In our debate on 9-2-2010, our opponents claimed that the Bible isn't reliable because it's full of contradictions and historical and scientific errors. I will answer several of these below in some detail for the benefit of the Christians who read this blog. However, if I can link to sites that provide plenty of follow-up information I'll do that since there is no need re-inventing the wheel. My responses are in blue font.1. @ 25:40 "The Bible says the earth is flat" and @ 25:44 "The Bible says the earth is stationary and on pillars."
No it doesn't. The biblical writers are doing two things (1) using phenomenological language just like we do today [i.e., sunrise tomorrow will be at 6:32 a.m.] and (2) using poetic language to beautifully depict creation.
The Bible teaches the correct shape of the earth. Isaiah 40:22 says that God "sits above the circle of the earth". The Hebrew word translated "circle" can also carry with it the idea of sphericity. Also, Luke 17:34-36 depicts Christ's second coming as happening while some are asleep at night and others are working at daytime in a field. Such language indicates an implicit knowledge that the earth was spherical and rotating.
See the following articles as well:
- Did Bible writers believe the Earth was flat?
- Did Bible writers believe the Earth was flat? (Christian Answers Network)
- The Myth of the Flat Earth (Summary by historian Prof. Jeffrey Burton Russell, author of the book Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus & Modern Historians (ISBN 027595904X, 1991), off-site)
- Flat-Earth Hey Day came with Darwin
- The Bible refers to ‘the four corners of the earth’. How can a spherical earth have corners? (Christian Answers Network)
- Are (biblical) creationists ‘cornered’?—a response to Dr J.P. Moreland (The Bible talks of ‘the four corners of the earth’. Does this mean the days of creation could be non-literal, too?)
- What Shape is the Earth In? An Evaluation of Biblical Cosmology (Tekton Apologetics Ministries)
- Is the ’erets (earth) flat? Equivocal language in the geography of Genesis 1 and the Old Testament: a response to professing evangelical Paul Seely (Semi-technical)
- Seely’s response to above, plus author’s reply
- ‘Pillars of the Earth’ — Does the Bible teach a mythological cosmology?
- Rodney Stark on this myth, from For The Glory of God
- Who Invented the Flat Earth? (Flat earth myth revisited)
- Creation and the Flat Earth (Dr Danny Faukner, Creation Matters, 1997)
- The flat-earth myth and creationism
No it doesn't, it says that it "gives light". "Giving" light does not necessarily entail producing it. Let's look at Genesis 1:14-17,
Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth"; and it was so. 16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. 17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth . . .The text of Genesis 1:14-17 doesn't tell us how the "lesser light" gives light to the earth, only that it does. We know through scientific experimentation that the moon gives light via reflection of light from the sun. As I said earlier, "giving" does not necessarily entail producing. I can give food to my child, but it doesn't follow that because I gave her food that I also produced it. One one-light bearer produces and gives (sun) whereas the other only gives (moon). Our atheist friend is reading into the text something that's not in the text in order to criticize the text. This is a form of literary straw man.
3. @ 25:52 - "Bible says things about water cycle that aren't true."
This was a bare-naked assertion. No more information was provided to say how this is the case; so, I can't respond to an argument that wasn't given. However, I can say this, the Bible does speak clearly and accurately of hydrology in the following passages:
- The hydrologic cycle - Ecclesiastes 1:7; Isaiah 55:10
- Evaporation - Psalm 135:7; Jeremiah 10:13
- Condensation - Job 26:8; 37:11, 16
- Precipitation - Job 36:26-28
- Run-off - Job 28:10
- Oceanic Reservoir - Psalm 33:7
- Snow - Job 38:22; Psalm 147:16
- Hydrologic balance - Job 28:24-26
- Springs in the sea - Job 38:16
This too is a bare-naked assertion with no historical evidence to substantiate it. Our atheist friend is obviously not familiar with Bill Cooper's work titled After the Flood where he documents that all the people groups of the world descend from the Table of Nations in Genesis 10. He then focuses on how the earliest Europeans meticulously recorded their descent from Noah through Japheth, that they knew all about creation and the Flood, and that they had encounters with creatures we would now call dinosaurs.
See also here: The Tower of Babel account affirmed by linguistics
5. @ 25:58 - The Flood of Noah is false.
The above assertion is false. See Evidence for the Worldwide Flood.
