Scientist Tests the Holy Books of Major Religions
Watch video by philosopher Michael Horner
I was born in Montreal and raised in Vancouver, Canada. My parents were morally upright but non-religious. Our neighbors could also be described as non-religious. I did not know any Christians or serious followers of any other religion while I was growing up.
Though my neighborhood was poor, its public schools were outstanding and its libraries well equipped. By age seven I was reading physics books as fast as I could check them out. By eight I had decided to make astronomy my career. In the next several years my study of the big bang convinced me that the universe had a beginning, and thus a Beginner. But, like the astronomers whose books I read, I imagined that the Beginner must be distant and non-communicative.
My high school history studies disturbed me, for it was obvious that the peoples of the world tended to take their religions very seriously. Knowing that the European philosophers of the Enlightenment largely discounted religion, my initial response was to study their works. What I discovered, however, were inconsistencies, contradictions, evasions, and circular reasoning.
The obvious next step was to turn to the “holy” books themselves. If God the Creator had spoken through any of these books (and I thought He probably had not) his authorship would be obvious: the communication would be perfectly true. I reasoned that if men invent a religion, their teachings will reflect human error. But, if the Creator communicates, His message will be error free and just as consistent as the facts of nature. So, I used the facts of history and science to test each of the “holy” books.
Initially my task was easy. After only a few hours (in some cases less) of reading, I could find one or more statements clearly at odds with the facts of history and science. I also noted a writing style best described as esoteric and mysterious; it seemed inconsistent with the character of the Creator as implied by the facts of nature. My task was easy until I dusted off the Bible that the Gideons had given me several years earlier as part of their distribution program in the public schools.
I found the Bible noticeably different. It was simple, direct, and specific. I was amazed at the quantity of historical and scientific (i.e., testable) material it included and at the detail of this material. The first page of the Bible caught my attention. Not only did its author correctly describe the major events in the creation of life on earth, but he placed those events in the scientifically correct order and properly identified the earth’s initial conditions.
For the next year and a half I spent about an hour a day searching the Bible for scientific and historical inaccuracies. I finally had to admit that it was error free and that this perfect accuracy could only come from the Creator Himself. I also recognized that the Bible stood alone in describing God and His dealings with man from a perspective that demanded more than just the dimensions we humans experience (length, width, height, and time). Further, I had proven to myself, on the basis of predicted history and science, that the Bible was more reliable than many of the laws of physics. My only rational option was to trust the Bible’s authority to the same degree as I trusted the laws of physics.
By this time I clearly understood that Jesus Christ was the Creator of the universe, that He paid the price that only a sinless person could pay for all of my offenses against God, and that eternal life would be mine if I would receive His pardon and give Him His rightful place of authority over my life. I had understood enough Scripture to know, however, that this commitment could not be a secret one. It had to be public, and that meant letting my peers and professors and family know about it I feared the contempt and ridicule that surely would come. So, for several months I hesitated.
During those months I experienced a strange sense of confusion. For the first time in my life, my grades dropped and I had difficulty solving problems. I was discovering the meaning of Romans 1:21, which says that when a man rejects what he knows and understands to be true about God, his thinking becomes futile and his mind darkened. The eventual consequences spelled out in the succeeding verses chilled me.
I knew what I had to do, but my pride seemed too great. One evening I prayed, asking God to take away my resistance and make me a Christian. I prayed this way for six hours with no apparent answer. Finally, I realized that Jesus Christ will not force Himself upon anyone, even if asked. It was up to me to humble myself and invite Him in. And this is what I did at 1:06 in the morning. I then signed my name to the “decision statement” at the back of my Gideon Bible, acknowledging Jesus Christ as my lord and Savior.
Right away I sensed an assurance that God would never let me go, that I was His forever. My fears of ridicule from unbelievers subsided gradually, and day by day I began learning how to share my discoveries of spiritual truth with fellow students and faculty. However, without the benefits of fellowship with other Christians, I found that my growth in Christlikeness was stunted.
