Creationists

[Lonestar_logic]

it's fictious because there's no evidence to support it .
your denial of dating methods is a dodge
it is true that they are flawed but even if they were only right 50% of the time it would still make them far more accurate then the no proof answers you provide.
BTW the bible is the most flawed and inaccurate book ever written....but you still use it...

The only requirement is faith.

Dating methods have been proven to be flawed. Not a dodge but simply the truth.

Using your logic that the dating methods are correct 50 percent of the time, then how can you be certain which result is correct and which result isn't? Flip a coin? It'd be about the same odds.

Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact.

Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy.

and using your "logic" you missed the "IF" the fact is dating methods are far more accurate then 50% more like 97or 98 % percent depending on the method,unlike the claims in the bible that are not supported by evidence,the following claims are erroneous in the extreme : "Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact." L.S

Bible Science Debunked



A Brief Introduction To Biblical Cosmology

It is not uncommon for biblical apologists to make the claim that the Bible miraculously revealed advanced scientific principles long before they were discovered by modern science. If true, this would lend credibility to the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired (or that the Bible authors were incredibly astute). But can these claims really be substantiated through an objective analysis of the biblical citations that are presented to support this premise? In order to find out, I searched the Internet for Christian apologetic websites that tout the Bible as a source of revelatory scientific insight and settled on one developed by a Mr. David Pyles entitled, �Scientific Facts and Accuracy in the Bible.� I chose Mr. Pyles� website because it contained more citations than most and included claims that routinely appear on other such websites.

Before examining Mr. Pyles� claims for the Bible�s amazing scientific accuracy, it is helpful to first set the stage by providing an overview of the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary,

�The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round [disk], covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen. 1:6,7; cf. Psalms 24:2; 148:4, Deut. 5:8). The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it were opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20; Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33; Isa. 14:9,15)."

Yes, those Bronze Age science wizards whose creation folktales were collected in the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was covered by a solid dome. The Hebrew word translated as firmament in Genesis is "raqiya." Strong's Lexicon (searchable at the Blue Letter Bible website) translates the word as "extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament." In keeping with the notion of solidity, the dome was thought to be impervious to water, i.e., it separated the waters above it from the waters below, to contain windows that regulated precipitation, to serve as a surface across which the sun, moon, and stars traveled, and to serve as a sub-floor for the mythical reservoirs of snow and hail (Job 38:22).

The concept of a solid dome in the sky is also exemplified by Job 37:18 which describes God as spreading out the heavens and making them "as strong as a cast metal mirror." (NKJV) In Isa. 40:22, the heavens are likened to the fabric of a curtain or tent. And in a footnote to "raqiya," Strong's Lexicon states, "...considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting "waters above."

A depiction of this archaic concept of a dome-covered universe and further discussion on the subject can found here.

Incidentally, the sky is not blue because a make-believe firmament partially transmits the color of �chaotic waters� confined above it. It is blue because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.



Examining the Claims



In consideration of the foregoing, it is difficult to identify anything that might come close to qualifying as cutting-edge science. Truth be told, the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe is manifestly unscientific and something that any Typical Scientifically-Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herder (TSIBAGH) might be expected to have dreamed up. Be that as it may, in what follows, let�s see how Mr. Pyles� claims stand up to scrutiny. (It appears Mr. Pyles has used the KJV Bible for most of his biblical citations. I have done likewise, unless otherwise specified.)

Claim 1.

Genesis 1:1,3 (written 3,450 years ago): "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power and motion. "In the beginning (time) God created (power) the Heaven (space) and the earth (matter) . . . And the Spirit of God moved (motion) upon the face of the waters."

My Response:

Genesis gets off to a rather dubious start in the science department because it violates one of the principal tenets of the scientific method, i.e., it invokes supernatural causation. Science deals exclusively with natural causes and effects. (See here.) God, a supernatural entity, cannot be invoked as a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe (or anything else for that matter). Scientific theories dealing with the origin of the universe do not include reference to any creator gods because to do so would render them utterly unscientific.

According to an earlier understanding of �Big Bang� theory of the origin of the universe (based on general relativity factors), time started when matter/energy originated and was set in motion through space. The thinking was that the process began with a so-called singularity in which matter/energy was compressed to an incredibly high density (similar to the condition that is thought to exist at the center of black holes). Now, taking into account additional factors relating to quantum mechanics, it is the consensus of cosmologists that there was no singularity at the start of the Big Bang. This means that time did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang and that the universe could extend back in time with no limit, i.e., it may have existed in one form or another forever. In other words, and in contradiction to Genesis, there may well not have been a beginning of the universe for anyone or any thing to cause. The Genesis creation story provides none of this insight and consists of nothing that a TSIBAGH could not have dreamed up. More to the point, it is precisely the type of mythical folktale a TSIBAGH would be expected to dream up.

Although Genesis 1:1-3 makes general statements about what God supposedly did, it provides no information regarding how He did it. Scientific explanations include information not only about what happened, but also about how (using only naturalistic mechanisms) it happened. Not only does Genesis get virtually everything wrong, it also leaves out far too many details to qualify as a source of useful scientific information on the origin of the universe.

Arbitrarily assigning scientific meanings to words in ancient documents does not automatically lend any scientific credibility to the stories they tell. One can play the same word game with a number of ancient creation stories. Consider the following from a part of a Chinese creation story:

In the beginning (time), the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might (power) to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up (motion) and formed the heavens (space), the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth (matter).

I have inserted the words "time," "power," "motion," "space," and "matter" using the same logic (or lack thereof) that Mr. Pyles used in his example above. Does this lend any scientific credibility to the creation story of Pan Gu? I don�t think so. Neither do I think it does so when Mr. Pyles uses the same specious approach with the Bible.

Bible Science Debunked


"Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy L.S."


How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?By Austin Cline, About.com GuideJuly 30, 2009

Quite a few Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in every detail - not a single error or contradiction can be found in the text. Other Christians believe that many allegedly historical passages are only metaphorical and that the authors, being fallible, made mistakes from time to time. Which end of this spectrum do you think is most reasonable and, more importantly, why? What sorts of evidence or reasoning can be presented to more literalist Christians to explain why the Bible is not a perfect historical record?

It's obvious that some parts of the Bible were only ever intended to be metaphorical or allegorical stories — the Bible is, after all, a collection of texts written over a long period of time and they represent many different genres of writing. Even those intended to relate actual events, though, were not written from the perspective of purely factual, objective history because that genre didn't exist at the time — for most of history, writing "history" meant pursuing a political, ideological, or religious agenda at the same time.

Even if we ignore that, however, distinguishing between the portions that are allegories or metaphors and the portions which are meant to be historical isn't always easy. Sometimes there are markers, but so often religious believers insist that some stories are allegories even though no such markers are present — apparently, anything that obviously couldn't be true must have been intended to be allegory all along while anything that might be true must be true. Where doe such an attitude come from and why is it only applied to one's own religion?

.Weekly Poll: How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?

One more thing ..why is it when searching those statements do you only find conformation on Christian bias sites?
you would think that if those fables were fact you find them on actual historical and scientific sites not pseudoscience or pseudohistoric ones?

I ain't got time to read all that. If you can't make a point in a coupe of paragraphs then I feel sorry for you.

 

[Youwerecreated]

Not surprisingly, you never opened the link sent to you. The facts are there.

Let's look at this from the perspective of a conspiratorial mindset and we'll presume that all the facts and evidence supporting evolution are wrong.

How does that support your claims to the gods? As we see with consistency, the conspiracy theory addled fundie is utterly unable to present evidence for his gods, thus the entirety of the fundie argument in favor of the gods is reduced to attacks on science.

Yes I opened it and found NO PROOF.

Gods? I made no claim about gods.

The thing is my faith needs no proof. Yours does.

Evolutionary science is junk science.

They have zero evidence that life can be created from non-life. They have zero evidence that any new information or intelligence has been created by random mutations of nucleotides. And so on.

So what do they use for their "evidence?"

Their primary evidence is to assume the theory of evolution is true and to claim that each new discovery in biology or genetic research is the result of evolution.

The scenario goes something like this:

1) Scientists assume the theory of evolution is true,
2) Then they look at the "data" and spin whatever kind of story they can come up with to "prove" the theory of evolution is true,
3) They then claim they have "evidence" for the theory of evolution.

The theory of evolution does not address the origin of life. Why are you arguing against an established field of science when you have no knowledge of even the most basic principles of that discipline? You stumble over your own arguments as they are meaningless regarding evolution. Shouldn't you have at least a middling understanding of evolutionary principles before you attempt to argue against it?

The scientific method does not operate in the manner you describe. It seems that you and the two other Christian fundies all cut and paste from the same websites that have made you accomplices to ignorance, fear and superstition.

The discipline of science has what us known as "peer review". That is a process wherein data, results of testing and claims to theories or observed test results are subject to ruthless re-testing and examination by others.

