Statements Consistent With Anthropology
We have cave paintings and other evidence that people inhabited caves. The Bible also describes cave men.
Job 30:5,6
They were driven out from among men,
They shouted at them as at a thief.
They had to live in the clefts of the valleys,
In caves of the earth and the rocks.
Note that these were not ape-men, but descendants of those who scattered from Babel. They were driven from the community by those tribes who competed successfully for the more desirable regions of the earth. Then for some reason they deteriorated mentally, physically, and spiritually.[1]
Hydrology Statements Consistent With Hydrology
The bible includes reasonably complete descriptions of the hydrologic cycle.[3] Psalm 135:7
He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth;
He makes lightning for the rain;
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.
Jeremiah 10:13
When He utters His voice,
There is a multitude of waters in the heavens:
“And He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning for the rain,
He brings the wind out of His treasuries.”
In these verses you can see several phases of the hydrologic cycle—the worldwide processes of evaporation, translation aloft by atmospheric circulation, condensation with electrical discharges, and precipitation.[1] Job 36:27-29
For He draws up drops of water,
Which distill as rain from the mist,
Which the clouds drop down
And pour abundantly on man.
Indeed, can anyone understand the spreading of clouds,
The thunder from His canopy?
This simple verse has remarkable scientific insight. The drops of water which eventually pour down as rain first become vapor and then condense to tiny liquid water droplets in the clouds. These finally coalesce into drops large enough to overcome the updrafts that suspend them in the air.[1]
The Bible describes the recirculation of water. Ecclesiastes 1:7
All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.
Isaiah 55:10
For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
The Bible refers to the surprising amount of water that can be held as condensation in clouds. Job 26:8
He binds up the water in His thick clouds,
Yet the clouds are not broken under it.
Job 37:11
Also with moisture He saturates the thick clouds;
He scatters His bright clouds.
Hydrothermal vents[4] are described in two books of the Bible written before 1400BC—more than 3,000 years before their discovery by science. Genesis 7:11
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Job 38:16
Have you entered the springs of the sea?
Or have you walked in search of the depths?
We discuss the “fountains of the great deep” further in our Creation Versus Evolution page.
Geology Statements Consistent With Geology The Bible describes the Earth’s crust (along with a comment on astronomy). Jeremiah 31:37
Thus says the LORD:
“If heaven above can be measured,
And the foundations of the earth searched out beneath,
I will also cast off all the seed of Israel
For all that they have done, says the LORD.”
Although some scientists claim that they have now measured the size of the universe, it is interesting to note that every human attempt to drill through the earth’s crust to the plastic mantle beneath has, thus far, ended in failure.[1]
The Bible described the shape of the earth centuries before people thought that the earth was spherical. Isaiah 40:22
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
The word translated “circle” here is the Hebrew word chuwg which is also translated “circuit,” or “compass” (depending on the context). That is, it indicates something spherical, rounded, or arched—not something that is flat or square.
The book of Isaiah was written sometime between 740 and 680 BC. This is at least 300 years before Aristotle suggested that the earth might be a sphere in this book On the Heavens.
This brings up an important historical note related to this topic. Many people are aware of the conflict between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Pope, Paul V. After publishing A Dialogue on the Two Principal Systems of the World, Galileo was summoned to Rome, where he was forced to renounce his findings. (At that time, “theologians” of the Roman Catholic Church maintained that the Earth was the center of the universe, and to assert otherwise was deemed heretical.)
We could not find any place in the Bible that claims that the Earth is flat, or that it is the center of the universe. History shows that this conflict, which took place at the time of the Inquisition, was part of a power struggle. As a result, scientific and biblical knowledge became casualties—an effect we still feel to this day.
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Topic: What Is Your Evidence? (Read 36902 times)
August 26, 2010, 10:28:30 am
