The Holy Bible and Science - Part 2

In last weeks article, I discussed if God actually realised that the earth wasn't flat, but instead, spherical.

In this weeks article, I would like to look at some other gaffs this God fellow has made.

You would think that the guy who created life, the universe, and everything in it, would have a pretty good knowledge of how things work. But God managed to display the scientific knowledge typical of a bronze-age nomadic sheep-herder. Let’s spend a day in Gods classroom.

The Universe According to God.

"Let there be a dome to divide the water and to keep it in two separate places... and it was done. So God made a dome, and it separated the water under it from the water above it." – Genesis 1:6,7

In the above passage, we see that God put up a dome over the earth, to keep out the water that was in the upper "firmament". This is where he got the water for the flood, obviously.

"You stretch the heavens out like a tent, you build your palace on the waters above.... You water the mountains from your palace." - Psalm 104:3,13

God lives up above the upper firmament, and turns taps on and off. The heavens are thin, like a tent canvas.

All the stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shrivelled figs from the fig tree. – Isaiah 34:4

Therefore, the sky is thin and can be rolled up. Stars are also small and can fall to earth, presumably when the glue gets old.

Can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze? – Job 37:18

I could go on like this for a long time, but I assume you get the point. For instance, there are references to the "foundations" and "pillars" of the earth, and its "socket pedestals". But, the point is made; God really didn’t have a clue that the earth was spherical, revolved around the sun, and that stars are actually distant suns.

Biology according to God

Well, I would expect God to do a little better in this field of study. After all, he created plants, animals, and humans. Let’s take a look:

And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you. – Leviticus 11:6

God actually thought that hares chewed their cud. It was an easy mistake to make, because if you put a rabbit in a cage without food, before long, you will notice it chewing something. Like many animals, it will eat its own faeces in order to gain nutrients from undigested material. It’s the type of mistake that a casual observer might make.

All winged insects that go upon all fours are an abomination to you. Yet among the winged insects that go on all fours you may eat those which have legs above their feet, with which to leap on the earth. – Leviticus 1:20,21

Has anyone seen a winged insect that goes on all fours? And, what’s up with "legs above their feet"?

And these you shall have in abomination among the birds, they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey... the stork, the heron according to its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat. – Leviticus 11:13,19

Here is another mistake that a casual observer would make. The bat flies like a bird, but is actually a mammal.

As well, God seems to think that dragons (Isa 13:22), satyrs (Isa 13:21), and unicorns (Isa 34:7) actually existed. Please note that some translations have removed those words so as to save themselves from shame, which is a shame, because up till now, I thought the Bible was a library of comedy.

I won’t take a detailed look into the creation account, since that was covered in earlier articles and you can view them by reviewing the archive. However, don’t forget that God made plants before the sun. He also created the various types of animals in the wrong order; even though the fossil record shows otherwise.

What did God get in his biology examination?

First Name: Jehovah
Last Name: God
Lesson: Biology
Mark: F

Oh well, at least God gets a chance to redeem himself in next weeks concluding part of The Holy Bible and Science, when he gets tested on Physics and Mathematics.

The Holy Bible and Science - Part 1

In the UK, there's a TV show called QI and it's hosted by our British gem, Stephen Fry.

Where am I going with all of this?

Recently, some TV channels have been showing repeats of the QI show and not so long ago, Stephen mentioned the following exchange between an elderly lady and William James:

After a lecture on science, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."

The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "what is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."

When I was young, I was told that we know the Bible to be correct, because of the uncanny accuracy of its scientific knowledge. This conclusion was based on eight words. Here they are:

"The circle of the earth" – Isaiah 40:22 and "Hanging upon nothing" – Job 26:7

If you ignore the prepositions and articles, you come down to two significant words, which are, "circle" and "nothing". That’s not much to base a life on, but did the Bible display scientific foreknowledge by indicating that the earth was spherical and suspended in space?

Well, first of all, we need to determine if the Bible really meant what we thought it said. Secondly, is this knowledge remarkable enough to require divine guidance? And finally, is the Bible scientifically accurate in all of the other things it said?

