Science And The Bible

[DavidLeon]

The clash between science and religion began in the sixth century B.C.E. with the Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, whose geocentric view of the universe influenced ancient Greeks like Aristotle and Ptolemy. Aristotle's geocentric concept as a philosophy would have an influence in on the powerful Church of Rome. It was adopted by the church due to the scientist Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) who had great respect for Aristotle.

Galileo's heliocentric concept challenged Aquinas' geocentric philosophy, and Galileo had the nerve to suggest that his heliocentric concept was in harmony with Scripture, a direct challenge to the Church itself, and so bringing about the Inquisition in 1633. It was Galileo's figurative, and accurate, interpretation of Scripture against Aquinas' and the Catholic Church's literal and inaccurate interpretation. For being right Galileo stood condemned until 1992 when the Catholic Church officially admitted to their error in their judgment of Galileo.

So the static between religion and science was caused by philosophy and religion wrongly opposed to science and the Bible.

For debate, what significance does modern science bear upon an accurate understanding of the Bible? How important is science to the modern day Bible believer and where is there a conflict between the two?

[DavidLeon]

Yeah, I know how the methodology supposedly works but in reality it's practical use flies in the face of reason.

In reality it is how we understand nature and develop new technology, find cures for diseases, etc. Science via the scientific method has proven itself to be incredibly valuable in virtually area of human endeavor. If you think it "flies in the face of reason" you must have a very wrong understanding of what science is and how it works.

Reality is a fallible observation. You can call this observation science or spirituality. Recently on another forum my observations on science prompted a scientific atheist giving 8 or 9 examples of medical science's cures for diseases. All of them were discovered by theists except one who I couldn't demonstrate as theistic because he was Japanese and I couldn't ascertain whether or not he was theist. Here the same response was given to me on scientific advancements with me giving the same results. They were all discovered by theists. Why is that? I know they used science but why were they all theists? I once heard a scientist who was afraid to appear on camera with his own face and voice explain it this way. He said you have to appear to subscribe to evolutionary theory but in practice you have to use intelligent design otherwise it doesn't work.

Not everything is faith based unless you have a very strange definition of faith.

In this context I define faith as complete trust or confidence in someone or something as opposed to strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

Do you think that the axioms underlying mathematics are faith based?

Hmmmm. Good question. I'm mathematically retarded. Literally. But I would say they were truisms, and so provoking faith as defined above in the mundane sense.

Do you think that the fundamental laws of physics are faith based?

Ditto. Also, you attribute laws to design. Science is just ambivalent to the design while seeking to either discover or employ the laws which the creator, Jehovah God, designed.

These things have no dependence on anyone's faith or whether or not they believe them to be true or false.

Nonsense. How do you suppose they manage that. They don't know something. They are looking for the answer. They believe they find the answer, they have faith the answer is true or false and then they set out to demonstrate this. How could faith not be a part of the scientific processes? Science and faith aren't synonymous with truth and illusion respectively.

The bolded statement does not contradict anything I've said ... it is simply a statement that there are open scientific problems that are still being worked on. How does that in any way contradict anything I've said previously? It is a simple statement of fact. I've never made a claim that all scientific problems have been solved, or that refinements don't happen, or that theories are not modified based on new evidence and observations, etc. This happens all the time and is a normal part of science.

"Many issues can remain open scientific problems for decades or centuries, and may currently have no resolution (eg. origin of life, origin of the universe, explanations for dark matter and dark energy, etc.). So work continues until the problem is solved or a hypothesis is disproved" is a statement of faith. It's either divination or faith. You have faith science will self correct. You have faith the problems will be solved.

You seem to be suggesting that a scientific understanding of something at one point in time can never be changed as a result of new information, and if it is that is somehow a problem.

