The Bible of Bibles; Or, Twenty-Seven "Divine" Revelations

by Kersey Graves; Lydia M. Graves

CHAPTER XLIX.—THE BIBLE AT WAR WITH EIGHTEEN SCIENCES.

The word "science" is from the Latin scire ("to know"). Hence every statement incompatible with the teachings and principles of science is simply ignorance arrayed against knowledge. It may surprise some who have been taught that the Bible contains "a perfect embodiment of truth," or who believe, with the redoubtable Dr. Cheever, that "the Bible does not contain the shadow of a shade of error from Genesis to Revelations,"—it will doubtless surprise all such persons to be told, that, so far from Dr. Cheever's statement being correct, "the Holy Book," by a fair estimate, is found to contain more than nine thousand scientific errors alone; i.e., more than nine thousand statements and assumptions which conflict with the established principles of modern science, besides errors in morals and history, &c.

This, perhaps, should not be a matter of surprise to any person after viewing the character and condition of philosophy and the wide-spread scientific ignorance which reigned over the world at that period. Let it be borne in mind that science was the book which does not contain several errors of this character but just budding into life, and philosophy had attained but a feeble growth amongst that portion of the earth's inhabitants who constituted the representatives of the Jewish and Christian religion. Not only does their history and their writings show that they were, for the most part, ignorant of what little science there was in the world,—which was small compared with the present period,—but they opposed it whenever they came in contact with it. Every thing was ascribed to supernatural power. The word "science" only occurs twice in the Bible,—once in the Old Testament, and once in the New; and, in the latter case, it was used for the purpose of condemning it. Paul advises Timothy to "beware of the babblings of science" (1 Tim. vi. 20). The word "philosophy" is used but once in the Bible, and then not to recommend it; but Paul uses it to condemn it, as he does science, or at least to discourage it: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain conceit" (Col. ii. 8). It will be observed, then, that there is apparently a veto placed upon the study of science and philosophy in the only two instances in which reference is made to them in the Bible. We can not wonder, therefore, that its devout disciples have in all ages, until a very recent period, set themselves squarely against the propagation of science and philosophy. It was but carrying out the spirit of their Bible. The early Christians, almost to a man, discouraged the study of science, and condemned and persecuted those who attempted to propagate its principles, and even put some of them to death. Copernicus was persecuted for setting forth principles of astronomy which conflicted with the teachings of the Bible; Galileo was sentenced to death because he taught the rotundity and revolution of the earth in opposition to the Bible, which declares, "The earth has foundations, and can not be removed" (Ps. civ. 5); and Bruno suffered the penalty of death for teaching substantially the same doctrine. And every discoverer in science was condemned and persecuted. Much was written by the early fathers in acknowledgment of the incompatibility of science with religion and the teachings of the Bible, and to warn the pious disciple of the danger of occupying his mind in the investigation and study of science. Even Eusebius, the popular ecclesiastical writer of the third century, and one of the most intelligent Christians of that age, acknowledged he had a contempt for "the useless baubles of the philosophers:" "We think little of these matters, turning our souls to the exercise of better things." And Lactantius, a Christian of the same century, pronounced the study of physical causes of natural things "empty and false." And St. Augustine, "a shining light of the Church," treated with contempt the notion that the earth is round, as "trees on the other side would hang with their tops down, and the men there would have their feet higher than their heads." He condemns it as false, "because no such race is recorded in Scripture among the descendants of Adam." What profound reasoning! Martin Luther utters his malediction against astronomy in the following language: "This false Copernicus will turn the whole art of astronomy upside down; but the Scripture teacheth another lesson, when Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth." Of course Joshua's order for the sun to stop knocks the science of astronomy on the head, and extinguishes it for ever with all true Bible believers; and men have had to outgrow their Bibles before they could accept the teachings of astronomy. When we take into consideration the almost boundless acquisitions that have been made in the field of science since the invention of the printing art, and the many discoveries evolved in every department of science and art, now classified into a long list of new sciences, and which throw a flood of light on almost every thing taught by the ancients in morals, religion, or science, we should not be surprised to find more or less error in every thing they taught. Let us look for a moment at the long list of sciences now taught in our schools, most of which were unknown two hundred years ago: Astronomy, geology, chemistry, mineralogy, meteorology, pneumatics, hydrostatics, mechanics, psychology, paleontology, anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, biology, history, chronology, botany, zoology, philosophy, physiology, ornithology, geography, mathematics, optics, acoustics, phrenology, animal magnetism, &c. The facts and principles now comprised in these several branches of science have mostly been developed within a comparatively recent period of time; and almost every department of science here enumerated embraces facts and discoveries which reveal important errors in the religious creeds of the ancient representatives of the Christian faith. To illustrate this statement, we will cite some examples:—

