Biblical scientific errors

What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs or surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or to the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes.Look for a mistake in the Word of God, and you will make one.

Biblical scientific errors refer to Biblical claims that go against verifiable scientific data. Biblical scientific errors are external errors (something that the Bible gets wrong about the external world) as opposed to internal errors (something that contradicts the Bible's own message).

Biblical scientific errors amount to evidence against Biblical scientific foreknowledge and Biblical literalism.

What is science?
When considering whether or not an idea is scientific it is worthwhile remembering some principles from the philosophy of science. One of these is the concept of methodological naturalism. This states that supernatural explanations are excluded a priori from scientific considerations. In other words - from the get go - if the suggestion is Godidit then it isn't science.

This aspect of methodological naturalism is also tied into the question of falsifiability - the idea that there must be a theoretical way in which a claim could be disproved in order for it to be science. For example, there is no way that a claim such as: "A god created the world with the appearance of age last Thursday" could be tested or disproved. And if it cannot be tested, it cannot even theoretically be disproved (falsified) and thus it cannot be a scientific claim. A somewhat different question associated with disproof is whether a statement is both and falsifiable and has actually been falsified. For example the claim "the Earth and the universe came into existence within seven days of each other" is a falsifiable claim - and it is also one which is easily falsified. In consequence, neither the "Last Thursday" claim nor the "Seven day creation" claim is "scientific" - but for different reasons.

Another aspect of science is the question of evidence. Evidence is crucial to the scientific method - if no evidence is found for a proposed hypothesis then it does not meet even the lowest threshold for scientific acceptance.

The question of evidence is also strongly associated with the concept of burden of proof. Simply stated, this concept maintains that it the responsibility of the person (or book) presenting a claim to provide evidence for its veracity - it is not the responsibility of third parties to disprove any claim.

Gross errors
Although this article focuses more on areas where the bible gets scientific detail wrong, it is also important to remember that a literalistic reading of the bible also contains gross scientific errors in cosmology, biology, geology, and linguistics. More information about each of these points is contained in the linked articles.

Six day creation
The idea that the Earth and the Universe were created in six days a few thousand years ago is completely unscientific. The age of the universe is calculated as being around 13.8 billion years while Earth is calculated to have formed 4.5 billion years ago. The difference between these two dates is significantly greater than six days. For those biblical literalists who argue for a 7,000 year old earth, there are multiple lines of evidence against a recent creation and—by extension—against a six day creation.

Human evolution
The claim that humans were the result of a special creation event at the end of this six day period is wrong. In fact, the evidence that humans and other animals evolved gradually over a period of some three to four billion years is overwhelming.

A global flood
There is no evidence for a global flood event as described in the Bible. While there is evidence for large floods in regions spanning all over the world, there is nothing to suggest one giant flood engulfed the planet's surface. Many ancient tribes and religions across the globe have flood myths, likely arising from past events. This does not suggest the flood described in the story of Noah actually occurred.

Tower of Babel
There is no linguistic evidence for any of the events included in the Tower of Babel myth.

Anatomy of insects
(NIV):

While some would see this as a scientific error, J.P. Holding has an "explanation":

What the above explanation so clearly misses is the fact that when the Bible mentions that “All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be detestable to you” [Group A] this group does not include those with leaping legs as shown by the fact that the very next passage states “There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground.”  [Group B]

Now if the passages lacked the first half discussing Group A, evangelical apologists such as J.P. Holding may have some ground. But as the biblical text clearly differentiates Group A (those with no jointed legs) as separate to Group B (those with said jointed legs) and yet both groups are defined as having four legs, this argument can be of no defense. Even if J.P Holding were correct on the still unsubstantiated basis that the ancient Hebrews defined crickets and similar insects of Group B as having four typical legs and two "jointed legs" for leaping,that still would not explain the missing legs of the beetles and other non-leaping insects from Group A which are discussed separately.

One should also note that the mentioned passage from Animal Farm provides an example of the pigs making up a clever excuse to justify and amend a previous mistake. In fact, Orwell's tale was a complete satire on how apologists operate, a literary device that went right over the head of J.P. Holding, who to the surprise of none, thinks the porcine ratiocination should be taken seriously. A real-life apologist invoking the B.S. excuse of a fictional apologist and not realizing that the character was actually a mockery of himself represents pure poetic justice.

