Difference between revisions of "Biblical scientific foreknowledge"

Revision as of 04:19, September 29, 2010

Isaac Newton, cornerstone of the scientific revolution, based his research on the scientific authority of the Bible and sought enlightenment in scripture.

Biblical scientific foreknowledge is how the Bible shows a comprehension of scientific knowledge far ahead of its time.

Atheistic organizations and scientists, particularly evolutionists, engage in liberal denial about how the Bible was correct long before science could discover the same truths.

Geology

Modern scientists long opposed the suggestion that cataclysmic flooding, such as the Great Flood described in the Bible, shaped the landscape. But the discovery in the Northwest of "giant ripple marks, 50 feet high and 200-500 feet apart" proved that a cataclysmic flood did indeed occur. As a result, "[a]mong geologists, the concept of a catastrophic flood came to be accepted by the late 1950s."^[1]

Health and Biology

Bloodletting hastens death

At the time of Jesus and for centuries afterward, arteries and veins were thought to be filled with air and blood was viewed as something to be used up rather than recirculate. Bloodletting -- the practice of intentionally draining blood from a patient -- was common medical practice through the time of George Washington, hastening his death prematurely for reasons not understood until years later.^[2]

Most victims of crucifixion in Roman times languished on the cross for days. But the Bible describes how Pilate, who crucified many, was surprised at how quickly Jesus passed away. 2000 years later, scientific knowledge has advanced to understand that this was caused by his prior loss of blood during his scourging (being brutally whipped), a punishment typically given instead of crucifixion.

Homosexuality and disease

The Bible's prohibition against homosexuality predated knowledge about the many diseases and disorders associated with homosexuality, and thus showed scientific wisdom prescient for its time.

Eyesight

The description in the Gospel of Mark 8:24 for the sensation when one's eyesight is restored includes his perception of "trees walking." This perception was first confirmed nearly 2000 years later as physicians developed medical techniques for restoring eyesight.^[3]

Maximum Human Height

Atheists thought the size of Goliath in the Bible to be absurdly large (over nine feet tall), until Robert Wadlow grew to nearly 9 feet tall and was still growing when he died at a young age in 1940.

Leprosy and Contagion

At the time of Jesus, leprosy was thought to be highly contagious. Jesus rejected that prevailing view and welcomed lepers. Not until the 20th century was it realized that leprosy is very rarely contagious.

Digestive System

It was common thought throughout history that infections and illness resulted from the digestive system, based on unclean hands or food. Jesus rejected that view, and declared hand-washing before meals to be typically unnecessary. It took many centuries before science caught up to the Bible on this.

Feasibility of Abiogenesis

Although scientists dismissed ideas involving abiogenesis, or the process from which life emerges from nothing, as nothing more than archaic beliefs in spontaneous generation, the Bible very clearly depicts an occurrence of this phenomenon, for beginning in Genesis 1:20, God creates life from nothing. It was not until the early 20th century that science finally began to accept the viability of abiogenesis, a view that the Bible had held for almost 2000 years, except that atheists falsely claim that abiogenesis is somehow possible without a creator.

Awareness while Unborn

Abortion advocates argue that it is ok to terminate a baby while dismissing the pain inflicted by ending an innocent life. They argue that a fetus cannot feel pain because senses are incomplete. There is a heart-beating human in the womb that can feel even though still unborn and developing. In modern times, we now know the baby in the womb is alert, aware of their mother's emotions, recognizes voices, responds to stimuli and music. The Bible tells us the baby feels (1 Luke 44), "the babe leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice." The inwomb developing baby, John the Baptist, notices the presence of the unborn Lord in Mary, and is excited. In addition (St. Paul to the Galatians 1:15), "God… from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace." Paul's very first thought, feeling, awareness began while unborn.

The significance of blood

The Old Testament teaches that the life of all flesh is its blood (Leviticus 17:13-14 (KJV)). Secular science remained ignorant of the properties and circulation of blood until the 17th century A.D.

