Science And The Bible

[Kharakov]

Much science can be learned from the Bible. For example, the light of day has nothing to do with the Sun. On the first day, god created light and divided it from the dark giving us day and night. It wasn't until the fourth day that he created the Sun to preside over the day and the Moon and stars to preside over the night.

Mankind followed the path of Genesis in their creation of artificial universes, first created worlds in which there was ambient lighting, and "false" day and night. In fact, we will have the tech to simulate a geocentric physical universe before we have the tech to simulate a relativistic one- just a star sphere with planets following paths. Perhaps then a heliocentric update- this doesn't require all the star's paths in different galaxies to be calculated constantly.

And if we do create a realistic universe, you can be sure it will be easier to use fudge factors like Dark Energy and Dark Matter to create an interesting looking evolution of universal substance than it is to come up with a working (ok, pragmatic) ToE off the bat (not baseball or tomb bat, but noodley appendage bat).

I have to laugh at those fools who trust modern science that tells us the Sun is what gives us light.

It's mean to call them fools. They don't know any better. I understand how one could arrive at the assumption of metaphysical naturalism, from the current set of natural laws, and all of the art that has gone into the backstory (fossils, stellar evolution, tight ass natural laws, etc.). The drag on de sieves the whirled world wise fools and the wise. And then the whirled world wise fools are educated by the wise, because they have been de sieved and exposed to actual wisdom: that whirled, wisdom is womb.

 

[Sajara]

You are not familiar with the hygenic laws of Moses?

Are you claiming that women should follow the hygenic laws:
And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.

 

[Atheos]

You are not familiar with the hygenic laws of Moses?

Are you claiming that women should follow the hygenic laws:
And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.

Also, most of us are familiar with Jesus poo-pooing (pardon the pun) the idea that washing one's hands was important before eating. The allegedly hygienic laws of Moses were nothing of the sort. Apologists like to claim that they were this grand collection of laws that engendered a healthier lifestyle but there is absolutely no evidence that any such benefit was afforded. A god with the knowledge of microbes we possess today could have given them hundreds of tips that were actually useful and within their capacity to implement (such as boiling water before drinking it). Instead these "laws" are little else besides a hodgepodge of barbaric superstition mixed with a few examples of useful tips that could have just as easily been obtained through observation. Even a blind pig gets an acorn occasionally.

Science works because it uses a methodology that guarantees progress towards a solution rather than blind acceptance of something just because someone claiming to be an authority claims it to be so.

The bible is all about "Trust me, don't lean on your own understanding." It encourages blind acceptance and discourages skeptical questioning. Those are the foundation pillars of every scam. The bible sells a product you can't research and it makes this "deal" a limited time offer with no chance of changing your mind after the deal expires. Its product is sold entirely through testimony. It creates a disease and then sells you the cure. Scam, scam, scam, scam, scam.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

When did this take place? After all, science and education began with theologians quest for knowledge.

No, religion began with a quest for answers. Not the same thing.

Religion, you say, without evidence I might add, began with a quest for answers. Science and education began with religion.

Some of the greatest minds in science were not only theists, but Christian apologists who desperately tried to use their great intelligence to help prove their religion. None of them ever managed to propel their religion in any way even remotely comparable to how they shaped our understanding of the universe. That should tell you something.

The greatest minds were able to establish laws of the universe that they hadn't even known about, while failed at proving the one thing they we most certain about.

 

[Malintent]

Darwin struggled with his discovery of the branched diversity of life. He didn't fully understand, but he knew that his observations invalidated much of the Christian creation myth (Genesis) that he devoutly believed in. But, Darwin believed more in the truth that the scientific method produces than in the threats of torture (Hell) that the church produces.

Many historical scientists struggled in the same way. It is true that religion sparked a search for answers, and even paved the way for the scientific method... but boy were they surprised, and maybe disappointed, at the answers they got.

 

[Perspicuo]

The magisteria overlap if religion contains statements about the real world, and the Bible is full of these statements.

If these statements are found wrong through the study of evidence (a.k.a. science) and the statements are not changed, the inevitable result is conflict.

In case change does happen as a result of the study of the world of evidence, then the fact that the statements used to be false, destroys any contention that religion is a source of truth. In any court of law, a witness if found to lie, his or her testimony is declared void. The Bible must therefore be declared void.

The conflict is patent everywhere and every step of the way.

