I have been challenged by Richard Aberdeen to provide a list of his "erroneous claims" of what the Bible actually says. This thread is my response.
Note: I will not address in detail the Bible's scientific errors on this thread (though I'll mention them in passing). There are other threads dealing with that. Here, I'm concerned mostly with Richard's wayward interpretations of what the Bible actually says and what its authors clearly intended.
From his
RANDOM CHANCE A-Z PRIMER OF SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE:
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The Bible claims that in the beginning, God created the heavens (plural) and the earth, created our current universe after that, presently creates, will continue to create in the future and that there are beings that exist outside the realm of our three-dimensional physical reality.
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"Heavens" is an English phrase. The Bible wasn't written in English, so you can't argue that God created multiple Universes without quoting the original Hebrew. Also, the beings in the Bible live in a physical location above the solid dome that covers the Earth (the Firmament dome): you get to Heaven by going UP.
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Some modern scientists have speculated that the universe may be surrounded by water; i.e., that it may be a huge cosmic 'bubble' expanding in a much larger cosmic ocean. The Bible says the universe is an expansion that is surrounded by water.
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Neither of these statements is true. Scientific theories about multiple Universes don't suggest water as an inter-Universal medium, and the Bible refers to the creation of the Earth's land masses from the ocean. This, too, contradicts modern science: the land came first, the oceans formed when the Earth cooled enough for liquid water to condense from steam.
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C) Modern science claims that our known current universe took a very long time, that is from our human perspective, to come into being. So does the Bible.
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The Bible says six days. It's quite specific about that, apparently to clear up an ambiguity in Hebrew with the word for "day" possibly signifying an indefinite period: it specifically mentions evenings and mornings. Old-Earth Creationism was invented by Christian apologists because the Bible got this wrong.
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Modern science claims that the earth is spherical. So does the Bible (although this interpretation is disputed by some).
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Nowhere does the Bible claim that the Earth is spherical. The Hebrews believed that the Earth was flat and covered by a solid dome (the Firmament) to which the stars were attached. This view is consistent right through to the last book, Revelation: a dragon knocks one-third of the stars in the sky down to Earth, and the Firmament will roll back like a scroll to reveal Heaven to those on Earth.
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The Bible compares the number of stars to the number of grains of sand on the earth, which it says cannot be numbered; the Bible made this comparison long before the invention of the telescope.
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This is, of course, just a figure of speech, and requires no supernatural knowledge. It is also technically wrong: the number of sand grains on Earth is finite, and can therefore be numbered. In fact, the scientists you refer to wouldn't be able to make the comparison without an estimate of that number!
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Modern science speculates that the newly formed earth was originally shrouded in cloud cover (some theories) and that the earth was covered by water in its infancy. The Bible agrees that the earth was originally shrouded in cloud cover, that the earth was originally covered by water and says that plant life appeared while the earth was still influenced by the resultant 'greenhouse effect' of the primordial cloud covering.
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As previously mentioned, there was originally no liquid water on the Earth. And the Bible says nothing about a "primordial cloud covering". That's a later claim by Christian apologists.
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According to the Bible, plant life emerged before the sun, moon and stars were visible in the sky as seen from the perspective of the earth. Also, according to the Bible, plant life first emerged before both marine life and creatures of the earth, which according to the Bible, appeared after sea creatures; modern science concurs that marine life appeared before creatures of the earth. The only real difference between the Biblical story and that of modern science theory regarding the order of appearance of life is the appearance of plant life in the sequence.
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The Bible mentions the creation of plant life before the Sun and Moon: there is no "seen from the perspective of Earth" condition, this was invented by Christian apologists because the Bible got the sequence wrong. It makes no sense, from the context, beacuse there were supposedly no observers on the Earth at the time. Also, plants were not the first form of life: photosynthesis was a later development.
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It is possible (based on the correctness of the Bible regarding other matters, most probable) that plant life emerged far earlier than modern science can find evidence for and that evidence of earlier plant life was destroyed by cataclysmic events before the existence of the current known fossil record of flora. According to a recently released report by the University of Quebec, "the story of the planet's first billion years [is] still largely unknown, with little information available on a period that saw the formation of the moon and the first traces of life, such as bacteria in the ocean. This is a capital period of our evolution that however remains a great mystery, since geological traces that are preserved are not much available before 3.6 billion years." Science has been very wrong many times in the comparatively recent past and it remains entirely possible that plant life initially appeared on land before animal species existed in the ocean.
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An over-elaborate way of saying "the Bible disagrees with science, therefore I will assume that science is wrong". And the Bible contains MANY errors, so there is no basis for the assumption that it's "probably" right on this.
Incidentally, 3.6 billion years is almost as far back as the end of the great bombardment of planetesimals which formed the Earth (thought to have ended 3.8 billion years ago). Plants would not have survived that. And large land plants actually appeared MUCH later than fossil bacteria in the oceans: like about
three billion years later...