The Circle of the Earth

If you look at a pizza from a distance, it looks like a circle. Therefore, when the Bible speaks of "the circle of the earth", did it mean that the earth was spherical, or just round?

Well, the evidence seems to indicate that God thought the earth was flat and round, like a pizza. Here is why I and a great many others (including Stephen Fry) say that:

"I saw a tree of great height at the centre of the world. It was large and strong, with its top touching the heavens, and it could be seen from the ends of the earth." – Daniel 4:7, 8

Therefore, God inspired Daniel to write that the earth’s surface has a centre, and that a tree could be tall enough to be seen everywhere on the planet. But, the surface of a sphere has no centre, and no matter how tall a tree is, it will not be visible from a large part of that sphere.

Jesus and the Devil make a similar mistake:

"The devil took him (Jesus) to a very high mountain and displayed before him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence...." - Matthew 4:8

Now, you could argue that the Devil used a vision to show Jesus the kingdoms, but the scripture implies that the purpose of going up the mountain was to make it possible to see the ends of the earth.

A similar concept regarding height shows up in Genesis 11:4. In this story, the people are trying to build a tower that would reach right up to heaven. This was very threatening to God, because heaven was his realm. Therefore, he confused their languages and scattered them. I wonder why he hasn’t put a stop to modern sky scrapers. Surely the height of a ziggurat could not compare to the Empire State Building.

Therefore, when the Bible talks about "the circle of the earth", it appears to be talking about a flat, round surface, not a sphere.

The Hebrew word (חוג - chwg) refers to a circle, and to the action of circling. It does not refer to a sphere, or a ball, although it is often claimed by fundamentalist writers that the Hebrew word chwg "circle", which appears in Isaiah 40:22 can also mean "sphere," but I haven't seen any textual evidence to support this claim.

Another word meaning "circle" or "to encircle", dwr (as in Isaiah 29:3) was used to refer to spheres, as it is in Isaiah 22:18 (where it has the sense of "ball"), but 40:22 does not say that God resides above the "ball (dwr) of the earth".

I could go on an tell you that Ibn Ezra's commentary of Isaiah did not take chwg as referring to a three-dimensional sphere but simply noted that the expression implies that the earth is "not square" (also two-dimensional), but that would bore you.

But, let’s give God the benefit of the doubt and overlook this mistake. Let’s assume that he really did know the shape of the earth. Would that be evidence of divine inspiration?

Everyone who grew up watching Bugs Bunny knows that common knowledge held the earth to be flat until Christopher Columbus (not the guy who messed up the first two Harry Potter films) proved them wrong. Except, of course, for a bunch of Greek fellows. In 240 BC, Eratosthenes not only figured out that the earth was spherical, but he even managed to devise a brilliant method of calculating its diameter using trigonometry. Aristarchus built on this information to calculate the diameter of the sun. He was a little off, but he realised that the earth and sun were both spherical, and that the sun was many times larger than the earth. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the spherical shape of the earth was common knowledge among the Egyptians and Greeks as far back as 2550 BC.

Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) believed in heliocentrism, which basically means that the sun (helios in Greek) is at the centre. Unfortunately, God disagreed with the theory of heliocentrism.

Biblical references Psalm 93:1, 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 state (depending on the translation) that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." In the same manner, Psalm 104:5 says, "the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved." Further, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place" etc.

Are you starting to get the picture?

Okay, that's enough of History 101. What I can't understand is that even if God had actually thought that the earth was spherical, it really wasn’t that remarkable of a conclusion. Other people, you know, the ones he had created, had figured it out all by themselves.

Stay tuned for next Thursday's article when I will discuss Gods other scientific mishaps.

The World's Worst Jobs - Part 2

In last weeks article, we discussed the fact that the Bible is riddled with jobs that you or I wouldn't want to disclose on our CV's.

In this concluding part to the World's Worst Jobs, we take a look at two more professions that only God could dish out.