 

[Underseer]

The source of knowledge, prior to the existence of the scientific method, was scripture. Then along came science and out with the old and in with the new and improved.

When did this take place? After all, science and education began with theologians quest for knowledge.

Also, religion invented electricity, the computer, and intertidal marine biology! I read all about it on a Christian site, so it must be true! If there never was a Christianity, then there would be no knowledge of electricity nor intertidal marine biology! If Jesus never died for our sins, then how do we know about limpets?

Limpets, therefore Christianity!

Sorry. Had to tease you.

Yes, I know that the evangelicals claim that science comes from religion. They have to make this claim because as creationists, they need people to believe that evangelical preachers are greater experts in biology than 99.85% of biologists. This is easier if you claim that Christianity is the source of all scientific knowledge, and therefore preachers know more about science than those stupid scientists, who use evidence instead of the Bible to discover truths, and are therefore wrong about evolution.

It's just something evangelicals made up in order to make their creationist claims sound less like anti-science quackery (e.g. "See? We're the real scientists! We're just trying to stop those bad, bad ol' evilooshunists from spreading their bad science!") The fact is, religion has been a constant impediment to intellectual inquiry throughout history.

This is because religion is just a political control mechanism, and people who hold the reins of power don't like when smarty smartpants question their truth claims. At least we should be thankful that Christians no longer set people on fire for making competing truth claims.

 

[DLH]

Thousands of years of theology and no progress on understanding the world, no improvement in the human condition, just endless fighting over trivia.

This forum or religion?

Religion hindered progress and promoted war and misery.

Governments, the kingdoms of men. They used religion in order to incite wars that were really about money, power, land. They (governments) were able to do that because people, in general, are stupid. By stupid I mean intellectually lazy, apathetic, patriotic, nationalistic, religious, and xenophobic in this case.

As soon as we abandoned "faith" and began empirically testing our notions of cause and effect, technology took off. We saw more progress in 200 years than we'd seen in the previous 10,000.

[Laughs] Well . . . we can take pictures on our cell phones and demographics have expanded but the situation has only gotten worse. We could cure cancer, feed and supply the needs of every man, woman and child on the planet, without polluting it. End poverty, hunger, most disease but we don't. Why? Money, mostly. Money, unfortunately, keeps science and technology at bay and keeps us in a sort of trap. Fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, the military industrial complex, oil, coal, and the pharmaceutical industry, for example.

Modern science minded people tend to exaggerate the significance of modern science, most of which has been devoted to progress in media format. Telephones, etc. While at the same time keeping us fat, lazy, dumb, sick and in constant fear of thermonuclear and chemical warfare.

T.V. screens are getting better but reality sucks. Anyway, its a quixotic perspective. Look at the forming of the F.D.A. and dental amalgams and you can see quite clearly what money and politics does with science. Look at the "war of the doctors" in the U.S.A. in the late 1800's. Rockefeller, and others founding the medical institutions for profit and how that has effected us today. Look at Einstein and his protesting of his colleagues and Nazism, and then his indirect contribution to the atomic bomb.

 

[DLH]

I imagine a person, long ago, who while watching a priest utter magic formulas for absolution (or good crops or whatever) dipping yarn and hyssop in to a bowl of dove blood, that person thinking "this is utter bullshit".

you don't have to imagine a person long ago, just go watch a Shinto priest in Japan blessing a supermarket or house. They don't believe it, no more than you believe in Santa Clause, but you know, in that cliche there is an interesting lesson. Or two. If you're interested in that sort of thing. #1. People don't believe but they still tell their children, still practice such nonsense, it becomes a fun aspect of a materialistic culture. #2. Someone probably told you Santa Clause existed and you believed it, and then someone probably told you he didn't exist and you believed it. You never gave it much thought either way. Being hopeful of his existence you didn't research and being disappointed in his non-existence you did no research. You just believed what you were told.

I was never told that there was a Santa. I never believed. But I see him every year. Isn't that something? Point being that Santa does exist, Bill. Just not as legend and myth proposes.

Humans have always had the same inquisitive nature. Thousands of years ago we would have been just as likely to be skeptics as we are now.

Unfortunately, we would have also been just as likely to have been ruled by the robes with the magic incantations, etc.

In that sense, yes, religion and science have always been at odds.

