Good points from Tom4Uhere, as usual.
Something I want to point out, is that a fair amount of the turbulence and ire of such arguments, is due to the fact that people are fiercely talking about completely different things, without realizing it.
Our thread hosts opening post itself shows this. He admits that there are seeming contradictions in various TEXTS, while insisting that they are invalid as complaints against his FAITH. His logic is correct, as far as he goes with it. From within ANY faith, the challenge to followers and believers is not to explain to non-believers, why the texts don't make sense to those non-believers. It is to find guidance within their texts which they can follow consistently themselves.
The point of view of both non-believers who are not hostile to the religion, and of believers who approach the texts from a purely scholarly, historical side, can lead to understanding of why the texts DO say what they do, the way that they do, in the context of the times they were written down BY PEOPLE.
There are differences as well, amongst the people who are pointing out textual inconsistencies, as to why they are doing so. In the case of pure historians, for example, the goal isn't to make complaints against the writings, or against the authors or scribes of the various texts, it is instead to UNDERSTAND those people more thoroughly. Their investigation doesn't care whether the texts show contradictions as such, rather they seek to know how the times they were written in, are more accurately revealed by the seeming contradictions.
IgorFrankensteen
The difference between historical documentation and scripture is that historians are not attempting to live by those documents in a personal day to day manner.
In religion, believers use the scriptures to attempt to live by the intent as written.
The contradictions between scripture and real-life experiences causes conflict between real examples of day to day life and their instructions on how to conduct themselves in life.
The whole reason for the Bible is to have an instruction book on how to live your life to find grace with God and your fellow man.
Any contradiction, by written word or intent, invalidates it.
The sermon attempts to show connection between the scriptures intent and one's experiences in life. To do this, the sermon often changes the intent of the scripture to apply to current society and when that happens contradictions occur.
Since most intelligent people value consistency and accuracy, any contradiction invalidates the source. While there are a larger number of people alive today with higher intelligence than the original target audience, contradictions and the ability to detect them is not limited to intelligence. Most people notice when something doesn't make sense to them. It eats at them that there is something wrong here. Its a common foundation for stress.
There are some people that delude their reason and believe anything, sometimes what they are told, other times what they read and often times what they see is subject to interpretation based on a deluded mindset.
What happens in forum communities is that people use quoted text to justify their mindset. It works for them because they take the intent of the sentences as they interpret them. Someone else interprets those same sentences differently. It doesn't matter if the quoted text is scripture or the 2nd amendment.
Ignorance to the meaning of a word in the context of what is written can also cause one to feel the words contradict. Communication is most effective when everyone is on the same page on the meaning of the words being conveyed. Since many words have more than one meaning, the intent is the validity, not the words.