But Genesis is not a science textbook’ - Page 1

http://creation.com/but-genesis-is-not-a-science-textbook
by Jonathan Sarfati

But Genesis is not a science textbook’

How many times have you heard that? My favourite short answer is, ‘Thank goodness it’s not—textbooks always have mistakes and go out-of-date in a few years; the Bible has no errors and is always current!’

History vs. science

Actually, Genesis is about history more than science (of course it touches upon, and is highly relevant to, aspects of anthropology, biology, geology, etc.). Normal (operational) science that puts men on the moon and cures diseases is based on repeatable observations in the present. Genesis claims to be an eyewitness account about the past, which can’t be repeated. In particular, Genesis is an account of world history from creation to the beginning of the Messianic people, Israel.

Some might say, ‘But … Genesis is not a history textbook either—it was written for simple people who wouldn’t have understood long ages or evolution.’ But as we show in ‘Genesis according to evolution’, there were plenty of ways to communicate that alleged ‘truth’ in simple language, if that’s what God intended.

Genesis and science

Historians of science agree that modern science really blossomed in Christianized Europe, while it was ‘stillborn’ in other cultures. Surprised? You shouldn’t be! Science requires that our thoughts should be rational, the universe is orderly, that man can investigate the world, and that results should be reported honestly. The Bible explains that: we are made in the image of a rational God (Genesis 1:26–27), God is a God of order not of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), God gave man dominion over creation (Genesis 1:28), and He commanded honesty (Exodus 20:16). But if evolution were true, there would be no logical basis for any of this.

That’s why almost every issue of Creation has articles featuring Bible-believing scientists. This time we feature a leading satellite scientist (pp. 18–23) and one of the pioneers of life-saving MRI (pp. 40–42). The latter also reveals discrimination against creationists today, often blasted as being ‘not real scientists’. Thankfully, these discriminators were not around in the days of Newton, Faraday and Pasteur, to name a few of the many great creationist founders of modern science!

Just about faith and morals?

‘But … the Bible is a book about faith and morality—that’s the important thing.’ However, the Bible’s doctrine and morality cannot be separated from its historical/scientific aspects. Without the Resurrection of Jesus, there would be no Christianity—it is a historical fact that Jesus had vacated the tomb on the third day, and appeared to 500 people at once (1 Corinthians 15:1–6). But this also impinges on science—naturalistic scientists assert that it is impossible for dead men to rise.

Furthermore, the meaning of Jesus’ death and Resurrection depends entirely on the real history of Genesis 3. That is, a real first man, Adam, really sinned and really brought physical death. Therefore, the Last Adam, Jesus, really died for our sins and really brought physical resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:1–4, 21–22, 45).

What about marriage? This is a moral teaching if ever there was one. Yet when Jesus answered on this subject, he cited Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as real history, not allegory (Matt. 19:3–9, Mark 10:6–9). Furthermore, Jesus said that the first human couple was there ‘from the beginning of creation’, not billions of years afterwards. This is a major problem for Christians who have reinterpreted the Bible to fit into the big bang. (See ‘Big bang can’t explain’ (p. 7) for scientific problems that might mean that these Christians have to reinterpret their reinterpretations!)

Even the Ten Commandments, obviously about morality, are meaningless without the history. The Fourth Commandment, about the Sabbath, is completely based on the history of Creation Week, ‘Six days you shall labour and do all your work, … for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day’ (Exodus 20:9–11).

Jesus asked Nicodemus: ‘I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’ (John 3:12). So if we can’t trust the Bible about earthly things (such as the timeframe of creation), why should we trust it on heavenly things (e.g. faith and morals)?

What it’s all about: authority

Ever had people asking, ‘What’s the big deal? Why don’t you spend as much time arguing over baptism, the Sabbath, predestination vs. free will, last days, whether charismatic gifts are for today, or forms of church government; as you do over what Genesis means?’

Here’s the difference: all these debates presuppose that the Bible is the authority, and argue over what it means. The creation issue is about whether the Bible or modern ‘science’ is the authority on what happened in Earth’s past. [See also the later article End-times and Early-times for more explanation.]

But the Bible is the Eyewitness account of the Maker who was there, knows everything and never errs. Jesus accepted that Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). But scientists weren’t there (Job 38:4), don’t know everything, and make mistakes.

This shows the folly of demanding that creationists ‘leave the Bible out of it’. As ‘Don’t answer—do answer!’ points out, this is ‘answering a fool according to his folly’. This approach effectively abandons the Bible’s truth claims, and concedes defeat. It confirms the unbeliever in his sinful view that man is the ultimate arbiter of truth, and puts God on trial—what Christian would knowingly want to do that?

