the Bible. The logical end of Jerry's position, then, is that contradiction or discrepancy in written documents is impossible. What rational person can believe a position as ridiculous as that?
He has said that he will not accept my definition of contradiction, so evidently I don't have the right to apply a legitimate dictionary definition to a major term in my proposition. The American Heritage Dictionary gives "inconsistency or discrepancy" as a definition of contradiction, and that is the sense I will be using the word unless otherwise stated to let readers know that I am using it in the strict philosophical sense that can also be applied to it. McDonald's reason for rejecting my vernacular definition was "that two accounts can differ and yet not contradict one another" (first rebuttal, p. 4). By this, he means that they can differ without being exact opposites, and he is of course right. However, I don't need to prove strict contradiction in the Bible in order to prove that it was not inspired of God. Proving the existence of inconsistency and discrepancy will do the job just as well, so if McDonald doesn't mind, I will decide what meaning to assign to a key term in the proposition I am affirming. He wasted a lot of time in the Sullivan debate trying to argue that when I say that real moral atrocities exist I am saying that objective moral atrocities exist. His reasoning principle was that one definition of the word real in the dictionary was objective. I knew that, of course, but objective simply wasn't the sense in which I was using the word; I had defined it to mean actual or not imaginary, which are both recognized definitions of real. According to McDonald, if I should say that he is a real jerk, I would have to believe that an objective standard of jerkry exists. With so many relevant matters to discuss, why does he waste time on trivial matters like these?
McDonald has also rejected my definition of "moral atrocities," because it does not acknowledge the existence of objective morality. That doesn't bother me. He may reject all that he wants to. I am willing to leave the matter to the judgment of our readers, most of whom, I am sure, will recognize that abstract concepts can and do exist independently of objective standards by which those concepts are judged. People recognize that beautiful things exist, but they know that there is no such thing as an objective standard of beauty. People recognize that sad things happen in life, but they know that there is no such thing as an objective standard of sadness. In the same way, people whose sense of logic has not been distorted by the wackiness of religious fundamentalism, realize that immoral things can and do happen in life, even though there is no such thing as an objective standard of morality.
In our oral debate, I publicly exposed the extremes that McDonald is willing to go to in defense of his nutty belief that the many acts of savagery attributed in the Bible to Yahweh of the Hebrews were morally good acts. I asked for his response to the following true or false statement related to king Saul's massacre of the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15):
If I had been born an Israelite in the time of king Saul, I Jerry McDonald would have willingly participated in the destruction of the Amalekites by personally killing old women, pregnant women, mothers, children, and infants (emphasis added).
His response was true. He qualified his answer by saying that he would have regretted having to do it, but, nevertheless, he would have willingly killed women, pregnant women, mothers, children, and babies. I urged him to tell us why he would have regretted having to do it. He believes that it was the will and purpose of God that this be done, so why would he have had any regrets about having been a part of God's great plan for mankind? He never did tell us, but maybe he will now. I am putting the question directly to him again: Why would Jerry McDonald have any regrets at all about killing babies if he believed that doing so was the will of the God who so loved the world that he gave his only son (who was really himself) to redeem it? We eagerly await his answer.
This is the predicament that belief in Bible inerrancy gets people into. To believe in this absurd doctrine, one must defend the killing of babies. Inerrantists resort to all sorts of absurd rationalizations to try to make such atrocities as the massacre of the Midianites (Num. 31) and the Amalekites (1 Sam. 15) into examples of divine wisdom. This was McDonald's latest effort:
The world sees nothing wrong with slaughtering a million and a half babies each year, in fact the world gets mad if we try and [sic] oppose abortion. Yet if God, the ultimate creator of the universe from whom all life stems, destroyed a nation of wicked people, and killed their babies so as to give them eternal life and keep them from growing up in their predecessors footsteps, then that is a moral atrocity (first rebuttal, p. 5).
