Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Science and the Bible Part 2

One of the more controversial claims that a Christian can make is that we exist on a ‘young earth’.   This belief is that God created the universe and all life during a literal six-day period described in the first chapter of Genesis.    Science teachers, politicians and even corporate executives that espouse such a belief have been summarily dismissed as religious simpletons and unintellectual. 

It's not just the scientists and the atheists that can be critical.   Not surprisingly, many well-known Christians including Evangelical pastors, theologians, heads of well-known seminaries and denominations are some of the biggest critics of what is known as “young earth creationism.”

However, like most science and a large portion of theology, we haven’t heard the last word.   Daily there are new discoveries that can either support or frustrate an argument or defense for young-earth creationism.

As Christians, if we agree that God created the heavens and the earth and look to the Bible as the source of truth, we can find some common ground between the relatively short (i.e. thousands of years) taught by ‘young-earth’ creationists vs. the unusually long (i.e. 4.2 billion years) timeframe that commonly is taught in science textbooks.

The Bible, while obviously not a science text book has been proven to be not only accurate in many scientific areas but has actually declared scientific truth long before it was generally accepted by the science and common understanding of the time.


Here are some examples:

1) The Bible declared that the earth is round (Isaiah 40:22) in 700 BC long before Aristotle was thought to be ‘mad’ by claiming the same thing. 

2) Jeremiah 33:22 states that the stars are innumerable, contrary to the common teaching that there were only about 1,100 stars based on what was visible to the naked eye. 

3) The Bible also said that each star was unique and different (1 Cor. 15:41) long before telescopes could confirm the endless variety in size, brilliance and temperature.

4) The book of Job, thought to be possibly the oldest book of the Bible written before Abraham and the patriarchs around 1,500 BC, has many interesting revelations regarding the earth and the cosmos. 
·      The earth floated freely in space (Job 26:7)
·      Light actually moved, i.e. light waves (Job 38:19-20)
·      The oceans contain springs (Job 38:16 Also Genesis 7:11)
·      Job may also have described dinosaurs (Behemoth in Job 40:15-24) and dragons (Leviathan is described as breathing fire in Job 41)

The Bible and Medicine 


Many have taken the Christian and the Bible to task for some medical claims that over the years have actually been proven to be true:
  •      The book of Leviticus (written prior to 1400 BC) describes the value of blood and that life itself was in the blood.  Note: Blood letting (based on the need of the menstrual cycle) was ‘scientific’ and popular until the late 1800s
  •      Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.”   Modern science agrees! 
  •           Regarding the Jewish rite of Circumcision, medical science has only recently discovered that blood-clotting in a newborn reaches its peak on the eighth day, then drops. The Bible consistently says that a baby must be circumcised on the eighth day.
Many of us read the Bible daily for inspiration, guidance and truth.  It is good to know that even in the area of science, we can trust it completely. 

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