Has anyone seen this before: http://www.doesgodexist.org/Charts/CheckableBiblicalAccuracy.html ?
It claims to show that the bible was indeed ‘divinely’ inspired by presenting the ‘truer’ beleifs expressed int the bible where ahead of their times, that is they were correct, compared to the erroneous beleifs held by the people of the time.
This does seem a bit strange to me. Woudl any care to comment on their examples?
How about giving me some examples of the reverse?
Some of them don’t really make sense. “Eating blood of animals forbidden.” Was there a reason for this? It just says that this goes against what many people were doing at the time. So what?
I was thinking of posting some examples of bibilical versus that are very bloody, but no, I will just let the theists fight it out.
Some of his (?) assumptions about the beliefs of the times are wrong as well.
For instance, he states concerning that blood is essential to life that in Biblical times" people attempted to cure disease by bloodletting. While that may be true, it was also widely understood that a person needed blood to live. It wasn’t a mystery to anyone 3000 years ago that if a person lost too much blood, he’d die.
Zev Steinhardt
The argument that a book is divinely inspired because scientific information it contains was not known to people at the time it was written is not limited to Christians; it’s a very common argument for Islam, also. One problem with this sort of argument is that the scientific knowledge must already be in place for the purported evidence of divine inspiration to be clear. For example, there is an argument that the Quran must be divinely inspired because it contains a passage that suggests Big Bang cosmology. However, it is not possible to read the passage without knowledge of Big Bang cosmology and conclude that the universe must be expanding.
Suppose there’s a book which some people believe is divinely inspired. Suppose it contains a story about a snake eating its tail. Now, today someone might see that passage and claim that the authors of the book were divinely informed of the hexagonal ring structure of benzene. (Kekulé, who is credited with determining the structure of benzene, is said to have been inspired by a dream about a snake eating its tail, although his laboratory work on benzene probably helped too.) However, someone who was ignorant of benzene or its structure could never see a passage like “and lo, he beheld a serpent with its tail in its mouth; and like a ring was that foul-smelling serpent” and determine that there must exist a molecule with six carbon atoms arranged hexagonally. In other words, these scientific arguments require scientists to discover the knowledge the books purportedly contain.
Perhaps one of the most effective arguments against this arcane sort of claim of evidence of divine inspiration is to look for similar books which do not claim divine inspiration. (For example, several people have responded to the ‘Bible code’ claims that the Hebrew text of the Bible contains secret messages by finding such messages in other books, showing, among other things, that Moby Dick predicts an assassination.)
Here is a list of scientific evidence found in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, an Epicurean work that denounces religion. (The list is on an atheist website; it responds to the Islamic argument from scientific knowledge, not a Judeo-Christian one.) Lucretius made claims that agree with scientific discoveries made thousands of years after his death – advanced scientific knowledge such as the wave-particle theory of light, the atomic theory of matter, and evolution by natural selection. But he does not claim divine inspiration.
With this sort of thing, there are two possibilities for how someone might arrive at a conclusion that reflected later scientific knowledge. In some cases, someone might just be lucky, and write a vague passage that suggests something that would be learned much later. (Things which are impossible to know intuitively, and which require detailed scientific work, such as the Big Bang or atomic theory, probably fall into this category.) Others might be a simple matter of common sense. Remember that the people who wrote these books were more intelligent than average for their time, and they might have realized basic things about the way the world works intuitively. The water cycle is definitely in this category; arguably, even evolution by natural selection can be arrived at this way.
Ultimately, one must remember that religion is not a thing that is supposed to be based on scientific evidence. With the wealth of scientific knowledge available today, it’s possible to find passages that suggest modern scientific knowledge in many books whose authors did not know of this knowledge, and that does not necessarily mean they had any supernatural means of knowing these things. Religion is a matter of faith, not of scientific evidence. The power of faith does not lie in secret messages in books, or in supposed scientific facts hidden between the lines of a sacred text. It lies in the power of the story, the message of these texts, and in the devotion of believers who take the lessons of that story into their own lives. We must remember that the claims of any religion cannot be tested scientifically, and cannot be proven using natural means. It is a supernatural affair, and the only way to discover whether a given belief is really true is to pass out of the natural world.