What on earth gave you that idea? You couldn't be more wrong. Why do I have to keep explaining this very simple concept? Perhaps some examples:

Claim: The Bible is wrong in it's claiming of the age of the universe. Fact: The Bible makes no such claim and therefor isn't contrary to science.
Claim: Celestial phenomenon in the Bible is a product of primitive superstitious people. Fact: It is symbolic for political and social upheaval.
Claim: The Biblical soul is imaginary. Fact: Soul is life, blood.

Whatever methodology you are using isn't working for you and you're going to tell me that science can determine that Noah's flood was a myth? Never mind your evidence, which is conjectural,

So, is my lack in faith (mundane; irreligious i.e. trust) in science due to science being notoriously arrogant and pathologically wrong or a reaction to your misrepresentation of science?

You seem to have this idea that all scientists who are atheists are somehow evil and have as their goal to discredit the bible, or religious people and institutions in general.

Not at all. I think most atheists wouldn't waste a minute of their time concerning themselves with any of this. What I do think is that the atheist vs. theist debate is a smoke screen. God, the Bible and science isn't the real issue. It's like a couple arguing about something insignificant when it's really about something else altogether. Namely, the sociopolitical frustration of a minority in a theocratic democracy. Until it addresses the real underlying problem it's a futile exercise in vanity.

Atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods ... it does not have any mission to attack the bible or religious people.

Yes, I know ... I've read the bumper stickers, the billboard signs, seen the YouTube videos .... in all fairness I try to make clear the distinction of the militant atheist. I'm almost always referring to the militant.

[DrNoGods]

Reality is a fallible observation. You can call this observation science or spirituality. Recently on another forum my observations on science prompted a scientific atheist giving 8 or 9 examples of medical science's cures for diseases. All of them were discovered by theists except one who I couldn't demonstrate as theistic because he was Japanese and I couldn't ascertain whether or not he was theist. Here the same response was given to me on scientific advancements with me giving the same results. They were all discovered by theists. Why is that? I know they used science but why were they all theists?.

Scientific discoveries are made by scientists, and it is irrelevant whether or not they are theists or atheists. Great advances have been made by both, and citing just 8 or 9 examples where the people happened to be theists says nothing at all about the issue. Depending on whose numbers you believe are correct, something like 20%, plus or minus about 5%, of the world's population are atheists or agnostics. So if the distrubution of theists and atheists among scientists were the same as it is in the general population, for any particular scientific discovery you'd have about 75-80% change of them being made by theists. But it is irrelevant whether or not a scientists is a theist or an atheist ... it has no bearing on their ability to produce results.

I once heard a scientist who was afraid to appear on camera with his own face and voice explain it this way. He said you have to appear to subscribe to evolutionary theory but in practice you have to use intelligent design otherwise it doesn't work.

This is another bad example. First, the opinion of any one scientist means nothing. Second, subscribing to evolutionary theory does not in any way mean you can't be religious. For example, the entire Catholic church accepts evolution as the mechanism for how life diversifies on this planet. Since evolution says nothing about the mechanism for the origin of life (although many anti-evolutionists seem to think it does and erroneously argue that since it doesn't explain origin of life it must be invalid) you can accept evolution and still believe in a creator and the biblical creation story (ie. evolution is just the mechanism god chose for diversification of life). Intelligent design is not needed to make it work, and of course no intelligent being who could be responsible for such a thing has ever been shown to exist in the real world.

Science is just ambivalent to the design while seeking to either discover or employ the laws which the creator, Jehovah God, designed.

And how do you know this particular god did the designing and not one or more of the other thousands of gods that humans have invented? They all have the same characteristic that they hide themselves from discovery and exist only in the minds of those who believe in them. How do you know that the Hindu gods are not responsible?

Nonsense. How do you suppose they manage that. They don't know something. They are looking for the answer. They believe they find the answer, they have faith the answer is true or false and then they set out to demonstrate this. How could faith not be a part of the scientific processes? Science and faith aren't synonymous with truth and illusion respectively.

