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When God Forgot Biology Class

So, according to Leviticus 11:13–19, God tells people not to eat certain “birds”… and right there on the list the bat.

Now, unless wings automatically make you a bird someone clearly skipped biology class. A bat’s a mammal not a bird. But sure let’s throw science out the window, right?

I honestly love this detail. It’s like watching divine taxonomy in action “if it flies, it fries.” Makes you wonder how many other “divinely inspired” rules might’ve been written with the same level of scientific accuracy.

Thoughts, anyone? Or should we just pretend the bat laid an egg and move on?


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Reply by xTerrorWavEx

posted

Bats used to be classified as birds until 1779, you are arguing semantics. EEither way a lot of religious dietary laws have their origin in actual historical precedents, there's a reason Levantine religions abstain from pork. Same with bats. 


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Reply by ⛤⃝ Devil_Advocate

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Yes people in the ancient world grouped bats with birds. Yes dietary laws often had historical or practical motives none of that is disputed but the text in Leviticus is not presented as “human observation from the Bronze Age.”it is presented as direct divine instruction from an all-knowing deity.That is the key distinction you keep skipping.If the classification were purely cultural then it makes perfect sense that bats are listed with birds it reflects human understanding.But if the instruction is supposed to come from a deity with perfect knowledge of creation then using an incorrect biological category is not historically justified, it is scientifically incorrect.You can’t defend divine omniscience by appealing to human scientific limitations.If God is the speaker the text should transcend human error,if the text contains human error then its origin is human, not omniscient that’s the part that remains logically unchallenged.


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Reply by enfys

posted

at the end of the day, scripture was written by humans, and is subject to human error (whether or not it was divinely inspired i cannot say for certain, but that would be my belief). if you wish to take scripture that literally, to the point where you literally believe it's g-d's word, you can do - but for the record, i do think you can "defend divine omniscience by appealing to human scientific limitations" when like, the vast majority of religious believers do not believe it is g-d's literal word, do not believe that it was literally g-d who wrote it, but rather that it was written by human's in the spirit of hashem


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Reply by LuciLucilia

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Whilst there are plenty of very genuine scientific inaccuracies to argue about in the bible, I honestly don't really think this is one of the better lines of argument. I'll explain why:

Taxonomy isn't absolute, since the groupings themselves do not exist in nature, but only within the taxonomical system itself. In other words, Taxonomy is a way of sorting and grouping similarities and differences between biological specimens (and nowadays, particularly as is informed by evolutionary biology). Or, to simplify further, taxonomy is a system of measurement. One that, notably, has changed and evolved over time itself (much like the biology it studies!). Originally, the system was not meant to allow for certain groupings to exist within the exact same type of group... in other words, you weren't meant to have a "Genus" inside of another "Genus", or a "Class" inside of a "Class". However, evolution isn't simple, nor neat, so nowadays, we have situations like "Aves/Birds", which is a taxonomical class, being inside of "Reptilia/Reptiles", which is yet another class. And furthermore, terms we've inherited from the ancients like "Fish" don't even really mean anything taxonomically, despite being a commonly used word applied to animals, which is a quirk of how cladistic taxonomy works. 

Now, let us assume that God does exist... probably not the God that folk Christians traditionally imagine, but we'll go with it. Who is to say that God would really make these taxonomical distinctions? They were invented by humans as a form of very useful, but ultimately inabsolute measurement system for biology. 
I am reminded of the quote by Sartre "Existence proceeds Essence", or as Deleuze similarly puts it: "Difference proceeds Identity". It is to say that the labels we use for things are merely helpful categories created and retroactively applied after the thing exists already. Of course, this is a philosophical question... one might believe that the categories are actually innate to reality, but personally I find that unlikely... So who is to say God doesn't view biology with this lenses? If that were true, and God was directly writing the Bible, then it may make a lot more sense to use the arbitrary language of the time, rather than the arbitrary language of the 21st century / future.

Plus, carrying on, as user @enfys points out... plenty of people don't believe the Bible was actually written by God, which is actually textual. The Bible does not claim for itself that it was... It's a pretty common folk Christian tendency, and especially Protestant tendency, to act like this is somehow a textual idea whenever it isn't. 

So yeah... I think this line of argument falls flat in multiple regards. 


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