Thus is the most glaring exception for creationist charlatans who explicitly do not submit their anti-science efforts for peer review. The reasons are obvious: the Christian creationist charlatans have an explicit agenda of denigrating science as a perceived mechanism to vilify science. Those efforts have crashed and burned as the creationist ministries have been repeatedly exposed as frauds, such as the snake-oil salesmen at the Disco-tute'.

Baloney, they have been working on origins for many years they have no viable explanation for origins so they resort to the same argument you just made.

 

[Youwerecreated]

The only requirement is faith.

Dating methods have been proven to be flawed. Not a dodge but simply the truth.

Using your logic that the dating methods are correct 50 percent of the time, then how can you be certain which result is correct and which result isn't? Flip a coin? It'd be about the same odds.

Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact.

Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy.

and using your "logic" you missed the "IF" the fact is dating methods are far more accurate then 50% more like 97or 98 % percent depending on the method,unlike the claims in the bible that are not supported by evidence,the following claims are erroneous in the extreme : "Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact." L.S

Bible Science Debunked



A Brief Introduction To Biblical Cosmology

It is not uncommon for biblical apologists to make the claim that the Bible miraculously revealed advanced scientific principles long before they were discovered by modern science. If true, this would lend credibility to the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired (or that the Bible authors were incredibly astute). But can these claims really be substantiated through an objective analysis of the biblical citations that are presented to support this premise? In order to find out, I searched the Internet for Christian apologetic websites that tout the Bible as a source of revelatory scientific insight and settled on one developed by a Mr. David Pyles entitled, �Scientific Facts and Accuracy in the Bible.� I chose Mr. Pyles� website because it contained more citations than most and included claims that routinely appear on other such websites.

Before examining Mr. Pyles� claims for the Bible�s amazing scientific accuracy, it is helpful to first set the stage by providing an overview of the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary,

�The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round [disk], covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen. 1:6,7; cf. Psalms 24:2; 148:4, Deut. 5:8). The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it were opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20; Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33; Isa. 14:9,15)."

Yes, those Bronze Age science wizards whose creation folktales were collected in the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was covered by a solid dome. The Hebrew word translated as firmament in Genesis is "raqiya." Strong's Lexicon (searchable at the Blue Letter Bible website) translates the word as "extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament." In keeping with the notion of solidity, the dome was thought to be impervious to water, i.e., it separated the waters above it from the waters below, to contain windows that regulated precipitation, to serve as a surface across which the sun, moon, and stars traveled, and to serve as a sub-floor for the mythical reservoirs of snow and hail (Job 38:22).

The concept of a solid dome in the sky is also exemplified by Job 37:18 which describes God as spreading out the heavens and making them "as strong as a cast metal mirror." (NKJV) In Isa. 40:22, the heavens are likened to the fabric of a curtain or tent. And in a footnote to "raqiya," Strong's Lexicon states, "...considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting "waters above."

A depiction of this archaic concept of a dome-covered universe and further discussion on the subject can found here.

Incidentally, the sky is not blue because a make-believe firmament partially transmits the color of �chaotic waters� confined above it. It is blue because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.



Examining the Claims



In consideration of the foregoing, it is difficult to identify anything that might come close to qualifying as cutting-edge science. Truth be told, the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe is manifestly unscientific and something that any Typical Scientifically-Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herder (TSIBAGH) might be expected to have dreamed up. Be that as it may, in what follows, let�s see how Mr. Pyles� claims stand up to scrutiny. (It appears Mr. Pyles has used the KJV Bible for most of his biblical citations. I have done likewise, unless otherwise specified.)

Claim 1.

Genesis 1:1,3 (written 3,450 years ago): "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power and motion. "In the beginning (time) God created (power) the Heaven (space) and the earth (matter) . . . And the Spirit of God moved (motion) upon the face of the waters."

My Response:

Genesis gets off to a rather dubious start in the science department because it violates one of the principal tenets of the scientific method, i.e., it invokes supernatural causation. Science deals exclusively with natural causes and effects. (See here.) God, a supernatural entity, cannot be invoked as a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe (or anything else for that matter). Scientific theories dealing with the origin of the universe do not include reference to any creator gods because to do so would render them utterly unscientific.

According to an earlier understanding of �Big Bang� theory of the origin of the universe (based on general relativity factors), time started when matter/energy originated and was set in motion through space. The thinking was that the process began with a so-called singularity in which matter/energy was compressed to an incredibly high density (similar to the condition that is thought to exist at the center of black holes). Now, taking into account additional factors relating to quantum mechanics, it is the consensus of cosmologists that there was no singularity at the start of the Big Bang. This means that time did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang and that the universe could extend back in time with no limit, i.e., it may have existed in one form or another forever. In other words, and in contradiction to Genesis, there may well not have been a beginning of the universe for anyone or any thing to cause. The Genesis creation story provides none of this insight and consists of nothing that a TSIBAGH could not have dreamed up. More to the point, it is precisely the type of mythical folktale a TSIBAGH would be expected to dream up.

Although Genesis 1:1-3 makes general statements about what God supposedly did, it provides no information regarding how He did it. Scientific explanations include information not only about what happened, but also about how (using only naturalistic mechanisms) it happened. Not only does Genesis get virtually everything wrong, it also leaves out far too many details to qualify as a source of useful scientific information on the origin of the universe.

Arbitrarily assigning scientific meanings to words in ancient documents does not automatically lend any scientific credibility to the stories they tell. One can play the same word game with a number of ancient creation stories. Consider the following from a part of a Chinese creation story:

In the beginning (time), the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might (power) to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up (motion) and formed the heavens (space), the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth (matter).

I have inserted the words "time," "power," "motion," "space," and "matter" using the same logic (or lack thereof) that Mr. Pyles used in his example above. Does this lend any scientific credibility to the creation story of Pan Gu? I don�t think so. Neither do I think it does so when Mr. Pyles uses the same specious approach with the Bible.

Bible Science Debunked


"Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy L.S."


How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?By Austin Cline, About.com GuideJuly 30, 2009

Quite a few Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in every detail - not a single error or contradiction can be found in the text. Other Christians believe that many allegedly historical passages are only metaphorical and that the authors, being fallible, made mistakes from time to time. Which end of this spectrum do you think is most reasonable and, more importantly, why? What sorts of evidence or reasoning can be presented to more literalist Christians to explain why the Bible is not a perfect historical record?

It's obvious that some parts of the Bible were only ever intended to be metaphorical or allegorical stories — the Bible is, after all, a collection of texts written over a long period of time and they represent many different genres of writing. Even those intended to relate actual events, though, were not written from the perspective of purely factual, objective history because that genre didn't exist at the time — for most of history, writing "history" meant pursuing a political, ideological, or religious agenda at the same time.

Even if we ignore that, however, distinguishing between the portions that are allegories or metaphors and the portions which are meant to be historical isn't always easy. Sometimes there are markers, but so often religious believers insist that some stories are allegories even though no such markers are present — apparently, anything that obviously couldn't be true must have been intended to be allegory all along while anything that might be true must be true. Where doe such an attitude come from and why is it only applied to one's own religion?

.Weekly Poll: How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?

One more thing ..why is it when searching those statements do you only find conformation on Christian bias sites?
you would think that if those fables were fact you find them on actual historical and scientific sites not pseudoscience or pseudohistoric ones?

What really sticks in my ribs are these claims because on so many other things we encounter in life The Bible is a great map and course for many things.
That is what it is and is supposed to be.
A person follow Biblical principles in so many areas, they will make it work.
Nothing about science, it is not a science book and was never intended to be one.

I will agree to a point,God did not need a science book to complete his work. There are many references in the bible however that can be tested by science which you ignore.

 

[UltimateReality]

There are facts you possess that prove your gods?

Super. Present them.

Why would I need proof of something I acknowledge exists?

If that were true, why do you so desperately need to thrash away at science and evolution?

It's a common these with fundies: evolution is a threat to their belief in supermagical gods just as evolution is a threat. Science strips away fear and ignorance. Just as we now understand that natural forces are not of any gods, knowledge has inevitably reduced your gods from being the eternal winders of the universe to mere paper-shuffling laggards and lay-abouts.

So what is your reason for being here?

 

[UltimateReality]

The theory of evolution does not address the origin of life. Why are you arguing against an established field of science when you have no knowledge of even the most basic principles of that discipline? You stumble over your own arguments as they are meaningless regarding evolution. Shouldn't you have at least a middling understanding of evolutionary principles before you attempt to argue against it?

The scientific method does not operate in the manner you describe. It seems that you and the two other Christian fundies all cut and paste from the same websites that have made you accomplices to ignorance, fear and superstition.

The discipline of science has what us known as "peer review". That is a process wherein data, results of testing and claims to theories or observed test results are subject to ruthless re-testing and examination by others.

