The Bible Contains Scientific Errors

Rebuttal: My opponent rejects taking a non - literal approach to the bible, based on the following: "Matthew 15:9,13 - We must not teach man-made doctrine. " *True believers must accept Bible records of miracles as literal, historic fact. " 1st of all this is a misquoting of the bible, it neither says, nor implies, that the bible must be read literally Mathew 15:9 - "Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God" Mathew 15:13 - "Jesus replied, "Every plant not planted by my heavenly Father will be uprooted," No implication that, "True believers must accept Bible records of miracles as literal, historic fact". More importantly, I'd like to remind my opponent of round 1, in which he wrote: "Definitions: The Bible: The Bible agreed upon by my opponent." To which I responded: "As a Jew, I will be choosing the Hebrew bible, also known as the old/original/1st testament." Matthew is part of the N.T., not O.T.. My opponent further argues that even if taken non-literally it still contains scientific errors. I will now explain why I think that"s not true: Science only relates to what actually happens in our world. If the description of creation and the flood as described in the bible are not to be taken literally, than the bible isn't saying that it actually happened. If it isn't saying that it actually happened, than it really has nothing to do with science, it isn't talking about the same thing science talks about. They're talking about 2 different worlds so to speak. It may have said the words "x y z", but it wasn't saying that "x y z" actually really happened. All science says, is that "x y z" did not happen, which the bible may be in total agreement with. So you can't say they contradict one another. A couple of quick analogies: Theologically speaking god does not have a physical body. But the bible in numerous places refers to "the hand of God", "the finger of God" etc. Are we to conclude that the bible is theologically inaccurate? Obviously not. The bible is speaking metaphorically and the theology speaking literal. Another example: we are all familiar with the term red state / blue state. The media often shows maps of the U.S., with some states shaded blue, some red, some in between etc. Now, obviously, the states are not actually red or blue. Should we now say all these are inaccuracies? Obviously not. Red and blue were not referring to the actual color of the state, so there is no contradiction. If for whatever reasons the none-literal approach is not convincing, I will attempt to show that even a literal approach does not contradict science: Problems with genesis 1:1-3: My opponent is bothered that the bible implies that: a) Creation of heaven and earth occurred at the same time, & b) Earth was created before light If you will remember this argument was made in round 2, and I responded to it as follows: "There are 2 basic ways of reading/understanding this [the 1st] verse: a) As an introduction to the creation story b) In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth --[2] Either way, that verse is not describing the order of creation, and thus there is no contradiction." To which my opponent responded: "God created the heavens and the earth, he didn't prepare it. It says so in the Bible." 1st of all, the translation I gave was sourced, http://yltbible.com.... 2nd of all, that wasn't the point, (perhaps I wasn't clear enough in stressing this). The point was the word, "of". The verse is to be read, "In the beginning of god's creation of heaven and earth..." This is the way Rashi (see http://en.wikipedia.org...) & Genesis Rabbah (http://en.wikipedia.org...) understand the verse The reason the verse must be read this way is because the bible uses the word "berashit", as opposed to "baryshonah". "Berashit" means "beginning of", as we see from; Genesis 10:10, Deut. 18:4, Jeremiah 26:1, etc. Another interesting thing is that the word translated as earth, "Aretz", can be referring not to the planet Earth but rather to matter in general / the universe in general, the word for heaven is that which is beyond/without "Aretz" (i.e. space) / beyond the universe (i.e. past where the universe reaches.) The other interpretation, that of the Ramban (http://en.wikipedia.org...) in his commentary to the bible ad loc. is eerily similar to that of the big bang. I will quote a translation of the Ramban words: ..."He brought forth from absolute nothing a very thin substance devoid of corporeality but having a power of potency, fit to assume form and to proceed from potentiality into reality. This was the primary matter created by god and it is called by the Greeks hyly (matter). After the hyly, he did not create anything, but formed and made things with it, and from this hyly He brought everything into existence ... This that the Greeks call hyly (matter) is called in the holy language "tohu"... The 2nd verse which says "the land was void and without form" uses the word "tohu" which according to the Ramban would seem to be the tiny little bit of matter which the universe came from. Which would be the universe before it started expanding. In the 3rd verse god said let there be light. This refers to the beginning of the big bang. In which: "The remaining protons, neutrons and electrons were no longer moving relativistically and the energy density of the Universe was dominated by photons" [2] And there you have it, light before planet earth, the sun, and stars. II. Light: Light before sun has already been addressed. Light is simply photons, the same way he created everything else he can create photons. My opponent rejected my examples of non-sun/star light because they were man made. 2 points: a)If man can do it god could do it. b)There are lights that are neither man made nor come from sun/stars. Like lightening. Then my opponent is bothered by the bible calling the moon a source of light. I already addressed this by quoting Gerald Schroeder PhD.: "Actually the light reflected by the moon does not have the same wave length as the incident light so it is a source of its "type" of light, i.e. the wavelength. The moon is a great light in the heavens. The text does not claim that the moon makes its own light, merely that it is a light and it is." Lastly my opponent makes a new argument based on the verse saying the moon rules over night. I honestly have no idea what his problem is, this is obviously not literal. III. Noah's Ark It's too small: Basically there is too much information missing for this to be a conclusive argument; how big was the ark, what animals were in it, how big where they, etc. There is an entire book " Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study" with approximately 1,200 references. The conclusion is that it is theoretically possible. I suggested that Noah only took in from every genus. To which my opponent asked "Then why is there so much genetic diversity?" To which I respond "Punctuated Equilibrium" / breeding. In claiming it's too big, my opponent offers no scientific evidence that there is a maximum size that can float. All he says is that, it hasn't been done. So? Lastly he asks a number of other questions on the flood which I don't have space to go into individually, so I'll use a meta-answer: There seems to be a misconception that an unanswered question makes something unscientific. Just because there are unanswered questions doesn't make it unscientific. In fact many, (if not most/all), scientific theories have/had unanswered questions: http://cogprints.org... http://rationalwiki.org... http://en.wikipedia.org... Evidence of flood: crinoids-on-mount-everest http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.answersingenesis.org... out of ro