Part two, then, of the review of the startling revelation that there are 101 scientific facts that were in the Bible long before modern science got round to rediscovering them. Startling, that is, if it were true. After the first ten, so far, we’re 0/9, with one claim discarded as not being a claim made by science at all.
11. Noble behavior understood (John 15:13; Romans 5:7-8). The Bible and history reveal that countless people have endangered or even sacrificed their lives for another. This reality is completely at odds with Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest.
Oh, dear, that was a very bad start.
John 15:13 says ‘Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends‘, while Romans 5: 7-8 says: ‘Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’
These might be examples of noble behaviour, but it doesn’t offer us a scientific explanation of anything, nor can it be described as a fact that has subsequently been “rediscovered” by science.
This is simply an opportunistic sleight at the theory of evolution. However, Darwin used the concept of natural selection (subsequently dubbed “the survival of the fittest”) to explain variety in life and the origins of variation and variety, hence, the origin of species. His theory of evolution has little or no interest in theories concerning alturism in human society per se.
Anyway, it’s not science, so we’re down to alleged 95 facts in total, and not 101.
12. Chicken or egg dilemma solved (Genesis 1:20-22). Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This question has plagued philosophers for centuries. The Bible states that God created birds with the ability to reproduce after their kind. Therefore the chicken was created first with the ability to make eggs! Yet, evolution has no solution for this dilemma.
No I’m getting confused. I thought we’re supposed to be finding the claims of science prefigured within the Bible? Evolution does offer a solution for this dilemma – and it isn’t to be found in the Bible.
But it’s another “fact” that science doesn’t make in a list that’s supposed to be of scientific facts and claims that we can find in the Bible. So we’re down 94 of the feted 101. Hence, an invalid claim not science.
13. Which came first, proteins or DNA (Revelation 4:11)? For evolutionists, the chicken or egg dilemma goes even deeper. Chickens consist of proteins. The code for each protein is contained in the DNA/RNA system. However, proteins are required in order to manufacture DNA. So which came first: proteins or DNA? The ONLY explanation is that they were created together.
This project is now simply being seriously derailed. There are no scientific claims for DNA and RNA being ‘created’ together, and in fact evolution suggests that it is not the ‘ONLY’ explanation at all. This cannot considered to be a claim that can be prefigured in the Bible. And we’re down to 93. Not science.
14. Our bodies are made from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7; 3:19). Scientists have discovered that the human body is comprised of some 28 base and trace elements – all of which are found in the earth.
We’ll take this statement at face value, and allow that there is agreement here between the Genesis and science. However, it is hardly a unique claim to Genesis: the story itself derives from older Middle Eastern stories, while the Ancient Greeks (with Promotheus on clay-moulding duty and Athena taking care of blowing life, as recorded by the 8th BCE poet Hesiod) and the Ancient Chinese (with Nu Gua Shi) had similar stories of man being made from dust/soil/mud and life being blown into them. So no unique scientific insight there, then.
15. The First Law of Thermodynamics established (Genesis 2:1-2). The First Law states that the total quantity of energy and matter in the universe is a constant. One form of energy or matter may be converted into another, but the total quantity always remains the same. Therefore the creation is finished, exactly as God said way back in Genesis.
Genesis 2:1-2 says: ‘1Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work’.
Now, I personally can’t get anything useful about matter or energy from that, but the 1st Law of Thermodynamics is concerned with the total amount of energy in the universe – not matter. But because of the famous E=MC-squared formula in Special Relativity, that would imply that matter is constant, as well as energy. It took Einstein to link matter and energy – not the First Law of Thermodynamics.
Nevertheless, if the suggestion is that simply because God created the world, therefore the 1st Law of Thermodynamics can be seen to be embodied, then I don’t see how that can possibly be unique to the Bible, not least because the Biblical Creation myths derive from older Babylonian myths. At best, no unique scientific insight.
16. The first three verses of Genesis accurately express all known aspects of the creation (Genesis 1:1-3). Science expresses the universe in terms of: time, space, matter, and energy. In Genesis chapter one we read: “In the beginning (time) God created the heavens (space) and the earth (matter)…Then God said, “Let there be light (energy).” No other creation account agrees with the observable evidence.
This is to play fast an loose with what science says on the one hand, and what the Bible says on the other.