The smallest seed
Another parable put he [ Jesus ] forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

This argues that Jesus was wrong because there are smaller seeds in existence, like the orchid. One attempt to rationalise this, used by J. P. Holding is to use a process called illegitimate totality transfer, where a single possible meaning out of many for a specific word in the original text is argued to be the only possible translation solely because it supports the inerrantist viewpoint: in this case, translating the Greek mikros (root of "microscopic") as "least" (5 other uses in the KJV, 5 least / less in the NAS) rather than little or small (20 uses for these two in the KJV, 41 references to something small in the NAS). It is difficult to make sense of the suggested translation: in what sense is mustard the "least" of seeds, compared to, say, the seeds of weeds? How is the seed useless if it grows into something great? And given the other half of the sentence refers to the mustard becoming tall, it makes no sense to say the first part is an "evaluation of worth" as Holding does. Holding also ignores that least is a synonym for smallest in English as well, so his totality transfer doesn't even solve his problem. Many non-KJV translations have outright rejected this attempted rationalisation and simply translate mikros as "smallest" in this case.

The NIV at one point took a more active stance of shoving the word "your" into the verse with no real precedent, but this was regarded as so unacceptable that the 2011 edition removed it.

Some versions refer to the mustard as a "shrub", which Holding characterises as an incorrect translation, claiming the word used (Lachanon) only means "vegetable" or "herb." This cunning argument is a win unless anyone happens to take the radical step of looking at Strong's Concordance, in which case one will find it has one other meaning he's not bothering to tell us about. Hm, "garden plant", but clearly "shrub" is a completely unacceptable translation because he says so.

A second problem is that the Bible incorrectly states mustard grows into a tree: rather than trying to BS his way out of this with the Lexicon or Concordance (because there are no alternate meanings for the word used), Holding takes the "it was right back then" approach by claiming that mustard would be classified as a tree because it is tall, ignoring that it never looks remotely like a tree: we're apparently just supposed to believe him that the classification system used to work this way. And one would think Jesus, being the guy who created trees and all, would know what was and was not one.

Ant behavior
(Willibrord) The English translation would look something like this:

6:6 Look at the ant, you lazy bum, watch her behavior and become wise. 6:7 She has no captain, no supervisor, no ruler, 6:8 but she makes sure that she has food in the summer and safeguards her food during harvest

The idea that the ant is an individual animal that does everything herself simply isn't true from a biological standpoint. Ants live in a colony with many subdivisions, which include workers and queens. Most ants in reality do only have one mission and that is to make sure that their queen is fed and alive to pass on the genes to a succeeding population. So, in a sense, worker ants do have rulers and the ant population does survive as a population, where every individual is dependent on another.

Thoughts
Sirach 17:6 says: "He gave them the ability to think, made a tongue, eyes and ears and gave them a heart to be able to think." This is false, for obvious reasons. This is however, part of the Deutor-canonical and one of the biblical texts that was scrapped in Protestant denominations and is used exclusively by Catholics and Orthodox sects.

Pi
The Bible mentions a circle whose dimensions would make pi equal to 3. This has been a source of humor for skeptics and consternation for literalist Christians and Jews.

The cauldron is first mentioned in (KJV):

Said verse is reiterated in (KJV):

These verses present three notable problems for literalist Christians.

1. Value of pi
Pi is a circle's circumference divided by its diameter. (C = πd, π = C/d.) According to a purely literalistic interpretation of the Bible, these are the circle's dimensions:

Circumference (C) = 30 cubits ("a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about")

Diameter (d) = 10 cubits ("ten cubits from the one brim to the other")

Thus:

Biblical Pi (π) = (C/d) = (30 cubits/10 cubits) = 3.0

However, actual pi is not 3. The actual value of π is 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288...

This leaves Biblical literalists in a bind: either reject mathematics and most of modern technology, or reject Biblical literalism.

2. Over-statement of Capacity
Per 1 Kings, the capacity of the "container" was (at least?) 2 000 baths, whereas 2 Chronicles asserts the capacity at (at least?) 3 000 baths.

Ignoring the internal contradiction in respect of its capacity (2 000 baths versus 3 000 baths - proving inaccuracy in itself), one is still left with the impossibility / inaccuracy pertaining to the capacity of the container.