Cosmology

Number of Stars

The Bible repeatedly refers to the number of stars as being innumerable,^[4] despite scientists insisting throughout most of history that there were only about 6000 stars. In the early 17th century Galileo turned a telescope to the heavens and discovered a great number of stars that had been previously invisible to the naked eye. [3]

Not until the 20th century did scientists discover the tremendous number of stars:

There are "10 times as many stars as grains of sand on all the world's beaches and deserts," totaling "7 followed by 22 zeros or, more accurately, 70 sextillion." [4]

Spherical Earth

The Book of Isaiah establishes that the true shape of the earth is a sphere:

Here, the translation "circle" is inapt, as the Hebrew term entailed something spherical, not flat.

Note that Isaiah was written circa the 8th century BC, centuries before Greek philosophers, beginning with Pythagoras, theorized the earth was round.

Earth free floating in space

The book of Job states that God "hangs the earth on nothing." This presaged the fact that space is in fact empty, which wasn't known until the dawn of the 20th century, when ether theory was disproved. It also contrasts with pagan mythologies such as Atlas holding up the earth or the earth being supported by a giant turtle, as in ancient Hindu and native American myths.

Darkness, and Unexplained Ripples in Cosmic Background Radiation

Genesis Chapter 1 explains that God created light first, rather than merely stars. A "big bang" would result in light everywhere, without darkness, and without ripples in cosmic background radiation. Yet in the 21st century ripples were discovered in cosmic background radiation, which can only be plausibly explained by recognizing that light was created first.

Meteoroids

The Revelation of Saint John notes,

This accurately describes meteoroids, essentially large chunks of rock lit on fire by the shock of entering the earth's atmosphere. They were not discovered until 1801, and their composition was not otherwise known until the 20th century.

Stellar proper movement

In Job, there is a list of challenges that are constructed in the form of questions, with the idea that man can't do it, but God can.

Among those challenges, two are remarkable: one mentions the untying of Orion's belt, and the other is the binding of the Pleiades. One recently astronomers could measure the proper movement of those stars; Orion's belt is moving apart, with each star going in a different direction, while the Pleiades are moving together.

Space flight

Many theorize that the book of Ezekiel contains descriptions of spaceships and rockets, as they would have been described by someone thousands of years ago. Author Blumrich has even published an entire book about this.

Meteorology

Existence of the Jet Stream

Ecclesiastes 1:6 notes, "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits." This described the jet stream long before its 19th-20th century discovery.

Water cycle

The existence of the water cycle was not known until imperial Roman times, but the Bible described it over a thousand years before that! See Ecclesiastes 11:3, Job 26:8 and Amos 9:6

Physics

Light and Color

Prior to the work of Isaac Newton, white was considered to be the fundamental color of light, and other colors (such as red, green and blue) were formed by adding to white light. Under that traditional theory, the fullness of all light (a combination of all colors of light) would result in something other than pure white.

The transfiguration of Jesus is described with remarkable consistency in all three synoptic Gospels: in the fullness of light Jesus and his clothing display an intense white, whiter than any bleach could produce. This illustrates what was not discovered and accepted until nearly 1700 years later: that white is the combination of other fundamental colors, and the purest white light is formed by a perfectly full combination (see Prism).

Quantum Mechanics

Observation of the Wave Function

The second chapter of the Gospel of John describes the conversion of water into wine by Jesus at a wedding reception. John 2:9 states: "When the host of the wedding feast tasted the water, it had been made into wine." This passage implies that the drink was not wine until it had been tasted, or observed. Possibly, the drink was a superposition of the state of wine and the state of water until it was observed as wine.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Both the Old and New Testaments refer to a fundamental uncertainty that requires observation to resolve, akin to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle discovered in the 1920s:

• "The earth came to exist in an utterly formless and empty state." Genesis 1:2.
• The master refusing to order the removal of the weeds sowed among the wheat because of the uncertainty in distinguishing between the two until later: Matthew 13:24-30.

Wave-Particle Duality

Particles are subject to gravity; waves are not. Wave-particle duality, first discovered in the 20th century, allows for a particle to sometimes be subject to gravity and sometimes not.