They manage it by building on prior knowledge and the axioms and "truisms" that exist as tools for explaining new observations. There is no faith involved in whether the answer is true or false ... it has to be demonstrated to be true or false by experiment and observation. Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity (Special and General) and provided predictions based on his results. There was great skepticism as it was new and not all that intuitive, so great efforts were made to accurately measure certain things that he predicted (specifically, early on, the apparent position changes in stars as their light passed close by the sun causing it to bend as it followed the curvature in spacetime caused by the sun's mass ... only directly observable back then during eclipses ... and the precession in the orbit of Mercury). Einstein may have had faith that his theory was correct, but it wasn't accepted by the scientific community until these observations were made to confirm it, and since then there have been many more observations and everyday use of his theory (eg. in adjusting the clocks on the GPS system to correct for time dilation) that confirm it precisely. No faith needed.

"Many issues can remain open scientific problems for decades or centuries, and may currently have no resolution (eg. origin of life, origin of the universe, explanations for dark matter and dark energy, etc.). So work continues until the problem is solved or a hypothesis is disproved" is a statement of faith. It's either divination or faith. You have faith science will self correct. You have faith the problems will be solved.

You do indeed have an unusual definition of the word faith in a discussion area called science and religion. My statement is not a statement of faith, it is a statement of fact. I stated that, for unsolved scientific problems, work continues until there is a resolution. If there is no resolution (ie. the hypothesis is either shown to be correct, or disproved) then it remains an open problem. Those are the three possible outcomes, and one of them is that work continues (implying that the problem is not yet solved). If I do believe that science will find a solution to a problem that is not faith, but an expectation based on the prior record of science in doing just that. If I thought some god would swoop down and provide the results on stone tablets then that would be faith, and I could pray to this god to do that. But I know what the result of that exercise would be, again based on the fact that there has never been any demonstration of prayer actually working.

What on earth gave you that idea? You couldn't be more wrong. Why do I have to keep explaining this very simple concept? Perhaps some examples:

Statements like this (especially the third one):

Post 60: "For example, it's common for some new scientific finding that starts out with "we used to think [insert science here] was true, but now we know [insert some other science here].""

Post 64: "When someone says this is scientific fact and it changes 20 years later it wasn't scientific fact it was faith."

Post 64: "Just come back in 40 years and it will all be rubbish."

Claim: The Bible is wrong in it's claiming of the age of the universe. Fact: The Bible makes no such claim and therefor isn't contrary to science.
Claim: Celestial phenomenon in the Bible is a product of primitive superstitious people. Fact: It is symbolic for political and social upheaval.
Claim: The Biblical soul is imaginary. Fact: Soul is life, blood.

The age of the universe does not have to be explicitly given in the bible ... it is inferred from the stated "begats" and geneology when those are taken literally. Have you not heard of Ussher and the many other people who have done this exercise?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology

Either the bible is wrong with its chronology and all the "begats", or it is contrary to science. If you don't take the bible literally and say things like early on days were actually years, or millennia, then anything goes. But if you take it literally, it very much is at odds with science ... by some six orders of magnitude.

You know for a fact that "soul is life, blood" (whatever that actually means)? You should publish this important information as the scientific community seems to know nothing about such a discovery. You can't state that as "fact" as by all observation "soul" is not a real thing.

Whatever methodology you are using isn't working for you and you're going to tell me that science can determine that Noah's flood was a myth? Never mind your evidence, which is conjectural,

Science has absolutely, positively proven that the Noah's flood story as described in the bible did not happen. It isn't conjecture and has been disproved from just about every angle possible. I provided a link in an earlier post for a summary of some of the scientific discplines that can be used to disprove this flood myth, and none of it is conjecture. There simply not being enough water is only one aspect of it.

Not at all. I think most atheists wouldn't waste a minute of their time concerning themselves with any of this. What I do think is that the atheist vs. theist debate is a smoke screen. God, the Bible and science isn't the real issue. It's like a couple arguing about something insignificant when it's really about something else altogether. Namely, the sociopolitical frustration of a minority in a theocratic democracy. Until it addresses the real underlying problem it's a futile exercise in vanity.