Thus is the most glaring exception for creationist charlatans who explicitly do not submit their anti-science efforts for peer review. The reasons are obvious: the Christian creationist charlatans have an explicit agenda of denigrating science as a perceived mechanism to vilify science. Those efforts have crashed and burned as the creationist ministries have been repeatedly exposed as frauds, such as the snake-oil salesmen at the Disco-tute'.

If the "theory" of evolution doesn't involve the "origin of life" then at what point did evolution begin?

BTW peer review doesn't mean squat in this case. You have fellow evolutionary scientist agreeing with each other. Big deal. Proves nothing.

Evolutionist don't have an agenda?

I have no idea what the disco-tute is or why you keep referring to it.

Why is an unproven theory used as fact?

How did the "sexes" come to be?

Regardless of whether we are talking about animals, fish, or plant life, it's an undeniable fact that nearly all life forms have both male and female varieties. If evolution is a fact how did that come about?

Regarding the science of evolution, you really should take some time and acquaint yourself with what science has discovered....

What? Like you have?

 

[UltimateReality]

The only requirement is faith.

Dating methods have been proven to be flawed. Not a dodge but simply the truth.

Using your logic that the dating methods are correct 50 percent of the time, then how can you be certain which result is correct and which result isn't? Flip a coin? It'd be about the same odds.

Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact.

Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy.

and using your "logic" you missed the "IF" the fact is dating methods are far more accurate then 50% more like 97or 98 % percent depending on the method,unlike the claims in the bible that are not supported by evidence,the following claims are erroneous in the extreme : "Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact." L.S

Bible Science Debunked



A Brief Introduction To Biblical Cosmology

It is not uncommon for biblical apologists to make the claim that the Bible miraculously revealed advanced scientific principles long before they were discovered by modern science. If true, this would lend credibility to the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired (or that the Bible authors were incredibly astute). But can these claims really be substantiated through an objective analysis of the biblical citations that are presented to support this premise? In order to find out, I searched the Internet for Christian apologetic websites that tout the Bible as a source of revelatory scientific insight and settled on one developed by a Mr. David Pyles entitled, �Scientific Facts and Accuracy in the Bible.� I chose Mr. Pyles� website because it contained more citations than most and included claims that routinely appear on other such websites.

Before examining Mr. Pyles� claims for the Bible�s amazing scientific accuracy, it is helpful to first set the stage by providing an overview of the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary,

�The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round [disk], covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen. 1:6,7; cf. Psalms 24:2; 148:4, Deut. 5:8). The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it were opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20; Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33; Isa. 14:9,15)."

Yes, those Bronze Age science wizards whose creation folktales were collected in the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was covered by a solid dome. The Hebrew word translated as firmament in Genesis is "raqiya." Strong's Lexicon (searchable at the Blue Letter Bible website) translates the word as "extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament." In keeping with the notion of solidity, the dome was thought to be impervious to water, i.e., it separated the waters above it from the waters below, to contain windows that regulated precipitation, to serve as a surface across which the sun, moon, and stars traveled, and to serve as a sub-floor for the mythical reservoirs of snow and hail (Job 38:22).

The concept of a solid dome in the sky is also exemplified by Job 37:18 which describes God as spreading out the heavens and making them "as strong as a cast metal mirror." (NKJV) In Isa. 40:22, the heavens are likened to the fabric of a curtain or tent. And in a footnote to "raqiya," Strong's Lexicon states, "...considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting "waters above."

A depiction of this archaic concept of a dome-covered universe and further discussion on the subject can found here.

Incidentally, the sky is not blue because a make-believe firmament partially transmits the color of �chaotic waters� confined above it. It is blue because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.



Examining the Claims



In consideration of the foregoing, it is difficult to identify anything that might come close to qualifying as cutting-edge science. Truth be told, the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe is manifestly unscientific and something that any Typical Scientifically-Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herder (TSIBAGH) might be expected to have dreamed up. Be that as it may, in what follows, let�s see how Mr. Pyles� claims stand up to scrutiny. (It appears Mr. Pyles has used the KJV Bible for most of his biblical citations. I have done likewise, unless otherwise specified.)

Claim 1.

Genesis 1:1,3 (written 3,450 years ago): "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power and motion. "In the beginning (time) God created (power) the Heaven (space) and the earth (matter) . . . And the Spirit of God moved (motion) upon the face of the waters."

My Response:

Genesis gets off to a rather dubious start in the science department because it violates one of the principal tenets of the scientific method, i.e., it invokes supernatural causation. Science deals exclusively with natural causes and effects. (See here.) God, a supernatural entity, cannot be invoked as a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe (or anything else for that matter). Scientific theories dealing with the origin of the universe do not include reference to any creator gods because to do so would render them utterly unscientific.

According to an earlier understanding of �Big Bang� theory of the origin of the universe (based on general relativity factors), time started when matter/energy originated and was set in motion through space. The thinking was that the process began with a so-called singularity in which matter/energy was compressed to an incredibly high density (similar to the condition that is thought to exist at the center of black holes). Now, taking into account additional factors relating to quantum mechanics, it is the consensus of cosmologists that there was no singularity at the start of the Big Bang. This means that time did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang and that the universe could extend back in time with no limit, i.e., it may have existed in one form or another forever. In other words, and in contradiction to Genesis, there may well not have been a beginning of the universe for anyone or any thing to cause. The Genesis creation story provides none of this insight and consists of nothing that a TSIBAGH could not have dreamed up. More to the point, it is precisely the type of mythical folktale a TSIBAGH would be expected to dream up.

Although Genesis 1:1-3 makes general statements about what God supposedly did, it provides no information regarding how He did it. Scientific explanations include information not only about what happened, but also about how (using only naturalistic mechanisms) it happened. Not only does Genesis get virtually everything wrong, it also leaves out far too many details to qualify as a source of useful scientific information on the origin of the universe.

Arbitrarily assigning scientific meanings to words in ancient documents does not automatically lend any scientific credibility to the stories they tell. One can play the same word game with a number of ancient creation stories. Consider the following from a part of a Chinese creation story:

In the beginning (time), the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might (power) to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up (motion) and formed the heavens (space), the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth (matter).

I have inserted the words "time," "power," "motion," "space," and "matter" using the same logic (or lack thereof) that Mr. Pyles used in his example above. Does this lend any scientific credibility to the creation story of Pan Gu? I don�t think so. Neither do I think it does so when Mr. Pyles uses the same specious approach with the Bible.

Bible Science Debunked


"Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy L.S."


How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?By Austin Cline, About.com GuideJuly 30, 2009

Quite a few Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in every detail - not a single error or contradiction can be found in the text. Other Christians believe that many allegedly historical passages are only metaphorical and that the authors, being fallible, made mistakes from time to time. Which end of this spectrum do you think is most reasonable and, more importantly, why? What sorts of evidence or reasoning can be presented to more literalist Christians to explain why the Bible is not a perfect historical record?

It's obvious that some parts of the Bible were only ever intended to be metaphorical or allegorical stories — the Bible is, after all, a collection of texts written over a long period of time and they represent many different genres of writing. Even those intended to relate actual events, though, were not written from the perspective of purely factual, objective history because that genre didn't exist at the time — for most of history, writing "history" meant pursuing a political, ideological, or religious agenda at the same time.

Even if we ignore that, however, distinguishing between the portions that are allegories or metaphors and the portions which are meant to be historical isn't always easy. Sometimes there are markers, but so often religious believers insist that some stories are allegories even though no such markers are present — apparently, anything that obviously couldn't be true must have been intended to be allegory all along while anything that might be true must be true. Where doe such an attitude come from and why is it only applied to one's own religion?

.Weekly Poll: How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?

One more thing ..why is it when searching those statements do you only find conformation on Christian bias sites?
you would think that if those fables were fact you find them on actual historical and scientific sites not pseudoscience or pseudohistoric ones?

What really sticks in my ribs are these claims because on so many other things we encounter in life The Bible is a great map and course for many things.
That is what it is and is supposed to be.
A person follow Biblical principles in so many areas, they will make it work.
Nothing about science, it is not a science book and was never intended to be one.

Strawman. But neither was that little work of fiction titled the ORigin of the Species.

 

[newpolitics]

The thing is my faith needs no proof. Yours does.

This is a tautology. Faith is defined as belief without evidence. What you just said is "my belief without evidence needs no evidence."

 

[UltimateReality]

The thing is my faith needs no proof. Yours does.

This is a tautology. Faith is defined as belief without evidence. What you just said is "my belief without evidence needs no evidence."

Faith (noun):

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.

2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that his hypothesis about the origin of the cell would eventually be proven as fact.

3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.

4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.

5.a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.

 

[Hollie]

Yes I opened it and found NO PROOF.

Gods? I made no claim about gods.

The thing is my faith needs no proof. Yours does.

Evolutionary science is junk science.

They have zero evidence that life can be created from non-life. They have zero evidence that any new information or intelligence has been created by random mutations of nucleotides. And so on.

So what do they use for their "evidence?"

Their primary evidence is to assume the theory of evolution is true and to claim that each new discovery in biology or genetic research is the result of evolution.

