Has anyone used science to "just" disprove the bible?

[Alceste]

I'll save you the trouble. When the Bible said "circle," you claimed that it meant "circle," when actually it means "sphere."

Oh, thanks for the sum-up. That's kind of what I expected it was going to say.

 

[Autodidact]

Autodidact



When you look up at the moon, is it in the shape of a circle? Yes, but is it a sphere? Yes. That is my point.

Exactly. It looks like a circle, which is why the authors of the Bible thought it was one. But they were wrong, because science has shown us that it's actually a sphere.

Plus if we go by your definition of circle, then it’s one dimensional, not two dimensional (a disk). So, did the biblical authors believe the earth was a circle like one dimensional THIN sheet of paper like object? Obviously not, they could dig into the ground. Globes are in the shape of a circle. The earth was in the shape of a circle. Plus I showed you from the Hebrew that it can be a Journey starting in one spot and ending in the same spot (like a globe). Anyway, you cannot prove your point from the little bit of detail that the biblical authors gave.

One dimensional would be a point.

When you take all the references to the shape of the earth and heavens in the Bible together, what you get it is this:

which is exactly what the ancient Hebrews (and Bible followers for some time afterward) believed about the earth. They were wrong.

 

[Gabethewiking]

Exactly. It looks like a circle, which is why the authors of the Bible thought it was one. But they were wrong, because science has shown us that it's actually a sphere.

You are incorrect, and I can prove it Autodidact.

A 'Sphere' according to Oxford's English Dictionary is a 'round solid figure in which every point on the surface is equidistant from the centre'.

The correct definition is rather a bumpy spheroid. I understand that this is not your fault, you may hold your beliefs about the shape of the earth as you wish, but others in this forum use science and come to the conclusion by research and hard work rather then guessing and assuming. I am not attacking your faith, you may believe what you want about the world, but remember you will be wrong.... :foot:

 

[Autodidact]

You are incorrect, and I can prove it Autodidact.

A 'Sphere' according to Oxford's English Dictionary is a 'round solid figure in which every point on the surface is equidistant from the centre'.

The correct definition is rather a bumpy spheroid. I understand that this is not your fault, you may hold your beliefs about the shape of the earth as you wish, but others in this forum use science and come to the conclusion by research and hard work rather then guessing and assuming. I am not attacking your faith, you may believe what you want about the world, but remember you will be wrong.... :foot:

I stand corrected, and yield to more accurate information. Can JollyBear do the same?

 

[Gabethewiking]

I stand corrected, and yield to more accurate information. Can JollyBear do the same?

You know I was just poking you a bit, right?

But it does show, as an example to others, that even true statements can easily be defined as wrong depending on how you define it.

I am aware of a somewhat "better" representation of the Hebrew world view, very similar to the one you posted, but I consider it "superior" only because of aesthetical representation, can not find it right now. Either way, that is indeed how the writers and culture of the Torah and New Testament did see the world.

 

[Autodidact]

You know I was just poking you a bit, right?

Yes, and it's a good example of how science works, getting less and less wrong. Science requires us to yield our preconceptions to more accurate data all the time. (Thank you, Arthur C. Clarke, IIRC)

 

[Walkntune]

Yes, and it's a good example of how science works, getting less and less wrong. Science requires us to yield our preconceptions to more accurate data all the time. (Thank you, Arthur C. Clarke, IIRC)

Science tries to get us to conform are awareness to a particular method of understanding reality.
It's funny how the method changes when our awareness changes.Is the scientific method leading the awareness or is the awareness leading the scientific method?

 

[McBell]

Science tries to get us to conform are awareness to a particular method of understanding reality.
It's funny how the method changes when our awareness changes.Is the scientific method leading the awareness or is the awareness leading the scientific method?

what are you talking about?

 

[dust1n]

Science tries to get us to conform are awareness to a particular method of understanding reality.
It's funny how the method changes when our awareness changes.Is the scientific method leading the awareness or is the awareness leading the scientific method?

No, that's called propaganda. Our government uses propaganda in the form of 'science' to persuade public opinion for some economic reason.

"Science" in it's essence is nothing like that.

 

[Buttons*]

Anyone know of any scientist(s) peer reviewed that made it their purpose to disprove the things of the bible, and that was their primary concern in life in regard to science?

Not really... Anyone who tries to disprove religion does it in a strictly non-scholastic way. I mean, I suppose you could call Richard Dawkins, "God Delusion" a way to disprove religion, but not the Bible itself... I don't believe it's peer reviewed though.

 

[Walkntune]

what are you talking about?

I am talking about how our awareness changes as we go from a state of fear to being in faith and how much it is open depends on the amount of faith.Its funny how it's mentioned that science is getting closer and closer to truth but in reality awareness is just opening up a little more over time.

