Can science and Bible co-exist?

[sin_is_fun]

Bible and science cannot both be correct.Only one of them can be true.Biology,geology,physical sciences everything is unneccesary of we accept bible says asimov.Old testament is nothing but oral traditions of sumerian kings he says.

Doesnt taking bible as true-literally-word to word-stretching our faith too much?Bible was not given by god.The authors of it were humans.Humans have a tendency to exaggerate says asimov.He sees bible with a scientific eye and says it is exaggerated.

He is not just a scientist but also a writer.

so if Bible and science both cannot be correct then we have to look at the evidence we have for both.

what evidence does Bible have?Statments of 12 apostles and their disciples.

what is the evidence science has?billions of experiments,statments of highly trustworthy and knowledgable scientists like Einstein,stephen hawking,Galileo and so on.Their statements are backed up by billions of experiments,observations and verifications.

It is obvious that science has overwhelming evidence.But why do people still reject it?Is it based on statements of 40 people which were passed on as oral traditions for so many years.The existence of many of those disciples themselves is doubtful.

Who is correct?12 apostles versus millions of scientists and billions of experiments.coming to a conclusion must be easy,right?

------------------from asimov's interview-----------------------


Kurtz: Do you take the Bible primarily as a human document or do you think it was divinely inspired?

Asimov: The Bible is a human document. Much of it is great poetry, and much of it consists of the earliest reasonable history that survives. Samuel I and 2 antedate Herodotus by several centuries. A great deal of the Bible may contain successful ethical teachings, but the rest is at best allegory and at worst myth and legend. Frankly, I don't think that anything is divinely inspired. I think everything that human beings possess of intelligent origin is humanly inspired, with no exceptions.

Kurtz: Earlier you said that the Bible contained fallible writings. What would some of these be?

Asimov: In my opinion, the biblical account of the creation of the universe and of the earth and humanity is wrong in almost every respect. I believe that those cases where it can be argued that the Bible is not wrong are, if not trivial, then coincidental. And I think that the account of a worldwide flood, as opposed, say, to a flood limited to the Tigris-Euphrates region, is certainly wrong.

Kurtz: The creationists think there is evidence for the Noachian flood.

Asimov: The creationists think there is evidence for every word in the Bible. I think all of the accounts of human beings living before the flood, such as Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, are at best very dim memories of ancient Sumerian rulers; and even the stories about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I rather think are vague legends.

Kurtz: Based on oral tradition?

Asimov: Yes, and with all the distortions that oral traditions sometimes undergo.

Kurtz: In your book In the Beginning, you say that creation is a myth. Why do you think it is scientifically false? What are some of the main points?

Asimov: Well, all of the scientific evidence we have seems to indicate that the universe is billions of years old. But there is no indication whatsoever of that in the Bible if it is interpreted literally rather than allegorically. Creationists insist on interpreting it literary. According to the information we have, the earth is billions of years younger than the universe.

Kurtz: It is four and a half billion years old.

Asimov: The earth is, and the universe is possibly fifteen billion years old. The universe may have existed ten billion years before the earth, but according to the biblical description of creation the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars were all created at the same time. As a matter of fact, according to the Bible, the earth itself existed from the beginning, whereas the stars, sun, and moon were created on the fourth day.

Kurtz: Yes, so they have it backward.

Asimov: They have that backward, and they have plant life being created before the sun. All the evidence we have indicates that this is not so. The Bible says that every plant, and every animal, was created after its own kind, which would indicate that species have been as they are now from the very beginning and have never changed. Despite what the creationists say, the fossil record, as well as very subtle biochemical evidence, geological evidence, and all sorts of other evidence, indicates that species have changed, that there has been a long evolutionary process that has lasted over three billion years.

Kurtz: It's not simply biology that they are questioning, but geology, astronomy, and the whole basis of the physical sciences.

Asimov: If we insist on the Bible's being literary true, then we must abandon the scientific method totally and completely. There's no way that we can at the same time try to discover the truth by means of observation and reason and also accept the Bible as true.

source:http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/asi ... #SCI_BIBLE

[QED]

Dear AlAyeti, you fill me with wonder at your 'take' on these matters. Before I can give you my case for separating the bible from science, I have to get to the bottom of this problem with evolution...

You know that when we study living things, we find they are all "built" to a genetic blue-print that is passed on from generation to generation I can't recall anyone disputing this particular bit of science, but please say so if you disagree with this.

And you also know that all individuals of a given species are not identical -- after all, we have no difficulty identifying those who are talented above others in things like sports, arts and academia etc. let alone recognizing our own immediate family and friends by their visual properties. This means that our blue-prints must be slightly different from one individual to another, otherwise we would all look like either Barbie or Ken.

And when it comes to family you must have noticed how people acquire certain facets directly from their biological parents. Bits and pieces of our mothers and fathers pop-up all over the place! This means that variations in the blue-print are passed on to each new generation.

So this is how it works. We are not identically stamped-out at birth each time by some cosmic cookie-cutter, instead we are more like a jittery photo-copy of a whole sequence of previous jittery photo-copies. Isn't this a fair way of putting it (if not technically spot-on)?