You’re missing the point(s). First, Moses received his knowledge in the same way the ancient prophets knew about the future coming of the Messiah - by revelation from God. Secondly, I have said nothing about unknown theories and technologies. The science is well-known. I simply applied it in a way you haven’t thought of.
Or rather … you applied it in ways that the biblical authors never thought of or even had any reason to.
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It’s possible to find all kinds of mystical hidden meanings in the Bible if you have an imagination. Even Newton was convinced that the Bible held all kinds of astrological knowledge. And Numerology–finding hidden codes in the Bible based on numbers and letters–has been popular. Bill Dembski of the Discovery Institute has endorsed one such book, Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover.
Dembski writes,
At the same time that research in the Bible Code has taken off, research in a seemingly unrelated field has taken off as well, namely, biological design. These two fields are in fact closely related. Indeed, the same highly improbable, independently given patterns that appear as the equidistant letter sequences in the Bible Code appear in biology as functionally integrated (“irreducibly complex”) biological systems, of the sort Michael Behe discussed in Darwin’s Black Box.The relevant statistical methodology is identical for both fields. As a result, the two fields stand to profit from each other. For instance, my forthcoming book, The Design Inference, gives a thorough account of universal probability bounds, i.e., how small a p-value one needs to eliminate chance decisively. (Although the literature on universal probability bounds dates back to the French probabilist Emile Borel, it seems not to have been engaged by the Bible Code researchers.)
This convergence of the Bible Code and biological design should not seem surprising. There is a tradition within both Judaism and Christianity of speaking of two “books” where God reveals himself—the Book of Scripture, which is the Bible, and the Book of Nature, which is the world. I commend Jeffrey Satinover for his efforts to read both books.
Learn more here:
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Then explain why the Bible gets so much of what we consider science to be wrong.
Surely God could have told Moses that the sun stands still and the earth moves around it.
That there isn’t a solid dome over a flat, circular earth which is supported on pillars.
Either God gets all the science right or God never intended to put science in the Bible in the first place. You don’t get to pick and chose.
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It wasn’t well-know then. You are reading science into an ancient text.
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If this is true then you’d expect Genesis to be unique but you’ll see plenty of people saying it very similar to “Enuma Elish” a Mesopotamian creation myth which at best predate genesis by several centuries.
But when you compare Genesis to “Enuma Elish” the differences are arguably much more revealing than Genesis is on its own.
Now I’ve done a similar exercise in the past, and whilst i found the result interesting but their are two glaring issues. First if we somehow show that our understanding of science is wrong then we’ve just undermined our faith, it is similar to he god of gaps issue. Second to anyone smart they will do exactly what was done in this forum a.k.a. argue on why such details would exist in such an obscure way, amongst friends this is fine but if you are trying to convert people, you’ll come out as someone a bit crazy desperately trying to cling on an obscure interpretations to validate and this will damage your credibility.
Sorry, I’m new here and I think I have accidently replied to the wrong comment once or twice.
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On the other hand, Moses may have understood cosmology and physics perfectly, considering he was taught by God.
Genesis 1 is also very similar to the Book of Abraham. Why would they be different if they’re from the same source? Do you think God only spoke to the biblical prophets? Doesn’t He speak to us today?
What’s to stop God from saying, “Hey, Moses, write this down.”? On the other hand, Moses may have understood cosmology and physics perfectly, considering he was taught by God.
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What follows is the appendix to my original post that explains the “complementarity principle,” which is central to my thesis. I originally wrote the post, with appendix, for publication. I didn’t include the appendix here because I thought the post might be too long.
Appendix
Complementarity and the Double Slit Experiments
In 1801 Thomas Young demonstrated the wave nature of light by performing a simple version of what is known today as the “double slit” experiment, in which a coherent light source, e.g. a laser (Young used sunlight), shines onto a plate with two narrow, closely spaced slits. As the light wave passes through the slits, it emerges on the back side, spreading out from the slits and interfering with itself. The effect is analogous to two water waves on a pond. Where peak meets peak or trough meets trough their amplitudes add. Where the peak of one wave meets the trough of the other, they subtract. A screen placed behind the plate captures the resulting “wave interference pattern.”
When one of the slits is closed the wave pattern on the screen no longer appears, and a single band, called a “clump pattern,” forms directly behind the open slit instead, as if the light source is emitting particles. The difference is that when both slits are open it’s impossible to determine which path the light travelled (through which slit it passed), but with only one slit open the path is known. When the path is known, it behaves as a particle. When the path is unknown, it behaves as a wave. And if we attempt to determine, by any means whatsoever, which of the open slits it passes through, the wave pattern disappears.
Also, using a photon gun to shoot photons one at a time through a double-slit apparatus results in single particles appearing on the screen, as expected, but as the photons build up one by one, a characteristic wave interference pattern emerges just as it does with, say, a laser beam. And again, closing one slit causes the wave pattern to disappear and a clump pattern to appear instead, clearly demonstrating the complementary nature of individual photons.
