It is a proven fact. God exists and the Bible is His inspired book. There is so much compelling evidence for faith in the Bible and the God thereof. One type of evidence is that of factual scientific foreknowledge and, or practices that are align with such knowledge in the Bible. Scientific foreknowledge is the knowledge in the Bible regarding the facts and practices that were not known until centuries after the Bible was written thus going to prove the existence of God and that the Bible is God’s Revelation. This is an old evidence to those who know Christian evidences, but it is just as powerful now as ever and worth reviewing. The Scriptures contain many references to nature and God’s creation. Now, the false idea that the Bible is the production of ancient superstitious minds of men would mean that the Bible most likely would contain errors in presenting scientific facts, but such does not exist. On the same point, if the Scriptures consistently taught scientific facts centuries before such facts were discovered and understood by the science of men, then this would mean that the Bible truly was either guided by God or written by very intelligent men, who in this case believed in God and thought that they received this truth from God. Let’s consider this evidence being some of the most definite and most compelling evidence for the Scripture’s origins being from God and for the existence of God Himself.
Due to figurative language being a dismissal of truth for non-believers regarding this subject and due to the outrageous stretching of interpretations by some believers of some Scriptures, this list of foreknowledge from the Scriptures is divided into 2 groups. These are the types of foreknowledge: foreknowledge in literal figurative language. There is some foreknowledge in figurative language, which is not hard to understand. These instances serve just as well as the explicit. Here are some facts from foreknowledge existing in Scripture before being discovered by the science of men more than 1500 plus years later:
Foreknowledge in Literal Language
*The earth is round (Prov. 8:27, Isa. 40:22, Job 26:10).
*The Earth hangs upon nothing (Job 26:7).
*North of the Earth is nothing (Job 26:7).
*The entropy of the Universe (Psa. 102:25-26, Isa. 51:6, Heb. 1:10-11)
*The stars cannot be numbered (Jer. 33:22).
*The states of constellations, Pleiades and Orion, differ in nature (due to gravity) (Job 38:31).
*The Sun has an orbit of its own (Psalm 19:4-6).
*Blood is essential to the life of the flesh of man and animals (Lev. 17:11-14, Gen. 9:4-6).
*The ideal time for the circumcision of an infant boy is on 8th day after birth (Lev. 12:3).
*The scientific Law of Biogenesis, life only comes from life, one kind only comes after its own kind (Gen. 1:11, 12, 21, 24)
*The use of genes in livestock (Gen. 30:30-43).
*There once existed animals with tails as thick as cedar trees (Job 40:15-24).
*If someone has an illness resulting in an open wound, then that person is to wash their clothes and bathe in fresh water (Lev. 15:13).
*Preventing the spread of disease by washing in water (Lev. 13:34, 14:47).
*Quarantining those having certain diseases (Lev. 13:45-46; Numbers 5:1-4).
*The needed washing, altering and, or burning of contagious clothing (Lev. 13:46-59).
*Disinfecting of a house (Lev. 14:39-41).
*Practicing principles of hygiene (Lev. 15:19-33).
*The practice of using safe drinking water (Lev. 11:33-36).
*Early diagnosis of leprosy from other skin diseases (Lev. 13).
*Warning of any open wound (Lev. 13:14).
*A woman’s menstruation is an act of cleansing (Lev. 12).
*Blood and water come from the body when the heart is pierced (John 19:34).
*A cheerful heart is good medicine (Prov. 17:22).
*Sanitation by one digging a hole for their excrement outside of camp (Deut. 23:12-13).
*Eating the flesh of animals with blood in it is forbidden (Lev. 17:12-14, Gen. 9:4-5).
*Eating an animal that has died naturally and is decaying is forbidden (Ex. 22:31, Lev. 17:15, 22:8).
*Eating meat after the 2nd day that it was cooked is forbidden (Lev. 19:6-7).
*Diagnosing an infection (Lev. 13:24-25).
*The ideal ratio for a seaworthy barge (Gen. 6:15)
*The Water Cycle (Eccl. 1:7, Job 36:27-28, Amos 9:6)
*There is another source of water from within the seas being springs (Job 38:16).
*There are paths in the sea (Psa. 8:8).
*The human body may be open to surgery (Gen. 2:21).
*One may avoid the uncleanness of dead bodies and be clean by washing and isolation (Num. 19:11-22).
