Mr. McDonald complained that he had made 16 arguments in his first manuscript but that I had responded to only three of them. He seems unable to recall my challenging him to prove that his "arguments" pertaining to the existence of God and the origin and evolution of life are relevant to the proposition we are debating. All that he said in response to the challenge was this:
He (Till) said that he would not "waste time discussing the existence of God" and complained about my making those arguments. Mr. Till apparently does not understand that God's existence is an integral part of our subject matter. He thinks that God could have existed without his word coexisting with him. I deny this kind of reasoning (second affirmative, p. 1).
We see in this statement an attitude that is unfortunately typical of most fundamentalist preachers: beliefs become truth simply because they say they are truth. In this case, the existence of God becomes relevant to Mr. McDonald's proposition (the Bible is the verbally inspired, inerrant word of Jehovah God) simply because he says that it is. But what was his proof of its relevance? Well, this is all he had to offer:
God's word is part of him and it has existed as long as he has. Now the written form of God's word is not as old as God is, but the written form is just that, the written form. It does not teach one thing and God teach another; it teaches exactly the same thing as God teaches. Therefore, we see that those arguments were relevant after all. Mr. Till refuses to answer them because there is no answer for them (second affirmative, p. 1).
The readers will surely sympathize with me at this point, because when I am confronted with overwhelming logic like this, what can I say? "God's word is part of him and it has existed as long as he has." Just where did Mr. McDonald learn this? And what does it mean anyway? Does he mean to imply that those quaint little fables about the tower of Babel, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah and the great flood, the crossing of the Red Sea, Sampson and Delilah, David and Goliath, etc., etc., etc. coexisted with God somewhere out in that Big Nothing that God drifted around in for eons and eons and trillions of eons before he finally decided it would be a good idea to create the universe? Mr. McDonald tells us that the "written form of God's word is not as old as God is" but goes on to say that "it (the written form) does not teach one thing and God teach another." So if the Old Testament is part of the eternal, coexistent word of God, then these stories (myths and fables) would have existed eternally with God, but how could that be? How could the stories have existed before the characters involved in the stories existed? Is God somehow involved in recycling lives? Perhaps Mr. McDonald believes in reincarnation. Or, even more likely, he probably doesn't know what he actually does believe. For sure, if he does know what he believes, he doesn't know how to go about proving that it is true.
On the matter of God's existence being relevant to McDonald's proposition, it would of course be necessary for God to exist before he could inspire the writing of a book. This doesn't mean, however, that I would have to prove that God does not exist before I could prove that God, if he does exist, did not inspire the writing of a particular book. The reason for this was explained in my first rebuttal, page 1:
The ... Biblical claim is that Jehovah God is both omniscient and omnipotent. If he is both of these, then any book that he verbally inspired would necessarily be inerrant in every fact and detail recorded in it. An all-knowing, all powerful deity would not make mistakes, not even little ones.
Mr. McDonald is in complete agreement with this statement. The proposition he is affirming requires him to agree with it, and in commenting on a syllogism that I based on this principle, he said, "Till says in his major premise that any book that was written by God would have to be free from error, and I agree" (second affirmative, p. 15). Why, then, can he not see that this principle makes the existence of God irrelevant to what we are debating? If I can establish the existence of discrepancies, contradictions, and other errors in the Bible text, then I will have proven that, even if McDonald's omniscient, omnipotent God does exist, he did not inspire its writing.
Let's assume, for example, the discovery of a dusty, old manuscript in the archives of an English library. The text of the manuscript claims that William Shakespeare was its author, although certain information in it casts serious doubt on the claim. It makes references, say, to the United States of America, the guillotine, and other anachronisms that didn't exist until after Shakespeare had died. Let's assume too that reputable chemists establish that the paper and ink are types that didn't exist in Shakespeare's day and that notable graphologists determine that the styling of the handwriting belonged to the late eighteenth century, about a hundred fifty years after Shakespeare's death. Armed with facts like these, would it be necessary for Shakespearean scholars to prove absolutely that Shakespeare never existed before they could prove he did not write this particular manuscript? The question is a simplistic one; nevertheless, I would like for Mr. McDonald to answer it as he takes another whack at defending his proposition. Sometimes we have to use simplistic means to get Bible fundamentalists to see the obvious.
