Bearing in mind the Bible was written around 2000 to 3000 years ago, I have compiled some interesting insights into Bible verses, science now, and science then.
I am interested to see everyone's input.
Key:
The Bible
Science Now
Science Then
Okay, so here we go!
Bible: The earth is a sphere [Isaiah 40:22]
Now: The earth is a sphere
Then: The earth was a flat disk
Bible: Incalculable number of stars [Jeremiah 33:22]
Now: Incalculable number of stars
Then: Only 1,100 stars
Bible: Free float of earth in space [Job 26:7]
Now: Free float of earth in space
Then: Earth sat on a large animal
Bible: Creation made of invisible elements [Hebrews 11:3]
Now: Creation made of invisible elements (atoms)
Then: Science was ignorant on the subject
Bible: Each star is different [1 Corinthians 15:41]
Now: Each star is different
Then: All stars were the same
Bible: Light moves [Job 38:19-20]
Now: Light moves
Then: Light was in a fixed place
Bible: Air has weight [Job 28:25]
Now: Air has weight
Then: Air was weightless
Bible: Winds blow in cyclones [Ecclesiastes 1:6]
Now: Winds blow in cyclones
Then: Winds blew straight
Bible: Blood is the source of life and health [Leviticus 17:11]
Now: Blood is the source of life and health
Then: Sick people must be bled
Bible: Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains [2 Samuel 22:16; Jonah 2:6]
Now: Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains
Then: The ocean floor was flat
Bible: Ocean contains springs [Job 38:16]
Now: Ocean contains springs
Then: Ocean was fed only by rivers and rain
Bible: When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water [Leviticus 15:13]
Now: When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water
Then: Hands washed in still water
This isn't to get people to believe the Bible is truth and infallible, but in my opinion it presents a pretty compelling case of a few examples where science has actually proven the Bible.
What do you think?
Two little things:
| Quote: |
Bible: Blood is the source of life and health [Leviticus 17:11]
Now: Blood is the source of life and health
Then: Sick people must be bled
|
I think that science would say that proteins are the source of life and health. Many living things have blood, but not all do in fact have blood. Take paramecium, for example. There are proteins in paramecium, and it is essential for the life of the creature IIRC, but there certainly isn't any blood in a paramecium.
| Quote: |
Bible: Ocean contains springs [Job 38:16]
Now: Ocean contains springs
Then: Ocean was fed only by rivers and rain
|
The current theory is that comets slammed into the earth to create the oceans. There are no springs that feed the oceans - from what I learned about plate tectonics the only thing under the ocean that is remotely close to a spring is the sea floor are the divergent plate boundaries that spew magma into the lithosphere.
Other than that it sort of surprises me that such ideas were in the bible and these ideas did not catch on during the middle ages with the amounts of devout Christians in Europe. | Soulfire wrote: |
Bearing in mind the Bible was written around 2000 to 3000 years ago, I have compiled some interesting insights into Bible verses, science now, and science then.
I am interested to see everyone's input.
Key:
The Bible
Science Now
Science Then
Okay, so here we go!
Bible: The earth is a sphere [Isaiah 40:22]
Now: The earth is a sphere
Then: The earth was a flat disk
Bible: Incalculable number of stars [Jeremiah 33:22]
Now: Incalculable number of stars
Then: Only 1,100 stars
Bible: Free float of earth in space [Job 26:7]
Now: Free float of earth in space
Then: Earth sat on a large animal
Bible: Creation made of invisible elements [Hebrews 11:3]
Now: Creation made of invisible elements (atoms)
Then: Science was ignorant on the subject
Bible: Each star is different [1 Corinthians 15:41]
Now: Each star is different
Then: All stars were the same
Bible: Light moves [Job 38:19-20]
Now: Light moves
Then: Light was in a fixed place
Bible: Air has weight [Job 28:25]
Now: Air has weight
Then: Air was weightless
Bible: Winds blow in cyclones [Ecclesiastes 1:6]
Now: Winds blow in cyclones
Then: Winds blew straight
Bible: Blood is the source of life and health [Leviticus 17:11]
Now: Blood is the source of life and health
Then: Sick people must be bled
Bible: Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains [2 Samuel 22:16; Jonah 2:6]
Now: Ocean floor contains deep valleys and mountains
Then: The ocean floor was flat
Bible: Ocean contains springs [Job 38:16]
Now: Ocean contains springs
Then: Ocean was fed only by rivers and rain
Bible: When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water [Leviticus 15:13]
Now: When dealing with disease, hands should be washed under running water
Then: Hands washed in still water
This isn't to get people to believe the Bible is truth and infallible, but in my opinion it presents a pretty compelling case of a few examples where science has actually proven the Bible.