Every once in awhile I would visit a church, only to discover a cult or a group who called themselves Christians but did not take the Bible seriously. On arriving at Caltech for post-doctoral studies, I met a serious Christian at last, Dave Rogstad. Dave invited me to attend a seminar with him on applying Biblical principles to daily living. There I sat with 16,000 committed Christians all in one building. I was overwhelmed to find that so many Christians existed, and I was helped and humbled by the things I was taught.
Within weeks of that seminar I found myself not only attending home Bible studies but helping to lead them. Dave challenged me to begin sharing my faith with non-Christian non-scientists. I was surprised to observe that unlike scientists, who tend to struggle more with their will than with their mind in coming to Christ, the non-scientists I met tended to struggle more with their mind. If only they could see convincing evidence that God exists, that Jesus is God, and that the Bible is true, they would readily give their lives to Christ. What a joy!
I began spending more and more time sharing the evidence with others. Within a year I was serving full-time as the minister of evangelism for Sierra Madre Congregational Church. Ten years later, when breakthrough discoveries in the sciences virtually sealed the scientific case for the God of the Bible, a group of friends urged me to form an organization, Reasons To Believe, to communicate this new evidence as widely as possible. It is my delight to report that for each year that I have known Jesus as my lord and Savior, my joy in Him and, in sharing His truth with others grows greater. There is nothing in this world for which I would trade my relationship with Him.
>> Start giving the Bible a chance and read this summary of the main points of the Bible.
I am sorry Xephon. I did not intend to offend you. I just wanted to respond to your quote of Epicurus. And also, yes, I would love to see you come to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but I did not anticipate that my response would create such an adverse reaction from you. If I were to speculate, I’d say that while your primary reason for losing your faith was the insistence on the inerrancy of the Bible there were probably some other more visceral reasons as well. But you are likely not interested in talking about those so I won’t push you.
I understand that my apologetics seem convoluted to you (although I wouldn’t mind having you expand on which part I lost you) but I have found that a primarily cerebral debate does not progress anywhere. You have your beliefs and I have mine and very little gets accomplished. However, in order to truly understand the essence of Christianity you must look beyond just the provable cerebral information of the Bible, to the relational component. The Bible, while being a source of lots of useful information, is essentially a revelation of who God is and an invitation for humans to discover relationship with Him. If someone is unwilling to address that aspect of what the Bible says there is very little point of discussing its informational aspects.
If the intended purpose of the Bible was a mathematical textbook, it would read entirely different than it does. If it were a guide to observations of natural science it would contain completely different structure and information. If it were purely an historical account or an anthology of poetry and prose it would look completely different. But because it is an introduction into the nature of God it includes the record of His work in Creation so that His authority is unquestioned. It also includes an historical record of the way that He has interacted with humanity to reveal His love, mercy and patience. It contains poetry to help humans comprehend the incomprehensible aspects of His infinite love, beauty, and power in order to guide us into appropriate worship of Him. There is no other piece of literature quite like it and when it is used as it was intended, it becomes a literary pathway into the presence of God.
Yes there are many different Christian groups that emphasize different aspects and even disagree about how to interpret what has been written. That is partly due to the vast complexity of God and the limited nature of humanity. Things that may seem contradictory to us can only be understood through the infinite wisdom of God Himself. The disagreements also are due in part to the continuing rebellion within the hearts of humanity who choose to read their own agenda into the pages of scripture rather than surrendering to the revealed truth of God. Many terrible things have been perpetrated on the minorities, the weak, and the defenceless in the name of Christianity. But that has happened not because of God’s direction but because of humans’ misdirection. But to write off God because of the evil choices of those who claimed to follow Him is foolhardy. And to write off God because of the diversity within the ones who follow Him is (I am sorry) arrogant. What right do you have to demand that God fit your expectations? If He is the Creator of all things would He not also have the right to reveal Himself to and through His followers as He sees fit? Do you want to follow a God that is explainable and completely understandable? Is it not far better to worship a God who is so infinitely more than we can comprehend that it will take all of eternity to plumb the depths of the beauty of His character?
