WHAT DO I DO?

by betty boop 16 Replies latest jw friends

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  betty boop

  My cousin and aunt (she who is in no way active) have ganged up on me saying how reputable and correct the bible is. My aunt in specific has stated some good points about the Bible, asking how is it that i dont believe in the bible if there are a lot of things in it ahead of its times. Scientifically speaking, she said, the bible clearly states the earth is round and that rivers give way to the seas. The point is i am not sure how to respond to her because how is it that the Bible stated these things??

  My cousin just calls me an apostate. He is active still.

  Help me!! Where can i get reliable sources for these answers
• 

  jstalin

  http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html
• 

  daystar

  I could write a book containing all sorts of crazy claims and then drop a handful of scientific facts in there as well. This does not make the crazy claims any more true, does it?
• 

  Legolas

  http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html

  http://islamway.com/english/images/library/contradictions.htm
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  funkyderek

  Scientifically speaking, she said, the bible clearly states the earth is round and that rivers give way to the seas. The point is i am not sure how to respond to her because how is it that the Bible stated these things??

  Well, it does say the earth is a circle. Of course, the earth is actually spherical (or nearly so) and the Bible doesn't say that. Even if it did, it was known by the Greeks as early as 500BC that the earth was spherical.

  Not sure what you mean about "rivers giving way to the seas". That's fairly obvious just from looking.
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  OldSoul

  Good ol' Euclid! Triangulating from shadows. And so accurately at such an early time, too! Of course, that was around 240 B.C. Who figured it out in c. 500 B.C.?

  Respectfully,
  OldSoul
• 

  AlmostAtheist

  It also says that the mustard seed is the tiniest of all seeds, but that isn't true. When this is pointed out, believers say "the Bible isn't a book on botany". Fine, then it isn't. So don't trot out comments yanked out of context and claim they show the scientific accuracy of the Bible.

  This is similar to a person claiming psychic powers because they can accurately predict a roll of a die 1 time in 6.

  Dave
• 

  RunningMan

  The Bible also says that the earth has "socket pedestals" and foundations. It says that you can see the whole earth from a high tree. It says that the rabbit chews its cud, and that there are "four legged flying creatures". The list of Biblical scientific errors staggers the imagination. On the plus side, it does say that the earth is "standing upon nothing", and it mentions the "circle of the earth" - two correct statements and a whole bunch of incorrect ones. Overall, though, the Bible writers displayed a scientific knowledge roughly on par with bronze age sheepherders, which is about right.
  
  My personal favorite Bible error regards the contents of the temple. I wrote an article on that. When you add up everything that the Bible claims went into the temple, it is obvious that they exagerated by at least a factor of a thousand.
• 

  Black Sheep

  The earliest age I can remember having 'cognitive dissonance' was about ten.

  My father used the 'circle of the earth' to try to convince me that they knew the earth was round.

  I let it pass, even though I knew it was wrong.

  I knew what a circle was. I had a good grasp of English grammar.

  You can't tell me that they didn't have a means of describing a sphere.

  If I ask you to go into you kitchen and get me something shaped like a circle, are you going to get me an orange?

  How could my father tell me to get a stone that was shaped like a ball rather than a flat, round one if he didn't have a way of describing it?

  Where did our word sphere come from? It wouldn't be from the same roots as the ancient Hebrew word 'sephira' would it? I don't know the answer to that, but it seems very strange, to me, that any society would not have a way of differentiating between a circle and a sphere.

  Whatever method the writer did have available to him to describe the earth as a sphere, he did not use it in this case.

  I hope this helps.

  Chris
• 

  funkyderek

  OldSoul:

  Good ol' Euclid! Triangulating from shadows. And so accurately at such an early time, too! Of course, that was around 240 B.C. Who figured it out in c. 500 B.C.?

  Pythagoras, or at least he postulated that it was round. Anaxagoras proved it not long after. See http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question54.html