What do you think? |
Most of those examples are bogus, and require real subjective interpretation to gather any meaningful scientific claims out of them. For example:
| Soulfire wrote: |
Bible: The earth is a sphere [Isaiah 40:22]
Now: The earth is a sphere
Then: The earth was a flat disk |
The actual verse is (KJV): "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:" You interpret "circle of the earth" as "sphere". Why? It seems to me that it means a flat disk. God is comparable to "a person sitting on the flat disk of the earth (the inhabitants of which are bugs), holding up a sheet over his head like a tent made of black fabric with the stars and other heavenly bodies on it". How does the tent analogy even make sense with a spherical Earth?
| Soulfire wrote: |
Bible: Incalculable number of stars [Jeremiah 33:22]
Now: Incalculable number of stars
Then: Only 1,100 stars |
i'm not sure where you get the 1,100 number from, but you have ignored some key facts. First, the term used is "hosts of heaven", which can be interpreted either to mean stars or angels - sometimes they are interpreted one way, sometimes another. Second, the bible is pretty clear that there is something up there called the "firmament" (basically, the tent from the previous case) that the stars we see are attached to, and behind that are even more stars and heavenly bodies that we cannot see. Third, most ancient civilizations were well aware that stars came and went, so to claim a fixed number seems suspicious to me.
| Soulfire wrote: |
Bible: Free float of earth in space [Job 26:7]
Now: Free float of earth in space
Then: Earth sat on a large animal |
That's just being dishonest. Some civilizations thought the Earth was on the back of an animal, not all. Given the age of Job, it's hard to determine exactly when and where its influences came from. There's no reason to presume there was anything revolutionary about the cosmology until you can actually determine what prevailing thought was. Further, the surrounding context makes clear what is actually being described is a flat Earth, not a spherical one. It would seem the only thing of interest about this cosmology is that rather than having a flat Earth supported from beneath, it has a flat Earth hanging from heaven. Cute, but still dead wrong.
| Soulfire wrote: |
Bible: Creation made of invisible elements [Hebrews 11:3]
Now: Creation made of invisible elements (atoms)
Then: Science was ignorant on the subject |
A mistranslation/misinterpretation. The actual text does not mean "made of" in the sense of "matter is made of (constructed of) atoms", but made of in the sense of "cars are made of (the products of) man". The verse is part of an appeal to faith, saying that the faithless believe that everything comes from (that is, is the product of, or is "made of") nature, wherease the faithful believe that everything came from God willing it into existence. It has nothing to do with the structure of creation, but with where "creation" came from (ie, it came from being created, it didn't always exist).
And so on and so forth.I hate agreeing with Indi, but, whereas I don't mind an interpretation of The Bible, I do dislike manipulating the translation just to prove a point. Nice try, Soulfire, but no basket...
HM
| Soulfire wrote: |
| This isn't to get people to believe the Bible is truth and infallible, but in my opinion it presents a pretty compelling case of a few examples where science has actually proven the Bible. |
Even given the points raised by others about the validity of the claims in each case (possible mistranslation, reinterpretation, etc), there is still a conceptual problem with the idea of science proving the Bible on any of these points.
People need to be careful about claims of proof just because science or modern knowledge agrees with some statements. There is more to it than just the final answer - there is the important part of understanding the reasoning behind the answer. It is quite possible even now to have a completely crackpot "theory" that through bogus reasoning comes up with an answer that agrees with science in a few cases, even if it is completely wrong elsewhere. Just because both agree (in that they get the same answers) in a few cases does not imply at all that one proves the other. It's a bit like the confusion between correlation and causation - two things might always happen together, but that does not imply that one causes the other.
What I see is that there are some statements in the Bible which were not necessarily the widely accepted view of the world when they were written, and which have subsequently become accepted, understood or explained by science.
I am sure that there are many statements like those you highlighted in almost any old or ancient book or writings, whether they are religious, philosophical or whatever. Also, there are undoubtedly similar statements that are now accepted for reasons other than science (through wider and deeper philosophical arguments, for example). On the other hand, almost all such writings also contain statements which are now regarded as simplistic, misguided or just plain wrong for similar reasons.
If you step back and think about it, the people who wrote the Bible (or probably almost any similar major historic work) probably weren't dedicated conformists in their time; it's quite likely that many of them were seen then as what we would now consider to be free-thinking radicals. It's quite likely that they would have been open to new ways of thinking about the world in many different contexts, so it would be amazing if there weren't statements in the Bible (or similar) that match this pattern.While I doubt any of you are scholars on the language of the Bible, I am manipulating nothing.