 

[freeradical]

Anyone know of any scientist(s) peer reviewed that made it their purpose to disprove the things of the bible, and that was their primary concern in life in regard to science?

I would argue that historians whom make their living by studying things like the Dead Sea Scrolls and other works pertaining to the early Christian Church fit this description.

 

[Smoke]

Israel Finkelstein from my department has become somewhat of a superstar around the world in disproving many of the historical details of the bible.

I didn't realize you were in the same department. That would be amazing.

I'm also a great admirer of William Dever, and where Finkelstein and Dever disagreed I always tended to come down more on the side of Dever, thinking Finkelstein was simply too rash in his conclusions. It's interesting to see how Dever has, over the years, come around more to Finkelstein's point of view. I have, too.

 

[Smoke]

And even if the part about "humans and other animals being created in their "current form"" is debunked, it is no way proves that creation did not happen.

It's very clear that if creation happened, it didn't happen as the Genesis account says it did, though, and that's really what matters to most Creationists.

 

[Smoke]

Actually, the bible kinda disproves itself.

I always think it's kind of funny and sad at the same time when biblical inerrantists assume I don't believe in biblical inerrancy because I've fallen under the sway of the dreaded liberal scholars.

I know the Bible isn't inerrant because I've read it. If it were the only book in the world and we had no data at all to contradict it, anybody who read it with attention would still be able to figure out that it wasn't inerrant.

I'll grant you, I had to read it a lot before I started noticing things beyond the obvious, but some things are so dead obvious that it really takes a concerted effort for anybody with the slightest familiarity with the Bible to maintain a belief in inerrancy.

 

[Smoke]

Personally, I think Darwin's theory makes the story of the Biblical creation make since. We can't assume that the days of creation are the literal 24 hour days we know, and when you look at a day as a long period of time, and take into effect that man is the new kid on the block (both in Darwin's theory and Creationism), and you have a much better approach to Creationism. It not only makes since, it explains dinosaurs, fossil records, the appearance of fossil fuels, and many other things that the Bible can't explain on it's own.

Even with really long days, though, the Bible believer is still left in the uncomfortable position of having to explain how the earth and plant life both existed long before the sun.

 

[Smoke]

Jay, I don't deny my lack of familiarity with the topic, it just seems to me, that both a quick conquer and slow move could have taken place at the same time, and wondered if anyone suspects that as a possibility.

The smart money seems to be on the idea that the Israelites were just a particular group of Canaanites that developed in a particular way. There's no evidence for the conquest.

Finkelstein basically thinks the Bible is fiction, with no historical value. That doesn't mean there are no historical facts at all in the Bible, it just means that the Bible has little to no value to the person trying to figure out what the facts are.

I wouldn't go that far, but here's where I've come around more to Finkelstein's point of view. I started out years ago thinking the Bible was probably pretty much true except on the points where it was known not to be true. That starts you off at a disadvantage. The biblical account is first of all tendentious and second heavily edited and redacted. When you start with the biblical framework for history and then only reluctantly give up your assumptions when you have no choice, what you have a is faulty framework with a lot of holes in it. It is, I think, better not to use the Bible as a framework. Take a broader approach, and see what you can find out. I do think there's accurate history in the Bible; the problem is that it's hard to know where. When it comes right down to it, you have to take the biblical account with a grain of salt.

As an example, think of the legends of King Arthur. Is there a historical basis for the legends? Probably, for some of them. Are they factual? No. This is a little over the top as an example, because you could probably write all the facts contained in the Arthurian legends on the palm of your hand and have room left over, and I think the Bible contains considerably more facts than that. I just mean to illustrate the problem.

 

[McBell]

It's very clear that if creation happened, it didn't happen as the Genesis account says it did, though, and that's really what matters to most Creationists.

I agree.
It is their particular literal interpretation that they care about.
To hell with truth, to hell with facts, to hell with anything that they think threatens their fairy tail.

 

[Jollybear]

This is a response rebuttal to the article “problems with mount Sinai in Saudi Arabia”. Read it carefully tumbleweed41.

What they mean by "Arabia" is modern Saudi Arabia and there is no statement in the Bible or any other ancient source that places Mt. Sinai in Saudi Arabia by whatever ancient name (in this case Midian). In fact, it is quite the reverse, Mt. Sinai is clearly placed outside of Saudi Arabia and right on the Sinai Peninsula as we would expect.

