“The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through his telescope, then He sees worlds beyond, but if he
looks at his telescope, he does not see anything but that.”
Henry Beecher

​Science & The Bible

by Mark Karapetyan

The Bible is often described as a book that includes many ideas that are scientifically inaccurate. The truth is that many Christians and others have misinterpreted the Bible in such a way as to make it seem to be at odds with the reality of our world. [1]

It is crucial to grasp the idea that the Bible is not a science book, yet it is scientifically accurate. Whenever it makes a statement relating to a scientific principle or fact, it is completely accurate. No one has ever been able to refute the Bible scientifically. We are not aware of any scientific evidence that contradicts the Bible.

In this short study, I will present ten examples that clearly show a beautiful, coherent harmony between science and the Bible.

The Earth Floats in Space

While other religions declared the Earth sat on the back of an elephant, or was carried by a giant turtle, the Bible alone in (Job 26:7) states what we now know to be true – “He hangs the earth on nothing.”  Ask yourself this question: How could ancient man have known this? Just a lucky guess ? [2]

In what is probably the oldest book of the Bible, Job, living in an ancient culture that knew nothing about space or planets, asserted that God hung the earth on nothing.  Again, the question is, how did Job know this scientific fact thousands of years ago?

The Hydrologic Water Cycle

The water cycle was not fully understood until about 30 B.C. by a Roman engineer named Marcus Vitruvius. Yet every aspect of the water cycle was fully revealed to mankind in 1600 B.C.! The Bible’s description is in perfect agreement with modern science.  Guess what? Vitruvius was 1600 years too late. [3]

The Bible says: “The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.  All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.” (Ecclesiastes 1:6-7).

The phrase, “the wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course” is an accurate and astonishing description of the circular flow of air around the earth, called the ‘jet stream,  ‘well known to anyone who watches the evening news weather reports.  This is only a recent understanding of scientists and modern-day physics.

The Number of Stars

In the years 161-126 BC, the man who is said to have first started the study of astronomy, Hipparchus, counted the number of stars in the heavens, and put the number at 1,080. This number was considered to be fairly accurate 300 years later, when Ptolemy announced that the number was more like 1,056.

It wasn’t until the invention of the telescope that people realized the number of the stars was actually quite huge, in the countless millions. The Bible didn’t make the mistake of saying that the number was merely a few hundred or thousand, but rather, in about 600 BC, the prophet Jeremiah said that the “number of stars of the sky are measureless as the sand on the seashore.”

Astronomers now estimate the number of stars to be approximately 10 to the 26th power (which may also be a fair estimate of the number of the grains of sand on all the earth’s sea-shores), but the actual number is “countless” for us to attempt to precisely count. [4]   “I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars in the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore.”  (Jeremiah 33:22).

The Universe Expanding

Most astronomers today believe that the universe is indeed expanding. In the 1920s, astronomers discovered that virtually all clusters of galaxies appear to be moving away from all other clusters; this indicates that the entire universe is expanding. You can think of this like points on a balloon. As the balloon is inflated, all the points move farther away from each other. If the entire universe was being stretched out, the galaxies would all be moving away; and that is what they actually appear to be doing.  According to the red shift, the most distant galaxies and quasars seem to be receding fastest; quasars recede at 149,000 miles per second. Quasars are quasi-stellar objects seemingly as large as our entire solar system.

It is fascinating that the Bible recorded the idea of an expanding universe thousands of years before secular science came to accept the idea. [5]

In 1905, Albert Einstein developed the special theory of relativity, involving measurements of length, velocity and time from moving observers. Years later, Einstein derived the equations of general relativity which describe the relationships between gravity, the speed of light, mass, and other factors in regard to the universe as a whole. His work was consistent with an expanding universe. [6]

There are many verses in the Bible that suggests God “stretched out” the heavens (universe). Here is one:

“He that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in”.  (Isaiah 40:22).

The Circuit of The Sun

Only in recent years has it been discovered that the Sun is in fact moving through space at approximately 600,000 miles/hour.  The Sun’s orbit (circuit) is so large that it would take approximately 200 million years to complete one single orbit.

The Bible teaches that the Sun is actually on a circuit through space. Writing of the Sun in Psalm 19:6, David said: “Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.”

For many years critics scoffed at this verse, claiming that it taught that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Scientists at that time thought the Sun was stationary.

Air Has Weight

In 1643, a mathematician named Torricelli performed an experiment and discovered that air has weight.  Before science enlightened the world with the knowledge we have today, it was widely believed that air was weightless. However, almost four thousand years ago Job declared that God established “a weight for the wind.” Not too long ago meteorologists calculated that the average thunderstorm holds thousands of tons of rain. That means that for air to carry this load, it must have mass. [7]

“To make the weight for the winds; and he weighs the waters by measure.” (Job 28:25)

Invisible Matter

All matter is composed of atoms. Only in recent years has science discovered that everything we see is composed of things that we cannot see- tiny invisible particles called atoms, made up of electrons and protons, which are really not solids, but positive and negative charges of electricity. Depending on the atom, the smallest atom, Hydrogen is said to make up approximately 90% of the universe. It’s through these small atoms and their complex bonding behavior that we make up visible matter. Ironically, to this day we can’t actually “see” atoms with the naked eye. Atoms are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light but we can detect them through spectroscopy, which shows their presence, bonds, and structure. [8]

Hebrews 11:3 says: “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed (made to fit put in order) by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. The things which are seen are made of things not seen.” This was not known until modern science discovered the invisible atoms. Invisible to the eye microscopic structures, The Encyclopedia describes it as a unit of matter, the smallest unit of an element, having all the characteristics of that element and consisting of a dense, central, positively charged nucleus surrounded by a system of electrons. The entire structure has an approximate diameter of 8-10 centimeters and characteristically remains undivided in chemical reactions except for limited removal, transfer, or exchange of certain electrons.

