Do you think the Bible takes precedence over evidence?

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Then you know nothing about evolution and quite possibly have little understanding of the scientific method. As far as any scientific theory can be, evolution is a FACT!



Absolute garbage, I would find your beliefs laughable if they were not so insidiously dangerous. Yes Newton may have believed in God, virtually everyone did back then, and if you did not you kept quite about your atheism, and pretended otherwise. To suggest that science without god is flawed is plain stupid. The laws of motion did not require a belief in god for their discovery. As Newton said "I see far because I stand on the shoulders of giants" this refers to the scientists who had gone before him and the accumulated knowledge that he had access to, not the bible. Yes scientists can have a belief in god and science without contradiction, but only as far as they allow scientific understanding to have free range without the boundaries of their faith. To deny evolution or to believe in a 6k year old earth is to do the opposite, to claim such beliefs are scientifically based is to commit fraud against humanity

Are you equating atheism with science as it is generally practiced? Then I must disagree. Nothing in my scientific education included that I must interpret all observations under the assumption that there is no god. The closest things to an axiom I know in the natural sciences are that any law of nature must be the same for all observers and that laws of nature must not contradict each other.

If you are dividing the set of valid axioms into atheistic and YEC, how do you account for the many Chrsitians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Shintoists, etc who work as scientists without abandoning their faiths? How do you account for Hindu fundamentalists who say the universe is far older than the cosmologists say, because their holy books tell them so?

Or are you saying that all sets of assumptions that are internally consistent are equally good as a foundation for natural sciences? That you would accept Very Old Universe Creationism as being as valid as Young Earth Creationism or more orthodox science?


That means you would accept something in the Bible could be false? That is my question. What happens if your book and your best interpretation of the evidence are in conflict? If in every case of conflict you always declare you must be wrong and the bible right, then you can't determine whether something in the bible is true or false, because your decision is a foregone conclusion.

That is the essence of my question: What happens when it looks like the Bible is wrong? Would you ever be willing to decide something in the bible could be wrong? If not, you can't honestly say you can test anything that is in the Bible.

All of the ideologies can be treated as axiomatic foundations from which to develop postulates and theorems which make testable predictions.



I can't test just anything in the Bible, just as I can't test just anything that was written by Polybius or Thucydides or Tacitus. To make the requirement that everything must be testable in order to be true would eliminate yesterday in general.

As for a datum conflicting with a prediction derived from an interpretation of a part of the Bible causing the all out rejection of the entire set of books therein, no. As long as atheists are willing to appeal to the unknown for the origin of life and have faith in some eventual formulation of abiogenesis, I see no reason why they should hold me to a higher standard than themselves.

A case of miscommunication. I didn't mean to ask whether everything in the bible can be tested, or whether you would be willing to discard all of the Bible as soon as you find one conflict or how you compare to atheists.


That entails that the the result of the test is not a forgone conclusion. To rephrase my point, if in all cases of contradiction between your interpretation of a Bible passage and your best interpretation of evidence you conclude that your interpretation of the Bible must be right, then you have nothing you can test. If your conclusion of any test is that your interpretation of the Bible must be right, then the Bible, as you interpret it, makes no testable predictions. That appears to be true for the people I quoted and for Kurt Wise. I would like to know how common that is. If you found a conflict, do you think you could decide that your interpretation of the relevant Bible passage could be wrong?

no. for instance, in the book of matthew i think it is they try to match up jesus geneology with that of king david. when in reality it doesnt fit or something, ive already spoke and posted evidence of this and really dont feel like doing it again. in my opinion the early bible was nothing more than a rip-off of the sumerain myths. i mean read it really, how can you base you're faith on something that is stolen?

I believe that both science and religion have truth, and while sometimes they may seem to be contradictory (i.e. the creation and garden of eden) if we keep learning it will all make sense in time and we'll see that they both tell the same story. At the moment, I keep the stuff that I can't reconcile in different compartments, and which compartment I open depends on whether I'm at school or church.

I think that one must take a purposive approach to answering the the OP's question.

If, implicit in the question is the qualification, "for all purposes," then clearly, the answer must be no. The notion that scientific understanding changes with new understandings is not, to my mind, an invalidation of scientific method, but rather a demonstration of its dynamic capacity to grow and develop. Revelation in science is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It is an accumulation of knowledge built over time.