The scenario goes something like this:

1) Scientists assume the theory of evolution is true,
2) Then they look at the "data" and spin whatever kind of story they can come up with to "prove" the theory of evolution is true,
3) They then claim they have "evidence" for the theory of evolution.

The theory of evolution does not address the origin of life. Why are you arguing against an established field of science when you have no knowledge of even the most basic principles of that discipline? You stumble over your own arguments as they are meaningless regarding evolution. Shouldn't you have at least a middling understanding of evolutionary principles before you attempt to argue against it?

The scientific method does not operate in the manner you describe. It seems that you and the two other Christian fundies all cut and paste from the same websites that have made you accomplices to ignorance, fear and superstition.

The discipline of science has what us known as "peer review". That is a process wherein data, results of testing and claims to theories or observed test results are subject to ruthless re-testing and examination by others.

Thus is the most glaring exception for creationist charlatans who explicitly do not submit their anti-science efforts for peer review. The reasons are obvious: the Christian creationist charlatans have an explicit agenda of denigrating science as a perceived mechanism to vilify science. Those efforts have crashed and burned as the creationist ministries have been repeatedly exposed as frauds, such as the snake-oil salesmen at the Disco-tute'.

Baloney, they have been working on origins for many years they have no viable explanation for origins so they resort to the same argument you just made.

Your quaint notion that science not providing every answer to every question somehow is default proof of your gods is creationist silliness.

If anyone needs to see how bankrupt the fundie worldview has become, one only needs to see the creationist hissing and spitting at science while never being able to offer positive evidence for their gods.

 

[Hollie]

and using your "logic" you missed the "IF" the fact is dating methods are far more accurate then 50% more like 97or 98 % percent depending on the method,unlike the claims in the bible that are not supported by evidence,the following claims are erroneous in the extreme : "Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact." L.S

Bible Science Debunked



A Brief Introduction To Biblical Cosmology

It is not uncommon for biblical apologists to make the claim that the Bible miraculously revealed advanced scientific principles long before they were discovered by modern science. If true, this would lend credibility to the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired (or that the Bible authors were incredibly astute). But can these claims really be substantiated through an objective analysis of the biblical citations that are presented to support this premise? In order to find out, I searched the Internet for Christian apologetic websites that tout the Bible as a source of revelatory scientific insight and settled on one developed by a Mr. David Pyles entitled, �Scientific Facts and Accuracy in the Bible.� I chose Mr. Pyles� website because it contained more citations than most and included claims that routinely appear on other such websites.

Before examining Mr. Pyles� claims for the Bible�s amazing scientific accuracy, it is helpful to first set the stage by providing an overview of the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary,

�The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round [disk], covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen. 1:6,7; cf. Psalms 24:2; 148:4, Deut. 5:8). The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it were opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20; Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33; Isa. 14:9,15)."

Yes, those Bronze Age science wizards whose creation folktales were collected in the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was covered by a solid dome. The Hebrew word translated as firmament in Genesis is "raqiya." Strong's Lexicon (searchable at the Blue Letter Bible website) translates the word as "extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament." In keeping with the notion of solidity, the dome was thought to be impervious to water, i.e., it separated the waters above it from the waters below, to contain windows that regulated precipitation, to serve as a surface across which the sun, moon, and stars traveled, and to serve as a sub-floor for the mythical reservoirs of snow and hail (Job 38:22).

The concept of a solid dome in the sky is also exemplified by Job 37:18 which describes God as spreading out the heavens and making them "as strong as a cast metal mirror." (NKJV) In Isa. 40:22, the heavens are likened to the fabric of a curtain or tent. And in a footnote to "raqiya," Strong's Lexicon states, "...considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting "waters above."

A depiction of this archaic concept of a dome-covered universe and further discussion on the subject can found here.

Incidentally, the sky is not blue because a make-believe firmament partially transmits the color of �chaotic waters� confined above it. It is blue because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.



Examining the Claims



In consideration of the foregoing, it is difficult to identify anything that might come close to qualifying as cutting-edge science. Truth be told, the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe is manifestly unscientific and something that any Typical Scientifically-Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herder (TSIBAGH) might be expected to have dreamed up. Be that as it may, in what follows, let�s see how Mr. Pyles� claims stand up to scrutiny. (It appears Mr. Pyles has used the KJV Bible for most of his biblical citations. I have done likewise, unless otherwise specified.)

Claim 1.

Genesis 1:1,3 (written 3,450 years ago): "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power and motion. "In the beginning (time) God created (power) the Heaven (space) and the earth (matter) . . . And the Spirit of God moved (motion) upon the face of the waters."

My Response:

Genesis gets off to a rather dubious start in the science department because it violates one of the principal tenets of the scientific method, i.e., it invokes supernatural causation. Science deals exclusively with natural causes and effects. (See here.) God, a supernatural entity, cannot be invoked as a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe (or anything else for that matter). Scientific theories dealing with the origin of the universe do not include reference to any creator gods because to do so would render them utterly unscientific.

According to an earlier understanding of �Big Bang� theory of the origin of the universe (based on general relativity factors), time started when matter/energy originated and was set in motion through space. The thinking was that the process began with a so-called singularity in which matter/energy was compressed to an incredibly high density (similar to the condition that is thought to exist at the center of black holes). Now, taking into account additional factors relating to quantum mechanics, it is the consensus of cosmologists that there was no singularity at the start of the Big Bang. This means that time did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang and that the universe could extend back in time with no limit, i.e., it may have existed in one form or another forever. In other words, and in contradiction to Genesis, there may well not have been a beginning of the universe for anyone or any thing to cause. The Genesis creation story provides none of this insight and consists of nothing that a TSIBAGH could not have dreamed up. More to the point, it is precisely the type of mythical folktale a TSIBAGH would be expected to dream up.

Although Genesis 1:1-3 makes general statements about what God supposedly did, it provides no information regarding how He did it. Scientific explanations include information not only about what happened, but also about how (using only naturalistic mechanisms) it happened. Not only does Genesis get virtually everything wrong, it also leaves out far too many details to qualify as a source of useful scientific information on the origin of the universe.

Arbitrarily assigning scientific meanings to words in ancient documents does not automatically lend any scientific credibility to the stories they tell. One can play the same word game with a number of ancient creation stories. Consider the following from a part of a Chinese creation story:

In the beginning (time), the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might (power) to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up (motion) and formed the heavens (space), the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth (matter).

I have inserted the words "time," "power," "motion," "space," and "matter" using the same logic (or lack thereof) that Mr. Pyles used in his example above. Does this lend any scientific credibility to the creation story of Pan Gu? I don�t think so. Neither do I think it does so when Mr. Pyles uses the same specious approach with the Bible.

Bible Science Debunked


"Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy L.S."


How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?By Austin Cline, About.com GuideJuly 30, 2009

Quite a few Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in every detail - not a single error or contradiction can be found in the text. Other Christians believe that many allegedly historical passages are only metaphorical and that the authors, being fallible, made mistakes from time to time. Which end of this spectrum do you think is most reasonable and, more importantly, why? What sorts of evidence or reasoning can be presented to more literalist Christians to explain why the Bible is not a perfect historical record?

It's obvious that some parts of the Bible were only ever intended to be metaphorical or allegorical stories — the Bible is, after all, a collection of texts written over a long period of time and they represent many different genres of writing. Even those intended to relate actual events, though, were not written from the perspective of purely factual, objective history because that genre didn't exist at the time — for most of history, writing "history" meant pursuing a political, ideological, or religious agenda at the same time.

Even if we ignore that, however, distinguishing between the portions that are allegories or metaphors and the portions which are meant to be historical isn't always easy. Sometimes there are markers, but so often religious believers insist that some stories are allegories even though no such markers are present — apparently, anything that obviously couldn't be true must have been intended to be allegory all along while anything that might be true must be true. Where doe such an attitude come from and why is it only applied to one's own religion?

.Weekly Poll: How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?

One more thing ..why is it when searching those statements do you only find conformation on Christian bias sites?
you would think that if those fables were fact you find them on actual historical and scientific sites not pseudoscience or pseudohistoric ones?

What really sticks in my ribs are these claims because on so many other things we encounter in life The Bible is a great map and course for many things.
That is what it is and is supposed to be.
A person follow Biblical principles in so many areas, they will make it work.
Nothing about science, it is not a science book and was never intended to be one.

I will agree to a point,God did not need a science book to complete his work. There are many references in the bible however that can be tested by science which you ignore.

....and which you are unable to identify.

 

[newpolitics]

Thinking about tonight, I bet I am right about one thing: Hollie, Daws, Loki and NP are for four more years of handouts, entitlements, excessive spending, free money for failed alternative energy companies, DOJ gun running schemes, and wealth redistribution.

There is no god.

Prove it.

I was returning one red herring for another.

I would never actually make the claim "there is no god" because it is nearly impossible to prove a negative existential claim.

