Religion: Inspired Text Reliable Text

A little while ago, I wondered about the idea of inspiration. I sensed that the Islamic notion of the inspiration of the Koran was different than the Christian concept of the inspiration of the Bible but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I extended those thoughts in a follow-up post here on what I think is the chain of events from the mind of God to the English Bible on my desk.

I'm a molecular biologist and not a theologian.

Nonetheless, as someone committed to Jesus, I feel the need to wrestle with these ideas.

Dennis Prager recently on his radio show wondered aloud: if you had to pick a religion from scratch, how would you do it?

His advice was the following:
(1) Seriously consider the religion of your family. Study it and see if you think it works.
(2) What he means by "works" for you is that does this belief system provide you with (a) a way to live your life and (b) confidence that it is mostly true
(3) Finally, do you like and admire the people who are trying to live out your chosen religion?

I recognize that religion encompasses aspects that are beyond the access of reason. However, I think Prager is right to emphasize the need for the sense that your religious system is mostly true. 100% certainty in a very rare thing in life but the notion of believing in something you know to be false will cause distress and will ultimately be futile.

Thus, I seek to understand how I got that Bible on my desk. I know some aspects of my confidence in it is an article of faith but some of it is based on reason.

It was really nice to come across this set of articles by Mark D. Roberts. I've visited his blog before but the other day I looked a bit more carefully on his table of contents on the left hand column. To my delight, he addressed the issue of Islamic views of the Koran and how they differ from the Christian perspective on the Bible. He also addressed the concept of how we got our Bible today by addressing the concerns raised by Bart Ehrman who wrote the book, Misquoting Jesus which calls into question the reliability of the Bible.

The article by Roberts is long but very accessible and I encourage you to check it out if you have the same questions I did.