Hey Y'all
I don't post here that often but I had an encounter with some preachers the other day on my way to work, and I wanted some advice on how to do better the next time I encounter some of the arguments they use.
They wanted to tell me about god the mother or some BS, so I aksed them why I should believe in god to begin with, and they immediately turned to the Bible. I then asked them, "why should I believe anything the bible says?" and they went the route of trying to convince me that the bible holds all these amazing scientific revelations.
The first one they used was Job 26:7, "He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing" and tried to argue that this meant that the Biblical authors knew that the earth was an object in space. Now, I argued that that explanation is far too vague to arrive at that conclusion. If you offered that explanation to someone who had a bronze age understanding of astronomy and asked them to depict it, you would wind up with vastly different interpretations of what that verse meant that differ wildly from what we currently understand. In retrospect, what I should have said was that that's a horrible explanation. The earth isn't 'suspended', it's traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour around the sun, which in turn is orbiting around the milky way galaxy. In that sense of the verse, it would be more correct to say that the earth is suspended by gravity over the sun. Even if it did offer a more concrete explanation of where the earth stands in relation to the rest of the universe that was WAY ahead of its time given the knowledge of the era - while that would suggest that there is something very strange about the book, I still wouldn't be convinced that this information came from a god as there are still many other explanations that are far more plausible (ancient aliens, a lucky guess, time travel, etc.).
He then moved on to Job 36:27-28, "to He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams, the clouds pour down their moisture, and abundant showers fall on mankind." and said that this was evidence that the Biblical authors had knowledge of the water cycle. I was honestly a little surprised that the bible contained a verse that somewhat accurately describes the water cycle, and I stumbled here a bit. I used an argument similar to the one I'd made above about how scientific revelation doesn't really prove there's a god or prove that anything else in the bible is true (although I think I stumbled some in my explanation), and then I explained that Muslims point to scientific explanations in the Quran, and told them that perhaps they should consider Islam. One of the preachers pressed me and asked me to give a specific example of scientific revelation in the Quran. I'm not familiar with that Holy book, and I don't know what kinds of "scientific proof" Muslims point to, but I do know that it is a phenomenon that does occur, and to object to it on grounds that I can't point to a specific example is honestly kind of silly.
Now, honestly, I don't think I should have had to have gone that far. I can't put my finger on why this is, but as far as scientific revelation goes, Job 36:27-28 honestly seems kind of underwhelming, and I feel like I should have been able to argue that it's silly to think that that verse is derived from an advanced scientific understanding of the water cycle - I feel like I had to concede that it might have actually pointed to such an advanced understanding, and that shouldn't be necessary. Next time that's brought up, how should I respond?
I don't post here that often but I had an encounter with some preachers the other day on my way to work, and I wanted some advice on how to do better the next time I encounter some of the arguments they use.
They wanted to tell me about god the mother or some BS, so I aksed them why I should believe in god to begin with, and they immediately turned to the Bible. I then asked them, "why should I believe anything the bible says?" and they went the route of trying to convince me that the bible holds all these amazing scientific revelations.
The first one they used was Job 26:7, "He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing" and tried to argue that this meant that the Biblical authors knew that the earth was an object in space. Now, I argued that that explanation is far too vague to arrive at that conclusion. If you offered that explanation to someone who had a bronze age understanding of astronomy and asked them to depict it, you would wind up with vastly different interpretations of what that verse meant that differ wildly from what we currently understand. In retrospect, what I should have said was that that's a horrible explanation. The earth isn't 'suspended', it's traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour around the sun, which in turn is orbiting around the milky way galaxy. In that sense of the verse, it would be more correct to say that the earth is suspended by gravity over the sun. Even if it did offer a more concrete explanation of where the earth stands in relation to the rest of the universe that was WAY ahead of its time given the knowledge of the era - while that would suggest that there is something very strange about the book, I still wouldn't be convinced that this information came from a god as there are still many other explanations that are far more plausible (ancient aliens, a lucky guess, time travel, etc.).
He then moved on to Job 36:27-28, "to He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams, the clouds pour down their moisture, and abundant showers fall on mankind." and said that this was evidence that the Biblical authors had knowledge of the water cycle. I was honestly a little surprised that the bible contained a verse that somewhat accurately describes the water cycle, and I stumbled here a bit. I used an argument similar to the one I'd made above about how scientific revelation doesn't really prove there's a god or prove that anything else in the bible is true (although I think I stumbled some in my explanation), and then I explained that Muslims point to scientific explanations in the Quran, and told them that perhaps they should consider Islam. One of the preachers pressed me and asked me to give a specific example of scientific revelation in the Quran. I'm not familiar with that Holy book, and I don't know what kinds of "scientific proof" Muslims point to, but I do know that it is a phenomenon that does occur, and to object to it on grounds that I can't point to a specific example is honestly kind of silly.
Now, honestly, I don't think I should have had to have gone that far. I can't put my finger on why this is, but as far as scientific revelation goes, Job 36:27-28 honestly seems kind of underwhelming, and I feel like I should have been able to argue that it's silly to think that that verse is derived from an advanced scientific understanding of the water cycle - I feel like I had to concede that it might have actually pointed to such an advanced understanding, and that shouldn't be necessary. Next time that's brought up, how should I respond?
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