On 1/01/2013 2:47 PM, Jojo Jaro wrote:
... I have still to encounter a statement in
the Bible that science has found to be categorically false.
I challenge you or anyone to prove me wrong on this. But do it one at a
time so that I can respond properly to it. Do not cut and paste a blog from
an Atheist web site. I won't have time or the capability to respond to that
in a meaningful way.
Let's start with one that we can probably all agree on: I was rather
amazed to find recently that there was a Professor Philip Stott arguing
on an international website of a doctoral degree granting theological
seminary, that the earth really was fixed and that the sun etc revolved
around it! (I don't blame the seminary - I am impressed that they allow
such freedom of expression! and he is not a Professor of the seminary)
Here is a link to some of his writing regarding geocentricity:
http://reformation.edu/scripture-science-stott/geo/pages/01-thinking-reasoning-geocentrically.htm
Quoting a snippet:
To the Bible-believers of Copernicus's day there was simply no doubt
about the Bible's geocentricity. Copernicus said "surely it is more
reasonable to assume that the earth rotates once each day than that
the entire universe rotates around it." Calvin countered with "The
heavens revolve daily; immense as is their fabric, and inconceivable
the rapidity of their revolutions" [commentary to Psalm 93:1] in
deliberate scripture-based contradiction. Luther, speaking of
Copernicus's idea said "Even in these things which are thrown into
disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures." Galileo was so confident
that the Bible puts the earth stationary at the centre of the
universe that to disregard it he had to say "In matters concerning
the natural sciences Holy Writ must occupy the last place."
Why were they so certain of the Bible's stand?
Well for one thing Genesis 1 tells us that God created the unformed
watery waste of the earth on the first day. On day two He separated
the waters above from the waters below by an expanse called the
"firmament," and on the fourth day He set the sun moon and stars in
this firmament. Where is the possibility for the day-one-created
earth to be circling around the day-four-created sun?
And so he goes on, completely convinced that the Bible states that the
earth is fixed in space and accepting this fact "by faith" in "the
testimony of the One who can [stand outside the universe and look in]".
As scientific support for a fixed earth he mentions the famous Michelson
and Morely experiment and quotes Bernard Jaffe "The data were almost
unbelievable. There was only one other possible conclusion to draw,
that the earth was at rest ..."! Unfortunately he doesn't seem to be
aware of the Sagnac effect which is a very similar experiment (and was
also attempted by Michelson) and proves rather convincingly that the
earth really does turn!
One wonders what Prof Stott's answer would be if this Sagnac effect was
pointed out to him. I expect that he would simply change his mind on
the interpretation of the Bible passages that suggest geocentricity, and
accept that Christendom of Galileo's day had universally misinterpreted
scripture, and that the modern interpretation is after all, correct.
This illustrates that attempting to find "a statement in the Bible that
science has found to be categorically false" is likely a pointless
exercise. If the evidence is convincing enough, then the believer will
simply reinterpret the passage in the light of scientific discoveries.
If the evidence is less convincing (by not being aware of the enormity
of the evidence), then he will simply say that the scientists have got
it all wrong, they made incorrect assumptions and they are
self-deceived, or they are lying to protect their income source.
Since I have no idea of Jojo's position on how literally he interprets
Genesis, let's skip the ridiculously young (~6000 year old) universe,
young earth, very recent life creation, and take a quick look at Noah's
flood - because I would guess from a previous posting that Jojo
considers this to be an unembellished historical account. According to
the record Noah's flood should have occurred approx 4400 years ago.
Since it was global, there really should be some signature of its
occurrence in some paleoclimatology proxy - such as the ice core data
(since I imagine that all polar ice should have been melted by the
flood?). But to the best of my knowledge there is absolutely none - and
I think that in this case absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Individual year cycles can be easily counted much further back than 4400
years in some of the proxies: In fact it seems tree rings can be
counted back well beyond a young earth date (from Wikipedia):
"Fully anchored chronologies which extend back more than 11,000
years exist for river oak trees from South Germany (from the Main
and Rhine rivers) and pine from Northern
Ireland.^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology#cite_note-5>
Furthermore, the mutual consistency of these two independent
dendrochronological sequences has been confirmed by comparing their
radiocarbon and dendrochronological ages."
The cycles in the ice core data can apparently be counted back much further:
"The first 110,000 annual layers of snow in that ice core (GISP2)
have been visually counted and corroborated by two to three
different and independent methods as well as by correlation with
volcanic eruptions and other datable events."
Checkout the agreement between the entire ice core data and the benthic
foramanifera core data (which come from tiny shellfish living and
accumulating on the sea bed) at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles. This data is from
such different sources that this agreement can only be produced by a
common driving mechanism (ie climate). Yet one would expect the arctic
snow fall to be far more affected by a global flood than the steady
accumulation of foramanifera on the sea bed (which would be scarcely
altered by a flood). So one can't suggest that many of the ice core
layers were produced by multiple snow storm events in a single year, and
still have the two independent data sources agreeing so well.
I realise that this approach is probably pointless as almost no amount
of this type of evidence will induce someone to let go of their
lifeline. However I have witnessed someone letting go of biblical
inerrancy as a result of an on-line discussion. It resulted from an
attempt to explain the following biblical contradictions: (1) What were
the names of Benjamin's children, (2) Who wrote on Moses' second set of
tablets, and (3) Where did Aaron die. The first is particularly
interesting because the structure of the Hebrew in the two contradicting
passages do not allow the disagreement to have been produced by a
copyist's error. The error *must* have been present in the original
autographs - which proves inerrancy errant!
But as the pastor of the church next door says "inerrancy is an issue of
a bygone era", and his faith remains completely intact regardless of
stories about Eden and Noah being clearly non-history. "A man with an
experience is never at the mercy of an argument."
Regards - John
