Responding to Rand: the Bible is wrong about bats. September 23, 2007
Posted by Evil Bender in Religion, Science, wingnuts.trackback
This post is in response to Rand’s comment.
Rand,
You write:
it is also noteworthy that while you claim I harassed poor souls, you make no mention that I was the one who was mocked, cursed at, and nearly beaten (yeah… yeah… I know… I must have it coming). Your hypocrisy is worthy of a position on network news.
You set out to provoke people. I know you think that you’re doing them a favor, but that doesn’t change the fact that you are hoping they react strongly to you. Whining when they do so is ridiculous. I don’t approve of violence, of course, but you’re foolish to attempt to goad people and to be surprised when they take the bait.
I thought long and hard before commenting here. There is a duelism in the book of Proverbs concerning answering a fool. It could be profitable (Proverbs 26:4), and can also be quite unprofitable (Proverbs 26:5) . . .
As for that “dualism” in proverbs: how odd that the same book offers directly conflicting advice. Seems like it might be less than inherent.
All three articles you provide have the same basic defense: the hebrews wouldn’t have known any better. They didn’t know that bats are mammals and are very, very distantly related to birds. They didn’t have exact measurements, so their mistake about pi was understandable.* Hares seem to chew their cud, so it’s no okay that the Bible says they did.
These would be great defenses if you were arguing the ancient hebrews were doing the best they could with what they knew. If the writer of the Torah were just tribal writers doing the best they could with limited knowledge, that makes perfect sense.
But if they were being divinely inspired by an all-knowing God who set out to write an inerrant book, that God would have been able to tell them their measurements were wrong and so they would not have recorded them incorrectly in a book that is supposed to have no errors.
That same God would have known that bats are not birds, and that flight does not make something a bird. He would have known about flightless birds. He would have known bats are much more closely related to rats than to birds, and would not have made Himself look foolish by having his scribes record incorrect information.
That same God would not have pointed out that hares chew their cud, when in fact they do something similar but not identical to chewing their cud. Surely the all-knowing Lord of the Universe understands what is a ruminant and what is not.
“I” am the one who is quite at ease with not having anything to do with “you”… “you” are the one obsessively out to show “your superiority”)
(Side note: why do ultraconservatives use quotation marks incorrectly?)
The only “superiority” I claim over you, Rand, is that my worldview is superior: when faced with evidence that indicates that ancient writers didn’t know bats weren’t birds, I assume they had incomplete knowledge. When faced with that same evidence, you twist to try to say “it wasn’t really wrong, because it made sense to the ancients.”
I’ll say it again: the God you claim wrote the Bible could have ensured these details were correct. That He didn’t means either a) the Bible was not inspired by God, b) it may have been inspired by God, but it was written by humans and so cannot be expected to be correct in matters of science which they were unaware, or c) God did not intend it to be correct on matters of science, and wrote it as a spiritual guide, so we should not expect it to be correct where spiritual things are not concerned.
I’ll note that many Christians understand that the Bible can’t have been meant as a scientific tome, and so don’t try to read it as one. If you’d made that argument, you could have followed the lead of those scientist-Christians who understand that just as science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, religious books aren’t what we should rely upon for our scientific facts.
You’re a scientist, Rand. You must understand, at some level, the value of following the evidence where it leads. When the evidence points to a supposedly inerrant book containing mistakes, omissions and errors, a rational person admits that book cannot be considered entirely factual. You have started with the conclusion that the Bible must be right, and in your defense of it, you have proved my point: the writers of the Bible didn’t know any better than to make these classification mistakes! God did not care enough about the accuracy of his book to tell them the correct information.
*Or, their measurements were so exact that the measurement was to the inside edge, which was apparently .14159… cubits away from the other. No matter–no reason I should ask for consistency, eh?
[edit: fixed a typo.]
What drives you to try so hard to change other’s opinions? And to the guy who commented… Why would you call bender a fool if you were trying to talk to him about the truth?
This is a sad situation and blog, for both individuals involved.
http://UriahMinistries.wordpress.com
tim kurek
Well said, Bender. I posted my response to his response to your response to his self-congratulatory post about being ridiculed for his faith after deliberately provoking people before reading yours.