McDonald clearly understands the principles involved in my hypothetical example, but for some reason, perhaps desperation to believe in transcendent concepts that give him great comfort, he just can't bring himself to apply the principles to his beloved Bible. The first of five questions that I asked him in my first rebuttal was this: "Would you have to prove that God does not exist before you could absolutely prove that the Koran is not the inspired word of God?" His answer was, "No, I would handle this situation in exactly the same way that I would handle your objection on the Book of Mormon," (second affirmative, p. 2). And what had he said about the same question I had earlier asked about the Book of Mormon? "No! The reason being that all I would have to do is to prove the inspiration of the Bible, and then compare the two books and show that they do not agree with each other." Such is the joy one obtains from trying to discuss the inerrancy doctrine with its fundamentalist advocates. Apparently, it would never occur to Mr. McDonald that an Islamic missionary being asked the same question about the Bible would probably say, "No! The reason being that all I would have to do is to prove the inspiration of the Koran, and then compare the two books and show that they do not agree with each other." McDonald would instantly pounce on any Islamic spokesman who would say such a thing in defense of the Koran--and rightly so. The statement begs the very question that is in doubt and therefore proves nothing at all. Bibliolaters can recognize this logical fallacy when it is made by Mormons and Islamics, but they can't see it when they commit the same fallacy. In debates like this one, bibliolaters always want and expect their opposition to make a concession: the Bible is right in everything it says, so everything it says must automatically be accepted as infallible truth. I'm sorry, but I won't grant that concession to Mr. McDonald. He is going to have to prove his proposition. This, of course, is something that he cannot do. If he could, he would be doing it rather than wasting time on irrelevant matters.
To show the irrelevance of God's existence to the propositions we are debating, I directed McDonald's argument back to him in my first rebuttal:
If he is right in saying that I must first "know that there is no God" before I can "know (absolutely) that the Bible is not the inspired and inerrant word of God," why wouldn't the converse be true of his proposition? Why wouldn't he have to prove unequivocally that God does exist before he could know absolutely that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God? Perhaps he can explain this to us" (original emphasis, p. 2).
In response to this challenge, all that McDonald said was, "Had he read my first affirmative, he would have seen that I did exactly that [prove the existence of God]. Therefore, I have nothing to explain" (second affirmative, p. 2). Oh, really? He proved the existence of God? Unequivocally proved it? I would like for him to point out to us just where he did this, because somehow I missed it.
In Section B of his first affirmative, McDonald presented an "argument for the existence of God," but he fell far short of proving its soundness. Its minor premise, which claimed that there is at least one human characteristic that could have come into existence only by the creative power of God, is a false premise. Since the question of God's existence is irrelevant to this debate anyway, I don't intend to waste valuable space showing that the premise is false. Common sense, however, should tell the readers, if not Mr. McDonald, that the existence of God cannot be proven unequivocally, because if this could be proven, all reasonably intelligent people would accept the proof. All demonstrable truths are accepted by intelligent people regardless of their race or geographic locations. Educated Arabs, Greeks, Chinese, Koreans, Italians, Australians, Norwegians, etc., etc., etc. accept the truth that 2 + 2 = 4 in a base ten math, that the moon is a satellite of Earth, that H2O is the chemical composition of water, etc., because these are all demonstrable truths. If, then, Mr. McDonald could unequivocally prove the existence of God, as he claims he has already done, all educated people on earth would accept his finding, and the number of atheists would dwindle away to almost nothing. As it is, however, the people of the world are sharply divided along geographic lines in their religious beliefs for the simple reason that the truth of religious beliefs cannot be demonstrated. Obviously, then, McDonald has not proven the existence of God and cannot prove the existence of God; therefore, by his own distorted logic he has disproven his proposition, because he cannot prove that the Bible was inspired by Jehovah God until he first proves that Jehovah God exists.
I hope, then, that McDonald will at last see that all arguments relating to the existence or nonexistence of God are out of place in this debate. We are not debating the existence of God; we are debating the origin of the Bible. Did it come to us through the divine intervention of an omniscient, omnipotent deity? Mr. McDonald believes that it did, but I say that it didn't. This is the issue that I intend to focus my efforts on until McDonald can establish the relevance of God's existence to the inerrancy question.
So far, I have had to focus most of my attention on extraneous matters that McDonald keeps trying to wag into the debate, and in this respect his second defense was no different from his first. He seems to be obsessed with attacking Joseph Wheless's book Is It God's Word? as if he thinks I am duty bound to defend everything in it merely because I believe it is a good anti-inerrancy reference work:
Now, Mr. Till, answer the argument that I made concerning Joseph Wheless' book! He even states that he does not endorse everything about that book. Well, which part is truth and which part is error? How can I know what is truth in Wheless' book and what part is error? As I said, either way that he answers this argument, he is out of the debate. If he answers by saying that Wheless' book is faulty and therefore wrong, then he discredits the most convincing anti-inerrancy book he has ever read. However, if he says that the argument concerning Wheless' book is wrong, then he of necessity admits that the Bible is inerrant, even though it was written with human agency and therefore he is out of this debate, because he has no position. I suspect that Mr. Till will dance around this and not answer it at all, (second affirmative, p. 15).
What I like about Mr. McDonald is his impeccably clear logic. I didn't respond directly to the Joseph Wheless syllogism in McDonald's first manuscript, because, quite frankly, it was an idiotic argument, and there were more important issues that needed addressing. However, since he seems to think that I would rather dance than debate, I will analyze his masterful syllogism. It was on page 16:
Major Premise: To err is human.
Minor Premise: The book Is It God's Word? was written by a human.
Conclusion: Therefore, the book Is It God's Word? has error in it.
