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51 scientific "facts" disproving god

miatasport99

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I am preparing an email critique to a book that an old friend ambushed me with while returning me to the airport after one of my rare visits. It was accompanied by his assurances that it proves that Christianity is “the one true religion” and timed perfectly so that I had no chance to respond with anything other than “OK, thanks, and bye”. Hopefully my written response will be slightly better considered.

The book is called “Know Why You Believe” by Paul E. Little and cites theologian W.A. Criswell citing that “In 1861… the French Academy of Science published a little brochure in which they stated fifty-one scientific facts that controverted the Word of God. Today there is not a scientist in the world who believes a single one of those fifty-one so-called scientific facts that in 1861 were published as controverting the Word of God. Not a one!”. My Google searches have led to nothing other than creationist after creationist website repeating the claim. Does anyone know whether this is true, and if so how I can find a list of these “facts”? I think it would make a fascinating read.
 
miatasport99 said:
I am preparing an email critique to a book that an old friend ambushed me with while returning me to the airport after one of my rare visits. It was accompanied by his assurances that it proves that Christianity is “the one true religion” and timed perfectly so that I had no chance to respond with anything other than “OK, thanks, and bye”. Hopefully my written response will be slightly better considered.

The book is called “Know Why You Believe” by Paul E. Little and cites theologian W.A. Criswell citing that “In 1861… the French Academy of Science published a little brochure in which they stated fifty-one scientific facts that controverted the Word of God. Today there is not a scientist in the world who believes a single one of those fifty-one so-called scientific facts that in 1861 were published as controverting the Word of God. Not a one!”. My Google searches have led to nothing other than creationist after creationist website repeating the claim. Does anyone know whether this is true, and if so how I can find a list of these “facts”? I think it would make a fascinating read.
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I would appreciate it if you changed the name of this thread to "51 facts proving literal christianity is absurd.".
Thanks.
 
You'll have to pardon Lifegazer. He gets a bit testy when people suggest he doesn't exist.

And welcome aboard!

Steven
 
Sounds like faith promoting rumor to me. I'd respond that without knowing what those "facts" are I couldn't reasonably respond to them. I don't see a move by the science community to endorse God. The Steve Project certainly demonstrates the Scientific communities commitment to evolution. Of course evolution isn't counter to God it is only counter to creationism.

In any event, so what? What is this claim supposed to prove?

Welcom BTW.

RandFan
 
I don't know what it's supposed to prove. If true, though, it would seem to prove that those dirty closed-minded skeptical scientists are fairly good at changing their minds.
 
I've had no better luck myself. Although I have learned some other fascinating "facts". For instance, did you know that the existence of Atheists in itself proves the existence of God because the bible states that some will deny the existence of God? Or that if you translate a certain passage selectively enough it shows that God revealed the Earth to be a sphere long before humans could have known this? Although I'm pretty sure that elsewhere the Bible refers to the Earth as being flat and having four corners, from which we can only conclude that God is a bit of a prankster as well. Or is he testing our faith?

Steven
 
lifegazer said:
I would appreciate it if you changed the name of this thread to "51 facts proving literal christianity is absurd.".
Thanks.
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I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with the personalities around here to understand what your post was meant to convey.
 
In 1861, there were no:

Internal combustion engines
Aeroplanes
Computers
Electronics
Open-heart surgery
Organ transplants
Television
Internet forums

Does it really matter whether they existed or said anything? Sounds a lot like another persistent, untrue, christian rumour - akin to the Roman Catholics who persevere in insisting that Bertrand Russell rescinded his atheism before death - which of course, he didn't.

Try searching for page 51 jokes about god. Far more enlightening.
 
I agree-- this sounds like yet another Christian legend of the "overeducated" skeptic finally seeing the light-- much like the ubiquitous unnamed philosophy professor, or the myths that Russell or Darwin recanted their controversial beliefs on their deathbeds. The fact that Mr. Little can't be bothered to name any of these alleged "scientific facts" that have subsequently been disproven suggests that this is nothing more than an empty rhetorical device.
 
I'm also going to go with this being a myth. If there really was a list of facts on which science was wrong and the bible was right, then surely the people gloating about it would at least list one or two of those facts as examples, if not the whole list. It would make for a much better argument, and a better way to illustrate the wrongness of science.
 
RandFan said:
In any event, so what? What is this claim supposed to prove?

Welcom BTW.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

I don’t suspect it would prove anything to the current scientific community, but for a person like myself who respects the scientific method but doesn’t have the intellectual capacity and/or patience to rigorously apply it myself, I must cautiously trust the consensus of those that do. If I were alive at the time, and if this pamphlet actually represented a scientific consensus, my trust would have made of fool of me 51 times in a row. Suppose a current list of only the three best scientific arguments disputing information in the bible were published only to be completely discredited in the future. This unlikely scenario would shake my trust in science to its foundations spurring me to scramble to understand how the method could have gone so wrong. I guess that’s what I’m doing now: trying to determine if the scientific method really went that wrong 140 years ago. I’m guessing not…
 
miatasport99 said:
Thanks!