As incredible as it is, this is a stock defense that inerrantists use when confronted with the Midianite and Amalekite massacres. Mac Deaver used it too in my debate with him at Southwest Texas State University at San Marcos (March 1991). He said that the killing of babies on these occasions wasn't really so bad, because their souls "had gone to glory."
Such twisted thinking as this is hard for nonfundamentalists to comprehend, but our readers have seen it with their own eyes. McDonald said that the massacre of Amalekite babies wasn't a bad thing at all, because "the ultimate creator of the universe from whom all life stems" gave these babies "eternal life." In other words, he did them a big favor in ordering Saul to kill them. In reference to my position that the Amalekite massacre was a nonobjective moral atrocity, McDonald said, "I guess we are supposed to just bow down to this kind of thinking...." I wonder if he thinks that we are supposed to bow down to a kind of thinking that justifies the killing of babies on the grounds that it gave them "eternal life"!
Before leaving this point, I want to notice that McDonald's statement quoted above claimed that the killing of Amalekite babies "[kept] them from growing up in their predecessors' footsteps." This is another typical fundamentalist defense of Bible atrocities. Why, if the Israelites had not killed those babies, they would have grown up to be evil, just like the Amalekite adults had been, and God just couldn't allow that to happen. Earlier, McDonald even suggested that the killing of those babies had been a humane thing to do; otherwise, they would have starved to death with no adult Amalekites living to take care of them (second affirmative, p. 11). I have pressed McDonald to explain why these babies would have grown up to be "evil" like their "predecessors" if there were no predecessors living to set improper examples for them. Why couldn't the Israelites have taken the children and babies back home with them and reared them to be good, Yahweh-fearing Israelites? (Of course, even the Bible admits that the Israelites themselves frequently worshiped idols and offered human sacrifices just like the nations around them, which nations Yahweh often ordered the Israelites to exterminate for doing the same things the Israelites were doing, but that is a matter I will have to discuss later, if time permits.) In those days, taking captives was a common practice in that part of the world. Even the Israelites did it (Num. 31:12), apparently so frequently that the law of Moses even regulated their treatment of captives (Dt. 21:10-14). So maybe McDonald would like to explain to us just why Yahweh, "the ultimate creator of the universe," would have considered it necessary to kill babies to keep them from growing up to be like their evil predecessors when he could have given orders for the babies to be taken back to Israel to be reared as good, Yahweh-fearing Hebrews. If that had been done, of course, they wouldn't have starved to death either, so that would take care of McDonald's other ridiculous rationalization.
He wondered why I did not answer his "point about why [he] know[s] that Thomas McDonald had to have a biological father." Well, I would like for him to show me where I have in any way questioned that Thomas McDonald had a biological father. If there is any person alive named Thomas McDonald, then of course this Thomas McDonald had to have a biological father. Does Jerry think that I am stupid enough to express doubt that a living man had a biological father? (Only Jerry and his cohorts who believe the virgin birth myth are stupid enough to believe that a living man did not have a biological father.) What I said about this, as anyone can check by reviewing my second rebuttal (pp. 9-10), was that Jerry cannot know that Robert Sydney McDonald was actually the father (biological) of Thomas McDonald. That is very different from saying that Thomas McDonald had no biological father.
We have been through this enough that there should be no reason to bring it up again, but McDonald seems determined to keep it before us, even though he claims that he doesn't want to discuss it anymore. He accused me of calling his mother a whore (first rebuttal, p. 6), but I have done no such thing. I have merely said that there is no way that Jerry can know that the man he thinks is his father (Thomas McDonald) is in fact his real father. All rational people--and this excludes Jerry McDonald--realize that women often give birth to children who were not conceived by their husbands. To deny this is to live in a fantasyland. It was therefore possible, as far as Jerry actually knows, that this was the circumstance of his own birth. I believe that the man that my mother was married to for thirty years before his death in 1963 was my biological father, but I don't actually know this. I don't even know that the woman I call my mother is really my mother. I could have been abandoned on her doorsteps as far as I actually know. In saying these things, I do not consider that I am calling my mother a whore or a liar. I am simply facing reality, and that is something Jerry McDonald has not yet learned to do.