I trust the readers are beginning to understand what I mean when I say that Mr. McDonald is wasting time on irrelevant issues. I have yet to quote Wheless's book; nevertheless, Mr. McDonald wants me to take precious space out of the amount allotted to me and defend a book that I haven't even referred to as proof or support of any of my counterarguments. Have I demanded that he defend Geisler's Introduction to Philosophy, Alford's Greek New Testament, Word Pictures of the New Testament, Copi's Introduction to Logic, The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, and other books he has quoted? In relying on these books for support of his arguments, does he mean to imply that they are inerrant? Does he endorse everything in them? If not, will he please tell us which parts are truth and which parts are error? How can we know what is truth in these books and what is error? Whatever way he chooses to answer these questions, will he be out of the debate? Or is his line of reasoning something that applies only to me but not to him?
Enough has been said to show the utter stupidity of his argument, but to put the matter of Wheless's book completely to rest, where it belongs, I will go on and analyze McDonald's syllogism. The problem with it is that its major premise is false. While responding to another of his arguments in which he used the same major premise, I showed that it was clearly fallacious:
The premise implies that any task performed by humans will involve error, and that just isn't so. It's possible for humans to write books and do other tasks without committing errors (first rebuttal, p. 18).
Although Mr. McDonald ended his second manuscript with a claim that he had "answered Mr. Till's objections point by point," he didn't have much to say about this one. He thinks that I like to dance, but if the readers will check page 15 of his second manuscript, they will see just how gingerly he danced around this statement. "I wonder why Mr. Till thinks that the Bible contains textual discrepancies and errors?" he asked. "Simply because he thinks that it was written solely by men, and to err is human" (original emphasis). Oh, really? This is why I believe the Bible contains errors? Because I think it was written solely by men and to err is human? Well, he is at least half right. I do believe that the Bible was written solely by men, but I certainly don't believe that everything done by human agency will necessarily include error. A secretary may type an entire document without once hitting the wrong key; a student may quote an entire poem without faltering or miscuing a single time; an author may write an entire geography textbook without making a single geographic mistake. "To err is human" may be a familiar adage to all of us, and it may even be true in most instances, but it isn't necessarily true in all instances. So I will just ask Mr. McDonald to answer a simple question: Will everything done by human agency always, without exception, include error? As for why I believe the Bible contains textual discrepancies and errors, the answer is simple. I believe the Bible contains discrepancies and errors because it does contain discrepancies and errors. I have found them many times in the Bible text.
Sometimes the best way to show the fallacies in an opponent's argument is to turn it against him. McDonald hasn't in so many words said that Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties is an effective pro-inerrancy book, but he must think very highly of it, because he quoted it three times in his second manuscript. So let's take his masterful syllogism and apply it to Archer's book:
Major Premise: To err is human.
Minor Premise: The book Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties was written by a human.
Conclusion: Therefore, the book Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties has error in it.
Now to show the idiocy of McDonald's Wheless argument, I am going to paraphrase the paragraph that I quoted from page 5 of his second affirmative manuscript:
Now, Mr. McDonald, answer the argument I just made concerning Gleason Archer's book! No doubt he will say that he does not endorse everything about that book. Well, which part is truth and which part is error? How can I know what is truth in Archer's book and what part is error? Either way that he answers this argument, he is out of the debate. If he answers by saying that Archer's book is faulty and therefore wrong, then he discredits the pro-inerrancy reference book that he has quoted the most often. If he says that the argument concerning Archer's book is right, then he of necessity admits that the Bible is not inerrant, since it was written with human agency and therefore he is out of this debate, because he has no position. I suspect that Mr. McDonald will dance around this and not answer it at all.
The tangents McDonald is determined to lead us into never seem to end. He is still hung up on a position I took in the Laws-Till Debate, i.e., that knowledge can be obtained only through one or more of the five senses. He thinks that my defense of this position has made a "bigger mess out of it" than I already had. In desperation, he even relied on a statement I had made in a recent phone conversation when I said that an associate of mine was a knowledgeable man because he has read a considerable body of religious materials. "Oh?" McDonald responded, "Knowledge through reading, Mr. Till? I thought that your position was that knowledge can come only through the five senses" (second affirmative, p. 5). Well, Mr. McDonald, I always use my sense of sight when I read, don't you? If one is blind, he uses his sense of touch to read Braille or he listens to "talking books." How else can a person read unless he uses one of these senses?
I propose that Dr. Laws collaborate with me in a (pardon the expression) scientific experiment. He may choose a thousand people to assist him, and I will work alone. An impartial third party will take an object that is unknown to all subjects in the experiment and hide it at a distance far enough to prevent any of us from perceiving it with our senses. Then while Dr. Laws and his thousand assistants meditate about it, speculate about it, and pray about it, in an effort to "come to intellectual cognizance and certitude" regarding the identity of the object, I will be permitted to go to the hiding place and inspect the object with any or all of my senses. We will then see who is able to reveal what the object is. Afterwards, we will repeat the experiment once, twice, ten thousand times to test the accuracy of the findings. We will select different subjects and run the experiment as many times again and then select new subjects and repeat it another ten thousand times (Till's Second Rebuttal, p. 21).
