Is Logos 4 theologically biased?

I need to say something that has been missed so far in this thread. In all likelihood there is much diversity of theological bent amongst the programmers. I highly doubt Logos only hires Calvinistic programmers. That being said, it would be very counterproductive for programmers to bias the searches as this would only create more work as they constantly had to go highjack the work of other programmers who were biasing the searches in a direction they disagreed with. Before long we would have anarchy amongst our beloved Logos programmers and nothing would get done. I think the fact the Logos 4 actually was released is proof enough this did not occur. Just my 2 cents.

That said, it is possible for people to build in bias without realizing it.

I suggest you contact these publishers and ask why they are biased against electronic distribution

Back in the old days they could have burned the publishers for not converting. [:P] Wait... Sorry that was for heresy or.... Well, all should take advantage of electronic format. Convert !!!![:@][A][]

A simple observation about the nature of both the general theological orientation of the libraries available (i.e. company) and what is in those library is not  an open ended invitation to either defend or attack Logos.  It is not my place to investigate Logos, other publishers, availability of theological resources, motivations of publishers, or industry bias against certain formats.  Nor do I particularly care if the product appears in Logos format..its a matter of convenience for my present project.  The issue of the op was possible bias of the program which I addressed from my perspective as a long term customer of this company.  I believe its time for me to leave this topic.. Thank you for your perspective.

While I don't think that the programmers themselves stack the deck in the way the program responds to a general search there does seem to be some serious bias's related to the library material.  In a Scholar package with all available Galaxie journals (some 1600 resources) try running a search on Paul Tillich or Christian Existentialism...perhaps 3 hits a piece (you get my point I think).  What maybe taken as liberal among Evangelical Conservatives (Barth perhaps) may not be considered liberal in many mainline seminaries at the moment.  Nothing wrong with stacking the deck, so to speak, in this direction but I don't really think there are too many "liberals" sneaking around in the libraries Logos is putting together....perhaps I'm wrong.

You may want to peruse the Semeia articles then. You might even find some incredibly morally questionable material.

If the goal of Logos is to have the broadest possible customer base then they shouldn't simply cater to Christians. They should cater to non-Christian religions and secularists/atheists too. 

Is that the goal of Logos? Obviously not. They cater to a niche and even a niche within a niche. This means there will *always* be some disgruntled customer complaining about why Logos doesn't agree with and, therefore, excludes their theological niche. 

"Why doesn't Logos have more resources by John Shelby Spong?"

Isn't that question a bit absurd? I guess that depends. Is your name John Dominic Crossan? Then it probably doesn't look so absurd. 

Why does Logos have a bias in favor of the protestant canon? We might as well ask why they have a bias against the Secret Gospel of Mark.

One of the reasons why we see these sorts of complaints is because Logos is seen primarily as a powerful searching and researching tool. Naturally, everyone wants to put that tool to use for their own purposes. I'm sure atheists would love to have a Logos type program for their atheological literature.

How do we know we are getting all sides of an issue? Do the resources available have a balanced perspective on issues of theology?

This is an issue regardless of the media you use to study God's Word.  This is where the human aspect comes in -- This is what is called study.  Never take a search result and think you've done your work.  It takes prayer, hard work, and digging to get a balanced perspective.  

I have a concern that the Word of God may be transitioning out of the hands of the Holy Spirit

When a person performs a search, he or she is going to get back a plethora of results.  Just like going to the library and pulling ten books off the same shelf.  They may all be cataloged the same, but that is not the librarian's bias in trying to sway you one way or the other.  You pull the books, look through them, weigh the evidence, pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance -- it's all comes back to the person doing the studying...not the librarian, not the programmer.

Anyone know a good source for dates of the first translation by continent, country or language? I'd love to have an almanac of such info in Logos - I'll be puzzling over this all day.

This is precisely why you are a great teacher MJ. Your never-ending inquisitiveness piques my curiosity and I frequently learn new things. Don't stop asking.

?? which continents??

Now I will try to give an answer short & sweet:

1) Zondervan has license restrictions controlling where the NIV can be sold so the proper profit can go to the proper pockets. In the past, Logos had to disable your NIV if you lived in Europe.
2) Lockman Foundation argued over who has the profit rights to their recent venture of a new Japanese Bible translatiion. This opened the floodgates of legal challenges to many Japanese Bible texts resulting in several years before they started to reappear online. Logos offers several Chinese & Korean versions but you have to go back several years to find the only Japanese version done in Logos.
3) The German Bible Society claims rights to the original manuscripts behind the NA27 and consequently forbids online usage by third parties and international sales. The Logos edition of Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible http://www.logos.com/products/details/3005s is a limited collection that I am sure has a handsome license fee.

That's what I meant by denying whole continents. If you truly believe you hold the best translation of the actual words of God, how can you deny others access until you have collected your fee? Especially after reading how the poor servant mishandled the one talent entrusted to him.

According to Wikipedia the 1611 KJV is still held in copyright by the Crown of England. I don't hear the Queen asking for her cut of the profits.

 DISCLAIMER: I am NOT arguing against "intellectual property rights." I AM criticizing the holders of copyrights for highway robbery & total denial of access. Also I highlighted in purple the Logos specific points of this post.

Sorry I fuilt the need to add logos 4 inter-lineals, original languages are awesome I didn't want to make it seem like wordsearch 9 is superior in that regard or that it is better or equal to logos 4 just that I find that logos 4 is lacking in commentaries in the base packages.

I'd have to agree with you there, but most books today are outside of older commentaries tend to lead towards evangelicals etc that is just a fact of life traditionalists and or fundelmentalists tend to stick towards bible versions and manuscripts etc. Where I think Logos has room for improvement is in their bundling of various commentaries of a wide denominational and theological backgrounds both modern and older works.

In the lawless  days of the Pre-Rules Forum I mercilessly castigated various paraphrases posing as translations and a couple copyrighted (read "profit motivated" when the Word of God is denied to whole continents) new translations.

I'd hope you're talking about the Jehovah's Witness' "translation," but they've never claimed it was a paraphrase.

So I'm just going to go ahead and guess that you've never actually spent any time studying & reading up on translation methodology at all.