Do I not have a right to interpret a verse the way I see it? With that kind of logic, pointing fingers and saying "You've misinterpreted that" isn't acceptable. The problem is that you can interpret one verse a thousand different ways - does that make it wrong? I guess that's for you to decide.
What I'm surprised is that everyone is overlooking the fact that this book was written some 2000 to 3000 years ago -- not even atheists agree that it is at least somewhat credible?
Given the limited technology of the day, I am quite surprised at the understanding of the world. I guess I am the only one who finds it fascinating.
Ah well.
| Soulfire wrote: |
Given the limited technology of the day, I am quite surprised at the understanding of the world. I guess I am the only one who finds it fascinating.
|
What about the Romans and Greeks? They were pretty famous about understanding their world better than other ancient civilizations. I believe it was a Greek who first proposed the theory that the Earth rotates around the sun. | {name here} wrote: |
| Soulfire wrote: |
Given the limited technology of the day, I am quite surprised at the understanding of the world. I guess I am the only one who finds it fascinating.
|
What about the Romans and Greeks? They were pretty famous about understanding their world better than other ancient civilizations. I believe it was a Greek who first proposed the theory that the Earth rotates around the sun. |
True, but their theories were largely rejected. | Soulfire wrote: |
While I doubt any of you are scholars on the language of the Bible, I am manipulating nothing.
Do I not have a right to interpret a verse the way I see it? With that kind of logic, pointing fingers and saying "You've misinterpreted that" isn't acceptable. The problem is that you can interpret one verse a thousand different ways - does that make it wrong? I guess that's for you to decide. |
You have the right to interpret any text any way you want. You can interpret the bible as a science text; you can interpret the Divine Comedy as an autobiography; you can interpret Gor as a sex manual; you can interpret anything written by Ayn Rand as coherent. Go nuts.
Just don't expect anyone else to take your interpretations seriously unless they can be backed up with facts - facts about context or other facts.
| Soulfire wrote: |
| What I'm surprised is that everyone is overlooking the fact that this book was written some 2000 to 3000 years ago -- not even atheists agree that it is at least somewhat credible? |
There is nothing in the bible that wasn't known even 5,000 years ago. You assume a linear progression of knowledge: we didn't know, then we found out, and we've known since. That's not so. Knowledge came and went. Correct answers were deduced then overruled by dogma or other factors. People thought the Earth was a stationary plate with the Sun travelling over head, then they thought that the Earth revolved around the Sun, then they thought that the Sun revolved around the Earth, then something else and so on and so forth... and that's all just in one civilization. The ancient Isrealites were influenced by dozens of ancient civilizations (they actually produced very little knowledge themselves).
The bible is a collection of writings that span thousands of years, each picking up traits of the thinking of the time of writing. Would it be any surprise if they got things right once in a blue moon? No, not at all. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
The real question is: if the bible was divinely inspired, would it ever be wrong?
And boy is it ever wrong! It's an almost constant stream of poor science and ancient worldviews that we know are wrong, with a few marginally potentially correct facts interspersed throughout. To find facts that seem to be right, one has to bend and twist and squint.
So, credible? No, i think not. | Soulfire wrote: |
| Do I not have a right to interpret a verse the way I see it? With that kind of logic, pointing fingers and saying "You've misinterpreted that" isn't acceptable. The problem is that you can interpret one verse a thousand different ways - does that make it wrong? I guess that's for you to decide. |
In the context of this discussion, what is relevant is not your interpretation of the scriptures, but the intentions of the people who wrote them. Therefore, it's acceptable for someone to disagree on point of fact with your interpretations (in this context).
From my perspective, it seems that you're "cold reading" things into those writings that aren't there. | make_life_better wrote: |
Even given the points raised by others about the validity of the claims in each case (possible mistranslation, reinterpretation, etc), there is still a conceptual problem with the idea of science proving the Bible on any of these points.
