➘ #06 Source Article

◉ A reader-friendly explanation of the symbolic logic above.

A) Likelihoodist/Bayesian framing

What this means in plain English:
We’re comparing two competing explanations for the Bible’s origin:

• H₁: The Bible came from an all-knowing, all-powerful, never-changing God who wanted to give humanity normative directives (rules or guidance) that work for everyone, everywhere, for all time—always clear, consistent, unambiguous, and easy to access.
• H₂: The Bible is a human cultural creation, shaped by specific times, places, and communities, with all the limitations and biases that come with that.

We look at the evidence (E)—the Bible’s directives are not perfectly consistent, universal, clear, or accessible. This evidence fits much better with the human-origin hypothesis (H₂) than with the divine-origin hypothesis (H₁).

Bayesian logic part:

• If E is far more likely under H₂ than H₁, the likelihood ratio (LR) is much greater than 1.
• A big LR means the evidence pushes our confidence toward H₂ and away from H₁.
• Conclusion: The observed pattern in the Bible—variability, ambiguity, cultural specificity—strongly supports human authorship over divine authorship.

B) First-order expectation–violation schema

What this means in plain English:
Here, the logic focuses on what we would expect to see if the Bible came from an unchanging, perfect God, and compares that to what we actually observe.

• Expectation under H₁: Every directive in the Bible, for all times and cultures, should be consistent, universal, clear, and accessible.
• What we actually find:
  1. Some directives contradict each other.
  2. Some are not universal (apply only to certain people or times).
  3. Some are unclear.
  4. Some are not accessible to all (due to language, historical, or cultural barriers).

By putting all these observations together, the required perfection fails. That means H₁ is false or at least has much less explanatory power than H₂.

C) Reductio internal to the realist/theological frame

What this means in plain English:
This part steps inside the theological worldview to show an internal contradiction.

Conclusion:
At least one of those two claims (“God’s will never changes” or “Every biblical directive comes from God”) must be false. This contradiction forces the realist/theologian to downgrade their claim, and this in turn (per section A) shifts the weight toward the human-authorship hypothesis.message wrote it. Therefore, the evidence tilts heavily toward human authorship.

Assumption for argument’s sake:

God’s will never changes (Imm(G)).

Every directive in the Bible comes directly from God.

Observation:
Some Bible directives are incompatible—for example, “love your enemies” vs. commands for total war and destruction in other contexts.

Problem:
If God’s will is unchanging, then two incompatible directives cannot both come from God. But the Bible contains such incompatibilities.

◉ Prose Version:

The analysis begins by comparing two possible explanations for the Bible’s origin. The first hypothesis (H₁) is that the Bible was authored, or decisively inspired, by an all-knowing, all-powerful, unchanging God whose aim was to give humanity clear, consistent, universally valid directives that would be relevant for all times and cultures. The second hypothesis (H₂) is that the Bible is a human product, emerging from specific historical communities with their own limitations, biases, and cultural concerns, without any guarantee of universal applicability, perfect consistency, or unambiguous clarity.

When we look at the actual state of the Bible’s directives, we see that they are often inconsistent, not universally applicable, sometimes unclear, and not equally accessible to all people. If we think in Bayesian terms, this evidence is far more likely if the Bible is a human cultural document than if it came from an unchanging divine mind. The likelihood ratio—the measure of how much more likely the evidence is under one hypothesis than the other—leans heavily toward human authorship.

A second way to frame this is through expectation and violation. If H₁ were true, we would expect that in every time and cultural setting, every biblical directive would be consistent with the others, universally applicable, clear in meaning, and easily accessible. But in reality, we can find examples of contradictions between directives, rules that apply only in specific times or places, instructions that are ambiguous, and teachings that are inaccessible to many due to language or cultural barriers. Since these failures are widespread, the combined expectation of consistency, universality, clarity, and accessibility is not met, which weakens H₁ and strengthens the case for H₂.

Finally, we can examine the matter from within a theological framework using a reductio ad absurdum. Suppose we accept, for argument’s sake, that God’s will is unchanging and that every directive in the Bible directly expresses God’s will. Yet the Bible contains directives that are incompatible—for instance, passages commanding love for enemies alongside passages commanding total war and destruction. If God’s will is truly unchanging, such incompatibilities cannot both be genuine expressions of it. This creates a contradiction, forcing a choice: either God’s will does change, or not every biblical directive comes from God. Either way, the original theological claim loses coherence, and this reduction in explanatory power points us back to the conclusion from the first analysis—human authorship is the better explanation.