This will be huuuge, so bear with me, people, please.
Ok first I just want to say that isn't under question, that the absolute main belief in the christian theology is Jesus and his message and the belief and actual practice of belief is what gets you into heaven. Then I'd say you have to consider christian theology accepts the bible is word for word perfect or anything of the sort, where an Islam will attest their holy book is a perfect revalation as a whole, from Allah.
So again we're at the point where the question of who exactly is right comes to light. People who interpret Jesus' wishes in a way that makes them burn thousands on stakes were practising their belief as dictated in the Bible. A mass murderer who believed wholeheartedly will go to heaven while a member of another or no faith who has done nothing wrong in his life will burn forever. That's a question you have been asked before in this thread and haven't answered.
Also we all accept there is a large amount of the bible that you can not take literally. There is much debate as to the exact numbers stated in genesis about creation. Can we also consider that there have been many attempts of kings in the past that ordered the scribes to try and translate the true meaning out of it. Yet then counters were made like the reformers to get the original meaning back, and it is clear that the main message has not changed on Jesus and his message.
If the Bible is in any way authoritative, there should be no doubt as to which parts of it are literal and which aren't. And there's no place for fairy tales and metaphors in a document that's considered as important as a holy book. The mere fact that there are as many interpretations of the Bible as there are Christians and that there are over 30
thousand denominations of Christianity alone should tell you that there's something severely wrong with god's communication skills.
With all this in mind I'm sorry, but I have to qoute a good bit here I got to go to sleep, but I think at least one of these will be hard to shown false, I give you the challenge and I eagerly await you all's response. The first deals with science and the bible, how we don't believe it's a scientific book but I think it is very well shown here, That it does indeed contain scientific fact.
I'll go there a bit later. But suffice it to say, you're wrong.
I can speak more tomorrow on the contradictions claimed that it makes but I will say now, much can rationally be explained by the true value in how you should read scripture and it even says never stop reading it because it can be very difficult sometimes to understand the true meaning and many times meaning the text implies literally or through literary devices.
Read above. Why was it so hard for god to make his message clear so everyone can understand it? If he loves his creation, he should be the one taking care that we all get saved, not just select few - 144 thousand virginal men, to be precise, so being a female I'm doomed anyway.
Ok first this article please take the time to read it.
http://100777.com/node/534
Took the time, giggled a lot. But let's do this ...
The pagans said that the earth was supported by a giant man called atlas, while the Greeks had horses, elephants and snakes supporting the planet.
That's actually a gross generalization. Greeks were well aware of the fact that the Earth was spherical at the time when Christians still claimed it was flat. The idea of flat Earth was based on severely limited observational data. The planet is too large to actually see its curvature, therefore it seems flat to us. So what?
This 'knowledge' was well known and trusted at the time the bible was being written, yet one of the oldest books of the bible declares that:
"He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing." Job 26:7 (NKJV) "He sits enthroned upon the circle of the earth" Isaiah 40:22*
Earth does not hang on anything and space is not 'nothing'. It's mostly empty of big chunks of matter, but it's chock full of particles. God should know that. He should also know the difference between a circle and a sphere. A circle is two dimensional, while the sphere occupies the whole three dimensions. So the Bible is wrong.
That same Bible also states that the Moon is a source of light (Genesis 1:16), which is scientifically horribly wrong. It also states that space is actually water, the Earth is there to divide them.
And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. That one you can read for yourself in Genesis 1:7. That would make god wrong, you know. And it would also produce a bit of a contradiction - does Earth hang on nothing or does it float in a bubble in water?
The next part of the article is some weird drivel that has absolutely nothing to do with its aim, that's why I'll skip it.
The Scriptures Speak of an Invisible Structure
Only in recent years has science discovered that everything we see is composed of things that we cannot see; invisible atoms. In Hebrews 11:3, written 2,000 years ago, Scripture tells us that the
"things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
This is a blatant lie and an actual misquoting of the Bible, which is something I find rather appalling. Hebrews 11:3 states the following:
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.So the unseen things aren't atoms at all. It's god's word. There's a not so subtle difference between the two.
Then the author goes on again on the idea that the Bible reveals that the word is round. See, a circle is round, but it's flat.
Anyway, the Bible also suggests that Eve was created from Adam's rib and that's why men have one rib less than women. It took Christians 16 centuries to admit that's not true. That same scientifically accurate Genesis also puts plants on the planet before their life support was even enacted, living beings in completely wrong and illogical order and so on.
Matthew Maury (1806-1873) is considered the father of oceanography. He noticed the expression "paths of the sea" in Psalm 8:8 (written 2,800 years ago) and said, "If God said there are paths in the sea, I am going to find them." Maury then took God at His word and went looking for these paths, and we are indebted to his discovery of the warm and cold continental currents. His book on oceanography remains a basic text on the subject and is still used in universities.
