lpetrich

Then what great health risk is there in eating the various kinds of no-no birds? Or aquatic invertebrates (shellfish)?

Seriously. In Leviticus 11, there is a long list of birds that one is not supposed to eat -- a list which includes bats(!).

As to that part of grasshoppers having four legs, I think that Lev11's writers were being a bit careless; they likely extrapolated from all the four-legged beasts they could see around them. But that seems a bit strange when one considers ther examination of the extremities of various domestic animals to help point out the ones that are OK to eat. They make a good start, but one that soon fizzles out.

Also, as to the bats-and-birds part, one does not have to be familiar with modern classifications to note that a bat much more closely resembles a mouse than some "other" bird. Another example of fizzling out, sad to say.

Simply compare a pigeon (a rather common and "typical" bird), a bat, and a mouse. I'll use features that the Bible's writers could easily have observed.

Pigeon Bat Mouse:

Front limbs are wings? yes, yes, no
Bare-skin nose? no, yes, yes
Teeth? no, yes, yes
Beak? yes, no, no
Covered with: feathers, hair, hair
Wing surface: feathers, skin, (no wing)

Features shared by all three are omitted as uninformative. Here is a count of shared features:

Pigeon-Bat: 1
Pigeon-Mouse: 0
Bat-Mouse: 4

So one concludes that a bat is more like a mouse than like a "typical" bird.

CX

Fair enough, but this particular passage seems to me a trivial mistake (if it is one and not simply a product of cross-cultural or translational signal loss) and one easily dispatched by those inclined to accept it as the "word of (an omnipotent) god". In any event such discussions are almost always utterly pointless and discussion of a more substantial nature are generally not understood by the majority of Xians and non-Xians alike.

aberdeen

If one wishes to challenge what is truly good and not good for human beings to eat, that one is on rather shakey ground. There is no particular agreement among modern nutritionists and others about what is fundamentally good for us. Many disease, both mental and physical, obviously are either caused or encouraged by what we eat. Since modern science has yet to find a cure for many types of cancer, stress, mental disease and a great many other diseases, as human beings we really do not know what is harmful at the fundamental level and what is not. There is really no rational argument to say that pork is particularly good or particularly bad for us or that bat meat or other insects are particularly good or bad, thus to say the Bible is wrong is based on our modern information of ultimate dietary reprocussions is truly an error. The fact remains is that we simply do not know.

Hawkingfan

It is too the point. The OP is asking what scientific errors are contained in the bible. The scripture I sighted is a scientific error that still stands even after looking at it in the context of the Hebrew writers. It stands as inconclusive. At least Lev 11 verse 20 because we have a flying insect with 4 legs (not 6 as implied in verse 21). Since there are no insects with 4 legs, we have no idea what the hell they are talking about in verse 20 and there is no problem with identifying it as a scientific error until someone comes up with a definite answer. Since god is omnipotent, the answer should be definite. But it isn't.

Hawkingfan

Since billions of people have eaten pork all their lives and live long lives in spite of it, I'd say the evidence is clearly in favor of it not being harmful. I have heard reports that cured pork can be harmful because it contains sodium nitrate, but no such reports of natural pork products. Of course, people who eat it in moderation all their lives generally are fine, it seems. I doubt the Hebrews cured their pork.

And I am aware that many of the ridiculous laws in Leviticus were meant to keep the Hebrews healthy and protect them from disease, but all of the remedies are scientifically inaccurate and many of the laws totally arbitrary to the problem. The omnipotent god, knowing the actual scientific cause of the disease, should precisely know the remedy to keep one safe from it. But many remedies are totally ridiculous (and superstitious) and show that the Hebrews did not have a good understanding of medicine (much of it basic).

aberdeen

The book of Eccleasties says the sun also rises. Do you think it is fair to call this a scientific error or more accurate to call it correct from the author's perspective? There probably are no ultimate universal laws from true perspective as also, time itself does not exist beyond our own constructs and perception of it. In other words, everything modern science believes is based on a perspective, not based on ultimate universal LOGOS perspective and thus, is so much cowpie in the ultimate reality. Language itself inhibits us from writing anything exactly true, even if we knew what it was. I think it is quite obvious that the author or authors of Leviticus wrote in a form that was easily understood by the people of that culture--it was probably a cultural given in that particular society that these creatures had 4 'legs'...