Also, for “use of genetics in livestock”, first, other civilizations knew about selective breeding, which is why you saw breeds develop in antiquity, and second, Jacob doesn’t use genetics to trick Laban. He makes sure that the strong animals see striped twigs when they conceive so that their offspring will have stripes. That’s not breeding on a genetic basis.
Comments on “Facts” – or, this guy is not too bright (I can’t believe I took the time to do this.)
1 – stating that blood is essential to life does not refute a belief that bad blood should be removed in times of disease. Lev 17:11-4 does not show a superior understanding of blood or an understanding of blood at odds with the common beliefs of the time.
2- the verses quoted do not show that the bible believes that both male and female produce ‘seed’. The Gen 3:15 is, in fact, referring to snakes and humans when stating ‘your seed and her seed’. In both of the verses ‘seed’ could be replaced by the word ‘relatives’, with no information at all given as to how the relation passed through the generations.
3 – The bible forbids the eating of animal blood. So what. How is that a sign that the bible was ahead of anything? Because we also don’t make a habit of drinking blood? And we’re the be-all and end-all of beverage consumers? Just silly.
4 – Don’t eat animals that have died naturally. I don’t think that it can be categorically stated that there were no restrictions, re cause of death, for food animals. There may not have been religious restrictions, but even there I’m not sure. I’m not really up on the dietary restrictions of Babylonian deities.
5 – I’m also not up on ancient quarantine practices. But I’m guessing that not wanting to catch the demon causing the disease would cause avoidance as well as not wanting to catch the bacteria. But that doesn’t matter, because the verse quoted is about AVOIDING MENSTRUAL BLOOD, which is a matter of avoiding magic contamination, not bacterial contamination.
6 – The Israelites were not the only group to deal with human wastes properly. In addition to sewers, many cities had public baths which the Israelites could not use because they couldn’t let anyone see them naked. Dealing with human wastes properly may not have gotten coded into other religions’ texts, but that doesn’t matter. For instance, the bible doesn’t command anyone to wipe, but I bet most bible readers do.
As to the verse – it’s about an army. And the verse says that G-d is walking through the camp in order “to give up thine enemies before thee” and he doesn’t want to see anything nasty while he’s there. Kind of like doing the dishes when you hear your MIL is on her way over.
7 – The human body can be opened for surgery? What is this guy smoking? Any pioneering doctor who tried to use Eve’s creation story as a sign that surgery as evidence that G-d approved of surgery would have been accused of thinking he was G-d, himself. This is just stupid.
8- Again, the bible verse if being mis-represented. Numbers 19 is describing the ritual things to be done during a blood sacrifice. He left of the first verses of that chapter, which state:
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying,
2 This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke:
3 And ye shall give her unto Eleazar the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face:
4 And Eleazar the priest shall take of her blood with his finger, and sprinkle of her blood directly before the tabernacle of the congregation seven times:
5 And one shall burn the heifer in his sight; her skin, and her flesh, and her blood, with her dung, shall he burn:
6 And the priest shall take cedar wood, and hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the midst of the burning of the heifer.
Nothing at all to do with physical contagion. Everything to do with ritual.
9 – None of the verses say that the earth is round. Not even a little bit.
10 – Earth not physically supported. Both the bible and common thought in OT time was that the flat earth floated on ‘the waters of the deep’. The one poetic Job verse doesn’t change all the other verses referring to the firmament and the pillars of heaven and . . . well, all. Atlas wasn’t holding up the earth, he was holding up the sky. I think the elephants were from a different region.
So. Same basic flat earth floating on the waters of the deep. Pillars and/or Atlas holding up the sky. No difference.
11 – The north is not empty. He’s gotten so many other verses wrong that I’m guessing that Job 26:7 doesn’t really represent the idea that there are no stars in the north, but if it did, then it’s wrong.
12 – Too many stars to count? You putz. How can you possibly claim that anyone living in OT times thought the stars were countable? Numberless as the stars has always been a well-understood metaphor. In the bloody verse the idea is being used as a metaphor. The verse is not declaring that the stars are uncountable. It’s saying your decedents will be as numberless as the stars. The understanding being that, wait for it, EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS THAT THE STARS ARE UNCOUNTABLE. I’m not sure what 1932 refers to. Astronomers are still fiddling with star counts by estimation. Counts by estimation still count. Just because there are too many to count one by one doesn’t mean anyone will stop counting.