*Lightning has a path (Job 38:25).
*Lightning is natural (Jer. 10:13, 51:16).
*Lightning and thunder are related (Job 38:25).
*Wind has weight (Job 28:25).
*Winds have a regular course (Eccl. 1:6).
*A seed must die (be dormant) to produce a plant (1 Cor. 15:36-38, John 12:24).
These stand as flat truth. Either way, the hostile non-believer wants to not believe. He or she will resist the Truth no matter what, because their hearts are not set on knowing the truth especially when it reveals the existence of God. While many believers also tend to believe what he or she wants, they will not progress like the non-believer toward a depraved and defiled mind unto damnation (Rom. 1:28-32).
The fact that so many facts exist in the Scriptures is intriguing. One or two may be interesting and just a coincidence, but the number of facts predating the times of recognized discovery is no coincidence and certainly amazing. How could a number of the writers of the Bible continue to know such things about the world without the tools to observe such? God is the answer, and He is who they claim to be their source. There are no other ancient books claiming God’s guidance that can present such foreknowledge.
Please comment if something was missed in the lists above.
22 responses so far ↓
jens // August 7, 2007 at 5:51 pm |
See my blog for a discussion of this point by point. I’m very skeptical as you might imagine. I’d enjoy your elaboration on sme of the points.
http://jenshegg.blogspot.com/
Scott // August 7, 2007 at 10:00 pm |
Response to Jens’ skepticism,
Concerning the world being round, this Scripture is clearly referring to creation before the creation of the Sun, so it is not the circuit of the Sun. Where on earth can I go see a visible circular horizon? Just read the verse along with Job 26:10 and Isaiah 40:22.
There is no life in a seed between dispersal and germination. It is dead or in other words dormant.
Ancient people had stupid ideas about their waste. Did Egyptians use excrement and urine for medicine? Where did most European cities in the Middle Ages dump their waste?
The following article will suffice in answering you’re other errors concerning the medical foreknowledge. It presents what people did believe for which you think they should have just figured out.
“Scientific Foreknowledge and Medical Acumen of the Bible”
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/3159
Regarding the water cycle, no, it was not discovered in detail until Pierre Perrault. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9059317/Pierre-Perrault
There are over sextillion stars and the ancients did try to number them. http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/1791
Gordy! // August 7, 2007 at 10:26 pm |
Wow, I really liked this post. It’s interesting to see all of the “common sense” that come from the OT, like antiviral soap. Cool beans, Scott.
jens // August 8, 2007 at 4:01 pm |
You might want to tell people that you are editing your posts. You’ve switched a bunch of your items around, changed, and added several since I replied. I’d hate to think that others who just joined the conversation would think I moved the goalposts by not including some of your new assertions in the post I put on my blog or my subsequent replies.
You added that circumcision is best done on the 8th day of life. Where did science show that to be the case? My son was circumsized on his second day. I know there is debate about the health effects of circumcision but I hadn’t heard that science had established that a particular day was better than another.
Thanks for qualifying dead with dormant. At least people know what you are talking about even if dormant does not mean dead (http://tinyurl.com/32hbbq) It’s etemology is based on sleep, not death; the word dormir for anyone who has studied a romance language. Here is a journal article on seed dormancy which states such (http://tinyurl.com/36pp74) Look at the last sentence. You can pay the fee to see the whole article if you want to see citations for that conclusion.
I’m confused as to why you added the statement that eating meat without blood is somehow related to foreknowledge. Isn’t that just a food taboo? Meat with blood in it won’t hurt you, nor has science taken a stand on that as far as I know. It doesn’t look as good, or process as well but that would have been obvious to the earliest humans just as it is for us.
I’m intrigued by the Law of Biogenesis you added. I actually think it might have some truth to it. If you consider Gen 1:24 to mean that all animals give birth to other animals of the same species, which is the literal interpretation, I wonder how interspecies hybrids (many, like the liger are fertile (http://tinyurl.com/6at2e)) play into this foreknowledge though. Natural hybrids across genera (like the naturally occuring sheep-goat hybrid documented here http://tinyurl.com/352mmg) put an even larger wrench in the works. The chimera of goat and sheep is lab created but still causes some confusion in this area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geep).