I didn't really botch my story about Betsy and the backwoods preacher either, as Jerry accused me. The preacher pointed to Betsy and said that she knew the children with her were hers. By that, I meant that under the circumstances of home births, which would have been the custom in the backwoods where Betsy lived, she actually knew that the children were hers, because when she gave birth there would have been no nursery on the premises for a switching of babies to have occurred. In Henry's case, however, he could never actually know that the children were his. He could only accept Betsy's word on faith that they were his. I was just trying to make an obvious point: there is a big difference in faith and knowledge. McDonald has yet to understand that difference. He cited the case of the people who said, after hearing the testimony of a woman who had talked to Jesus at Jacob's well, "Now we believe him ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world" (Jn. 4:42), and assumed, as he always does, that the mere quotation of a scripture settled the issue. In reality it settled nothing, because if this scene actually occurred, the people were wrong. They didn't actually know that Jesus was the Christ, the savior of the world; they had merely believed the testimony of a woman who said that she had had an encounter with a man who had "told [her] all things that ever [she] did" (v:39). As far as these people could actually know, however, the woman had lied about the whole experience, and even if she was telling the truth and the encounter with Jesus had in fact occurred exactly as she had related it, there still would have been no way for the people to know from what had happened that Jesus was the saviour of the world. How many people have had experiences with psychics who told them "all things that they ever did"? Did these experiences make the psychics saviors? McDonald's problem is that he still can't distinguish between things that people can know and things that they can only believe. I get tired of telling him this, but he just won't give up on it.
He said that my position would require him to say that he could not "know for sure that the articles which bear Farrell Till's name" were actually written by me unless he had been here with me while I was writing them. "If not, why not?" he wanted to know. I guess he thought that this question would back me into a corner, but I'm going to surprise him. He is absolutely right. He doesn't really know whether any of the articles published under my name in his paper, challenge, and mine, The Skeptical Review, or any of the manuscripts in this debate were actually written by me. As far as he knows, I had someone else write them for me and put my name on them. He just can't see a very simple truth: there is a vast difference in knowing something and believing something.
In response to my perfect-palace illustration, he asked if I could know that the palace was perfect if I looked at it and found no flaws. The answer would depend on what he means by "looking" at the palace. If I examined only the exterior construction visible to the eye, the answer would be no, because it would be possible for flaws to be hidden somewhere underneath the exterior work. If I took the palace apart, brick by brick, nail by nail, plank by plank, until the edifice had been completely disassembled so that I could evaluate every single step in the construction process, then I could "know" that its construction had been perfectly done, if I found no flaws during all of the disassembling process. He said, "I have examined the Bible and have found it inerrant." Sure, he has, and I have flown to the moon and back on a hang glider. McDonald has done only a superficial examination of the Bible at best. If he had "disassembled" it to any degree remotely resembling the thorough examination of the palace that I just described, he would have seen more than enough flaws to convince him that it is a fraud.
He saw my example of passenger-pigeon extinction working to his advantage rather than mine. To know that the Bible is not inspired, he said, I must find legitimate contradictions that will show that the Bible could not have been inspired of God. I have already done that, so just where is the big advantage working in his favor? Well, I will have to show that these contradictions were in the "original autographs," he went on to explain. Ah, yes, the original autographs! What would the Jerry McDonalds of the world do if they didn't have their illusion of inerrant original autographs to retreat to when the going gets tough?
