In the
Why so friggin' confident? various spin-off threads have been proposed. There is definite interest in this one. Bertot claimed
Bertot writes:
...that about 100 yeas ago the Academy of sciences put out a list of 50 or 51 scientific discrepncies in the Bible and that not a single one of those discrepencies remains or that any scientist will back those diescrpencies anymore...
in
Message 333 of that thread. I Googled it out of interest. It seems to be a 'fact' touted by evangelicals and their brethren, but nobody seems to be able to name these fifty one facts, the claim usually goes:
quote:
"In the year 1861 the French Academy of Science published a list of fifty-one so-called scientific facts, each of which, it was alleged, disproved some statement in the Bible. Today the Bible remains as it was then, but not one of those fifty-one so-called facts is held by men of science."
The spirit of the claim is no doubt true: science does not have dogma and changes its views as evidence roles in whereas the Bible doesn't change - only its interpretation by its readers. Is the claim itself actually true? What are these facts? If it is true, does it support the strong claim that the Bible is eternally TRUE whereas as science is only temporally 'true'?
If anybody can track them down, that would be great. A poster on
this newsgroup claims to have spoken with the French Academy of Sciences and received the {translated} response of:
quote:
We did not find in the tables of the Reports of the Academy of Science in 1861 the existence of such a list. Nothing makes it possible to affirm that this list existed.
Is this one of those religious urban legends that keep circulating because the people that pass it on simply believe (with a high degree of confidence) that it is fact based on what turns out to be highly spurious grounds?
I'd say this is one for
The Bible: Accuracy and Inerrancy.
™ Version 4.2