Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Scientific Facts in the Bible


religion, science, creationism, evolution, bible, god, stupid,
I'm not a scientist. I have an interest in science and read as much as I can about it, but I'm a legal secretary, and science is not my speciality. So the fact that I can easily refute this list of "scientific facts" found in the bible is just sad.

The Bible specifies the perfect dimensions for a stable water vessel (Genesis 6:15). Ship builders today are well aware that the ideal dimension for ship stability is a length six times that of the width. Keep in mind, God told Noah the ideal dimensions for the ark 4,500 years ago.

Why couldn't ship builders several thousand years ago have been aware of the ideal dimensions for ship stability? There's no reason at all. for as long as humans have wished to cross large bodies of water, we've built ships for that purpose. trial and error alone (gee, these boats keep sinking, maybe we should make them longer or something) would arrive at the answer before too long.

Our bodies are made from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7; 3:19). Scientists have discovered that the human body is comprised of some 28 base and trace elements – all of which are found in the earth.

Well, duh, of course we contain elements in our bodies found on Earth. we live here. we didn't just pop in last week from Andromeda. In fact, if the Andromedans came by for a visit and ate our food, grown in the Earth's soil, they would contain elements found in the Earth, too. (assuming the food or the elements didn't kill them.)

Origin of the rainbow explained (Genesis 9:13-16). Prior to the Flood there was a different environment on the earth (Genesis 2:5-6). After the Flood, God set His rainbow “in the cloud” as a sign that He would never again judge the earth by water. Meteorologists now understand that a rainbow is formed when the sun shines through water droplets – which act as a prism – separating white light into its color spectrum.

Or the writer of Genesis had only ever seen rainbows in conjunction with clouds and sunshine- just like everyone else on the planet.

Light can be divided (Job 38:24). Sir Isaac Newton studied light and discovered that white light is made of seven colors, which can be “parted” and then recombined. Science confirmed this four centuries ago – God declared this four millennia ago!

This actually depends on what translation you are looking at. this link in Job is to the King James Version of the Bible, and reads:

By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth?

That does sound like a reference to a prism, sort of. But read it as it appears in the New Living Translation:

Where is the path to the source of light? Where is the home of the east wind?

Or the English Standard Version:

What is the way to the place where the light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?

That doesn't sound like prisms at all.

Rejecting the Creator results in moral depravity (Romans 1:20-32). The Bible warns that when mankind rejects the overwhelming evidence for a Creator, lawlessness will result. Since the theory of evolution has swept the globe, abortion, pornography, genocide, etc., have all risen sharply.

That's not a fact, and certainly not a scientific fact.

Continental drift inferred (Genesis 7:11). Today the study of the ocean floor indicates that the landmasses have been ripped apart. Scripture states that during the global Flood the “fountains of the great deep were broken up.” This cataclysmic event apparently resulted in the continental plates breaking and shifting.

Read all of Genesis 7. This is a description of the flood, not continental drift.

God fashions and knits us together in the womb (Job 10:8-12; 31:15). Science was ignorant concerning embryonic development until recently. Yet many centuries ago, the Bible accurately described God making us an “intricate unity” in the womb.

I don't care how scientifically ignorant you are, if you've seen a baby come out of a woman's vagina, you know where babies are formed.

Origin of the major language groups explained (Genesis 11). After the rebellion at Babel, God scattered the people by confounding the one language into many languages. Evolution teaches that we all evolved from a common ancestor, yet offers no mechanism to explain the origin of the thousands of diverse languages in existence today.

Why would the Theory of Evolution explain language development? I've never studied the history and development of language, but the explanation here seems obvious: isolated groups of humans would naturally create different languages from one another. It would be evidence of god if isolated groups all spoke the exact same language, not that isolated groups developed different languages.

Cain’s wife discovered (Genesis 5:4). Skeptics point out that Cain had no one to marry – therefore the Bible must be false. However, the Bible states plainly that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters. Cain married his sister.

Not a scientific fact, and eeewwww!!!

Strong and weak nuclear force explained (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3). Physicists do not understand what binds the atom’s nucleus together. Yet, the Bible states that “all things consist” – or are held together by the Creator – Jesus Christ.

