Talk:Science Confirms the Bible/Archive1

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Atoms and visibility[edit]

The atoms thing still isn't right. It's not that atoms are visible or invisible, but that visibility does not make sense on the molecular scale. Furthermore, one never directly "views" an atom. It is always indirect detection of an atom though the interaction of electromagnetism and the atoms. (Chemistry rocks!) Sterile Toyota 01:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The atom thing also fails to mention virtual particles, particles who's energy and time of their existence is such that they remain under the limit set by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Also what about string theory? 192.43.227.18 01:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it needs to get into too much depth like with virtual particles and string theory; the full "Science Now" stuff is well beyond the scope of this article, perhaps some short "see also" bits or more wiki-linking might be needed. The Bible's source is so vague on that point that it could be interpreted as anything, really, so if we're not careful we could end up with 10,000 words just used to refute something that doesn't actually say much.

^theist 08:44, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

When I did my YEC science book thing at the "see also" I didn't even bother with science - the bible cites were so off-target and meaningless that all that was necessary was to quote them. I was actually embarrassed for the Cretinists, as I looked up the verses. ħuman

08:50, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

'Science confirms...'[edit]

You just have to choose the right scientists (mad or otherwise). ;)

212.85.6.26 (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

English vs. Hebrew[edit]

There is a serious problem here, that I don't know if i want to take on in an article that is somewhat obscure. All of your cites go back to ENGLISH versions of the bible. The arguments are far stronger, and far more relevant if you address these issues from the point of view of the Hebrew and the intended audience. The article is also amazingly vague about "by the time the bible was written" or "when the bible was written". this is a problem, since you give no indication of when you think that was. Again, I assume all these arguments are made elsewhere? or is it important to correct them here?En attendant Godot 20:02, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

And by the way, it's really NOT silver quality. nothing is cited, the "refutations" are fairly vague and mostly of a "i once heard that" sense. Can we change it back to bronze till we fix it?

En attendant Godot 20:03, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. Тy^talk 20:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I added the original languages (though I was logged out)—Greek for the NT cites as well as Hebrew for the OT—though I'm not sure how useful they are really in the context of this debate. --Lord Shang (talk) 03:19, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

King James is the only One True incarnation of the Bible. Those squiggly things are just a liberal corruption.

^{d hominem} 23:15, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely. It is a well-known scientific fact that Jesus spoke post-Elizabethan English.VOX ^HUMANA 23:18, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Added some detail on Isa. 40:22. If you look at the original Hebrew, it is arguably it means "sphere" rather than "circle", and the KJV translation is poor. (Or maybe the English word "circle" had a broader meaning back when KJV was translated? Or maybe the KJV translators knew it meant "sphere", but thought "circle" sounded better, and thought euphony more important than semantic precision?) (((Zack Martin)))^™ 23:28, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I remember looking up the analogous passage in the Qu'ran and it's frequently translated as "bed" or "dwelling". They certainly had access to the word "sphere" in the time of the KJV, but perhaps the connotations of it were different at the time as it was mostly used as an astronomical term. Either way, it's not like the Bible is a science textbook, as we can see from the fact that this discussion even exists.

^sshole 23:38, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Mara, I really think the original hebrew revolves around the word and concept of circle, not sphere. the word used, חוג transliterated as "ch'g" means circle, fairly clearly. A rounding, a closing. Ch'g is used in concepts like the area around a tent that is safe for children to play, or the area around a temple that is held sacred for priests only. it has also been used in ancient hebrew to describe things like plates... round and flat. It has never been used to describe things like balls, which have a different word, כַּדּוּר kd'r which describes things like balls.

GodotVAGINA, Vagina, vagina vaginaVAGINA 23:50, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

(Technically חוג would be ḥûg̱ (root ḥ-w-g), though it's not too relevant either way.) I'm not convinced that it can mean sphere. Checking in my lexicon, it's given as a form of the verb to draw around, and a cognate is mĕḥûg̱āh (without getting too technical this grammatical form is a "thing that performs something"), which is given as "compass", "circle-drawing instrument". Its cognate in Aramaic is also given as specifically meaning "circle". Now I'm not aware of there being a Hebrew word specifically denoting the geometric shape "sphere" (in fact a quick search on biblos.com doesn't turn up any OT verses using that word), but there are other words you would expect if this was intended, namely dûr which means either a circle or a ball, hence a sphere (check Isaiah 22:18 for it being used unambiguously in that sense). The lexicon doesn't give any Arabic cognates, but this may be an oversight on its part—in any case it's not necessary for the Qur'an to use precisely the same turns of phrase. --Lord Shang (talk) 00:39, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

