Science and The Bible
There is much heat in the debate about science versus religion. Most of the historical 'cases' that highlight this clash are plain old false, but I won't go into these as the real point of this post is to look at the 3 options you have when science seems to clash with what the bible says.

1) Our scientific hypothesis about the observed facts is wrong
2) Our interpretation of what the bible says is wrong
3) The bible is wrong

Atheists go for option 3. Theistic/Old age Evolutionists take option number 2. Young earth creationists take number 1 or 2, depending upon how clear the bible is.

An example of option 2 would be when people complained that turtles didn't have voices, yet the KJV in Songs of Solomon 2:12, talks about the voice of the turtle. Yet when you look into the more recent, better translations, the word the KJV translates as 'turtle' is actually turtledove.

Whilst consistent Christian's are not able to choose option 3, the problem with the current approach of long age theistic evolutionists is that the inherent imperfection of written communication allows for a tiny amount of wiggle room. As such, any hypothetical scientific observation or theory could be found to be 'consistent' with the bible by reinterpreting the normal or straight forward meaning of the text.

If you take this approach however, especially on the basis of 'new' observations or theories, you have no firm foundation for believing anything the bible says. I.e. What you believe the bible says today could be considered wrong tomorrow based on some new scientific finding. Worse, what the original receivers of the text believed was wrong, because they didn't have the new knowledge to 'correct' their faulty interpretation. Worse still again, science continually changes, sometimes radically, it's theories. Reinterpreting the Bible to match a theory which itself will change in 10 years leaves us with no confidence in any interpretation.

A second issue is that this makes the bible unfalsifiable and stops investigation. Any apparent conflict with the bible is resolved by changing what we think the bible means, not investigation of the evidence to see if another theory which agrees with the bible could equally or better explain the evidence.

To be serious about the Bible and science, you need to accept the text of the bible is true, based on the knowledge of the original audience.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Monday, January 22, 2007