"Molten sea", unfortunately does not describe an exact geometric shape. What is clear, however, is that the container was round at the brim, with a height (depth) half its diameter. It might have been of hemispherical- (a half-sphere, with every point on its surface equidistant to the centre of the circle at the brim), or cylindrical- (with straight parallel sides and a bottom circle replicating the brim) shape, (or indeed any ovaloid shape in between).

A. The container as a hemisphere: If the stated verses intended describing a hemisphere, with a 10 cubit diameter (i.e. a 5 cubit radius / depth), the capacity thereof calculates as follows:

Volume of a hemisphere = 2 π r³/3

THUS:                   2 (3.14) (2.29m)³/3     -》   (5 cubits = 2.286m) ≈ 25.14 m³ or 25 140 litres (All values rounded upward to two decimals to fit more "baths")

Using the smallest known variable for the biblical unit for "bath" at 22.00 litres (rounded downward to fit more "baths"), a hemispherical "container" could at most hold :

25 140 litres / 22 = 1 143 baths

THUS: Even applying approximations to the various factors to best calculate the highest number of "baths" a hemispherical container could possibly engulf, one is left with a staggering over-statement of its capacity by ±42% (in the case of 2 000 baths as stated by 1 Kings), or an even more-embellished over-statement of its capacity by ±62% (in the case of the 3 000 baths of 2 Chronicles).

B. The container as a cylinder: In the alternative, the stated verses could have intended to describe a cylinder, the capacity of which calculates as follows:

Volume of a cylinder = π r² h

THUS:                 (3.14) (2.29m)² (2.29)    -》   (5 cubits = 2.286m) ≈ 37.73 m³ or 37 730 litres

(All values rounded upward to two decimals to fit more "baths")

Using the smallest known variable for the biblical unit for "bath" at 22.00 litres (rounded downward to fit more "baths"), a cylindrical "container" could at most hold :

37 730 litres / 22 = 1 715 baths

THUS: Even applying approximation, the capacity is still over-stated by ±15% (in the case of 2 000 baths as stated by 1 Kings), or ±43% (in the case of the 3 000 baths of 2 Chronicles).

C. The container as an irregular or ovaloid shape: In the further alternative, the said verses might have intended to describe an irregular or ovaloid shape.

In that case, the capacity would range between the values calculated at A   above and that calculated at B.

THUS: The over-statement of the container's capacity remains.

3. Lack of explanation
Why doesn't the Bible use this chance to explain the nature of pi? (Or explain any other then-unknown scientific/mathematic principles, anywhere?)

If the next verse, 1 Kings 7:27, stated, "And the said, 'LO! Pi (π) is irrational and has no end!'", it would have proven that the Bible had some really smart authors, if not necessarily a divine one.

The consistent lack of Biblical scientific foreknowledge and presence of Biblical scientific errors suggests against divine authorship.

Apologia
Due to the problems that a literal interpretation of this verse as it stands would pose for engineering, mathematics, and reality, literalists have proposed several alternate ways to intepret the verse. While many are inherently flawed, even a valid response would still show that the Bible itself is not "self-evident" and doesn't have enough clarity to make simple statements about the world. And if the Bible is unclear or inaccurate here, why should it be trusted on more important matters, like the age of the earth (calculated via math)?

Imprecision
Even the comparatively innocuous idea that the writer of I Kings might have been speaking in only approximate terms is unacceptable to some people, because it implies, however slightly, that some passages in the Bible were never intended to be taken with exact literalness.

The most probable explanation for the Bible's inaccuracy is that this verse was written by humans using approximations. This seems especially likely given that "Hebrews were not an especially technological society; when Solomon built his Temple he had to hire Phoenecian artisans for the really technical work". The real reason the bowl's dimensions are mentioned is to emphasize that it's big (hence why "it contained two thousand baths" is included), not to perfectly describe it in every detail. Pomp is a more common characteristic of the Bible than precision.

Is the circumference approximate? "30 cubits" in circumference may really mean "30±0.5 cubits". This gives a diameter of (30±0.5)/pi or 9.55±0.159 cubits (to three significant figures), meaning anywhere between 9.39 and 9.71 cubits. This does not include a 10 cubit diameter, and so cannot resolve the issue.