Colossians 1:17- And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

Hebrews 1:3- Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:

Which of those two passages explains strong and/or weak nuclear force?

Most of the things on this list are like the "facts" listed above: not facts, not related to a scientific discipline, or the bible quote attached doesn't even begin to relate. But these "facts" were, of course, celebrated:

We don,t yet know 1% of what this earth is really all about,how blind lost humans must be not to see these proofs you displayed.They are truly dwellers in darkness w/sin blinded eyes.What is also interesting to me is the unknown science that mortal man has yet to discover yet proclaimed in the Holy Word .I have a lot of these highlighted in my bible,some are metaphor,s some are unknown science-it,s hard to tell the difference until they,re proved physically by some future science.

This was excellent!!I am going to print this out!

I love this !!!!!!

Awesome information! Thanks for posting it. I didn't know most of that stuff, and it's easy to forget when you read the Bible that we didn't actually discover a lot of it through science until recently. Thanks! I love finding out stuff about how the Bible lines up with the very same science that we're always told must make the Bible false or redundant. Well actually the Bible got there first! How cool.

and finally,

Jesus did'nt have to die for us rebels...but HE DID! I know HIM and that is SCIENCE TO ME!!!!

17 comments:

  1. This is the travesty of our education system and total lack of competent science training for our children. They grow up into pseudo-science sheep who don't care about actual science, but just the made up god-science that they are spoon-fed by other religious nuts. So sad....

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  2. honestly. my 10 year old niece hasn't had science at school since last fall, and doesn't have it this semester. which is really sad, because children automatically understand science. it fits their questioning worldview.

    this summer was a wet one in PA, and we had lots of rainbows. on sunny days, i get a rainbow in my foyer from the peephole in my front door. all on own, my niece realized that water in the sky and the glass in the peephole must share some certain property, because both produce rainbows. but who knows if they'll ever get to that at school.

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  3. I love this one: "Since the theory of evolution has swept the globe, abortion, pornography, genocide, etc., have all risen sharply."

    It combines scientific ignorance with historical ignorance. History education is almost as lacking as science education.

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  4. I was reading about strong and weak force the other night as it relates to fermions and bosons. It was so freakin' cool. I mean... honestly. Just the fact that science is SO much cooler than whoever wrote this dreck? Enough for me.

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  5. "Since the theory of evolution has swept the globe, abortion, pornography, genocide, etc., have all risen sharply."

    Wasn't there a study recently that showed that highly religious States in the US (I presume where evolution-denial is at its most common) were where the highest consumers of online pornography lived?

    PF,

    The story about your niece saved my afternoon there, thanks!

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  6. "The Bible specifies the perfect dimensions for a stable water vessel (Genesis 6:15)."

    Too bad that those dimensions specify a wooden vessel much larger than the largest seaworthy wooden vessel ever accurately documented. Anything larger that large would break up and sink before the water got high enough to cover the local foothills.

    Of course, it was made out of the mystical magical gopherwood, which apparently has miraculous flotation and trans-dimensional storage capabilities unknown to other woods.

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  7. PF, you're a woman who knows her place, right? Ask your hubby if it would be OK for you to check out this link and tell us what you think - but only if he says so, of course, we wouldn't want you forming too many of your own ideas now, would we?!

    http://ideasoftimreligion.blogspot.com/2009/10/xxxix-im-sorry.html

    The main post is one thing, but his comment is just something else!

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  8. Expat... wow. Just. Wow. Did he really say that the world revolves around... wow.

    I wait eagerly for PF's response.

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  9. Not a scientific fact, and eeewwww!!!

    Girl, you really hurt me!

    Laughing this hard this soon after my surgery and with my face wired up is agony...but I really needed a good hoot, so thanks!

    I really needed it!

    I can't really put my finger on what's the dumbest thing I heard of out of christianity or most erronious. About the only thing that really sticks out are the "kosher" things which most people solemnly attribute to disease carried by pigs. They know nothing about livestock and have no idea what cattle carry as well, plus what was to worry about since a lot of other things finished one off before age thirty.

