The existance of 'contradictions' does not in any way prove that the Bible was not inspired by God. If God did in fact inspire the Bible (and I believe He did), then He left the actual writing in the hands of man. This has resulted in some imperfect explainations, interpretations, etc- The Bible says we 'prophesy in part and see in part', this does not mean that things that are prophesied, seen, written down in the Bible are not inspired, just delivered by a perfect God through and imperfect channel. I believe the Bible is both God-inspired AND written by men.
If you told a friend to write down your thoughts and he didn't express your feelings EXACTLY how you meant for him to, that would not mean you didn't 'inspire' the writings, just that your friend didn't understand everything quite perfectly. In the same way, any argument that small contradictions disprove the Bible as God-inspired are far short of convincing.
The 'contradictions' that I have seen in the past have all been easily explained by difference in perception of the eyewitness, mis-translations of small details, and the inability of human language to accurately describe God. Small contradictions or differences in eyewitness accounts are not thrown out by police investigators with the assumption of lies, in fact, there are always small contradictions in multiple eyewitness accounts. The best way for investigators to get a complete picture of events is to have at least 2 or 3 eyewitness accounts- this is why there are 3 gospels to depict the events of Jesus' life. Each one saw things the others didn't, and from a somewhat different perspective. The fact that there are so few contradictions, and no substantial (major factual) contradictions in the gospels is amazing concidering they were written down by unlearned fishermen (except for Luke, I believe he was a doctor) years after the events took place.
I don't believe that you can interpret everything in the bible literally, there is a big difference between image-based prophesies and historical events. I personally believe that most historical events depicted in the Bible are literal (I don't know if the days in creation are literal or figurative, however), while other things (revalation, daniel, etc) are figurative prophesies. Both are inspired by God, and both have been channelled through imperfect people.
That's my take on the subject.
Unfortunately, my life is too stinkin busy right now to research and respond to every contradiction that has been presented in this argument. If you want a great in-depth defense of Christianity and faith, read 'The Case For Faith' by Lee Strobel.
