RELIGION AND SCIENCE MYTHS

Category: THE SCIENCE IN TORAH

Written by Dr. Gerald Schroeder

The flood ruined the accuracy of scientific methods of dating.

The argument that the flood at the time of Noah affected the fossils to the extent that they are no longer valid indicators of history does not stand up to scrutiny. And here is why! We read in Genesis 4:22, that Tuval Cain, son of Lemach, developed the sophisticated working of bronze metal. Though the ages of Cain’s progeny are not listed in the Bible, by juxtaposing Cain’s progeny with those of Seth we can estimate that Tuval Cain lived approximately in the Biblical year 1,000 (that is 1000 years after Adam). The Flood occurred in the Biblical year 1659, 600 years after Tuval Cain. Thus Tuval Cain did his work prior to the Flood and so the waters of the Flood should have upset the relics of his work. Yet along comes the archaeologists and discover the relics of an age that they label as The Early Bronze Age. Scientific dating places it at approximately 2800 BCE or in the Biblical year approximately of 1000, overlapping the Biblical timing of Tuval Cain. If the Flood did indeed alter or change the fossil record, it should also have altered the relics of Tuval Cain. But it did not. The implication is the Flood did not alter the fossil record. The Flood is a poor choice to discredit the fossil record as a measure of true history. To learn in-depth about the Seven Noahide Laws given to Noah, check out the Noahide Halachah class HERE!

Radioactive Carbon dating is unreliable because the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is always changing.

True it is that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has changed over time. And this indeed affects the precision of radio-carbon dating. Yet we can test carbon dating against tree ring data. A tree produces a new ring in its trunk each year. Look at the stump of any tree and you see the annual rings. Counting rings tells how long ago a specific ring was formed. This can then be compared with the radio-carbon date for the carbon in that ring. We find that for at least the past 3,000 years, carbon dating is good to within 10%. Whether or not carbon dating is accurate, there are other parallel radioactive “clocks” not dependent on carbon (for example, uranium – thorium) that corroborate the carbon data. And more over, carbon dating is only useful for very recent relics that have carbon remaining, such as bones. Once petrified (morphed into stone as over eons of time the minerals in the soil replace the organic matter of the relic) carbon is no longer present. For longer periods of time, there are other “longer-lived” radioactive clocks. In general the different radioactive clocks agree among themselves about to within 15%. The dual myths of the Flood confounding the fossil record and radiocarbon being highly flawed simply fail upon scrutiny.

The Big Bang Theory disproves God (and is therefore heresy).

On the contrary, the big bang theory is good news for God and the truth of the Bible. Until the mid-1960′s, the overwhelming opinion of the scientific community was that the universe was eternal, never had a creation. This is in direct contradiction to the opening sentence of the Bible, Genesis 1:1. Then two scientists at Bell Labs in New Jersey, USA, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, while scanning the heavens with a special antenna, detected a weak radiation filling all of space. Working with P.J.E. Peebles at Princeton University, this ubiquitous radiation was identified as the residual energy of the big bang creation. It is now known as the cosmic microwave radiation background. Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery, and rightly so. Their discovery changed humanity’s understanding of our universe. There was a creation, a beginning to our universe. The Bible got it right and 3000 years later science confirmed the fact. As we say, better late than never. The big bang theory does not specify what caused the creation. That is under intense scientific debate. The Bible of course gives answer as God.