To take Genesis 1:24 and interpret to mean that no living thing can come from something not living takes a bit of a logical leap, but not much of one. Gen 1:24 only talks about making babies from mothers which already exist and were created from nothing by God as said in verses 1,11 and 21. The text doesn’t explicitly address whether animals can come from nothing or not. The question is implicitly answered by the fact that God just created them from nothing.
So, you can see it two ways. You can see it as implicitly stating that life must produce other life since God alone can create life. Or, you can see it as limited to talking about reproduction of species. Either way is parsing words I think, although the first one has the prerequisite of belief while the second does not. If we are talking about comparing science and religion any statement that requires religious belief in order to answer is a nonstarter. I’m not qualified to make that distinction, I’m not a biblical scholar.
To me the fact that Prions exist (protiens which reproduce and cause diseases such as Mad Cow and CJD http://tinyurl.com/s2vsd) and are able to reproduce and infect without so much as a genome points to a progession from-molecules-to-more-complex-molecules-to-life. This is bolstered by viruses which are basically the step up from Prions in that they have a genetic code but are still not alive. Further still the Miller-Urey experiments show the possibility of beginning this progression from very simple molecules (http://tinyurl.com/wl8cr). Still, I have to admit that there has been no confirmed cases of abiogenesis scientifically so this is just my hunch, not fact. You could easily be just as right as I am on this.
I’ll give you this statement if you want it. To argue it further would be parsing the shades of words.
I would like to see your answers to the replies above as I am very confused by your logic on several, as you can see.
Scott // August 9, 2007 at 12:19 am |
Jens,
Yeah, I continue to edit my posts, every single one of them. I didn’t write this for you to debate it though you can. Just address what I’ve written and if I change something, you have to the right to criticize. I think that I have edited every single post since I published them. I like to fix grammatical flaws and clarify my reasoning and conclusions.
I really don’t think that you get the fact that these Scriptures are perfect science for that time. Not eating pork, blood, and oysters is a perfect rule more than 2,000 years ago to prevent disease then while today that’s not usually a problem. Yeah, the ancients were smart and sometimes very ignorant.
Thanks for the sources; I could send back to you. The journal blatantly redefines dormancy saying that dormant seeds are active in remaining dormant in changing environments. That explains the title “Redefining Seed Dormancy: an attempt to integrate physiology and ecology”. The title explains that it an attempt to integrate physiology and ecology. That’s like redefining a physically inactive man as active due to the rotation of the Earth. So, a seed is dormant doing nothing internally or externally, and it is alive. What would be the state of a dormant seed that died naturally? Maybe you should also define death. How many people over 2,000 years ago knew that the seed was biologically inactive? Well, Jesus did.
In ancient times, the 8th day was the best time for circumcision since it is the only time in the life of a newborn that their vitamin K levels are at 200% and then some. Yes, today, men can be circumcised any time, and such was true of Abraham and Moses’ sons. The 8th day was the ideal time according to God. This is a perfect example to point out that even Moses did not understand that vitamin K was increased though somehow there is a purpose behind God’s instruction that Moses nor anyone actually knew.
So, if someone said that the Earth is a circle, then they would be wrong? Why would I look at a Parallel Bible when I and many others have done word-studies in Hebrew? I did look at it. The most reliable translation said “circle”. “khug” is the Hebrew word for circle or sphere. See the other Scriptures in the figurative speech part. The figurative speech is not being used, but its blatant common sense interpretation. Proverbs 8:25-27, “Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills was I brought forth; (26) While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the beginning of the dust of the world. (27) When he established the heavens, I was there: When he set a circle upon the face of the deep,”
Regarding the Law of Biogenesis, the point is not to prove origin of life between Creation or Evolution, but to affirm foreknowledge in this Law. You surprised me. I just thought that you would write off the Law of Biogenesis altogether sense it stands against your faith in atheistic agnosticism. Though the idea of micro-evolution from the point of Creation would not contradict the Bible or the Law of Biogenesis, the Law still debunks the theory of natural origin of life being coincidental. Here’s an animal mix for you too. What if a wolf mated with a Jack Russell? What if a horse mated with a donkey? Animals still produce of their own kind.
