Scientific “Foreknowledge” from the Bible

One of the stranger creationist talking points I have come across is the argument that the Bible got science right, before science did – they call it “Biblical scientific foreknowledge.”

The thrust of the argument is that some Biblical stories change upon scientific truth, coming to the right answer by the wrong way. In arguing that the Biblical arrival at truth through fables is “science,” these Biblical “scholars” show just how poorly they understand science in the first place. In science, it’s how you get there, and what that means, that’s important. Like any high-school algebra student knows, one must “show their work” – getting the conclusion right is less than half the battle. In the long run, the creationist assertion that the Bible is an almanac of scientific facts – albeit without explanation – proves the Bible’s limited application as a factual guide to today’s world.

Take the explanation of the common origin of language. Linguists can now trace most languages to their ancestral languages, and prove that languages evolve, diverge, and branch in a fashion similar to – but not identical to (so shut up, Answers in Genesis!) – biological evolution. CreationWiki suggests that the Tower of Babel myth, by positing a common, pre-Babel, unified language, from which all others descend, is therefore identical to and a substitute for modern linguistics. But it’s not. It comes to a similar result, but a result of only sound byte-length. Modern linguistics tells us infinitely more than that all languages descend from a common one – it identifies how, and why. The Biblical shortcut around science, to the “same” conclusion, thus cuts out the real meat of linguistics, and the real value and meaning of science. Creationists imagine that science is a sound byte, to be summed up by a fable – any fable! – and a conclusion. It’s not. Add this to the list of “things creationists don’t understand about science.”

Furthermore, apparently, to make scientific sense of the Bible, one must read the Bible very generously.  According to CreationWiki, the phrase used in Isaiah 40:22, referring to God as “He who sits above the circle of the Earth,” proves that the Bible “foretells” a spherical Earth. But the phrase could just as easily suggest a flat, circular earth or, more likely, have been intended to mean nothing at all. In short, these examples of “foreknowledge” require a little bit of a stretch, almost to the point that one must already know the truth scientifically to know whether the phrase is to be taken seriously.

Before we go into the next section, a little fun…

Now, creationists don’t always make a scientific mountain out of a rhetorical molehill. When the inspired Word of God tells us in I Kings 7:23-26 that the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter (a.k.a., Pi) is precisely 3, instead of 3.14159…, they argue that the story is not intended to be a strictly accurate or scientific statement. Clearly. Double standard, much.

Not only does the Biblical view of science require a stretch, but it shows us exactly how little fundamentalist Christians think of science. They imagine science as an “almanac” – a practical, bare-bones summary of sound-byte facts about the world. Thus the Bible, which seems, if stretched to the breaking point, to state facts without reasons, is the perfect scientific text for them. But to equate science with the result and not the process, and to ignore the value of knowledge gained along the way, is to fundamentally misunderstand science.

At most, the Bible represents a compilation of statements about poorly understood natural phenomena, reduced to practical “tips,” and lacking in explanation. Don’t eat raw shellfish, for example. Far from elevating the Bible to the level of a scientific text, this approach exposes many of the Bible’s teachings as mere tips-for-life, compiled by a provincial desert people, and thus lacking moral force and relevance to today’s world. I don’t doubt that the Bible contains many valuable moral lessons, but this examination proves all the more the need to get a “second opinion” on many of the Bible’s teachings before applying them today. For example, while “love thy neighbor” never goes out of style, maybe “stone thy gay neighbor” does.

How funny that creationists remember the petty scientific “lessons,” and force upon an unwilling populace the out-of-date moral lessons, but conveniently forget the important ones. I wonder if anyone ever mentioned this one – “a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” – to Jerry Falwell.