I'm interested in specific points of conflict like Geocentric vs. Heliocentric, Evolution, prenatal influence, taxonomy, entomology, the global flood, pi and the sun standing still.

 

[DLH]

It was stopped by too much dependency on books (the bible and the greeks(aristotle etc)) instead of performing actual observation. The examples is so numerous that your ignorance is telling. (Sunspots, projectile trajectories," number of legs on flies etc).

What about evolution? Specifically what of Aristotle's, Anaximander's, Anaxagoras' and Empedocles' contribution to evolution prior to Darwin?

 

[DLH]

You are not familiar with the hygenic laws of Moses?

Mostly to do with women and their periods, aren't they?

The Romans brought the concept of bathing regularly to most of the Middle Easterners.

Blood, childbirth, circumcision, cleanness, dead bodies, fat (dietary restriction), fecal matter, food, homes, leprosy, menstruation, running discharge, sanitary provisions and uncleanness.

 

[DLH]

Much science can be learned from the Bible. For example, the light of day has nothing to do with the Sun. On the first day, god created light and divided it from the dark giving us day and night. It wasn't until the fourth day that he created the Sun to preside over the day and the Moon and stars to preside over the night.

I have to laugh at those fools who trust modern science that tells us the Sun is what gives us light.

Before any of the creative periods, or "days," the heavens, including the luminaries, had already been created, as Genesis 1:1 states in the Hebrew perfect state, indicating completion.

 

[DLH]

You are not familiar with the hygenic laws of Moses?

Are you claiming that women should follow the hygenic laws:
And on the eighth day she shall take unto her two turtles, or two young pigeons, and bring them unto the priest, to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And the priest shall offer the one for a sin offering, and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make an atonement for her before the LORD for the issue of her uncleanness.

No. The Mosaic Law became obsolete - void - after Christ.

- - - Updated - - -

Mankind followed the path of Genesis in their creation of artificial universes, first created worlds in which there was ambient lighting, and "false" day and night. In fact, we will have the tech to simulate a geocentric physical universe before we have the tech to simulate a relativistic one- just a star sphere with planets following paths. Perhaps then a heliocentric update- this doesn't require all the star's paths in different galaxies to be calculated constantly.

And if we do create a realistic universe, you can be sure it will be easier to use fudge factors like Dark Energy and Dark Matter to create an interesting looking evolution of universal substance than it is to come up with a working (ok, pragmatic) ToE off the bat (not baseball or tomb bat, but noodley appendage bat).

I have to laugh at those fools who trust modern science that tells us the Sun is what gives us light.

It's mean to call them fools. They don't know any better. I understand how one could arrive at the assumption of metaphysical naturalism, from the current set of natural laws, and all of the art that has gone into the backstory (fossils, stellar evolution, tight ass natural laws, etc.). The drag on de sieves the whirled world wise fools and the wise. And then the whirled world wise fools are educated by the wise, because they have been de sieved and exposed to actual wisdom: that whirled, wisdom is womb.

how come they don't jump all over your ass when you say stuff like that?

 

[DLH]

Also, most of us are familiar with Jesus poo-pooing (pardon the pun) the idea that washing one's hands was important before eating.

Then you do understand that it was the religious tradition of unnecessarily washing the hands up to the elbows like modern day surgeons that he objected to?

 

[DLH]

Some of the greatest minds in science were not only theists, but Christian apologists who desperately tried to use their great intelligence to help prove their religion. None of them ever managed to propel their religion in any way even remotely comparable to how they shaped our understanding of the universe. That should tell you something.

The greatest minds were able to establish laws of the universe that they hadn't even known about, while failed at proving the one thing they we most certain about.

People are people. Atheist and theist are alike. They make unsubstantiated claims all the time. If it sells in their neighborhood.

 

[DLH]

Darwin struggled with his discovery of the branched diversity of life. He didn't fully understand, but he knew that his observations invalidated much of the Christian creation myth (Genesis) that he devoutly believed in. But, Darwin believed more in the truth that the scientific method produces than in the threats of torture (Hell) that the church produces.

Many historical scientists struggled in the same way. It is true that religion sparked a search for answers, and even paved the way for the scientific method... but boy were they surprised, and maybe disappointed, at the answers they got.

Darwin was a superstitious failed Christian Minister in a time when piano legs had to be covered for decency and animals were just starting to appear in zoos etc. Imagine what a chimpanzee in pantaloons contributed to science? A failed metaphysical experiment which was already thousands of years old in Greek philosophy.