Mr. Laws was unwilling to accept this challenge. Will Mr. McDonald accept it? If so, I wonder what kind of results he will anticipate finding? Will he expect to confirm his apparent belief that knowledge can be acquired by some mystical means separate and apart from the five senses? Or will he be forced to admit that I am right: knowledge enters the mind only through one or more of the human senses?
I challenged Mr. McDonald to tell us just one thing that he knows that he came to know by any means other than his five senses. "This is going to be easy!" he exuded. "Mr. Till, observe!" Well, just take a look at what he wanted me to observe:
I know that my dad (Thomas Harvey McDonald) had a dad. I know that his name was Robert Sidney McDonald. I know that he was a gospel preacher. I know that he died at the age of 76. How do I know all of this? Did I ever see, hear, touch, smell, or taste the man? No! He died before I was conceived. Then how can I say that I know these things? I know these things based upon the following criteria. [A] I have a copy of his death certificate which is a legal document stating that he was once alive and that he had died. This falls into the category of the authorities. [B] my parents told me about him, and they would have no reason to lie... (second affirmative, p. 5).
His example rambled on, but why quote any more of it? This is more than enough to expose the utter absurdity of his answer. If Mr. McDonald knows that Thomas Harvey McDonald is his father, he had to learn that through having heard the name or else having seen it in writing. Otherwise, McDonald (Jerry) would never have known his father's name. Furthermore, if Jerry McDonald knows that his grandfather who died before Jerry's conception was named Robert Sidney McDonald, then he knows this only because he was told it (hearing) or read it (seeing) on the death certificate referred to or somewhere else. The same could be said of the grandfather's profession and age at the time of his death. Jerry knew that his grandfather was a preacher who died at 76 either because he was told these facts (hearing) or he read them (seeing). This is all so elementary that it is almost embarrassing to have to point it out.
But it gets even worse. I have no desire to insult the McDonald family, but to further show the fallacious reasoning that seems to go on in Jerry McDonald's fundamentalist mind, I am going to acquaint him with some hard facts of life. I submit that Jerry McDonald doesn't really know that Thomas Harvey McDonald is actually his father. Only Jerry's mother would really know for sure, wouldn't she? Married women do have affairs that result in children whose true paternities are kept hidden from their husbands. Many men have reared children who they thought were theirs when in reality they weren't. As far as Jerry McDonald actually knows, this type of thing could have accounted for the birth of his father or even his own birth. It would even be possible that Jerry McDonald is in reality an adopted son whose parents kept the adoption a secret. In either case, the man that Jerry thinks is his father would not in fact be his father, and the man he thinks was his grandfather wasn't really his grandfather.
Furthermore, it is entirely possible that the man whom Jerry McDonald accepts as his grandfather was in fact his grandfather but that Robert Sidney McDonald was an alias rather than his real name. Circumstances do sometimes cause people to run away from where they are known and seek new lives under new identities. If Jerry McDonald's grandfather died before Jerry was even conceived, it could be that something like this had happened in his life and the false identity that he assumed became the name that he was known by to his wife, children, and grandchildren. Jerry McDonald said that his parents would have had no reason to lie to him, but how does he know that they didn't? There may be family skeletons in the McDonald closet that could have provided them with ample motive to lie about his ancestry. Or it could be that his parents had themselves been misled by family lies that had been passed down to them.
I want to assure Mr. McDonald that I am not trying to malign his family. I just want him to see that there is a big difference between knowing and believing. The most he can say with certitude is that he believes Robert Sidney McDonald was his grandfather and that he was a "gospel preacher" who died at 76, but as far as knowing is concerned, he doesn't really know any of these things to be true. If, however, he wishes to quibble over the word know, he will still have to admit that he "knows" these things only because he acquired the information about them through his senses.
When Mr. Laws seemed unable to see simple facts like these in my debate with him, I asked him to try to imagine a person who had been born without any of the five senses:
To further illustrate this point, let us imagine the tragedy of an infant who has been born with none of the five senses--no sense of sight, no sense of sound, no sense of taste, no sense of smell, no sense of touch. Being born blind or deaf poses tremendous learning disadvantages to children who are so handicapped, and those who teach them must have special talents. In those rare cases when children (through the infinite wisdom of God) are born with the double handicap of both blindness and deafness, the learning problems that confront them are almost insurmountable. In my hypothetical example, however, I am not talking about an infant who is only doubly handicapped; I am talking about an infant who is quintuply handicapped, one who has none of the five senses, (Laws-Till Debate, p.21).
