Of what use are good 'tools', if you do not believe the Bible is divinely inspired?
Might as well use 'em to 'analyze' Shakespere!
"Of what use are good 'tools', if you do not believe the Bible is divinely inspired? Might as well use 'em to 'analyze' Shakespere!"
That's beside the point. Try to focus. We were talking about "human error" as a "weakness" of science. Human error is a weakness in EVERY area -- science, history, technology, space travel, pizze delivery, baseball, religion, etc.
You implied that the problem of human error was somehow a serious flaw in science. I was pointing out that science has overcome human error to a greater extent than almost any other area of life. I used biblical interpretation as an example for comparison.
The overwhelming majority of Christians DO believe the Bible is divinely inspired -- and they are the ones doing all this interpreting I am talking about. They STILL can't agree on what it means, even when they are using the same interpretive tools.
Using good methods, and with only one source of evidence to deal with -- Christians still have thousands of controversies over virtually every doctrine imaginable.
Assuming that most of them are sincere, and that they are all "relying on the Holy Spirit" as they study -- they still cannot come to agreement. If it's not the fault of the source itself -- the Bible -- we have to chalk it up to human error.
On the other hand, look at science. Using good methods -- and with thousands upon thousands of sources of evidence to deal with -- there are still unanswered questions, of course, and there always will be -- but science has done a much better job of overcoming human error.
That was my point. It has nothing to do with my opinion concerning the inspiration of the Bible.