The general thrust of Mangani's statement is accurate.

Given the circumstances I completely agree with your terms. We shall largely ignore the other points and focus on the question of whether the Bible contradicts science. - You believe it a misnomer to make the claim that the Bible contradicts science, it is not. The basic tenets displayed in the bible are the antithesis to the scientific ethic. The basic virtues of science consist of three things. 1) Curiosity. 2) Empiricism. 3) Progress. While the antiscience ethics typically oppose these same virtues. This basic divide comes from the most fundamental and basic question of epistemology. How do we know what we know? The scientific ethic demands we try things out, fiddle around, and understand. The early Church was opposed to these virtues, either as demonstratively evil or completely worthless. Curiosity was simply vanity. Anything God wanted you to know he would have told you. If he didn't tell you then you don't need to know. Empiricism was similarly condemned as arrogance and only scripture, revelation, faith-based intuition were valid ways of knowing the only thing you need to know: the scriptures. To accept Empirical evidence as the highest authority which was seen as a rejection of the authority of God. Progress was seen equally as a worthless pursuit. Even if you could progress in your understanding, it would be a waste time because the Bible is all you need to be saved and being saved is all you need. While the understanding of the world displayed in the Bible is obviously primitive and we should not find fault in that (outside of the supposition that it's a product of divine revelation rather than the product of its time). - I must agree that the Earth does look pretty flat when we are walking around on it. The sun, moon and stars do seem to move around the planet. These observations are rather undeniable. However, the fact that the Bible allowed the simplest and easiest observations to creep into the vernacular of the Bible, does not imply for a moment that it is remotely scientific. There's no investigation. There's no curiosity. There's no understanding conveyed. The Bible makes the consistent consistent claim is that you *shouldn't* question such things. It is wrong to question religious dogma. More blessed is he who believes without needing to see for himself. Walk by faith, not by sight! The Bible is littered with such references. Zacharias is struck mute for doubting Mary's God-assisted pregnancy in Luke. Faith can move mountains and grant wishes in Mark. And James tells is to accept without doubting to avoid being tossed around like stormy seas. You note that the Bible provides answers for some very basic questions that everybody should ask. However, the Bible doesn't actually try to answer these questions. It simply uses the obvious nature of these, typical the Greek understanding of cosmology, as the basic setting. It doesn't describe the Earth as being flat and on pedestals, rather it in places describes people on mountains so high they could see all of Earth, the four corners of Earth, and Job describes the shaking of Earth's pedestals. It doesn't explicitly say this is how the Earth is. Rather it simply draws from common understanding of an unmoving flat world with heavenly bodies traveling in the firmament. The Bible doesn't answer the age of the Earth. Usher actually had to go through Genesis and add up the ages of all the people in the Bible to figure out "the date of creation" (October 4004BC, making the Earth 6011 years old as of January 2009). The misfortunes of others were not answered they were told it was God's punishment or the work of evil spirits. This isn't even the obvious result of any observations, rather this is simple terrorism. You are suffering because you're not Godly enough. They simply accepted intuitive things about existence and included those things, in places, into the setting. I fully accept that it looks like the moon and the sun revolve around the Earth. The stars are look really tiny. The sky doesn't fall. Snakes lack legs. The Earth seems flat. These observations make logical sense. They are intuitive ideas for how the world works. I do not condemn those ideas any more than I condemn our own. There are a number of fairly common ideas for how the world works that are wrong. Why is it hotter during summer? Seeds are really small and trees are really big, where does the plant get the matter it needs to become really big? Why are the oceans blue? How do planes fly? -- The standard answers are almost always wrong, largely because the standard answers aren't very scientific. Humans as a species are quick and good at making intuitive leaps, but that's not science. Science demands testing. It isn't so much accepting the intuition notion that if we drop a 10 pound weight and a 1 pound weight that the 10 pound weight falls 10 times faster as Aristotle so brilliantly intuited. Science actually climbing up the tower of Pisa and dropping the blooming things as Galileo did. Science is asking ourselves that if a plane's wings are shaped to produce lift, why do the still fly upside-down? If oceans reflect the sky, why are they still blue when it's cloudy? If we're 93 million miles from the sun, how much hotter is a couple hundred miles of tilt going to make? If we tied the ten pound weight to the one pound weight would it fall 11 times faster as the 1 pound weight alone or would the 1 pound weight impede the 10 pound weight making it fall slower? Understanding the understanding of the time is certainly required for addressing the topic. I do not condemn them for their ignorance. I do not regard ignorance as a pejorative. They simply didn't know. However, the Bible is anti-scientific because they didn't even want to test it and the Bible actually condemns the most central virtues of science. There certainly were scientists who were men of God. Galen, for example, did a fantastic job defending creation from a scientific point of view. When Galen was confronted by the natural evolutionists (they existed in the 6th century and date back to the 2nd century BCE with Anaxamander) he did fantastic work on anatomy to show how complex the human body was and how it was not likely the product of chance forces. He was absolutely right! (Evolution via natural selection is not chance forces at work, rather happenstance is washed away by non-random selection). He defended God with real scientific study. Later work by later anatomists showed some points and observations of Galen wrong and inaccurate, because that's the way science it works. It challenges things. It explores. It learns. The question then isn't whether the Bible properly implied some intuitive ideas of primitive people. Rather, the question is whether it endorses the scientific ethic and compels one towards understanding; it doesn't. The Bible condemns curiosity and empiricism. It compels one to accept without evidence, reject without consideration, and to avoid doubt like the plague (which is clearly caused by demons). The Bible contradicts science. It opposes the very fiber of what makes science work and inquiry possible and truth discernible. It isn't simply that the Bible is wrong about what the world is and how it works (and boy is it), rather the Bible doesn't compel one to care about such notions and goes so far as to condemn the very things which could. You ask us to accept that the Bible may be a large collection of false hypotheses. But being a large collection of false hypothesis does not contradict science qua science. I am compelled to accept that. However, the fact that the Bible condemns the very tools and virtues of science *does* contradict science qua science at the most fundamental levels. - Even picking the most narrow scrap of Mangani's statement does not provide one jot of redemption nor tittle of truth.