Now I will ask Mr. McDonald to imagine this same tragedy of birth, a person born so wretchedly handicapped that he would live his entire life without ever seeing anything, hearing anything, feeling anything, smelling anything, or tasting anything. In a case like this, would this person ever learn anything? If such a tragedy had happened to Mr. McDonald, would he have ever "known" that Robert Sidney McDonald was his grandfather or that his grandfather was a "gospel preacher" who had died at 76? Would you ever have "known" any of these things, Mr. McDonald, if you had been born without any of the five senses? What kind of music do you want for your dance, a slow waltz or a lively rock 'n' roll tune?
Of everything McDonald has said in this debate, nothing demonstrates the irrationality and moral bankruptcy of his position more than the outrageous and intellectually insulting defense that he offered as justification of the Israelite slaughter of the Amalekite and Midianite nations (1 Sam. 15 and Num. 31). In the one case, Yahweh commanded Saul, the first king of Israel, to "utterly destroy" the Amalekites and all that they had, to kill "both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass" (vv:1-3). When Saul failed to execute everything that Yahweh had ordered in that he spared Agag, the Amalekite king, and brought him back a prisoner, along with the best of the Amalekites' livestock, Yahweh was somewhat upset. He sent the prophet Samuel to rebuke Saul and to hack Agag to pieces with a sword so that the "people of God" would know that when Yahweh said utterly destroy, he meant utterly destroy. All of this was done to seek vengence on a tribe whose ancestors 400 years before them had protected their land from Israelite encroachment during the trek to the promised land: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt" (v:2). The Bible text doesn't mention a single thing that the Amalekites of Saul's day had done to Israel; they were slaughtered for something their ancestors had done 400 years earlier. If we could go back 400 years in time, we would have to wait 17 years for the first permanent settlers to arrive at Jamestown. That's just how vindictive Yahweh Elohim was. I have heard of bearing grudges, but this is ridiculous! Yahweh has to be the champion grudge-bearer of all times.
One would think that no civilized person in modern times would condone the carnage described in the Israelite slaughter of the Amalekites. Indeed, if a contemporary government should send an army into the territory of another nation with orders to kill everything that moved, including women, children, and babies, world opinion would condemn the action in a howl of outrage, but when such atrocities are recorded in the Bible, there will be no shortage of fundamentalist defenders. Mr. McDonald showed a lot of concern in his second manuscript for the victims of the Nazi holocaust, but all that an atrocity like that would need to have his approval would be for it to have been recorded in "sacred writ" as deeds commanded by Yahweh. If that sounds like an unduly harsh appraisal of Mr. McDonald's sense of morality, please remember what he said in justifying the slaughter of Amalekite children and babies:
In our text here there are a couple of things that need to be brought out. [A] God is a divine being and is the creator af all life on earth. As such he has the right to decide who will live upon the earth and who will die. Since God decided that these babies should die, could he not give them eternal life in the hereafter? Of course, he could and did! He, being the all-knowing God that he is, knew that these babies would grow up and rebel and then they would not have eternal life. However, if they died as babies he could give them eternal life. Now, if Mr. Till was a divine being, he would have the right to challenge God on his actions here, but since he is not, he has no such right (second affirmative, p. 11).
One wonders why churches bother to send missionaries to foreign lands to preach the gospel. They would get better results by sending commando squads to kill all of those heathen children and babies and thus guarantee them a place in heaven, because if they "grow up and rebel," as most of them will by Mr. McDonald's standards, they will die and go to hell. Now we don't want that to happen, do we? I may not be a divine being, as Mr. McDonald pointed out, but I don't have to be one to see that the wholesale massacre of captive women, children, and babies is a moral outrage by anyone's standards--except Yahweh Elohim's, of course. With him, apparently anything goes.
But there is still more to Mr. McDonald's inscrutable logic. He went on to tell us how "merciful" it was to kill the Amalekite babies:
[B] It was more merciful to kill them outright rather than to allow them to die of starvation, thirst, and exposure. The parents had died in battle. What was God supposed to do, Mr. Till, allow the babies to die a slow, painful death? I guess that would be more merciful in Till's mind. No! If God had done this, Mr. Till would be complaining about that way as well.
So the parents had been killed in battle, huh? Well, I seriously doubt if the mothers of those babies had been killed in battle. They no doubt died on the points of Israelite swords and spears after the battle was over, but if they had been left alive, there would have been adults around to care for the children. At any rate, McDonald's point is too absurd to deserve serious comment. The Israelites could have taken both women and children back as captives after the battle, just as they had done with the Midianite women and children (Num. 31:12-15). If the Midianite women and children were taken home as captives, why couldn't the same have been done for the Amalekites? Didn't the Babylonians take civilian captives back to Babylon after they captured Jerusalem? It would seem, then, that the Babylonian pagans were more humane than "the children of Yahweh."