I can however, prove that the christian god does not exist, because it is logically incongruous. As defined, the judeo-christian god is said to be perfect, yet this being needs or wants a relationship? A perfect being wouldn't need anything. It would never be jealous, as the bible often indicates. Also, omniscience and omnipotence are also logically incongruous. If you know every action you are going to take in the future, you are powerless to change them.

 

[daws101]

No. No religious authority was needed to convince me that dating methods are flawed.

Your foolishly veiled insult is noted.

Why do think dating methods are flawed? Do you believe there is a vast conspiracy among leading universities and scientists across the globe? Have you been convinced of a 6,000 year old earth when experimentation, physical data and evidence depicts a very ancient universe?

Was your earlier insult to be ignored? I've come to expect insults from religious people when challenges to their beliefs are presented. Do you enter a public discussion board and expect others to accept "because I say so claims"?

Please explain how diamonds that were dated to a couple of million years old were found to contain carbon ?

are youreally this ignorant?
In mineralogy, diamond (from the ancient Greek αδάμας – adámas "unbreakable") is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions

Diamond - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

btw graphite is also carbon...

 

[daws101]

Ficticious? Why because you say so?

Sorry if I don't take your word for it.

And as I've said dating methods are flawed and since that is a fact, then all presumptions about how old something is, is just that a presumption.

it's fictious because there's no evidence to support it .
your denial of dating methods is a dodge
it is true that they are flawed but even if they were only right 50% of the time it would still make them far more accurate then the no proof answers you provide.
BTW the bible is the most flawed and inaccurate book ever written....but you still use it...

You are in denial of the evidence that shows dating methods are not reliable.

lol...asshat

Accuracy of Fossils and Dating Methods
Michael Benton
articlehighlights
Fossil dating is accurate since the method follows strict scientific guidelines:

•the age of rocks around a fossil can be considered
•mathematical calculations are used
•the state of decay, carbon-14, and isotopes figure in calculations
•tree of life relationships often help sort the dates
read articlelearn moreget involvededucator resources January 2001
Fossils provide a record of the history of life.
Engraving from William Smith’s 1815 monograph on identifying strata based on fossils. Smith (1759-1839) is known as the Father of English Geology. Source: Oxford Library.
Our understanding of the shape and pattern of the history of life depends on the accuracy of fossils and dating methods. Some critics, particularly religious fundamentalists, argue that neither fossils nor dating can be trusted, and that their interpretations are better. Other critics, perhaps more familiar with the data, question certain aspects of the quality of the fossil record and of its dating. These skeptics do not provide scientific evidence for their views. Current understanding of the history of life is probably close to the truth because it is based on repeated and careful testing and consideration of data.

The rejection of the validity of fossils and of dating by religious fundamentalists creates a problem for them:

Millions of fossils have been discovered.•They cannot deny that hundreds of millions of fossils reside in display cases and drawers around the world. Perhaps some would argue that these specimens - huge skeletons of dinosaurs, blocks from ancient shell beds containing hundreds of specimens, delicately preserved fern fronds — have been manufactured by scientists to confuse the public. This is clearly ludicrous.
Some skeptics believe that all fossils are the same age.•Otherwise, religious fundamentalists are forced to claim that all the fossils are of the same age, somehow buried in the rocks by some extraordinary catastrophe, perhaps Noah’s flood. How exactly they believe that all the dinosaurs, mammoths, early humans, heavily-armored fishes, trilobites, ammonites, and the rest could all live together has never been explained. Nor indeed why the marine creatures were somehow ‘drowned’ by the flood.
Rejecting fossil data cannot be supported by proof.•The rejection of dating by religious fundamentalists is easier for them to make, but harder for them to demonstrate. The fossils occur in regular sequences time after time; radioactive decay happens, and repeated cross testing of radiometric dates confirms their validity.
Fossils occur in sequences
Fossil sequences were recognized and established in their broad outlines long before Charles Darwin had even thought of evolution. Early geologists, in the 1700s and 1800s, noticed how fossils seemed to occur in sequences: certain assemblages of fossils were always found below other assemblages. The first work was done in England and France.

Fossil hunting began by accident in England around 1800.•Around 1800, William Smith in England, who was a canal surveyor, noticed that he could map out great tracts of rocks on the basis of their contained fossils. The sequences he saw in one part of the country could be correlated (matched) precisely with the sequences in another. He, and others at the time, had discovered the first principles of stratigraphy — that older rocks lie below younger rocks and that fossils occur in a particular, predictable order.
Stratigraphy, the study of rock layers, led to paleontology, the study of fossils.•Then, geologists began to build up the stratigraphic column, the familiar listing of divisions of geological time — Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and so on. Each time unit was characterized by particular fossils. The scheme worked all round the world, without fail.

•From the 1830s onwards, geologists noted how fossils became more complex through time. The oldest rocks contained no fossils, then came simple sea creatures, then more complex ones like fishes, then came life on land, then reptiles, then mammals, and finally humans. Clearly, there was some kind of ‘progress’ going on.

•All became clear, of course, in 1859 when Charles Darwin published his “On the origin of species”. The ‘progress’ shown by the fossils was a documentation of the grand pattern of evolution through long spans of time.

Accuracy of the fossils
Fossils prove that humans did not exist alongside dinosaurs.Since 1859, paleontologists, or fossil experts, have searched the world for fossils. In the past 150 years they have not found any fossils that Darwin would not have expected. New discoveries have filled in the gaps, and shown us in unimaginable detail the shape of the great ‘tree of life’. Darwin and his contemporaries could never have imagined the improvements in resolution of stratigraphy that have come since 1859, nor guessed what fossils were to be found in the southern continents, nor predicted the huge increase in the number of amateur and professional paleontologists worldwide. All these labors have not led to a single unexpected finding such as a human fossil from the time of the dinosaurs, or a Jurassic dinosaur in the same rocks as Silurian trilobites.

Scientists now use phylogeny, mathematics, and other computations to date fossils.Paleontologists now apply sophisticated mathematical techniques to assess the relative quality of particular fossil successions, as well as the entire fossil record. These demonstrate that, of course, we do not know everything (and clearly never will), but we know enough. Today, innovative techniques provide further confirmation and understanding of the history of life. Biologists actually have at their disposal several independent ways of looking at the history of life - not only from the order of fossils in the rocks, but also through phylogenetic trees.

•Phylogenetic trees are the family trees of particular groups of plants or animals, showing how all the species relate to each other.

•Phylogenetic trees are drawn up mathematically, using lists of morphological (external form) or molecular (gene sequence) characters.

•Modern phylogenetic trees have no input from stratigraphy, so they can be used in a broad way to make comparisons between tree shape and stratigraphy.

•The majority of test cases show good agreement, so the fossil record tells the same story as the molecules enclosed in living organisms.

Accuracy of dating
Dating in geology may be relative or absolute. Relative dating is done by observing fossils, as described above, and recording which fossil is younger, which is older. The discovery of means for absolute dating in the early 1900s was a huge advance. The methods are all based on radioactive decay:

Fossils may be dated by calculating the rate of decay of certain elements.•Certain naturally occurring elements are radioactive, and they decay, or break down, at predictable rates.
•Chemists measure the half-life of such elements, i.e., the time it takes for half of the radioactive parent element to break down to the stable daughter element. Sometimes, one isotope, or naturally occurring form, of an element decays into another, more stable form of the same element.
•By comparing the proportions of parent to daughter element in a rock sample, and knowing the half-life, the age can be calculated.
Older fossils cannot be dated by carbon-14 methods and require radiometric dating.Scientists can use different chemicals for absolute dating:

•The best-known absolute dating technique is carbon-14 dating, which archaeologists prefer to use. However, the half-life of carbon-14 is only 5730 years, so the method cannot be used for materials older than about 70,000 years.
•Radiometric dating involves the use of isotope series, such as rubidium/strontium, thorium/lead, potassium/argon, argon/argon, or uranium/lead, all of which have very long half-lives, ranging from 0.7 to 48.6 billion years. Subtle differences in the relative proportions of the two isotopes can give good dates for rocks of any age.
Scientists can check their accuracy by using different isotopes.The first radiometric dates, generated about 1920, showed that the Earth was hundreds of millions, or billions, of years old. Since then, geologists have made many tens of thousands of radiometric age determinations, and they have refined the earlier estimates. A key point is that it is no longer necessary simply to accept one chemical determination of a rock’s age. Age estimates can be cross-tested by using different isotope pairs. Results from different techniques, often measured in rival labs, continually confirm each other.

There is only a 1% chance of error with current dating technology.Every few years, new geologic time scales are published, providing the latest dates for major time lines. Older dates may change by a few million years up and down, but younger dates are stable. For example, it has been known since the 1960s that the famous Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, the line marking the end of the dinosaurs, was 65 million years old. Repeated recalibrations and retests, using ever more sophisticated techniques and equipment, cannot shift that date. It is accurate to within a few thousand years. With modern, extremely precise, methods, error bars are often only 1% or so.

