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Author Topic:   Scientific errors in the Bible
The Arachnophile
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 163 (9303)
05-07-2002 7:27 AM


Die-hard YECs claim that the Bible is infallible. Indeed, much of their arguments against Evolution seem to rest on this very position.
I have discussed evolution and creationism on Norwegian websites for quite some time, but I have never had the scientific errors in the Bible explained and I hope some christian fundamentalist on this forum can explain the following:
1. The Bible clearly states that insects have four legs (believe me, they have six, and spiders have eight!):
"Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth. Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind. " (Lev. 11.21-22)
2. The hare is a ruminant!:
"And the hare, because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you." (Lev. 11.6.)
There are many, many more examples of how scientifically wrong the Bible is, but being an biologist, these are my favourites. I just hope some of you fundamentalists can try to explain this away.
The Arachnophile

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by Quetzal, posted 05-07-2002 8:17 AM The Arachnophile has replied
 Message 3 by compmage, posted 05-07-2002 8:24 AM The Arachnophile has not replied
 Message 8 by Brad McFall, posted 05-23-2002 11:59 AM The Arachnophile has not replied
 Message 10 by Tranquility Base, posted 07-05-2002 1:51 AM The Arachnophile has not replied
 Message 23 by JJboy, posted 08-31-2002 1:00 AM The Arachnophile has replied
 Message 126 by Laboo, posted 01-11-2003 5:22 PM The Arachnophile has replied
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Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5862 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 2 of 163 (9305)
05-07-2002 8:17 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by The Arachnophile
05-07-2002 7:27 AM


Hi Arachnophile! Welcome to evcforum. From your pseudonym, I'm hoping you're an entomologist. We have a YEC here who has been arguing that insects could have survived the year-long putative Flood by hanging on to hypothetical vegetation mats
. This, of course, to preclude having to have several million additional species on the Ark. It's on one of the Flood threads (sorry, you'll have to dig through them.) Maybe you could show possibly how few species could conceivably have survived in this manner. The argument was getting tiresome.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by The Arachnophile, posted 05-07-2002 7:27 AM The Arachnophile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by The Arachnophile, posted 05-07-2002 9:30 AM Quetzal has replied
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compmage
Member (Idle past 5143 days)
Posts: 601
From: South Africa
Joined: 08-04-2005


Message 3 of 163 (9306)
05-07-2002 8:24 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by The Arachnophile
05-07-2002 7:27 AM


quote:
Originally posted by The Arachnophile:

I have discussed evolution and creationism on Norwegian websites for quite some time, but I have never had the scientific errors in the Bible explained and I hope some christian fundamentalist on this forum can explain the following:

I don't think you will be getting any answers that don't require either a specific interpretation of the texts or something to the effect that these errors are a result of translation.
However, either of these mean that the bible is not the literal truth.
------------------
compmage

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The Arachnophile
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 163 (9308)
05-07-2002 9:30 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by Quetzal
05-07-2002 8:17 AM


Hi Arachnophile! Welcome to evcforum. From your pseudonym, I'm hoping you're an entomologist.
Thanks. Well, actually I am an arachnologist (we deal with spiders, daddy longlegs, and other arachnids).
We have a YEC here who has been arguing that insects could have survived the year-long putative Flood by hanging on to hypothetical vegetation mats
. This, of course, to preclude having to have several million additional species on the Ark. It's on one of the Flood threads (sorry, you'll have to dig through them.) Maybe you could show possibly how few species could conceivably have survived in this manner. The argument was getting tiresome.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks. I'll try to find it.
The Arachnophile

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by Quetzal, posted 05-07-2002 8:17 AM Quetzal has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 5 by Quetzal, posted 05-07-2002 10:23 AM The Arachnophile has replied

  
Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5862 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 5 of 163 (9310)
05-07-2002 10:23 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by The Arachnophile
05-07-2002 9:30 AM