He said that I can't absolutely prove that the original autographs were not inerrant, and I have admitted that. No one can prove anything about what a document said or didn't say, was or wasn't, when that document no longer exists. I can't absolutely prove that the tooth fairy doesn't exist either, but I can certainly make any grown adult who avows faith in the tooth fairy look pretty foolish. What McDonald just can't seem to see, however, is that the absence of the original biblical autographs works more to his disadvantage than mine. I can't prove that the original autographs were not inerrant, but he can't prove that they were inerrant. He is the one who claims that they were inerrant, so the burden of proving that rests on him.
Now he, of course, claims that he can prove that the original autographs were inerrant. He said that he could do this by using "textual criticism, logic, and the testimony of others to prove that the Bible, in its original autographs, was inspired." Well, okay, if he can do that, I would like to see him do it. Let him show us his "textual criticism" that will prove that the original autographs were inspired. Let him show us his "logic" that will prove that the original autographs were inspired. Let him show us the "testimony of others" that will prove that the original autographs were inspired. If he can do all of this, then why hasn't he done it? Why has he waited this long to come forth with his conclusive textual criticism, logic, and testimony of others that will prove the original autographs of the Bible were inspired? Doesn't this man have enough sense to know that if anyone could prove absolutely that the original autographs of the Bible were inspired, someone would have done it by now? Doesn't he know that it is impossible for mere testimony to absolutely prove anything? If 50 people testify that they saw Smith kill Jones, that would undoubtedly convict Smith, but it wouldn't prove absolutely that Smith killed Jones. It would be possible for 50 people to be mistaken. Perhaps they saw a Smith look-alike or even an unknown identical twin of Smith's, who was separated from Smith at birth, kill Jones. Or perhaps they all through personal prejudice against Smith, conspired to lie to convict him of murder. All of these things are within the realm of possibility, and in this matter we are talking about the unreliability of testimony in simple everyday matters. How much more unreliable would testimony be in extraordinary matters like divine inspiration in the authorship of books?
McDonald can't seem to understand that when facts are proven to be absolutely true, then all educated people accept them as truth. So if what he so facilely claims that he can do could actually be done, the whole world would believe in Bible inerrancy. If our readers need anything to convince them that McDonald's position is ridiculous, his claim that he can prove inerrancy in nonexistent documents should be enough to do it.
He blessed us with a list of my concessions that have seriously damaged my position (according to him). All of them have been discussed and rediscussed in prior manuscripts and this one too, so there is no need to discuss them again, except for the one that perplexes me a little. He said that I had conceded my position on how knowledge is obtained (first rebuttal, p. 10), but I have done nothing of the kind. I still say that knowledge can be obtained only through one or more of the five senses and that even sensual perceptions can be misinterpreted so that one can think that he knows something to be true when in fact he is mistaken. This is why it is extremely difficult for anyone to know anything in the sense of absolute, unequivocal knowledge. If McDonald understood this simple truth, he would never make the mistake of asserting that he knows the Bible was inerrant in its original autographs. Likewise, he would see nothing disgraceful in a person's admitting, as I have done, that he could be wrong about something he believed.
I demonstrated to McDonald that I could have written the Bible much more clearly than God's inspired penmen did, but apparently he wasn't too impressed with my effort. "Notice that Farrell Till used almost a half a page explaining his calculations," McDonald said, "while the Holy Spirit did it in only two short sentences" (first rebuttal, p. 14). Yes, but the "Holy Spirit" so bungled the job that people are now debating whether there are discrepancies in the "inspired" text. That's the point that McDonald desperately needs to see but apparently can't. He went on to say that if I had written the Bible, "it would be so heavy and so thick that no one would be able to carry one around with them [sic]." He complained that one "would need a freight train to move it," but that isn't so. If divine omniscience had merely used good common sense and proven techniques of clarity in writing, a much leaner, less confusing Bible could have been produced. For one thing, the senseless repetitions that characterize so much of the Bible could have been eliminated. Rather than telling the story of David's sin in numbering Israel twice, as was done in both 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, one well written version, exact in all essential details, could have sufficed. Instead of four versions of the gospel, which in many places duplicate one another, just one that told everything divine wisdom deemed necessary for mankind to know about Jesus could have been written, and in the process considerable space could have been saved. Entire passages could have been written just once without repeating them word for word as was done in the case of 2 Kings 19 and Isaiah 37. Practical information could have been given to guide man through life rather than the senseless genealogies that are found in the first nine chapters of First Chronicles and other biblical passages. So McDonald can spare me his inanities about the wisdom of the "Holy Spirit's" writing methods. Anyone who knows anything at all about the proven techniques of effective writing knows that many sections of the Bible were very ineptly written. McDonald has yet to explain why this is so.