This is totally false. The bible indeed does claim that mount Sinai is in Saudi Arabia and median is also in Saudi Arabia (Galatians 4:25 Exodus 2:15 Exodus 3:1 Exodus 4:19)

Exodus 18:27 states that, while the Israelites were camped near Mt. Sinai,3 Moses sent his Midianite (Saudi Arabian) father-in-law Jethro back to"his own country" of Midian (NIV, emphasis added). Clearly, Mt. Sinai and northwestern Saudi Arabia (Midian) were in two different locations. The making of the statement signals the importance of the action, it was not a trivial event or insignificant journey for Jethro to go back to Midian from Mt. Sinai.

Again this is completely false from what I showed above. When it says Jethro went back to his “country” that does not mean he left midian, it means he left to go back to his own little region of midian. I already showed from scripture that mount Sinai is in midian, and Jethro was a priest OF MIDIAN (Exodus 2:16). Also it’s good to note that when it says Jethro went back to his own country, that can also be translated as went back to his own “land” or “district” or “region (http://studylight.org/desk/?l=en&query=Exodus+18%3A27&section=0&translation=str&oq=ex%252020%3A12&new=1&sr=1&nb=ex&ng=20&ncc=20 and http://studylight.org/desk/view.cgi?number=0776

The only response to these difficult arguments from the Bible has been to suggest that everything was really happening at Mt. Sinai in Midianite Saudi Arabia and that Hobab merely meant that he was going back to his own tent nearby, which trivializes the watershed decision and is frankly absurd. If this conversation at Mt. Sinai was really taking place already in Hobab's homeland of Midian among his people the Midianites then Hobab would have said to Moses "You go on your journey but I am staying here in my land with my people." Hobab obviously did not say that. It was a parting of ways with the two going their separate routes.

The author here is forgetting and belittling a VERY important point. The land of midian (Saudi Arabia) is VERY BIG and stretched out. So, when Jethro says to Moses that he is going BACK to his own land, that means him and Moses did part ways, for the whole land IS VERY BIG. He was going back to his own region.

Also, this forgets the VERY OBVIOUS in all this. The evidence that Mount Sinai is at the mountain Bob and curnuk found is OVERWELMINGLY CORROBORATING for the story in the bible!

This devastating Biblical disproof of Sinai-in-Arabia was first made in a book that Williams and Cornuke quote and use as an important reference, yet they never mention the disproof to their readers. It was in Prof. Menashe Har-El's 1983 book The Sinai Journeys: The Route of the Exodus. It was again repeated to Cornuke and Williams in Dec. 1996 when the draft of this article was presented to them in advance of publication on this website in Jan. 1997 and again there was no response, though one was promised in writing. Four years later an unofficial rebuttal has been presented privately but hasn't been made public as of this date.

Perhaps they did not mention it because they make the same point I do and plus, it’s not “disproof”. The land of Saudi Arabia is very BIG and therefore my point is valid.

The latest desperate effort to save Sinai-in-Arabia, the back-to-the-city theory, was in Bible Review magazine for April 2000. The suggestion is that "Midian" was a city and that Mt. Sinai was close by, thus supposedly solving the problem of the Bible verses in Exodus 18 and Numbers 10, which we just reviewed (above), and again putting Mt. Sinai in Saudi Arabia. However, this flies in the face of the passages in Exodus and Numbers that clearly indicate that Midian was a land not a city and that it was a substantial distance from Mt. Sinai requiring a special effort by Jethro to send word back and forth and to come out and meet Moses (Exod. 18:1, 5-7). There may have been a capital city of Midian with the same name as the land (as indicated in a few places in the Septuagint Greek translation of the Bible) and this was often the case with ancient nations and their capitals. But it is irrelevant to the circumstances in the Bible describing the land of Midian not a city. As previously noted, if Midian was a city near Mt. Sinai then Hobab should have told Moses he was staying where he was when the Israelites set out for the Promised Land, instead of saying he was returning to his own land (Num. 10:30).

Josephus says that midian is a city. It’s funny how the author uses Josephus when it suits there purpose, but when it don’t, it won’t quote him and perhaps hopes the public won’t know what he said. In chapter 11 of Josephus right here http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/antiquities-jews/book-2/chapter-11.html it says “he (Moses) went away privately; and because the public roads were watched, he took his flight through the deserts, and where his enemies could not suspect he would travel; and, though he was destitute of food, he went on, and despised that difficulty courageously; and when he came to the city Midian, which lay upon the Red Sea,”
Also even if it was not a city, the author keeps forgetting the land is BIG. Plus here he says there was a substantial distance from mount Sinai and where Jethro was going back to. It does not say “substantial distance” in the biblical text at all. It just says he was going back to his own land. And the Hebrew word their meant his own region or district.

