BIBLE GOD FORBIDS SCIENCE
INDEX
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DID THE
LAW KNOW ABOUT INFECTION?
MIRACLES AND SCRIPTURE PROBLEMS
FOREWORD
If the Bible is really the word of God, who knows all and sees all and who has all power, you would expect it to be different from any other book. It would have the marks of divine influence on it. You would expect it to report history accurately and to perhaps reveal things that were not discovered until centuries had past.
The Bible is an evil book just
because it opposes science. Science means checking things out and researching
to make sure that we do know what we believe we know. But the Bible demands
that the Bible be believed and we are expected to continue believing even when
science and archaeology conflict with the Bible. This is unjust and offensive
to those good decent scientists who are trying to enlighten the world. The
Bible has kept
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MIRACULOUS SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE ?
Fundamentalist Christians have an insatiable appetite for books which claim that the authors of the Bible had knowledge of scientific facts which were not discovered until centuries later. This is considered to be proof that God wrote the Bible. How could it be proof for that when there could have been contact made with aliens? One wonders that if the Bible really revealed scientific information before it was discovered then what did the knowledge need to be rediscovered for?
Luke 23:45 states that the sun gave no light when Jesus died. The original says that this was a total eclipse of the sun. But this was Passover time. And it was impossible for that eclipse to happen for the Passover was held at the full moon (page 186, Catholicism and Christianity).
In Job 26:7, Job cries that the earth hangs upon nothing. Fundamentalists see this as miraculous knowledge that the earth just floats in space. But Job knew that when God could make the earth in such a way that it didn’t need to hang on a string or rest on an infinite mountain that it was most likely that he did this. Job would have agreed that the earth hanged upon God so to speak for God made all things. Besides, the earth could rest on a mountain that has no bottom and still be said to hang on nothing. Job would have believed the angels could float around without support so why be impressed if he thought the same about the earth?
Job 25:5 allegedly says that the moon has no light of its own. The moon gets its glow from the sun. But the verse does not actually state that it means this. “Even the moon has no brightness [compared to God’s glory] and the stars are not pure in his sight – How much less man, who is a maggot! And a son of man, who is a worm!” The Amplified Bible rejects the other interpretation as the note in the brackets show. The verse is about things not being as beautiful or as glorious or bright as God not about what has light and what has not. The stars are not pure or pleasing in God’s sight like the moon. The fundamentalists are twisting the verse.
Job 26:7 is said to say that there are no stars in the north as science now knows. This is supposed to be a marvel as there were no telescopes. But read the verse, “He it is Who spreads out the northern skies over emptiness”. This does not say that there are no stars in it does it? Genesis says that God spread the sky over emptiness, or indicates that the space between earth and sky is empty.
The Bible is said to reveal the scientific fact that there are currents or rivers in the sea (Psalm 8:8). But everybody near a shore knows that water is cold in some places and warm in others in the same sea. The seas are big rivers so the Psalm might not be about currents at all. Rivers are water and their water is in the sea for they are all linked and are one so maybe that is the key to the meaning of the text.
Hebrews 11:3 tells us that all that we see is made of invisible things. Fundamentalists call this an extremely accurate description of the atom. But all things can be ground into invisible dust which was here the idea of things being made from things too small to see came from. It means dust not atoms.
In Hebrews 1:2; 11:3; it is said that God made worlds. So according to it God made at least two worlds. This is often assumed by Fundamentalists to declare that God made lots of planets in an age in which this was not known. But Hebrews says that the spirit realm, the dwelling of the good angels and that of the bad angels the demons as distinct from the world of matter, is a world so that is the end of that.
The discovery that air has weight is supposed to be a recent one and fundamentalists think they read in Job 28:25 something that only God could have revealed so long ago. “He gave the wind weight or pressure and allotted the waters by measure”. The Amplified Bible says that the word weight in the verse may mean pressure. It is impossible for anybody who thinks to believe that air is weightless when it feels like particles too fine to be discerned by the naked eye in a strong breeze. Anybody that surmised that air was weightless was just being thoughtless or drawing attention to the fact that when air is mild it seems weightless. By air having weight the Bible might mean the weight the wind lays on you when it pushes down on you. There would be nothing marvellous about knowing that it does that!
Everybody knew that air has pressure. When air becomes a gale it puts strong pressure on the earth. Weight and pressure are much the same thing in that context so there is no reason to think that Job means anything other than that the wind is strong at times.
Lord Kelvin was the man who discovered that rainfall will not happen unless there is an electric discharge. The Bible is said to teach this centuries before he discovered it at Psalm 135:7 and Job 38:25,26. But when lightning and rain coincide, it is only natural for people to assume that the former causes the rain at least sometimes. Notice that the verses do not say that electricity causes all rain but is only interested in lightning that brings rain. There is no miracle here but only educated guesswork. And above all they never say that all rain is caused by lightning or electricity.
