The Bible was not intended to teach matters of science and history.
Therefore, those areas should not be held to standards of literal
accuracy.
The general ideas in the Bible, such as salvation and God's
majesty,
do not rely on literalism for their communication. An error or
contradiction in detail does not affect the overall message.
The claim is a non sequitur. That something is wrong in one area
does not prevent it from being perfectly accurate in another.
Theologians through the ages have considered parts of the Bible suspect
but accepted the rest as canon. In fact, it was exactly such a process
by which canon was determined. Even Martin Luther considered some Old
Testament passages suspect (Armstrong 1996; Engwer n.d.; Shea 1997).
A logical consequence of this claim is that the Bible cannot, in fact,
be trusted, because parts of it (not only
Genesis) are known to
be wrong if interpreted literally.
Creationists themselves sometimes make claims that contradict the
Bible. For example, Whitcomb and Morris (1961, 69) claimed, contrary
to Genesis 7:21-23, that some land animals not aboard Noah's ark
survived.
