Is the Bible Inspired by God because it is Correct?

 
The Church says the Bible is inspired by the all-knowing and all-powerful God therefore all it says is right. Should we be saying instead that the Bible is right and therefore it is inspired? Then why the Bible only? Why not consider any book where it contains correct statements to be inspired? A statement being right does not mean it's inspired by any kind of higher being and even if it were is the being speaking for something another being knows more about?

What the Church is saying is that we should accept the Bible as God’s word without evidence. If we assume the Bible is never wrong we will find ourselves manipulating the evidence against this for we do not allow ourselves to see the errors. For example, if an inscription turns up denying that Jesus met Pontius Pilate we will either dismiss it as a forgery or say some other explanation will turn up. Then we end up claiming there is no error in the Bible while the truth is we mean we refuse to see if there is.

By advancing the concept of divine inspiration, the Bible is seeking to trick us and seduce us. It is accusing those who do not accept its inspiration of sinning in doing so for if one person should believe blindly in it all should.

The deceitful Catholic anti-Christian book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, says you should believe in the inspiration of the Bible only after making sure that the Bible is right (page 126). What happens then is that you conclude the Bible is inspired because God agrees with your perception of history, philosophy and ethics! If you believe it is immoral of God to hurt the world without a decent explanation then you will conclude that the Bible is not inspired. There are billions of problems you could have with it. You could agree with it for the wrong reasons. For example, if you think God wanted homosexuals stoned to death in the Law of Moses as a kind of euthanasia that is the wrong reason for the real reason is that it was out of hatred. In all this, you are claiming to believe the Bible is inspired but you have to be inspired too to see it! You say you are not, so you don’t believe in the inspiration and you are just kidding yourself. You are not interested in following God but your own perception of God which you are projecting on a book.

Think about this, if you believe in any Bible books because you think they are right then what do you need the concept of inspiration for at all? If you find the gospels historically accurate and sensible and philosophically acceptable then you believe in them because of that so it seems absurd to say they are inspired for there is no point in the inspiration. It’s an accessory. Being right does not make them inspired. It is crazy to say that a book is right in all things even when it claims to be inspired by God for nobody can prove they were inspired but only that they thought they were or pretended they were.
 
It is better to follow a book because you see it as right and put the question of inspiration out of your mind altogether for if it errs then inspiration or claiming to be inspired is going to make no difference. When inspiration is about making a book right the only thing you need is for the book to be right and you have no need for the inspiration concept.
 
Inspiration accuses God of unnecessary miracles and crassness for the whole point of divine inspiration is to declare that a book was written by God and is therefore to be trusted. When Jesus claimed his teaching was divinely inspired, notice this is at its strongest in the Gospel of John, he proved that his credibility should be nil. In case you missed it, inspiration is really a demand for unquestioning faith. It asks that your faith be a prejudice, an unfair bias.
 
Whether you assume a book is inspired from God or not you cannot win. No matter what you do you are not looking for directions from God but are inventing your God and spirituality for yourself without regard to honesty and truth and love.

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be infallible. It says this infallibility is not the same thing as divine inspiration (page 224, Catholicism and Fundamentalism). Infallibility does not tell the Church which of several possibilities is right but prevents the Church from selecting the wrong one when it is trying to put something forward as a dogma and declare it revealed by God.   But inspiration does tell her what the right one is. It must. The Church cannot reach the right conclusion except with divine guidance. The doctrine of Church infallibility is totally absurd.
 
If it is possible then it follows that God had no need to inspire the Bible. He could have protected it from moral and doctrinal error the same way as he allegedly does the Catholic Church. Thus the doctrine of inspiration is totally ridiculous if so. If the Bible is inspired then it is because God wants to do more than protect it from moral and doctrinal error. He wants everything even down to the grammar and style and choice of material to be perfect. But the Bible is far from being totally perfect. And to inspire is just showing off so the Bible should put us off God. If that is not what he wants then he didn’t write it.
 
The Catholic Church says it used its infallibility that it inherited from Jesus to find out what books belonged in the Bible. Infallibility requires research to work for the Church says infallibility is not inspiration. An infallible statement that depends on the research being done carefully is not an infallible statement even if presented as one if the research was sloppy. The Church could not infallibly determine which books belong in the Bible without doing its homework so the infallibility does not guarantee inspiration of the Bible but the homework does. It is the homework that counts for even infallibility was impossible without it. That means that infallibility serves no purpose. It is meant to make you sure God revealed something and it cannot for you don’t know if the people that decided to make an infallible statement were fair and diligent when it came down to researching for their statement.

The Bible can have errors and still lawfully demand that it be treated as the only religious authority.  It can do that on the basis that nothing is perfect anyway but it goes further than that.  It claims to be the truth from God.

The Bible no matter what it says about inspiration certainly teaches that cherry-picking or being selective with it is not an option and the whole lot must be taken extremely seriously indeed.

There is no mistake: any book that claims to be divinely inspired is thereby proving that it is not. It’s just a book. The only exception would be a book that man had nothing to do with and which provably dropped down from Heaven and was written by the finger of God in the sight of lots of reliable witnesses. But no such book ever existed.
 
 
BOOKS CONSULTED
 
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Answers to Tough Questions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press Bucks, 1988
Attack on the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1965
Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press, New York, 1985
But the Bible Does Not Say So, Rev Roberto Nisbet, Church Book Room Press, London, 1966
Catholicism and Christianity, Cecil John Cadoux, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988
Creation and Evolution, Dr Alan Hayward, Triangle, London, 1994
Does the Bible Contradict Itself? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1982
Essentials, David L Edwards and John Stott, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1990
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
Free Inquiry, Fall 1998, Vol 18, No 4, Council for Secular Humanism, Amherst, New York
God and the Human Condition, F J Sheed, Sheed & Ward, London, 1967
God Cannot Lie, David Alsobrook, Diasozo Trust, Kent, 1989
God, Science and Evolution, Prof E H Andrews, Evangelical Press, Herts, 1985
God’s Word, Final Infallible and Forever, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
How and Why Catholic and Protestant Bibles Differ, Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ and Donald Senior, CP, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1983
How to Interpret the Bible, Fergus Cleary SJ, Ligouri Publications, Missouri, 1981
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene Oregon, 1996
Inspiration in the Bible, Fr Karl Rahner, Herder and Herder, New York, 1966
Jesus and Early Christianity in the Gospels, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald, Oxford, 2002
Jehovah of the Watch-tower, Walter Martin and Norman Klann, Bethany House Publishers, Minnesota, 1974
Know What You Believe, Paul E Little, Scripture Union, London, 1973
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New Evangelicalism An Enemy of Fundamentalism, Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1984
None of These Diseases, SI McMillen MD, Lakeland, London 1966
Our Perfect Book the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1958
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Radio Replies Vol 3, Radio Replies Press, Minnesota, 1942
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1974
Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Charles Pellegrino, The Softback Preview, New York, 1995
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The Authority of the Bible, Ambassador College, Pasadena, California, 1980
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The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
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What is the Bible? Henri Daniel-Rops, Angelus Books, Guild Press, New York, 1958
Why Does God..? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls , Bucks, 1970