Duvenoy

"No. But there are parts of the Bible which are obviously NOT "metaphorical", such as Lot's wife turning into a "pillar of salt". Ever heard of some of the results of the explosion of a nuclear bomb?"


I must admit that I have never heard this one before. Remarkable!

But would there not be geologic evidence for such an event? Or even a non-nuke explosion of such a magnitude as to destroy two cities? I would think so - it didn't happen all that long ago, geologicly speaking. But like the evidence of a world-wide flood, none has been forth-coming.

doov

edited to clean up the usual tpyos.

[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: Duvenoy ]</p>

Mageth

In any case, Lot's wife "turning to look" might not have merely involved her turning her head or body, but turning and moving in the opposite direction (for some period of time), heading back towards Sodom and Gomorroh, perhaps to try to get a better view of what would happen. That would be consistent with the Biblical account, and there might have been a fair distance between her and Lot when she was "turned into a pillar of salt". If so, probably she and Lot had a bit of an argument, and then she followed through on her decision to go back for a better look. Possible.

Got that camel through the eye yet, there, Douglas?

I'm always amazed at how apologists can accept many miraculous stories of the bible at face value yet strain their brains trying to think up naturalistic, scientific explanations for others. Like they're trying to say, "See, this magic book IS scientific! The NUCLEAR BLAST coulda turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt!"

pseudobug

Actually, Duvenoy, there are pillars of salt in the Dead Sea area that can get 8-12 feet high. They are formed from the evaporation/condensation of the highly saline water.

Not coincdently, the biblical city of Sodom is thought to be in the area of the Dead Sea.

I rececently saw a show on Biblical archaeology where it was proposed that the Sodom story was the typical "demonize your enemy" type of situation that is not even uncommon today. It was proposed that the Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt bit was a bit of hyperfabrication to emphasize the wickedness of whatever tribe of goat-herding Jews were warring with the people of Sodom to make it more memorable.

Douglas J. Bender

Jack (the Bodiless),


Hey, if you're not proof that the mind can exist apart from the body, I don't know what is. Unless, of course, the atheists here would argue that you are "mindless". (Just kidding.)

Here's the Strong's Concordance entry for the Hebrew word translated in Leviticus 11 in the KJV as "fowl":

Note the following: "...or RATHER as covering WITH WINGS...". Note also that it could simply mean, essentially, things "that flieth". It is NOT a biologically-defined term used in a strict scientific sense. Thus, there is no scientific contradiction in the Biblical use of that term to include "bats" along with what we define as "birds".

In Christ,

Douglas

RufusAtticus

If it is not a strict scietific manner, why would creationists have us use the Bible as a work of science? Is it a science book when you want it to be, and not when you want it to not be?

~~RvFvS~~

[ June 15, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Principia

Amazing, a poorly defined term with no scientific contradiction.

[ June 15, 2002: Message edited by: Scientiae ]</p>

Duvenoy

"I rececently saw a show on Biblical archaeology where it was proposed that the Sodom story was the typical "demonize your enemy" type of situation that is not even uncommon today. It was proposed that the Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt bit was a bit of hyperfabrication to emphasize the wickedness of whatever tribe of goat-herding Jews were warring with the people of Sodom to make it more memorable."


That's about the way I had it figured - I've read the Bible but am no way any kind of a scholar on the subject. I've always thought Lot's wife got a raw deal.

Thanks, Pseudobug.

doov

scigirl

Well said, rufus.

Fact is, it's really a horrible science text. Not even that good of a history text either.

scigirl

lpetrich

Here are my favorite bits of Bible biology:

Genesis 30: Jacob makes a deal with Laban; Jacob will care for Laban's livestock, which are solid-colored, but will get to keep spotted and streaked livestock, which may reasonably be presumed to be others' strays.

So Jacob gets an idea. He paints stripes on some sticks and shows them to Laban's livestock as new ones were getting conceived. The offspring, unlike their parents, were spotted and streaked, and Jacob got to keep them.

Leviticus 11 is an adventure into taxonomy. I'll try to analyze it. It starts off good, but it makes several mistakes that could easily be corrected by careful observation, even with the technology of 2500-3000 years ago.

It starts off (3) by stating that split-hoofed animals that chew the cud are OK to eat. This is somewhat redundant, in that all ruminants in Earth's biota have split hooves, or more precisely, double hooves on each limb.

But it soon makes a famous mistake (5) about rabbits and cud-chewing. Perhaps rabbits like to twitch their noses, but I am not familiar with rabbits.

This is followed by forbidding the eating of everything that lives in the water that does not have fins and scales (9). Fish form a coherent taxonomic group, so that's OK.

Then follows a long list of no-no birds (13), with several kinds being individually named.

The bat (19) is a famous mistake. Though most bats have the overall size and shape of small birds, that's "overall" in a very broad sense. A closer look at a bat reveals that it looks much more like a mouse than a "true" bird. I'll give details at the end of my posting.

The book continues with stating that some "insects" have four legs (21), listing orthopterans (grasshoppers, locusts, crickets) as being OK to eat (22).

The four-legs bit may be a mis-extrapolation from bigger beasts that keep their main body axes horizontal as they walk -- which are almost all four-legged.

However, most land arthropods have either six or eight legs, not four. One does have to look closely to be able to count, but since some of the people in the Bible had eaten grasshoppers, I wonder if any one of them had ever bothered to take a close look at one of them before eating it.

This is followed by mention of four-legged animals with paws as no-nos (27) and a taxonomic mishmash (29) as falling into that category.

Now here are my bird-bat-mouse comparisons, in format (feature) (bird version), (bat version), (mouse version):

Can fly -- yes, yes, no
Front limbs are wings -- yes, yes, no
Front limbs have stretched skin -- no, yes, no
Front-limb digits -- 3, 4 or 5, 5
Rear-limb digits -- 4, 5, 5
Body is covered by -- feathers, hair, hair
External ears -- no, yes, yes
Exposed-skin nose -- no, yes, yes
Mouth has -- beak, teeth, teeth
Offspring released as -- eggs, live, live

Coragyps

Some more nice biology/epidemology is in Leviticus: much of chapters 13 and 14 deal with how you tell whether a garment (woolen or linen, in the warp or in the woof) or a house has leprosy. In short, if you have your greenish or reddish streaks in your clothes or plaster, you may be infected. Do any of you who have had microbiology remember plaster as a culture medium for M. leprae? Does it make reddish colonies?

I thought not.