Conclusion: The strict rules of the scientific method ensure the accuracy of fossil dating.Conclusion
The fossil record is fundamental to an understanding of evolution. Fossils document the order of appearance of groups and they tell us about some of the amazing plants and animals that died out long ago. Fossils can also show us how major crises, such as mass extinctions, happened, and how life recovered after them. If the fossils, or the dating of the fossils, could be shown to be inaccurate, all such information would have to be rejected as unsafe. Geologists and paleontologists are highly self-critical, and they have worried for decades about these issues. Repeated, and tough, regimes of testing have confirmed the broad accuracy of the fossils and their dating, so we can read the history of life from the rocks with confidence.

© 2001, American Institute of Biological Sciences. Educators have permission to reprint articles for classroom use; other users, please contact [email protected] for reprint permission. See reprint policy.

Michael Benton, Ph.D., is a vertebrate paleontologist with particular interests in dinosaur origins and fossil history. Currently, he is studying certain basal dinosaurs from the Late Triassic and the quality of different segments of the fossil record. He holds the Chair in Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Bristol, UK, in addition to chairing the Masters program in paleobiology at the university. He has written some 30 books on dinosaurs and paleobiology, ranging from professional tomes to popular kids’ books.
People: Earth Sciences: University of Bristol

Actionbioscience | Accuracy of Fossils and Dating Methods

 

[daws101]

The only requirement is faith.

Dating methods have been proven to be flawed. Not a dodge but simply the truth.

Using your logic that the dating methods are correct 50 percent of the time, then how can you be certain which result is correct and which result isn't? Flip a coin? It'd be about the same odds.

Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact.

Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy.

and using your "logic" you missed the "IF" the fact is dating methods are far more accurate then 50% more like 97or 98 % percent depending on the method,unlike the claims in the bible that are not supported by evidence,the following claims are erroneous in the extreme : "Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact." L.S

Bible Science Debunked



A Brief Introduction To Biblical Cosmology

It is not uncommon for biblical apologists to make the claim that the Bible miraculously revealed advanced scientific principles long before they were discovered by modern science. If true, this would lend credibility to the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired (or that the Bible authors were incredibly astute). But can these claims really be substantiated through an objective analysis of the biblical citations that are presented to support this premise? In order to find out, I searched the Internet for Christian apologetic websites that tout the Bible as a source of revelatory scientific insight and settled on one developed by a Mr. David Pyles entitled, �Scientific Facts and Accuracy in the Bible.� I chose Mr. Pyles� website because it contained more citations than most and included claims that routinely appear on other such websites.

Before examining Mr. Pyles� claims for the Bible�s amazing scientific accuracy, it is helpful to first set the stage by providing an overview of the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary,

�The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round [disk], covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen. 1:6,7; cf. Psalms 24:2; 148:4, Deut. 5:8). The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it were opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20; Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33; Isa. 14:9,15)."

Yes, those Bronze Age science wizards whose creation folktales were collected in the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was covered by a solid dome. The Hebrew word translated as firmament in Genesis is "raqiya." Strong's Lexicon (searchable at the Blue Letter Bible website) translates the word as "extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament." In keeping with the notion of solidity, the dome was thought to be impervious to water, i.e., it separated the waters above it from the waters below, to contain windows that regulated precipitation, to serve as a surface across which the sun, moon, and stars traveled, and to serve as a sub-floor for the mythical reservoirs of snow and hail (Job 38:22).

The concept of a solid dome in the sky is also exemplified by Job 37:18 which describes God as spreading out the heavens and making them "as strong as a cast metal mirror." (NKJV) In Isa. 40:22, the heavens are likened to the fabric of a curtain or tent. And in a footnote to "raqiya," Strong's Lexicon states, "...considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting "waters above."

A depiction of this archaic concept of a dome-covered universe and further discussion on the subject can found here.

Incidentally, the sky is not blue because a make-believe firmament partially transmits the color of �chaotic waters� confined above it. It is blue because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.



Examining the Claims



In consideration of the foregoing, it is difficult to identify anything that might come close to qualifying as cutting-edge science. Truth be told, the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe is manifestly unscientific and something that any Typical Scientifically-Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herder (TSIBAGH) might be expected to have dreamed up. Be that as it may, in what follows, let�s see how Mr. Pyles� claims stand up to scrutiny. (It appears Mr. Pyles has used the KJV Bible for most of his biblical citations. I have done likewise, unless otherwise specified.)

Claim 1.

Genesis 1:1,3 (written 3,450 years ago): "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power and motion. "In the beginning (time) God created (power) the Heaven (space) and the earth (matter) . . . And the Spirit of God moved (motion) upon the face of the waters."

My Response:

Genesis gets off to a rather dubious start in the science department because it violates one of the principal tenets of the scientific method, i.e., it invokes supernatural causation. Science deals exclusively with natural causes and effects. (See here.) God, a supernatural entity, cannot be invoked as a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe (or anything else for that matter). Scientific theories dealing with the origin of the universe do not include reference to any creator gods because to do so would render them utterly unscientific.

According to an earlier understanding of �Big Bang� theory of the origin of the universe (based on general relativity factors), time started when matter/energy originated and was set in motion through space. The thinking was that the process began with a so-called singularity in which matter/energy was compressed to an incredibly high density (similar to the condition that is thought to exist at the center of black holes). Now, taking into account additional factors relating to quantum mechanics, it is the consensus of cosmologists that there was no singularity at the start of the Big Bang. This means that time did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang and that the universe could extend back in time with no limit, i.e., it may have existed in one form or another forever. In other words, and in contradiction to Genesis, there may well not have been a beginning of the universe for anyone or any thing to cause. The Genesis creation story provides none of this insight and consists of nothing that a TSIBAGH could not have dreamed up. More to the point, it is precisely the type of mythical folktale a TSIBAGH would be expected to dream up.

Although Genesis 1:1-3 makes general statements about what God supposedly did, it provides no information regarding how He did it. Scientific explanations include information not only about what happened, but also about how (using only naturalistic mechanisms) it happened. Not only does Genesis get virtually everything wrong, it also leaves out far too many details to qualify as a source of useful scientific information on the origin of the universe.

Arbitrarily assigning scientific meanings to words in ancient documents does not automatically lend any scientific credibility to the stories they tell. One can play the same word game with a number of ancient creation stories. Consider the following from a part of a Chinese creation story:

In the beginning (time), the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might (power) to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up (motion) and formed the heavens (space), the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth (matter).

I have inserted the words "time," "power," "motion," "space," and "matter" using the same logic (or lack thereof) that Mr. Pyles used in his example above. Does this lend any scientific credibility to the creation story of Pan Gu? I don�t think so. Neither do I think it does so when Mr. Pyles uses the same specious approach with the Bible.

Bible Science Debunked


"Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy L.S."


How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?By Austin Cline, About.com GuideJuly 30, 2009

Quite a few Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in every detail - not a single error or contradiction can be found in the text. Other Christians believe that many allegedly historical passages are only metaphorical and that the authors, being fallible, made mistakes from time to time. Which end of this spectrum do you think is most reasonable and, more importantly, why? What sorts of evidence or reasoning can be presented to more literalist Christians to explain why the Bible is not a perfect historical record?

It's obvious that some parts of the Bible were only ever intended to be metaphorical or allegorical stories — the Bible is, after all, a collection of texts written over a long period of time and they represent many different genres of writing. Even those intended to relate actual events, though, were not written from the perspective of purely factual, objective history because that genre didn't exist at the time — for most of history, writing "history" meant pursuing a political, ideological, or religious agenda at the same time.

Even if we ignore that, however, distinguishing between the portions that are allegories or metaphors and the portions which are meant to be historical isn't always easy. Sometimes there are markers, but so often religious believers insist that some stories are allegories even though no such markers are present — apparently, anything that obviously couldn't be true must have been intended to be allegory all along while anything that might be true must be true. Where doe such an attitude come from and why is it only applied to one's own religion?

.Weekly Poll: How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?

One more thing ..why is it when searching those statements do you only find conformation on Christian bias sites?
you would think that if those fables were fact you find them on actual historical and scientific sites not pseudoscience or pseudohistoric ones?

I ain't got time to read all that. If you can't make a point in a coupe of paragraphs then I feel sorry for you.

translation: I'm illiterate and the concept that the facts may take more than a couple of paragraphs is too much for me....even my bible has pictures.

 

[pjnlsn]

It's hard to find a specific post to quote, but as to evolution, the core of the idea is very simple. And is just to note that there are these fossils that we have, and that there is global change over time. The rest is as to try and reason out how it happened.

