# What falsifiable claims do the holy books make? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 16, 2013, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952 "2013-09-16T06:02:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/21 "2013-09-16T14:01:49Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > The Bible doesn’t say how long Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden. For all anyone knows, the writer believed they had been there for millions or billions of years, not aging a day while Earth aged around them. A potential problem with this is that the Bible _does_ give Adam’s age at death, though one might argue that this age may only represent the time outside the Garden since he otherwise was immortal. Adam and Eve also don’t have time in the Garden to “be fruitful and multiply”, which suggests they didn’t spend huge amounts of time there. ---
**Author:** ![Uber\_the\_Goober](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/58956e/32.png) [@Uber\_the\_Goober](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uber_the_Goober)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/22 "2013-09-16T14:23:51Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > A potential problem with this is that the Bible _does_ give Adam’s age at death, though one might argue that this age may only represent the time outside the Garden since he otherwise was immortal. That’s a good point, and one I have never considered! The bible does say that if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, he would die. And it then took hundreds of years for him to die after eating it. Logically speaking, if not for eating the fruit, he wouldn’t have died. Which is why [Romans 5:12](http://biblehub.com/romans/5-12.htm) is a verse worth reading. Curious too is how the average age of people in the bible (who had their ages recorded) does drop the farther from Adam they are in time. Their “genetic defect” of death was catching up with them, until we get to our recent past, with lifespans of about 40-50 years until medical science caught up and staved off some of the causes for our premature death. And for a nugget really worth chewing on - if the only way to get to heaven is to die, then why was death Adam’s punishment for disobeying God? Why not, “Upon your inevitable death, which I was gonna get around to telling you about eventually, you’ll go to Hell to suffer for eternity instead of coming to hang out with me in Heaven. Because that’s how I roll, present evidence notwithstanding.” Unending life on Earth is the hope God holds out to all of us, but not until the Earth is restored to the paradise Adam and Eve were 'sposed to make it into…and now we’re into GD territory. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/23 "2013-09-16T14:24:00Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > On the census at the time of Caesar Augustus, see: [What did the census at the time of the birth of Christ accomplish? - The Straight Dope](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2001/what-did-the-census-at-the-time-of-the-birth-of-christ-accomplish) > > The calculation of the earth as 6000 years old is based on the assumption that the text is literal rather than poetic. Certainly the text posits that human civilization (calculating backwards) is around 6000 years old, but whether the creation was in six literal 24-hour days… well, most of us read that as poetic, six time periods, each period lasting many millions of years. Eh, I don’t think there’s really any reason the to suspect the writers of the Bible didn’t mean day literally. They knew roughly how old the Fertile Crescent cities were (Ur had written records going back to 4000 BC), they imagined man had figured out agriculture and city building more or less right away and so that the oldest cities were more or less the same age as the world, give or take a few centuries. There isn’t any reason to think some iron-age Jews knew about pre-history. And if they did, its kind of bizarre that they wouldn’t mention it in their creation account just for the sake of “poetry”. The Bible writers believed the world was created 6000 years B.P. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/24 "2013-09-16T14:29:11Z")
There is no other historical account of Herod’s massacre of the innocents. Absolutely none. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/25 "2013-09-16T14:32:09Z")
This is probably better suited to Great Debates than GQ. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/26 "2013-09-16T14:32:09Z")
> [@sentrix](#): > > the biggest falsifiable claim is that there is an invisible being/man in the sky that all should pray to or end up in the pit. How do you falsify it? ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/27 "2013-09-16T14:38:06Z")
> [@Uber\_the\_Goober](#): > > So, considering the belief that the entire Bible is literal to be a “silly” belief (though the level of silly is undetermined) - is somehow not dismissing that side casually? One can say the Bible is the literal word of God and intended to be interpreted literally, and argue that the term “day” didn’t necessarily mean a 24 hour period, as the word was used at the time, by those who transcribed the text from divine inspiration. Likewise, one can assume the Bible is a collection of myths written by men, and still argue whether the term “day” was intended to mean a 24-hour period, or something more generic such as “age”, “era”, etc., as in the expression “back in my day”. In either case, the argument wouldn’t regard the English word “day” but rather the ealiest written versions available, IIRC from the “Priestly” source, written in Hebrew, but that work draws on earlier ones which may include the story, possibly in Greek. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/28 "2013-09-16T14:39:45Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > There is no other historical account of Herod’s massacre of the innocents. Absolutely none. But how does this relate to falsifiability? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/29 "2013-09-16T14:41:23Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > That people who could work miracles existed That miracles could happen strikes me as a good example of the kind of claim that is **not** [falsifiable](http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Falsifiability.html). ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/30 "2013-09-16T14:43:26Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > One can say the Bible is the literal word of God and intended to be interpreted literally, and argue that the term “day” didn’t necessarily mean a 24 hour period, as the word was used at the time, by those who transcribed the text from divine inspiration. You can argue it, but given the writer of Genesis goes on to specify exactly what he meant by “day” (“and there was evening and there was morning…”) it’d be a pretty heavy lift. ---
