Expert: Austin Cline - 7/15/2010

Question
Dear expert,


This time, let's talk about an aspect of the Argument from scientific anticipation.

To promote their religion, fundamentalist Christians and Muslims are fond of claiming that their Scriptures contain many allusions to modern science (which is assumed to be impossible except by God).


I noticed the verses they use for their thesis
are open to different intepretations (literal, compatible with science or not, allegorical) and choosing among them a meaning similar to recent scientific discoveries AFTER the very discovery, whereas these verses were understood unscientifically before [1], looks fallacious to me.

However, these scientific verses aren't written in the form: <<In X years, thou shalt discover "...." (fill the blank with a modern
discovery)>> but are those where the supposed God speaks to the people of Revelation epoch, or when He narrates past events (Beginning of everything, prophets' life) or events in Last Days.



So, the question which arises is: if their Book really has such scientific merit, why isn't it clearer about modern scientific concept?



To this, these fundamentalists replied:

<< if the verses were crystal clear about Big Bang, nuclear physics, slightly flattened round Earth, ect...

then the people at the epoch of Revelation would have thought these verses are wrong (or would have been confused) and thus would have easily dismissed God- because the Book would have contradicted their science.

So it's necessary for the God's Book to "hide" its modern scientific meanings from ancient people by having many different interpretations, so that both ancient and modern people can understand it according to their respective science.

Therefore, the unclearness of verses is a fallacious reason for denying the astonishing modern knowledge in our Scriptures.>>  


How can I respond to their reply?



                                               Thank you





                                    Sincerely



[1]eg: the Quran was said to support flat Earth belief 1 thousand year ago, however nowadays the same verse are said to mention a round Earth or even a slightly-flattened spherical Earth)

Answer
1. There's nothing actually in scripture which says this. So they have to demonstrate that they aren't just making it up as an ad hoc rationalization.

2. By admitting that the text is unclear, they undermine their own claim about what the text "really" says. If it is not only unclear, but designed to be unclear, how can they be sure they are right?

3. How can they justify that anything else in the document is "clear?" For example, maybe prohibitions against homosexuality are actually about something else and the fundamentalists are just too "primitive" to fully comprehend it.

4. The argument depends on assuming that their deity lacks the ability to make certain basic scientific facts clear to primitive people but that would be an awfully incompetent deity. The ancient Greeks knew the world was round and actually estimated it to figure close to what it really was. Why would it have been difficult to explain the hows and whys in religious scripture?