Prions, clusters of proteins, are not living. Viruses need living hosts to reproduce. What is the most basic living host for a virus? It is bacteria. The virus could only have evolved after some other life did, according to the evolution hypothesis, so I’ll help you out and give you the simplest independent life form, bacteria. How many bits of data exist in bacteria according to Carl Sagan? One trillion. Carl Sagan also noted that the most basic DNA known to exist, E. coli DNA, to have formed is like every letter of every word of every book in a library of 10,000,000 books coming together accidentally. I think he is exaggerating though his point made is against his own faith. The following article does just as well: http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/origin-of-life.html
Just the idea of at least 10×25 stars in the Universe, how can these ever be numbered when reaching the last star others may not exist and more may exist? I guess a billion people could with the most advanced scopes yet to be invented spend 100 years of their life counting a little over 100 billion stars a day, but I still don’t think that is possible. But, how would we know if the first stars still exist when one is finished counting centuries later when we only see the light of the stars traveling only in the direction toward us thousands of years from the actual stars? Over sextillion stars are as the Scripture says that the stars “cannot be numbered”. Only God knows the finite number of stars in the Universe at any point in time. You would better make your point by asking how the light of stars millions of light-years away reached Earth when the stars and Earth were created less than 10,000 years ago according to the Bible. I was once a skeptical believer.
Why don’t you just say that this is just one big coincidence like the rest of the Universe?
Scott // August 9, 2007 at 8:56 am |
Answers to my rhetorical questions above.
Where on earth can I go see a visible circular horizon? Nowhere on Earth just in space can anything be called circular regarding the shape of Earth in Prov. 8:27, which is not figurative and there is no firgurative language in that passage. Just present another alternative to understanding what “a circle set on the face of the deep” is. If anyone referred to the circle of the Earth today, most people would know that they are talking in reference to the globe.
Did Egyptians use excrement and urine for medicine? Yes, so people did not handle their waste in the best way.
Where did most European cities in the Middle Ages dump their waste? In the streets thus the Plague.
jens // August 9, 2007 at 11:22 am |
One more,
I don’t think you get the idea of hybridization. A wolf mixing with a Jack Russell would create a half wolf/half jack russell (Assuming the jack russell wasn’t eaten before it could mate). The progeny would exhibit intermediate features. The traits would converge the more you mated these hybrids with wolves but you could always see the hybridization in the DNA. They are all from the genus of Canis so they look like dogs, but according to science they are distinct species, therefore throwing a wrench in the Law of Biogenesis to some degree.
An even bigger wrench in the Law of Biogenesis is the sheep-goat hybrid I cited that you obviously didn’t read or understand. These animals for from entirely different genus and thus should be unable to hybridize, however, they have been shown by science to exist. Here are some links to journal articles on the subject.
http://tinyurl.com/2vkoeb
http://tinyurl.com/39vjau
So, if Genesis says that each animal must produce it’s own kind then how can a goat and a sheep breed naturally since they are entirely different genus of animal? The animal produced is a mix of both, not one or the other. To me this shows that the Law of Biogenesis is less a law and more of a theory or genrealization and that Genesis was generally correct but science has shown that it does not hold up in all circumstances, thus science has shown that it was not foreknowledge. Mabye we scientists should stop calling it a law.
After all, it is easy to see that most animals breed with their own and produce similar offspring. Any primitive person would have realized this. Therefore, to prove foreknowledge you must show that the forekowledge applies in the strange situations which are not obvious to any prehistoric farmer. The sheep goat hybrid being shown in the peer reviewed scientific literature shows that science does not support this statement of biblical foreknowledge.
Scott // August 9, 2007 at 12:03 pm |
Evidently, I am not intelligent enough to understand how hybrids disprove the Law of Biogenesis or the Genesis account. I looked past the genus since those assignments are historically subjective anyways. Strange according to “science” animals of different genus are not supposed to breed together, but then “science” proves that they can. Assigning a genus to each animal is somewhat subjective and set by men. So, “science” was wrong about intergenus hybrids. Has “science” ever been wrong? Could “science” ever be wrong again? That just sounds like “science”, but the Law of Biogenesis is very general regarding animals producing after their own kind. Could one not say that these animals that can produce hybrids are of one kind? “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fishes.” There are four kinds. Can these interbreed? The chromosomes between horses and donkeys differ as well, so I don’t really see any problem here either if that is what you are referring to.
Here let’s reconcile the Law of Biogenesis with your faith. If animals still produced their own kind while mutating gradually, then these animals are still producing their own kind while evolving. If I were an atheist, this is what I would say, but then this does not disprove the fact that God created animals to evolve from the position of accepting evolution. The only other struggle is again life coming from nothing. When does a collection of proteins start to perceive?