The Bible treats locations close to Mt. Sinai as interchangeable or virtually identical sites, e.g., Horeb was near Mt. Sinai and the two place names are used interchangeably. (7a)

If Midian was a city near Mt. Sinai then it was effectively the same location in Biblical terms and so Hobab would have stayed and waved to Moses and the Israelites as they left him behind.

This is a big twist. Again the author keeps forgetting the land of Saudi Arabia desert is very BIG.

 

[Jollybear]

Jewish historian Josephus, ca. 100 A.D., lauded in the Williams-Cornuke book as "perhaps the greatest Biblical scholar of all time," (8) vindicates the traditional location of Mt. Sinai on the Sinai peninsula (9):

JOSEPHUS: "Moses went up to a mountain that lay between Egypt and Arabia, which was called Sinai...."
It has been suggested in rebuttal that Josephus was here quoting Apion whom he was attacking, so therefore everything Apion said was a lie. This is a desperate and absurd argument. Josephus merely objected to a discrepancy in Apion's account of the Israelites' Exodus about the number of days of travel versus remaining camped, and evidently agreed with this statement of Mt. Sinai's location "between Egypt and Arabia" otherwise he would either have attacked it as well (especially since it had bearing on the travel time issue) or he would not have quoted it in the first place.

Josephus was focused not on Sinai being between Egypt and Arabia but on other parts of Apions views.

Moreover, how on earth did Apion in ca. 40 B.C. even get the idea that Mt. Sinai was, well, in the Sinai, if as Williams and Cornuke allege, this was actually a fabrication of the 18th century designed as a "tourist scam" to attract visitors to the traditional site at St. Catherine's monastery?

When Apion says “between” Sinai and Egypt, does he speak generally, or precisely? Because to be exactly between Sinai and Egypt would mean the mountain would have to be split right by the border line. Highly unlikely that is the case. Therefore I believe he spoke generally. Plus, Paul spoke clearly that the mount was in Arabia.

If Josephus did not agree that Sinai was "between Egypt and Arabia" but thought that Sinai was in Arabia he should have said so and racked it up as another gross error by Apion, or just omitted that altogether if the only issue was the 6 days vs. the 40 days travel. But he didn't.

This is a stupid point and here is why. Either mount Sinai is IN the Egyptian desert or it’s IN the Saudi Arabia desert, but it’s not in BOTH of them. So, what does “between Egypt and Arabia” mean? Does it mean the mountain is half in Egypt and half in Arabia? That is baloney. It’s in one or the other.

The specific Jebel al-Lawz site for Mt. Sinai has been occasionally indicated in some scholarly references as a possibility, going back at least two decades prior to the Williams-Cornuke and Blum books. Such references include a map published in an encyclopedia in 1972, a map in the Har-El book published in 1983 (used by Williams-Cornuke without credit for the site location), maps in two popular books in 1975 and 1985, and in a well-known archaeology magazine in 1977. (14) None of these sources give any documentation that the Jebel al-Lawz site had a genuine local geographic tradition as Mt. Sinai. No early map or reference has been cited specifically giving Jebel al-Lawz the name "Jebel Musa" ("Mountain of Moses" in Arabic). The only evidence is stories allegedly told Williams and Cornuke by local residents and not even claimed by the locals to have come from ancient tradition and is not documented from ancient sources. (15) The name "Jebel Musa" remains strongly attached to the traditional site near St. Catherine's monastery, as it has for nearly 2,000 years (see next section).

There is no evidence of the St Catherines monastery site as being mount Sinai. The one who picked this mountain did not know what they were talking about when they picked that mountain. You go where the corroborating evidence points and it points away from St Catherine. Plus, tradition don’t make something right, there can be many false traditions. You go where the evidence points.

PROBLEM NO. 4:
Traditional Southern Sinai Site is Ancient

I am just going to summarize this part. ALL the mountains over in the desert are ancient. What the author elaborates on under this heading is foolishness. Again tradition is meaningless, evidence is what matters and the mountain cornuk discovered has the evidence for it. It’s the evidence that matters. The lengths some people will go in building a case without dealing with the evidence is amazing.

In Apostle Paul's time, "Arabia" covered a wide area that "included the Sinai Peninsula" as well as what we now call Saudi Arabia, according to Cambridge scholar Graham Davies. (27) A glance at most Bible atlases will show this. Thus, Paul's remark in Galatians 4:25 is quite consistent with Mt. Sinai's traditional placement on the Sinai Peninsula.

So now the author recognizes that mount Sinai is in Saudi Arabia according to Paul. So the author now contradicts himself. Isn’t that nice for his case now?

Plus again, the traditional site for mount Sinai is not the real Sinai because of the lack of evidence. Tradition don’t matter and all this mumbo jumbo this author is making don’t matter, what matters is the evidence and dealing with it.