^^ Ok, so I suffered through several minutes of the podcast (and I SWEAR the scene of the knights in Holy Grail going "GET ON WITH IT" flashed through my mind several times). I've only listened to the first two and this guy's argumentation was the same for both. Maybe it was translated wrong and we don't know what the author meant. Or to put the second one differently ... If we assume the authors aren't contradicting then they're not contradicting. ... erm, yeah, ok. If I assume the sky is green with orange polka dots, then it's green with orange polka dots.
So, basically, he's ignoring the fundamental problem, which is that, the bible is unclear on some things. Some things in the bible are up for debate. Some things in the bible depend on the interpretation of the reader. It is not an absolute, either in the King James version (which was used for the 'big orange rainbow' he keeps mentioning) or in any other.
Reader A can gleam one meaning from a passage and Reader B can get something different from that same passage. And there's no way
[1] to settle who's right and who's wrong. A and B can hurl scripture at each other
[2] until hell freezes over
[3] and never reach a conclusion.
For completeness sake ... he claims copy error for the first contradiction. Which may or may not be true, but it makes it all the more asenine for anyone to pick up an English bible and wave bout any part of it as if it has any special meaning, after all, you're holding a copy of a copy of a copy of a ... .
As for the translation error card ... this leads to the same problem as above, you're holding a translation of a translation of a translation of a ...
And even if you were to get ahold of the original untranslated text, you're left with the problem that different parts of the bible were written in different languages and in order to compare any of it, you will need at least one translation. And believe me, even for languages as close together as English and Dutch, exact translation is not always possible ... never mind between languages as distent from eachother as ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek. Some concepts quite simply can't be translated.
And if you're a biblical literalist, then you accept the tower of Babel story. Which means that your god intended to leave behind a flawed bible from the get go.
Which, incidentally, is an odd parallel between christianity and islam. There's a holy book, which tells you how to live, but you can never be sure that what you're reading is god/allah's true intent. Only difference is that the quran says this explicitly while the bible only implies it.
Oh and while on the subject of completeness, he also pulls the massively dishonest argument of "Well it's not YOUR bible, so you shouldn't be interpreting it in the first place."