The relevence of Biblical claims to science

First, any person trying to do science who starts with the bible to form an hypothesis has erred.Second, find one example where a creationist has used the bible as a starting point and done real science that has stood the standard tests of falsifiability, repeatability and so forth. You won't be able to.Third, if this is going to be some argument trying to show the validity of the bible or christian mythology, you are doomed from the start, as that is one of your stated propositions, making the argument circular.

Now we are back to where I think Percy thought we were supposed to be going.
You suggest that there is another methodology of some sort. How about describing it in general and then giveing a few examples.(btw regarding the Vit K --- it is rather clear that the behavior is the same between males and females -- that in itself, without any other details invalidates your idea. )This message has been edited by NosyNed, 12-22-2004 03:09 PM

As I read what Maestro is trying to say, he isn't saying that his methodology has to stand the test of science. He seems to suggest he has a completely different way of determinting "truth" about the natural world.We wait for him to describe this and show how it is better.We've asked for this before. We have never seen anything useful.

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You suggest that there is another methodology of some sort. How about describing it in general and then giveing a few examples.

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I thought I had. It was the methodology that was just rejected:

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Any person trying to do science who starts with the bible to form an hypothesis has erred.

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Perhaps you now understand why this is a bit unfair. If I were to develop a hypothesis from the Bible and test it and find it to be true, then we are dealing with a case in which the Bible and Science agree. These are the cases that you reject because you can simply claim that the Bible is a story anyway, so how hard is it to write a discovery and give God the credit?If my hypothesis comes from the Bible and is not shown true in the scientific methodology, it is a place where the two disagree. And, as we have seen around here, when the Bible disagrees with scientific methodology, scientific methodology always wins.Where to go then??Perhaps we could start here:

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Second, find one example where a creationist has used the bible as a starting point and done real science that has stood the standard tests of falsifiability, repeatability and so forth. You won't be able to.

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Would this do much?

But, it doesn't. It gives answers that are wrong, or inferior in usefulness to scientific answers. Instead of giving answers that advance knowledge, it gives answers designed to make the asker stop asking impertinent questions. "Why are there so many languages?" "Because God wanted it that way. Now shut up before He hears you."

Is CrashFrog proposing a slightly different challenge that may bring us to a helpful place?

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But, it doesn't. It gives answers that are wrong, or inferior in usefulness to scientific answers. Instead of giving answers that advance knowledge, it gives answers designed to make the asker stop asking impertinent questions.

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Is this the deeper issue with atheistic scientists? Would it be fruitful to try to disprove this claim specifically?

But this isn't want you said you wanted to do. The above is using the methodology of science to show something about the natural world.I guess I'm not clever enough. I simply can't think of another approach that might give better answers than the scientific approach does.So far all I see of your suggested method is:
1) Read the bible
2) Assume true
3) Stop there, do NOT check what you've been told.As soon as you DO check with the real world you start to move closer to the scientific methodology. If you don't how the heck do you know you are half way right.When we DO check of course we find that the Bible is right in some places (but not, it seems, very many) and wrong (very wrong) in a bunch of places.

No. This is the issue with all scientists: how do we find out, to the best of our ability, what the best models of reality are?The Bible, because it is not based on reality, gives rise to models that do not make accurate predictions or explain all observations. It can't even address most of the issues in science, and where it does, it provides explanations that contradict observations we've already made.The Bible doesn't make scientific issues clearer. If it did, creationists wouldn't have abandoned it in the 18th century.

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But, it doesn't. It gives answers that are wrong, or inferior in usefulness to scientific answers. Instead of giving answers that advance knowledge, it gives answers designed to make the asker stop asking impertinent questions. "Why are there so many languages?" "Because God wanted it that way. Now shut up before He hears you."