The Bible asserts that God made man from dust. And science shows us that the ground and the body all share the same elements. But the Bible does not actually say that the two have the same elements for the clay was transmuted and could have been changed in its element composition. That does not stop fundamentalists from bragging that God revealed the scientific truth before science did.
It is interesting that the Fundamentalists depend so much on the Book of Job which never pretends to give divine revelation but which believers say is what God recorded about what a number of men were saying without necessarily agreeing with what they said. If the book had supernatural knowledge what business have we saying it came from God when even God never said it was?
The Bible speaks of fire coming down from Heaven and Jesus going up to Heaven at his ascension. Clearly Heaven is thought to be up in the clouds. But it is not. Heaven means the sky. Nowadays the Church obscures that meaning for we know there is no Heaven in the clouds. The Church refuses to take such language literally. Yet the Bible never gives a hint of anything different. It is just the Church rationalising away Bible errors.
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BIBLE VERSUS SCIENCE
The old prejudice that the Bible is not in harmony with science is right. But it takes a bit of work to defend it because it involves exposing Christian lies and trickery. What Christians do is that they assume the Bible is all true. Then they interpret science and even the Bible itself where there is a contradiction in such a way that no disagreement seems to exist. No matter how wrong or silly or incoherent a book is you will end up concluding that it is entirely true if you assume that it is entirely true. This happens with Muslims in relation to the Quran, Mormons with the revelations of Joseph Smith and Catholics in relation to the pope and Church teaching. To assume something like that and then to conclude that because it all adds up and agrees it is the word of God is really making a God out of your assumption and all the harm you do in the name of God is unforgivable and poor God gets the blame.
In Revelation 6:13 we read that when Jesus, the Lamb opens the sixth seal, the earth is cast into chaos and the stars of Heaven fall down on it. Though when some of the other seals were opened the author saw a symbolic vision there is nothing symbolic in this bit. Christians cannot say that the falling stars stand for something and are not real stars. The answer that God will reduce the size of the stars so that they can fall on earth shows that religion can explain away any error if it believes in miracles. For example, the Hindu Bible, the Vedas, say that the light of the moon is its own light and that the earth is a flat triangle. Hindus could say that the earth has been turned into a sphere and the moon illuminated by the sun since that time by a miraculous transforming divine power. God might have done this for one of those inscrutable divine purposes that Christians go on about.
Revelation 9:1 has a star that fell to earth which was given the key to the bottomless pit and is referred to as he. So this star is a symbol. But since Revelation does not tell us that the stars in the other part were symbols they are not.
The majority held the earth to be flat in the past so fundamentalists see a miracle in Isaiah 40:22 where God is said to sit on the circle of the earth. The original word for circle here also means sphere. But Isaiah may have subscribed to the common view that the earth was a flat circle. The circle idea was popular for the sky looked like a dome. Even the fundamentalist booklet, Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, says that the literal translation is roundness (page 23).
The magazine, Free Inquiry (Fall 1998, Vol 18, No 4, page 50) informs us that since the verse argues that God sits above the circle of the earth and makes the heavens like a curtain that this is most likely to mean the roundness that appears when you look at the horizon. The word used for circle has the same root as the word for horizon in Hebrew and related languages. Eratosthenes of Alexandria who came a few centuries after Isaiah knew that the world was a sphere and was able to work out its circumference with surprising accuracy. It is credulity to say that Isaiah must be the word of God if it knew about the roundness, when this Greek did and especially when Isaiah would have been more clear had he intended to give a supernatural proof. Lots of ancient books have made some accurate guesses.
The Bible prophet Isaiah says that the earth has four corners (Isaiah 11:12) – flat in other words. Fundamentalists surmise that this is not meant literally and is the same as us saying that the sun rises in the morning though we know that it does not rise but only looks like it does. But it is different for us to say that the sun rises for everybody knows that it is just a figure of speech. The figure of speech is just a carry over from the days we thought the sun did rise. The figure of speech was not the case with Isaiah and the four corners for he lived in an age that would have taken it literally. His book was written for people who would have done that therefore he did mean it literally. The fundamentalists just take the circle reference literally because it is right instead of taking the corners one literally. That is dishonest scholarship. It is reading what we know now back into the Bible. When you start doing that you can make the Bible mean anything you want. It is their blinkered interpretations they honour as the word of God not the Bible.
The verse says that a signal will
be erected for the nations to gather the people of
When the Devil took Jesus up a huge mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world the world must be flat. He did not see them in a vision for why would we be told that Jesus was taken up a high mountain to see them when he could see a vision anywhere?
