Creation of Universe according to Bible & Quran

Tiberius said:

BTW, I've yet to see any passage in the Bible that specifically mentions germs or microbes. All I've seen is it saying, "Wash you hands" etc. The fact that people know that washing hands reduces sickness does not mean they know WHY it reduces sickness. All it does is show that they figured out that washing hands reduces sickness for some reason.

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Right, it does not mention germs, God gave Moses specific commandments that if the Hebrews followed they would be spared the disease and death of their neighboring enemies. They did not know why, just like we don't always know why, they just knew they were to obey the Lord. Even the soldiers were commanded to carry a shovel and bury their waste outside the camp, something their enemies had not learned, and we know that many battles/wars were lost due to diesease thru history.

http://www.creationists.org/foreknowledge.html go here, it contains many scientific and medical statements from the Bible, so I don't have to type them all.

Here is a little article if you don't mind.

FOREKNOWLEDGE OF MEDICAL SCIENCE
IN THE BIBLE
During the middle ages, garbage and sewage were thrown into the streets of Europe. This practice bred flies, rats and disease. Typhoid, cholera, leprosy, and bubonic plague killed millions. Science had no solution. In the ghettos where the Jews lived, this was not the case. Why? Because the Jews were practicing the laws of sanitation that were given in the Bible. Not until finally, the church led in introducing the practice of quarantine from the Bible, and cities turned to sewage disposal as taught in the Bible, were these diseases brought under control.

In the 1840's Ignaz Semmelweis caused an international stir. He required the doctors under him to wash their hands before they examined another patient in the hospital. This practice reduced the spread of child bed fever. However, these doctors had him fired and forced out of Vienna.1 Today, such methods of sanitation are rigidly enforced in hospitals all over the world. Did you know that the Bible commanded such sanitation more than 3,400 years before Ignaz Semmelweis? Yes, the Bible was way ahead of human science. How could this have been?

Washing

Let us now look at some of the laws given in the Bible. When a person had gotten well, the Bible commanded:
"The one to be cleansed shall then wash his clothes and shave off all his hair, and bathe in water and be clean. Now afterward, he may enter the camp, but he shall stay outside his tent for seven days. "And it will be on the seventh day that he shall shave off all his hair: he shall shave his head and his beard and his eyebrows, even all his hair. He shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in water and be clean. Leviticus 14:8, 9.

These are the same practices that are used today by medical science. However, do you understand that the Bible commanded this long before medical science started to do the same thing? The Bible was 3,400 years ahead of medical science in practices of sanitation.

Did Moses get these laws from the science of Egypt? No, impossible. The Egyptians at that time used dung for medicine.2 Science did not know about bacteria until the work of Leeuwenhoek, which was 3,100 years after the Law was given to Moses. How do you account for this? Is it possible that God gave the Law to Moses, as the Bible claims? This appears to be the only logical conclusion.

No Tricinosis

Many people suffered from fever, headache, diarrhea, and sore muscles. Not so long ago, science learned that this was caused by worms living in the muscles. These worms come from eating pork, the meat of swine, that is not cooked enough. This is called tricinosis. Now consider this. The Bible, in the Law of God to Israel, had forbidden the eating of swine more than 3,400 years ago. We shall read again from the Bible:
. . . and the pig, for though it divides the hoof, thus making a split hoof, it does not chew cud, it is unclean to you. You shall not eat of their flesh nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you. Leviticus 11:7, 8. (See also Deuteronomy 14:8.)

As long as the people of Israel obeyed the Law, they were free from trichinosis. Where did Moses get this knowledge of parasitology? Certainly, it was not from the science of his day.He must have gotten the Law from God. Do you believe in God? You need to.

Fat

Just in recent years, science has discovered that it is bad for the circulatory (blood) system to eat animal fat. The fat plugs up the arteries. This is just a recent discovery. Now listen again to what the Bible commanded the people of Israel in the Law:

It is a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwellings: you shall not eat any fat or any blood. Leviticus 3:17.

"Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, `You shall not eat any fat from an ox, a sheep, or a goat. `Also the fat of an animal which dies, and the fat of an animal torn by beasts, may be put to any other use, but you must certainly not eat it. Leviticus 7:23,24.

Again we find that the Bible was 3,400 years ahead of science. This shows scientific foreknowledge on the part of the author of the Bible. No mere human could have known what this shows in this law. Moses claims that these laws came from God who created all things. These laws must have come from God.