1. Astronomy.—More than forty errors in astronomy will be found exposed in Chapter 15, treating on the Mosaic account of creation; and here may be added a few more to the number. Several texts in the Bible speak of the stars falling to the earth, or traveling in some lawless direction. Even Christ committed this error. (See Mark xiii. 25.) How ridiculous is this conception when viewed in connection with the fact that these stars are many of them larger than the earth! Saturn is about a thousand times larger, and Jupiter twelve hundred times larger, than our planet. John speaks of one-third of the stars falling at once (Rev. xii. 4). If these two large planets (Jupiter and Saturn) should be of the number, our little earth would fare rather badly, though it is evident they could not all have room to strike it. If they should strike it from opposite sides, they would effectually grind it to powder. The inspired writers of the Bible seem to have had their minds so filled with heavenly things, that there was but little room left for scientific knowledge appertaining to the earth. The idea of the sun being made "to rule by day, and the moon and stars to rule by night," as taught in Gen. i. 16, discloses still further the ignorance of Bible writers on astronomy.

2. Geological Errors.—The story of the creation in Genesis (as exposed in Chapter 15 of this work) contains many geological errors. Almost every statement, in fact, conflicts with the teachings of geology, and especially the assumption that the earth, with the retinue of worlds which roll through infinite space, was brought into existence by a fiat of Omnipotence, and only about six thousand years ago; while many facts in geological science disprove its creation, and prove that it existed hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. For the numerous Bible errors under this head, see Chapter 15.

3. Errors in Geography.—The language applied to the earth by various writers of the Bible show quite plainly that they entertained very erroneous conceptions of its form and size, and the laws that govern it. Such language as "the foundations of the earth" (Ps. civ. 5; Job xxxviii. 4), "the ends of earth," "the corners of the earth," "the pillars of the earth" (1 Sam. ii. 8), clearly indicate that Bible writers entertained the common erroneous conceptions of that age, that the earth is a flat, square, angular figure, only inhabited on one side. Matthew, who represents Christ as seeing all the kingdoms of the earth from the top of a mountain, plainly discloses the same error.

4. Errors in Ethnology.—The Bible assumption of the origin of man within a period of six thousand years, and the descent of the whole race from a single pair, is directly at variance with the teachings of ethnological science, which discloses the true history of man, and proves, according to Agassiz and other modern naturalists, that the human race has descended from at least five pairs of original progenitors. See a work entitled "Types of Mankind," compiled from the writings of the ablest naturalists of the age.

5. Archæology, which treats of antiquity, presents us with nearly the same series of scientific facts to disprove the Bible history of man. It presents us with many facts in the history of the ancient empires of India, Egypt, Greece, China, and Persia, which directly contradict many statements found in the Christian Bible, which the want of space compels us to omit any notice of here. (See chapters on Bibles.)

6. Biology.—The Bible statements which make a son two years older than his father (2 Chron. xxi. and xxii.), a girl only three years old when she married, and two millions of people spring from seventy persons in two hundred and fifteen years, are all at variance with the teachings of biology.

7. Botany.—The origin of thorns and thistles, and the preservation of the whole vegetable kingdom during Noah's flood, as inferentially taught by the Christian Bible, conflict with the present established principles of botany.