Before Christians would admit an error in the Bible they would say that the world was flat until God turned it into a sphere after the Bible was finished.
The Bible is necessarily hostile to science because it claims to be superior to science while science says evidence and investigation and science come first. It was written before science made its big discoveries and still claims to come first therefore to be a Christian and a scientist is impossible.
DID THE LAW KNOW ABOUT INFECTION?
Bible-believers are confident that God told the ancient Hebrews things about germs and infection that were only rediscovered centuries later. If they are right then that would indicate that they knew things that nobody could have found out unless they were told by some supernatural being or alien.
The Law of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy were supposed to have been revealed by God and have absolute infallibility.
Is the fundamentalist notion that Deuteronomy 14:21, which forbids the Hebrews to eat an animal that died naturally, proves that they knew about bacteria long before they were discovered, credible? How can it be when the verse doesn’t say why it must not be eaten except that it is ritually unclean?
The Bible says that touching a seat used by a menstruating woman was unclean so perhaps unclean means that God doesn’t allow it and not that it necessarily is dirty or infectious or that it is magically infectious. Even many pagan gods hated dirt, real and imagined, and considered it disrespectful. Thus, some believe they detect that eating animals that have died without being killed is not forbidden because of the danger of infection at all. But the Hebrews saw a connection between dirt and sickness but they did not know what the connection was. They did not know about germs. They were thinking in terms of dirt magically causing the dirt of sickness as did many occultic systems in those days. The verse says that the animal may be given for food to other races. Are we to conclude that God does not mind who dies from food poisoning and infection as long as it is not people from Hebrew descent? We would if the fundamentalists had their way for the Bible has a racist God. Many nations unrelated to the Law encapsulated this ban on eating such animals in their own laws. This is a sign that no miraculous enlightenment was required for knowing that the consumption of animals who died naturally was not commendable.
Deuteronomy 23:12-14 tells the people to dispose of sewage by burying it away from where people live. Fundamentalists drop their jaws in false amazement at this pretending that it is proof that God knew that this prevents infection which was not known in those days and that the Bible must be inspired. But the text tells us that this must be done for God does not like it dirtying the land or to see it when he goes about the land and who would want excrement on full view? It also shows that God would despise sodomy for he would find it grossly indecent.
Moses forbade people to drink water from stagnant pools and
which flesh had rotted in (Leviticus
Is the Bible law that people must avoid contact with leprosy (Leviticus 13) evidence that God revealed to humanity that it is infectious? But the blasted book says that leprosy could spread when it infects a damp wall so the sense came from human observation and not from a divine revelation. Leprosy in the Bible is any mould or rash or skin infection and is not just the disease we call leprosy now (page 122, Bible Dictionary and Concordance, New American Bible).
Pigs are maligned as unclean food but they are not when
cleaned and cooked right. Animals revered by the pagan nations around
The Bible has a magical and not a scientific understanding of infection. It supposes that magical forces spread disease. It is plain that God did not know about germs or understand fully how infection could be stopped.
THE MAD MORRIS DANCE
In
In the book, Reason and Belief we learn that in the mid seventies nearly three quarters of top American scientists had no religion and the number from Catholic families was not even 5% (page 72). And the fact that the religious ones would not know much about their religion so that their commitment to it could not be taken as an indicator that their religion is probably true is important.
The president of Creation Research is the mental or lying or both, Henry Morris.
His little book, Science and the Bible, lies about something that Abraham was told. It starts with a lie and that is how it goes on.
Abraham was informed by God that he would have more descendants than there are stars in Heaven by God (Genesis 15). Fundamentalists are amazed that Abraham was told that there were countless stars, a fact that was only recently discovered by science. This does look startling … until one goes to the context in which God said it. God told Abraham to look up at the sky and try to count the stars if he could and wanted to meaning that there would be a lot and Abraham would have as many and more descendants. God never said that there were more stars than the visible ones. God was just giving Abraham a metaphor for he knew Abraham wasn’t going to try and count the stars nor did God expect him to! Mad literalist Morris and his fundamentalists are trying to hoodwink us. God made the mistake of forgetting to try to count the stars visible to the naked eye before he spoke for they can be counted.
Even if we could count the stars it would be impossible because the earth moves and you would never be able to tell what stars you have already counted.
Morris finds it remarkable that the Bible teaches that all things deteriorate in Psalm 102:25-27 and Romans 8 (Science and the Bible, page 19). All things do not deteriorate for energy, from which all things are made doesn’t. These verses are merely referring to the decay and disintegration we all see in the world and are not about science.