We have seen three cases of scientific foreknowledge in the Bible so far, concerning medical science. The Bible even commanded sewage disposal in Deuteronomy 23:12-14.

Quarantine

Now we shall look at another case of scientific foreknowledge in the Bible. During the 1800's, science discovered that germs caused disease. The science of bacteriology is rather young. With this understanding of the spread of disease, quarantine is used to stop the spread of disease. However, the Bible commanded quarantine about 3,300 years before the science of bacteriology. We read in the Law of Israel:
. . . then the priest shall isolate the person with the scaly infection for seven days. Leviticus 13:26, 31.

You can see that the Bible is the Word of God. You have the evidence. If you are objective, scientific, you will conclude that Moses got his information from a source higher than man, from a Scientist that knew more than human scientists. This Scientist, the Bible calls God. He knows science because he created science. He created the human body. He also created your spirit. Will you put your faith in Him?
Germaine Lockwood

I've scanned and read portions of this thread and as a Baha'i wanted to contrinute our perspective on some of these issues.... Just generally we Baha'is would see little contradiction though between the Bible and the Qur'an but we see the scriptures as more of a spiritual allegory than as a word for word literal account.

Secondly we believe that science and religion should agree and if the universe is found to be billions of years old based on scientific evidence we accept... We believe the earth is also very ancient as is man's life on this planet... We also accept evolution generally within the species but would question the idea of "missing links" as say traditional Darwinists would believe. Mankind we believe has evolved through many forms on this earth.

- Art

arthra said:

Just generally we Baha'is would see little contradiction though between the Bible and the Qur'an but we see the scriptures as more of a spiritual allegory than as a word for word literal account.

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you really surprised me when you mentioned that in Baha'i faith you accept both Quran and the Bible ignoring the contradictions between them.

Don't put yourself in the middle or you will lost the way because when a christian asks you about somthing so you gonna agree with him and when a muslim do so again about the same thing, you gonna agree about somthing which may contradict with the opnion you accepted to agree about in the first place with the christian one.

You believe in them only "spiritually" neglecting the facts and scince in both scriptures and also neglecting the title of the thread which is the Creation of Universe but not "the Spiritually of the Universe".

Secondly we believe that science and religion should agree

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What if the scince contradict with the scriptures? What would you do in this case?

Would you believe scince and facts in this life or the "spiritual scriptures" (i.e. Quran, Bible) which you believe about it in the Baha'i faith as "spiritual allegory "?

By the way, do you think the creation in the universe in the Quran and the bible are just a spiritual allegory too?

Thanks ..

Joe said:

Science did not know about bacteria until the work of Leeuwenhoek, which was 3,100 years after the Law was given to Moses.

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And the bible passage that shows Moses knew about bacteria is?

Where did Moses get this knowledge of parasitology?

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And the Bible passage that shows Moses knew about parasites is?

Do not think that just because they figured out that washing hands etc stops sickness that they actually knew WHY it stops sickness. it is perfectly plausible for a person several thousand years ago to know that washing his hands and cooking his food will reduce the chances of him getting sick even though he's got no idea WHY it stops him getting sick.

And the thing is....

This person, if he is writing this information down, will write down, "You should wash your hands, and you should stay away from sick people", and yet he will never write down WHY washing your hands works, and he will never say WHY staying away from sick people works. And this is exactly what we see in the Bible. Why is it that there are no pasages in the Bible that say that there are tiny organisms that can cause sickness? because the people did not know. they were not told this by God, they learnt from their own experience that cooking food and washing hands and staying away from sick people reduced their own chances of getting sick. They didn't understand the CAUSE of sickness, they merely learnt ways to AVOID it without understanding why those ways worked.

You also said, regarding this:

God gave Moses specific commandments that if the Hebrews followed they would be spared the disease and death of their neighboring enemies. They did not know why, just like we don't always know why, they just knew they were to obey the Lord.

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Why would God want to keep the knowledge of germs from them? We routinely tell little kids about germs and why they should wash their hands, yet this information is nowhere in the Bible. Surely if a three year old can undestand it, Moses should be able to.

Just in recent years, science has discovered that it is bad for the circulatory (blood) system to eat animal fat.

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And this is based on the assumption that all fat is always bad no matter what. An unfortunate misconception. Fat is actually a very important part of the diet, and any God which forbade the consumption of fat would seem to be unaware that people needed fat.