I expect non-believing scientists to not believe in the Law of Biogenesis, but scientific laws have to be sacrificed to accept an origin of life without a Creator. I know the atheist can think around these evidences and ignore these facts as just coincidence. This post does make many like you stop and recognize this “coincidence”. Do really believe in no Creator whatsoever? Isn’t Deism more appealing? I thought you believed in inherent morality, so where would this come from?
jens // August 9, 2007 at 5:07 pm |
Let me get one thing straight about the “Law of Biogenesis” after some further reading. I have made a mistake. Pasteur is the one who is credited with coining the term, however his experiments did not have anything to do with how life began and everything to do with how life in it’s present form is created. http://tinyurl.com/dp9zt , http://tinyurl.com/29gd9l.
His experiments involved boiling media and comparing sterile conditions in open and closed containers. The closed containers did not grow. This proves that microbes do not spontaeously come about in closed, sterile conditions. It does not prove that in an open system, with lot’s of time and appropriate media, life could not evolve or even be created by a God. He also did not address whether these “ovum” as they were called were created by the mixing, or hybridization of species or not. His experiments simply did not extend that far, they only went as far as to say that life, in our current world, does not simply arise out of conditions in which no life has been able to enter.
If you have other research to cite that says that this “Law” can be applied to biological species interbreeding or evolution let me know. I don’t see any literature references to a “Law of Biogenesis” that don’t relate to Haeckel and his very different, and very discredited, theories of embryo development and evolution. That is, except for citations by Apologetics Press and other creationist websites. I’m inclined to wonder why it is that scientists don’t consider it a law, but creationists do?
So, now that we are clear on that…let’s continue. I have made the mistake of enabling an argument that this theory is related to the origin of life and/or hybridization, you have made the mistake of postulating that they are related, we are both at fault. I’m afraid we have both been barking up the wrong tree with our arguments about hybridization and evolution. They simply don’t apply.
In that light I’m not sure how you would prove foreknowledge. We can continue to debate whether these biblical passages allow for interbreeding or not but in either case the fact of the matter is that knowledge of hybridization is old as the hills. Donkeys have been around a really long time. So I don’t see how that line of reasoning really would lead to any idea of foreknowledge in the Bible.
To take the opposite tack on Pasteur’s experiments, is there evidence of biblical foreknowledge that life in it’s current form cannot be created out of nothing. No, there is plenty of evidence in the Bible that God created life. Unfortunately this relies on belief rather than rational thought. The same applies to the origins of life by evolution. I can show a logical progression of existing structures and thought experiments but cannot prove or disprove it. It is essentially the same for divine creation. We can debate the issue, as many do, but there is no smoking gun for either case.
So, to answer you last question: No I don’t see a problem with believing in evolution. This “Law of Biogenesis” does not need to be “sacrificed” as you say because it doesn’t really exist in relation to the origins of life. But, I do realize that my belief is just that, a belief. I base it on an extrapolation of scientific facts but, as you know, extrapolation is not proof. You are free to have your belief, as am I, until a smoking gun is found one way or the other.
I am interested after reading more about circumcision that you are correct that vitamin K is highest around 8 days and thus children with clotting disorders would have bled less after that point. I was impressed by the number of clinical citations I found. I stop short of calling this foreknowledge simply because I can easily imagine that it wouldn’t take too long for a preist who circumcised babies regularly to realize that fewer babies bled profusely when they were circumcised after 8 days than if they were circumcised before that. This would be especially true if most children were vitamin K deficient and therefore did not clot as well. These days it is only children with clotting defects which bleed profusely without vitamin K so it would have taken a huge sample of children to reach a conclusion. If most babies were deficient, which is likely given their living and diet conditions in Moses time, it would not have taken a very large sample size to figure this out.
jens // August 9, 2007 at 5:14 pm |
Here is my comment from before arguing falsely for Biogenesis. I’ll post it so it doesn’t end up not making sense in light of this previous post and because there are some other arguments for other points that should be included.
I’m not sure why you are suprised about Biogenesis, it doesn’t conflict with my beliefs unless you interpret it in the strictest light possible, which creationists do. I was created to disprove the idea that maggots or fungi appeared from nothing, it was never meant to explain the origin of life. As I said I think you have a point when you use tis interpretation.