One off-topic post and then I'll let you get back to your thread.
quote:
Well, actually I am an arachnologist.
Outstanding! Spiders are too cool. I think this must be evidence of the existence of god - or karma or something. I am at this very moment attempting to counter an argument on another bb about the evolutionary pathway (err, lack thereof according to my opponent) that led to web spinning behavior in modern orb spiders. Do you have any good on-line articles I can peruse? (I've already checked out Zschokke's page on Araneus diadematus and Vanuytven's "Arachnology Home Page" links. I'm looking for some refereed journal articles on-line that I don't have to pay for
).
Thanks for your help.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 4 by The Arachnophile, posted 05-07-2002 9:30 AM The Arachnophile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 6 by The Arachnophile, posted 05-08-2002 4:56 AM Quetzal has replied

  
The Arachnophile
Inactive Member


Message 6 of 163 (9349)
05-08-2002 4:56 AM
Reply to: Message 5 by Quetzal
05-07-2002 10:23 AM


Hmm. A bit difficult to find papers for free on the web but here are some links that may help:
http://www.brics.dk/~krink/netSpinner/index.html
http://www.americanarachnology.org/JoA/JoA_v27_n1/arac_27_01_0053.pdf
http://www.unibas.ch/dib/nlu/staff/sz/pdf/nomenorb.pdf
http://www.gwu.edu/~clade/spiders/jc.htm
I would recommend that you try to obtain the following books/articles:
Coddington, J. A. 1986. The monophyletic origin of the orb web. In W. A. Shear, ed. Spider Webs and Spider Behavior, pp. 319-363. Stanford Univ. Press.
Coddington, J. A. 1989. Spinneret silk spigot morphology. Evidence for the monophyly of orb-weaving spiders, Cyrtophorinae (Araneidae), and the group Theridiidae-Nesticidae. J. Arachnology, 17(1): 71-95.
Griswold, C. E., J. A. Coddington, G. Hormiga, and N. Scharff. 1998. Phylogeny of the orb-web building spiders (Araneae, Orbiculariae: Deinopoidea, Araneoidea). Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 123: 1-99.
Hope this helps.
And yes, spiders are wonderful creatures which are so complex in their contruction and behaviour that it is easy to believe they must be created by a supernatural being!
Spiders are also excellent model organisms for the study of evolution and evolutionary mechanisms.
The Arachnophile

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5862 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 7 of 163 (9358)
05-08-2002 11:47 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by The Arachnophile
05-08-2002 4:56 AM


Thanks a million for the links and references, Arachnophile.
Now back to your regularly scheduled thread...

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Brad McFall
Member (Idle past 5023 days)
Posts: 3428
From: Ithaca,NY, USA
Joined: 12-20-2001


Message 8 of 163 (10291)
05-23-2002 11:59 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by The Arachnophile
05-07-2002 7:27 AM


It is much better evidently to rest them on this foundation while the indivdual development of evolution is being synthesized.
The reason more results are not appearing sooner is that internal differences arose in creation science that with so much less funding that fundys science time is taken away from building the philsophy post-naturalism on something else such as intelligent design.

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Jonathan
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 163 (12794)
07-04-2002 10:28 PM
Reply to: Message 2 by Quetzal
05-07-2002 8:17 AM


quote:
Originally posted by Quetzal:
We have a YEC here who has been arguing that insects could have survived the year-long putative Flood by hanging on to hypothetical vegetation mats
.

Which has better odds of actually occuring in nature?
1.)A few bugs survived a storm by floating around in/on debris.
Or
2.)That life spontaniously arose from a chemical soup?
For now Ill put my money on the bugs. I havent seen any new never before seen animals springing out of my pond but I have seen clumps of ants the size of my fist floating on the water after a flood.
Please dont discount some of the low probabilities in the creationist theories when there are far far greater streaches in the biogenesis/evolutionary theory.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 10 of 163 (12810)
07-05-2002 1:51 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by The Arachnophile
05-07-2002 7:27 AM


1. Is 'on all four' a literal translation or a colloquial one? Is it even possible that the ancients use 'on all four' colloquially as we do? Simple Hebrew/Aramaic research will answer the first part.
2. The ruminent issue is discussed at www.answersingenesis.org (search for ruminant probably). The point made is that the term 'chew the cud' may have included both classic cud chewing and the fact that rabbits eat their dung.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-05-2002]

