Five Bible verses that are touted as "scientific"

It often happens that Christians will insist the Bible to be scientifically accurate in certain places, and that proves the validity of the Bible because how could those primitive folks have known such truths if not through the agency of God's influence? A few verses keep popping up over and over, and I have posted them here.

Job 26:7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.
8 He wraps up the waters in his clouds,
yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
9 He covers the face of the full moon,
spreading his clouds over it.
10 He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters
for a boundary between light and darkness.
11 The pillars of the heavens quake,
aghast at his rebuke.

The specific part that is quoted is the second part of verse 27, "He suspends the earth over nothing." Christians like to imagine that this is a reference to a spherical Earth floating in empty space. This interpretation is possible only by taking the verse out of context and ignoring everything around it--and as you can see, this is exactly what has been done. When that portion is placed IN context, the verse clearly takes on a whole new meaning, with no indication of a scientific knowledge at all.

First, we have God spreading out the northern skies. This would make sense only if you lived in a time when the sky was thought to be a huge, solid dome over the earth. (This is why Genesis calls the sky a "firmament"--that word specifically refers to a firm, solid structure, not a gaseous envelope surrounding a spherical planet.) Note verse 11, which speaks of the pillars of heaven. These verses do not give me the impression that the Hebrews had some mystically-derived knowledge of the universe as it really is, but rather that they simply accepted the commonly-understood version of cosmology, which was primitive and completely wrong.

Isaiah 40:22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.

I don't know why, but for some reason, Christians like to interpret "circle" as "sphere." But the word used in Hebrew means "circle." This is how they viewed the world back then. It was a disk to them, not a sphere, and the sky was a solid object overhead, upheld by giant pillars. A giant reservoir of water existed above the sky; God would open the "windows of heaven" (Gen.7:11) to let the rain water out. There was a world ocean surrounding the land, and beneath the ground were storehouses of the deep, where ground water came from.



Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

This verse is used to "prove" that God gave the writer an understanding of atomic particles, the "unseen" substance of which everything we see is constructed. But this is not the case at all. This is talking about God magically poofing the universe into existence. If I'm not mistaken, this was an age when there were believed to be four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. A fifth element, spirit, was added to describe things of the heavenly realms--God, angels, and whatnot. Various combinations of the four earthly elements made up everything. And that was considered to be sophisticated thinking in those days. The "unseen" referred to God's spirit, not to tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye particles.

Genesis 6:14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.

I have heard that this ratio--the length being six times the width--is supposed to be the perfect dimensions for a ship. Quite aside from the fact that you can see boats and ships of all sorts of dimensions, how scientific is it to build a WOODEN boat of such massive dimensions that it would collapse under its own weight, never mind the weight of tons of animals and provisions? No matter what the dimensions were, NOAH'S BOAT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SEA-WORTHY. It was just a primitive wooden structure with no metal support frame. I could go on for paragraphs about everything that is wrong with this dumb, childish story, but I won't.

Leviticus 15:7 “‘Whoever touches the man who has a discharge must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening.

v. 13 “‘When a man is cleansed from his discharge, he is to count off seven days for his ceremonial cleansing; he must wash his clothes and bathe himself with fresh water, and he will be clean.

Occasionally, the Bible gets something sort-of right. Nothing was known about viruses and bacteria back then. Nobody knew how diseases were transmitted, or what caused them. They thought plagues were a curse from God. But they must have had some notion that touching a sick person could result in the disease spreading to others, so washing thoroughly was recommended to remove the bad influence. But this is something that the astute observer can conclude easily enough by studying how people who touch the sick often become ill, themselves; no supernatural agency would have been required. This is not evidence of God giving people information, but simply of smart humans figuring something out on their own.

Also, if you read on, even an emission of semen was considered "unclean," and bathing in water was necessary to remove any impurity. A woman's menstrual blood was scary and unclean, and so was childbirth. The instructions to bathe reached OCD levels in the Old Testament because the Hebrews thought evil could result from not washing away the uncleanness.

In Leviticus 13, we read detailed instructions on how priests are to determine if someone has leprosy in the skin. It may seem very scientific, but sores, rashes, and swellings can be caused by many different ailments, and are not a definitive diagnosis of leprosy. Verse 47 tells us that a GARMENT can have leprosy! Lev. 14:34 explains all about leprosy in a house! We know that these things cannot have a disease; what was probably meant was mildew or mold, but "leprosy" was a catch-all term for any rash-like, spreading disfiguration. (The NIV more correctly calls it a "spreading mold.") We are told that the correct way to deal with mold is to completely seal up the house. Now, I would think that opening it up to let the air dry it out would be the best thing to do, but people back then thought the uncleanness would spread if the doors were left open. Does this seem like science that came from the mind of God, or more like incorrect guesswork on the part of people who didn't understand what mold and mildew were, or what caused them?

There is NO science in the Bible. I don't know why so many Christians insist that there is, but careful examination of any of their claims shows them to be wrong. The Bible was written by people who had no notion of how nature worked. They thought diseases, earthquakes, plagues, floods, and other bad things were caused by an angry God who was punishing them for their misdeeds. There was no such thing as a natural explanation for anything; it was all supernatural because they didn't understand it.