Is the diameter approximate? "10 cubits" in diameter may really mean "10±0.5 cubits". This gives a circumference of π*10±0.5 or 31.4±1.57 cubits (to three significant figures), meaning anywhere between 29.8 and 33.0 cubits. This does include a 30 cubit circumference, which may resolve the issue.

The major issue for this apologism is that, if it's accepted that the Bible is human-written and imprecise at best, then the basis disappears for using the Bible as a guide to the age of the earth, "medicine", or anything requiring accuracy. How can we know if the Bible is just emphasizing something for pomp purposes or speaking literal truth?

Numerology
Some have noted that, if one chooses certain words from the passage, then convert those words to numbers, then divides those numbers by each other, you get a value close to pi. It's also been noted that this is ridiculous and nobody would have noticed it, unless they were trying to defend the Bible.

"Flowers of lillies"
The cauldron is described as having a rim with "flowers of lillies". In this case, it would likely have decorations, bumps, and re-entrants, all of which makes a precise circumference measurement meaningless. Again, this "solution" leaves literalists little ground for using the Bible as a source of information -- what other seemingly meaningless details that are actually crucial has the Bible left out?

Inside circumference
So now we are asked to believe that the circle being referred to at the end of the sentence is different from the circle being described at the beginning of the sentence. No writer in the history of the universe has ever written in such a way, and that goes double for the writers inspired by God. Again, no one would dream of interpreting the verse that way unless he was desperate to rescue the Bible from this obvious contradiction.

An alternate proposal is to claim that, while the diameter is the whole diameter of the bowl, the circumference is actually the circumference of the inside of the cauldron. (Why anyone would ever go to the trouble of measuring this way is never explained.)

If the outside diameter was "10 cubits", the cauldron was "an hand breadth thick", a handbreadth was 4 inches (actually ca. 2.5-4.0 inches, and presumably even smaller for the shorter Iron Age population), and a cubit was 4 inches (actually ca. 4.0-5.5 inches), then the inside diameter would be about 9.5 cubits.

If so:

Circumference (C) = 30 cubits ("a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about")

Diameter (d) = 9.5 cubits (10 cubits - 2 handbreadths)

Thus:

Biblical Pi (π) = (C/d) = (30 cubits/9.5 cubits) = 3.16 (to three significant figures)

If looking for perfect, literal accuracy, this idea fails, as [1] it's still inexact ((30/9.5) - π = ca. 0.0163020833, or 0.5% off), which is especially true if you buy that Hebrew writers weren't big on precision and [2] because one had to interpolate facts to the literal verse to make it work. If looking at the verse as a human product, this interpretation works fine.

Volume
Theodore Rybka attempted to resolve the pi problem in an article entitled Determination of the Hebrew Value used for Pi, published in the January, 1981 issue of Acts and Facts, a bulletin of the Institute for Creation Research. Steven Dutch handles its idiocy accordingly:

Iowa bill
A (mythical) Iowa bill supposedly tried to implement a 3.0 standard for pi, in a similar vein to the fake bill from the Alabama legislature. Snopes, in fact, made a similar entry about incorporating Bible errors into the school curriculum, which they claimed as "true", only later to say they made it up to educate readers to accept facts with caution, even in Snopes's site.

Firmament
The "firmament" is claimed to be a solid "roof" over the world. It is described in (KJV). This is obviously untrue, unless all those satellites in orbit are a hoax. Considering the views of flat earthers, someone, somewhere, probably thinks this is the case (don't ask them how GPS systems work).

Many Christians believe that this Firmament is what fell from the sky and caused the entire earth to flood, with only Noah and his family surviving. "... and the floodgates of the heavens were opened."

However, an explanation offered by inerrantists is that the description of the firmament is only what was believed to be true and not necessarily stating that it is literally true. This leaves literalists with the same problem, of course, namely that if part of the Bible isn't strictly accurate, how (they feel) can you trust any of it?

Illumination
In Genesis, the Moon is referred to as a "light" (specifically, a "lesser light"). The Moon is merely a reflector of the Sun's light, and produces no visible light of its own, although it does shine in different wavelengths not perceivable to the human eye, such as infrared. Of course, when talking to tribal nomads and other desert dwellers, the concept of referring to the Moon as a light was commonplace. Additionally, the Moon was made to "rule the night", but there seems to be no explanation for why it's visible frequently throughout the daytime or not visible on some nights. This last bit seems like a strange oversight even for a pretechnological society, let alone the words of an omniscient God.