13 – There are two creation sequences in Genesis. You can try to line one or both up with evolutionary development. It’s fun, but doesn’t mean much. And I’d need a cite that other OT time creation stories had man created first. Especially when so much else about this site is wrong.
14 – Gen 1:1 does sort of claim that the age of everything is the same. I don’t know if other OT beliefs concur or disagree. But modern science largely disagrees, if you’re talking about things like stars and planets. Different stars and planets are different ages. So no prize.
15 – Continents in a single mass, then dividing. The verses don’t support this. In the first the WATER was pulled back into one place, so that land could appear. In the second, different NATIONS were divided. Neither refers to continents. Sorry.
16 - Hubert Spencer’s scientific principles. – Is this reference to another apologist? The fact that someone else has taken a go at using the bible as a science textbook is not an argument for anything. And the Genesis creation story especially has no scientific content.
17 – Lightning is produced naturally. You’re smoking crack again. Both verses say “he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures”. This is a god making lightning. Sorry. It is. It matches the common OT times’ thoughts. No difference.
18 – Now we’re in the NT and listening to Paul. So this would be compared to Greek and Roman beliefs, rather than Babylonian beliefs. And I don’t think that the Greeks and Romans believed that all nations had different origins. If I remember correctly, they also had a flood story, although only two people survived that one and they repopulated the earth by throwing rocks over their shoulders (at least in one version).
19 – Again – the common Babylonian/Biblical model was a flat earth floating on and surrounded by water. The firmament holds back the waters of the sky and the earth holds back the waters of the deep. And G-d/the gods regulate it so that if you don’t keep them happy, you’re screwed. Nothing natural about either water cycle.
20 – Use of genetics in livestock. So, if the sheep mate where the shadows are dappled, their offspring will be spotted. Can you spot how that is not accurate genetics? And anyone breeding animals in any era had a rough idea of inherited characteristics. No prize.
21 – The treasures of ice and snow. First, that chapter is listing all the things that G-d knows that no human could know, all the things he saw at the creation and after. It’s not saying that snow is good. It’s saying he’s seen all the snow that will ever fall and that he’s the only one who could ever see that. Ice and snow are neither valuable nor a waste. And views on it haven’t changed over time. (See 17 above, where the treasures of wind are released. He has them stored up in the sky and lets them loose when he pleases.)
22 – The dimensions of the ark aren’t given as a good ratio for ship construction. I’ll let someone else comment on that. But if you think shipbuilders of any age built for beauty rather than seaworthiness, you’re nuts. The ratios may have changed over time, as more was learned, but you can bet that every shipbuilder had a set.
23 – The bible has no concept of id and ego. Wading through that chapter, with all the sin and adultery and deliverance from the old law, it looks like the writer was familiar with the body/soul dichotomy so dear to the Greeks of NT times. No difference between the biblical and the common view of the times.
24 – OK, just as the creation of Eve was not a prescription for surgery, so the cursing of the serpent to crawl on its belly is not a prescription for mutation. Sorry, it just isn’t. Oh, and other gods also transformed individuals. And, as in the bible, the transformations were inheritable. Changes in individuals are not inheritable. Sorry. Here the bible matches the common view and they are both wrong.
25 – 26 – I really don’t understand these. Luke has a story of someone traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and getting mugged. The first verse is supposed to show a direction and doesn’t. And I really don’t care if anyone found a mistake in some old map. The other verse does give a measure of distance, but without a cite that the assertion that common belief in Greco/Roman times was wrong is meaningless. I take that back. It’s meaningless even if there is an incorrect cite.
Oh, G-d got the location of Jericho right and this old map is wrong. You have to worship, now. Nuts.
So 27 claims - maybe a couple of half-claims that haven’t been refuted yet. What surprises me (although by now I guess it shouldn’t) is how poor the writer’s understanding of the bible is.
I’ve been reading quite a lot lately about Sumeria and such. Their medical guides most definitely note that certain diseases are contagious and that quarantines were sometimes required in such cases. Note that these are among the earliest known writings. (I know that this is hardly a post comparable to Yllaria’s, but Yet Another Nail In This Twit’s Coffin can’t hurt.)
Thanks Yllaria for all that! Very informative! 