The general thrust of Mangani's statement is accurate.

My opponent has managed to construct a very original argument which is seemingly as original, as it is hollow and tortured. We are asked to accept on face value that the Bible is written to be figurative and not truth. The core of it is an attempt at non-overlapping magisteria. He argues that religion doesn't contradict science by opposing every virtue needed for scientific inquiry because the book is really myth. The argument supposes that we are to accept that a book about what punishments we shall receive is for doubting the existence of God is a scientific text because punishments are synonymous with evidence and thus, read as a whole attempts to justify the existence of God. Since God would be a way to see the world anything attempting to justify the existence of God must be scientific. I'm not sure which aspect is more tortured the religious or the scientific in this attempt to make the two mesh. First off, the virtues of science qua science are firmly established and reading the Bible as an argument for the existence of God via punishments and feats of magic written into a book are no more compelling than claiming that Harry Potter is scientific attempt to show the evils of dark wizardry. Science is the establishment of truth with regard to the evidence. If we think about something in this way it explains all of these facts and makes these predictions and these predictions checkout. No matter how tortured we make our logic, this is not an acceptable analogy to the Bible. The virtues of science do not contort in such ways. Threats are not empirical evidence, threats for doubts and want for answers are not curiosity, and long dusty stories about genocide and taking of sex slaves are not, in anybody's view, progress. Nothing in the Bible compels us to believe that through a rational understanding of the world and experimentation we can improve our understanding of the world. The Bible is in every aspect a rebuke of scientific ethos, and the fact that in everywhere it has been allowed to dominate the thinking we see an end to scientific thought and scientific inquiry. I can easily allow you to focus on any shred of Mangani's comment. I can easily accept that false hypotheses are not necessarily bad science. However, when you attempt to suggest that arguments for God are scientific arguments because they make threats against scientific inquiry and that qualifies as evidence, I really need to stop you there. When you try to excuse the fact that the Bible and exalts faith and opposes every scientific virtue by claiming it's a different way of seeing things, I have to stop you there. The Bible is antiscience because it opposes every scientific virtue. Where those virtues are exalted science makes progress, suppress them and you suppress science. The Bible is in clear contradiction. Faith is praised while inquiry is scorned. The Bible standing on its own, rebukes scientific ethics. I submitted the positions of the Early Church fathers specifically because they would necessarily be close to and coherent with the view of the Bible. I submitted a number of clear examples in the Bible of these positions being expressed unambiguously. On the other side, there is not ever a good word given towards the understanding of natural phenomenon or towards skepticism. The utmost difference between the scientific and the non-scientific is the difference in epistemology. How do we know what we know. Ultimately religions break down at some or many points to the issue of faith: accept what I say without regard to the evidence. Whereas scientific inquiry ultimately rests on the evidence. While these lines can get fuzzy, but they are always there and always important. The Bible ultimately is a document about faith and exalts faith as a virtue, whereas science necessarily must regard faith as a vice and a corruption of any true way of knowing. The division given between mythos and logos is an acceptable one, and strikes nicely at the core of the argument itself. Whereas logos clearly falls into the scientific realm, mythos falls into the religious realm. This is combined my opponent to explain that the Bible is largely mythos. But somehow mythos manages to migrate into the scientific realm because modern empiricists are wrong to deny the importance? This gaping hole is consistent throughout the argument. The book is myth and therefore not contradiction with science. The book opposes every scientific virtue and every necessary prerequisite of science, but is rendered non-contradictory by supposing that the Bible is false? The argument being offered is that there's science based knowledge and myth-based knowledge. Modern fundamentalists accept that myth-based knowledge is best and science-based knowledge wrong if disagreeing with myth-based knowledge. Whereas modern scientists accept science-based knowledge is the best way of knowing and everything is subject to review and evidence. However, such a view is wrong and they both fall into the scientific sphere because... you say so? I do not see why the distinction between myth-based knowledge and science-based knowledge suddenly fuzzes to allow your argument that myth is really science too to become coherent. The objection was never that the Bible contained false views of the world. That's obvious to anybody. Rather the Bible is opposed to the very nature of science and is simply a book of myth with the natural world largely as the setting. The truth or falseness of a hypothesis doesn't make it scientific or not. Science is a process and the Bible is opposed to that process in very fundamental ways. If the book is a book of myth rather than a book of logos, then praytell, how does reading it as a book of myth rather than a book of science make the fault lie with the reader? The differences in virtues with the Early Church were not simply notions of protecting themselves. That certainly could be a part of it, the objections were far more stately than that. The Early Church fathers regarded such progress as impossible or evil even if it could be achieved. This was not because they were worried about being wrong but rather they were worried about people doing something other than dedicating themselves to the scriptures. If the Gospels are all you need to be saved, and being saved is all you need. Why are you going to waste time and energy doing anything else? It wouldn't be until about Aquinas that the religious community started to worry that science might disprove their religious notions. If one ignores the need for the Church to keep political power and reads the Bible as is, how does it "become clear" that it doesn't inherently contradict science? You argue it's an attempt to understand the intent of the world and the mind of God, but attempt to skirt the core issue that it does this by constructing myth whole-cloth. How is that an attempt to understand if the entire thrust of the text is this is how the world came to be, then we are told repeatedly to never question it. Even focusing on this tiny scrap of the principle argument, I don't see how you redeem anything. You agree that the Bible is myth, and that the Bible is opposed to the virtues of science qua science, but somehow magic these two together to conclude that the Bible is not in obvious contradiction to the very notion of science? Bad observations are forgivable but opposing the inquisitive nature of science in general is not. The Bible is in contradiction with science. Mangani's statement is not accurate (even this fragment of the whole).