Commandment, Exodus 20 v 15:
Thou shalt not steal.

Commandment, Exodus 20 v 16:
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

See, don't need a textbook.

According to the Bible, the Earth is not round. I think that pretty much ends any debate on the Bible as a scientific document.

Your argument will not convince any reasonably well-educated person, even if they believe in God. If you are trying to claim there is science in the Bible then you would be better served by showing it.

And Genesis was not an eyewitness account. If we believe that it was Moses who wrote it, it was his interpretation of what he claims God told him. Moses did not witness anything. If God was capable of inscribing the 10 Commandments why didn't He simply write the Bible Himself? An eyewitness account actually requires an eyewitness.

This is an interesting question: "So if we can’t trust the Bible about earthly things (such as the timeframe of creation), why should we trust it on heavenly things (e.g. faith and morals)?"

The answer I'll give won't be what you expected. The answer is, we can't trust it on either point. The Bible allows slavery, capital punishment for non-violent crimes, the subjugation of women, genocide, polygamy, rape (The punishment for rape? The rapist must marry the victim.), etc.

The Bible, the OT in particular, reflects the values of the culture who created it. My values in 2016 America are far from the values of Middle Eastern nomadic goat herders who lived 5,000 years ago.

Noitsyou, Shtal has frequently shown that he simply cannot tell the difference between "witness" [as in "how do I withness to a non christian ?"] and an "eye witness".

Faith might be fair to categorize as "heavenly", since it does require grace.

Morals, such as the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule, do stand up to the eternal test of time.

Does the Bible talks about Astronomy? Let’s extrapolate in a current scientific stand point!

 
I will start with Biblical scripture to begin and then you would understand afterwards!
Psalm 19:1…The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
There is something about universe that when you look at it, you think of God, it is his handy-work and God design it that way, he design it so we can see his glory in creation and people when look at the sky they cannot honestly say that there is no God. We live in the day when we need a big GOD not a little GOD, the real GOD is the big GOD…he is the God of creation. If you look at the universe, galaxies and all the stars I can see it makes me feel little small and it makes me see God very big and that is reality. And I think that is the point and I think that is why he did it that way and if people think about it God did this all of course as he did it in six days, most of it was done in one day on day four and I love the way how Bible describes the creation of all this hundreds billions of galaxies and hundred billions of stars and it sum-up in this little phrase he made the stars also :) It is so easy - to spread those out into space like that - so really incredible!
And now I want to talk about some other verses where Bible touches astronomy, my point is when the Bible touches on the astronomy its right! And we have to all agree these verses today so for example Bible talks about spherical earth, people probably heard young earth creationist all they “like” flat earthers, well apparently they haven’t read the Bible because Bible talks about the earth being round like a circle and it describes in Isaiah 40:22 where God describes, he says it’s like “the circle of the Earth” or in Job 26:10 which I think it is even better one it says God inscribes “a circle on the face of the waters of the boundaries between light and darkness, this is indicating this is spherical planet. And now this is perhaps the oldest book in the Bible but if people now-days look the most text books they would NOT credit Bible with that discovery, they say we all know Greek philosopher Pythagoras he was the first to come up with this idea that the Earth might be round, but that’s (570-500 B.C.) and credited with being the first to assert that the earth is round, but Job in the Bible around ~2000 B.C. so God is going to beat by quite a period of time ~1500 hundreds of years …Also Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) be credited with being the first person to prove that this is so and apparently secular folks ignored the Bible. Btw there is idea that Christopher Columbus was the first to come up with that idea is a myth, people already knew the world was round at the time of Columbus but be surprise how often we hear that.
There are lots of verses like that, the earth floats in space? Hangs on nothing according to Job 26:7 God “hangs the Earth upon nothing” (2000 B.C.) it is poetic passage to be sure but it accurately describes earth hanging in space, hanging on nothing but gravity, wonderful description is in it?
But compare to early Greek scientists taught that the Earth was a flat disk and floated on water. This was the dominant scientific view of the time. (800-900 B.C)
I wouldn’t really call the Bible as a science book; I think it is a salvation book, but when it’s speaks to science because God always speaks the truth, everything that it says about science is true! Even thou it is mostly salvation book.
Also Bible talks about expansion of the universe in same passage actually Isaiah 40:22 God “stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in.” (Isaiah 760-698 B.C.)
 
Astronomers Wirtz and Hubble in (1920’s) demonstrated from observations of galaxy red shifts that the entire universe is expanding.
 
