lpetrich

First, to add to my previous point, the noncanonical book 1 Enoch goes into a lot of detail about various astronomical phenomena, though when it gets away from what is directly observable, it is rather off-the-wall by present-day standards.

Furthermore, it's no trouble to come up with simplified versions of modern scientific theories that the writers of the Bible could easily understand. There is no need to use lots of fancy jargon when starting out; thus, instead of using "autocoprophagy"; one says "rabbits eat their own dung."

At the very least, one would discuss methodology and simple observational and experimental techniques -- like how to do a controlled experiment.

And as to theories, here goes:

The sky only looks like a bowl because the air acts like a thin fog; the Sun lights it up in the daytime, keeping us from seeing the stars.

The Moon is shaped like a ball; its phases are from being illuminated by the Sun from different directions.

The Earth is also shaped like a ball, as is evident from eclipses of the Moon; the Moon itself causes eclipses of the Sun by going in front of it. Eclipses are a shadowing effect, not some frightening omen.

Water evaporation and condensation could be demonstrated by boiling a pot of water and holding a chilled metal object above it -- water droplets may appear on it. This explains why the oceans do not fill up, something which had puzzled the author of Ecclesiastes.

Bats are much more like mice than like "true" birds; here's a table of features for mice, bats, and birds, omitting what they have in common:

Wings: no, yes, yes
Teeth: yes, yes, no
Fleshy nose: yes, yes, no
Beak: no, no, yes
External ears: yes, yes, no
Body covering: hair, hair, feathers

Mouse-bat: 5
Mouse-bird: 0
Bat-bird: 1

Dargo

You'd think that among all the nonsense in the old Testament laws Yahweh could have given a few basics of medicine. Simply explaining how to make soap and telling midwives to scrub their hands with it before delivering babies would have saved many lives! I guess those menstral impurity rules were more important.

Shinobi

"Now if God revealed that information to us today, we would pass it off as
nonsense. Had God revealed the information we know now to those living
2000-5000 years ago, none of it would make any sense.

For example, how is God to explain the creation of Adam to a people who don't
even know what amino acids are or have the knoweldge of biochemistry that would
be necessary to explain them? Those who wrote the Bible through God's
inspiration were given that inspiration in a way that would make sense to them
and the other people of their time."

I don't buy this. Surely an omnipotent auther would be able to word things in a way to make things understood by people. Like how scientists explain complex phenomena to the public using analogy and other simplifying devices. Another thing, I assume that the purpose of God inspiring the bible is to get people to beleive in and follow him, a really effective method would be to explain quantum physics then when we have the knowlege 2000 years later we could look back on the bible and say "wow!, god laid the smack down on this stuff in perfect detail 2000 years ago! I'm convinced!" If the bible was divinely inspired I would expect this sort of thing. Surely it's not too hard for a God to raise the bar of human knowlege by educating us.

Why isnt there an updated bible? Why does'nt he make a new
Bible v4.3 filled with scientific data that we can use an comprehend? They are my reasons for thinking the essense of this post is B.S.

The Other Michael

Many present-day people have at least a moderate grasp of scientific principles by their late teens. If Yahweh had churned out a bunch more stone tablets giving the next generation of Hebrew children a sound education, they too could have understood all our current scientific theories.

Yahweh is obviously not the Education God.

cheers,
Michael

lpetrich

Calling the Bible coherent is an absolute absurdity. Maybe some theological constructions, but not the Bible itself.

And it's reading the Bible that has made me suspicious of it. I was appalled when I read that story of Jesus Christ cursing that fig tree just because it did not have figs ready for him.

NonHomogenized

I find it amazing that anyone can actually read the bible, and still take it seriously. It starts out with the old testament; a book of nothing but erroneous information, atrocities, geneology, and, occasionally, a story which doesn't involve the aforementioned. All in all, an extremely unconvincing argument for the existence of the god it is supposed to be the book of. Furthermore, it demonstrates that, if said god existed, it's a monster.
Then, we have the new testament. At first glance, it seems to start out with 4 fiction authors trying to tell the same story. Unfortunately, all of them seem about as gifted as L. Ron Hubbard, as the story is wholly unbelievable and presupposes the existence of the god from the old testament. Since there was no good reason to believe in said god to begin with, there is no reason to consider the stories of the main character, Jesus, to be rational, and, as such, they can only be considered fantasy. These are coupled with odd (to say the least) stories and quotes, in which we see that the authors really suck, as they cannot maintain a consistent characterization, or provide plausible motivations/defense for the behaviour of their own characters.
To sum it up, the bible has the believability of those stories told by 6 year olds to explain things, not quite as much entertainment value as said, and the intellectual depth equivalent to the depth of a puddle, as well as literary quality that would fail a first-grader, were they to hand it in as a composition.