I guess you will say I am getting convoluted again Xephon. I know I get kind of worked up when I talk about the One who is my very life. I tried to live life in my own terms and carried off a pretty good scam for those who knew me. For all anybody knew, I was always the ‘good boy’. But for all of my external ‘goodness’ I could never get away from the fact of my own rebellion against God in my own way. I discovered that even as I tried to be good it was so I could say to God, “See! I don’t need You!” But as time went on it became harder and harder to resist His constant loving voice calling me to surrender to His plan. And finally, when I had come to the end of what I could accomplish, I realized that I was only fooling myself. I gave myself fully into His authority, into His grace and forgiveness, and into His love and my life has never been the same. I still face troubles and difficulties in my life but I know that He is with me and He directs my choices and passions so that I end up closer to Him and living a life of adventure that I would have never experienced on my own. And I want to let everyone know what He did for me and that He will do it for them as well.
Don’t worry Xephon. I am not trying to force you to become a follower of God. I just wanted to let you know and those others who may read our discussion here that God is real. His love is real. His life changing power is real and nobody has to remain trapped in their rebellion against Him any longer. He will set you free.
Now if you want to go back to the cerebral discussion I am certainly open to that. You have made some pretty strong claims of what the Bible is mistaken on. You seem to think that the Bible argues for a flat earth. I know that there are historically those that claimed that the Bible states that but I think you will have a hard time pointing out where the Bible makes that claim directly. There is a good article at http://www.tektonics.org/af/earthshape.html where the author addresses the parts of the Bible that some have used to argue for a flat Earth and helps those of us who don’t know ancient Hebrew to understand what is being said. Some of the complications are that ancient Hebrew did not have a separate word for ‘sphere’. The two words for ‘circle’ could be interpreted ‘sphere’, ‘circle’ or ‘surround’ depending on the context. Many of the other pieces that have been interpreted as a description of a flat Earth are poetic and prophetic writings that are not trying to describe the shape of the Earth but describe the awesome creative power of God. The descriptions are full of metaphor and imagery and poetic language that is trying to use human speech to describe an indescribable God. To try and then use that to prove the Earth is flat is like using Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to map out the geography of Great Britain. So I do not agree with your assertion that the Bible claims that the Earth is flat.
You also say that the Bible calls the bat a bird. It is true that in Leviticus 11:13-19 and Deuteronomy 14:11-18 there are lists given of birds that should not be eaten which include ‘bat’. As I had stated before, just because the Hebrews used a different classification of biological life then our current system does not mean that they were wrong. There are some libraries that use a Dewey Decimal system to organize its books. Others use The Library of Congress Classification for the very same books. To say one is right and the other wrong is short-sighted.
You also contested the Bible’s description of Creation that all the creatures of the world were able to be created in one day. I would challenge you to conclusively prove that Creation did not happen that way. Or even prove conclusively instead that all of the creatures of the world are the product of evolution and the spontaneous self-creation of the universe. Those remain theories that lack any concrete evidence. If there were any verifiable proof there would no longer be a debate between evolution and intelligent design.
So like I said, our cerebral discussion accomplishes very little because we can go back and forth making claims and discounting the other’s ad infinitum. Your quotation of Epicurus’ question on God’s ability and willingness to deal with evil was much more to the point. I applaud your inclusion of that into our discussion. I have given my response but you still have yet to address your answer of where evil came from and how you deal with the evil in your own heart. Have you ever thought through that?
Jamie,
Please do not proselytize to me. I have already made it clear to you (or tried to) that I do not begrudge you your beliefs and have no intention of getting into a preach-off with you. My original position stands uncontested by facts: that the Bible, allegedly a document inspired and guided by an all-knowing creator, contains countless falsehoods and misconceptions consistent with the beliefs of a primitive culture but refuted even by the limited knowledge of other cultures of the day.