People need to be careful about claims of proof just because science or modern knowledge agrees with some statements. There is more to it than just the final answer - there is the important part of understanding the reasoning behind the answer.
|
I agree with HM, and yet I find this somewhat sickening. You are arguing that he should not try to provide supporting evidence for his religion? It wasn't the greatest of cases presented, but your whole attitude that it was somehow wrong for him to even try sounds like fanatical bigotry to me. How dare someone with a different point of view from you try to support their point of view?? | Indi wrote: |
| Soulfire wrote: | Bible: Free float of earth in space [Job 26:7]
Now: Free float of earth in space
Then: Earth sat on a large animal |
That's just being dishonest. Some civilizations thought the Earth was on the back of an animal, not all. Given the age of Job, it's hard to determine exactly when and where its influences came from. There's no reason to presume there was anything revolutionary about the cosmology until you can actually determine what prevailing thought was. Further, the surrounding context makes clear what is actually being described is a flat Earth, not a spherical one. It would seem the only thing of interest about this cosmology is that rather than having a flat Earth supported from beneath, it has a flat Earth hanging from heaven. Cute, but still dead wrong.
|
I wasn’t too impressed with most of the other points, but this one is quite impressive, and as far as I am aware, without parallel of any kind in the ancient world. The Buddha referred to countless other Buddha worlds, but he didn’t point up at the sky while he was doing it, and that is as close as you can get to my knowledge, of any kind of parallel to this verse in Job.
If anyone is being dishonest in this case, Indi, it is you.
Job is a very interesting book, which is also one of the primary scriptural sources for Jews believing in reincarnation. There is a verse that refers to the multiplicity of lifetimes of a man. | mike1reynolds wrote: |
| make_life_better wrote: | Even given the points raised by others about the validity of the claims in each case (possible mistranslation, reinterpretation, etc), there is still a conceptual problem with the idea of science proving the Bible on any of these points.
People need to be careful about claims of proof just because science or modern knowledge agrees with some statements. There is more to it than just the final answer - there is the important part of understanding the reasoning behind the answer.
|
I agree with HM, and yet I find this somewhat sickening. You are arguing that he should not try to provide supporting evidence for his religion? It wasn't the greatest of cases presented, but your whole attitude that it was somehow wrong for him to even try sounds like fanatical bigotry to me. How dare someone with a different point of view from you try to support their point of view?? |
I am absolutely not saying that. I am wholly in favour of anybody providing evidence of any of their beliefs, whether they are religious or not. I was trying to distinguish a different thread of thought than just another argument about whether these points that soulfire raised were due to interpretation or mistranslation.
I don't think that what I wrote implies at all that it is "wrong for him to even try" - I agree that would be fanatical bigotry, and I absolutely will not accept the idea that this sort of stuff is not up for discussion here. I think that it is important for us to be able to post these questions and challenges, preferably without feeling likely to be attacked for our sincerely held views.
My point was simply that there is a conceptual problem with trying to say that any evidence of this sort proves anything about any writings. In general it is very hard to prove any theory; it is usually much easier to disprove one, and much of science is made up of theories that are widely accepted because they make the right predictions and have stood up to every test that has been tried (i.e. they haven't been disproved).
I was also trying to point out that the world view or theories that underlie ancient writings may not be the same as our current world view (comprising scientific theories, philospohy, etc.). Just because the answers came out the same doesn't mean that the reasoning behind those answers agrees at all in other cases.
Let's assume that the highlighted statements from the Bible are OK to take as quoted, i.e. we agree to put aside any discussion of translation and interpretation, and just take them at face value. Then we can certainly take them as supporting evidence, and I have no problem with that at all. However, just because some of the numbers or statements agree to some extent still does not prove anything. I am quite happy to go along with the idea that the Bible and current scientific models and theories agree on some things, and I am quite happy to accept that some of the things written in the Bible (or any other ancient writing) may be ahead of their time (or just ahead of general acceptance, or maybe even groundbreaking and new at the time). But we have little evidence that the thinking that lay behind those statements highlighted is in any general agreement with current scientific knowledge, and they may have been completely different in other cases. As Indi said above, even a broken clock is right twice a day. My point is that the notion of "proof" is often misunderstood and the word gets abused and misused, and I think it is inappropriate here. Even the word "confirms" in the subject is a bit questionable.
I suppose I have just fallen into the same "picky" trap about the use of words that some others here are perhaps better known for. I'll just shut up. 
| Indi wrote: |
And boy is it ever wrong! It's an almost constant stream of poor science and ancient worldviews that we know are wrong, with a few marginally potentially correct facts interspersed throughout. To find facts that seem to be right, one has to bend and twist and squint.
|
Actually, this is just as bad. Science has shown that there is some validity to some of the restrictions (such as pork), and it's been used to find a number of sites that there was almost no other proof for. Also, a number of the OP's points are valid (even though a few are stretching it).
I mean, the OP may have been exaggerating a bit, but it's only by a bit...