With regards to what the article now says is the use of it to mean "sphere" in the sense of the sky, this is traditionally translated as "vault" (which is an arch, but that's English semantics) and is only ever used in this sense to describe the sky, i.e. it is a set idiom (which can just as well be literally translated as "the circle of the heavens") -- it's certainly not an implication that it can be used to talk about a three-dimensional "sphere". --Lord Shang (talk) 02:18, 19 June 2012 (UTC) — I've updated it to reflect this (and changed it to a more precise transliteration FWIW, though "ol" is wrong for 'al in any case). --Lord Shang (talk) 02:25, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Theories about light/myths about blood[edit]

Those two wikipedia links in the references don't work anymore. Any idea where they should go? Peter ^{Urist for Mod!} 03:21, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I found the WP sections and repaired the links. VOX^HUMANA 04:11, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Cheers for that. The light claim on this just breaks my brain. It doesn't even make sense.

^postate 17:20, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I browsed a less fundamentalist apologist site, and they argued that this passage was using "light" and "darkness" as metaphors for "knowledge (of god)" and "ignorance (of god)". While this interpretation does make more sense out the bible passage (at least within its own context), it renders it completely irrelevant as far as purported "science confirms..." angle. VOX^HUMANA 23:36, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Done before[edit]

This appears to have been done before, it seems: at ActionSkeptcs.blogspot. But someone recently showed it to me and genuinely thought it was awesome and realistic so I just had to do it, clearly pointing out exactly what the Bible did actually say. If anyone is interested in adding, please do and I'll shift it to mainspace. ^theist 15:35, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm just trying to get my brain around this. Is the suggestion that the bible is some sort of source of scientific knowledge? I'm sure that you can't seriously be suggesting that so I must be missing the point. Will you want people to add points where the bible is seriously scientifically wacky as well?--Bob ^{Not Jim} 17:22, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Having now spent more that three minutes looking at what you were doing I see that you want to debunk it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.--Bob ^{Not Jim} 17:26, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Ha! Three minutes? I thought you'd get it in three seconds! :p I just saw the postcards and someone was saying how great and knowledgable (in all seriousness too) and I thought "damn, this is just too easy".

^theist 23:07, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

There's a similar list at biblical scientific foreknowledge that I culled from a homskollar textbook. By the way, this is still riddled with typos, anyone want to help polish it up? ħuman

05:17, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I was wondering why we didn't have anything like this. I think it's that the titles get long and umweildy. Might be useful to have Bible Science fork-page or something.

^theist 10:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, good idea. Although even the fork page title would suck... "science in the Bible"? "Biblical science"? IDiots arguing from compleat stupIDity? Aaaargh. ħuman

11:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

And apologies for the typos, I did the bulk of it from a browser without a spell check on it (it's Firefox 1.5 and I don't have the root password on this machine to install a better version or switch to Opera). I should have double checked it elsewhere before pulling it out of the sandbox.

^theist 16:55, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

No need to apologize, you did 99% of the work. It's very rare for anyone to do something this big and not need proofreading. I think it's mostly done now, though I'll probably scan through it again later. Oh, and how about a cat for "bible science" or "science in the bible"? ħuman

21:10, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Job 38:16, Springs of the sea. I think that this section could be improved with the information below. But, I'll leave that for someone more familiar with the site.

You must read the verse in the biblical context. Yahweh is addressing Job and disparaging his knowledge of creation. The majority of the text parallels the Akaadian (old Babylonian) creation account where the god Marduk killed Tiamat and created the seas with her blood, and the earth with her body (Dalley 2000). The Akkadian text described the sea as "gushing from her womb" in identical language later found in Job. In the Ugaritic version (Ugaritic is a linguistic precursor to Hebrew), the god Baal Hadar defeats the sea god Yamm (Yam became the Hebrew word for "sea" BTW). Then he sets "bars and limits" (Pope 1963) In the Akkadian and Hebrew versions, the principle deity is cheered on by the Council of Gods (Hebw. bene elohim).

