Re: Why the Bible is not a Science Textbook

"On Tue, 2 Jun 2009 12:10:49 +1000, in article
<1j0omrx.4xvq7w7r8c7vN%john@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, John S. Wilkins stated..."

TomS <TomS_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"On Mon, 1 Jun 2009 09:27:43 -0700 (PDT), in article
<64f81ec2-5e23-415c-94f3-caa9588a30f4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
gregwrld stated..."
[...snip...]
This is blatant bullshit. I just had a
discussion with a creo who insisted
the bible was a "book of science" and
should be read that way.

He actually was foolish enough to say
that since the bible hadn't mentioned
evolution then it couldn't have happened.
He couldn't tell me why it didn't mention
quantum mechanics or any of dozens of
scientific discoveries.
[...snip...]

The Bible doesn't mention fixity of species.

The Bible doesn't mention the creation of most forms of life,
for example, the microbes.

The Bible doesn't mention the *existence* of microbes, which, were it a
science book, is a rather major lacuna.

I was going to note that the Bible doesn't mention the existence of
a lot of these things, such as the existence of *species*, but I
wanted to be very conservative about it. Anyway, I thought that it
would distract from gregwrld's friend's point about the Bible not
mentioning evolution - to note that the Bible does not mention
*creationism*.


The Bible doesn't mention the creation of "the vertebrate eye",
"the adaptive immune system", "the blood clotting system", "the
bacterial flagellum", "information", "complexity", ...

or the existence of any of these.

The Bible does mention eyes. If I were being somewhat risky about
this, I would say that the Bible does not mention "the vertebrate
eye", that is, that the most interesting, most complex, and most
distinctive features of their eyes which are generally shared by
vertebrates, leaving the distinctions between vertebrate eyes to
be within the realm of "micro"evolution.


Nor planets, galaxies, nebulae, tectonic plates, meteors, the Gulf
Stream, or the Coriolis Force.

Nor the Grand Canyon, so that it is non-Biblical to say that Noah's
Flood carved out the Grand Canyon.


--
---Tom S.
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
attributed to Josh Billings

.

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