As a follow up to my debate summary, I wanted to go into a few topics that I don’t think Michael Shermer highlighted enough. The lines for questions filled up too quickly for me to have a chance at asking a question of the Reasons to Believe folks, so I’m left to simply post my rebuttals here on my blog.
The first thing I want to accuse them of doing is picking and choosing. They do this on many levels. The most obvious is “quote mining” where they take quotes that when taken out of context highlight the nearly opposite effect of the original text. This is a common tactic, but not the tactic I’m wanting to talk about today.
Today it’s all about picking and choosing verses from the bible. This is something every Christian does without knowing it. For nearly any statement, one can find verses to agree with or disagree with the statement.
The main assertion of Hugh Ross during his presentation is that the bible is a cosmological book. He points out the bible supporting these cosmological truths:
- Singularity in the beginning: Genesis 1:1, 2:3, 2:4, Psalm 148:5, Isaiah 40:26, 42:5, 45:18, John 1:3, Col. 1:15-17, Hebrews 11:3. This statement asserts that the bible agrees with the “big bang” model.
- The universe is expanding: Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24, 45:12, 48:13, 51:13, Zechariah 12:1, Psalm 104:2, Jeremiah 51:15, 10:12. Interesting thing to note is that unlike the previous slide, this slide had no particular order. While potentially just a coincidence, perhaps he’s wanting to draw attention away from the fact that over half of those verses are from the same book.
Now what Hugh Ross didn’t go into is how he decided those particular verses were the truth. For example:
- The Sun revolves around the Earth: Joshua 10:12-13, Psalms 19:4-6, Ecclesiastes 1:5
- The Earth is fixed in place: 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, Psalms 96:10, 2 Samuel 22:16, Psalms 18:15, Psalms 102:25, Proverbs 8:27-29, Isaiah 48:13, John 17:24, Psalms 104:5, Isaiah 24:18
- Similarly, the Earth is set up on pillars: Job 9:6, 1 Samuel 2:8, Job 38:4-6
- The Earth is flat: Job 28:24, Psalms 19:4-6, Daniel 4:10-11, Matthew 4:8, Isaiah 40:22, Psalms 136:6, Isaiah 44:24
- The Earth is finite (you can’t walk around it to get back to your starting spot): Psalms 103:12, Deuteronomy 28:64, Deuteronomy 33:17, 1 Samuel 2:10, Job 28:24, Job 38:13, Psalms 19:4-6, Psalms 22:27, Psalms 46:9, Psalms 48:10, Psalms 59:13, Psalms 61:2, Psalms 65:5, Isaiah 41:9, Jeremiah 51:16, Daniel 4:10-11, Mark 13:27
- The Earth has edges and corners: Job 26:10, Job 37:3, Proverbs 8:27-29, Isaiah 11:12, Isaiah 40:22, Isaiah 41:9, Ezekiel 7:2, Revelation 7:1, Revelation 20:8
And I could go on and on, but I won’t because in the search for a good list of these verses, I found a great article highlighting in more detail than I would ever want to do here. It shows the verses supporting a few other cosmological falsehoods as well.
Now here’s the question for the Reasons to Believe folks: what was it that allowed you to dismiss all of these verses as metaphor instead of being literal while being able to take the verses for your arguments and take them literally?
I know the answer: Science. The Bible didn’t predict that the universe was expanding, and it didn’t predict that there was a big bang. If it did, then it also predicted all of the other cosmological themes listed above.
The bible is not a cosmological book. It clearly shows the themes of ancient cosmology, and not of our modern understanding of the universe.
