FOR WRITERS

FOR READERS

FOR PUBLISHERS




FREE CHRISTIAN REPRINT ARTICLES

Christian Articles for All of your Publishing Needs!

LIKE US
Translate this Page Here

FOR WRITERS

FOR READERS

FOR PUBLISHERS




Word Count: 1190

Send Article To Friend Print/Use Article

Contact James Barringer


Is the Bible a science text?

by James Barringer  
7/14/2010 / Christian Apologetics


People become atheists for a lot of reasons, but most of the really serious ones have one thing in common: they are very, unhealthily, convinced by science. One time, an atheist said to me, "I think Christianity is untrue because, if you destroyed all the religious texts in the world, nobody could recreate Christianity. But if you destroyed all the science books in the world, we could find all that scientific knowledge again. Does that bother you at all?"

My answer was instant and immediate: "No, it doesn't."

Here's why. Imagine that you are immortal, and that the Russian government has blocked out a huge 100-mile by 100-mile expanse in Siberia to serve as your private playpen (perhaps they're scared of immortal people and don't want anybody near you, or you near anybody). They would also give you whatever resources you wanted or needed, so you could do scientific research to your heart's content. In time, you could figure out that the earth was round, and even get pretty close to guessing its diameter. You could build a telescope and figure out about stars and the moon and the sun. You could, after a really long while, even come to "discover" Newtonian physics and the theory of relativity. This is what my atheist friend was saying.

But you would still be incredibly ignorant. You would not know, for instance, who Napoleon Bonaparte was, unless someone slipped you a history textbook. You simply cannot figure out history using your senses. You would not know which country you were in, without access to a map. You could not even write down your scientific discoveries, unless someone taught you a language with which to express yourself.

Empirical science, the truth that you can figure out for yourself, is unspeakably limited. There is a nearly infinite amount of information that you cannot figure out with just your senses. Unless someone communicates it to you, you will simply remain forever ignorant. Try your hardest: there is no way to know who signed the Declaration of Independence without appealing to a source outside yourself (a history book, the Declaration itself, someone else who knows, etc). You cannot use empirical science to find it out by examining the universe.

The essence of my rebuttal to my atheist friend dealt with the idea that the Bible is more like a history book than a science book. Don't get me wrong: the Bible includes scientific truth, and wherever it and "science" collide, the Bible is right. But it does not present itself primarily as a scientific text. It is, most basically, a historical record of God's interaction with humanity. It has more in common with a history textbook - names, dates, geography, and so on - than it does a science book. In fact, if you divide up the Bible by genre, historical narrative comprises the greatest potion. All four gospels are historical narrative.

And the entire purpose of history, as I have already said, is to communicate to you, from outside your experience, something that you could never otherwise know. I believe I have demonstrated that the number of things that you can figure out using your senses is a tiny, utterly insignificant fraction of the total number of things that it's possible to know. Every other truth in the universe, from the laws of the country you live in to the proper grammar and syntax in the language you speak at home, has to come to you from outside your own personal experience. It's just that simple.

In this sense, it makes absolute sense that religious truth is also something that would have to come to you from outside, rather than something you could independently discover. This is doubly true when you consider the primal claim of Christianity, that it is communicated not merely to you from outside your experience, but to all of humanity from outside any of our experiences. The first words in the Bible indicate the existence of a God who is wholly other than us. Anything we could possibly know about him would be communicated to us by him, either directly or by us witnessing his interactions with humanity. And the previous sentence perfectly describes the exact contents of the Bible.

Yet God, knowing our interest in figuring things out for ourselves, has not asked us to take a leap of blind faith. Rather, there is much about the Bible that can be verified: locations mentioned in the Bible can be excavated and investigated. The leaders of foreign nations mentioned in the Bible: Pharaoh Neco of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar of Persia, Herod the Great of Palestine, four different Caesars; all these can be independently researched, and we can find that they existed precisely when the Bible said they existed, and ruled the exact geographic territories that the Bible says. In time, we can become convinced that the Bible is a profoundly accurate historical document in every way that we can possibly verify, and with that kind of track record, we really have no choice but to take it seriously when it begins to speak of things that we cannot verify. Of course, the primary thing that it says, we can verify: that if there is any sort of galactic morality, we have fallen extremely short of it, and that if there is any kind of great cosmic reckoning, we're going to have a lot of explaining to do to whoever is doing the judging.

As far as I can tell, that is the single biggest difference between science and our faith. Science deals with the things that we could, with sufficient time and resources, figure out on our own. Faith, as well as all of history, deals with things that we could never know unless they were communicated to us from outside our own experiences. They are not fundamentally opposites, although as I have said, anytime they do find themselves in conflict, we have to give the nod to the Bible, a source which has not needed a single correction or amendment in its whole 3500-year existence, whereas science is continually admitting fault and correcting untrue beliefs. Bizarrely, even this "self-correcting" nature of science is touted as a good thing by those who put their faith in it; I will take the document which was perfectly correct the first time around.

Perhaps it will even change the way you personally read the Bible if you stop mining it for self-help tips or for do's and don'ts, and instead read it merely as the history of God's relationship with humanity. I think that's the best way to really get to know God. "What did you do in history, God? Why did you do it like that?" It's not a science book. It's not a list of rules. It's not a legal document like the Constitution. It's the history of God, the same God who is living and active in the world today, and it's his unique revelation of himself in space and time to humanity. That's why it's a remarkable book. Read it that way and see if God doesn't speak to you through it.

Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included.

Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com-CHRISTIAN WRITERS

If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be! Click here and TRUST JESUS NOW

Read more articles by James Barringer

Like reading Christian Articles? Check out some more options. Read articles in Main Site Articles, Most Read Articles or our highly acclaimed Challenge Articles. Read Great New Release Christian Books for FREE in our Free Reads for Reviews Program. Or enter a keyword for a topic in the search box to search our articles.

User Comments

Enter comments below. Due to spam, all hyperlinks posted in the comments are now immediately disabled by our system.

Please type the following word below:


Not readable? Change text.



The opinions expressed by authors do not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

Hire a Christian Writer, Christian Writer Wanted, Christian Writer Needed, Christian Content Needed, Find a Christian Editor, Hire a Christian Editor, Christian Editor, Find a Christian Writer


Main FaithWriters Site | Acceptable Use Policy

By using this site you agree to our Acceptable Use Policy .

© FaithWriters.com. All rights reserved.