In the same context, Mr. McDonald justified the barbaric treatment of the Midianite captives in Numbers 31. "God had instructed Israel to completely destroy the Midianites," he said, "and they disobeyed." Now where does it say that the Israelites were told to "completely destroy" the Midianites? I can find no such command in my Bible. It says only that "Jehovah (Yahweh) spake unto Moses, saying, Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people" (vv:1-2). Why does avenge have to mean "completely destroy"? If McDonald is going to contend that Yahweh ordered the Israelites to completely destroy the Midianites, then he will have to say that Moses disobeyed God, because Moses told the "officers of the host" to "kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women-children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (vv:17-18). When Saul kept just one Amalekite alive, Agag the king, Yahweh was so angry about it that he sent Samuel to kill Agag and to tell Saul that the kingship of Israel would be taken from him and given to another (1 Sam. 15:24-30). So if Saul committed such a grievous sin by keeping just one Amalekite alive after he was told to "utterly destroy" them, why wouldn't Moses, whom McDonald claims had been told to "completely destroy the Midianites," have been guilty of an even bigger sin when he spared the lives of all the virgin Midianite girls? Who knows, perhaps Moses had gotten another communication from Yahweh telling him that on second thought Yahweh wanted to let the battle weary Israelite soldiers enjoy a little rest and relaxation with their virgin captives? One never knows what a Bible fundamentalist might come up with to "explain" away a textual problem in sacred writ.
McDonald objected to my saying that these virgin girls were kept alive for sexual purposes, but I didn't say it; Moses did: "But all the women-children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves" (v:18). McDonald said that only someone with "an awful filthy mind" or someone who wants so badly to find something wrong with the Bible "that he will do anything to discredit it" could possibly interpret this statement to mean that these virgin girls were saved for sexual reasons. Well, I submit that only someone who will stop at nothing to defend the inerrancy doctrine would stoop to such idiotic and preposterous explanations as McDonald is using to circumvent (dance around) obvious contradictions and discrepancies in the Bible text.
For an explanation of a discrepancy or contradiction to be acceptable, the explanation must be both rational and plausible. McDonald claims that the virgin girls were alive only to become servants (and he had the word of Gleason Archer himself on this), but the explanation is neither rational nor plausible. If the Israelites were interested only in having servants, why would they kill all of the males and keep just the females? Males are physically stronger than females and would be better suited for doing strenuous tasks like hewing wood, carrying water, digging wells and cisterns, and tending flocks. And why kill all of the nonvirgin women and girls? In other words, what does virginity or lack of the same have to do with qualifying one for servitude? McDonald's explanation falls far short of solving the problem raised by this passage, but perhaps he can come up with another one. There seems to be no end to the far-fetched, how-it-could-have-been scenarios that he can dream up to explain away Bible discrepancies.
To say, however, that the passage in question means that the Midianite virgins were kept alive for sexual purposes is both rational and plausible. The barbaric tribes of that time and area were known to put their captive women to such use, so we have no reason to think that the Israelites were any different from their barbarian neighbors. In fact, both the Code of Hammurabi and the law of Moses regulated the sexual treatment of captive women (Deut. 21:10-14). Why would there have been laws about this if the Israelite soldiers were as virtuous and chivalrous as Mr. McDonald would have us believe? As for the virginity of the women being a life-or-death factor in the case, if McDonald has read the Old Testament any at all, he is surely aware that the cultures of that time and area put a high premium on female virginity. The high priest was allowed to marry only a virgin; widows and divorcees were expressly forbidden to him (Lev. 21: 13-15). When the political advisers of King Ahasuerus recommended that he find a replacement for his rebellious wife, Queen Vashti, they called for officers to be appointed in all the provinces to gather together "all the fair young virgins" in the palace at Shushan for the king to choose one of them to be his bride (Esther 2:3). When King David lay dying, his servants recommended that a young virgin be brought in to lie in his bosom and cherish him (1 Kings 1:2). If a man married a woman only to discover that she wasn't a virgin, he was entitled to have her stoned to death for having "played the harlot in her father's house" (Deut. 22:20-21). Perhaps the most telling Bible example that could be cited in this matter is one that relates another occasion when the entire population of a city was exterminated except for the virgin women. After all but 600 Benjamite men were killed in an intertribal dispute, the other tribes quickly realized that they had put one of their own tribes in danger of extinction. Before the skirmish, all the tribes had sworn not to allow any of their women to marry Benjamites, but now all Benjamites were dead except for the 600 men who had escaped into the desert near the rock of Rimmon. So what could the other Israelites do to save the tribe of Benjamin from extinction? Their oath had to be respected, but they didn't want one of their own tribes to die out. The following passage tells about the solution that they decided upon:
Judges 21:6-14 The Israelites felt grieved about the Benjamites. They said, "Today one of our tribes is eliminated from Israel. How shall we provide wives for those who are left, seeing we have sworn by the LORD (Yahweh) not to give them our daughters for wives?" Then they said, "Which one of the tribes of Israel did not come to the congregation before the LORD (Yahweh) in Mizpah?" And it showed that none had come to the assembly from Jabesh-gilead; for when they checked up on the people that were mustered, not a man from Jabesh-gilead had been present.