 

[UltimateReality]

and using your "logic" you missed the "IF" the fact is dating methods are far more accurate then 50% more like 97or 98 % percent depending on the method,unlike the claims in the bible that are not supported by evidence,the following claims are erroneous in the extreme : "Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact." L.S

Bible Science Debunked



A Brief Introduction To Biblical Cosmology

It is not uncommon for biblical apologists to make the claim that the Bible miraculously revealed advanced scientific principles long before they were discovered by modern science. If true, this would lend credibility to the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired (or that the Bible authors were incredibly astute). But can these claims really be substantiated through an objective analysis of the biblical citations that are presented to support this premise? In order to find out, I searched the Internet for Christian apologetic websites that tout the Bible as a source of revelatory scientific insight and settled on one developed by a Mr. David Pyles entitled, �Scientific Facts and Accuracy in the Bible.� I chose Mr. Pyles� website because it contained more citations than most and included claims that routinely appear on other such websites.

Before examining Mr. Pyles� claims for the Bible�s amazing scientific accuracy, it is helpful to first set the stage by providing an overview of the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary,

�The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round [disk], covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen. 1:6,7; cf. Psalms 24:2; 148:4, Deut. 5:8). The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it were opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20; Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33; Isa. 14:9,15)."

Yes, those Bronze Age science wizards whose creation folktales were collected in the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was covered by a solid dome. The Hebrew word translated as firmament in Genesis is "raqiya." Strong's Lexicon (searchable at the Blue Letter Bible website) translates the word as "extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament." In keeping with the notion of solidity, the dome was thought to be impervious to water, i.e., it separated the waters above it from the waters below, to contain windows that regulated precipitation, to serve as a surface across which the sun, moon, and stars traveled, and to serve as a sub-floor for the mythical reservoirs of snow and hail (Job 38:22).

The concept of a solid dome in the sky is also exemplified by Job 37:18 which describes God as spreading out the heavens and making them "as strong as a cast metal mirror." (NKJV) In Isa. 40:22, the heavens are likened to the fabric of a curtain or tent. And in a footnote to "raqiya," Strong's Lexicon states, "...considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting "waters above."

A depiction of this archaic concept of a dome-covered universe and further discussion on the subject can found here.

Incidentally, the sky is not blue because a make-believe firmament partially transmits the color of �chaotic waters� confined above it. It is blue because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.



Examining the Claims



In consideration of the foregoing, it is difficult to identify anything that might come close to qualifying as cutting-edge science. Truth be told, the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe is manifestly unscientific and something that any Typical Scientifically-Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herder (TSIBAGH) might be expected to have dreamed up. Be that as it may, in what follows, let�s see how Mr. Pyles� claims stand up to scrutiny. (It appears Mr. Pyles has used the KJV Bible for most of his biblical citations. I have done likewise, unless otherwise specified.)

Claim 1.

Genesis 1:1,3 (written 3,450 years ago): "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power and motion. "In the beginning (time) God created (power) the Heaven (space) and the earth (matter) . . . And the Spirit of God moved (motion) upon the face of the waters."

My Response:

Genesis gets off to a rather dubious start in the science department because it violates one of the principal tenets of the scientific method, i.e., it invokes supernatural causation. Science deals exclusively with natural causes and effects. (See here.) God, a supernatural entity, cannot be invoked as a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe (or anything else for that matter). Scientific theories dealing with the origin of the universe do not include reference to any creator gods because to do so would render them utterly unscientific.

According to an earlier understanding of �Big Bang� theory of the origin of the universe (based on general relativity factors), time started when matter/energy originated and was set in motion through space. The thinking was that the process began with a so-called singularity in which matter/energy was compressed to an incredibly high density (similar to the condition that is thought to exist at the center of black holes). Now, taking into account additional factors relating to quantum mechanics, it is the consensus of cosmologists that there was no singularity at the start of the Big Bang. This means that time did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang and that the universe could extend back in time with no limit, i.e., it may have existed in one form or another forever. In other words, and in contradiction to Genesis, there may well not have been a beginning of the universe for anyone or any thing to cause. The Genesis creation story provides none of this insight and consists of nothing that a TSIBAGH could not have dreamed up. More to the point, it is precisely the type of mythical folktale a TSIBAGH would be expected to dream up.

Although Genesis 1:1-3 makes general statements about what God supposedly did, it provides no information regarding how He did it. Scientific explanations include information not only about what happened, but also about how (using only naturalistic mechanisms) it happened. Not only does Genesis get virtually everything wrong, it also leaves out far too many details to qualify as a source of useful scientific information on the origin of the universe.

Arbitrarily assigning scientific meanings to words in ancient documents does not automatically lend any scientific credibility to the stories they tell. One can play the same word game with a number of ancient creation stories. Consider the following from a part of a Chinese creation story:

In the beginning (time), the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might (power) to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up (motion) and formed the heavens (space), the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth (matter).

I have inserted the words "time," "power," "motion," "space," and "matter" using the same logic (or lack thereof) that Mr. Pyles used in his example above. Does this lend any scientific credibility to the creation story of Pan Gu? I don�t think so. Neither do I think it does so when Mr. Pyles uses the same specious approach with the Bible.

Bible Science Debunked


"Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy L.S."


How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?By Austin Cline, About.com GuideJuly 30, 2009

Quite a few Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in every detail - not a single error or contradiction can be found in the text. Other Christians believe that many allegedly historical passages are only metaphorical and that the authors, being fallible, made mistakes from time to time. Which end of this spectrum do you think is most reasonable and, more importantly, why? What sorts of evidence or reasoning can be presented to more literalist Christians to explain why the Bible is not a perfect historical record?

It's obvious that some parts of the Bible were only ever intended to be metaphorical or allegorical stories — the Bible is, after all, a collection of texts written over a long period of time and they represent many different genres of writing. Even those intended to relate actual events, though, were not written from the perspective of purely factual, objective history because that genre didn't exist at the time — for most of history, writing "history" meant pursuing a political, ideological, or religious agenda at the same time.

Even if we ignore that, however, distinguishing between the portions that are allegories or metaphors and the portions which are meant to be historical isn't always easy. Sometimes there are markers, but so often religious believers insist that some stories are allegories even though no such markers are present — apparently, anything that obviously couldn't be true must have been intended to be allegory all along while anything that might be true must be true. Where doe such an attitude come from and why is it only applied to one's own religion?

.Weekly Poll: How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?

One more thing ..why is it when searching those statements do you only find conformation on Christian bias sites?
you would think that if those fables were fact you find them on actual historical and scientific sites not pseudoscience or pseudohistoric ones?

I ain't got time to read all that. If you can't make a point in a coupe of paragraphs then I feel sorry for you.

translation: I'm illiterate and the concept that the facts may take more than a couple of paragraphs is too much for me....even my bible has pictures.

I don't read your super long irrelevant posts either. You've already proven you are totally clueless so why would I waste precious moments of my life reading more of your endless vitriol???

 

[UltimateReality]

"Saying something doesn't make it so. Darwinists have a bad habit of saying this or that wonder "evolved" with no sense of obligation to say how it evolved. Tracking down the individual lucky accidents that led to a complex adaptation (behavior included) is too hard, so here's what they do: assume evolution, then just assert that the trait evolved, because evolution is already assumed to be a fact."

"It may well be that flying fish gained their adaptations from fish that did not have them. It would seem improbable, but not impossible, to imagine the fins growing longer as certain fish leaped above the water to avoid predators. Perhaps this kind of adaptability is itself a product of design. But with no fossil record of the transition, we need a lot more than a Darwinian evolutionist's word for it that a blind, purposeless process produced a functional adaptation.

Instead, we are told that these fish "evolved so that they could escape predators by 'gliding' over-water to safety." No transitional forms are needed; no accounting of mutations is required. The magic occurs in a black box the audience can't see, and presto! -- a fully functioning flying fish leaps above the water, complete with brain software to know how to use its new equipment.

If we demanded that evolutionists drop all teleological language to be consistent with their anti-teleological worldview, evolution would be a very boring act. If we insisted on looking into the black box to see how the trick was done, there would be a loud hissing sound as the hot air escapes. What would be left, if anything, would undoubtedly be a finely tuned, designed mechanism for producing adaptive change. That's not natural selection; that's intelligent design."

 

[Hollie]

"Saying something doesn't make it so. Darwinists have a bad habit of saying this or that wonder "evolved" with no sense of obligation to say how it evolved. Tracking down the individual lucky accidents that led to a complex adaptation (behavior included) is too hard, so here's what they do: assume evolution, then just assert that the trait evolved, because evolution is already assumed to be a fact."

"It may well be that flying fish gained their adaptations from fish that did not have them. It would seem improbable, but not impossible, to imagine the fins growing longer as certain fish leaped above the water to avoid predators. Perhaps this kind of adaptability is itself a product of design. But with no fossil record of the transition, we need a lot more than a Darwinian evolutionist's word for it that a blind, purposeless process produced a functional adaptation.

Instead, we are told that these fish "evolved so that they could escape predators by 'gliding' over-water to safety." No transitional forms are needed; no accounting of mutations is required. The magic occurs in a black box the audience can't see, and presto! -- a fully functioning flying fish leaps above the water, complete with brain software to know how to use its new equipment.

