Supposed Contradictions

Problems with History, Science and Math

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 1: Hares “chewing the cud”?
Lev.11:6 "And the hare, because he cheweth the cud".
But...
Hares never have and never will chew the cud, they have only one stomach, they are not ruminants like cattle. If chewing your food a lot like a hare is equivalent to "chewing the cud" then human beings with false teeth "chew the cud" also!

Bible-Believer: Rabbits do chew the cud by practicing refection. This is a process when rabbits pass pellets of partially digested food, then they chew on it for their stomachs to get another opportunity at extracting the nutrients in the food.

Bible Rejecter’s Response: Although rabbits (we’re talking hares here not rabbits) eat their fecal pellets there is a huge difference between coprophagy (the eating of excrement) and rumination. A fecal pellet is not a cud. A cud is the product of rumen, a chamber of the stomachs of ruminants. Shouldn’t God have known this?

Bible-Believer: God clearly then defines “a cud” differently, as “food naturally chewed by an animal that has already partially digested it”, a definition that includes refection.

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 2: Bat-birds?
Lev.11:13-19 God refers to bats as fowl but bats are not birds they are mammals. Where are their feathers? The skin covered wings, and hair are good clues that these aren’t birds. Maybe a human author of Leviticus might think so but this is supposed to be God talking here!

 

Bible-Believer: This is insane! Brian actually expects God (the Creator) to conform to man’s standard for categorising different sorts of animals, and even long before man’s “scientific” categorisation standards were nailed down or ever there was a concept of a “mammal” created. Who decided that something has to have feathers before it can be called a bird? SOME MAN many years after Leviticus was written! God can categorise His creatures in whatever way He wants.

 

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 3: Counting Problems?
1 Chron.25:3 says “the sons of Jeduthun; Gedaliah, and Zeri, and Jeshaiah, and Hashabiah, and Mattithah, six, under the hands of their father Jeduthun” but anyone with eyes to see can see that five names do not equal six. 1 Chron.3:22 says “The sons of Shemaiah; Hattush, and Igeal, and Bariah, and Neariah, and Shaphat, six” but five names do not equal six. 1 Chron.3:19-20 says “The sons of Zerubbabel; Meshullam, and Hananiah, and Shelemith their sister; and Hashubah, and Obel, and Berechiah, and Hasadiah, Jushab-bhesed”, five” but how can the total be five when seven males and one female are listed?

Bible Believer: 1. The passage in 1Chron 25 is speaking about groups of musicians (see verse 1). Gedaliah, Zeri, Jeshaiah, Hashabiah, and Mattithah are only five sons, but the music group consists of SIX when their father Jeduthun is leading them. The verse CLEARLY says, “six, under the hands of their father Jeduthun”! 2. Brian yet again leaves out part of a verse to make it say something contradictory, this time he leaves out the first part of 1Chron 3:22. The “six” refer to the son and grandsons (always called just “sons” in Scripture) of “Shechaniah” (of whom the verse concerns) and includes Shemaiah along with his five mentioned sons, which equals SIX sons of Shechaniah in all. 3. Finally, anyone “with eyes to see” will see that the “five” of 1Chron 3:19-20 applies to the five sons mentioned after the interval in the sentence (the listing of a daughter of Zerubbabel), and not all eight children.

 

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 4: Is God bad at maths?
In 2 Chron.4:2 the Bible says that a bowl with a diameter of 10 has a circumference of 30.
But...
Everybody who paid attention in maths class knows that's impossible. If pi which is 3.14 is multiplied by 10 then the circumference is 31.41 not 30.

Bible Believer: Let’s work backwards here for a second. If the circumference of the bowl under discussion was exactly 30 cubits that would mean that the diameter was 9.554140127 (30 divided by 3.14), which “everybody who paid attention in maths class knows” could be accurately written as 10 cubits (not 9 cubits) by rounding the number off. No intelligent unbeliever could really criticise the Bible for telling us the diameter of something is 10 if it is 9.554140127. It is also worth mentioning that if the diameter of the bowl was somewhere in between 9.5 and 9.7, and hence the circumference was somewhere in between 29.83 (9.5 x 3.14) and 30.458 (9.7 x 3.14) then the details of the bowl without the decimals could also be written ACCURATELY as diameter 10 and circumference 30.

For further reference, see: http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52573.html

 

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 5: What about Babylon?
The destruction of Babylon was predicted (Isa.13:20, Jer.50:39-40, 51:26, 29, 30) but it was still inhabited in New Testament times (1 Peter 5:13) and still exists today south of Baghdad, Iraq. In addition Isa.14:23 says Babylon will become a wet desolation while Jer.51:36 says it will become a dry desolation!

Bible-Believer: The COMPLETE desolation of Babylon is yet to come to pass according to the Bible itself, this prophecy will be fulfilled in the end-times (see Rev ch18). And would it be far-fetched to suggest that there were some pools of water after the destruction of Babylon (Isa 14:23) before God dried up its springs (Jer 51:36)?