If omniscience and omnipotence were really behind the authorship of the Bible, why wouldn't it exhibit signs of perfect writing skills? The inerrancy doctrine is a logical consequence of belief that the Bible was verbally inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity. Such a deity would know everything there is to know and would have the power to put that knowledge into any written work that he was verbally inspiring. Consequently, there could be no mistakes in history, science, chronology, geography, or any other subject area, including linguistics in a book that was so inspired. Inerrantists freely admit all of this except for the matter of linguistics. They talk vaguely about verbal inspiration permitting the individual authors to express their own personalities and writing styles, but nothing of what they say explains the problem. If verbal inspiration did not allow the individual authors to express their own views about geography, science, or history, why would it have allowed them to use individual writing styles that were filled with boring repetition, ineffective transition, vague pronoun-antecedent reference, abstract description, and other writing problems that characterize so much of the Bible? This is something McDonald should explain to us.
The fact that many passages in the Bible duplicate others is really all that we need to understand that the doctrine of divine verbal inspiration is a farce. If an omniscient, omnipotent deity inspired someone to write a historical account, such as a biography of Jesus, then whatever was written would be perfect. To say otherwise is to say that omniscience and omnipotence were incapable of doing the job right the first time. This is the problem that the four gospels pose for inerrancy advocates. The only reason why a second gospel account would have been written after a first one was completed would be that whoever wrote the second one thought that the first one was inadequate. Whoever wrote the Chronicles of the Old Testament must have thought that the books of Samuel and Kings were flawed; otherwise, why would he (they) have written variations of the same stories that had already been recorded in the earlier books? The books of Samuel and Kings were inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity, but for some reason this deity found it necessary to "inspire" the chronicle writer(s) to tell the same stories again. Why? Was something wrong with the first versions of these stories? Did the omniscient, omnipotent deity realize that he had not quite been up to snuff when he inspired the first accounts and so decided that he should inspire a second go at it? This is something that McDonald needs to tell us instead of dilly-dallying around with his far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios.
He has gone so far as to dig up articles that I wrote some thirty years ago while I was a missionary in France. Somehow, he has determined from those articles that I left the ministry for reasons other than the discovery of biblical contradictions, but the truth is that I was the one who made that decision, and I know why I made it. I made it because of a loss of faith in biblical inerrancy. If McDonald doesn't want to believe that, I frankly couldn't care less. Furthermore, I can't even remember writing the articles that he cited. I don't deny that I wrote them. I wrote and published a lot of religious tripe while I was a believer in Bible inerrancy, but I honestly don't remember a single one of the articles he cited.
[Editor's Note: In another debate with McDonald on the errancy list in 2007, McDonald again brought up these same articles, which Till had written in 1958, and claimed that they showed that he was angry at the Church of Christ for having had his financial support withdrawn while he was working as a missionary in France. McDonald was challenged to post the articles, but after they were posted, he admitted that they did not show what he had previously claimed.]