    But the pigs...it is utility rather than health, and still, who would use an unclean animal in a theocracy like Judah or Israel? How come the Prodigal Son was welcomed home after such defilement? Who was using the ones that got demons added to them and drowned? The very land they walked over would be unclean.

    Then there's the rabit, which I've been informed, divides the hoof and chews a cud. Since when?

    They come up with all sorts of things, don't they? When I was a boy, condemned to Sundays in Sunday School, we were told that the Russians had drilled a hole and actually had gotten so deep that they could hear the cries and wails of the damned. I'm sure she actually believed it.

    I asked why the Russians were still "bad" since they knew that there WAS punishment? I doubted it.

    My parents were informed, and once again, I was acquainted with the consequenses of free - thought ... and being a little smart - ass.

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  10. Ship builders today are well aware that the ideal dimension for ship stability is a length six times that of the width.

    Bull. Shit.

    Absolute freaking bullshit. The 6:1 ratio was pretty close to an ideal relationship for galleys, but that's about it. The Athenian trireme, one of the most successful galley designs of all time, was 37 meters long and 4 meters wide, which was actually a 9.25:1 ratio. The Venetian galleys that fought at Lepanto, which was pretty much the last time a galley fought in war, were 42m by 5.1m, giving them a 8.4:1 ratio.

    The reason galleys were extremely long and thin had nothing to do with stability, either. It was all about moving through the water with minimal resistance. Long and thin is the way to go.

    Cogs, the primary sailing ships of the medieval period were practically round. With the invention of the caravel the ratio went back up to about 3.5:1 and stayed steady pretty much throughout the age of sail. Some of the famous British race-built galleons got back up to 6:1, most notably the Golden Hind. But the next highest ratio I can find for that age is the San Martinho, flagship of the Spanish Armada, at 4.5:1.

    The culmination of the Age of Sail brought us HMS Victory: 4.5:1 and USS Constitution: 4.75:1 at the largest ratios I can find.

    Modern ships have extended well past the 6:1 ratio. The Yamato, the largest battleship in history, was 6.4:1. The biggest American battleships, the South Dakotas and Iowas were 6.8:1 and 8.2:1 respectively. This had as much to do with the placement of weaponry s anything else. And the length of the Iowas was about the need to send the ships through the Panama Canal.

    These days the Nimitz-class carriers are 4.3:1. The Colombo Express, one of the largest container ships in the world, is 7.85:1.

    What's the point? 6:1 is a load of crap. Most ships, including highly successful, very stable ones, aren't anywhere close to that ratio. And, of course, the Ark probably would have been better off if it weren't 6:1, especially since it didn't have any form of propulsion or even a rudder. So that's "Bible science" for you.

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  11. @ geds

    actually there were one famous ship quite close to a 6:1 ratio (5.75:1 precicely)

    It never made it out of the harbor

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  12. Anna:

    Oh, yeah, I totally forgot to look for 6:1 ships that weren't exactly stable. Good ol' Wasa.

    You'd almost think that there's more to keeping a ship stable than making sure it has the right length to beam ratio. Like, possibly, making sure it's not too top-heavy. Which is probably why ships from the Age of Sail rarely approached 6:1. All that rigging was already top-heavy and it could pull a ship that was too narrow over before anyone could do a thing about it.

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  13. Be humble - for you are made of earth.
    Be noble - for you are made of stars.


    This is a Serbian proverb (or so I'm told) which I heard for the first time this weekend.

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  14. @Weemaryanne:
    I’ve never heard that one before, and although I don’t exactly understand it, I gotta admit, it does sound pretty.

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  15. Evolution doesn't explain the mechanism of how languages develop -

    Hello? There is an entire field of study, which is devoted to how human languages, that has been around for hundreds of years. So yes, we do have some idea of how the different languages on Earth were formed.

    Great blog post, by the way.

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Comments are for you guys, not for me. Say what you will. Don't feel compelled to stay on topic, I enjoy it when comments enter Tangentville or veer off into Non Sequitur Town. Just keep it polite, okay?

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