Then the congregation sent warriors there with orders, "Go and execute the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead, including the women and children. This is what you are to do: kill all the men, also the women who have lain with men." They found 400 young virgins among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead, who had not lain with a man; these they brought into the camp at Shiloh, located in the land of Canaan. Then the whole congregation sent word to the Benjamites living at the Rimmon rock, proclaiming amnesty to them. The Benjamites returned, and they gave them the women that had been saved alive in Jabesh-gilead... (Revised Berkeley Version).
This passage gives us not only an excellent description of the barbaric sense of justice that reigned supreme in Israel at this time but also a clear understanding of why their armies kept virgin women captives alive but killed all males and nonvirgins. Will Mr. McDonald contend that the virgins taken alive at Jabesh-gilead were not spared solely for sexual purposes?
When the sparing of the Midianite virgins is considered in the context of all these facts, only one plausible interpretation can be made: Moses was telling his soldiers to kill all the males and nonvirgin women among the captives but to keep the virgin girls alive for their sexual pleasure. Mr. McDonald may think that this interpretation gives me "an awful(ly) filthy mind," but let him think this if he wants to. My mind isn't nearly as filthy as the morality of his god Yahweh Elohim.
I have put a lot of space into the discussion of this point to the neglect of other issues raised by Mr. McDonald's second manuscript, but I believe it has been a wise investment of space. I want to make sure that the readers understand the position that belief in Bible inerrancy will eventually push them into if they do not reject it. To be a believer in this doctrine, one has to defend the sexual abuse of children and the murder of entire civilian populations, including babies in their mothers' arms. Mr. McDonald made an offhanded comment about my concern for the massacre of the Amalekites when I am a "man who believes in and endorses the wholesale slaughter of a million and a half babies a year by the process of abortion and justifies such by calling it 'A Woman's Right To Choose.'" When my wife read this, she looked at me quizzically and said, "Have you changed your position on abortion?" So before Mr. McDonald makes another rash statement about what I may or may not believe, perhaps he should check with me first. Be that as it may, he would do well to stop worrying about the issue of abortion and take a long look at where his belief in Bible inerrancy has taken him. He has become a defender of infanticide and the sexual abuse of children. Besides, I seriously doubt if any aborted fetus suffers any more pain than the untold number of Amalekite and Midianite children and babies felt when they were being run through with Israelite swords and spears. So instead of pointing the finger of accusation at me, McDonald should heed the advice of Jesus in Luke 4:23: "Physician, heal thyself!" Anyone who would say what McDonald did in defense of the Amalekite and Midianite slaughters has no right to judge the morality of another be he pro-abortionist or not.
McDonald presented me with another list of five questions. As before, I will restate the questions for the readers' convenience and then answer them:
One: Is the following statement true or false? "Since I (Farrell Till) absolutely know that there is no such thing as real (objective) morality, I absolutely know that the Nazis were not guilty of real (objective) moral wrong when they exterminated millions of Jews by working them to death under unbearable conditions, subjecting them to inhuman indignities and then killing them in gas chambers, and putting them in freight cars coated with quickime (producing excruciating burns) which required about four days to kill the victims."Answer: In replying to the first question in his first affirmative, I plainly said that there is no such thing as objective morality. If there is no objective morality, then neither the Nazis nor Saul, the butcher of the Amalekites, was guilty of objective immorality. That is not to say, however, that they were not guilty of immorality. The atrocities described in this question sound more Yahwistic than anything else, so I suggest that Mr. McDonald stop worrying about Nazi atrocities and invest more of his time to explaining why Yahweh was so Nazilike in his attitude toward the non-Hebraic tribes of Palestine.
Two: Is the following statement true or false? "Since the Nazis were not guilty of real (objective) moral wrong in exterminating the Jews, those who tried the Nazis, for crimes against humanity, in the Nuremberg trials, were guilty of real (objective) moral wrong in prosecuting the Nazis."
Answer: How could anyone be guilty of objective moral wrong when there is no such thing as objective morality? Why is McDonald so concerned about Nazi crimes against humanity but completely unconcerned about the many Yahwistic crimes against humanity recorded in the Bible?
Three: Is the following statement true or false? "Since I (Farrell Till) absolutely know that no man can know anything at all by means other than his five senses, and since I (Farrell Till) have never seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled the original autographs of the Bible, then I must admit that I do not and cannot know with certainty that these manuscripts were not inspired and, since this is true, all I can say is that I can only believe they were not inspired, but then according to my own definition of faith and belief, I do not have sufficient evidence to support my claims."
Answer: What I like about McDonald's questions is their simplicity. By the time one wades through all of the "nots" and "absolutelies," the point of the question gets lost along the way. In this case, it appears that he has actually presented me with two statements, so I can't answer true or false to the entire paragraph. The first statement is true; I cannot know with certainty that the original autographs of the Bible were not inspired. I wish to point out, however, that he cannot know that they were inspired, and this poses a much bigger problem for him than for me. He is the one who is affirming a proposition that says the original autographs were inspired, so the burden of proving that falls on him. I would like to see him do it. His second statement is false. I think that I do have sufficient evidence to support my belief that the original autographs were not inspired. When it is my time to affirm, I will be presenting that evidence.