Job 36:27-29 supposedly evinces Elihu’s miraculous knowledge when it speaks of the hydrologic cycle. Water evaporates and goes up to the sky and then comes back as rain. There is nothing amazing about this for the clouds look like steam and steam rises and turns to water when it touches something and anybody can see the rain comes from the clouds. (This is why it took no miracle for the author of Ecclesiastes (1:6,7) to know that rain comes from the sea and that it is supplied by rain.) Elihu said this. Elihu was not an inspired prophet and the scripture does not declare him to be one. If Elihu said something that was found to be true centuries later then that has nothing to do with trying to show that the Bible taught things that only God could have known.
Morris imagines that when Paul wrote that one star differs from another in glory (1 Corinthians 15:41) that God had revealed to him that the stars were different sizes and of different strengths in light for Paul could not have known this for it is a later discovery. But Paul did not intend to reveal things ahead of his time. He gazed up at the clear night sky and noticed that some stars were dimmer or brighter than others like the rest of us have done.
Morris said lays down an astonishing interpretation of Psalm 19:6 which says that the sun goes from the end of Heaven and circles around Heaven. This might mean that the sun circles the earth. But Morris says, though he cannot prove it, that it is saying that the sun goes round in a circle in the milky way and that the galaxy to which our sun belongs is in motion! The verse says that the sun comes from one end of Heaven and circles to the end of it and then that there is nothing hid from the heat of this motion. It may mean that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west in a round way. It may just be saying that the sun moves across the sky in a circular way. The bit about the heat strongly suggests that this is the true interpretation for only the earth can feel the heat and not the parts of Heaven. Morris like a bad scientist completely ignores the rule of Occam to take the simplest meaning.
Morris raves that he sees a
reference to the earth being round at Proverbs
Morris reckons that when the
Bible says that the blood causes life (Leviticus
If the Bible said that the life of flesh is in the breath the fundamentalists would be arguing that it knew about the fact that breath takes in oxygen and expels bad gases and that keeps you alive. They make no sense.
Creation no longer takes place as in something appearing out of nowhere and Morris asserts that the author of Hebrews knew this miraculously before it was proven by science (4:3). The verse he has in mind says that the wicked will not receive God’s reward through his works have been finished from the foundation of the world. Now the cessation of creative work has nothing to do with not getting a reward. The author is just saying that though God has prepared rewards from the time he finished creation for all people not all will get them and he knows before it happens what will happen so it is all settled since the dawn of time. This comes out clearly in the Amplified Bible. Hebrews is not on about finished creation at all. Morris’ failure to understand or want to understand this is the reason why he tells us that this verse speaks of the discovery of science about the conservation of energy, the first law of thermodynamics. Christians believe that God is creating now for he has to keep holding things in existence though it is not as obvious as it was the first time he created when things popped out of nothing but now nothing can see things coming from nothing. Also Morris believes that God is creating souls now. How an he know that God isn’t creating matter still maybe at the remote corners of the universe or in some other universe?
Morris quotes Genesis 2:1,2 where it is written that God finished his work of making the Heavens and the earth as a standby. But God finishing the Heavens and the earth does not mean that he won’t create any more.
Morris thinks that the trinity, three separate persons being one God, is possible for space consists of height, length and breadth and is still one. So he would regard the trinity doctrine, which is thinks is scriptural, as a miracle – miraculous knowledge of the scientific doctrine that three can be one. But any mathematically minded person would know that space has three dimensions and is still one. It is not three kinds of space making up one space so it is only superficially like the trinity. It is no more a mystery than the one shamrock having three leaves. And the Bible does not actually say it means there are three distinct persons in God. It could be argued that since the Bible says there is one God that anything that seems to mean that there are two or more persons in God means it symbolically. It never proves it means it literally.
Christians say that persons is the nearest they can get to describing the threefold being of God. It is not an exact description. Those who believe in the Bible alone like Morris cannot believe in three “persons” in one God if the Bible does not know of this loose use of the word person and would have to say there are three persons in God. The Bible makes no distinction between person and being so it would mean there were three gods in one God for that is all it could understand a trinity to mean. If space or anything else can be three in one, God might be different for he is not like space and space is not like him.
Morris dishonestly claims that
the Bible was scientifically accurate when it says the world was once flooded
for there is enough water on earth and in the sky to do that. But if there had
been a flood it would have happened close enough to our time to leave its mark
all over the world. There would be fish bones all over the
Morris claimed in 1993 that the Devil used psychic powers to trick Eve so that she would take the forbidden fruit. This shows his mentality because even the Bible does not go that far. It does not bother him that the Bible says in Genesis 1 that water existed before God made the land though it is clear from science that the land existed before water did.
