The Great Flood

[Kyuuketsuki]

The Bible doesn't say the universe and the earth were created in 6 literal 24 hour periods and doesn't disagree with the accepted estimation of science.

The bible says quite clearly 6 (SIX) days with God resting on the 7th (SEVENTH) ... it does not say 6 periods that many or may not be 24 hours in length and may be reinterpreted according to the personal wishes/biases of the person reading it, it says DAYS! Anything else is a personal interpretation of yours and not backed up by the available evidence.

The resurrection of life from the dead, in most cases (other than Lazarus by Jesus) actually read more like CPR events not entirely out of place with modern medical science.

CPR my arse! It reads as magic!

Lazarus was diferent because Jesus was diferent and you can't test or explain that. That and the healing of the sick were spiritual matters that none of us can understand or compare anything with.

Yawn! I couldn't care less, they read as magic and as such cannot be considered to be in line with modern scientific thought.

You can't discount them only because you don't understand them.

Nothing stays at the scientific table UNLESS it is supported by validatable evidence ... these claims have no supporting validatable evidence and therefore can be discarded as non-scientific.

Talking animals and plants are similar but I would point out that the animal or plant are not actually talking, spirit creatures are talking using the animals / plants as representations.[q/uote]

Well that's ... just ... bullsh1t isn't it? The fact is that the bible has both talking animals and plants in it and your reinterpretations of those stories are just weak-arsed attempts to retro fit your belief system into science and, sorry 'n all that, but it doesn't work!!!

[quote='Daystar' pid='3312' dateline='1225733839']The four corners reference you brought up is a figurative expression not at all out of place with modern day terminology, the Bible stated that the earth was round long before science did.

No it just shows the scientific ignorance of the writers of that age ... current day poetic expressions of the same kind derive from such biblical lunacy for the same reason that many think the heart is the centre of emotion (it isn't, it's a pump, nothing more) ... in fact I'll post another post on this subject by a friend and e-zine contributor of mine.

The result is that some uninformed skeptics consider the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe to be of a solid vault arched over the earth with sluice holes through which rain can enter and the stars fixed within. Diagrams of this concept even appear in some Bible dictionaries and translations.

Again I couldn't actually care less about your weak attempts to reinterpret and retrofit the words of the bible into science, the fact is that it refers to the sky as a dome (it isn't) and it says there are windows in it that let the rain come through.

The flood issue of water I have dealt with here and since you provide no grounds for dismissal I assume that your position remains baseless. I have also considered gods, hell and the soul which you haven't responded to so perhaps you need more time?

I will check.

Kyu

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The Bible gets an "F" in basic anatomy
(Thinking with your bowels)
by
Psycho Dave
Some of the most outlandish lessons in anatomy and physiology are contained in the Bible. We are told that bats are birds, that there are insects that have only 4 legs, and that rabbits chew their cud. Well, let's take a look at what the Bible says about human anatomy.

The Bible has been a chief inspiration throughout history of various ideas, one being that emotions are centred in the heart. It is easy to understand how PRIMITIVE, SCIENTIFICALLY ILLITERATE people could believe such crap. After all, when we are sexually aroused or excited, our hearts beat quicker. So primitive people thought there was something in the heart that made us feel emotions. This view is held throughout the Bible and even up to the modern times, as references to the heart being the centre of emotion permeates our literature and poetry.

The people who wrote the Bible attached enormous emotional and moral significance to the heart's behaviour. The Bible emphasizes how the heart "deviseth a man's way," "inspires speech" "believes," "is joyful," "is deceitful," "is good" (Prov. 16:9 ; Mt. 12: 34 ; Rom. 10:10 ; 1 Chron. 16:10 ; Jer. 17:9 ; Lk. 6:45 ). This resembles what the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks (those Greeks who were not physicians, Homer and Aristotle) believed and taught. Besides the heart, the Bible also focuses (to a lesser extent) on the emotional and moral significance of the bowels and kidneys. Here are some of the verses in the King James Bible in which the Greek and Hebrew terms for bowels and kidneys are literally translated:

• My bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord (Jer. 31:20).
• Be ye straitened [restrained] in your own bowels (2 Cor. 6:12).
• I long after you in the bowels [affection] of Christ (Philip. 1:8).
• (T)he bowels of the saints are refreshed.... ®efresh my bowels in the Lord (Philemon 7:20).
• (S)hutteth up his bowels of compassion (1 John 3:17).
• Thus my heart was grieved, and I was pricked in my reins [Latin, renes, which means kidneys, a literal translation of the Hebrew] (Ps. 73:21).
• My reins [kidneys] also instruct me in the night seasons (Ps. 16:7).
• Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the heart and reins [kidneys] (Ps. 7:9).
• Yea, my reins [kidneys] shall rejoice when my lips speak right things (Prov. 23:16).
• I am He [God] which searcheth the reins [kidneys] and hearts (Rev. 2:23).