The complementarity phenomenon has been shown unequivocally to occur with electrons, atoms, and even some large molecules, as well as with photons. These experiments provide convincing evidence that everything we perceive has its own wave nature, strongly suggesting that everything in the physical universe is characterized by the complementarity principle.
The Quantum Eraser
Physicist Richard Feynman once proposed a thought experiment in which sensors are placed so as to determine which slit the photon has passed through, and predicted that this would cause the interference pattern to disappear. Figure 2 is a schematic representation of the basic idea in Feynman’s thought experiment.
On the left side of the illustration a light source shines onto a half-silvered mirror, which replaces the slitted plate in the original experiment. Each photon has an equal probability of being reflected or passing through the half-silvered mirror to a normal mirror that directs it to one detector or the other, depending on whether it has passed through or been reflected by the half-silvered mirror. In this scenario the path of the photon is known, and therefore a clump pattern forms at each detector, as with the double slit apparatus when only one slit is open.
On the right side of the figure a second half-silvered mirror is placed as shown in the upper right-hand corner. Photons arriving at the second mirror again have an equal chance of passing through or being reflected. Now, however, it’s impossible to determine which path the photon has travelled, and a wave interference pattern forms at the detectors as a result. The principles in operation in this case are the same as in the double slit version of the experiment with both slits open, except that in this version the “which path” information has been erased after the photon has made its decision to travel one path or the other. The path information has been hidden from human consciousness.
Figure 2. Quantum Eraser Experiment.
Quantum Entanglement and Delayed Choice
We might ask what would happen if the “which path” information is obscured after the photons have reached the detector(s) but – and this is important – before the result has been observed. In 2000, physicists Yoon-Ho Kim and colleagues conducted a mind-bending experiment that not only answered this question, but raised intriguing questions about causality. Their experimental setup is rather complicated, but the basic idea exploits an important property of quantum systems called entanglement.
According to entanglement, any two objects that have ever interacted are thereafter related, to a greater or lesser degree, such that anything experienced by one instantaneously affects the other also, regardless of distance between them. The more intense the interaction, the greater the degree of entanglement. And the principle applies to everything, including humans.
Kim, et al generate two entangled photons and send them along opposite paths, each to its own detector(s). The path of one, let’s call it photon A, is unknown, so it should show a wave pattern. The path of the other, photon B, is sometimes known and sometimes unknown (randomly). When the path of photon B is known, it registers a clump pattern, and when its path is unknown, it registers a wave pattern.
The A photon patterns remain unobserved until after the B photon patterns are observed. When the paths of the B photons are known, both they and their entangled A photon twins register a clump pattern, and when their paths are unknown, they and their entangled A photon twins register a wave pattern.
But the path of the B photons is longer than the path of the A photons, so that they arrive at their detector eight nanoseconds later than the A photons arrive at theirs. The effect appears to precede the cause! I want to emphasize this. The outcome of the later event determines the outcome of the earlier event, given that the later event is observed first!
The conclusion from all this is that observation manifests physical reality (all physical reality, not just photons) from spiritual potential (light waves). And that reality includes a history that’s rational and consistent with all other (observed) history! It should also be noted that observation includes all sensory input, not just visual, and that the observation may be below the threshold of human awareness.
Gavin, there are several variations on the big bang model, but none serious enough to invalidate what I’m teaching about the creation story. And the creation story is not the only scripture that I interpret in terms of modern science. Stay tuned and you will find that there is much more in scripture that these same scientific principles apply to.
The book of abraham maybe but “Enuma Elish” I can’t see how it a revelation of God. I mean its a story about how the Babylionian pantheon was set up and through their battle how earth and humanity was created.
The two text are similar but they talk of wildly different beings between the babylonian pantheon and God.
Even if he did, his readers would not. They would claim him talking the same gibberish some people are accused of here.
One of the main ways to try and understand scripture is to look at the knowledge of the time, the culture of the time and how the writing relates to it. Science may have existed but it did not have the same authority or universal familiarity as it does today. Religion was the main authority until comparatively recently.
Richard
Well, that doesn’t comport at all with my understanding of inspiration or biblical authorship, and I don’t think Moses sat down at a desk and wrote the Genesis we have today. It is clearly a compiled and redacted text.
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I don’t see where God taught him cosmology and physics. God taught him about God. If anything, he was taught Egyptian cosmology and what passed for physics by the court tutors.
By the way, we all get confused at times when there are multiple replies and conversations with the crowd. If you have a specific point, it is helpful to me to use the highlight and quote function. It both helps me stay of track as a poster and as a reader when others use it.
Mostly, this approach falls into the well-known physics category of ‘not even wrong’. This, on the other hand, is actually wrong:
Light is electromagnetic radiation within a particular frequency range. Most of the universe isn’t that.
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The Book of Abraham is an LDS book, not from the Bible.
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If God explained physics to Moses who knows what He might have passed on to Joseph Smith.
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Indeed. Maybe that included instruction in reading Egyptian.
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