Another perspective
Look at it this way: until Troy was found, everyone though the Iliad was pure fantasy. Of course, now that Troy is proven to exist it must follow that the Iliad and the Odyssey are true accounts of actual events. :bugeye:
Similarly, the existence of Crete and the ancient Minoan civilization demonstrates the veracity of the Ariadne myth.
Well, anyway... I'm not aware of any scientific attempts to disprove the Bible through archaeology. If anything, all I've heard is that some archaeologists are now using the Bible as well as other myths and artifacts from ancient cultures and religions to search for other "mythological" locations that used to be considered fictional but now are considered to be at least potentially real.
Where the Bible does conflict with science is its creation myth as well as a number of other places where it entertains such things as the stone-age notions of disease for example. In short, pretty much it conflicts in any nontrivial issue when it comes to describing the natural world. Note that in cases where the truth would be obvious even to someone from the stone age, the Bible tends to get it right.
With regard to some of the things Caleb posted as purportedly deep insights of a prophetical nature:
Well, anyone who stands up, looks at the horizon and turns 360 degrees will notice that the horizon (where the earth "ends") is a circle with the observer's location as its center. Easy piece of insight for a stone-age "wise man". I think your conceptual leap from a circle to a sphere, though, is unjustified.
Here we go again. I've already had this discussion with Tony1 -- but unless you insist that the Earth is the center of the universe, you have to acknowledge that the Earth is zooming at many hundreds of miles per second in a complex trajectory through space. Hardly what a reasonable person would call "hanging".
However, it is easy to see how a stone-age thinker would arrive at such a notion. After all, if the Earth is not "hanging" but standing on something, then what is that 'something' standing on in turn? It's essentially the same argument that atheists give to dispute the existence of the supernatural -- only this time applied to the support of the earth. The solution, of course, is to choose the simplest explanation that agrees with all observation and does not introduce unnecessary complexity.
Again, little surprise there. Anybody knows that water evaporates into the air on a hot day, that it can linger in the air in the form of fog, and it comes down from the air in the form of precipitation. Stone-age science that just happens to be simple enough to get it right.
Another easy observation for any nation involved with or at least indirectly familiar with seafaring.
A conclusion anyone would reach after trying to count them by hand one night.
On the other hand, the stars can be numbered. There is a finite and exact number of stars in the sky that are visible to the naked eye at any particular moment in time. Moreover, there is a finite and exact number of stars in our galaxy at any given moment, and no stars beyond our galaxy are visible even with the best modern telescopes. However, the number of galaxies in the observable universe also can be numbered and is finite (because the observable universe is finite), and therefore the total number of observable stars is also finite. As to the universe beyond the observable threshold (too far for light to have reached us since the universe's formation), nobody knows yet. It may be infinite, or it may be finite...
That's a wishful misinterpretation. The Bible describes the "stretching" of a heavens over the earth as a single act that is part of creating the Earth. From the context it cannot be interpreted as meaning that the heavens continue to stretch even to this day. Rather, the verse is a simple allegory to stretching a tent over a lot of dirt.
Look at it this way: until Troy was found, everyone though the Iliad was pure fantasy. Of course, now that Troy is proven to exist it must follow that the Iliad and the Odyssey are true accounts of actual events. :bugeye:
Similarly, the existence of Crete and the ancient Minoan civilization demonstrates the veracity of the Ariadne myth.
Well, anyway... I'm not aware of any scientific attempts to disprove the Bible through archaeology. If anything, all I've heard is that some archaeologists are now using the Bible as well as other myths and artifacts from ancient cultures and religions to search for other "mythological" locations that used to be considered fictional but now are considered to be at least potentially real.
Where the Bible does conflict with science is its creation myth as well as a number of other places where it entertains such things as the stone-age notions of disease for example. In short, pretty much it conflicts in any nontrivial issue when it comes to describing the natural world. Note that in cases where the truth would be obvious even to someone from the stone age, the Bible tends to get it right.
With regard to some of the things Caleb posted as purportedly deep insights of a prophetical nature:
Well, anyone who stands up, looks at the horizon and turns 360 degrees will notice that the horizon (where the earth "ends") is a circle with the observer's location as its center. Easy piece of insight for a stone-age "wise man". I think your conceptual leap from a circle to a sphere, though, is unjustified.
Here we go again. I've already had this discussion with Tony1 -- but unless you insist that the Earth is the center of the universe, you have to acknowledge that the Earth is zooming at many hundreds of miles per second in a complex trajectory through space. Hardly what a reasonable person would call "hanging".
However, it is easy to see how a stone-age thinker would arrive at such a notion. After all, if the Earth is not "hanging" but standing on something, then what is that 'something' standing on in turn? It's essentially the same argument that atheists give to dispute the existence of the supernatural -- only this time applied to the support of the earth. The solution, of course, is to choose the simplest explanation that agrees with all observation and does not introduce unnecessary complexity.
Again, little surprise there. Anybody knows that water evaporates into the air on a hot day, that it can linger in the air in the form of fog, and it comes down from the air in the form of precipitation. Stone-age science that just happens to be simple enough to get it right.
Another easy observation for any nation involved with or at least indirectly familiar with seafaring.
A conclusion anyone would reach after trying to count them by hand one night.
On the other hand, the stars can be numbered. There is a finite and exact number of stars in the sky that are visible to the naked eye at any particular moment in time. Moreover, there is a finite and exact number of stars in our galaxy at any given moment, and no stars beyond our galaxy are visible even with the best modern telescopes. However, the number of galaxies in the observable universe also can be numbered and is finite (because the observable universe is finite), and therefore the total number of observable stars is also finite. As to the universe beyond the observable threshold (too far for light to have reached us since the universe's formation), nobody knows yet. It may be infinite, or it may be finite...
That's a wishful misinterpretation. The Bible describes the "stretching" of a heavens over the earth as a single act that is part of creating the Earth. From the context it cannot be interpreted as meaning that the heavens continue to stretch even to this day. Rather, the verse is a simple allegory to stretching a tent over a lot of dirt.
