The Bible Contains Scientific Errors

My argument is simple, and in effect it debunks all of the presuppositions behind the PRO's first argument. As such, there won't be any direct refutation, just my argument which contains the preferable framework for reading the Bible. In effect, this reads something like a debate "kritik" or "K," so I'll signpost it as such. My thesis and sole contention is that the PRO's reading of the scripture is scientific literalist, which is a poor way of reading the scriptures. Thus the concern about whether or not the Bible has scientific errors is irrelevant. Link The presupposition behind PRO's entire first speech is that the Bible is to be read at-face; that is, when it says in Genesis that God created the world in seven days, it means seven literal rotations of the Earth around its orbit. However, as our friend the Philosoraptor wisely pointed out once, if a day is determined by the rotation of the Earth, how is it that God knew what a day was prior to the world being created? This doesn't seem to make sense. But that's because the Bible isn't meant to be read this way. Throughout most of its existence, it wasn't read this way. Not until we get scientific rationalism during the Enlightenment does the Bible become, in the eyes of some Christians, a literal account of how the world was created. As John Gray points out in his book The Immortalization Commission, Contrary to the cartoon history of ideas that prevails today, Darwinism's threat to religion did not come principally from challenging the biblical account of creation. Until a few centuries ago the Genesis story was known to be a myth--a poetic way of rendering truths that would otherwise be inaccessible. At the beginning of the Christian religion, Augustine warned against the dangers of literalism. The Jewish scholars who preceded him always viewed the Genesis story as a metaphor for truths that could not be accessed in any other way. It was only with the rise of modern science that the Genesis myth came to be misunderstood as an explanatory theory. (21) Ironically enough, for all the fighting Christians do against the New Atheists, they think in strikingly similar ways, especially on this issue. To think that creation could be neatly summarized by anyone, Christian or atheist alike, is ridiculous. There's always a mystical element to these things, and the PRO's reading of scripture entirely ignores this. Much of the Bible is mythical text; I don't think, for instance, one has to read Jonah as a literal recounting of a man being swallowed by a giant fish, nor do I think that the Ark is a centimeter-for-centimeter exact measuring of how such an Ark might have been built. Impacts The PRO's reading of scripture leads to two harms that I think hold back genuine scriptural discussion. 1. It flattens the Biblical text, making the false philosophical presupposition that any text aiming at being a divine explanation of how the world works must read out like a literal history book. It removes the mystique and mystery from our lives. 2. The harm of anachronism is present, especially in the "errors" IV-VII. Of course they weren't aware of things like Pi, the taxonomy of rabbits, and the cure for leprosy; to hold that as a burden to the Biblical narrative is absurd, since it ignores the historical progression of science. Even though our contemporary scientific record may hold up different findings today, the fact they believed different things in Biblical times isn't an "error" in the sense that it harms the Bible's verisimilitude or authenticity; in fact, it's more authentic for these beliefs. One doesn't read contemporary notions of science into a text that had different understandings. From this I'm still meeting the burden of the resolution, insofar as I'm proving that using language like "error" doesn't make sense in the way the PRO wants it to, the conclusion being that there are no errors of this type in the Bible. Alternative I suggest a nuanced reading of scripture, one that recognizes metaphorical and mythical language, rather than the reductive scientism of the PRO's case.