Butch
Tim:
I care about changing others opinions because truth matters to me. I note that you could make the same charge against Rand, except I’m responding to someone who went out of their way to make public his views. Rand goes to people who have expressed no desire to discuss his faith.
Butch:
Thank you. I’m amused, but not surprised, how we noted the same logical problems in Rand’s case. The flaws in Biblical literalism are there for anyone to see.
Just don’t group me in with rand… Christ came to die for us, not to nitpick at our faults and belittle those who didn’t believe in God. I assure you there is much more logic in faith (christian faith to be specific) than you would ever think.
http://UriahMinistries.wordpress.com
tim
Christ died to take away our sins, not our minds. Rand seems to have missed part of the message somewhere.
Sharp logic sir. And a funny read. Double plus bonus.
I assure you there is much more logic in faith (christian faith to be specific) than you would ever think.
Oh really? Please enlighten us.
Yes, he (God) came down to earth so humans could kill him so that he (God) could forgive humans for faults which he (God), in all his omnipotence and omniscience, created in all humans.
Makes perfect sense.
Here is the deal… The above comment is in no way correct.
God created us, and we fell. He did NOT create imperfections in us, He created us with free will. And if He hadn’t wanted to die for us, He wouldn’t have. It was a sacrifice so that we would have the opportunity to know Him.
Your sacasm shows ignorance. Why can’t you be respectful when you disagree?
http://UriahMinistries.wordpress.com
tim
Sorry, Tim. You can’t claim that God is OMNIPOTENT and OMNISCIENT and created us and then blame us for our flaws. If I create a clock and it doesn’t tell the time, it’s my fault, not the clock’s.
The free will line doesn’t work here. It is absolutely possible for an OMNIPOTENT being to create perfect beings WITH free will. If God is OMNISCIENT, then he knew that we would “fall” and he didn’t stop it. This places the blame for our “sins” on God, not man.
And the idea that subjecting his son (himself) to torture and death at our hands somehow “frees” us from sin is just nonsensical. Couldn’t he just have forgiven us without all the confusing crucifixion silliness?
Tim, the God/Christ story told in the Bible makes no sense because it isn’t true. It’s all oral tradition of a primitive superstitious tribe written down hundreds of years later by people with an agenda.
As far as being respectful, Christianity gets far more respect than it deserves. I don’t respect stupidity.
Exactly Ipecac, you can’t have a timeless all knowing god and still claim that man has free will.
Then you shouldn’t have any self respect Ipecac….
Tim loses.
aww, thats cute. Bob is funny, like a monkey, wearing a diaper. Good job for critisizing a belief without actually explaining why its wrong. Its like you just stand at a distance and throw rocks at it. Well, it won’t work.
tim
Tim–
Bob correctly noted that personal insults cause you to lose a fight. You obviously don’t have to agree with Ipecac about Christianity, but your response was the opposite of a substantive one.
It was you who ignored Ipecac’s points, not the other way around.
Any further personal attacks in this thread–by anyone–will result in me replacing their post with pictures of puppies.
Precisely my point. Thanks Bender. I’ll be good.
Thanks, Bob. Always fun to have you around! :)
NOT PUPPIES! How could you even threaten such a thing?
Free will is one of the great mysteries of Christianity. Great minds of the great faithful dispute how and why it works, or if it exists, and have since before Jesus’ time. One of the serious ways to know somebody is out of their depth on the topic of Christianity is when they start saying they “know” something absolutely. The diaries of Mother Teresa rather suggests that such knowledge is denied even the saints.
Omnipotent? Omniscient? We can’t know, we can only guess. Nor can we explain it.
If we “knew,” it wouldn’t be faith. We’d be in the position of the agnostic who has gotten the evidence.
Yeah, I saw no reason to respond to Tim because Bob said it perfectly. Tim ‘lost’ because he didn’t address my points, he just called me stupid. That Tim ironically called Bob to task “for critisizing a belief without actually explaining why its wrong” is just hilarious.