In another perspective, we could easily say that human beings have four legs instead of two legs and two arms. We have four extremeites, our language has diferentiated these over time for the sake of description, not because they are necessarily scientifically all that different; people born without arms have learned to use their legs and toes very much the way most of us use arms and fingers.

enrious

Ok, so aside from the argument from ignorance stance you take, what, pray tell, what would the DNA of that person born of a virgin birth look like?

What would fill in for the father's side of the genetic material?

Regardless of the answer you come up with, answer the following: Would that offspring be considered human?

Quote:

Why would it be hard for the Grand Designer of the universe to cause a virgin to give birth? You have to do better than that...

Sure, you can go around and answer every question about the natural world with "Goddidit".

However, that ain't science.

At best that's an evasive non-answer.

aberdeen

All of what we call science breaks down from true LOGOS perspective. For example, our universal laws of light, gravity, etc are undoubtedly not correct from true LOGOS (universal or God) perpective--the Hubble has already cast serious doubts on the validity of current theories of both. Likewise, the concept of time is only a construct from our perspective; as far as we know, there is no such thing as time outside of our own persepectives of birth, death, earth spinning on its axis, etc. Hate to break your bubble, but if you want to argue about what is scientifically true, then you have no solid platform for which to argue.

The history of science also clearely postulates that what we call science today will be utterly scorned 100 years from now, as by then we will know how ignorant our current theories truly are. There is no true science from our view, so don't try to pretend that there is. Neither is it all irrational to assume that the Creator could cause a virgin to give birth, either to a human, a partial human or even a total non-human---people who try to 'scientifically' limit the Creator are truly speaking out of the end they normally sit on.

--Aberdeen
www.AberdeenFoundation.org

Jayjay

In Genesis 31, however, Jacob tells his wives that God appeared to him in a dream and told Jacob that "all the rams which leap upon the cattle are ringstraked, speckled, and grisled". So it wasn't the environment, it was God, and the misunderstanding of genetics was Jacob's alone.

Why Jacob bothered with the elaborate set-up if God already told him that the lambs are going to be striped and speckled, that I don't know.

Sarpedon

Lets see, around 100 years ago, Einstein was formulating his theory of relativity, Salk was out vaccinatin', Thermodynamics had been established, organelles were being discovered, Nobel was inventing TNT, Edison was at work in Menlo park, Tesla was alternating currents...I don't scorn this science, and I doubt that people living 100, or even 1000 years from now will scorn it, or the science of today. What people will scorn is the idiot, junk "science" that the ignorant today believe; crystals, psychics, paranormalism etc. Just as I scorn the mountebanks that were at work 100 years ago. True science builds upon itself, no real scientist claims that their theory is the end all and be all. Your objection, aberdeen comes from the common misconception that religious people have: that science is just another religion, so you expect that we have the same failings as you do: for example, the irrational clinging to the badly translated myths of primitive savages living thousands of years ago. When scientists make mistakes, they correct it.(remember the scientists who announced the color of the universe was turquoise? later, they realized that they had made an error in calculation, and announced that their findings showed that it is closer to being tan, they were embarrassed, but they admitted their error) Religious people pretend that their myths are inerrant. The theory of relativity, now 100 years old, has continuously held up to constant testing. All of your so-called miracles occurred thousands of years ago, and are recorded in anonymous and mutually contradictory accounts. Why don't miracles happen today? because they only exist in fables and folklore. They are products of exaggeration, hearsay, and lies. The religious believe that there is an ultimate "LOGOS" truth. Science knows that there is none. You criticize science for not supporting your absurd belief. We got over that with Heisenberg. (also, a good long time ago, and still valid)

And furthermore, the merest glance at history has shown that religion has changed a lot more over the course of 100 years than science has. Virtually every established christian church has made changes in the past 100 years that would have shocked its members in 1903. Religion changes with the times, because the goal of religion is to make money and maintain its powers, so religion is ever following the popular trend. (the pope recently said that evolution was more than just a theory, by Jiminy!) In contrast, the observations and experiments preformed by Galileo are as valid today as they were nearly 500 years ago.

In conclusion: religion claims to be inerrant and constant, yet it it changes as frequently as fashion. Science constantly grows and renews itself, but its remain as firm as when they were planted.