Pahu wrote:animist wrote:I have only checked out the second of these links. But have you actually read it yourself? It in fact debunks this attempt to prove the scientific accuracy of the Bible.
Yes, I have read it myself. Where does it debunk this attempt to prove the scientific accuracy of the Bible?
ok, here is the conclusion to this piece. If you read it again and fail to see that it denies the scientific accuracy of the Bible then I cannot really continue this conversation.
[edit] Conclusion
Science in the Bible
The idea of fideism is that faith is the most important thing of all, above evidence, above reason, above logic. It essentially states that you just have to believe, and ignore the evidence against you; these are just tests of faith, after all. However, for some, this faith is not enough, they need to prove it, and they want to prove it desperately. This is where things like this come in. Documentaries called "Proving The Bible True" or books like "Evidence Bible" play on the fears that people having their own faith in religion isn't strong enough. The result is that these people are then fed a pack of complete and utter lies and misrepresentations in order to back up their prejudices and pre-existing beliefs. The actual original meaning of "prove" is "to test", so if you want to go out and prove something, you need to be prepared to disprove it too. This is how science works, you test and you find out what is right and what is wrong - and then you test it again. Without this ability to say that you are wrong, or that your data was misleading, or that a new theory is better, science is nothing. And this is what we see here, with things like "Evidence Bible", they try to put it forward as scientific, but forget that the evidence can disprove their notions rather than back them up. Faced with this massive dilemma - accept the evidence and lose the beliefs, or keep the beliefs and just ignore the evidence as a test of faith - they take the option to misconstrue the evidence, lie, cheat and quote-mine their way out of an unwinnable situation.
This poster and card set titled "Science Confirms the Bible" is extremely simple and things like it are extremely common. Anyone with any specialty in the subjects mentioned can see the problems with it immediately, where the errors are, where the misrepresentations lie. Anyone with access to a Bible can also see the problems immediately, problems with translations or dubious interpretations. It's not difficult to debunk, but it is time consuming so why do it? The answer is simple: the key to the success of "Science Confirms the Bible" and similar efforts by fundamentalists is its simplicity. These things are given to school children who will take what they are given as fact and will understand it because of the ease of the language. This is a distortion, a caricature or parody of real science and these simple statements are outright wrong and devalue what science has actually given the world. Such things cannot go around completely unrefuted or even worse, merely laughed off as silly. The latter, especially, gets you nowhere; why just say that someone is wrong when you can prove it?