Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Scientific Explanations for Biblical Events

Article here. Could have been shorter. Here's an even simpler explanation, also scientific, to explain those events depicted in the bible: They didn't happen.

Note that this explanation also works when you want to explain how Superman can fly, how Wolverine regenerates, and how every alien on Star Trek looks basically human shaped and speaks English.

6 comments:

Robert said...

Of course, then you have to ask yourself why the Bible authors would go to the trouble of inventing logical details that they didn't understand, but that we do, and that make the story less impressive. Which is more convincing/has more propaganda value, the idea that Moses lifts his hand and poof, the sea is parted - which is what we would write if we wanted it to look like God had done it? Or the idea that the wind blew all night long and the sea level went down, which would have made little or no sense to the intended audiences for the Old Testament, but which does match up to what we now understand about wind set-down?

They did come up with a scientific explanation for the humanoid aliens in Star Trek, btw.

DBB said...

Yes, they came up with an explanation in Star Trek - but the point I was trying to make was, you don't have to come up with an explanation for something that hasn't actually happened - we haven't found other humanoids on other planets. Star Trek, for all its wonderfulness, is fiction.

So step one of "explaining" something should be 1) confirming something actually happened that needs explaining in the first place. Until you've done that, you really are just flailing about. I mean, right now, I could pose a question - how could a fully formed icicle, 15 feet long, have formed inside my house, in August, when it was 100 degrees outside, and when there are no refrigerators or freezers in my house. My roof is intact. The icicle clearly formed inside the house and is in the process of melting in the heat. So how did it get there?

Now, you could start working out some wonderful, scientific explanations for this, perhaps some of them even elegantly explaining the situation. But why bother before finding out first if such an icicle actually exists that needs explaining? This need is even greater where the event in question is rather fantastical and therefore, not credible.

Robert said...

Except that in the case of historical events, we generally do not have the option of going to look and see for ourselves. It's over; it happened three thousand years ago, or whenever. Your approach is the superior approach for investigating a current event or phenomenon, but relatively useless in assessing historical events.

DBB said...

Robert - How do you then investigate a claim in the historical record that someone slew a Minotaur? Do you start coming up for scientific explanations of how a half man/half bull came to be using genetic engineering, or do you conclude that there was no such beast and that it was just a story?

Did the Greek Gods really exist and cross-breed with humans or is that also a story?

All of those fall under the historic category. Do we start coming up for scientific explanations of how Zeus could transform into a bird and then into a human to impregnate a hapless princess? If you say those stories are somehow different than biblical stories, that is just special pleading. Show me an analysis that you would apply equally to both.

Robert said...

Robert - How do you then investigate a claim in the historical record that someone slew a Minotaur? You look for concurrent reports of the event, artistic representations (with the understanding that those can be fiction), and examine the records of the time to determine whether the story was thought to be myth or history. There are other research techniques as well, but that'd be one place to start.

Do you start coming up for scientific explanations of how a half man/half bull came to be using genetic engineering, or do you conclude that there was no such beast and that it was just a story?If the historical record makes it reasonable to think that an event occurred, or at least that contemporaneous people thought that an event occurred, then it's probably worthwhile to start looking into how it could possibly be true. Some stories can be validated in this way; science is telling us that it's possible for a body of water to get blown on and lower its level. I think science tells us that (for now) a half-man half-bull isn't practical, but I'm not an expert.

Did the Greek Gods really exist and cross-breed with humans or is that also a story?Don't know, but it would be interesting to find out!

If you say those [difficult to credit] stories are somehow different than biblical stories, that is just special pleading. Show me an analysis that you would apply equally to both.Well, it's special pleading unless I can show a bona fide difference in the stories. The persistence of a belief seems to me a bona fide difference. There are no people left on Earth who believe in the Minotaur; there are billions who believe in the Resurrection. If you decide that's special pleading, ah well.

And of course, you can assess the Resurrection and similar Christian beliefs in the light of reason as well as the light of faith. Some of them stand up, or at least, are hard to tear down. Others require more faith.

DBB said...

Those are certainly some valid research techniques. What you need to keep in mind, though, is that when they are turned on bible stories of miracles, you find there are no contemporary records from unbiased sources that confirm any of them. For instance, the bible talks about some pretty earth-shattering astronomical events that contemporary records in China and elsewhere show simply did not happen. (And that is but one example). Other dates simply don't jibe with the records of the time - like the non-existent census and the wrong ruler in place around the alleged time of the alleged birth of Jesus.

But looking further, there is a simple explanation why those things were made part of the mythology - there was a great deal of reverse-engineering of prophecies in the old testament. In an effort to gain legitimacy, followers of the new Jesus cult made up stories (like the gospels) and tried to make it sound like what happened in those stories matched the old testament "predicitions" - but some of those "predictions" were confusing or even contradictory, so, for instance, the city of origin. How could it be both Bethleham and Nazareth. Oh, let's come up with an explanation for it to somehow be both, then we're covered.

A mistranslation of a Jewish word for "young woman" and now Mary is a virgin. And so on. There are all sorts of explanations for how the story came to be what it was.

This works for the old testament too - the flood story of noah - that traces back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. And that traces back to the fact that civilization was born on river banks - because rivers flooded and created very fertile, easy to farm land every year. This flood/life cycle was what they depended on. The flood was life. It was renewal. So no big surprise that a people that depend on an annual flood for life has a big flood myth story.

And that is far more likely (and historically confirmed on top of that) than the entire world flooding and having animals saved in pairs on an ark.

Finally, billions of people believing something doesn't make it true. Probably 25% of the population right now thinks Obama is a communist. He clearly is not. To use but one example. Billions think the only true prophet is Muhammed. Does their numbers make them right?

Early Christianity had no ressurrection of Jesus - that was added to the story later. If the ressurrection really happened, this gap would not appear. And yet "true Christians" the first of them, those who would know best, knew there was no ressurrection. So based on an empirical investigation, the most logical explanation is that there was no ressurrection - that it was just part of the mythology. This is backed up by the fact that there is nothing in the contemporary historical record showing Jesus was executed, much less even existed.

Historians already have turned their attention to the questions of early Christianity and its myths, and the verdict is in - and has been - for a long time. It is just that most Christians don't want to hear it, and they call this willful ignorance "faith."