 

[Ford]

Some of the greatest minds in science were not only theists, but Christian apologists who desperately tried to use their great intelligence to help prove their religion. None of them ever managed to propel their religion in any way even remotely comparable to how they shaped our understanding of the universe. That should tell you something.

The greatest minds were able to establish laws of the universe that they hadn't even known about, while failed at proving the one thing they we most certain about.

People are people. Atheist and theist are alike. They make unsubstantiated claims all the time. If it sells in their neighborhood.

Science is in the business of substantiating claims. Religion is in the business of selling unsubstantiated ones.


Theists who accept that science may expose some of their beliefs as less than true, and seek out that truth wherever it might lead are better minds than those who continue to insist that scientific discoveries must conform to Scripture or be discarded out of hand.

 

[DLH]

The magisteria overlap if religion contains statements about the real world, and the Bible is full of these statements.

Huh? What statements?

If these statements are found wrong through the study of evidence (a.k.a. science) and the statements are not changed, the inevitable result is conflict.

Ahem. Yes, well . . . okay. Evidence is subject to interpretation. Much like the Bible. Presenting your case, also is subject to insubstantial bias. If a world view caters to a conclusion that isn't scientific, which is the arrogance of the science minded atheist, usually as uninformed about science as the average Christian is about the Bible, then that could be the biggest part of the surface problem. That wouldn't be an actual conflict between the two, however, in any real sense because it has no bearing on people doing real science. It's just a crutch for intellectually lazy former Christians. Rebound ideology.

In case change does happen as a result of the study of the world of evidence, then the fact that the statements used to be false, destroys any contention that religion is a source of truth. In any court of law, a witness if found to lie, his or her testimony is declared void. The Bible must therefore be declared void.

The conflict is patent everywhere and every step of the way.

Examples?

 

[DLH]

People are people. Atheist and theist are alike. They make unsubstantiated claims all the time. If it sells in their neighborhood.

Science is in the business of substantiating claims. Religion is in the business of selling unsubstantiated ones.


Theists who accept that science may expose some of their beliefs as less than true, and seek out that truth wherever it might lead are better minds than those who continue to insist that scientific discoveries must conform to Scripture or be discarded out of hand.

Well . . . to an extent I would agree with that, however, apply that to your own theological practice.

What you are really saying, in my opinion, is that science is always right, so the Bible can't be. In other words, your perspective, or world view is the correct one, so that of any one else is void. And then you say that a similar practice on my part, from my own perspective or world view, would be ignorant.

The conflict, by the way, as I have researched it, is minimal.

The Bible and science disagree on evolution and the flood. Everything else is spiritual in nature but not capable of being demonstrated as false through scientific methodology. If the theory of evolution didn't agree with the Bible but was presented in a way that wasn't patently absurd I could count it as a valid conflict with the Bible, like I do the global flood conflict. That doesn't mean that I hate science or that I can't see there being a disagreement. Two people who I admire on an intellectual level can disagree with each other and I can choose between the two opinions, beliefs, or whatever you want to call it, and I can still respect both. But when it comes to which I would be inclined to trust, it would be Jehovah God over imperfect men of science. Or, science in in that general vague doublespeak y'all seem to have picked up.

 

[Ford]

Science is in the business of substantiating claims. Religion is in the business of selling unsubstantiated ones.


Theists who accept that science may expose some of their beliefs as less than true, and seek out that truth wherever it might lead are better minds than those who continue to insist that scientific discoveries must conform to Scripture or be discarded out of hand.

Well . . . to an extent I would agree with that, however, apply that to your own theological practice.

I don't have a "theological practice" at all.

What you are really saying, in my opinion, is that science is always right, so the Bible can't be.

Not at all. Your opinion blinds you to what I'm saying.

There are parts of the Bible which do not deal with scientific truths, and as such science has no beef with them.

However, there are parts of the Bible which do, and it is apparently your position that in these instances science can never be right. If your interpretation of the Bible is literal, then science (literally) be damned.

The Bible and science disagree on evolution and the flood.

And the Bible is pretty clearly wrong on both counts.

But when it comes to which I would be inclined to trust, it would be Jehovah God over imperfect men of science. Or, science in in that general vague doublespeak y'all seem to have picked up.

So despite your protestations to the contrary, the Bible always wins when it comes to science.