 

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 6: What about Tyre?
In Ezek.26:7-14, 26:2 and 27:36 God says that Tyre will be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and never rebuilt It will never be found again according to God in Ezek.26:21.
But.. .
Mark 7:24, Matt.15:21, Acts 21 :3, and Mark 3:8 show that Tyre existed throughout New Testament times. It still exists today. The Bible is mistaken.

Bible-Believer: Nebuchadnezzar did not succeed in completely destroying subduing Tyre because the inhabitants of the city all abandoned it to escape to a large island fortress off the coast. Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of mainland Tyre however fulfilled Ezek 26:7-11.
Ezekiel 26:3 certainly indicates that multiple nations would be involved in the ultimate destruction of Tyre (see also Ezek 29:18). This may refers to Alexander the Great’s later conquering of the city of Tyre. Again the people of Tyre tried to escape via their island fortress. But Alexander scraped bare the dust from the city of Tyre in order to construct a walkway out to the island, he then destroyed Tyre (as prophesied in Ezek 26:4). In modern times this area is for the most part desolate rock where fishermen spread their nets (as prophesied in Ezek 26:14). The modern and New Testament city of Tyre is NOT the same site.

 

Bible Rejecter’s Response: It still exists today! It is located on the southern coast of Lebanon and it has been mentioned recently in connection with the deaths of over 1,000 innocent civilians in Israeli air strikes. Yet God said it would never be found again!  Nebuchadnezzar failed to destroy Tyre (Ezek 29:18) and even when Alexander the great defeated the city in 332 BCE it was soon rebuilt on the same site! (Wallace B. Fleming, The History of Tyre, Columbia University Press p.64) But God said Tyre would “be no more!” The Bible is mistaken. In addition Isa 23 also predicts the destruction of Tyre but beginning at verse 13 it says it will only be a temporary destruction, lasting 70 years. Ezekiel’s prophecy failed, but regardless of whether it failed or succeeded it would be impossible for both Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s prophecies to come true.

Bible Believer: There are plenty historians that say otherwise, the subject here is THE BIBLE not biology, philosophy, politics, the Ku Klux Clan (see contradiction no.5 in Section VIII), or HISTORY. We are not going to waste our time going down Brian’s rabbit trails on these subjects. Arguments about history go round in circles. All these debates basically come down to is “this historian says this but this historian that” and we’ll never get anywhere. And even if the Old Testament Tyre does exist today it’s no big deal, its destruction will soon come as prophesied. Lastly, Isaiah 23:17 speaks of a 70-year period of desolation for Tyre that only refers to the first attack by Nebuchadnezzar.

 

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 7: All kingdoms of Earth seen from a high mountain?
Bible Rejecter:
Matt 4:8 says that Satan took Jesus to a “exceeding high mountain” to show him all the kingdoms of the earth, but there is no place on our spherical planet from where you can see all the kingdoms of the earth. It’s an impossibility!

Bible-Believer: Brian seems to be claiming that Matthew asserts a flat earth. However the gospels, when telling the above story, are not saying that there is actually a mountain in Israel from which all kingdoms can be seen with the naked eye. The event in Matt 4:8 is a vision and not a literal visual experience. The devil took Jesus up to a real mountain in Israel (not high enough to see more than one other kingdom though) from which a miraculous vision was shown to Jesus in which it merely APPEARED that all kingdoms were directly below Him. The gospel writers would never affirm the existence of a mountain in Israel where all the earth could literally be seen with the naked eye. The Bible only ever speaks of REAL countries, cities, lakes, seas and mountains, that still exist today. Any honest reader (believer or otherwise) of Matthew and Luke knows that they would never speak of a mythical mountain (as Brian suggests they do) that would have to span into outer space for all kingdoms to be seen.

Bible Rejecter: Dan.4:10-11 gives us a similarly ridiculous story in which a tall tree can be seen from all the “ends” of the earth.

Bible-Believer: The Biblical expression “the end/ends of the earth” is a colloquial saying that loosely refers to the horizon (where, from our viewpoint the earth ENDS and the sky begins) and beyond. This verse (also recording a vision by the way) simply means that the tree was so tall, that those situated where the earth meets the sky and further in all directions were able to see it, nothing more.

Bible Rejecter: Christians often claim that the Bible says the earth is a sphere (Isa.40:22) but this is not true. It calls the earth a “circle” as in a flat circular enclosure as depicted in medieval maps, not a sphere. The Hebrew word used is “chuwg” which means a circle, not a sphere. The Hebrew word for a sphere or ball is “dwur” and it is used by the author of Isaiah in Isa.22:18. If the author wanted to call the earth a sphere he would have used the word for sphere in Isa.22:18. If he had said the earth was a sphere Christians would say this is proof of divine inspiration because there is a big difference between a sphere and a circle, but the fact is he didn’t.

