Listening to a debate about the bible the other day, I was reminded that some people regard the words of that book to be the inerrant word of god. For some of them the bible contains everything that we need to know.
A thought struck me though. The bible simply isn't big enough to do that is it.
We can't neglect the fact that the bible spends a lot of time on rules that people don't follow any more - about not mixing cotton with other materials, about what we can eat and as Christopher Hitchens said, who we can have sex with and in what positions. More pages are wasted with impossible myths, whether they be about talking snakes or floods. Still more describe how the peoples of the surrounding areas were massacred.
This leaves remarkably little space for all of human knowledge.
Fortunately this reveals the truth, that the bronze age writings of the bible tell us almost nothing about the universe, however you spin the contents. Whatever you do, you can't get all the learning about the universe into a book so small. Imagine everything we know about astronomy fitting into such a slim volume. Then fit all we know about physics into another, and Chemistry, Medicine, and each of the thousands of other specialist subjects into individual volumes. Not only would you not be able to fit any subject into one book, but these thousands of volumes self-evidently contain more knowledge than the bible.
So let's face it. Its not 'all in the bible'.
Presuppositionalists - how do you answer?
Well, I thought all knowledge was in the Bible and we didn't need any other book to find out anything we could possibly need to know, until I search cover to cover for the timetable of the 13X bus from Abingdon to Oxford, and couldn't find it.
ReplyDeleteI've found I also need to go to an ATM to get my bank balance because that's also missing from the Bible.
Mind you, it has a really detailed description of how to sacrifice a bullock, how to get a new wife when you need one, when to have your children stoned to death and what's a fair price to pay the father of a girl you've raped, so it's not entirely useless.
If the bible or koran were really god written they'd be just perfect, full of stunning info & non expiring data, effective guides for scientific investigation, not a single contradiction and with no need for ridiculous cover ups nor silly 'religious devotee' interpretations.
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