The wave-particle duality was described nearly 2000 years earlier in the Gospel account of Jesus walking on water: Mark 6:45-54. A close reading of the passage reveals the wave-like (or light-like) characteristic of the walking on water:

Mark 6:48-49 (italics added).

Classical Relativity

Romans 10:6-7: But the righteousness that is by faith says: "Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'" (that is, to bring Christ down) 7"or 'Who will descend into the deep?'" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

Equating ascending into heaven to bringing Christ down is an example of the fact that there is no universal reference frame, and only relative speeds matter.

Second Law of Thermodynamics

The Book of Genesis states that the darkness or chaos in the universe can never overcome the light, or order. This same concept was not discovered in physics until the development of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which holds that heat (or order or light) always travels in the direction of cold (or disorder or darkness), and never in the opposite direction.

The nature of air

Until about 300 years ago, common knowledge believe that the air was "empty" and didn't weigh anything. But Job 28:25 says "To establish a weight for the wind, And apportion the waters by measure" indicating that the divinely inspired author knew the air had substance and weight.

Mathematics

The only miracle described in all four Gospels is the multiplication of loaves and fish by Jesus, thought for thousands of years to be a mathematical and physical impossibility. But the 20th century discovery of the so-called Banach-Tarski Paradox proved a mathematical basis for creating identical copies of an object.

Zoology

Existence of dinosaurs

Dinosaur fossils were not discovered until the 19th century, but the book of Job describes enormous creatures called behemoth and leviathan, the descriptions being similar to dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. It may also have referred to another similarly giant now-extinct species.^[5]

Lions' killing methods

Until the 1970s naturalists believed that lions killed their prey by biting through the neck or by breaking the neck with a swat of a paw, while the Bible says that lions strangled their prey. (Nahum 2:12) It was not until the 1970s that it was discovered that the Bible was correct.^[6]

Giant Sea Creatures and Jonah

The Book of Jonah describes his survival in the belly of a giant sea creature for 2.5 to 3 days. Scientists declared this to be impossible due to powerful stomach acids that quickly break down any material.

Then, in 2010, scientists were astonished to find the following materials intact in the belly of a gray whale that had died after being stranded on a Northwest beach:^[7]

• a pair of sweat pants
• a golf ball
• over 20 plastic bags
• small towels
• duct tape
• surgical gloves
• a functioning laptop accessing Conservapedia (just kidding about this last item)

Of course, many sea creatures have gone extinct in the thousands of years since Jonah lived.

Engineering examples

Biblical scientific foreknowledge about these engineering developments has been proposed:^[8]

Alleged absurdities and contradictions

Biblical scientific foreknowledge is an underpinning of creation science, and is widely credited by Christian scientists and apologists, including the organizations Creation Ministries International, Answers in Genesis, and CreationWiki.^{[9][10][11][12]}

Atheists unsuccessfully attempt to discredit the Bible based on science. Here are some examples:

Bat as a bird

A favorite evolutionist canard is that Leviticus 11:13-19 labels the bat, a mammal, as a bird. But this is an obvious failure of translation, as the Hebrew term 'owph did not entail the "clade" of birds, but was a non-biological category referring to any winged creature, mammalian, avian, or insect. The KJV translation as "fowl" is simply incorrect.

Incorrect value of Pi

Two sections of the bible (1 Kings 7, 23-26, 2 Chronicles, 4, 2-5) appear to indicate that the correct value of Pi is 3, whereas Pi is in fact an irrational number, equalling approximately 3.14159. It has alleged by atheists, including Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, that this value indicates the fallacious nature of scripture.^[13] However, a simple explanation of the claimed "contradiction" is that the Bible records the ratio of the actual object which Hiram created, not that of a mathematical sphere. The claim that it was round all about does not equate to a claim that it was a perfect sphere, as atheists have claimed.^[14]

Moreover, Pi, when expressed as one significant digit, is equal to 3.

See Also

• Christianity and Science
• Creation vs. Evolution Videos
• The Bible
• Evolution
• Atheism

External Links

• Bible scientific foreknowledge by CreationWiki

References