As for verse 16, the conventional English translation is "Have you entered the springs of the sea, or walked the depths?" (KJV). The word translated as "springs" is Nebek. It is in the plural and is only used once in the entire Hebrew text, nor can the meaning be attested from any independent sources (Strong 2001). The 400 BC Greek translation, the Septuagint, translated the phrase containing "nebek" as "sources of the sea." This is given as the alternate translation in Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew lexicon(2007). Strong's offers "source springs."

The creationists falsely claim that the "springs of the sea" was an unknown concept in antiquity, and so this verse reveals some sort of divinely revealed secret. This is absurd. The meaning in context means "sources" and the seas were supposed to have them. The very next verse places the "doors to the dead" in the sea depths following the even older Sumerian cosmology placing the land of the living, Earth, between depths below, the realm of Apsu god of death and seas, and the realm of the gods above. This "disk world" is directly attested in Job 38:14 which described the Earth as the disk formed when a cylinder seal is rolled out over a piece of clay (Dalley 2000, Black et al 2003).

Sources: The KJV

Black, Jeremy, Anthony Green, Tessa Rickards (illustrator) 2003 "Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia" Austin: University of Texas Press

Brown F., Driver S., Briggs C. 2007 (reprint from 1906) “Hebrew and English Lexicon: With an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic: With Strong’s Numbering” Peabody Mass: Hendrickson Publishers

Dalley, Stephanie 2000 "Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others." Revised Oxford: Oxford University Press

Pope, Marvin H. 1965 “Job: A new translation with Introduction and Commentary” Anchor Bible Vol. 15, New York: ABRL/Doubleday

Strong, James (author), revised and edited Kohlenberger, James R. III, James A. Swanson 2001 edition (original 1894) “The Strongest Strong’s exhaustive concordance of the Bible (KJV) for the 21st Century” Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Blood as source for life[edit]

Can anyone find any information on ancient pre-biblical medical knowledge on the matter? Because medieval is after the bible was written. Mr. Anon (talk) 23:50, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

I tend to think the article misses the obvious point: this bible quote doesn't really elucidate anything because EVERY ethnic group throughout history has believed that "blood is the source of life". Even the cavemen would have noticed the pretty obvious relationship between "loss of blood" and death, so beliefs that "blood was the lifeforce" were pretty universal. As far as the "science then" perspective, wp:humorism (where blood was one of the four 'humors') dominated western medicine from the time of Hippocrates to the 18th century. VOX^HUMANA 00:01, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Humorism is not relevant since it's nothing to do with what the Israelites of the period believed (and the Pentateuch is most assuredly pre-Hellenistic). As far as this particular passage goes there's a good discussion of it in this chapter. The opening assertion of the verse is fairly straightforward in the Hebrew, though as that book notes there is disagreement on the exact grammatical structure involved (i.e. whether it says the life of the flesh "is the blood" or "is in the blood"; the three single-letter prepositions in Hebrew have such a huge variety of meanings that this kind of ambiguity is basically par for the course). The overall point is that the verse is exemplary of the peculiar cultic significance attached to blood in Israelite religion. Broadly speaking what the verse is saying is that animal blood can be manipulated in a sacrifice ritual as a ransom for human life. Clearly this is nothing at all to do with modern science but if people accepted that then this silly kind of fundamentalism wouldn't exist. --Lord Shang (talk) 03:32, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Lord Shang - I agree with everything you said except possibly for the "peculiar" comment - "magical/mystical/ritualistic" attitudes towards blood are generic across every culture around the entire world throughout history, right up until the modern age. Hence the assertion that this "blood is life" (however it's translated) statement is some "unique insight" from the bible is just absurd (not to mention the fact that it's also wrong). I only mentioned "humorism" as it is the closest thing to any "science then" perspective; you are correct about its relevance as it didn't come about until at least a few hundreds years after the Old T.VOX ^HUMANA 04:00, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

