# Is there any passage of the bible which has conclusively been proven wrong? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 8, 2000, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661 "2000-12-08T18:34:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Ablett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@Ablett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ablett)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/1 "2000-12-08T18:34:40Z")
I understand that the bible refers to the earth as being the center of the universe. Does it elaborate on what it means by that? Are there are other verse or verses in the bible where even the most staunch Christian admits is faulty? ---
**Author:** ![DRS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8e7dd6/32.png) [@DRS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DRS)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/2 "2000-12-08T18:51:45Z")
I sense a Great Debate coming on. In the meantime, I’d suggest there are Christians that would not concede error in any biblical passage. In terms of ones that I find incompatible with a belief with the literal inerrancy of the Bible, I’d suggest Ecclesiastes 1:5 and Joshua 10:13, both of which suggest that the sun moves around the earth, not the other way around. To be sure, you don’t need to look too far on the net to find creationists who insist the sun DOES go around the earth. Luckily for me, I’m Catholic, and we Catholics tend to get less hung up on the literal truth of every passage. ---
**Author:** ![pldennison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9fc29f/32.png) [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/3 "2000-12-08T18:57:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by DRS \* > \*\* > To be sure, you don’t need to look too far on the net to find creationists who insist the sun DOES go around the earth. > \*\* In the strictest terms of General Relativity, it does. There are no priveleged reference frames, after all. Take a random person given no other evidence but that of his or her eyes, and the reasonable conclusion is that the sun **does** go around the Earth. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/4 "2000-12-08T19:01:41Z")
Somewhere in the Bible, there’s the phrase “the four corners of the Earth”. I haven’t run across anyone who thinks this should be taken literally. Most will claim it’s just a figure of speech, and it’s true that that’s what it is now. I’m not a biblical scholar, but I think it’s quite possible that it wasn’t a figure of speech to the person who first wrote it. ---
**Author:** ![Ablett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@Ablett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ablett)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/5 "2000-12-08T19:04:03Z")
D’OH! “Are there are other verse or verses in the bible where even the most staunch Christian admits is faulty?” …was of course supposed to read as… “Are there ANY other verse or verses in the bible where even the most staunch Christian admits is faulty?” ---
**Author:** ![Inky\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7feea3/32.png) [@Inky\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky_1)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/6 "2000-12-08T19:16:25Z")
Christian scientists don’t believe the bible possible of being faulty, rather, they blame faulty human interpretation of the passages. A good example of this is one I experienced firsthand with a Christian school teacher regarding the bible repeatly describing the Earth as being flat. In the pre-King James Latin bible the Earth is described using such terms as “the table of the world”, “the plane of the Earth” and “The flat expanse of this world”. He just dismissed it as bieng a third-person description from God’s perspective, with us as all actors on God’s stage. I got a lot of circular logic and weird therories from him (don’t even get me started on his theories about dinosaurs). Fact is, science works better when you look at the facts you have and then try to determine the answer, rather than thinking you know the answer already and trying to fit your facts to suit it. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/7 "2000-12-08T20:02:57Z")
Well, I’d say that at least one of either [Matthew 1:16](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=MATT+1:16&language=english&version=KJV&showfn=on) or [Luke 3:23](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=LUKE+3:23&language=english&version=KJV&showfn=off) has to be wrong, but there are various dodges for that one, as there are likely to be for any suspect passage you bring up. (In this case, I believe the most popular “explanation” is to claim that Heli is actually the father of _Mary_, and Joseph is therefore his son-in-law.) To answer the OP’s question–there are no passages which a hardcore Biblical fundamentalist will admit are in error. If you say there are, you just aren’t “interpreting” them right. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/8 "2000-12-08T20:26:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pldennison \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by DRS \* > > \*\* > > To be sure, you don’t need to look too far on the net to find creationists who insist the sun DOES go around the earth. > > \*\* > > In the strictest terms of General Relativity, it does. There are no priveleged reference frames, after all. Take a random person given no other evidence but that of his or her eyes, and the reasonable conclusion is that the sun **does** go around the Earth. \*\* I think you’re 100% correct there, pldennison. We’ve always been taught the Earth “travels around the sun.” But it’s only because we have defined the sun as our reference point. Conceivably, you could make the _Earth_ your reference point, and say (with a perfectly straight face) the _other_ eight planets orbit the sun, and the sun _orbits the Earth_. I had a similar argument with a fellow engineer on the subject of “why we had seasons.” I insisted the Earth’s rotational axis was constantly _changing_ over time and followed a sinusoidal pattern, while he insisted it was _fixed_. Upon further reflection, we mutually agreed we were _both_ right: He was using the sun as his reference point, while I was using the Earth. Therefore, both of our explanations were valid. ---
