A really amazing thing happened recently:
New evidence for 'oceans' of water deep in Earth: Water bound in mantle rock alters view of Earth's composition
And then, almost immediately, a bunch of religious nuts lost their minds. "Look look look!!! The Bible is true because Genesis 7:11 tells of the 'fountains of the deep'! And now we found them! Therefore the Bible is TRUE!!"
If you're not familiar with the Book of Genesis, this particular verse is in the story of Noah and his Ark full of animals. The flood waters not only came from the sky, they came from the ground.
Anyway, my point is, some of the same people that say science can't be trusted while the Bible can are now saying we can trust the science in this case because it 'proves' the Bible is right.
Ugh.
So so many things wrong here.
I am a Christian. But I am a big big fan of science. All science. Though I would not call myself a scientist by any stretch. I know enough to know I don't know hardly anything and that to learn anything I need to read the works of those who do know.
And I know enough to know that A) The Bible is not, I repeat NOT a science manual and should not be used as a text that gives proof of anything scientific and B) just because there seems to be some correlation between what the Bible says and the real, measurable modern world is not proof of anything.
This "underwater ocean" for example. It's not really an ocean. It's not some vast cavern full of water. The water, if it's there, is trapped in rock, like a sponge. Also, they did not just drill a really deep hole and find water, they found evidence that suggests there is water, though the evidence, in scientific circles, is compelling.
But what I'm getting at here is science and religion and how people seem to think there is this battle between them until one seems to prove the other.
When I was growing up I was what I have come to call "quasi" religious. I was interested in "playing" church and enjoying the friends and music and such I discovered through churchy type things. (Especially girls that liked to make out, but that's another story.) I didn't really 'practice' but I liked to 'preach'. (This was in the days well before the Internet.) I was very plugged in to the culture of my church in the midwest. The United Methodist church. If there was debate about a literal 7 day creation and a literal Noah's flood and evolution being "bad" I was not aware of it. Science and the Bible lived happily alongside each other. Evolution? Who cared? Make a mixtape with Amy Grant and Alice Cooper at the same time? So what? It's all good.
But now it seems everyone wants to draw lines. Bible on this side, everyone else on that. The Bible has to be literal, therefore science has to be bad. The Bible must be TRUE therefore science must be flawed.
Until science seems to prove the Bible, then it's on the money!
Grr.
Science and the Bible are not enemies. Repeat after me, science and the Bible are not are NOT ARE NOT enemies.
Ok, got that?
But neither are they equals.
No, seriously, they are not.
Creationism and Evolution are not equally valid explanations of "how we came to be". One is science, the other is some pseudo-science finagled into a weird mold to make it look like a valid theory.
We should not try to get the Bible to explain scientific things. Likewise, we should not try to get science to explain matters of faith.
Science is science. It's a method. It's a way of looking at things. It's facts and figures and things that can be touched and measured and then making hypothesis to help explain things that can't be measured (such as water in the rock beneath our feet).
The Bible is many things. Each writer of the Bible used their own style, some is strictly narrative, other times it's poetry, other times it's correspondence. There's allegory and metaphor and history. There really isn't any part of it that deals with things in a clinical and 'scientific' manner.
But more than anything, the Bible is a story of faith. There are things that, by definition are outside scientific explanation. We shouldn't try to make science explain things like Jesus' miraculous healings or the parting of the Red Sea or any other thing that we give the name "miracle". If God is GOD then He is outside of science, outside of the rules of the physical and natural and we should not expect these things to have a scientific explanation.
So no. The water below our feet is not the "fountains of the deep". It's not like we can drill a hole and a huge fountain of water would come shooting out. The water would have to be extracted because it would be dissolved in the rock. Science did not prove anything, and the Bible has not been vindicated.
Nor should we expect it to be. So let it go already.
New evidence for 'oceans' of water deep in Earth: Water bound in mantle rock alters view of Earth's composition
And then, almost immediately, a bunch of religious nuts lost their minds. "Look look look!!! The Bible is true because Genesis 7:11 tells of the 'fountains of the deep'! And now we found them! Therefore the Bible is TRUE!!"
If you're not familiar with the Book of Genesis, this particular verse is in the story of Noah and his Ark full of animals. The flood waters not only came from the sky, they came from the ground.
Ugh.
So so many things wrong here.
I am a Christian. But I am a big big fan of science. All science. Though I would not call myself a scientist by any stretch. I know enough to know I don't know hardly anything and that to learn anything I need to read the works of those who do know.
And I know enough to know that A) The Bible is not, I repeat NOT a science manual and should not be used as a text that gives proof of anything scientific and B) just because there seems to be some correlation between what the Bible says and the real, measurable modern world is not proof of anything.
This "underwater ocean" for example. It's not really an ocean. It's not some vast cavern full of water. The water, if it's there, is trapped in rock, like a sponge. Also, they did not just drill a really deep hole and find water, they found evidence that suggests there is water, though the evidence, in scientific circles, is compelling.
But what I'm getting at here is science and religion and how people seem to think there is this battle between them until one seems to prove the other.
When I was growing up I was what I have come to call "quasi" religious. I was interested in "playing" church and enjoying the friends and music and such I discovered through churchy type things. (Especially girls that liked to make out, but that's another story.) I didn't really 'practice' but I liked to 'preach'. (This was in the days well before the Internet.) I was very plugged in to the culture of my church in the midwest. The United Methodist church. If there was debate about a literal 7 day creation and a literal Noah's flood and evolution being "bad" I was not aware of it. Science and the Bible lived happily alongside each other. Evolution? Who cared? Make a mixtape with Amy Grant and Alice Cooper at the same time? So what? It's all good.
But now it seems everyone wants to draw lines. Bible on this side, everyone else on that. The Bible has to be literal, therefore science has to be bad. The Bible must be TRUE therefore science must be flawed.
Until science seems to prove the Bible, then it's on the money!
Grr.
Science and the Bible are not enemies. Repeat after me, science and the Bible are not are NOT ARE NOT enemies.
Ok, got that?
But neither are they equals.
No, seriously, they are not.
Creationism and Evolution are not equally valid explanations of "how we came to be". One is science, the other is some pseudo-science finagled into a weird mold to make it look like a valid theory.
We should not try to get the Bible to explain scientific things. Likewise, we should not try to get science to explain matters of faith.
Science is science. It's a method. It's a way of looking at things. It's facts and figures and things that can be touched and measured and then making hypothesis to help explain things that can't be measured (such as water in the rock beneath our feet).
The Bible is many things. Each writer of the Bible used their own style, some is strictly narrative, other times it's poetry, other times it's correspondence. There's allegory and metaphor and history. There really isn't any part of it that deals with things in a clinical and 'scientific' manner.
But more than anything, the Bible is a story of faith. There are things that, by definition are outside scientific explanation. We shouldn't try to make science explain things like Jesus' miraculous healings or the parting of the Red Sea or any other thing that we give the name "miracle". If God is GOD then He is outside of science, outside of the rules of the physical and natural and we should not expect these things to have a scientific explanation.
So no. The water below our feet is not the "fountains of the deep". It's not like we can drill a hole and a huge fountain of water would come shooting out. The water would have to be extracted because it would be dissolved in the rock. Science did not prove anything, and the Bible has not been vindicated.
Nor should we expect it to be. So let it go already.
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