I have to wonder why McDonald bothered to bring this matter up. What relevance does it have to the issue we are debating? Let's just assume that McDonald is right and that I harbored all kinds of grudges against the churches that sponsored me in my missionary work. Finally, having suffered so much disillusionment and disappointment, I quit the ministry out of anger. Even if all of that is true (and it isn't), would it in any way prove that the Bible is the verbally inspired, inerrant word of God? No, it wouldn't! As I told Bill Jackson when he kept hurling ad hominem insults at me in my debate with him, if he could show that I am the most despicable specimen of humanity that ever lived, this would not prove anything one way or the other about the inspiration of the Bible. I do wish that inerrancy defenders would stick to the proposition when they are debating and forget about tangents that have nothing to do with the issues in dispute. I urge McDonald, then, to concentrate on the issue we are debating and forget about what I may have believed thirty years ago or how I may have conducted myself then or what may have motivated me to leave the ministry. Is the Bible the verbally inspired, inerrant word of God? I say that it isn't, and I am giving some excellent reasons to believe that it isn't. He needs to discuss those reasons and show that they are erroneous.
I cited several incidents from David's life to show that his personal life was pretty questionable for someone who was "a man after Yahweh's own heart" (1 Sam. 13:14) and who had "turned not aside from anything that [Yahweh] commanded him all the days of his life save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite" (1 Kings 15:5). My intention was to show that even the Bible acknowledges that David "turned aside" from Yahweh's commands many times other than the incident concerning Uriah the Hittite. This little gem was McDonald's solution to the problem:
Whether Mr. Till recognizes it or not, a man can be the kind of man who does right in the sight of God, in that the sins he commits are not done in rebellion to God. This is all 1 Kings 15:5 refers to; it is saying that the only time that David ever rebelled in God's eyes was in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. Every other time he would repent when he committed the sin and go on and try to do right. In the case of Uriah the Hittite, he deviated from his usual actions (first rebuttal, p. 18).
So once again McDonald resorts to purely arbitrary interpretation to remove an embarrassing discrepancy. The passage in question did not say that David never sinned in rebellion to God except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite; it said that David "did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh and turned not aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite." When David numbered Israel as recorded in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, did he "do that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh"? If so, then why did he say, "I have sinned greatly in that which I have done" (2 Sam. 24:10) and why was David, or rather Israel, severely punished with a pestilence that killed 70,000? Is this something that Yahweh did as a reward for David's not "turning aside from anything that Yahweh had commanded him"? McDonald's explanation of this discrepancy isn't just inadequate; it is absolutely ridiculous
That McDonald is grasping straws on this point is evident from his apparent ignorance of David's repentance in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. "Every other time [David] would repent when he committed the sin and go on and try to do right," McDonald said. "In the case of Uriah the Hittite, he deviated from his usual actions." Contrary to what McDonald claims, however, David did repent in the matter of Uriah the Hittite after Nathan the prophet had made him aware of the grievous nature of his sin. Space will allow me only a brief summation of the story, but the readers can check the details for themselves in 2 Samuel 12. After Nathan had told David the story of the rich man who had taken and killed the poor man's little ewe lamb, David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against Yahweh" (v:13). To which, Nathan said, "Yahweh has put away your sin; you will not die" (v:13). So the story makes it very plain that David did repent in this matter, as McDonald claims that he did "every other time" he sinned, and so Yahweh did not kill him. He killed instead the child that was born to Bathsheba as a result of David's sin with her. David's repentance was so manifest that he even "besought God for the child" and fasted and "lay all night upon the earth" (v:16). All this to no avail, of course, because Yahweh, in typical fashion, killed the child for David's sin. The significant point, however, is that McDonald is wrong--as usual--when he claims that 1 Kings 15:5 meant only that the matter of Uriah the Hittite was an act of rebellion against Yahweh that David did not repent of.
The final section of McDonald's first rebuttal, subtitled "Negative Arguments," consisted of seven pages that were everything but negative arguments. What he attempted to do here was prove that certain disputed passages in the Bible, such as Mark 16:9-20 and 1 John 5:7, should be considered authentic. As valuable as space is, I am not going to waste any of it trying to respond to this part of his manuscript. Even if he is right and these passages were all in the original autographs, that would prove only that the passages are authentic. It would not prove that the original autographs were inspired or inerrant. McDonald's lack of common sense at times amazes me.
