{"id":21531,"date":"2014-03-06T11:26:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T16:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=21531"},"modified":"2014-03-06T11:26:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T16:26:31","slug":"the-bible-vs-observational-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/the-bible-vs-observational-science.html","title":{"rendered":"The Bible vs. Observational Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/02\/hamonnye-post-debate-round-up.html#comment-1235701500\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">A commenter suggested<\/a> not long after the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate that even Ken Ham\u2019s attempt to retreat into so-called \u201cobservational science\u201d does not do him any favors. The Bible\u2019s statements are at odds not merely with reconstructed history of the unfolding of astronomical, geological, and biological processes, but with what we can observe. Even observational science is at odds with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2014\/03\/06\/no-interpretation-needed-rjs\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">the existence of storehouses for the snow<\/a>, and with the heart being the locus of human thought \u2013 things that ancient people took literally, but so-called literalists today insist are metaphors.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/13.7\/2014\/02\/09\/274335382\/dear-mr-ham-you-can-t-have-it-both-ways\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Ken Ham isn\u2019t consistent<\/a> when it comes to his statements about \u201cobservational\u201d and \u201chistorical\u201d science. And so not only is he wrong that he can salvage the literal factual truth of the Bible\u2019s creation accounts this way.<\/p>\n<p>He is also wrong in at least one of the two contradictory things he has to say about whether we can know about the past, and if so how.<\/p>\n<p>While Ham continues to try to pretend that ancient knowledge of the natural world is better than modern science, and to fight battles against early pioneers of modern science, <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/pharyngula\/2014\/02\/14\/the-state-of-modern-evolutionary-theory-may-not-be-what-you-think-it-is\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">the state of our knowledge continues to evolve<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>How many examples of discrepancies between the Bible, taken literally, and \u201cobservational science\u201d can readers offer in the comments below?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-22080\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/03\/nyeham-assumptions_custom-1c6f6d4f698eeff469c3736882b940e464ebe424-s40-c85-1024x587.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"614\" height=\"352\"><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.3em\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A commenter suggested not long after the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate that even Ken Ham\u2019s attempt to retreat into so-called \u201cobservational science\u201d does not do him any favors. The Bible\u2019s statements are at odds not merely with reconstructed history of the unfolding of astronomical, geological, and biological processes, but with what we can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":22080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[1140,1183,2527,4646,4660,6131,8297,8299,10886],"class_list":["post-21531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-young-earth-creationism","tag-bible","tag-bill-nye","tag-debate","tag-historical","tag-history","tag-ken-ham","tag-observation","tag-observational","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Bible vs. Observational Science<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A commenter suggested not long after the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate that even Ken Ham&#039;s attempt to retreat into so-called &quot;observational science&quot; does\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/the-bible-vs-observational-science.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Bible vs. Observational Science\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A commenter suggested not long after the Ken Ham vs. Bill Nye debate that even Ken Ham&#039;s attempt to retreat into so-called &quot;observational science&quot; does\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/03\/the-bible-vs-observational-science.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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