Ed, I think the vast majority of Christians “know” that their god is both omnipotent and omniscient. Are you making a “no true scotsman” argument here?
It’s a form of the ‘no true Scotsman’ argument, sure — but based on Christian scripture. This guy is making claims about stuff that is just not supported in scripture, or tradition. I’m pained to see people make such claims without being called on their bluff.
Ed–
Isaiah 46:10:
I make known the end from the beginning,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say: My purpose will stand,
and I will do all that I please.
The Bible clearly has support for the omniscience and omnipotence of God, and such has long been a central tenant of both Protestant and Catholic Christianity. For you to claim that these attributes are not accepted by Christians is either ignorant or dishonest.
There are certainly theologians who do not ascribe omniscience and omnipotence to God, but they would be considered heretical to almost any branch of Christianity.
If you’d like to argue that free will and God’s absolute power and knowledge can coexist, I would be curious to hear that argument. But drop your current argument: you can’t support it, and no atheist or Christian is likely to agree with your interpretation of Christian scripture and tradition.
I’m not making an argument about God. I’m saying that we cannot know for sure.
When statements start out “I know” rather than “I believe,” or “here’s what our faith holds to,” then you’ve got a non-thinking argument to follow.
So, Ed, do you believe God is omniscient and omnipotent?
I don’t know.
Gosh, Ed, it’s kinda sounding like you’re more of an agnostic than anything else…
Cute puppy!
[Ed's circular logic designed to dodge the issue of God's responsibility for sin has resulted in his comment being replaced by a cute puppy. - Evil Bender]
a = without.
gnosis = knowledge.
Ergo, an agnostic is one who doesn’t know.
It’s not an insult, particularly around here. It’s not that you “sound different,” it’s that you answered a question about one of the basic tenets of Christianity with “I don’t know.”
I see. “Cute puppy” means “blog owner cannot deal.” Got it.
EB:
Hey, I’m obviously coming in late to this debate so I’m not going to say much (so as to avoid making a fool of myself). I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on Christianity’s understanding of the “inspiration of scripture,” sometime. My thoughts on that topic have been tweaked a lot in the last year and a half. Give me a call or an email sometime because I’d like to hear your views. I think mine might make more sense to you than some fundy garbage that gets kicked around the Bible Belt. Catch ya later!
-Spart
P.S. This doesn’t account for all the issues of the argument but the bat/bird thing is just a language issue, not a scientific one. In ancient Hebrew, there is only one word for any creature that flies (unless maybe you count dragons, but that’s iffy). It’s the same with sea creatures. There’s no Hebrew differentiation between whales and fish. It’s just not in the language.
Spartacus:
That’s a fair point. But it doesn’t change the fact that the writer clearly sees bats as part of the same category as birds. This is a reasonable assumption for a bronze-age people, but one we know to be false. To equate bats with birds reflects a simplistic calculation. Any writer setting up dietary restrictions today would surely not have done so.
So yes, the Hebrew language does not account for that distinction, and we should not expect it to. But for those who would make the Bible a scientific tome, this is a big problem. Surely God could have told the writer that bats should not be classified as a bird–for that matter, He could have shown them a superior classification system.
The bats != bird problem is not a trouble for anyone but a strict biblical literalist. If the Bible was never meant to be authoritative on matters of science, this isn’t a big deal. But those who would claim it is so have to explain why this is a classification error.
On the bat/bird (nonexistent) conundrum, you should check out Matt’s post from yesterday.
Of course, bats return the favor: Bats are wrong about the Bible, too, generally. At least the few I’ve met.
“But it doesn’t change the fact that the writer clearly sees bats as part of the same category as birds. This is a reasonable assumption for a bronze-age people, but one we know to be false.”
No, it’s not “false.”
Before the Dewey Decimal System, libraries used to use their own classification systems for nonfiction. Some classified by size, others by colors, others alphabetically by title or author, and so on. Nowadays, we use the Decimal System to arrange books by category.
Let’s say you were to see an old painting of a library, where a carpentry book was sitting next to an autobiography. Does this mean that librarians had trouble distinguishing between a person and a table? Was their system “false?”