Psalm 8 (6-8) states the following:
You let us rule everything your hands have made. And you put all of it under our power - the sheep and the cattle, and every wild animal, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and all ocean creatures.That's the CEV. KJV is not much different:
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. So stuff passes through seas. What's that got to do with currents and, for that matter, why would currents (if that's actually what the passage refers to) be such a hard concept to grasp? If you stick a boat in the water, the current will push it around and then do it some more in some other direction. It doesn't even have to be a body of water as large as an ocean - a lake would do nicely. That's simple observational data that's not hard to come by. It doesn't make Bible special in any way.
God asked Job a very strange question in 1500 B.C. He asked,
"Can you send lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, Here we are?" (Job 38:35).
This appears to be a scientifically ludicrous statement; that light can be sent, and then manifest itself in speech. But did you know that all electromagnetic radiation; from radio waves to x-rays; travels at the speed of light? This is why you can have instantaneous wireless communication with someone on the other side of the earth. The fact that light could be sent and then manifest itself in speech wasn't discovered by science until 1864 (3,300 years later), when "British scientist James Clerk Maxwell suggested that electricity and light waves were two forms of the same thing" (Modern Century Illustrated Encyclopedia).
This is, frankly, bullshit. And a lie. Job 38:35
clearly talks about lightning. CEV is even more dodgy to use in this respect, since it states:
Can you order the clouds to send a downpour, or will lightning flash at your command?Anyway, that's the part of Job where god boasts what he can do (he can announce his presence by lightning, that's what the verse means, not as means of communication between people) and what Job can't. It's also a bit tasteless to use Job to illustrate the grandeur of god's work, don't you think?
Three different places in the Bible (Isaiah 51:6; Psalm 102:25,26; and Hebrews 1:11) indicate that the earth is wearing out. This is what the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the Law of Increasing Entropy) states: that in all physical processes, every ordered system over time tends to become more disordered. Everything is running down and wearing out as energy is becoming less and less available for use. That means the universe will eventually "wear out" to the extent that (theoretically speaking) there will be a "heat death" and therefore no more energy available for use. This wasn't discovered by science until recently, but the Bible states it in concise terms.
This statement is scientifically inaccurate because it's proposed explanation is simply wrong. The simplest possible explanation of the second law of thermodynamics actually states that without an external source of energy the temperature of everything eventually equals out. It doesn't talk of destruction or any kind of 'disorder'. If you put a cup of boiling hot coffee on the table, it will eventually cool down to room temperature (it will heat the surrounding air a bit, but since there's a lot more air than coffee, it'll win out at the end). That's what physicists would call a closed system, a system with no external source of energy. But, see, our planet is not a closed system. We get energy from the outside (before you start arguing think about sunburns). Our planet will not die out for lack of energy but because of severe over-abundance of it when the Sun goes nova. The planet will not 'wear out' its energy but will be first scorched and then swallowed by a huge energy source.
The next part on the water cycle is also ridiculous. First of all, not all rivers flow into seas. Second, it's not hard to conclude that the water that falls from the skies does something to water on Earth. The actual idea might not have been scientifically explained, but was well known. People also knew that gnawing on willow bark will reduce fever, inflammation and pain, but the actual effect of acetylsalicylic acid was explained a lot later. So? People who lived at the time the Bible was written were not stupid. They were severely uninformed on certain matters, but stupid they were not, neither were they uniformly blind. They could see that rivers flow into something else, they could see that water levels rise when it rains. A child could figure out some sort of connection without you having to explain it to him.
The Bible and the First Law of Thermodynamics
The Scriptures say,
"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them" (Genesis 2:1).
The original Hebrew uses the past definite tense for the verb "finished," indicating an action completed in the past, never again to occur. The creation was "finished" ... once and for all. That is exactly what the First Law of Thermodynamics says. This law (often referred to as the Law of the Conservation of Energy and/or Mass) states that neither matter nor energy can be either created or destroyed.
It was because of this Law that Sir Fred Hoyle's "Steady-State" (or "Continuous Creation") Theory was discarded. Hoyle stated that at points in the universe called "irtrons," matter (or energy) was constantly being created. But, the First Law states just the opposite. Indeed, there is no "creation" ongoing today. It is "finished" exactly as the Bible states.
Again, scientifically inaccurate because of a false interpretation of the first law of thermodynamics. The first law that actually states that the
energy of a closed system is constant. Earth is not a closed system, so the other part of the law comes into play, which states that
the internal energy of a closed system is equal to the amount of heat supplied to the system, minus the amount of work performed by the system on its surroundings. All laws of thermodynamics are quite simply explained on
Wikipedia.