And that would something the secular scientists like didn’t discover until the 1920’s but that would something Bible talked about millennia before that and so I think that is really interesting, it is really no way you could know that without modern science - except by revelation from God and I think that’s conformation we really do have a God who knows what he is talking about, he inspired his word. But VK4 btw can say is that mean there is a Big Bang? Because you know you got this expanding universe is that mean it exploded through existence billions years ago? And my answer is no, just because something getting bigger doesn’t mean exploded into existence billions of years ago, perhaps some of readers here expanding little bit, that does not mean they exploded into existence billions of years ago, does it? No it doesn’t, so that is the logical fallacy. Btw VK4 may say Big Bang at least predicted that expansion and my answer is it did NOT, this expansion was discover in 1920’s and Big Bang came alone in 1931 to explain that expansion from naturalistic point of view, but you see VK4 the Bible talked about this in advanced.
 
Now lets move on here….:)
 
James Joule (A.D. 1818-1889) is generally credited with the discovery of the conservation of energy).
 
And here is what the Bible says:
“All things were made by him” (John 2:3) “And on the seventh day God ended his work” (Gen 2:2) “God is upholding all things” (Hebrews 1:3) “By Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:17)
 
Also, Bible talks about conservation of Mass and Energy; basically the amount stuff in the universe is constant and that’s what we would expect given what the Bible says, because everything made by God, God upholds what he made and so we expect nothing going to cease to exists and God is not going to bring anything else into existence, because he is done, he ended his work on the seventh day, Bible tells us; and so those two principals combine what we called conservation of Mass and Energy. VK4 could say so there are no new galaxies being made now? Well, there is no new material being made now and I think that is probably true, there’s no new galaxies forming as well, you can re-arrange existing matter and make new things but there is no new stuff coming into existence or cease to exist and that is Biblical principal. James Joule is usually credited with the discovery of that but as far as I can tell the Bible got it right centuries earlier; not surprising considering its very word of God and so it touches on science is right.
 
Also, Bible indicates countless numbers of stars, it describes Abraham’s descendants “as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore” (Genesis 22:17) which is a figure of speech indicating uncountable number, I know that because it says which cannot be numbered from altitude but of course God knows the number, he counts the numbers of stars Bible tells us, but we couldn’t estimate that “Which cannot be numbered for multitude” (Genesis 22:17)…
 
Astronomers estimated that our galaxy contains over 100 billion stars, and that our universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.
 
You know that would have been hard to believe when it was first written in Bible because the number of stars you can see with your naked eye, few thousand, that is a big number but you can count it, and when we discovered telescopes and we look down into space and see all this star clusters, that maybe has hundred thousand stars right there, there is no way you can count all that? Scientists think there are maybe hundred billions stars in our galaxy or more you couldn’t count that number in your life-time that is why it’s only an estimate. So how true is this verse in Bible? Scientific inside giving us even more appreciation for this verse how true it is. And so there literally hundred billion galaxies, stars way beyond what we can even estimate, there is no way know how many stars in each galaxy? And that’s true scientists can make estimation, rough estimation that we couldn’t possible count the number is the point; and so Bible is certainly right when talks, touches on the astronomy, it’s right.

Dude, I don't really think anyone is going to read all of that. I hope you just copy and pasted it.

I skimmed it and regret to inform you that a circle is not a sphere. Also, Isaiah was written during, and even after, the Babylonian Captivity (putting it in the same time frame of Pythagoras) so if there is any astronomy in it, it probably came from the Babylonians.

The Book of Job was also written around the period that Pythagoras lived. It is mentioned in the Book of Job that the Earth is on pillars.

So even if the Bible claimed that the Earth was a sphere (not just a circle) it would have been after other cultures had already come to that conclusion. In other words, the Bible was not ahead of its time.

BTW, some believe that the ancient Egyptians believed the Earth was a sphere 1,000 years before Moses lived.

And there is no such thing as an uncountable number. That's impossible. Whether or not we have the capability to count all of the stars is a different matter.

Dude, you should do better homework lol about when Bible was written and what it says :)

I know what Origen has written about the Bible as well as what Spinoza wrote. I don't think you even know who they are.

The dating of when certain books were written was established by people who know far more about the people who wrote it, their language and history, than you or I ever will. Biblical scholars, some of whom may be believers, date the writings in the Bible a lot later than what you are claiming.

You might want to actually find out how old the oldest Torah is as well as the date of the Dead Sea Scrolls. We know these dates. The oldest Dead Sea Scroll is dated 250 BC I believe. You say the Book of Job was written in 2,000 BC but there isn't any existing Hebrew Biblical text that is even close to that age. The stories in the OT are older than the texts we have but between the time they were first told and when they were written down in the versions we have, a lot of revisions and changes were made.

Shtal isn't listening; he has his fingers in his ears and is going "La la la la la".