I was a Roman Catholic for the first 25 years of my life. I know a lot of fundamentalists do not consider Catholics to be “real” Christians, but there are about 500,000,000 Catholics in the world who would say otherwise, so I’m taking their word for it. The primary reason I lost my beliefs is because of people like Dr. Ross, who insisted that there was nothing questionable about the Bible, no matter how many contradictions you pointed out to them, so stop asking questions, and people like yourself, who defend your dogma with convoluted apologetics that seem to aimed more at obscuring the questions than answering them.
There are about 2000 sects of Christianity in the world. The Law of Averages alone says that at least 1999 of them must be wrong about SOMETHING. I’ll go back to believing in God when He starts exercising a little more quality control over His message and the people who claim to speak on his behalf. Until then, I’ll place my “faith” (such as it is) on that which is factually supported and demonstrably true. The Bible does not meet those qualifications.
Epicurus’ question about the nature of God is certainly a valid one and one that the Bible responds to clearly. The answer is that God is both willing and able to deal with evil. So why is there still evil? It is because Humanity, the object of God’s love, continues to rebel against God’s love and authority in our lives. God has relented from the complete destruction of evil because it would mean the end of those He loves who have chosen to persist in their rebellion against Him. Out of His love and mercy He has chosen to give each of us the opportunity of turning away from that rebellion and surrender ourselves to His love and forgiveness and follow His perfect plan and purpose for our lives.
Now Xephon, I am going to have to ask you to put aside your biases at this point and join me in imagining if what the Bible claims is true (don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.) What if God did make the entire universe as a place to put a unique creature whom He had made to have a special connection with, different from all other creatures? This creature reflected God’s ability to build and create, to exercise authority and care for all the rest of Creation, to have love relationships with others and most importantly to have a love relationship with Himself. Now love is something that can never be forced because by its very nature it is a choice. So these creatures were given the choice of either loving God or not. What if those creatures chose not to love God? What if this choice not to love and follow God was passed down generation after generation? What if, instead of reflecting the nature of God, they began to use those God-given abilities in ways that God never intended? What if, because they had chosen to reject God’s love, they had separated themselves from the One who could help them use those abilities for good? So building and creating turned into a passion for building and creating self-serving empires. Authority and caring for creation turned into abusing stripping the natural world around them. Love relationships turned into selfish attempts at meeting their own interests at the expense of others.
If all that were true, how would you try to turn things around? How would you deal with the problem of the ones you loved who were determinedly rebelling against you, destroying themselves and all of creation along with it?
God’s answer was His own Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus became human so that He could represent God to a world who had been so locked into rebellion against Him that they had a very poor understanding of who He is. He came so that He could show all of humanity how much He loved us all and so that He could make a way for us to have our relationship with God restored. That way was made by Jesus dying in our place. His death paid the penalty for our rebellion against God so that we no longer had to pay the consequence for that. He then came back to life to guide us on how to live as God intended rather than in rebellion. The Bible is a way for us to know who God is and to discover for ourselves the lengths that His love went for us. In the Bible we find out how to respond to that love in turning away from our rebellion and following Jesus. We are invited to once again, walk in love with God!
But that didn’t change the nature of love. Love is not forced and so each person makes their own choice if they will accept that love and forgiveness from God or if they will continue to rebel against Him. The time between Jesus dying on the cross and today has been the mercy of God allowing more and more people to discover freedom from our rebellion against God. God tells us in the Bible that one day that opportunity will no longer exist and evil will be dealt with completely. But until then, the followers of Jesus continue to tell people far and near of how much God loves everyone and wants them to be freed from their rebellion.
I know you think I am a snake-oil salesman Xephon but the truth of it is, I am former rebel who has found the love and forgiveness of God. It has changed my life completely and I know that it can completely change your life as well. I don’t want you to be bound by the generations of rebellion against God. I want you to experience what life is like living the way that God has intended for you rather than being trapped into going your own way.
Now let me ask you: how you would explain the existence of evil in this world? If this universe is the result of natural selection where species, elements, and ideas are born out of the process of what is best for the progression of life, where did evil come from? What defines what is evil and what is good? And how do you deal with the evil you find in your own heart?