In Genesis 6, God gave Noah the dimensions of the 1.5 million cubic foot ark he was to build. In 1609 at Hoorn in Holland, a ship was built after that same pattern (30:5:3), revolutionizing ship-building. By 1900 every large ship on the high seas was inclined toward the proportions of the ark (verified by "Lloyd's Register of Shipping" in the World Almanac).
And how many animals would fit on that ship?
But the question that arises when reading that passage is: so what? Someone made up a story about a guy building a gigantic ship and then, centuries later, when technology (which is actually the practical use of science) was advanced enough someone else actually builds such a gigantic ship. Well? People talked about flying for aeons and then they invented implements and machines with which they could do that. So?
The Scriptures describe a "cycle" of air currents two thousand years before scientists discovered them:
"The wind goes toward the south, and turns about unto the north; it whirls about continually, and the wind returns again according to his circuits" (Ecclesiastes 1:6).
We now know that air around the earth turns in huge circles, clockwise in one hemisphere and counter- clockwise in the other.
We now know that? No, actually we don't. Air circulates because of change in temperature somewhere else. It doesn't twirl around like a dervish or move about in any kind of orderly fashion. If it did, weather prediction would be ironclad and meteorologists would never, ever be 'wrong'. But they are, because they're trying to predict a chaotic system. Which, I repeat, does not even remotely work that way.
Jeremiah 33:22 (written 2500 years ago): "As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured."
The Bible claimed that there are billions of stars ("host of heaven" is the biblical term for the stars). When it made this statement, no one knew how vast the numbers of stars were as only about 1,100 were observable. Now we know that there are billions of stars, and that they cannot be numbered.
Actually, almost every single dot on the sky you can see is either a star or a galaxy. At the time the Bible was written there was practically no light pollution so people could see quite a chunk of the milky way, not just 1,100 stars. But claiming that the Bible somehow 'predicted' the number of stars is just ludicrous. There's a lot of grains of sand and an awful lot of dots in the sky. A simile does not a scientific proof make.
Basic sanitation, such as burying human waste, was not introduced until the 1600s, when it helped to contain the plague. Before then, human excrement was dumped onto the streets, helping to spread many diseases. Some ancient peoples in the near east actually believed that excrement had healing properties if spread on the skin. Yet in 1400 B.C. the Israelites were told to:
"Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement." Deuteronomy 23:12,13
Wrong. Ancient peoples made the connection between human waste and disease. The dumping of it everywhere started when cities started to grow. There were vast civilizations that were far cleaner than the Israelites. Some did make remedies out of human excrement and animal dung. And they didn't even die out, interestingly enough. Ever heard of the idea that peeing on a see jelly sting would relieve the pain? Ever heard of people who believe in treating all sorts of diseases by drinking their own urine? Those ideas are dumb, but they still persevere.
Again, observational data was available, someone made the connection (not to mention the fact that the smell probably bothered people) and that was it. This does not, in any way, imply that the Bible was the first to decree this type of behaviour.
Another idea that was discovered during the plague was quarantine. In the 1500s, Worried Christians looked to the bible for help and were amazed to find it written so clearly. Nearly 3000 years earlier, The Israelites had been told:
"The person with such a disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp." Leviticus 13:45-46
<snip>
Communicability of certain diseases is not rocket science. Quite a few cultures figured that out and either isolated, shunned or killed the diseased individuals. Lack of hygiene actually came a lot later, in part even due to Christian beliefs. This post is long enough already, so I won't go into details, but I could if anyone wishes.
The next part is about blood being the 'source of life'. That kind of a statement is kind of ridiculous, because there are quite a few organs you'd die without. Say, brain, lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas and skin, to name but a few. So they're all source of life. But it also doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that you die if you lose enough blood. People saw it often enough to figure that one out. The Bible is in no way special by stating that. And it was the Christians who practised bloodletting the longest. Not to mention that only priests were allowed to perform it (most other people who tried to heal someone were burnt at the stakes for witchcraft). How does that compute then?
Why was circumcision to be carried out on the eighth day? Medical science has discovered that the eighth day is the only day in the entire life of the newborn that the blood clotting element prothrombin is above 100%.
Glaringly wrong. There is no one day when blood clotting is at its peak. At about that time newborns start clotting properly, that's all. And then they clot properly all their lives if they remain healthy. The above statement is a gross distortion of medical fact and an outright lie.
As far as I can see, the rest of the article is a rehash of everything that had already been addressed. All of it is either silly or simply wrong at best, but I have a sneaky suspicion that the author set out to intentionally deceive his readers by distorting evidence and lying, even when quoting the supposed word of god.
Next I just wanna qoute CS Lewis on the evolution of man in his own lovely way. Sorry again for referring to other sources but I felt these are worthy.
<snip>
This is a typical case of wishful thinking and distorting facts in order to suit someone's beliefs. Just because CS Lewis said it, doesn't make it true or accurate.