Bible-Believer: The circle of Isa 40:22 refers to the spherical atmosphere around the earth, not a flat earth. If God “sitteth” on the surface of pancake shaped earth, the “the inhabitants thereof” wouldn’t look like “grasshoppers” (see Isa 40:22). The “circle” of Isa 40:22 obviously refers to a vantage point, high above the earth as we find in Job 22:14 (which also uses the word “chuwg”), see too Isa 14:14 and Psalm 68:4. Since Brian can’t find a scientific error in the Bible as it stands in English, he switches to the Hebrew. Of course the Hebrew language possesses no distinct word for a sphere, as Brian would have us believe, it uses 2D terms for all “round” shapes (see Isa 3:18). Besides, the words “sphere” and “ball” do not mean the same thing, one is a SHAPE the other is an OBJECT that people play with, and the term “ball” doesn’t always imply a perfectly round spherical object (like the earth) in any language, just THINK about it. The Hebrew word “chuwg” is the only word that could have possibly been used by Isaiah to accurately describe the SHAPE of the atmosphere or the earth.

Bible Rejecter: If the earth was not flat how could all the people of the world (“every eye”) see Jesus descend from the clouds of Heaven as it says in Matt.24:30 and Rev.1:7.

Bible-Believer: Brian simply just doesn’t think about what he’s saying. The world doesn’t need to be flat for all its peoples to see the same thing in the sky! “All the people of the world” see the same sun, moon and constellations all the time. When the sun, moon and stars disappear, Jesus will appear and replace their light (Matt 24:29-30) for up to 24hrs. It is at this point that all the earth sees Him and mourns. Besides Jesus will be returning in a generation that has satellite T.V. The dead bodies of the two prophets of Rev 11 lying in Jerusalem will also be seen and heard about by the whole world (Rev 11:9-10).

Bible Rejecter: Some Christians have even started a “Flat Earth Society” (if you don’t believe it do a web search) which rejects the fact that the earth is a sphere as a “humanist religious doctrine” and rejects satellite photographs and the moon landings as “atheistic frauds”! So much for scientific accuracy!

Bible-Believer: Hmm, so some Christians were as weird in their Biblical interpretations as Brian was and started a society, big deal!

Bible Rejecter: In addition the Bible also claims that the earth is stationary and motionless (1 Chron.16:30, Ps.96:10,93:1, 104:5),

1Chron 16:30, Psa 96:10,93:1 and 104:5 say basically the same thing, that the earth is “established” so that it “shall not be moved”. This simply means it won’t slip, fall, or be carried out of course (Psalm 10:6). The expression has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with being “motionless” or “stationary”, as the exact same term is used to describe the prudent (Psa 15:5), David himself (Psa 16:8), godly kings (Psa 21:7) Jerusalem (Psa 46:5) the righteous (Psa 55:22), the people of Israel (Psa 66:9) and so on and so forth.

Bible Rejecter: [The Bible also claims that the earth] has four corners (Isa.11:12) and rests on pillars (1 Sam.2:8,Job 9:6) fallacies disproved by true science long ago.

It also looks like Brian is not immune to “contradictions” himself; first he said that Isaiah thinks the earth is a flat “circular” enclosure, now he seems to be implying that Isaiah is calling the earth a square! Of course Isaiah is saying neither, the “four corners” of the earth merely refer to the four directions “north, south, east, and west”. It cannot refer to literal corners, for the term is applied to things that do not have four literal corners and are neither square nor rectangular, such as the land of Israel (see Ezek 7:2).

The “pillars of the earth” do not refer to columns that hold up the earth (as unbelievers seem to think). 1Sam 2:8 is a figurative reference to the world (referring to the people not the actual planet) being upheld by kings and princes (pillars), as is clear from the context. It’s up there with “scientific fallacies” like “the world is your oyster”. The pillars of Job 9:6 are simply the mountains, as the context shows (see 9:5). They definitely do not refer to anything BENEATH the earth, for see Job’s second reference to these pillars in Job 26:11. A fact that further proves Brian’s claims to be worthless, is that in the same chapter Job says that the earth rests upon “NOTHING” (26:7), about 3000 years before any “true scientist” knew how to tie his shoelaces!

 

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 8: The smallest of seeds?
Matt 13:31-32 states that “The kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed…the least of all seeds but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree.” However; mustard seeds while small are not the smallest of all seeds. Many other seeds, particularly some orchid species, are much much smaller. Second, the mustard herb does not become a tree (a mustard tree?), like all other herbs, it stays an herb. It is annual, and dies at the end of a single growing season. Jesus was mistaken.

Bible Believer: The mustard seed is indeed the “least of all seeds” relating to herbs. And the Middle Eastern fully grown mustard herb tree (which may grow up to be up to 10 feet tall) is truly a tree and no man has any right to say otherwise, since the Creator of a thing (Col 1:15-16) is naturally entitled to call it whatever He wants!

 

Bible Rejecter’s Question # 9: Dead seeds?
John 12:24 says “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”. In 1 Cor.15:36 Paul says something similar. But how can it bring forth any fruit at all if it’s dead? The ancients believed that seeds were actually dead, not alive as we now know today. If Jesus had said that seeds weren’t dead then Christians could proclaim the scientific accuracy of the verse; but he didn’t. God should have known better if this is his word!

Bible Believer: Any fool can see that “DEAD” in these passages is used figuratively to mean “unresponsive” in order to teach a truth about men (who are put into THE GROUND at death). Jesus had more important priorities than using MAN’S worthless “scientific” technical terms every time He spoke.