No you're right, I meant "peculiar" in the sense of it having a peculiar significance within that culture, rather than its place in Israelite culture being unique in the world -- maybe "particular" would be better. In any case I might try and bring my exegetic skills to bear to suggest some more extended analysis of these verses, since the page as it is makes valid points but it's far too vague and general about the verses themselves, like someone pointed out above. --Lord Shang (talk) 17:28, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Ah, then we are in full agreement after all. I'll get around to updating this section when I can - I think it can be greatly improved. Sorry to hear about your exegesis - are you using any topical creams for that? VOX^HUMANA 23:19, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Free float of Earth in space - Northern?[edit]

Can any of you hebrew-understanding types try and figure out what "northern" skies refers to in the section "Free float of Earth in space"? As an inhabitant of the southern hemisphere, I'm feeling a bit miffed. VOX^HUMANA 02:21, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

צָפֹ֣ון or ṣāp̱ōn technically just means "north", adding "skies" is presumably an educated guess by the translator (the KJV which is a lot more literalistic only gives "north" as well). Here though it's being used to refer to a specific place rather than the cardinal direction, i.e. the place where God has his throne, so in fact a better translation might be the more general "heavens". The other word תֹּ֑הוּ or tōhû means something like formlessness or void, the primordial sea of chaos. There are quite a lot of disputes about what exactly it means (see the Wikipedia article on tohu wa-bohu, which is probably its most famous occurrence). So he's spreading the skies out over the void. Overall it's just a poetic way of saying that God created the heavens.

Interestingly though it looks like this verse is very much out of skew with the science of its time, and indeed the rest of the Bible, and looking through the standard interpreters (who aren't fundies by any stretch of the imagination) this weird discrepancy is noted by a few of them. Apparently, and this is confirmed by other passages in the OT, the ancient Hebrews believed that the world is founded on some kind of pillars or mountains. --Lord Shang (talk) 03:04, 19 June 2012 (UTC) (Thinking about it though I wonder if this can be reconciled by viewing it in terms of divergent mythological traditions, connected specifically to the many different creation stories that are related in different parts of the OT — in this case it seems to be emphasizing the 'triumph over chaos' mythology, so suspending it over nothingness makes sense. --Lord Shang (talk) 03:07, 19 June 2012 (UTC))

Somewhat, i think that this article is written with a pro christian view, because bible clearly says that earth is flat, as per it's explained inside this page[1], "circle" is not round, it is sphere that is round. Circle's meaning is not spherical all time. Such things should be corrected here. 122.169.1.82 (talk) 08:56, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Isaiah 40:22 "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in."... But How could the "heavens" be spread out above the Earth like a tent if they suggest it's a sphere? They believe the sky literally came down and touched the edges of the Earth. Read this book for more information [2] 122.169.1.82 (talk) 09:01, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Deletion[edit]

Well, the article is fully copy pasted from the other. And it can mislead because it's pure propaganda, not supported by any scholar, or important writers. Contractor (talk) 11:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Don't really know what you're on about. There's 1.735 zillion (approx) edits by RWians ripping him to shreds. Scream!! (talk) 12:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I am also confused. Could you explain exactly what the issue is?--Weirdstuff (talk) 12:34, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Weirdstuff and Scream!!, what we know is, that in this website, we have tried to cut all the trash, most of the people here only present whatever is presented by most reliable sources.. Even the wikipedia can't be that accurate so many times. Now other thing is that, why we got a propaganda page? That is actually copied+pasted from a propaganda website, we are certainly misleading people by having page like this one. That's it. Contractor (talk) 15:12, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Are you using a Translator to talk to us?--Mikal | lakiM 15:15, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Mikal, what do you care whether this person is using a translator? I understand what he's saying and I'm not remotely as smart, well-traveled, or cultured as you are, but I appreciate the great value you bring to your pop-ins. I'm sure we all look forward to poignant substantive questions like this.

15:31, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, I always ask why they let the kids out. Contractor (talk) 16:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Anyway, Contractor - I'm with Weirdstuff. Additionally, this page is actually content original to RW that may be duplicated elsewhere inconsistent with our license. You'll find other RW content elsewhere. We're not deleting articles because people crib them. That's silly. As for propaganda, can you explain why an article that gives a general overview and points the reader to more comprehensive articles and sources is inappropriate? We don't make any distinction between scholars, "important writers," or credible sources, so your criticism of the quality of cites as you perceive them doesn't necessarily square with RW editorial policy. If you think any specific source is inappropriate, let us know. In other words, make a case rather than offer general complaints and we'll help you.