Four: Is the following statement true or false? "I absolutely know that my answer to question # 3 is true.
Answer: My response to the question speaks for itself. As I indicated, the statement is partly true and partly false.
Five: Is the following statement true or false? "Since my answers to 3 and 4 indicate that I cannot know that the Bible is not God's word, and since there is insufficient evidence to support my claims, I (Farrell Till) cannot consistently engage in this discussion about the Bible.
Answer: My reply to question # 3 states my belief that I do have sufficient evidence to support my claim that the Bible is not inspired; therefore, I can see no inconsistency in my participation in this debate.
Now turn about is fair play, so I have five questions for Mr. McDonald to answer. If he doesn't answer them I will assume--let's see, what will I assume? Oh, yes, I will assume that he can't answer them without damaging his position on the inerrancy doctrine.
One: When Samuel killed Agag, the only Amalekite to survive Saul's massacre (1 Sam. 15:8), was that the end of the Amalekite nation?
Two: How can one prove by applying the "science of textual criticism" (referred to in your answer to my third question) that any given Bible discrepancy, say, the variant readings existing between 2 Samuel 24:13 and 1 Chronicles 21:12 (seven years of famine as opposed to three years of famine), was not in the original manuscripts?
Three: Doesn't the same science of textual criticism that you speak about indicate that Moses did not write the Pentateuch and that Deuteronomy was written by someone other than the author of the other four books in the Pentateuch?
Four: Was Mark 16:9-20 in the original autograph?
Five: Which of the following statements is true? (If you do not answer, I will assume no telling what.) (A) Killing is wrong because Yahweh said that it is. (B) Yahweh said that killing is wrong because killing is wrong.
Obviously, some of these questions seek to clarify his responses to my first list of questions, so I will reserve comment on most of his answers until he has replied to these. His response to my fifth question, however, warrants an answer now. I asked him who wrote the book of Judges and to explain how he knew. His answer was that he didn't know, and then he asked, "What possible difference could this make?" So I will ask the readers again: can you believe it? Can you believe that an intelligent person would say such a thing? He knows that the book of Judges (in the original autograph, of course) was inspired of God, but he doesn't even know who wrote the book and, furthermore, thinks that it doesn't matter who wrote it. He would have to say the same thing about many of the other books in the Bible. He doesn't know who wrote them--nobody really knows who wrote them--yet he knows that whoever wrote them was inspired of God. If I should say that I don't know who wrote the Avesta and don't really care who wrote it but still I know that it was inspired by Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian god, he would laugh me into the next county. So the problem here is a familiar one: what Bible fundamentalists would never accept from the defenders of other sacred books, they expect everyone to accept without question from them. If McDonald can't see the foolishness of his position on this, then he needs more help than I could ever give him.
He will undoubtedly say that his "argument for the Old Testament Canon" will show why it doesn't matter who wrote the books in the Bible, so let's take a look at his syllogism:
Major Premise: If the O. T. Canon that we have in the KJV and the ASV is the same canon as that which was spoken of by Jesus, then we have the correct O. T. Canon.
Minor Premise: The O. T. Canon that we have in the KJV and the ASV is the same canon as that which was spoken of by Jesus.
Conclusion: Therefore, we have the correct O. T. Canon.
I would like for McDonald to explain why the major premise of this syllogism is necessarily true. Why would the Old Testament canon have to be the correct canon if it can be shown that it is the same canon that was spoken of by Jesus? He didn't tell us! He didn't offer an iota of evidence to show that the premise is true. He merely assumed that it was true, and he is good at that. He has quoted Copi's Introduction to Logic, so I would like to suggest that he take the time to read it. If he does, he might learn what begging the question is. If he has any expertise at all, it would be in begging the question. His syllogisms routinely beg the question. His "argument for the Inerrancy of the Scriptures" (first affirmative, p. 15) begged the question on both the major and minor premises, asking us to assume the truth of important points that his proposition requires him to prove. His "argument for the Authority of the Bible" and his "argument for the All Sufficiency of the Bible" (first affirmative, pp. 17-19) begged the question. In effect, these arguments were saying that the Bible is authoritative because it says that it is and the Bible is all sufficient because it says that it is. I don't have the space left to analyze those arguments, but the readers can turn back and review them. If they do, they will see that McDonald has consistently begged important questions in his syllogisms. Begging the question proves nothing, which is exactly what McDonald has so far proven in this debate.
I lay no claim to having answered Mr. McDonald's second affirmative "point by point" as he claimed to have done to my first rebuttal. Rather than using the hit-and-run, begging-the-question, saying-a-little-about-this-and-a-little-about-that methods that McDonald and his fundamentalist cohorts rely on when debating the inerrancy doctrine, I try to give the readers an in-depth analysis and response to the few relevant issues that the opposition presents. I would have liked to comment on other things that Mr. McDonald has said, but I have used my allotted space. Perhaps I can address at least some of these issues in the rebuttals I have left
Go to McDonald's Third Defense.