I don’t suspect it would prove anything to the current scientific community, but for a person like myself who respects the scientific method but doesn’t have the intellectual capacity and/or patience to rigorously apply it myself, I must cautiously trust the consensus of those that do. If I were alive at the time, and if this pamphlet actually represented a scientific consensus, my trust would have made of fool of me 51 times in a row. Suppose a current list of only the three best scientific arguments disputing information in the bible were published only to be completely discredited in the future. This unlikely scenario would shake my trust in science to its foundations spurring me to scramble to understand how the method could have gone so wrong. I guess that’s what I’m doing now: trying to determine if the scientific method really went that wrong 140 years ago. I’m guessing not…
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Even if this 51 facts thing were true, which I highly doubt, it does not make the scientific method any weaker. If anything, it is a demonstration of the power of the method--not for the 140 years ago when it 'failed', but the intervening years in which it was used to correct those mistakes. The scientific method does not guarantee you the right answers. It guarantees you the best answers available given the knowledge and capabilities of the time. Much we now 'know' will someday be shown to be wrong, but here's the kicker: it will be scientists, through scrupulous use of the scientific method who reveal our errors.
 
miatasport99 said:
Thanks!

I don’t suspect it would prove anything to the current scientific community, but for a person like myself who respects the scientific method but doesn’t have the intellectual capacity and/or patience to rigorously apply it myself, I must cautiously trust the consensus of those that do. If I were alive at the time, and if this pamphlet actually represented a scientific consensus, my trust would have made of fool of me 51 times in a row. Suppose a current list of only the three best scientific arguments disputing information in the bible were published only to be completely discredited in the future. This unlikely scenario would shake my trust in science to its foundations spurring me to scramble to understand how the method could have gone so wrong. I guess that’s what I’m doing now: trying to determine if the scientific method really went that wrong 140 years ago. I’m guessing not…
Click to expand...
I gotta go with the Marquis on this one. One of the strengths of science is that it is self correcting. While science can seem dogmatic in that it doesn't lurch about changing paradigms with every new idea, in fact there is nothing sacred in science. Science only attempts to model the natural world to a degree of precision. Science holds all things provisionally. See all of the provisional positions discared by red shift theory, solar wind, relativity, quantam mechanics.

I look at those changes in paradigms with great pride. I can tell you point blank that my "faith" or trust in science is unlikely to be shaken because I don't view science that way. My faith in science isn't based on the postions that it holds but rather the methods it uses to arrive at those positions.

As to these facts, I'm still guessing faith promoting rumor but if they are shown to be true it would only make me think that those behind the facts were naive in putting them forward. God is not really the province of science.
 
OK, since the claim was made about the French Académie des Sciences I tried googling this: 51 faits dieu. Only one reference in French, from some fundie website. Trying to look for "51 facts" and "51 scientific facts" and god, you get nothing but fundie websites repeating the same claim with no evidence whatsoever. I failed to find even one example of these supposed facts. So my verdict is: fundie urban legend. Maybe I should search through Snopes...
 
The fact that each of the half dozen or so fundie websites I encountered used nearly the same wording in their descriptions further suggests to me that this is a fundie legend. Not to mention the difficulty I have with believing that all 51 facts from 1861 would be shown to be false. I suppose all 51 could have come from 1 or 2 theories that have been discredited, but it still sounds suspicious to me.

Steven
 
Is The Bible Reliable scientifically?
In 1861 the French Academy of Science published a brochure of 51 "scientific facts" which contradicted the Bible. These were used by atheists of the day to ridicule Christians. Today, modern day science proves that the Bible was correct scientifically on all 51 facts, while science was wrong on all 51 "scientific facts"! How tragic that people trusted their eternal soul to a man's misconceived "truth"! There are "outdated" science books that are barely to the printing press while tens of thousands of science books are no longer relevant. While science has been changing the Bible has not changed, and is still correct scientifically! Some Bible examples are: The earth is round (Isaiah 40:22) written 220 years before Columbus. The earth is suspended in space (The Book of Job 26:7 )told us thirty five hundred years ago. Science did not know this until Sir Isaac Newton in 1687 A.D. The famous astronomer, Ptolemy, declared dogmatically that the number of stars to be exactly 1056! But the Bibles states that the stars are innumerable (Genesis 15:5) written nearly 4000 years ago! These are just a few hundreds of scientific facts that the Bible simply states, not as science, but that God uses His Word to His people!

The Bible is still true. Trust your soul to truth that does not change. The Bible is reliable.
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From: http://www.firstbaptisthenderson.org/10reasons.html
 
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