If we demanded that evolutionists drop all teleological language to be consistent with their anti-teleological worldview, evolution would be a very boring act. If we insisted on looking into the black box to see how the trick was done, there would be a loud hissing sound as the hot air escapes. What would be left, if anything, would undoubtedly be a finely tuned, designed mechanism for producing adaptive change. That's not natural selection; that's intelligent design."

What silly creationist cut and paste.

 

[ima]

There is no god.

Prove it.

I was returning one red herring for another.

I would never actually make the claim "there is no god" because it is nearly impossible to prove a negative existential claim.

I can however, prove that the christian god does not exist, because it is logically incongruous. As defined, the judeo-christian god is said to be perfect, yet this being needs or wants a relationship? A perfect being wouldn't need anything. It would never be jealous, as the bible often indicates. Also, omniscience and omnipotence are also logically incongruous. If you know every action you are going to take in the future, you are powerless to change them.

You could add that the creator, if real, had to have been created himself.

 

[Lonestar_logic]

and using your "logic" you missed the "IF" the fact is dating methods are far more accurate then 50% more like 97or 98 % percent depending on the method,unlike the claims in the bible that are not supported by evidence,the following claims are erroneous in the extreme : "Actually there are statements in the Bible which are consistent with scientific fact." L.S

Bible Science Debunked



A Brief Introduction To Biblical Cosmology

It is not uncommon for biblical apologists to make the claim that the Bible miraculously revealed advanced scientific principles long before they were discovered by modern science. If true, this would lend credibility to the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired (or that the Bible authors were incredibly astute). But can these claims really be substantiated through an objective analysis of the biblical citations that are presented to support this premise? In order to find out, I searched the Internet for Christian apologetic websites that tout the Bible as a source of revelatory scientific insight and settled on one developed by a Mr. David Pyles entitled, �Scientific Facts and Accuracy in the Bible.� I chose Mr. Pyles� website because it contained more citations than most and included claims that routinely appear on other such websites.

Before examining Mr. Pyles� claims for the Bible�s amazing scientific accuracy, it is helpful to first set the stage by providing an overview of the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary,

�The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round [disk], covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). The blue color of the sky was attributed to the chaotic waters that the firmament separated from the earth (Gen. 1:7). The earth was thus surrounded by waters above and below (Gen. 1:6,7; cf. Psalms 24:2; 148:4, Deut. 5:8). The firmament was thought to be substantial; it had pillars (Job 26:11) and foundations (2 Sam. 22:8). When the windows of it were opened, rain fell (Gen. 7:11-12; 8:2). The sun, moon, and stars moved across or were fixed in the firmament (Gen. 1:14-19; Ps. 19:4,6). It was also the abode of the birds (Gen. 1:20; Deut. 4:17). Within the earth lay Sheol, the realm of the dead (Num. 16:30-33; Isa. 14:9,15)."

Yes, those Bronze Age science wizards whose creation folktales were collected in the Old Testament really did believe that the earth was covered by a solid dome. The Hebrew word translated as firmament in Genesis is "raqiya." Strong's Lexicon (searchable at the Blue Letter Bible website) translates the word as "extended surface (solid), expanse, firmament." In keeping with the notion of solidity, the dome was thought to be impervious to water, i.e., it separated the waters above it from the waters below, to contain windows that regulated precipitation, to serve as a surface across which the sun, moon, and stars traveled, and to serve as a sub-floor for the mythical reservoirs of snow and hail (Job 38:22).

The concept of a solid dome in the sky is also exemplified by Job 37:18 which describes God as spreading out the heavens and making them "as strong as a cast metal mirror." (NKJV) In Isa. 40:22, the heavens are likened to the fabric of a curtain or tent. And in a footnote to "raqiya," Strong's Lexicon states, "...considered by Hebrews as solid and supporting "waters above."

A depiction of this archaic concept of a dome-covered universe and further discussion on the subject can found here.

Incidentally, the sky is not blue because a make-believe firmament partially transmits the color of �chaotic waters� confined above it. It is blue because of a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering.



Examining the Claims



In consideration of the foregoing, it is difficult to identify anything that might come close to qualifying as cutting-edge science. Truth be told, the ancient Hebrew concept of the universe is manifestly unscientific and something that any Typical Scientifically-Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herder (TSIBAGH) might be expected to have dreamed up. Be that as it may, in what follows, let�s see how Mr. Pyles� claims stand up to scrutiny. (It appears Mr. Pyles has used the KJV Bible for most of his biblical citations. I have done likewise, unless otherwise specified.)

Claim 1.

Genesis 1:1,3 (written 3,450 years ago): "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the earth . . . And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Science expresses the universe in five terms: time, space, matter, power and motion. "In the beginning (time) God created (power) the Heaven (space) and the earth (matter) . . . And the Spirit of God moved (motion) upon the face of the waters."

My Response:

Genesis gets off to a rather dubious start in the science department because it violates one of the principal tenets of the scientific method, i.e., it invokes supernatural causation. Science deals exclusively with natural causes and effects. (See here.) God, a supernatural entity, cannot be invoked as a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe (or anything else for that matter). Scientific theories dealing with the origin of the universe do not include reference to any creator gods because to do so would render them utterly unscientific.

According to an earlier understanding of �Big Bang� theory of the origin of the universe (based on general relativity factors), time started when matter/energy originated and was set in motion through space. The thinking was that the process began with a so-called singularity in which matter/energy was compressed to an incredibly high density (similar to the condition that is thought to exist at the center of black holes). Now, taking into account additional factors relating to quantum mechanics, it is the consensus of cosmologists that there was no singularity at the start of the Big Bang. This means that time did not necessarily begin with the Big Bang and that the universe could extend back in time with no limit, i.e., it may have existed in one form or another forever. In other words, and in contradiction to Genesis, there may well not have been a beginning of the universe for anyone or any thing to cause. The Genesis creation story provides none of this insight and consists of nothing that a TSIBAGH could not have dreamed up. More to the point, it is precisely the type of mythical folktale a TSIBAGH would be expected to dream up.

Although Genesis 1:1-3 makes general statements about what God supposedly did, it provides no information regarding how He did it. Scientific explanations include information not only about what happened, but also about how (using only naturalistic mechanisms) it happened. Not only does Genesis get virtually everything wrong, it also leaves out far too many details to qualify as a source of useful scientific information on the origin of the universe.

Arbitrarily assigning scientific meanings to words in ancient documents does not automatically lend any scientific credibility to the stories they tell. One can play the same word game with a number of ancient creation stories. Consider the following from a part of a Chinese creation story:

In the beginning (time), the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might (power) to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up (motion) and formed the heavens (space), the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth (matter).

I have inserted the words "time," "power," "motion," "space," and "matter" using the same logic (or lack thereof) that Mr. Pyles used in his example above. Does this lend any scientific credibility to the creation story of Pan Gu? I don�t think so. Neither do I think it does so when Mr. Pyles uses the same specious approach with the Bible.

Bible Science Debunked


"Archaeologist continue to find evidence that supports the Bible's historic accuracy L.S."


How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?By Austin Cline, About.com GuideJuly 30, 2009

Quite a few Christians believe that the Bible is 100% accurate in every detail - not a single error or contradiction can be found in the text. Other Christians believe that many allegedly historical passages are only metaphorical and that the authors, being fallible, made mistakes from time to time. Which end of this spectrum do you think is most reasonable and, more importantly, why? What sorts of evidence or reasoning can be presented to more literalist Christians to explain why the Bible is not a perfect historical record?

It's obvious that some parts of the Bible were only ever intended to be metaphorical or allegorical stories — the Bible is, after all, a collection of texts written over a long period of time and they represent many different genres of writing. Even those intended to relate actual events, though, were not written from the perspective of purely factual, objective history because that genre didn't exist at the time — for most of history, writing "history" meant pursuing a political, ideological, or religious agenda at the same time.

Even if we ignore that, however, distinguishing between the portions that are allegories or metaphors and the portions which are meant to be historical isn't always easy. Sometimes there are markers, but so often religious believers insist that some stories are allegories even though no such markers are present — apparently, anything that obviously couldn't be true must have been intended to be allegory all along while anything that might be true must be true. Where doe such an attitude come from and why is it only applied to one's own religion?

.Weekly Poll: How Historically Accurate Is The Bible?

One more thing ..why is it when searching those statements do you only find conformation on Christian bias sites?
you would think that if those fables were fact you find them on actual historical and scientific sites not pseudoscience or pseudohistoric ones?

I ain't got time to read all that. If you can't make a point in a coupe of paragraphs then I feel sorry for you.

translation: I'm illiterate and the concept that the facts may take more than a couple of paragraphs is too much for me....even my bible has pictures.

Reality: I have a job and don't have the time to read of bunch of nonsense.

FTR.... There are no pictures in my Bible.