6. @ 26:00 - "The destruction of Damascus that's prophesied in Daniel [didn't happen]." I.e., the idea is that Daniel made a false prophecy and can't be trusted.
I did a word search for "Damascus" in the premier Bible software program known as BibleWorks, and after examining many translations (including the ancient language texts), the biblical book of Daniel doesn't even have the word "Damascus" in it. I wonder if our opponent simply misspoke or if he simply doesn't know what he's talking about?
7. @ 26:04 - "Nile river will dry up".
The verse our opponent was referring to is Zechariah 10:11, "And they will pass through the sea of distress And He will strike the waves in the sea, So that all the depths of the Nile will dry up; And the pride of Assyria will be brought down And the scepter of Egypt will depart." The problem is, this verse is in a section that has to do with the future millennial kingdom, a period of time that is inaugurated after the second coming of Jesus. Thus, this objection is moot.
8. @ 26:10 - "The Bible promises that the unclean and uncircumcised will never enter Jerusalem again . . . but that prophecy has failed since Jerusalem is the center for 3 religions."
Our atheist friend is referring to Isaiah 52:1, "Awake, awake, Clothe yourself in your strength, O Zion; Clothe yourself in your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city; For the uncircumcised and the unclean Will no longer come into you."
John Gill best sums up our position on this verse when he says,
for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean; this shows that the prophecy cannot be understood of Jerusalem literally, nor of the times of the Babylonish captivity, and deliverance from it, since after this the uncircumcised and the unclean did enter into it, Antiochus Epiphanes, Pompey, and the Romans; but of the mystical Jerusalem, the church of Christ, in the latter day, the spiritual reign of Christ; when the Gentiles, the Papists, meant by the uncircumcised and the unclean, shall no more "come against" them, as the words {f} may be rendered, and persecute them; and when there will be no more a mixture of Papists and Protestants, of heretics and orthodox, of hypocrites and saints; and when there will be few or none under a profession but will have the truth of grace in them; when every pot and vessel in Jerusalem will be holiness to the Lord, and the Heathen will be perished out of the land, Zec 14:21, and especially this will be true in the personal reign of Christ, in the New Jerusalem church state, into which nothing shall enter that defiles, or makes an abomination, and a lie, Re 21:27.9. @ 26:45ff - "Egypt will be uninhabitable for forty years; this has never happened!"
So I will make the land of Egypt a desolation in the midst of desolated lands. And her cities, in the midst of cities that are laid waste, will be desolate forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them among the lands. Ezekiel 29:12 NAUThis event did happen and is mentioned briefly in ancient secular history. Again, our trusted old scholar John Gill gives us much help here. He notes in his commentary on Ezekiel 29:12, "Berosus makes mention of this captivity of the Egyptians under Nebuchadnezzar the son, which no other writer does." Who is this Berosus? Gill gives as his reference Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews, Book 10, Chapter 11, section 1. Reading in my copy of Josephus (trans. by Wm. Whiston), he documents the Egyptian captivity under Nebuchadnezzar by quoting from Berosus' third book on Chaldean history. Berosus was an ancient 3rd century B.C writer (now commonly referred to as Berossus) and his Chaldean history comes down to us only through what was quoted by secular and Christian writers of antiquity. So, while we have no extant copies of Berossus, we do have quotes of him from Josephus (1st cent. A.D.) and other writers thereafter. However, Josephus quotes from his Chaldean history in regards to the forty year Egyptian captivity and this provides one non-biblical witness from the ancient world testifying to the veracity of Ezekiel 29:12.
However, what do we do when we don't have any secular or extra-biblical writings from the ancient world to corroborate an ancient historical event mentioned in Scripture? I think Dr. Ralph H. Alexander in his commentary on Ezekiel 29:11 in the Expositor's Bible Commentary says it best when we are faced with these types of situations,
Though no specific data is available from Egypt's ancient literature concerning this dispersion, such a scattering most certainly took place at the hands of the Babylonians . . . . If Egypt fell to the Babylonians about 568 B.D., as implied in the chronicles of the Babylonian kings, then a forty-year "captivity" of Egypt would end under the Persians. . . . Sources for Egyptian and Babylonian history of this period are sparse. In addition, kings of the ancient Near East did not normally admit failure. Just because there is no direct statement in ancient history concerning this dispersion does not mean that it did not occur. God's word is more valid than our conjectures or ignorance. [Expositor's Bible Commentary, Vol. 6, 891.]Amen Dr. Alexander!
