Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “yet,” has this note:
Today’s comic inspired by a funny little guy called Hugh Ross.
(His Wikipedia bio is here.) I debated Ross once at the Alaska Bar Association Meeting in Anchorage (the lawyers wanted to hear both “sides”). He’s not little, nor especially funny, but I didn’t find him a particularly compelling opponent. He’s an old-earth creationist, though, and I’d like to see him debate a young-earth creationist about the age of the Earth. Has such a debate ever taken place?
But I digress. Here are the Divine Duo flap their jaws about creationism and science. Accommodationists and apologists often give credit for science to Christianity, arguing that without that religion there would be no science. That, of course, is arrant nonsense, but I often hear the same argument Jesus makes here. Does anybody really believe that if religion hadn’t come along, we’d have no science?
Even if you don’t worry about the Son of God stuff, Jesus curses fig trees, turns water into wine, and does other ‘miracles’. That’s magic, not science.
If it were correct that the Bible predicted scientific discoveries, that would be a remarkable evidence in favor of Divine inspiration, however, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
His organization had on their website Isaiah 40:22 (and I believe that they have used this verse in one of their Youtube videos) as a passage that predicts the expansion of the universe because it says: “…who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in” (ESV). Their implication was that God had to inspire the Bible because of this remarkable prediction.
But when you go and look up the entire verse it says the following:
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to dwell in” – Isaiah 40:22 (ESV)
How do you call Biblical cherry-picking where you ignore the first part of the verse but fully embrace the second part of the verse?
This circle of the earth and the domed heavens etc which are mentioned in the Bible are examples of the Babylonian concept of a flat earth.
s/Babylonian/Egyptian/and any number of other religions in that period.
The Greek astronomers and philosophers worked out, from the shape of the shadow of the Earth cast upon the moon during eclipses, that the Earth has a circular profile, no matter which direction you viewed it from. The simplest shape that fits that is a sphere.
Since that was worked out several centuries before this Jeebus dude got his own mother immaculately pregnant, then obviously this is a prediction of Bible Science.
THe idea that there can be no science without religion is obviously absurd. Especially so since some scientific discoveries such as the mathematics developed by the ancient Greeks predate christianity. They also had atheists such as Diagoras and Theodorus.
Ross’s article here is interesting:
He jumps straight from GR to God 🙂
The ID crowd discourages it since it wants to maintain a big tent — demonstrating (as was also done in the so-called “wedge document”) that it is at its core a political rather scientific movement.
Paulogia has a good video on this topic, what he calls “the debate that should have been.”
Matt Walsh vs Ken Ham & Eric Hovind – Young Earth Creation Debate https://youtu.be/ArFBmZCJVPc
Thanks, Stephen, I’ll check it out.
Thanks Stephen, that was hilarious.
Of course Matt Walsh is wrong, but anybody that thinks he’s as wrong as Ken Ham, Eric Hovind and their crew, is wronger than all of them ( thanks Asimov).
A nod to the Good Doctor: https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
Well and poetically put, Nicolaas! 🙂
I’m kinda surprised that Mo didn’t counter with the fact that during the medieval, Christianity-induced Dark Ages, the Muslim world was making huge advances in science and mathematics, not to mention philosophy. The later exposure of Europeans to all these advances wrought by the Muslims was what brought Europe into the light again. Sad to say, the Muslim world then retreated into superstition, where it largely remains to this day.
Maybe a historian can confirn or deny, I think the rot began with Al-Ghazali?
I think you’re right, Nicolaas. Here’s a good video on that topic, featuring two luminaries you’ll surely recognize. https://youtu.be/BvkBlpfbFJM
I think Steven Colbert had Steven Meyer (the ID person) and another guest (a ‘spirits and energies’ person) on The Colbert Report. At one point Colbert asked Meyer if he thinks the spirits and energies stuff should be taught in schools. I can’t remember how that went and I failed to find a video on youtube.
> Accommodationists and apologists often give credit for science to Christianity, arguing that without that religion there would be no science.
I am glad that my schools shows us a lot of science that was developed and discovered in non-Christian parts of the world, especially in pre-Christian eras. Unfortunately, what we are seeing with the New Zealand mess is that it is a short jump from empirical science to non-empirical ways of knowing – at least it’s a short jump for politicians.
[I don’t want to dismiss the term ‘way of knowing’ itself. That just turns into a word game. ‘Science’ itself is a relatively new term (200 years or so) from the Latin ‘scientia’ (=’knowledge’ or ‘knowing’); prior to ~1800 people referred to ‘natural philosophy’, rather than ‘science’. People could just as easily have translated the Maori term as ‘way of knowing’ or ‘science’. And don’t get me started on ‘Christian Science’.]
I was not aware that the term ‘science’ is that new. Are you sure? The term ‘scientist’ is probably a 19th century word.
The word ‘science’ existed in some form, but meant any study or knowledge. Newton definitely considered himself a natural philosopher. His Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was published in 1687.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_philosophy
“not yet” … gods eternal plan in a nutshell?
Hypothetically, if you were to observe lots of primitive life forms on an Earth like exoplanet, then my bet is the one obviously that displays worship tendencies, will be the one find the scientific method. An ability at least to see and wonder and possibly marvel at life beyond your own existence seems necessary. So religion, if not Christianity, may be an inevitable predecessor if not exactly prerequisite for science to come into being.
I’d take that bet too, because it’s fatuous. It takes cognitive abilities to produce the wonder and (wrong) answers to conceive of divinity as an explanation for mysterious phenomena, and it takes those same cognitive abilities to look beyond those phenomena and tome up with science. This by no means implies that religion leads to science; it merely means that both require sophisticated cognition. You could say the same thing about reading, making music, etc. READING LED TO SCIENCE!
Are you saying anything more than this? If not, admit that you don’t need religion to come up with science.
“He’s an old-earth creationist, though, and I’d like to see him debate a young-earth creationist about the age of the Earth. Has such a debate ever taken place?” According to his Wikipedia bio, he has done so, including Ken Ham…..
Yes, see StephenB’s link under 5. Hilarious!