Nathan Aviezer wrote a book called In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science
Then Mark Perach from talk reason wrote a critique of the book on talk reason.
Now on Hirhurim Aviezer wrote a response to Perach. (Only took him about 12 years...)
Ok now that you're all caught up let me say a few thoughts.
Aviezer's book has a lot of different things in it but one that really get on my nerves is the assertion that there is correspondence between the scientific theory of the Big Bang and the Biblical account of Creation. (i.e. the universe has a beginning in both accounts) This is a silly assertion not because the Big Bang isn't true (which seemed to be Perach's assertion, strangely enough...) even if its proven beyond a doubt its correspondence with the Genesis story is completely irrelevant. Because:
What about all the things in the Torah that do not correspond with science? Like men living for thousands of years? Global floods? Oh yeah what about the world and everything in it being created in six days! I'm sure there are explanations for these things, maybe they're allegorical etc. but it seems weird to boldly claim that the Torah corresponds with science because the first verse - sorry, the first verse and nothing else - corresponds with science.
This is classic sharpshooter fallacy.
Any man could have sat in the ANE and written a book about demons and goblins and wars between Gods. And maybe this man would have written about big dragons with long necks. And then suddenly a bunch of idiots would be claiming that this is an account of dinosaurs! Oh the correspondence with science! How edifying!
Anyone writing a long fanciful account about creation and giants and who knows what else has a chance of saying something true. This does not mean the author knew that he was saying something true.
It's essentially a win win for adherents to these types of books.
If something in the holy book does not correspond with science: then it's an allegory or a moshol or who knows.
If something in the holy book DOES correspond with science: then we win! Our book knew science before science new science. Hurray!
You simply cannot write a holy book that doesn't correspond with science because there's always the allegory technique and every now and then you might stumble upon a bit of science and just make people believe.
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