Why do we believe that the Bible is telling us the truth?
It's not because the Bible tells us it does - that'd be circular logic: the Bible is true because the Bible is true.
Rather, it's because we already believe the Bible is true that we're willing to accept what it says about itself. Why do we believe the Bible is true? Because we accept the idea that God is true and that the Bible is His message to us about how to be restored to life with Him.
What necessarily follows, then, is that we believe the Bible is true because we believe that A: God is real; B: God does not lie; and C: God wants us to know Him.
If that's true - and it's necessarily true for an inerrant Bible, for if we argue against those premises, we have to admit the possibility that the Bible is lying to us - then whence came dinosaurs?
I used to believe this: God, when He created the heavens and the Earth, also created the dinosaur bones and distant light to try to trip us up, to make us doubt Him and what He has said about Creation.
That argument is not consistent with a God who does not lie and desires us to know Him.
Because in that argument, God is the creator of two records - the Bible, and the physical reality (universe and planet). We can "read" both, if we are literate in the languages they were written in. One is true, the other is a lie - but both were written by God.
So isn't it true that accepting the science about the world is claiming that God is lying in the Bible?
No. Remember that the Bible never claims itself to be inerrant, only God-breathed. If we accept that it can be flawed - that is, that God did not write it Himself but through flawed intermediaries who took occasional shortcuts, then we can still accept that God is always truthful and that the Bible is His way of teaching us about certain aspects of Him - namely, His love and grace. If the Bible is, as my pastors told me so long ago, God's love-letter to humanity, why would we assume a love-letter is scientifically accurate? There's no point to. But it can still provide us insights about His love, if we're open to those insights.
There's also a way to read it, if you prefer, to say that the Bible is literally written word-for-word by God, and that, as with my love-letter argument above, God took shortcuts rather than attempting to explain everything to an ancient peoples who couldn't have possibly understood it. If God had told them that the world is billions of years old, they would've laughed at Him, because they couldn't read the world, couldn't understand the things they looked at, and sought answers for them in inappropriate places (such as other gods).
Thus, you can't argue that God created distant light or hid supposedly-ancient dinosaur bones and still argue that God loves us and wants us to know Him - but you can argue (and I threw that out there if you want to take it) that as ancient people were bad at reading the physical world, we are still. It's a fair argument, but good luck proving the science wrong. You'll have to engage science where it lives for that.
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