The relevence of Biblical claims to science

For your information historians as historians do not regard any ancient historical document as being so trustworthy that accounts of miracles should be accepted as true.And there is every reason to suspect that the Gospels - partisan documents written decades after the facts - and quite possibly not even intended as literal history - are not among the most reliable of documents even by the standards of their time.And indeed we know of clear problems - such as the fact that Matthew places Jesus' birth towards the end of the reign of Herod the Great, while Luke places it during a census conducted about ten years later after the Romans annexed Judaea.

It is these "Purpose Questions" that I am talking about in my post #50. It is valid and some here discussing this with you even agree that there are the questions and the Bible answers them to our satisfaction as believers.Science though does not recognize the need for the "Purpose Questions" since it is not interested in the metaphysical by definition. All the issues you are bringing up are valid from the perspective of seeking knowledge in the abstract but you must realize that science by definition limits itself to a subset of all thing you can possibly know. Science only tries to discover and explain the things that all people of all faiths and backgrounds can observe about the natural world without subjectivity. Science combined with a search for the inner truth that many of us know in different ways is something other than science. This other thing is subjective, sometimes irrational, and most certainly not universal to all people. That is why in a public education system of a free state or a topic of conversation based on the principles of science there is no room for this 'extra-science' thing.

Ok, Quetzal has shown me a reasonable filter for valid questions. Here is one:1) Why do people speak different languages?Science is incapable of coming up with a full answer. The Bible, however, has some information that scientific methodology cannot and has not come up with: Genesis 11:1-9.Gen 11:1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.
Gen 11:2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
Gen 11:3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.
Gen 11:4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."
Gen 11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.
Gen 11:6 And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Gen 11:7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."
Gen 11:8 So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
Gen 11:9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.So that should be a valid example. We certainly can verify that people have different languages now. So this should pass the test.

Ummmm....would you like to expand on that a bit? Did all those cyanobacteria, trilobites, placoderms, and archosaurs that died millions and millions of years before the first human lived not really die, or did they all share our "sinful nature?" Or does "death" have some non-standard meaning in your/the Bible's claim here?

Jazzs,Yes, you are totally right. Let me clarify though. And this is a super important point:We are debating EVOLUTION vs CREATION on this forumMy point is that MORE THAN JUST SCIENCE is relevent to that debate. And particularly, CLAIMS ABOUT CREATION are relevent. I propose the claims of the Bible as being a part of the debate here. Perhaps Buddists and Muslims would also like their documents and references to creation to also be included.

Coragyps,I am stating Scripture's clear answer here on why death is in the world.

Once again you are assuming that science cannot have an answer just because it may not currently have an answer. Also your answer is subjective and therefore other people following your train of though may not and presumably will not come to the same conclusion. The parts of science that hold true today are those that no matter who you are you can look at the data and you will always come to the same conclusion regardless of personality/religion/subjectivity/etc.

Oh? Incapable, forever? And your verses are more complete than the picture a couple of generations of linguists have come up with? "Confusing their language" gave rise to !Kung and Basque and Hmong and the other 5000 languages we know of? That's pretty lame.

Just as a slight aside, but still related I suppose:http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp

Well there's a problem there.Firstly are you claiming that no languages have developed or significantly changed since then ? What about French, for instance ? And modern English is quite different from Old or even Middle English. Given this evidence why should we assume that languages split in a single one-off event rather than diverging gradually through the same processes we know to have occurred ?What does the actual data we have suggest ? A single event in the Middle East a few thousand yars ago or a long process of divergence ? Or is it your idea that we should simply stick with a Bible story rather than examining the actual evidence ?

It is perfectly valid to believe and even discuss Creationism. It is when you decide to make it into "Creation Science" that you run into the problem that I have outlined for you.As long as you are willing to realize that it is part of a subjective religious faith then we should have no more problems. Lets get everyone else to stop trying to get "Creation Science" into our schools and there is no more public controversy. Then we can open up some threads (shameless plug for my Evolution != Atheism thread) to talk about how our different brands of Creationism are valid within our shared religion. And in this thread we can use all kinds of subjective and non scientific standards that we want.

Science explains this easily, and also explains something your Bible does not - why communications technology has resulted in a decrease in the number of living languages. Also, the Bible doesn't explain why languages can be sorted into the same kind of "evolutionary" trees that inundate biology.The reason that there are different languages is the same reason that there are different species. Just as geographic reality means that a population can't breed with every other population at once, so too can human comminities not remain in constant contact with all other communities. Hence, languages develop and change between isolated communities, until they're almost incomprehensible to each other. Like a kind of language speciation,

Maestro claims:

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Why do people speak different languages?

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Science is incapable of coming up with a full answer

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Excuse me? Since when did this qualify as a big scientific mystery? It seems you're letting your own lack of imagination give Scripture credit for explaining things that already have a valid explanation.Don't tell me, you don't believe languages evolved via human migration either?regards,
Esteban Hambre

I know that. Your Scripture is clearly wrong on this issue. Death was around for three billion years before any critters with the brainpower to be capable of "sin" as the same scriptures paint it.

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Firstly are you claiming that no languages have developed or significantly changed since then ?

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No no ... I understand that languages have developed over time. But this was the start of it.