Jamie,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on my commentary. I don’t begrudge you your faith, and I will make no claim to certainty on any mystery of the universe for which there is no factually-supported and verifiable answer. I do not personally believe in any deities, but I freely admit that it is an opinion based on a lack of evidence and not a conclusion drawn from evidence.
You have taken me to task for analyzing the Bible from a modern viewpoint. I would like to remind that Dr. Ross has done the same and failed to find any of the contradictions and inaccuracies that I have listed. I am merely picking up the gauntlet that he has thrown down.
Both you and Dr. Ross overlook your own belief that the Bible is allegedly a divinely-inspired document and while the Israelite authors can be forgiven for a failure to recognize their inaccuracies, one would think that the omnipotent God who was presumably guiding their hands would know better. The historical fact is that while several cultures that were not co-mingled with Judeo-Christian dogma (the Greeks, the Chinese, and the Hindus) all figured out the earth was a sphere several hundred years before the birth of Christ, the flat-earth cosmology persisted in Christendom well into the Second Millenium A.D. entirely because the Bible says the world is flat.
It is also historical fact that the pre-Christian Israelites were considered to be backward and primative even in the times in which they lived. In the last five centuries B.C., the Greeks, who made no claim to divine inspiration, even though they had enough gods to form their own football league, discoved the shape of the earth, the curvature of the earth, the motion of the earth around the sun, the link between the motion of the moon and the tides, the fact that the phases of the moon were caused by the shadow of the earth cast on the moon’s surface, and they measured the circumference of the earth with 97% accuracy. During the same time, the presumably God-guided scholars of the Israelites were claiming the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth did not move through space. If you look at Biblical claims from the viewpoint of the time in which it was written, most of it is still wrong.
I also think it is disingenuous of you to take me to task for using science to respond to Dr. Ross’s claim that the Bible contains no inaccuracies. He took a scientific position and I responded in kind. I feel that my response is perfectly legitimate given the nature of the claim. If anyone who reads my words has independently verifiable facts to refute my assertions, I welcome them. No one has done so, and the only response I have gotten is for you to cry foul for challenging Dr. Ross on his own terms.
The presence of known historical figures in the Bible does not make the Bible historically accurate. The DaVinci Code also mentions several well-known historical figures, including Jesus, but it is undeniably a work of fiction.
I also reject your premise that each of us has a “darkness” within us from which we need God’s protection. It is a common tactic of snake-oil salesmen to invent some ailment or dysfunction which can only be cured by purchasing and using their products. Many religions operate on this same principle.
Now how would YOU respond to the words of the Greek philosopher Epicurus:
“If God is willing to battle evil, but unable, then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able, but not willing, then He is malevolent.
If He is both willing and able, then why is there evil?
If He is neither willing nor able, then why call him God?
Melinda,
With all due respect, I do not get my science (or my “truth”) from YouTube videos, and neither should you. I get my science from my fellow scientists and my own methodologies.
Xephon, It seems as if you are one searching for truth. That is more than many can say. I challenge you to watch the film “The Privileged Planet”(you can pull it up on You Tube in chapters) and “God of Wonders.” God of Wonders is on Netflix. Some people begin looking into the Bible as to prove it wrong. I challenge you to do the opposite, look for the reasons it could be true. I will be praying for you.
Thank you for this article Dr. Ross. I was touched by your revelation of God prior to accepting Him as your Savior. Although God wanted you to accept Him, He waited those 6 hours that you were praying for you to realize who He was and how He wanted to meet you.
Revelation 3:20
“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
Your journey and personal testimony is a great challenge to us as we consider our own beliefs.
Xephon, you have done a lot of research into what the Bible states. I understand your reservations about the accuracy of the Bible but I think you have put some parameters on the tests of the accuracy of scripture that reflect a modern view point rather than the time in which the documents were written. Your points about the how the Bible refers to creatures in the wrong taxonomic classification ignore that fact that those forms of biological classification originated with Aristotle around 330 bce. That was long after the documents of the Hebrews scriptures were written.