Hired Gun

Au contraire! The effect that I was referring to concerns the gravity of the Barycenter. This is the system of gravity which causes a 'second' tide and depends on the earth's rotation. The 'first' tide depends on the gravitational effect of the moon. Therefore, if the earth stopped rotating, it would have only one tide. This would probably effect the sensitive marine ecosystem. So you see, there is a system of gravity that does indeed depend on the earth's rotation.

I took it for granted that most people know that the earth's gravity is dependent upon its mass and not its rotation. Had I known that my e-mail to Mark was going to be posted on the forum, I certainly would have made my statement more clear in order to avoid this type of misunderstanding. I never feel the need to state the obvious...unless, of course, I am engaged in a conversation involving infidels.org! ha ha

While I am here, I may as well also state that we would not 'all' fry; Only those on the earth facing the sun would 'get very hot' (I'm not sure if the temperature would be enough to literally fry us), while those on the surface away from the sun would become very cold. Legalists provide good motivation for one to be careful with one's words.

Thank you all for your comments.
A.S.A. Jones

Tenspace

Has anyone come across rational studies of what would happen if the earth would stop rotating? I think that's about as logical as asking what would an electron be like without its spin. You can't do it. The earth, or any large rotating mass for that matter, doesn't just stop spinning. Even if it did, what about the inertia of the molten core... wouldn't the various plates that make up the mantle crash against each other? Too many defining physical variables to even consider the stoppage of the earth.

Even god has to play by the rules. We have yet to witness a single miraculous event. Not one case of physical laws of nature being broken. Not one. If He's performing miracles, where are they? I want to see the laws of physics cold-cocked and kicked in the groin before I believe in... well, anything other than what my five senses tell me.

Thank you,

Tenspace

braces_for_impact

While I agree that sometimes in the "great debate" about biblical inerrancy people can become lost in the minute details, it seems that even taking these miraculous details as symbolic does not solve any problems within the bible.

Even if we were to remove every miraculous event from the texts we would still have a moral problem. God cannot seem to demonstrate the same moral behavior he demands of his subjects. This is in direct contrast to the characteristics that most Christians seem to tell us their particular deity has, i.e. omnibenevolence and omniscience.

Also, I think that people tend to underetimate the intelligence of our ancient ancestors. They seemed perfectly capable of understanding basic truths about cosmology or anstronomy. Surely a small note about the 'round earth' or 'rocks around the sun' couldn't have hurt?

Maybe even a few pictures? If god can inspire writers, why not artists? I mean if I had studied various other ancient religious texts which described a flat earth and then opened the bible to Genesis to say this...





I would have been impressed.

Zora

Noboby knows who wrote the Bible, so how can we know they were inspired? We have to assume that mankind was totally stupid and the wonderful Bible could only have been dictated by God. So, if they were smart enough to write, how could they be that stupid? We have to believe that the parent of the human race issued orders to his children and when they disobeyed, they were damned forever unless they followed an uninteligible set of rules still in dispute today.

If you have a baby, do you hand him a book and say, "Here, you'll understand this someday" while you watch him crawl off the edge of a cliff? Would you say "no, no" while he stuck his finger in a light socket. Or would you, as a parent, do whatever it took to keep the baby from hurting himself because you as a parent know he is not capable knowing the dangers of his environment and actions.

If human parents treated their children like God treats his, they would be up on charges of abuse and neglect. If you tried to have a relationship with a person who acted like God, you would be assumed to need counseling for self esteem issues. If you applied the "logic" of religion in any other area of your life, you would be rationalizing, in denial, or whatever. If you applied "faith" to deciding the facts in a trial, you would be a miserable excuse for a juror.

I don't care how much you tell me the Bible is inerrant, divinely inspired, metaphorical vs. literal, or whatever else you have to say. My gut tells me that it is a book, written by men, and contains some truth. Period. You can argue until you are purple, but I still have to have proof. Just because a book contains some truth doesn't mean its all truth. That's like saying "New York City exists, and the Empire State Building exists, therefore King Kong was real." Please!