It does not bother him that God
made the stars in Genesis
It is odd that Genesis has a God who makes the earth without form and void instead of making it right in the first place. This may imply an evolving God who is not almighty or that God just found these materials and started to work on them. The latter would deny that God made all things from nothing. Genesis uses a word called bereshit for making which is supposed to refer to making out of nothing. But the Hebrews like all ancient peoples often meant what you could not see or touch by nothing which made it nothing to them but was not necessarily nothing.
There are some Christian fundamentalist books which reject the rubbish in Morris’ book. He is not worth thinking about. For the likes of him to try and make Christianity as provable as two and two being four is dangerous indeed for we are better off without it and don’t need it. When he is president of the Creation Research Institute what does that say about the others in the Institute?
The best book against the lies and the twisting of facts and wilful ignorance about what science really says and the continual taking of other people’s writings out of context that Morris indulges in is the fundamentalist book, Creation and Evolution, by Dr Alan Hayward. This book is superb and refutes the evidences that Creation Science offers that the earth is at most 10,000 years old and the other absurd statements it makes.
Creation science is fraud.
MICHAEL SHERMER
This is an adaptation of chapter 10, Confronting Creationists, in Michael Shermer’s book, Why People Believe Weird Things. My comments are in italics.
He gives twenty-five of the main creationist objections to evolutionism and answers them. I have selected the objections that are worth considering.
1) They say that Creation Science should be taught in schools for it is science.
But it is not science but religion for they suppose that the Bible is inerrant and the word of God. They put the word of the Bible first.
Moreover, it is not scientific of them to say that God is creator when the creator could be an intelligent computer made of spirit and not a God of love.
2) They say that science deals only what can be found today and cannot tell us about the past so we need the Bible to fill in the gaps.
Geologists and archaeologists are scientists and we can learn what went on in the past.
Scientists shouldn’t be using the Bible for to use a book
there is so much contention over among historians is unscientific.
3) They say Creation Science should be taught alongside evolution so that both sides of the human origins issue are presented.
That would blur the distinction between teaching science and fact. If classes should not be taught Native American creation myths in Biology they should not be taught the Bible’s myth either.
It is possible to believe in creation and in the flood
and in two first parents without bringing in God or proclaiming the Bible to be
the infallible word of God. Even if the Bible is right that does not prove it
is God’s word. The creator could easily be an impersonal force as a God. But
their science brings in God and that is unscientific and unphilosophical.
4) The Bible is a book of science and should be taught in the schools.
Why the Bible and not other books that do the same?
Even if the Bible fits science that does not mean it should be taught in science. However I agree with the Fundamentalist idea that the Bible claims to be science and history. To say that God made the world is to make a scientific statement.
5) Natural selection says the fittest survive for they are the best adapted and the best adapted survive for they are the fittest. This is arguing in circles.
It is not for the fittest would necessarily have to be the best adapted. It’s just commonsense.
Sometimes circular arguments give guidelines about what
to look for and then we find evidence and they cease to be circular arguments.
6) Evolutionism is wrong for there is no evidence for it so creationism is right.
Evolution being wrong would not make creationism right and if creationism is right that does not mean that the Bible is true.
Creationism is a very strange concept for it has a
supernatural God who makes things out of nothing at all. That means there could
be an infinity of things we cannot think of that could be alternatives. When
creationism seems mad and paradoxical that gives the other mad and paradoxical
possibilities a chance. It is arrogance to say if evolution is wrong then
creationism is right.
Evolution can never be disproved for there is no limit to
the ways it might have happened. It could be that it happened to some species
and the rest were made by beings from another world.
7) Evolutionism
is to blame for the atheism, Marxism and decline in morals that sweeps
It doesn’t necessarily lead to these.
Creationists call Moses having gays and adulterers and
apostates stoned to death and the climate of fear in which he governed
8) Evolutionism is a religion like secular humanism and should be banned from American schools if creationism should be.
Religion is about the unseen and science about what is seen and to say that evolutionism and secular humanism are religions is to make the word religion mean nothing or its definition becomes too broad.
Suppose evolutionism and creationism can both be classified religious. Creationism is more religious than evolutionism so since we have to teach something it would have to be evolutionism.
9) The disagreements among evolutionists proves that the evolution theory is false.
It does not when they all believe in evolution. They just bicker over the details and what happened when and how. There are many different versions of how evolution happens. Christians bicker over many things so does that mean Christianity is false?
There are as more differences among creationists about what is evidence for its position and what is not and even about what exactly happened or how to interpret the Bible.
At least with evolution you don’t have the problem of explaining how God could have been such a bad teacher in the Bible and causing all this confusion and division!
10) There had to be a first cause and God is that cause so God is like a person when he makes persons.
Green paint is made from blue and yellow paint which are not like green. Men having nipples and panda’s thumbs are two things out of millions which refute design by a perfectly intelligent God.