**Author:** ![Cabbage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@Cabbage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabbage)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/9 "2000-12-08T20:36:15Z")
I’ve always wondered about Genesis 6:3: > [@](#): > > And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. This is about the time God destroys earth with the flood. I’ll admit I’ve never really read it closely to put it in context, but it seems to me to say that no one can live longer than 120 years; I’m pretty sure that record has been broken, though. Am I interpreting this wrong, or is this a case where the Bible is wrong? ---
**Author:** ![c\_goat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@c\_goat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/c_goat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/10 "2000-12-08T21:25:23Z")
Is there any passage of the bible which has conclusively been proven TRUE? I don’t think so. Wouldn’t that make it wrong by default? ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/11 "2000-12-08T21:42:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Crafter\_Man \* > We’ve always been taught the Earth “travels around the sun.” But it’s only because we have defined the sun as our reference point. Conceivably, you could make the _Earth_ your reference point, and say (with a perfectly straight face) the _other_ eight planets orbit the sun, and the sun _orbits the Earth_. Is this really related to the Theory of General Relativity? I agree that you can say that the Earth orbits the sun or the sun orbits the Earth, but this is true even from a Newtonian standpoint. Of course, depending on what you mean by “orbit,” you could say that neither orbits the other. (I’m trying to remember my physics here, so bear with me.) The mass of each object impacts the path of the other object, so with an system, two objects orbit around a locus points somewhere between the two centers of mass. With the mass differential between the Earth and the sun, the locus points are both within the diameter of the sun. Of course, we’re not in an isolated system, so everything else is affecting the orbits. Generally, we just refer to the smaller object as orbiting the larger one. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/12 "2000-12-08T21:44:27Z")
Well, doesn’t the Old Testament have people living to be, like, 800 years old? And the New Testament, I’m told, has some guy rising from the dead? ---
**Author:** ![Lego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@Lego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lego)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/13 "2000-12-08T21:47:32Z")
Cabbage has a good point, the oldest person lived for more than that. (121?) But I don’t know about men living more than 120 years. In the 1970s, there was this Japanese guy in the Guinness Book of World Records that lived to be 125. But then they took him out by the 1990s, and replaced him with a woman who was 121. Does anyone know why? I’ve also read something about it saying in the Bible that insects were four-legged creatures. Oddly, this was on an entomophagist’s web page. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/14 "2000-12-08T21:49:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by c\_goat \* > \*\*Is there any passage of the bible which has conclusively been proven TRUE? > > I don’t think so. > > Wouldn’t that make it wrong by default? \*\* This has got to be the illogical statement I have ever heard on these boards. It simultaneously neglects the OP, offends all Christians and Jews, and dismisses the Bible as a historical document which even many atheists use as a valuable scholarly research tool. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/15 "2000-12-08T21:55:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by c\_goat \* > \*\*Is there any passage of the bible which has conclusively been proven TRUE? > > I don’t think so. > > Wouldn’t that make it wrong by default? \*\* Depends on what you accept as conclusive proof. There are certainly things in the Bible that most people (even non-believers) accept to be true. And, no, just because something has not been proven does not make it wrong. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Ablett_ > **Are there any other verse or verses in the bible where even the most staunch Christian admits is faulty?** This is actually a slightly different question than the thread title. There are many “staunch” Christian who don’t accept the Bible literally. There are also different ways of viewing different parts of the Bible. A passage could be considered “faulty” is read as a scientific explanation but “true” as illustration of a point. Jesus told parables, which I doubt even Bible literalist consider to be actual events. This does not make them “faulty” even if they never happened. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/16 "2000-12-08T21:55:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cabbage \* > I’ve always wondered about Genesis 6:3: > > > [@](#): > > > > And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. > > This is about the time God destroys earth with the flood. I’ll admit I’ve never really read it closely to put it in context, but it seems to me to say that no one can live longer than 120 years; I’m pretty sure that record has been broken, though. Am I interpreting this wrong, or is this a case where the Bible is wrong? This passage actually doesn’t have much context to make it clear, but possible interpretations are : Since this is just before the flood, it’s the amount of time left before the deluge (i.e. mankind has 120 years to shape or ship out). It is intended to mean that the lifespan of a human will henceforth be no longer than a certain amount, presumably 120 years. The second interpretation is wrong if the 120 years is literal, but there’s an awful lot of numbers in the Bible that are symbolic, or rounded to symbolic numbers, and this could be one of them (12 being important, so a dozen tens would be a good approximation). As to the long lifetimes given for some of the earlier Biblical characters (e.g. Methusalah), it is possible that the name refers to a whole dynasty, or the descendants of a person for a long time. There are other (Sumerian, I think) records that report lifespans of kings on the order of hundreds of years. This discussion’s been going on for over 2000 years, and probably won’t end soon. ---
**Author:** ![c\_goat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@c\_goat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/c_goat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/17 "2000-12-08T22:01:27Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mavpace \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by c\_goat \* > > \*\*Is there any passage of the bible which has conclusively been proven TRUE? > > > > I don’t think so. > > > > Wouldn’t that make it wrong by default? \*\* > > This has got to be the illogical statement I have ever heard on these boards. It simultaneously neglects the OP, offends all Christians and Jews, and dismisses the Bible as a historical document which even many atheists use as a valuable scholarly research tool. > > :rolleyes: \*\* oops. Didn’t mean to offend anyone there. I suppose I should think before I post. I wasn’t trying to do any of those things. What I meant was that I’ve never heard of the bible as a historical document (which is what I thought the OP was referring to) and was unsure whether anything was actually known to have happened that was written in it. To me (this is my opinion mind you) it just seems like a collection of stories detailing how to be a good person. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/18 "2000-12-08T22:01:27Z")
If there are any fundies on SDMB aside from the occasional troll they do a good job of keeping it quit. The question becomes moot then. ---
**Author:** ![Nancyfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d78d45/32.png) [@Nancyfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancyfish)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/19 "2000-12-08T22:24:29Z")
Re-translations of the Bible are occasionally ordered by the Catholic Church (from their oldest stored records) so they can double-check their information. Usually that is assigned to an old monk who doesn’t mind sitting in a basement pouring over scrolls for months on end. One such monk disappeared for such a long time that his colleages got worried and went looking for him. They found him hunched over an old scroll, sobbing uncontrollably. When asked what was wrong, the 80+ monk looked up and wailed “celebrate… not celibate… it’s celebrate… aaaargh!!” 😉 //end hijack// In Genesis it mentions that God separated the waters below the firmament and the waters above the firmament, and the firmament became Earth. Have we sent enough stuff into space to determine there is no water above the sky?? 😕 Sounds like an error to me. ---
**Author:** ![City\_Gent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a87d85/32.png) [@City\_Gent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/City_Gent)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2000, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661/20 "2000-12-08T22:30:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by pldennison \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > \*Originally posted by DRS \* > > \*\* > > To be sure, you don’t need to look too far on the net to find creationists who insist the sun DOES go around the earth. > > \*\* > > In the strictest terms of General Relativity, it does. There are no priveleged reference frames, after all. Take a random person given no other evidence but that of his or her eyes, and the reasonable conclusion is that the sun **does** go around the Earth. \*\* Even without appealing to relativity, things are not so obvious. An observer “out in space” watching the Sun moving relative to the Milky Way would say that they both go around each other, like two balls at either end of a rope. Also, if the Sun and Earth were of similar mass, they would go around each other, because their mutual center of mass would be roughly halfway between them. Imagine that their masses then gradually become much different, approaching their actual values; the mutual center of mass moves closer and closer to the center of mass of the Sun, but at what point do you change from saying they go around each other to saying the Earth orbits the Sun? The only plausible cutoff is when the mutual center of mass moves close enough to the Sun’s center that it is actually below the surface of the Sun, but this seems arbitrary. Of course, the fundamentalist has no need for this fancy, Satanic science. He just argues that God wrote the Bible so that his audience could understand it; saying that the Earth goes around the Sun would just have confused people. That way, any crazy thing the Bible says doesn’t detract from its correctness, as long as it was believable by the people inhabiting the Near East around 0 B.C.E. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-passage-of-the-bible-which-has-conclusively-been-proven-wrong/44661.md?page=2)