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Modern science claims cultivation developed among our species from 10 to 12 thousand years ago, but fails to consider that reasoning capacity which includes farming techniques and animal domestication may be defining criteria of our species. The Bible claims that tilling of the soil began about 8 to 10 thousand years ago, the slight difference may be attributed to varying definition of what constitutes true farming.
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No, it does not. The creation of the world can be dated from Biblical genealogies to 4,000 BC or thereabouts. The "slight difference" is pure fiction.
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Unlike modern science, the Bible indicates that intellectual ability that results in cultivation of the earth and animal domestication is a defining criteria that separates us from other species...
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No, it does not. We are supposedly different because we're "made in God's image".
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Modern science claims Homo erectus appeared at least 1.4 million years ago but is rather vague as to when Homo sapiens sapiens actually appeared, most placing a figure of 15-30 thousand years or so ago. The Bible claims that actual human beings arrived about 8-10 thousand years ago...
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Homo Sapiens goes back at least 160,000 years, with "modern" forms going back at least 60,000 years (the first Australians). The Bible says 6,000 years.
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Modern science claims that all species on our planet evolved from a single primary source. The Bible and the consistent evidence of modern fruit fly experimentation indicates that flora and fauna ‘types’ (similar to Genus or Family in scientific classification) reproduce after their “own kind". There is considerable modern evidence to suggest that species may not have evolved from a single primary source, including a surprising (to Darwin’s prediction) lack of cross-over species in the fossil record, as well as the immense timeframe necessary to develop from a primordial prototype to a relatively advanced, single-celled organism and then, on to a highly advanced in-living-color eyeballed species such as our own. What Natural Selection pre-supposes would arguably take considerably longer than the 4.5 billion years or so the earth has theoretically been in existence for such immense variation and advancements to be achieved. It is perhaps more likely that species have arisen from several or maybe even thousands of primary sources; theoretically, almost anywhere where there is water could be a primordial breeding ground for life, including deep within large caves and at the bottom of the "midnight" ocean.
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This is being addressed in Evolution/Creation. Briefly, it is baloney.
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Modern science claims that no person is 100% hetero or homo sexual, but that we are all caught up somewhere between these two extremes. So does the Bible, although the Bible contains the more accurate view that we all fall "short" of being sexually whole; according to the Bible, there is fundamentally no difference before our Creator between ‘hetero’, ‘bi’ or ‘homo’ sexual human beings, as people are conveniently and very incorrectly defined and classified in modern-day society.
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According to the Bible, homosexuality is an abomination. I'm aware that gay Christians have an alternate view based on what sort of gay sex is being discussed, and what the word translated as "abomination" actually means: but nowhere in the Bible does it state that there is "fundamentally no difference before our Creator between ‘hetero’, ‘bi’ or ‘homo’ sexual human beings". This is wishful thinking.
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The Bible and the known historical evidence of our species say this is the result of an underlying disease that the Bible calls "sin". This disease is driven by an irrational love of wealth emanating from the often masked (even to our own selves) underlying motivations and intentions of our species, i.e., from the "heart", and is the root cause of theft, rape, murder, war and all that ills We The People of Planet Earth.
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No, it supposedly comes from Adam and Eve eating the Forbidden Fruit, according to a later interpretation of Genesis by Christians. But there's nothing in the original story that pins it on a "love of wealth".
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Recently a video presentation on the Discovery Channel went by the title, "The Science Of Sin". Contained in this presentation was a detailed explanation of very recent scientific findings which indicate strongly that violence, rape, addiction and other undesirable tendencies of our species are inherited and passed along in the gene pool from generation to generation. Scientists and other intellectuals once openly scoffed at the Biblical claim that "sins of the Fathers" are passed down to future generations. Now, as in many other areas noted here in the paragraphs above and below, modern science is finally catching up to what the Bible long ago claimed to be true.
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No, the Biblical reference to "sins of the fathers" relates to God's habit of punishing kids directly for specific crimes committed by their parents "unto the third or fourth generation" and so forth: an expression of the Biblical God's savagery.
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Many modern intellectuals claim that Human Rights is the correct and just yardstick from which to measure that which is positive toward and which will improve our species. So does the Bible; Jesus taught that this is the sum of what matters toward the positive good of our species.
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The Old Testament is full of what we would now call "human rights violations" by God, so claims that the Bible teaches human rights are laughable. Even the New Testament doesn't teach that humans have a
right to salvation: it basically says that we should be grateful to get it at all.
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Modern science has no valid explanation for why our species continues, after 5,000 years of Human Rights education to the contrary, to violate fundamental Human and Civil rights among its own members. Neither does it have a valid explanation for theories of God, conscience, and/or good and evil, and it has no rational conclusion for why people do not automatically love their neighbor as themselves, if indeed, this is desirable toward our positive good, that is, survival of our species. If not, why do so many educated members of our species believe that it is and why does a similar idea show up in a very great many diverse cultures; i.e., who lied to us and why? If there is no good or evil, how could our species lie? Unlike modern science, the Bible does have a good explanation, which accurately matches the historical and current record of the behavior of our species.
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You have it backwards. Modern science DOES have a good explanation: evolution. The Bible does not. There is no adequate Biblical explanation of why God allowed sin into the world: the "free will defense" was invented by Christian theologians.