You are far off on the simplest gemone as I state below. At the time Carl Sagan mad that statement E. Coli was probably the only bacteria genome sequenced, since it is the most common lab strain. Things have changed, you should read up.
You realize that people define what life is right? So when something becomes life is up to us based on the definition we have created. Prions, as I stated, are not alive. Neither are virus’s according to our definition. But they form a continuum of reproduction and growth, only lacking response to stimuli to be considered alive in the case of virus’s. A prion needs nothing more than other protiens to reproduce and thus could easily have evolved into a virus. Some virus’s contian RNA, a simpler code than DNA (and coincidentally much less complex than E. Coli which is does not have the simplest genome of all organisms as you claim. That would go to Mycoplasma genitalium http://tinyurl.com/2xy4dz. It has a genome of 580,000 base pairs, 14% of the size of E coli which has 4 million base pairs). RNA or DNA virus’s have immenselly less complex genomes than do even the smallest bacteria, thus another link in the chain. Prions do not need a host, but one could
easily imagine a symbiotic
relationship between virus’s and prions, or other virus’ which would result in evolution of increasingly complex structures and DNA or RNA. At the point at which they could respond to stimuli they would be considered alive. Pointing to E coli or even M genitalium as the least complex cell that can survive is not logically correct. They have knocked genes out of M genitalium and it still survives. We don’t know how small you could get, but it would be very small.
As for stars the argument that by the time you got to the last star others would not exist is a ridiculous argument. You already counted it, so whether it disappears or not is irrelevant. The point is theoretical since we both agree that we don’t currently have the tools to do it. My point was that you can’t argue that they are uncountable acording to science if you also say they are finite. A finite number can be counted with enough effort, an infinite one cannot. If you want to base your conclusions on scientific foreknowledge then use scientific logic, don’t bend it to suit your conclusion.
Have you been to the desert, especially Saudi Arabia? In a flat expanse of only a few miles the horizon looks to be the same distance in every direction. From the top of a tall hill, probably mount Ararat would be this way, the horizon appears the same in all directions. What is it when you are equidistant from the edge of something in all directions, you are inside a circle. Not to mention that the path of the sun in the sky is obviously semicircular. It’s not a logical leap to assume that that orbit continues despite not being able to see it. Early humans didn’t get everything but they weren’t stupid.
I think you missed my point about human waste. It isn’t that many cultures didn’t get it, it is that some did well before Moses. How can it be foreknowledge if humans discovered it before Moses? The fact that not all cultures followed that rule, or figured it out, or forgot it does not negate the fact that it was figured out before Moses and thus could not have been foreknowledge. It’s great that they figured it out, but the fact that other people figured it out on their own means that it might not have been God who told Moses to do it, it might have been that they figured it out on their own. The same goes for the medicinal stuff we have hashed over as well.
jens // August 9, 2007 at 5:23 pm |
Here is my comment mentioned above moderated for foul language:
Scott, I’m not sure where you are going with some of your rebuttals. You’ve argued yourself in a circle in a couple.
#1: Did you read the link to the Parallel Bible I gave you? There is no mention of a globe, a circle is not a globe. The fact that you find evidence in metaphoical passages in other parts of the Bible is not proof. They are scattered throughout and metaphorical. As I said I am not going to argue metaphor, it’s a lost cause. I have not seen, based on the paralele bible hebrew translation and others, that the word used is used in the sense of a globe. Prove me wrong.
#2 First, you’ve argued yourself in a circle. Your proof of forknowledge was that a seed “died” when a plant sprouted. Now you say a seed is dead? where are you going with this?
Check out this link to learn a bit more about seed dormancy.(http://tinyurl.com/2xddy9). A seed is indeed alive, the metabolism is just extremely slow. If you’d like I can look up journal articles as primary sources.
#3 So Abraham went #2 in the corner of his tent? Animals can figure it out but we can’t? The fact that not every culture understood it doesn’t negate that others did, before Moses’ decrees. Also, using excrement for medicine is not the same as going #2 in the corner although I don’t advocate trying it. The first flush toilet we know of was built into a major sewage and freshwater system in Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus valley 2500 years BC (http://tinyurl.com/2cd434)Something similar is thought to have been in place at Skara Brae in Scotland in a similar era (http://tinyurl.com/yv8cxw) To my knowledge this is 1200-1350 years before Moses was even born and another 120 before he gave out these laws in the months before he died (if you believe Biblical ages). Do you think they figured out not to go #2 in their house before they figured out sewage systems in these ancient cities or did they figure them out by accident?