Once again, McDonald has failed to explain the discrepancy in the two accounts of what the prophet Gad said to David. One version has Gad saying that David could choose seven years of famine (2 Sam. 24:13); the other has Gad saying that David could choose three years of famine (1 Chron. 21:12). I have emphasized that both accounts purport to be what Gad said to David, so if they are true accounts of what Gad said, both would have attributed the exact same words to Gad, and especially the same numbers, in what he said. I have pointed out that one cannot say seven and three simultaneously; it is physiologically impossible. Never short on far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios, McDonald suggested that the solution might be seen in an imaginary situation involving someone identified as X who had been sick. Person A telling about X's illness might say that he was sick three days whereas person D might say that X was sick for seven days:
Would these statements necessarily contradict each other?... Suppose that X was speaking of the days that Y missed work and was in bed because of being sick, but D was speaking of the whole time that Y was sick. It usually takes about 4-5 days for the flu to get me down to the point where I go to bed with it. However, I am sick for the whole time (first rebuttal, p. 16).
The problem with McDonald's example is that it is not parallel to the discrepancy under consideration. Both biblical passages claim to report what Gad said. He could have said seven years or he could have said three years, but he could not have simultaneously said both three and seven. If person Y missed work because of illness and upon returning to his job said, "I was sick for three days," it would not be an inerrant account of what Y said if his supervisor wrote in a memo to the company president, "When Y returned to work, he said, 'I was sick for seven days.'" Surely even Jerry McDonald can see this.
So now I come to my favorite part of the debate, responding to Jerry's questions. As usual, for reading convenience, I will restate the questions in their entirety (without considering that a part of my word limit):
One: Is the following statement true or false? (If you do not answer we will assume that your answer is true.) "It is perfectly alright [sic] for me (Farrell Till) to send out bogus debate propositions to preachers of the churches of Christ, pretending to be different preacher's [sic] of different religious groups, for the purpose of showing that these preachers of the churches of Christ will not debate me (as Farrell Till) but will debate me (as some denominational preacher)."
Answer: True. In the matter that McDonald is referring to, when I publicly challenged Church-of-Christ preachers to debate the inerrancy doctrine, several indicated to me that they did not think that debating was practical. As a former Church-of-Christ preacher myself, I knew that they were lying, so through bogus letters that I later mailed to these same preachers, I posed as a preacher of other denominations (Baptist, Adventist, Assembly-of-God, Pentecostal, etc.) and challenged them to debate doctrines taught by these churches. Before they realized they were the victims of a sting, many of them answered promptly and accepted the challenge. Their hypocrisy was publicly exposed, and the Church of Christ, as evinced by McDonald's insertion of the incident into this debate, is still smarting from the injury to its dignity. I consider what I did to be morally right, as much as I would consider it morally right for a policeman to work as an undercover agent, posing as a pimp, a drug dealer, a counterfeiter, etc., in order to expose criminal activity.
Two: Is the following statement true or false? (If you do not answer we will assume that your answer is true.) "David was guilty of lying to Achish when he pretended to be his friend yet all the while he was trying to destroy Achish by raiding his country."
Answer Exactly what you want to assume, true.
[Editor's Note: Till now considers this answer only half true. David did lie to Achish, but whether David was raiding Philistine villages and massacring entire civilian populations in order "to destroy Achish by raiding his country" is only speculation. David's motive could have been to raid the towns only to obtain booty, so in that case, the massacres of the civilian populations would have been done only to hide his activities from king Achish so that David would not lose his safe sanctuary while he was a fugitive from Saul's vengence.]
Three: Is the following statement true or false? (If you do not answer, blah, blah, blah.) "I (Farrell Till) can look at the finished product of the Bible, and if I find errors in it, I can know that the Bible is not the inspired and inerrant word of Jehovah God."