In your accusation that the Bible says pi=3 I am assuming that you are referring to the measurements given of the cast metal Sea described in 2Chronicles 4:2. While there could be a number of explanation why the measurements of the circumference (30 cubits) and the diameter (10 cubits) do not work for a perfect circle, ultimately the purpose of the description is not to be an exact blueprint but a generalized description of the vast size of the large basin in which the priests cleansed themselves in preparation for worship.
Time and again, when there have been questions about the historical accuracy of people and places mentioned in the Bible, new archeological finds consistently support rather than dispute the Bible’s accounts. Even in those situations where some evidence seemed to suggest the biblical description was wrong, further evidence has been discovered which reverses that accusation (e.g. Pilate the Roman governor of Palestine, the Hittites, Sargon king of Assyria were all at one time thought to be biblical myths but recent discoveries have conclusively corroborated the biblical account). Just because there is no historical data currently that supports or denies the issues you have raised, does not automatically mean the Bible is inaccurate.
Along those lines, just because the Bible makes incredible claims of feats of construction, or supernatural action through the process of Creation does not mean that the reports are inaccurate. With the absence of any other witness to those events there is no reason to say those things were impossible to accomplish. Based on the testimony of the Bible, God is able to accomplish anything and is not bound by the same limitations that we as finite creatures are bound to.
I understand your reluctance to accept the accuracy of the Bible because not only does it describe the physical world around us but it also, very accurately describes the reality of the darkness of the heart of humanity. It calls us to acknowledge the authority and sovereignty of God in the universe and the authority He has in my life. Everything within the human heart cries out to the importance self, where the Bible challenges us that our highest priority is to follow the plans and purposes that God lays out for us. So it is natural to want to find any excuse to reject the truth of the Bible.
How do you respond to the claim of the Bible that each of us has a darkness within us that only God can set us free from?
The Bible says that bats are birds, that some insects only have four legs, that pi = 3, that every species of animal on earth emerged on the same day (or “yom” or whatever), that the earth was created before the sun, that plants grew on the earth a day (or “yom” or whatever) before sunlight first reached the earth, that the moon produces its own light, that the earth does not move in space, that a 600-year-old man and his three sons could build a boat the length of a football field (The keel alone must have weighed about a hundred tons. How did four men cut, transport, balance and attach it?).
There is no verifiable evidence that the Exodus ever happened, or that the Egyptians ever kept the Israelites as slaves. If the Tower of Babel is a true story, and all of the world’s languages originated in the same location, there should be a place somewhere in the world where we’d find evidence of Chinese, Swahili, Navajo, Japanese and English thousands of years ago. Why has no such place ever been found? Why is there no evidence of any ancient place where any of these languages overlap?
If you read the Bible for a year and half, and failed to find a single scientific or historical inaccuracies, then all I can say is you must be one lousy scientist.
“For the next year and a half I spent about an hour a day searching the Bible for scientific and historical inaccuracies. I finally had to admit that it was error free and that this perfect accuracy could only come from the Creator Himself” ….After reading the preceding statement you made, my question to is this, How EXACTLY did you investigate the Bible to search for scientific and historical inaccuracies? How about a little detail….You can’t really expect anyone over the age of 10 to accept this statement at face value, can you?
gsk, Dr Hugh Ross (PhD Astrophysics, University of Toronto) was intending to tell his own personal story of how he came to faith in this article. He was not intending to provide a full defense of his scientific views.
Many Christians do believe in literal 6 day creation, but Dr Ross in fact does not; he believes the “days” referred to in the biblical account (Hebrew “yom”) reflect long periods of indeterminate time. He presents his views on his website Reasons.org, for example in his resource “Astronomical Evidences for the God of the Bible“
” I was amazed at the quantity of historical and scientific (i.e., testable) material it included and at the detail of this material. The first page of the Bible caught my attention. Not only did its author correctly describe the major events in the creation of life on earth, but he placed those events in the scientifically correct order and properly identified the earth’s initial conditions.”
what a joke! 6 day creation = big bang? wow… dude do you even know science at all? what a biased article!!!!