No. We just happened to agree on a system of classification that makes getting a book easier for us. Similarly, the Linnean system of classification makes taxonomy work along principles found in other sciences, so we chose that one for ease. A system can never be said to be “right” or “wrong.”
(If the Bible were to claim that bats were not birds, than it WOULD have been wrong at the time it was made.)
Mooby: you’re engaged in categorical relativism here. To say that all classification systems are equally valid is to miss the point: bats are not closely related to birds, but they are closely related to other mammals.
You wouldn’t say it was “correct” if we said people were of the same family when they were not actually related: why claim that the Bible’s classification system is equally valid as a more informed one.
I’ll repeat what Biblical literalists won’t admit: Bats are not birds, and calling them such makes no more sense than calling flying bugs or airplanes birds. Such a classification might have made sense to tribal peoples of the iron age, but did not reflect a clear understanding of the natural order in the way an all-knowing God surely would.
Hey, not here to argue just liked to read the arguments because my friend brought this one up to me. Thanks for setting things straight, because arguments are supose to be a clam line of reasoning. Not insults in poor taste over silly small disagreements. this is a learning experience? Theory: If evolution coexisted with there bring a creator is there not a possibility that “bats” in there times use to be a type of bird or a classification or name of a bird, or evolved from a bird into our bat of today? Perhaps they called a type of bird a bat back then? We can not be sure of what the names of things were in there times we were not there we can only perceive what they were trying to communicate to us and draw our own conclusions from what information is given. In Christians case what ever will affirm there faith. In atheists what ever will denounce it so they do not have to answer to anyone, because they can not deal with there being something bigger than them. I want to believe in something, I like a sense of hope it brings. I have no bias in this argument keep that in mind when you respond and I would also like to know what that comment up there was before the person that owns this replaced it with a “cute puppies”.
Hi Nathanael:
You’re making some of the same mistakes others have made on this post. We don’t know why the Hebrews tried to claim bats are birds, but we do know that you can’t call them birds if you realize creatures are related and try to group them by that relation.
In atheists what ever will denounce it so they do not have to answer to anyone
You won’t get far on this blog with comments like this. The atheists who are regulars here aren’t trying to avoid responsibility: in fact, they tend to think much more carefully about matters of ethics than many Christians.
Try to keep your responses to our ideas, not to your unsubstantiated opinion about our motives.
What are an atheists motives?
I won’t speak for other atheists. My own motives are pretty straightforward: I believe that reason is superior to lack of reason, and evidence to faith. Once I realized that I could not find any good reasons to continue to believe in a deity, I became an atheist.
The reason I blog about atheism is because I want reason, rather than religion, to be the focus of public discourse.
“I believe that reason is superior to lack of reason, and evidence to faith.”
I do not understand what you mean by this.
What he means, Nathanael, is that evidence beats a lack of evidence every day. One may be convinced that something one believes to be accurate is so — say, that the Moon is made out of green cheese. The analysis of the rocks of the Moon show that not to be so. The Moon is made out of rock, rather igneous rock, but rock.
By reason, we can conclude that the Moon is not made out of green cheese, and that conclusion, based on rock samplings from several different sites on the Moon, is a better and more sound conclusion than the insistence of the fool that it really is made out of green cheese.
Nathaniel Ashbrook says: “I believe that reason is superior to lack of reason, and evidence to faith.”
I do not understand what you mean by this.
No, Nathaniel, I guess you don’t.
Hey Green Eagle, I can’t help but feel that your comment was derogatory and sarcastic towards my understanding. You had nothing to do with the discussion you added nothing to ours you didn’t explain anything and you can’t even concentrate hard enough to spell my name right so “I guess you don’t” . As for Ed Darrell thanks I see what he means now.
Hey if anyone is still reading this or cares The Hebrew word for bird is actually owph which means “fowl/winged creature.”1 The word owph simply means “to fly” or “has a wing.” So, the word includes birds, bats, and even flying insects. The alleged problem appears due to translation of owph as bird. Birds are included in the word owph, but owph is not limited to birds. This shows that translators aren’t always perfect when handling the inerrant Word of God. There is always still Judas death if someone wants to talk about it?