HM | Indi wrote: |
| And boy is it ever wrong! It's an almost constant stream of poor science and ancient worldviews that we know are wrong, with a few marginally potentially correct facts interspersed throughout. To find facts that seem to be right, one has to bend and twist and squint. |
Was it not you who said I needed fact to back up my statements? Anyone can say the Bible is wrong. What have you got to back it up? | make_life_better wrote: |
| I was also trying to point out that the world view or theories that underlie ancient writings may not be the same as our current world view (comprising scientific theories, philospohy, etc.). Just because the answers came out the same doesn't mean that the reasoning behind those answers agrees at all in other cases. |
Another way to look at it is to consider fiction. H. G. Wells wrote in War of the Worlds in 1898 about the Martian invaders using "heat ray" weapons that are remarkably similar to lasers... almost 20 years before Einstein laid the theoretical framework for the concept, and over 60 years before it was actually developed.
So... what? What am i supposed to gain from that? H. G. Wells could see the future? Or he just used his imagination and happened to be proven vaguely right on that particular point (while simultaneously being proven wrong on others, such as intelligent life on Mars).
| Soulfire wrote: |
| Was it not you who said I needed fact to back up my statements? Anyone can say the Bible is wrong. What have you got to back it up? |
i could simply reiterate several of your own examples to show that biblical cosmology is flat Earth with a heavenly "firmament" acting as canopy above that the stars are set in, where angels move them around (and the sun and moon as well). Take the reference in Job 26 for instance.
Or would you like an engineering analysis of the ark? 'twon't float, i can promise you that.
But you probably would dismiss my engineering background as atheist. That's fine. Explain the four-legged insects in Leviticus. A bat is apparently a bird in Deuteronomy. The list goes on and on.
But in point of fact, who cares? If the bible got it right once in a while, that doesn't imply truth... unless H. G. Wells was also a divinely inspired prophet. What would imply truth is if the bible got it right always. That is clearly not the case.1) A lot of SF fans actually respect Wells and Verne for foreseeing a lot of inventions. Then again, I think that using a SF writer as part of your analogy is a bad thing; too many scientists get inspired by SF and make those inventions come true, and SF tends to have a proven foresight about various things (a number of scenes in 2001, for example were proven to be true). Not saying by a long shot that it's 100% accurate, but enough has happened that it's just bad to have as part of your analogy...
2) I'll give you the ark and the four-legged insects; however, bats tended to end up on a lot of lists (even today) that would make it seem like too many count it as a bird, when they are just including it for completeness, and the birds list just feels right.
At the same time, The Bible does seem to get a lot of things right (not 100%, but good enough that a lot of people have taken notice).
Oh...and I'm giving you the ark due to the number of animals it was supposed to have contained; the engineering itself has been shown to work...
HM
| Indi wrote: |
i could simply reiterate several of your own examples to show that biblical cosmology is flat Earth with a heavenly "firmament" acting as canopy above that the stars are set in, where angels move them around (and the sun and moon as well). Take the reference in Job 26 for instance.
Or would you like an engineering analysis of the ark? 'twon't float, i can promise you that.
But you probably would dismiss my engineering background as atheist. That's fine. Explain the four-legged insects in Leviticus. A bat is apparently a bird in Deuteronomy. The list goes on and on.
But in point of fact, who cares? If the bible got it right once in a while, that doesn't imply truth... unless H. G. Wells was also a divinely inspired prophet. What would imply truth is if the bible got it right always. That is clearly not the case. |
And I could retaliate all of your arguments with a simple, but true fact: that is God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and exists beyond time and logic. That further implies that God can do anything.
Last edited by Soulfire on Thu Apr 26, 2007 2:30 am; edited 1 time in total | Soulfire wrote: |
Of course I am not going to be bull-headed about it, because it's not like I reject science... quite the contrary, but the thing of it is is that you cannot look at God and try to make sense of Him. |
<SLAP!>You bring up a reasonably good point, and then you try to weasel out of it like this...?
Sorry....that's just lame...
HM | HereticMonkey wrote: |
| Soulfire wrote: |
Of course I am not going to be bull-headed about it, because it's not like I reject science... quite the contrary, but the thing of it is is that you cannot look at God and try to make sense of Him. |
<SLAP!>You bring up a reasonably good point, and then you try to weasel out of it like this...?
Sorry....that's just lame...
HM |
It wasn't weaseling out. I said it because I was convinced someone was going to call me a close-minded, bull-headed nut job or something along the lines.
My point is my point.
But since I've erased it, I hope my point is clearly seen.