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God does not tell you to shut up. If he did you would not be able to speak. Instead, ask and it shall be given to you. If you do not believe the Bible how can we offer credible advice to you? We credit science to whatever it does, why can you not credit the Bible as real? Because you follow the current scientific community's trends and uncertainty, which many times end up being proven wrong.There are many languages because the heaven above was being approached by Nim-Rod and his tower of Babel. Mankind was very much well advanced, and so God scattered them and confused them on account of their pride."Ask and you shall receive" does not seem to me to be telling you to shutup before He hears you. Instead, "the truth will set you free." And isn't that what all men want? The truth? Science might be able to give a human explanation to history and God's creation, but as long as we die you will never know the whole truth, for you die or pass out of your body at death into eternal life (or, you are reborn into a life with no death--since death is rebirth, so if you die, how can you die again? Death is part of this life). And the Bible does offer insight and answer to questions. In another thread of mine I have shown two instances in the Bible describing the earth as a circle, and also Ecclesiastes which describes the earth as round--and repeatedly uses its knowledge of this to call things "a chasing after the wind".If you use science as your religion, and reject Biblical relevancy, how can you expect to be respected when people who use the Bible as their religion accept scientific relevancy? I tell you the truth, though you were once born from your mother's womb, you are still a fetus in earth's womb. You once could not see, but now can. So if you refuse to acknowledge that though your fetal body could not see, but now does, and that you are still just a fetus in earth growing as a spirit with closed eyes, then you admit you are ignorant. First consider other options, using reason: then attempt to come across as reasonable.

OK...so it sounds like the challenge is:Show a better methodology for finding the correct answers (that science cares about) than an approach that uses purely scientific methodology and nothing else.Does this nail it?

No kidding. This is what I asked you to do in Msg 1 of this thread, n'est-ce pas? After 145 posts, you're just now "getting it"?

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No kidding. This is what I asked you to do in Msg 1 of this thread, n'est-ce pas? After 145 posts, you're just now "getting it"?

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Friend, look at how many of you there are responding to me, and how many of me there are. It is easy to get overwhelmed and sidetracked.I will consider the challenge of post 145 over the holidays and try to present a reasonable argument to folks here. Have a good holiday...I'm off for awhile.

I'll accept that. Have a good holiday - I'm off tomorrow myownself for about a week.

Maestro,I'm going to make some suggestions, and I'm making them in Admin mode because I think they're important to this discussion.First, you're changing your approach far too often, and it tells me that you haven't thought things through. So far we've had the Vitamin K and Genesis origins fallacies cited in support of the spirtual contributing to science. We've assumed the Bible is true and then found that it contradicts the evidence from the real world. You misunderstood the purpose behind Quetzal's stipulation about the Bible, taking it to mean you could just claim victory for the Bible, when the true purpose was to allow you to explain your spirtual improvements to scientific methodology.I think you should slow down to only a few well-thought out posts per day. Please give this advice some sincere consideration.Second, this thread is picking up posts at a pace consistent with a nonsense thread, which admins have a responsibility to close down. Few can resist correcting obvious error, and that's why your posts are attracting so much attention. I know you believe your errors on Vitamin K and in logic and so forth are just minor issues that we're letting get in the way of you making your point, but as the discussion develops (slowly, I hope) you'll discover that your errors are a bit more fundamental.Please don't take up this point: Where men take their inspiration is widely varied. It could come from dreams, the Bible, or as with Archimedes, while taking a bath.Your task is to show how the spirtual could inform scientific research. Please take all the time you need. And more.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

No, but religious believers like you do, and have. Aren't you the guy who just started a thread where atheists like me are called a variety of uncharitable names in the topic title itself? Because it doesn't give rise to accurate models about the universe. Therefore, its input on the nature of the universe is useless. The Bible does not advance knowledge. If it did it wouldn't have been abandoned by creationists in the 18th century. Unfortunately for you we know that isn't true, because that story makes predictions that don't hold up. For instance we know that we've constructed taller towers, or reached greater altitudes, than anything that existed in Biblical times. When Shuttle astronauts approach the "heaven above", they don't come back speaking any other languages than the ones they all went up with.We can reject the Biblical account because it doesn't advance knowledge. The scientific explanation, on the other hand, tells us much about the history of human civilizations, how language operates in the brain, and how humans coin new words for new concepts. These explanations do much to advance our knowledge. Well, I don't. I have no religion. Rather, I use science to find out what is most likely to be true about the universe.We reject the Bible as an unimpeachable authority in science simply because it has been impeached; there's much to be learned about human linguistic history from the Bible, but nothing to be learned at all from taking its claims at face value.The Bible, simply, is wrong. But that's not to say we can't learn things from it, and we do. Just as we learn things from fairy tales and myths.