To begin with, physics tends to describe the Universe in terms of mathematics and universal laws, which describes the behaviour of things like energy, space, time and matter – and other important things, such as forces (the weak and strong forces, gravity, and electromagnetism). Moreover, the ‘observable evidence’ suggests that time and space are intimately linked, as are energy and matter – as per Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. This is not what’s hinted at here, which rather is a rather more mundane sequence of events: first time was created, then space, then matter, then energy. Science actually says that time and space, along with matter and energy, were all present, simultaneously, from the first split-seconds of the birth of the Universe. Further, the description includes something called ‘God’ doing the creating, an entity that does not exist in any scientific veiw of the origins of the Universe. In fact, the verses simply do not reflect any scientific view about things such as space or time or energy or matter, but are merely descriptive of “what’s there” than how it works.
It’s impossible to see these anything in Genesis 1:1-3 as offering support of Einstein over Newton, and I’m not sure that biologists (for example) would agree that the four concepts of space, time, matter and energy really does represent ‘all aspects of the creation’.
We conclude that the cited verses simply DOES NOT reflect any scientific view, and that Genesis does not prefigure anything that science says in modern times.
We can further question whether the Biblical authors actually thinking of the modern scientific concepts of “space” when they wrote “heavens”, and “matter” when they wrote “earth”? “Energy” when they wrote “light”, And “time” when they wrote “in the beginning”? That sounds extremely unlikely. Moreover, Genesis 1:20-26 contains scientific contradictions: historically, livestock, for example, did not come before humanity; evolution tells us that there was a sequence of emerging species, and that fish, for example, did not appear at the same time as birds.
In lieu of obvious support of any particular scientific claim, one has to say that there is no scientific claim being made, and we’ve
17. The universe had a beginning (Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 1:10-12). Starting with the studies of Albert Einstein in the early 1900s and continuing today, science has confirmed the biblical view that the universe had a beginning. When the Bible was written most people believed the universe was eternal. Science has proven them wrong, but the Bible correct.
There are many creation stories which do suggest that the Universe had a beginning. Whether the Universe had a beginning as we understand it is a complicated, debateable point within cosmology itself, becuase the actual moment of the Big Bang is yet to be fully understood (Stephen Hawking, for example, suggests not – and that it is not eternal, either).
The crucial point is that one does not gain any further elucidation from the two cited versus on the mechanism of how the Universe began – saying simply that it did begin is not really explaining anything in a scientific manner, much less citing the ‘observable evidence’ which ‘true science’ relies upon.
At best, because the universe having a beginning is reflected in may cultures, we can only at best conclude that the Bible has no unique scientific insight on this occasion.
18. The earth is a sphere (Isaiah 40:22). At a time when many thought the earth was flat, the Bible told us that the earth is spherical.
A common myth. In fact, there is no evidence that anyone actually thought the earth to be flat in the last 2,500 years. Pythagoras put forward the idea in the 6th century BCE, for example, that the earth was spherical. It’s also not technically correct to say that the earth is spherical at all – the earth is in fact an oblate ellipsoid. The Biblical passage represents widespread understanding, and therefore offers no unique scientific insight.
19. Scripture assumes a revolving (spherical) earth (Luke 17:34-36). Jesus said that at His return some would be asleep at night while others would be working at day time activities in the field. This is a clear indication of a revolving earth, with day and night occurring simultaneously.
A long since widely understood phenomena, and not a unique scientific insight.
20. Origin of the rainbow explained (Genesis 9:13-16). Prior to the Flood there was a different environment on the earth (Genesis 2:5-6). After the Flood, God set His rainbow “in the cloud” as a sign that He would never again judge the earth by water. Meteorologists now understand that a rainbow is formed when the sun shines through water droplets – which act as a prism – separating white light into its color spectrum.
Meterologists – as indeed any scientist – would believe that the physical laws regarding water has not changed here on earth, and that rainbows have existed on earth as long as the was sun, rain, and an earth, with or without humanity around, so the point about the environment being different seems odd in this context (Cf Genesis 2:5-6). No scientific view holds that rainbows are the result of a deity’s ‘covenant’ with humanity and promise not to flood the earth (Genesis 9:13-16). No statement about the prism of light appears in these verses; indeed, the sun is not even mentioned within that context. Consequently, the assertions in the cited verses either do not reflect scientific understanding, as per the stated aims of the list of facts, or are simply not science.
So after 20 “facts” of the original 101, we’ve lost another five as simply not being scientific facts in the Bible and subsequently rediscovered by modern science, meaning we’re down to 91.
A further five “facts” are seen not to be unique to the Bible.
We also seem to be witnessing a selection process that was not indicated at the beginning. In particular, there seems to be a sorting of “scientific facts” (however ineptly or crudely put) that agree with the Bible, for example over Space and Time, and a simple denial of other scientific facts, for example, anything that possibly relates to evolution. Indeed, Biblical intpretations that appear to contradict scientific knowledge is simply hailed as having the correct insight into how things really work.