#4 The article you cite sets egyptians up as the foil and then shows that the isrealites had better medicine. Show me citations proving that no culture understood these same things before Moses did and you will have a point. I already showed that lye soap is older than the isrealites. Also, you missed the real point of my argument. The argument is not that ancient cultures had things wrong, it is that they did get some things right without science or Gods “foreknowledge”. The fact that many medicinal plants as well as Neem and Licorice sticks were used implys that people did figure things out, although they didn’t have it all solved. The possibility that they would find some medicinal things that worked on their own is obvious. Saying that the Bible proves that it was invented by God before science is ridiculous. Of course it was! People figured it out, they didn’t need Pasteur to explain the mechanism all they cared about was the effect. Did people figure out the wheel without God’s help before science was invented? Yes! Saying their successes were preordained by God while pointing to their lack of understanding as proof of this is absurd. In order to prove my premise using your logic ancient cultures would have had to have figured out every conceivable remedy in medicine in order to disprove that the ones that did work in the Bible were not preordained. You haven’t convinced me.
#5 A statement on the water cycle from ~500B.C. in Greece. “…what happens in the sky is caused by the heat of the sun; for when the moisture is drawn up out of the sea, the sweet part, which is distinguished by it’s fine texture, forms a cloud, and drips out as rain by compression like that of felt, and the winds spread it around…The sea is the source of water, the source of wind. For in the clouds, neither would the force of wind, which blows outward, originate without the great sea, nor the flowing of streams, nor the rainwater from the sky; but the great sea is the originator of the clouds, winds, and streams…” Xenophanes of Colophon 570-460 B.C.(http://tinyurl.com/3bey54 see page 13) Although you are correct in part about Perrault (Halley and others did their part too) it appears Xenophanes got it figured out in a much more concise and precise form than anything you referenced in the Bible. True the Job and Amos writings may be older than Xenophanes the era of the writing of Ecclesiastes is not. In order for your argument to work all those passages must have been understood together before Xenophanes figured it out, however they do not. In the face of proof that a more comprehensive and coherent narrative of the water cycle was completed within this time period I have a hard time calling this foreknowledge.
#6 So you started your argument by saying that the stars could not be numbered but now you say that they are not infinite but instead finite? You just argued yourself into a circle. Which do you believe? If the number is finite then you can assume that eventually, with the right tools, they could be counted, thus there is no forekowledge in the Bible. If they are infinite then this is foreknowledge. Which do you believe, your rebuttal doesn’t make sense.
Scott // August 9, 2007 at 5:34 pm |
I did say that E. coli was the simplest, which is true of an independent organism not needing a host, but the actual simplest is Mycoplasma genitalium. My point above is that viruses and mycoplasma genitalium are parasites needing a host and thus could not have evolve on their own and independent of a living host, thus these would have died without other life already existing, which the simplest independent life form to evolve is E. coli, and this knowledge may change.
You’re right that other ancient civilizations did practice things before their time and understanding. I was always personally interested the evolutionist 7th century Greek philosopher Anaximander.
You’re also right that one being able to see a flat horison could thus see a exact circle in distance from their point of view. This would be even more possible at sea (I’m not refering to the curve of the Earth). I just don’t see how someone would look around the sea and see it as a circleescpeically in Proverbs when it became one.
You may have the last words. Thanks for the discussion.
jens // August 9, 2007 at 5:35 pm |
Here are some other journal sources which prove that a seed responds to stimuli and has a metabolism. How can that be the case and still consider it dead during dormancy?
You totally misread the article I cited. The idea of redefinition of dormancy relates not to redefining the process of dormancy but placing this pysiological fact into ecological perpsective since ecology has up to now not focused on the fact that seeds respond to stimuli in ecologically relevant ways which effect the way the species survive in their environment.
http://tinyurl.com/33bg5w
Here is the relevant sentence. “Both dormant and stratified embryos rapidly metabolize abscisic acid to phaseic acid, dihydrophaseic acid, and an unidentified polar metabolite apparently derived from dihydrophaseic acid.”