Haemorrhoid Curator

A truly bizarre story is told in the 1st book of Samuel. Apparently, the ark of the covenant, which was a sacred relic of the Israelites and was also believed to contain God’s presence (imagine that, God in a box!), was stolen by the Philistines. They brought it back to their land and set it before their God, Dagon. The Philistines kept the ark for seven months. However, unfortunately for the Philistines, keeping the ark had a rather nasty side effect:

And it was so that, after they had carried it about, the hand of the LORD was against the city with a very great destruction; and He smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had haemorrhoids in their secret parts... And the men who died not were smitten with the haemorrhoids; and the cry of the city went up to heaven. - 1 Samuel 5:9,12

The Bible writer(s) seems to be a master of restating the obvious. For example, the reference to "secret parts" seems to be redundant. Where else would you get haemorrhoids? Likewise, it doesn’t seem necessary to mention that the dead bodies were not afflicted. I think that could have been assumed.

The following question also arises: If the God of Israel had enough power to plague the Philistines with such a terrible ailment, and at the same time saw shares in doughnut pillow manufacturing companies soar, why couldn’t he just have prevented the ark from being stolen and desecrated for seven months? That would have saved a lot of effort for everyone, unless of course, God Holdings Ltd bought stock in a few cushion companies at just the right time?

Now, in every primitive culture, there is a reasonable remedy for every problem. And of course, they found the solution that I’m sure any modern doctor would recommend:

Then said they, "What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him?" They answered, "Five golden haemorrhoids and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines; for one plague was on you all and on your lords. Therefore ye shall make images of your haemorrhoids and images of your mice that mar the land, and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from you and from your gods and from your land. - 1 Samuel 6:4,5 (21 Century King James Version)

The obvious solution to the problem was of course, to sculpt images of the offending haemorrhoids. They also threw in a few golden mice, just for good measure. The intended result? Giving glory to the God of Israel.

Now I’m not sure how they came to the conclusion that God would be honoured by this gift, but to their credit, it seemed to work.

Just so that I know I've completely understood this story, let's recap. There were haemorrhoids. Someone had to sculpt these haemorrhoids and presumably, someone had to model for them, unless they used Plaster of Paris moulds. Wow, that must have been painful for the model.

What about the haemorrhoid artist? I can picture it now:

Fal-eohim: If you are accepted as our new curator, you do realise just how big of a responsibility it will be? The Museum of Reuben prides itself on being the finest in all of the 12 tribes. I also see from your portfolio that you worked on the Philistine Haemorrhoid Collection? Tell me a bit about that.

Picassoshizar: Yes, that was some of my best work, although the models were a pain in the arse to work with.

Temple Testicle Inspector

In the Bible’s judicial code, there are several laws that must have required some
specialised enforcement procedures. For example:

• Entrance into the assembly of the Lord was granted only to those with complete testicles, as stated in Deuteronomy 23:1. I’m not sure what purpose this served, but that is a discussion for another time. For the moment, let us consider the enforcement issue. If you encountered a person on the street whose testicles were not in complete working order, how would you know? Most people do not publicise this information, unless you're from Brighton, England. The only possible way would be through either voluntary disclosure, which would surely be abused, or some sort of inspection process. Maybe the Vatican took note of this law and decided to act upon it?

• If a couple has sex during the woman’s period, the two are to be cut off from their people, as Leviticus 20:18 so brilliantly puts it. Once again, how would anyone know that this had happened? They certainly aren’t going to tell anyone, surely?

Brad-Mediohim: Levi, is it true that you had a go on Mythilia whilst she was being visited by little red riding hood?

Levi: Yes, it's true. It's so embarrassing mate, for all I wanted was a quickie. Now I'm going to have to be stuck with her while they cut us off.

Brad-Mediohim: You should have known the bollocks inspector would have caught you. Nothing gets past that todger.

Depending on your inclination, this may or may not be a good job.

This also raises the question of consistency. In order for all testicle inspectors to be objective, yet discriminating, it would be necessary for a code of standards to be developed, and testicle inspectors to be accredited and licensed. Undoubtedly, the venerated "TTI" designation would be greatly sought after.

So, here they are folks, the unsung heroes of the Bible, the people who slice off the foreskins, sculpt the hemorrhoids, and handle the unmentionables. These are truly the heroes of the Bible!