And God is totally different from anything we imagine and
the Church says that the more you learn about him the less you know.
11) Science says something cannot come from nothing so where did what exploded in the big bang come from? It must have been God. That is why we can’t believe that life evolved.
Evolutionists are more concerned with how the people and animals of the world got their present state of development than with how the universe began or what it came from or about how life began. The other questions are for philosophy not science. And if something cannot come from nothing then doesn’t God making something from nothing contradict this?
12) They say that if you calculate back from the present world population you work out that there had to be only two people Adam and Eve alive 6,300 years ago. The population would be very big if there had been people around for as long as evolutionists say.
That would mean that in 2,600 BC ago there would only be 600
people alive but we know that there were well-developed and sophisticated
civilisation in
A lot of killings and plagues took place before man became more civilised.
13) Mutations which are supposed to be the basis of evolution are always harmful.
But most mutations are so small that they are harmless. They can effect genetic change and make the organism improve.
The mutations needed in evolution can take place so slowly and over such a long period of time that they are harmless. A slow mutation might not have have same effect as a fast one.
14) The bones offered as evidence of human evolution are just bones that have been diseased by arthritis and other diseases and homo erectus and australopithecus are just apes. Why is there no evidence of the beings that were half evolved to humanness in the fossil record?
The answer is that there are too many bones that show that evolution happened both in animals and with man for evolution to be wrong. Lack of fossils can be evidence of a rapid change not that evolution has gaps in it and that creationism is true like they maintain. Creationists ignore the fact that fossils are rare so you can’t expect the fossil record to tell you a lot.
When creationists are shown a transitional form and another one they demand a third to show that there is a link between the two. But if they got the link they would be looking for another link between 1 and 2 and 2 and 3 and more links between each one and so on forever which is mad.
16) The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that things get more disordered as time goes on while evolutionism says living things get more ordered.
The answer to this objection is that there were countless failures in the evolutionary process so it is not as orderly as it looks. It is only partly orderly but the order is what we would expect by chance to come out of the disorder.
17) Even the simplest living thing is too complicated to have been made by chance.
It is not random and by chance. Chance helped but it was not the entire cause.
18) The flood made sure that the simple organisms are on the bottom layers and the more advanced ones at the top of the fossil record. This sorting is the reason it looks as if the higher animals evolved from simpler ones in the fossil record.
This is wrong for something had to float down to the bottom and some of the organisms had to float up to the top.
19) Dr Thomas Barnes proved that the earth is no older than ten thousand years when he shows that the half-life of the earth’s magnetic field is 1,400 years.
He assumed that the rate of decay does not change speeds, sometimes going faster and other times slowing down and it is very changeable. He was wrong. Many dating techniques corroborate each other but creationists just focus on the ones that tell them what they want to hear.
20) We know that living fossils which are animals that have not changed in millions of years prove that God made all life at once.
Evolution says that the environment causes change. It only proves that these creatures didn’t need to change. With natural selection some creatures will develop all they need to survive quicker than others.
21) Science has been taken in by hoaxes like the Piltdown man so listen to Creation Science instead.
That is all the more reason to watch out for outlandish chatter like Creation Science.
Real science moves on after admitting mistakes and science cannot work or teach us unless it makes mistakes.
If creationists listened to evolutionists and were not hell-bent on proving an argument and had more time for integrity there would be no dispute.
MIRACLES AND SCRIPTURE PROBLEMS
If miracles and a mystery God who does things even the brightest can’t understand are admitted into one’s world-view, one’s creed, however absurd, is placed far beyond the grasp of rational examination. It becomes irrefutable.
If Genesis said that Abraham had ten wives and Isaiah said he had only two then the believer could argue that, “Maybe God did a miracle to make it look like a contradiction in order to try our faith. Both statements can be true if God miraculous made it so that each wife is five persons in one just like he is three in one.”
Or one can simply assume that there is so much in religion that seems incoherent and which isn’t really that this problem is to be included among the mysteries.
The Bible views the world as a flat disk though it was in water that had four corners. The true Christian would say that it has been remoulded into a sphere since.
The Bible says that David killed Goliath the giant. If it said that somebody else – and it says Elhanan – did it, it would be argued that Goliath came back to life and was killed again or that Goliath was cloned by God.
What about when Jesus said that God’s statement, “I am the
God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob” (Mark
All miracles are silly or look silly. For example, if God raised Jesus from the dead instead of doing something greater then he is strange indeed. In Genesis 1, God did not create all things at once but in pieces. This was odd when he could have made it all at the one time. Why do a number of miracles where one would suffice especially when there is nobody about to be converted into faith by seeing them? Mysterious miracles make the whole situation go from bad to worse. Unfettered, the theologian can paper over any scriptural blunder or contradiction.