From the Wiki article on "fat":

Wiki article on Fat said:

This category of molecules is important for many forms of life, serving both structural and metabolic functions. They are an important part of the diet of most heterotrophs (including humans).

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Reading the article will show that a diet free from fat is actually quite bad.

The Truth wrote:
you really surprised me when you mentioned that in Baha'i faith you accept both Quran and the Bible ignoring the contradictions between them.

My reply:

Baha'is accept that there is very little difference between the Qur'an and the Bible.. both are Holy Scriptures with a Common Source... I didn't mention anything "about ignoring contradictions"! The Qur'an indicates it confirms the previous scriptures so that is to me is an indication they are complementary.

But our main topic here is on creation and so there are more similarities than differences in my view.

Truth wrote:

Don't put yourself in the middle or you will lost the way because when a christian asks you about somthing so you gonna agree with him and when a muslim do so again about the same thing, you gonna agree about somthing which may contradict with the opnion you accepted to agree about in the first place with the christian one.

My reply:

We Baha'is do feel sometimes in the "middle" and actually that's a good place to be because we can avoid the polarities and disagreements between Christians and Muslims and point out some of the good things in both religions!

The Truth:

You believe in them only "spiritually" neglecting the facts and scince in both scriptures and also neglecting the title of the thread which is the Creation of Universe but not "the Spiritually of the Universe".

Reply:

Welll again I can see where you're are coming from as you maybe believe there are contradictions as to science... Well I think it's very speculative to allege the scriptures are science textbooks.. We tend to focus on the spiritual meanings because to us they are more important. To know that God created us is a "spiritual" reality and probably not verified by science as yet.

Truth:

What if the scince contradict with the scriptures? What would you do in this case?

My reply:

Well I think there can be "apparent" contradictions but if you take the days of creation as meaning epochs of time they do not contradict that much... Consider if you were to explain the universe to someone who had very little scientific knowledge and using a language that had no scientific terms how would you proceed? The scriptures are not science textbooks either.

Truth:

Would you believe scince and facts in this life or the "spiritual scriptures" (i.e. Quran, Bible) which you believe about it in the Baha'i faith as "spiritual allegory "?

By the way, do you think the creation in the universe in the Quran and the bible are just a spiritual allegory too?

My reply:

I think science has taken it''s own course and developement but is still inspired by God through insights and "hunges" that scientists receive...Religious people need to be more scientific and scientists can be more spiritual and ethical which religion can contribute in my view.

Thanks for your questions!

- Art

arthra said:

We Baha'is do feel sometimes in the "middle" and actually that's a good place to be because we can avoid the polarities and disagreements between Christians and Muslims and point out some of the good things in both religions!

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This is a secular way but not a religious way to deal with it and it may lead to hypocrisy in case you tell evey religion follower that you agree with him/her in the same case they disagree about it with the other religion follower.

Ali Ansari said:

I want ask you what is Science?
you can't compare science with God

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True, one has the validity of a fairy tale sadly and this tears at my nerves day in and day out.

I note that Joe hasn't responded to my last post. I wonder why...?

Tiberius said:

I note that Joe hasn't responded to my last post. I wonder why...?

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Hi, Tiberius, not been on forums much lately, just saw your last reply today. You questioned alot about why God did not come right out and tell the Israelites that germs existed and such. I think He wants us to use our minds and abilities to discover things in science, medicine, etc. ourselves. I was listening to a broadcast the other day that discussed that, it had to do with Europe having become so much more advanced in some scientific knowledge and inventions than other nations and how it related to their acceptance of certain principles found in the Bible. (they did a lot of bad stuff, too, lol) Anyway, yes, it was mainly about obedience and trust in God in the Bible with the Israelites- God told them to obey these laws and they would not have the diseases and such as their surrounding enemies. The thing is, GOD knew how these things worked, Moses did not know about germs, God did not tell him, but Moses knew to trust in God. There are scriptures that tell us to trust in God and lean not on our own understanding, that His ways are higher than ours. God knows things we just do not know or understand and will not understand all things clearly until we see Him face to face. In the case with germs, we have discovered just why God would make these commandments, and to me it sheds some light on the nature of God. So, just as Moses did not know about germs, he did know to trust God, and that is what I try to do as well.

So God was basically, "Don't worry about the why, just do it. You don't need to know the details."

Score one for religion encouraging ignorance.