A simple challenge for atheists

[Esquilax]

While the scientific understanding of the world changed over time, the actual words in the OT/NT have never come down on the wrong side of science. Of course you are going to bring up creation. Augustine thought that the 6 days of creation were symbolic in 400 AD (way before Darwin). Anticipating that certain passages would be problematic he writes "In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines our position, we too fall with it."

What I find hilarious about this is that you make a strong, declarative statement in the first sentence, and then spend the rest of the paragraph either running away from it at full speed, or altering the actual premises of the first statement in such a way that it's not longer anything near what you're claiming it to be.

You start off by saying the actual words of the bible have never disagreed with science, and then in the very next sentence you start laying the groundwork for some wheedling: "Well, not actually the actual words, um, maybe what certain people after the fact, who had no possible way of knowing the original authorial intent, decided what the words meant?"

You took an entire paragraph to say what it'd take me one sentence (and a whole lot more honesty) to say: "It is possible for me to reinterpret or ignore the words of the bible, such that I can square it with modern science."

Well, so what? If you just get to decide what does and doesn't count as part of the bible, and interpret what does count to mean whatever you want, yeah, I bet it's real trivial to make the bible square with science. But that hardly means that the bible itself matches with science. It just means you're desperate to give your presupposed conclusions an air of rational legitimacy that they have neither earned, nor deserved.