We see then that for anybody to argue that the Bible does not authorise bizarre and tortured attempts to solve its discrepancies is wrong. God could have let the sea dry up naturally instead of parting it leaving a path through it with a wall of water on each side when the Exodus of Israel was in progress. When the Bible says that God is good enough though there is no possible way to explain why he lets us suffer, it is authorising foolishness as a way to solve the problems.
Miracles leave you that if you are in a religion and it is wrong you won’t be able to see if it is true or not. Obviously, the only reasonable way to deal with prophets is to shut your ears against their consecrated hogwash. Why? Because if you say one Bible should be believed you are eliminating the rest for nothing. You are arbitrarily rejecting other Bibles like the Koran or the Book of Mormon. And if you believe all Bibles you are insane. You are saying that though Jesus was infallible the Koran is right to deny what he said in the Christian Bible. One Bible, implicitly at least, condemns and contradicts the other.
There is no end to the contradictions that can be “resolved” with miracles. Miracles are used to solve the contradiction between Jesus being killed and showing up again afterwards. The concept of miracle is a godsend to the person who is determined or disposed to believe something no matter what. And the only kind of faith that person will have is blind faith which is evil. It is evil to make sacrifices for what you blindly believe in. It is reckless and exalts faith over prudence. It is dogmatism and arrogance at their worst.
Miracles must only be believed as a last resort for they are such a big threat to reason and reality. Therefore, since every book in the Bible could have been discreetly altered for copies were made by hand and were not supervised until the books grew in importance and attained scriptural status the accounts of miracles could have been inserted. Often it only takes a few minor changes to make a book speak of a miracle where it did not and only meant a strange natural event.
Religionists will protest that there is no evidence of interpolations. So, they say if there is no evidence against miracles they are true. You can’t believe in a miracle just because there is no evidence against it for then anybody could say that when they did something bad that it was a demon pretending to be them and who made them invisible at the same time who did it. The miracles in the Bible plus the fact that it could have been tampered with prove that the Bible is not from God. However, amazing it may be it speaks only of the astonishing craftiness of men. To say that there is no evidence for tampering and therefore the Bible is true is scandalous for that does not prove there is evidence that it was not tampered with. Nobody knows. And when the Bible says people by nature don’t like God it is as good as saying they would have been delighted to tamper.
There is no evidence that the Bible was written by a being that knows all things. There is no reason to believe in the Bible as the word of God. We have no right to do it because God would not want us to honour a book as his voice when it may not be or is not his voice at all.
THE
WWW
Creationism
This shows that the prime creationist apologist Duane Gish has been corrected many times for his errors and misunderstandings of his subject and has still repeated the same errors afterwards to make his case look good. He is perverting the evidence purposely. He has been known to make up quotations for the authorities he cites as evidence. He lies to prove that the skeleton Lucy which shows a transition between animal to man was just a monkey and could not walk upright. Both of his claims are false.
http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/gish.html
Dennis Mc Kinsey, Biblical Errancy
http://members.aol.com/darrwin2/iss171.html
Argues against the Fundamentalist claim that when the book
of Leviticus says that the life is in the blood it was stating an unknown
scientific fact and showing that the book was written by God. McKinsey says
that since the context of this verse is about sacrifice to God it means
spiritual life or holiness is in the blood and is not on about physical life.
This page gives some excellent criticisms of the fantasies and lies of Henry
Morris and the
Science in the Bible? Dr M Magee
www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/440BibleScience.html
Why It’s a Load of Old Cobblers, Adrian Barnett
www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/noahs_ark.html
Exposes the utter absurdity of the Noah’s
The Bible as History Flunks New Archaeological Tests
www.10.nytimes.com/library/arts/072900david-bible.html
Talk.Origins archive - presenting the mainstream scientific viewpoint of the Creation/Evolution controversy.
NCSE - science/evolution resources for Teachers.
Many evolution and musuem links
The Virtual Library on evolution
sci.skeptic newsgroup FAQ - good intro to skepticism
Massive evolution resource page
The Hawaiian Islands, creation science and the age of the Earth
Thorough demolition of Creationism - well worth a look.
In-depth analysis of the Noah's Ark myth
Polonium haloes problem. It's just Radon 222 after all.
Plate tectonics / continental drift
Facts
about Koala Bears - They were on the
Dr. Hovind debunked (not difficult)
Oldest
living thing on the planet -
Bristlecone Pines - almost the oldest living things on the planet, and an unbroken history dating back at least 9,000 years (3,000 years before the alleged Creation)
GISP2 Ice Core sample dating back 110,000 years (104,000 years before the alleged Creation)
The receding moon problem sorted out.
The incredible age of coral reefs.
