Alleging biblical inconsistencies, so it seems, inevitably gets bogged down in a debate over whose interpretation of such scriptures are correct. For better or worse, Christians have ways to rationalize and explain the allegations. This to me is zero sum for atheists...a Christian isn't going to be anymore compelled to accept the allegation than an atheist is going to be to accept the rationalizations...

Yeah, I thought Isaiah 7:14 was a perfect example of why the predictions were just copied from the Septuagint. Turns out the word for Young Woman CAN mean virgin (although the single other use of the word in the Bible talks about sleeping with a young woman, which indicates loss of virginity, and the actual word for virgin is a different one), and that in Hebrew "a woman IS pregnant" can also mean "WILL give birth". So christians are pretty good at rationalizing.

I agree; bible errancy is just a distraction from the actual topic imo.

It really just serves as a place for theists to hide. They can argue back and forth all day and never have to address the absurdity of god and supernatural belief in general.

I ask them why a creator would make a universe billions of light years across that was 99.99999% vacuum, and 99.9999% of the remainder nuclear fires? They never get a good answer out.

Then I ask them to explain why a creator would choose defecation as the preferred "waste management system". 

 Well. My approach tends to vary based on just how insane a theist comes off and on just what the specific bit of lunacy actually is.

Once in a while, I will come on really hardass on them. Not on the accuracy of the bible as such but on related matters. For many of the common points, I may have actually taken some time to look into the matter previously.

Let me take a moment to discuss a couple of doctrinal points and the reality behind them.

Take the bit about the definition of a virgin as the example. In the OT Strong's word H1330 is translated as virgin but does not even refer to an individual human being. It is used to refer to a collective state of a whole nation. In context, it means a people who are in good with god. However, it is used several times to refer to a people who have fallen from grace but having been called out on the matter remain capable of getting right with god again. Basically, this is a state which can be returned to after having been lost. Typical usage is found in Jeremiah 18 and Jer 31.

The word used in the NT is Strong's word G3933 and that does actually refer to a woman with an intact hymen. It is, in fact, the same root word as Parthenogenesis, which refers to virgin birth in general. Does it not seem odd that the Greeks would have a word for such a thing if they did not consider the idea to be part of their world in general?

However, the fact remains that the NT term for virgin is a Greek word and not one that would have been used by the people writing in that time and place. The fact is that we do not have any surviving original text of the NT and thus we are left wondering if the original really used H1330.

Another really useful one is when the loonie starts talking about the trinity. Well, early christians did not have a concept of the trinity. That does not enter into matters until early in the 4^th century. Prior to that, christianity had become fractured into different sects that had radically different view in the matter.

The Ebionites believed that jesus was fully human but became possessed by one of the archangels at his baptism. They also believed that to be a christian, one first had to become a jew. So while they were willing to take converts, they had to first engage in jewish genetial mutilation.

The Marcionites believed that jesus was not human at all. Rather, he was a bigger and better god than was yahweh. As such, there was no reason to become jewish first. Hey! Want to be a christian but don't want to have your cock worked over by a rabbi? Well, we have a deal for you...

By the time of the council of nicaea, both groups had fragmented into various disputes and had been cross pollinated with the thoughts of each other as well as the thoughts of many smaller sects of christianity. Hence the need to have a gathering of the world's bishops to hammer matters out and figure out what the one universal church really believed (btw: the term catholic means universal).

For each of the points where disagreement was at hand, the bishops voted on matters and the majority would be what it really meant to be a christian. They did this on fairly minor matters but also on the big questions like the need for circumcision and the nature of god jr.

So the whole holy trinity thing is not really a matter that even occupied the thoughts of christians prior to this time. Mostly, they did not believe in the trinity but rather that jesus was either a really cool dude or a god who just happened to be man shaped.

Now obviously, you are not going to be able to get all of this out in a face-to-face with some idiot. But if you want to come out of the gate strong, keep such things in the back of your mind. Ask the loon who is on about the trinity “what the vote was on the matter at the council of nicaea”. Since they will, with some degree of certainty, have been shielded from such matters by the abusers we call priests/pastors/reverends, you can expect them to go stupidly ignorant on the matter at hand.

Then hit them with “Well, before you try to sucker people into your batshit crazy stuff, don't you think that you should know what it is actually about?” If they persist, then you can tell them to go blow a talking donkey, if they can find one. Mind you, the OT does have talking donkeys so they must exist. The conversation will not go much farther than that.