This message is a reply to:
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gene90
Member (Idle past 3813 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 11 of 163 (12822)
07-05-2002 10:03 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Jonathan
07-04-2002 10:28 PM


[QUOTE][b]1.)A few bugs survived a storm by floating around in/on debris.[/QUOTE]
[/b]
How hot was the water? You may be aware that some calculations of the water temperature of the flood are well above boiling.
Also, explain how an olive tree (in the Bible) and a number of bristlecone pines (in the American southwest) survived a year underwater.
I think I should add that we are not talking about "a few bugs". We are talking hundreds of thousands of species, including those that exist as parasites inside other bugs. The ants you are refering to that ball up in a flood are probably fire ants, an accidental introduction from the Amazon River basin, where flooding is an annual ritual (hence their rafting behavior is an adaptation not common in other species).
They reached the United States through human shipping, making landfall in New Orleans in the 19th century. If they could survive the harsh conditions of a year-long brine flood, then they would probably have made it to the US before Europeans did, floating in ant rafts (or debris) across the Gulf. They also would have had a decent chance of reaching Europe and Africa.
This is one of the problems for the flood presented by biogeography.
If bugs could float all over the world on rafts, then they should all be cosmopolitan. Especially after the Flood. Another biogeography problem is that if all animals came through the Middle East, then the arid regions around Palestine should be the most ecologically productive deserts in the world. There should be representatives of most any desert organism in the world found there. I have yet to hear of Western Diamondbacks found in the West Bank or any species from the American Southwest.

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Replies to this message:
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John
Inactive Member


Message 12 of 163 (12830)
07-05-2002 11:17 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by gene90
07-05-2002 10:03 AM


The thread is now dead but I had a discussion with TC concerning the olive branch, if anyone wants to take a peek.
http://www.evcforum.net/cgi-bin/dm.cgi?action=page&f=7&t=27&p=19
------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

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Jonathan
Inactive Member


Message 13 of 163 (12869)
07-05-2002 6:27 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by gene90
07-05-2002 10:03 AM


[QUOTE]Originally posted by gene90:
[b] [QUOTE][b]1.)A few bugs survived a storm by floating around in/on debris.[/QUOTE]
[/b]
quote:
How hot was the water? You may be aware that some calculations of the water temperature of the flood are well above boiling.
Some, not all.
quote:
Also, explain how an olive tree (in the Bible) and a number of bristlecone pines (in the American southwest) survived a year underwater.
Devine intervention? If God can create the earth and flood it Im sure he can preserve a few trees while they're under water. If God is real he certantly doesnt follow our laws of physics.
[QUOTE]If bugs could float all over the world on rafts, then they should all be cosmopolitan. Especially after the Flood. [/B][/QUOTE]
Then why do we have birds, snakes, insects all of very similar structure on every contenant? Did they all evolve independantly of each other?
[This message has been edited by Jonathan, 07-05-2002]
[This message has been edited by Jonathan, 07-05-2002]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by gene90, posted 07-05-2002 10:03 AM gene90 has replied

Replies to this message:
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Percy
Member
Posts: 22359
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 4.8


Message 14 of 163 (12872)
07-05-2002 7:12 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Jonathan
07-05-2002 6:27 PM


Jonathan writes:

Devine intervention? If God can create the earth and flood it Im sure he can preserve a few trees while they're under water. If God is real he certantly doesnt follow our laws of physics.
This is fine from a faith perspective. It only becomes an issue when people want to teach it in science class.
--Percy

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John
Inactive Member


Message 15 of 163 (12874)
07-05-2002 7:46 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Jonathan
07-05-2002 6:27 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Jonathan:
Then why do we have birds, snakes, insects all of very similar structure on every contenant? Did they all evolve independantly of each other?

Insects popped up in the Devonian (410-360 mya), reptiles in the Carboniferous (360-286 mya), birds in the Jurassic (208-146 mya). Pangea began to split around 180 mya. See the overlap?
Various -zoics
Pangea
------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

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