Excellent article calculating the size and age of the universe.
Index of Creationism and Pseudo Science
Suspicious Creationist Credentials
BOOKS CONSULTED
A Summary of Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof,
The Banner of Truth Trust,
A Test of Time, David Rohl,
Century,
Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, John W Haley,
An Act of God, Graham Philips, Sidgwick
and
Answers to Tough Questions, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press Bucks, 1988
Attack on the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Belief and Make-Believe, GA Wells,
Biblical Dictionary and Concordance, New American Bible,
Living Word Edition, CD Stanley Enterprises,
Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine, Raymond E Brown, Paulist Press,
But the Bible Does Not Say So, Rev Roberto Nisbet, Church Book Room Press,
Catholicism and Christianity, Cecil John Cadoux, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius
Press,
Creation and Evolution, Dr Alan Hayward, Triangle,
Does the Bible Contradict Itself? Radio Bible Class,
Encyclopaedia of Bible Difficulties, Gleason W Archer, Zondervan,
Essentials, David L Edwards and John Stott, Hodder & Stoughton,
Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995
Free Inquiry, Fall 1998, Vol 18,
No 4, Council for Secular Humanism,
God and the Human Condition, F J Sheed,
Sheed & Ward,
God Cannot Lie, David Alsobrook,
God, Science and Evolution, Prof E H Andrews, Evangelical Press, Herts, 1985
God’s Word, Final Infallible and Forever, Floyd C McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, 1985
Hard Sayings, Derek Kidner, InterVarsity Press,
How and Why Catholic and Protestant Bibles Differ, Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ and Donald Senior, CP, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 1983
How to Interpret the Bible, Fergus Cleary SJ, Ligouri Publications,
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene Oregon, 1996
Inspiration in the Bible, Fr Karl Rahner,
Herder and Herder,
It Ain’t Necessarily So,
Investigating the Truth of the Biblical Past, Matthew Sturgis, Headline Books,
Jehovah of the Watch-tower, Walter Martin and Norman Klann, Bethany House Publishers,
Let’s Weigh the Evidence, Which Bible is the Real Word of
God? Barry Burton, Chick Publications,
Know What You Believe, Paul E Little, Scripture
Know Why You Believe, Paul E Little, Scripture
New Age Bible Versions, GA Riplinger, Bible & Literature Foundation,
New Evangelicalism An Enemy of Fundamentalism, Curtis Hutson, Sword of the Lord,
None of These Diseases, SI McMillen MD,
Our Perfect Book the Bible, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Proof the Bible is True, Rev JMA Willans BD, Dip.Theol.
Radio Replies Vol 3, Radio Replies
Press,
Reason and Belief, Bland Blanschard,
Remarks on the New King James Version and Revised Authorised Version, DK Madden, 35 Regent Street, Sandy Bay, Tasmania, 7005, 1991
Return to
Science and the Bible, Henry Morris, Moody Press, Bucks, 1988
Science Held Hostage What’s Wrong With Creation Science and Evolutionism, Howard J Van Till/Davis A.Young/Clarence Menninga, IVP, Downer’s Grove, Illinois, 1988
Science Speaks, Peter W Stoner and Robert C Newman, Moody Press, Chicago, 1976
Set My Exiles Free, John Power, Logos Books, MH Gill & Son Ltd,
Testament, The Bible and History, John Romer,
Henry Holt and Company,
The Authority of the Bible, Ambassador College,
The Bible Fact or Fantasy, John Drane,
Lion,
The Bible is the Word of God, Jimmy Thomas, Guardian of
Truth,
The Bible or Evolution? William
The Bible, Questions People Ask, A Redemptorist
Pastoral Publication, Liguori Publications,
The Bible, The Biography, Karen Armstrong, Atlantic Books, London, 2007
The Bible Unearthed,
The Canon of Scripture, FF Bruce, Chapter House,
The Church of Rome and the Word of God, Rev Eric C Last,
Protestant Truth Society,
The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
The History of Christianity, Lion, Herts, 1982
The King James Version Defended, Edward F Hills, The
Christian Research Press,
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Edited by Raymond E Brown, Joseph A Fitzmyer, Roland E Murphy, Geoffrey Chapman, New York 1990
The Theology of Inspiration, John Scullion SJ, Mercier,
The Unauthorised Version, Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, John R Rice Sword of the
Lord,
What is the Bible? Henri Daniel-Rops,
Angelus Books, Guild Press,
When Critics Ask, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992
Which Version Now? Bob Sheehan, Carey Publications, 5 Fairford Close,
Who is a Fundamentalist? Dr Curtis Hutson,
Sword of the Lord,
Why Does God..? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls , Bucks, 1970
Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer,
26 March 2008