If it has metabolism is it not alive by all standards? The embryo’s they are talking about are seed embryo’s, or radicle’s in dicots. I don’t know if these are dicots or monocots really. If you doubt me read the article.
http://tinyurl.com/24et3z
Relevant sentence : “The present study indicates that Cvi D and ND seeds can be easily distinguished by their ability to synthesize ABA following imbibition.”
Anything that can synthesize a chemical is by definition metabolizing. If you read the article D is short for dormant seeds Cvi is the cape verde variety and ND stands for Non-Dormant.
http://tinyurl.com/2mogmg
Here is the relevant sentence: “Dormant seeds of Avena fatua, which do not germinate when allowed to imbibe water, have a respiration rate only about 20% less than that of imbibed nondormant (after-ripened) seeds in the period before actual germination and are capable of synthesizing protein at a rate comparable to that of the nondormant seeds”
This is pretty clear language and shows without a doubt that dormant seeds respire and are thus alive by almost all standards.
If you have any research saying that seeds aren’t alive while dormant I’d love to see it.
jens // August 9, 2007 at 5:42 pm |
Thank you as well for the discussion. As always you are a worthy argumentative rival.
Scott // August 9, 2007 at 8:41 pm |
Not to discuss and not to ignore the comment before last. If someone else is reading these comments, these articles presented are true that seeds can be active between dispersion and germination.
Arv Edgeworth // August 31, 2007 at 3:51 pm |
I was just curious as to how you get the earth is round from Proverbs 8:27? Isaiah 40:22 does show the earth is round, but I had a hard time finding it in the other verse. Thanks.
Scott // August 31, 2007 at 4:37 pm |
Good question. Well, I first looked at the immediate context and saw in the pretext that wisdom existed before the creation of the world (23-26), then in verse 27, I see that wisdom was there when God set a circle upon the deep. What deep? Remember in Genesis that the earth was first void and just water. Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Also see Genesis 1:6-9 to see that the waters were then organized, which is exactly what is seen in Proverbs 8:28-29. It is very clear that a circle, as is in the Hebrew, was established upon the Earth as a whole consisting of only water at this time. There was no moon, sun, nor stars yet either according to the Genesis account, which it is very clear what this passage is referring to and that being that for the earth a boundary was set being water into a circle. Look also again at “When He [God] gave to the sea its boundary, That the waters should not transgress His commandment”.
Grace and peace to you in Christ,
Scott
James Green // July 30, 2008 at 2:44 am |
Here is an excellent article on Bible scientific foreknowledge
Scott // July 30, 2008 at 7:33 am |
That is a good article though I don’t know about the Asteroids passage. Thank you.
Bruce // December 31, 2008 at 3:24 pm |
It’s pretty obvious that the Bible thinks the Earth is a flat disk, that the sky is a solid dome above the disk, that it is supported on pillars, that the seas are fed from below (“the fountains of the deep”), that the stars are small lights attached to the dome (such that 1/3rd are able to fall to Earth in Revelations), and so on. Your attempts to find scientific “foreknowledge” in the Bible are very weak, and smack of desperation. Similar efforts have been made on behalf of the Vedas (ancient Hindu scriptures), and though the Vedas get some things blatantly wrong (e.g., thinking the Sun is nearer the Earth than the Moon is), it is clear that the understanding of the Cosmos in the Vedas is much more advanced well thought-out than that in the Bible.
Your other examples are equally pathetic. Jens has given a pretty good explanation as to why.
Why not just face up to reality, and admit what is obviously the case, namely, that the Bible was written, edited, and compiled by human beings, who possessed no magical knowledge either of science, or of the future, or of any supernatural realm?
You are clinging, with painful nostalgia, to a dead hypothesis. Why? Is there some niggling fear that if you stop believing, you will be punished?
Scott Shifferd Jr. // January 3, 2009 at 3:56 pm |
Bruce is a perfect example of a skeptic. As I stated before, “Either way, the hostile non-believer wants to not believe. He or she will resist the Truth no matter what, because their hearts are not set on knowing the truth especially when it reveals the existence of God. While many believers also tend to believe what he or she wants, they will not progress like the non-believer toward a depraved and defiled mind unto damnation (Rom. 1:28-32).”
He is an exact pattern in Scripture of “Why People Really Do Not Believe in God?” (http://tinyurl.com/89ghcz).
David Jensen // August 18, 2009 at 12:16 pm |
Here is another resource on scientific foreknowledge in the Bible.