Answer: False. I have explained in great detail throughout this debate just how difficult it is for a person to know anything. However, I can look at the "finished product of the Bible" and find much that would make a person look very ridiculous (as I have done to McDonald) if he claims that the Bible was the inspired and inerrant "word of God."
Four: Is the following statement true or false? (If you do not answer....) "I (Farrell Till) can look at the finished product of the Bible, but if I find no errors in it, I cannot know that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of Jehovah God because I was not present when it was allegedly inspired."
Answer: True. Not only was I not present when it was allegedly inspired, but the absence of errors in the Bible (if that were the case) would not prove that it was divinely inspired. To be inspired by an omniscient, omnipotent deity, a book would have to be inerrant, but inerrancy alone would not prove inspiration, because uninspired humans can write documents that are inerrant.
Five: Is the following statement true or false? (If you do not answer we will assume that your answer is true.) "The United States of America was guilty of crimes against humanity when it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima which upon [sic] hundreds died (including babies and children)."
Answer: He may go ahead and assume whatever he wants to, because I cannot answer this question. I simply don't know. This event raised serious moral issues that probably will never be satisfactorily resolved, except of course by either-or, black-or-white fundamentalists who know all the answers to everything.
After all the space I have devoted to answering McDonald's quibbles, I have none left to present new affirmative arguments. I will conclude my second defense by noting his utter failure to resolve the discrepancy in the New Testament concerning when the apostle Paul first went to Jerusalem after his conversion in Damascus. In the book of Acts, Luke indicated that Paul went from Damascus to Jerusalem so immediately after his conversion that the Christians at Jerusalem had not even had time to hear that he had been converted, but Paul himself said in Galatians 1:15-18 that he did not go to Jerusalem until three years after his conversion. So who was right, Luke or Paul? And why is a discrepancy like this in the inspired, inerrant word of God?
Essentially, Mr. McDonald has taken the Bill Jackson way out that I will show the absurdity of in my next affirmative. but because of the space factor, I will have to reserve comment on this matter until my next manuscript. Meanwhile, I would like for McDonald to clarify his position on Paul's claim that he did not go to Jerusalem until three years after his conversion. Is McDonald saying that every single verse of scripture was inerrant in the epistles of the Apostle Paul? Of course, I will have to add the expression "original autographs" to the question, because Mr. McDonald's position has always been that the Bible was inerrant only in the "original autographs." He has never seen an original autograph of any book of the Bible, he has never seen anyone who has ever seen an original autograph of the Bible, he has never seen anyone who has ever seen anyone who has seen an original autograph of the Bible, he wouldn't recognize an original autograph of the Bible if it walked up and shook hands with him, yet, somehow, he is very sure that the original autographs of the Bible were completely inerrant. So I will have to rephrase the question for him. Was every single verse of scripture in the original autographs of Paul's epistles inerrant? Was there not even as much as one tiny little verse in Paul's original autographs that was errant? I would like for him to answer that question before I respond to his "explanation" of the discrepancy in Luke's and Paul's accounts of when Paul first went to Jerusalem after his conversion.
In my oral debate with Mr. McDonald, I learned that he likes to talk about the law of excluded middle (every sentence must be either true or false), so I will put the question in the form of a true or false statement and ask him to tell us whether it is true or whether it is false. Here is the statement: Every single verse of scripture in the original autographs of Paul's epistles was completely inerrant. Now, he shouldn't mind telling us if that statement is true or false. After all, I have waived my right to include a list of five formal questions in each of my affirmative manuscripts, but the waiving of that right doesn't prevent me from asking a question relevant to the issue being debated. We both have that right even after formal questions have been presented. So if he will answer that question, in my next manuscript I will comment at length on the issue of when Paul first went to Jerusalem after his conversion.
Go to McDonald's Second Rebuttal