The Talmud (Berakhoth 61a) says that one kidney prompts man to do good, the other to do evil. The kidneys (among other organs, yet excluding the brain) were especially reserved for Yahweh and sacrificed to Him as a burnt offering (Lev. 3:4-5). Even if the Hebrews regarded this insight into the kidneys as "pure poetry" (which is doubtful, based on historical comparisons, and since figures of speech have to originate from ideas), it is a poetry that no longer survives or interests mankind. In fact, in the above verses the Hebrew word for kidneys has been translated soul in modern English Bibles to avoid cumbersome explanations of why the ancient Hebrews attributed moral significance to a person's kidneys.

Another anatomical mistake was made by the Leviticus writer in the same context with his four-footed insects. After stating the two characteristics that clean animals must have (part the hoof and chew the cud), he declared hares and coneys unclean because they "chew the cud" but do not part the hoof (vv:3-6). Deuteronomy 14:7 also described hares and coneys as cud-chewers. The biological facts, however,are these: hares and coneys have no hoofs to part, but they have no cuds to chew either. The Leviticus writer made a serious biological error in describing them as cud-chewers.

The Genesis writer's genetic knowledge was no better than his understanding of astronomy. In chapter 30, he told of Jacob's scheme to increase his wealth while he was still in the employ of his father-in-law Laban. The two had reached an agreement whereby Jacob would be given all striped, spotted, and speckled lambs and kids subsequently born in Laban's flocks. Laban then removed all the striped, spotted, and speckled animals from his flocks and put them in his sons' care at a three-day distance from the flock Jacob attended. Not to be outsmarted, Jacob devised a plan:

Then Jacob took fresh rods of poplar and almond and plane, and peeled white streaks in them, exposing the white of the rods. He set the rods that he had peeled in front of the flocks in the troughs, that is, the watering places, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the rods, and so the flocks produced young that were striped, speckled, and spotted (30:37-39, NRSV).

What an interesting idea. And we thought all this time that passing inherited genes was how you bred traits into animals. Imagine how much simpler it is! All we have to do to breed pure white animals is place a wall of white poplar in front of their feeding places.

The fact is that the writers of the Bible knew little about anatomy or any other aspect of biology, and the idea that the heart, kidneys, and intestines had anything to do with emotion, or thought is simply idiotic. If the Bible were a source of truth, and it were infallible, don't you think that it could have at least made one connection between the brain and thought. It never does!

So much for the wisdom of the ancients.

Footnote (by the Reverend Rob Miles)

The Hebrew Lexicon has this to say about the word translated as "hare":

0768 tbnra 'arnebeth ar-neh'-beth
of uncertain derivation; TWOT-123a; n f
AV-hare 2; 2
1) hare
1a) probably an extinct animal because no known hare chews its cud, exact meaning is unknown, and best left untranslated as "arnebeth"

There's no problem so great in the Bible that the inerrantist won't cook up some preposterous scenario to explain it. Of course the Bible can't be inerrant, so therefore the author of Leviticus could not have been referring to a hare at all. It must be some extinct animal.

Easton's Revised Bible Dictionary, on the other hand, disagrees:

Hare (Heb. 'arnebeth) was prohibited as food according to the Mosaic law (#Le 11:6 De 14:7) "because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof." The habit of this animal is to grind its teeth and move its jaw as if it actually chewed the cud. But, like the cony (q.v.), it is not a ruminant with four stomachs, but a rodent like the squirrel, rat, etc. Moses speaks of it according to appearance. It is interdicted because, though apparently chewing the cud, it did not divide the hoof. There are two species in Syria,
1. The Lepus Syriacus or Syrian hare, which is like the English hare.
2. The Lepus Sinaiticus, or hare of the desert. No rabbits are found in Syria.

So, on the one hand we have an apologist work that claims arnebeth must not have been a hare, and is probably an extinct animal. We have another apologist work that tries to get Moses off the hook by claiming that the animal (no denial that it's a hare) appears to be chewing the cud, so his error is excusable.

Well, I suppose if the hare can fool Yahweh, who supposedly inspired Moses to write the Law, we can't really blame Moses for being fooled, can we? Those wascally wabbits!