Stars
The Bible makes it clear that stars are objects in the sky that will fall down when Jesus comes back:

However, other verses in the book of Revelation clearly use "stars" in a figurative sense (for example, see Rev. 9:1 and Rev. 12:3, 4), so it is possible that the writer did not intend to make a statement about literal celestial bodies in 8:10 either. Indeed, given the highly allegorical and symbolic nature of apocalyptic literature in general, any literal understanding of Revelation is generally ill-advised until taking into consideration the idea that this is supposedly divine inspiration to which laws, societies and lives are proposed to be based upon.

Similar verses ( and ) have been claimed, at the very least the latter, to refer to angels instead of stars.

Planetary formation
According to the Genesis creation account, the Earth was formed before the Sun. Aside from bio-mechanical problems, this flatly contradicts the nebular hypothesis of stellar formation, in which planets form in the accretion disk created by a young star.

However, when the Sun, moon, and stars are introduced in Genesis 1:16, they are said to be "made", which, in the original Hebrew language, is different from the word "create" used in Genesis 1:1. If this is the case, then it could be argued that the Sun and moon were created in 1:1 as part of the collective "heavens" (compare, for example, the summary given in Genesis 2:4), and only in Genesis 1:16 (day 4 in the creative period) are they fully visible from Earth's surface.

The creation of the sun, moon, and stars on day four is meant to be a theological point, rather than a scientific one. As other cultures worshiped the sun and moon and divined by the stars (astrology), the Hebrew authors are making the point that none of them is the source of the light, but rather merely reflectors of the light (as lamps) whose ultimate origin is in their God. The creation myth also uses poetic parallelism to narrate the story: Day 1 and Day 4 are paired (light; sun, moon, stars), Day 2 and Day 5 (seas and dry land; fish and fowl), Day 3 and Day 6 (plants of the earth; beasts of the earth and humanity). Furthermore, given the similarity of this narrative to the creation myth of the Babylonians, whose god Marduk creates the cosmos by slaying his sea-serpent mother Tiamat, the Hebrew presentation of God creating over the deep (Hebrew: "tehom") by means other than violence and declaring the creation to be "good" is a rebuke to the Babylonian myth. The abundance of literary and theological devices in the narrative make it clear that the text is not attempting to be a scientific account of the origin of the world, but a theological declaration of the goodness of the creation as against competing religious systems (Canaanite, Babylonian, etc.).

Incorrectly regarded as errors
These arguments, sometimes raised against the Bible, are not actually scientific errors.

Bat classification
(KJV):

The KJV groups the bat with birds; however, in the Hebrew, the word "עוֹף" (owph) translated here as "fowl" (bird) often means something like "winged things". The ancient Hebrews obviously did not use Linnaean classification, and their words reflect this. Jewish law classifies animals mostly by habitat: flying animals, land animals, aquatic animals, and insects ("swarming" creatures), much as Aristotle did. Thus a bat qualifies as a "bird" but an ostrich does not, since ostriches do not fly. Likewise, shrimp, clams, and whales are regulated under the laws for "fish", since all are aquatic. Given that these classifications are mainly used for dietary laws, not scientific taxonomy, they work well enough.

While this may not be a scientific error, it does suggest a (even for the time) rather crude system lumping together any non-insect animal with any type of wing — and these are the authors we should trust to have set down the inerrant word of God in a format that he apparently thought we could understand even today.

Rotation of the Earth
Some fundamentalists argue that the Bible predicted the rotation of the Earth.

Many people say the Bible implies that the sun moves around the Earth, rather than the Earth rotating.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

However, this sentence describes the sun's appearance moving across the sky, not that it actually orbits the Earth. Surprisingly, people still say sunrise (sun also ariseth) and sunset (sun goeth down) to this day.

Christian sources

 * Answering Bible skeptics, CMI
 * Isn’t the Bible Full of Errors?, AIG
 * Are There Any Errors in the Bible?, 4Truth.Net

Muslim sources

 * Bible's Scientific Errors (from Dr. Zakir Naik, a fan of Qur'anic scientific foreknowledge)
 * The Bible's Scientific Absurdities, from Answering Christianity, the Muslim counterpart to Answering Islam