Law of Entropy

The first law of thermodynamics states that matter can be neither created nor destroyed, and that the amount of matter in the universe remains constant. If the first law is correct, which every scientific measurement ever made has confirmed, then the universe could not have created itself, it must have been created in the past, with no further creation going on, and no loss of creation occurring. The Bible is the only religious book that correctly portrays the first law by its description in Genesis of a Creator who is no longer creating, and a Creator who is “upholding all things by the word of his power (Heb 1:3)”.

The second law of thermodynamics, which states that all systems degenerate from order to disorder, was regarded by Albert Einstein to be the premier Law in science. Again, the Bible is the only religious book to accurately describe this law: “For the heavens will vanish away like smoke, the earth will grow old like a garment. (Isaiah 51:6).   Hebrews 1:10-11 states: “You  Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You remain; and they will all grow old like a garment; (Hebrews 1:10-11)” [9]

Life is In the Blood

If our bodies lose too much blood, we will die. However, man did not discover this principle until the 19th century. Before that time, blood-letting was practiced, and many died because draining blood from their bodies drained the very source of life. During George Washington’s day, the practice of blood-letting to treat various kinds of illnesses was common. In fact, George Washington died from this very treatment. In 1830 AD, Dr. Marshall Hall came out in strong opposition to this practice. However, had any of the doctors who practiced this treatment read these Bible verses, they would have known that it could have fatal consequences. [10]

Moses, again writing by inspiration hundreds of years ago, told us something man did not know until much later. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.”  (Leviticus 17:11).

How could Moses have known about the life-giving qualities of blood hundreds of years ago unless a divine source had revealed it to him? [11]

The Shape of the Earth

Long before the Greeks figured out that the world was round, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Chinese believed the world was flat. Amazingly, the Bible went against the grain and gave indications that the Earth was a sphere. In a book thought to be written about 2000 BC, Job 26:10 tells us that God “has inscribed a circle on the surface of the waters at the boundary of light and darkness.” That’s interesting. Stay with me on this. Job says God has drawn “a circle on the surface of the waters at the boundary of light and darkness.” This boundary between light and darkness is where evening and morning occur. Notice that the boundary is not a square or a triangle. It’s a circle. Why? Because the Earth is round. Another verse that speaks of the circular shape of the Earth is found in Isaiah 40:22, written about 700 BC: “It is He (God) who sits above the circle of the Earth.”[12]

“Other statements in the Bible also indicate that God revealed this truth long ago. For example, David said that God has removed our transgression from us as far as the east is from the west (Ps 103:12). On a spherical surface, east and west are infinitely separated in the sense that one can travel indefinitely in either direction without ever attaining the other. However, Solomon described the wind as blowing in circuits, first towards the south and then turning toward the north. North and south are not infinitely separated as east and west, because a southward traveler on a spherical surface will be heading north after crossing the South Pole” [13]

Conclusion

Science is not the enemy of either Christianity or the Bible. Nothing in science disproves the idea of God or the Bible. As Christians, we have both reason and faith. The two need not be in conflict.

Many Christian scientists today, like Dr. Hugh Ross, and Dr. Stephen Meyer, embrace both their Christian faith and their scientific theories of science.  They accept the factual, testable aspects of their scientific theories, but they also acknowledge a real and tangible role for God in the process. [14]

Think for a minute about the ten examples I have provided in this study. Those people thousands of years ago had no official knowledge of these scientific facts until more than a thousand years after the Bible was written. Is this scientific proof that the Bible was inspired by God?  How did they describe all of these scientific examples accurately? Who told them, and why?  Did they get lucky guessing every single time?

The Bible is not a scientific treatise, but it is a guidebook for life. It teaches us amazement in the face of life’s mysteries. [15] If the Bible is accurate in matters of science, could it be that it is also accurate in other areas?

 

“The Holy Book of the living God suffers more from its exponents today than from its opponents.”
Leonard Ravenhill

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[1] Godandscience.org/EvidenceforGod
[2] Angelfire.com/scientificfactsofthebible
[3] Bible.ca/
[4] Testingworldviews.com/R. Totten. Science Facts Confirm The Bible
[5] Answersingenesis.org/Does the Bible say anything about Astronomy?
[6] Coldcasechristianity/J. Warner Wallace
[7] Tcmag.comairhasweight
[8] ScienceforJesus/AtomictheoryintheBible
[9] Bibleevidences.com/advancedscientificknowledgde
[10] Creationist.org/Medical discovered by science
[11] Truthfortheworld
[12] Alwaysbeready.com
[13] Examples of Scientific Accuracy in the Bible By David Pyles. http://www.pb.org/pbdocs/bibleac.html
[14] Progressiveteology.org/ScienceandtheBible
[15] Biblica.com/IstheBibleatoddswithscience?