**Author:** ![sentrix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@sentrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sentrix)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/31 "2013-09-16T14:43:46Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > How do you falsify it? have you seen him? ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/32 "2013-09-16T14:44:29Z")
And even if you discount the story vs history aspect, the Bible was written by humans and errors could be made that way. For (a not very good) example, I had someone insist Jonah was not swallowed by a whale because the Bible says “a great fish” and a whale is not a fish. Discounting the other issues with the story, how many people now let alone at that time before our taxonomy system would have called a whale a big fish? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/33 "2013-09-16T14:47:43Z")
> [@sentrix](#): > > have you seen him? “Falsifiable” is not the same thing as “false”. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/34 "2013-09-16T14:48:56Z")
> [@sentrix](#): > > have you seen him? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Third mention in this thread.) ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/35 "2013-09-16T14:57:12Z")
Also, keep in mind that “metaphorical” language isn’t necessarily going to translate easily or have an easy equivalent in another language. Perhaps someone 2000 years in the future will try to read an a translated anthology of the early days of blogging and come across a passage saying that “Obama is making a mountain out of a molehill and wants to catch the Republicans in the eye of the storm.”, they might actually think it means that the writer thought that Obama could physically construct mountains and alter the weather at will, perhaps with some sort of sorcery or lost technology. We know that these are idioms. We need to be aware that the idioms used in everyday writing in days of old were not necessarily ones that we are familiar with - perhaps any reasonable ancient Israelite would have realized that “making the sun stand still” is a metaphor for events that take a long time and don’t seem to be getting anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![sentrix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac8455/32.png) [@sentrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sentrix)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/36 "2013-09-16T15:02:09Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. > > (Third mention in this thread.) sure sherlock. fact versus fiction. the world is a shitfest and what is god doing upstairs? masturbating? if the devil were dead would god create another one? between you and i, i worship the monkey king. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/37 "2013-09-16T15:02:37Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > You can argue it, but given the writer of Genesis goes on to specify exactly what he meant by “day” (“and there was evening and there was morning…”) it’d be a pretty heavy lift. Good point, yet I’ve read what seemed to me to be some very good debates on this point. I wish I could find them now, but can’t. In any case, the OPs question doesn’t make sense unless we interpret the Bible literally. The age of the Earth works for the OP’s purpose only if the concensus of opinion among Biblical scholars is that the term “day” was intended to mean what we generally mean by it today. I don’t know if there is such concensus. There might be: it’s certainly the concensus among literalist websites, but I don’t want to use them as a proxy for scholars! ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/38 "2013-09-16T15:05:56Z")
[Archaeological evidence](http://archaeology.about.com/od/jterms/qt/jericho.htm) shows that Jericho was destroyed circa 1800-1400 BCE. Joshua, according to Josephus, lived circa 1355-1245 BCE, too late to blow a horn and break its walls. ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/39 "2013-09-16T15:07:48Z")
> [@sentrix](#): > > sure sherlock. fact versus fiction. > > the world is a shitfest and what is god doing upstairs? masturbating? if the devil were dead would god create another one? I think the OP’s question is an interesting one. You’ve weighed in with your suggestion, thanks. Let’s proceed with answering the OP’s question, which is listing potentially falsifiable statements in the major texts, rather than discussing whether the Bible is fact or fiction. Most of us agree with you that it’s mythology, but that’s beside the point. If you just want to bash religion, please take that to a relevant thread, or start your own. IMHO, it’s like shooting fish in a barrell, which can be fun, but not what I think we want to do in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952/40 "2013-09-16T15:14:22Z")
> [@sentrix](#): > > sure sherlock. fact versus fiction. > > the world is a shitfest and what is god doing upstairs? masturbating? if the devil were dead would god create another one? > > between you and i, i worship the monkey king. I’m an atheist, Sherlock. And you need to brush up on your definition of[falsifiable](http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Falsifiability.html). (Second mention in this thread.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-falsifiable-claims-do-the-holy-books-make/668952.md?page=3)