If the purpose of the question is to find a determination of some absolute truth, then clearly neither scripture nor science can claim it. Scientific inquiry, by its very nature, assumes that there is some component of universal truth that is, as yet, unknown, that that human ingenuity will be capable of understanding it. Meanwhile, scripture, positing that only the creator is omniscient, immediately demonstrates that scripture cannot be a repository for complete truth, because that would directly conflict with the creator's exclusive omniscience.

So for the question to have any relevance, we must know for what purpose scripture and science are in conflict. Is it for the purposes of teaching doctrine within a religious congregation? Clearly scripture is supreme. Is it for the purpose of developing a curriculum for teaching History? Clearly both have important contributions to make.

The kickers are, of course, geology, anthropology and biology. For my part, I choose to place my faith in science to understand these disciplines. But I am not going to pretend that I can convince everyone to join me in that.

God is a comforting thought, a being we can place between ourselves and the howling wastes of eternity. God is the ultimate imaginary friend, always there to protect us, comfort us and listen to our banal drivel when no-one else will. God is a carrot to tempt our allies, and a stick to beat our enemies with. And God is the original and most insidious example of Big Brother, always watching and judging our every move and ready to bestow judgement at any time.

God promises us a solution to our greatest fear - that, once we die, we do not simply end but go on forever... and that it will be much better than this life. God promises our lives today will be better if we simply believe and trust.

Who wouldn't want to believe in God? A shame it isn't true!

Yes, as has been the case with the canopy theory among other YECs. It is physically untenable, so the interpretation of the Hebrew word translated "firmamentum" in the Vulgate must be incorrect. As it is, Russell Humphrey's interpretation of (הרקיע) as an "expanse" or "expansion" of the Heavens works in conjunction with verses elsewhere in Scripture where it says that God "...stretched out the Heavens...".

If an interpretation requires too many ad hoc additions to be tenable, then it is a worse explanation then one that requires fewer or no ad hoc additions.

Hmm. What it boils down to in my own mind, after ~45 years or so of a keen interest in natural history, paleontology and yes, Darwin's theory of evolution, in addition to ~30 years of Bible study as a Christian, a baptized believer of the Word, that it is an unending contest between the finite wisdom of humankind versus the infinite wisdom of God.

In the Creation versus Evolution debate, it's been observed that both parties have members that have made the mistake of using evidence that has not been carefully researched, and turns out to be erroneous.
The good debates are the ones where you come away saying, "How interesting! I must look into this further."
The trouble is, when evidence is presented in the scientific community, it is often ignored or repressed. This can happen on both sides, mind you. It's generally a political agenda that gets in the way of learning the truth.

However, I confess I am of the school of thought that the Bible needs no scientific evidence to prove its veracity and inerrancy as the Word of God.

It was written by people. The same people who can make mistakes. To think that we should blindly accept what is written without even trying to find out whether it's true is idiocy. IMO.

I debated a conservative friend of mine recently and asked him, more or less, this question. I questioned him which he would believe if there was a contradiction between the Bible and known, observable fact. It took several minutes of assurances that this was a hypothetical question to override his objection that he didn't believe that could ever be the case, but eventually he did come out and confirm that he would side with the Bible, and implied that I was a worse Christian for placing my "allegiance" (as he put it) with science. To me, this is just astounding. I cannot go against what the facts are, I cannot deny that which has been rigorously demonstrated by science or mathematics, even if I do not like the implications of those facts. Believing something in the absence of evidence is faith; believing something in the face of contradictory evidence is idiocy.

i use science to inform me on how the universe began

Of course it's your opinion. And it also lends to the effect of how people will fail to see all that is said and presented so as not to disturb that opinion. It's human nature, no one wants to be wrong.

I use science to determine concentrations of reactants. I use science to calculate the proper resistance values necessary allow the proper amperage for a component I don't wish to have fried. I used science to design a trebuchet when I was 12. I use science to help me understand how the physical universe operates normatively.

What of the case of believing something in the face of wrongfully interpreted evidence? Or believing something in the face of evidence which has been misrepresented?