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The Bible has a very good explanation for why our children are not easily trained to be as good as we would like them to be (regardless of what our conception of good might be, which differs from culture to culture and parent to parent). The Biblical explanation matches all known physical, historical and psychological evidence.
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No, it does not. There was no Garden of Eden, no Adam and Eve 6,000 years ago. And, as previously noted, no real Biblical explanation of sin.
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Some modern scientists have speculated that beings from habitats beyond the earth may have visited our planet one or more times. The Bible says that this is true.
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Not "beings from other planets", however: angels from above the Firmament dome.
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Modern science speculates that the universe probably contains other life forms. The Bible says that the universe and apparently other universes as well, are literally teeming with various life forms, some greater (as science would say, "more advanced") than our own species.
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Only those angels and deities above the Firmament dome.
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Some scientists believe that the earth may have changed rotational direction in the past. The Bible indicates this is true.
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No and no. Precession of the Earth's rotational axis isn't comparable to God stopping the Earth's rotation for a day.
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Modern science claims that the universe contains places of outer darkness, great bottomless pits filled with the fire and brimstone of star remnants from which nothing can escape (including light, thus "outer darkness"); at least one would assume that they are filled with remnants of stars torn apart---modern science claims to be uncertain exactly what is in them. The Bible agrees that at least one black hole exists, although the Bible seems to be quite certain what is in it.
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Sheol is not a "black hole": it is the area underneath the flat Earth. And the Christian Hell is nothing like a black hole either. Black holes don't contain lakes of fire.
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Modern science claims that the current universe will one day vanish, either by expanding until it eventually burns out or by contracting and being reborn as a new universe. The Bible says that the universe will one day pass away, the heavens will be rolled back like a scroll and stars will fall from the sky. This is an accurate description, considering the historical timeframe it was written, for the expanding-ever-faster universe science has only very recently ‘discovered’ based on measurements using the Hubble Telescope---before this recent discovery, scientists utterly scorned this previously assumed preposterous Biblical claim of a vanishing universe and stars falling from the sky.
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Revelation refers to the future removal of the Firmament dome and the falling of stars to Earth. This is NOT an accurate description.
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This especially cunning and deceptive individual will also control who may buy and sell by use of the above-mentioned mark and he will worship a new god that no one has ever heard of, the "god of fortresses" (i.e., do nuclear weapons, space-based 'defensive' weaponry and the New World Order profiteering war-machine-for-home-land-protection' ring any "god of fortresses" golden-calf cash register bells?).
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None of this, of course, has actually happened yet. Increasingly, you are arguing here that the Bible WILL be accurate.
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Modern scientists, it would seem, have had a rather difficult time trying to find evidence of God by depending on a ‘science’ that refuses to examine any of the overwhelming evidence for design. Then again, if one chooses to step beyond the blindfolds of modern 'scientific' superstition and simply wander out into the natural world and look around for a while with one’s own two eyes and, using one’s own God-given intellect, one can readily begin to see evidence of the three-in-one "Godhead" of our Creator, just as the Bible claims is the case---note the word "evidence".
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You have it backwards. If you step beyond the blindfolds of ancient, primitive superstition and simply wander out into the natural world and look around for a while with one’s own two eyes and, using one’s own evolved intellect, one can readily begin to see evidence of
evolution. That's where it came from: not from any "holy book", but from observation of the world.
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One might also fairly ask how Jesus conceived of the entire scope and sum of what modern Human Rights activists now consider to be ethically and morally correct.
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You're saying that slavery is morally correct?
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In other and very true and correct words, modern science has no valid rationale for how someone as intelligent and accurate as Jesus, having no modern historical, scientific or educational background, could randomly appear within our species...
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Human reproduction. Alternatively, the telling of stories.
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...nor does it have any logical explanation why such an "advanced" species as ours would crucify its greatest moral teacher on a Roman cross...
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Fallacy of "begging the question". Assumes that Jesus actually exsited, that Jesus actaully was the "greatest moral teacher", and that Jesus actually was crucified on a Roman cross. But are you saying that science has no logical explanation of how hammers and nails operate?
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If one pays attention to detail and compares the above carefully, it will become readily apparent that modern science and the authors of the Bible agree on far more than most who have not compared them carefully would assume. Likewise, they agree on practically everything that can reasonably be proven based on the known modern evidence, the vast majority of which was not at all available to the authors of the Bible. The burning question of the 21st Century thus then may very well be: If there is no God and/or, if the authors of the Bible were not tuned in to our Creator, how the hell did they know so much of what our modern science has only very recently discovered?
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Simple. They didn't.
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And finally, why are modern Christians and modern scientists arguing together against the over-whelming evidence that cries out to be examined for what is true, basing illogical and contradictory conclusions from assumed and unbending pontificated positions entirely devoid of scientific and/or, rational deduction, instead of simply, going by the evidence?
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Why, indeed!
07-25-2003, 08:23 AM
Richard Aberdeen's Biblical Errors