Read some more of this website ... I think you'll find that there are a lot of atheists would are happy to concern themselves with this subject. The science vs. religion debate has many subtopics, and some may just be for interest such as disproving Noah's flood which has no practical implications as we are here and the Earth is as it is now. That is just such an easy one to completely dismantle that lots of people have done it. But others may impact laws and other social issues and some atheists aren't comfortable with certain things being taught in schools to their children (eg. that evolution should not be considered), and some theists are not comfortable with certain things not being taught in schools (eg. creation myths of various religions).

[brunumb]

I once heard a scientist who was afraid to appear on camera with his own face and voice explain it this way. He said you have to appear to subscribe to evolutionary theory but in practice you have to use intelligent design otherwise it doesn't work.

"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" is a shameful exercise in misrepresentation and dishonesty. It has been rightfully criticised and condemned. For starters:

Ben Stein's Expelled: No Integrity Displayed
https://tinyurl.com/y9nj8yco

Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...
https://tinyurl.com/y9679jb3

Ben Stein Is Very, Very Wrong: Problems with Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
https://tinyurl.com/yck7q3uu

[DavidLeon]

Scientific discoveries are made by scientists, and it is irrelevant whether or not they are theists or atheists. Great advances have been made by both, and citing just 8 or 9 examples where the people happened to be theists says nothing at all about the issue. Depending on whose numbers you believe are correct, something like 20%, plus or minus about 5%, of the world's population are atheists or agnostics. So if the distrubution of theists and atheists among scientists were the same as it is in the general population, for any particular scientific discovery you'd have about 75-80% change of them being made by theists. But it is irrelevant whether or not a scientists is a theist or an atheist ... it has no bearing on their ability to produce results.

You are missing two important points. 1. The important part theism played in establishing modern day science. 2. The ease in which theists function within the sciences.

Begs the question what problem should atheists have with theism?

This is another bad example. First, the opinion of any one scientist means nothing. Second, subscribing to evolutionary theory does not in any way mean you can't be religious.

I think it means something. It means he's afraid to speak out. Afraid to tell the truth. As for religion I didn't say anything about religion, I said intelligent design.

For example, the entire Catholic church accepts evolution as the mechanism for how life diversifies on this planet.

Also placing Galileo under house arrest, absolving sins for money, Burning William Tyndale and Joan of Arc, Terrorizing Jews and Muslims, child molestation and it's cover up, inquisitions, crusades, the immortal soul of Socrates, trinity of Plato, cross from Constantine, cakes with naked young boys popping out, meddling in politics ...

Since evolution says nothing about the mechanism for the origin of life (although many anti-evolutionists seem to think it does and erroneously argue that since it doesn't explain origin of life it must be invalid) you can accept evolution and still believe in a creator and the biblical creation story (ie. evolution is just the mechanism god chose for diversification of life).

If Adam didn't exist he didn't sin and so what need of a savior? The entire meaning of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation can be summed up as the vindication of Jehovah God's name through the ransom sacrifice of Christ Jesus. Belief in evolution negates the Bible.

Intelligent design is not needed to make it work, and of course no intelligent being who could be responsible for such a thing has ever been shown to exist in the real world.

Only if you discount the Bible.

And how do you know this particular god did the designing and not one or more of the other thousands of gods that humans have invented? They all have the same characteristic that they hide themselves from discovery and exist only in the minds of those who believe in them. How do you know that the Hindu gods are not responsible?

It's called research. Buddha reportedly said there was no god and if there were it wouldn't be concerned with the lives of men. Confucius concentrated on propriety, specifically tradition and history. The Confucian concept of a god isn't a creator as we are accustomed to, it's a heavenly nature. There was human nature and heavenly nature. Confucians took an active role in their approach to nature, cultivating a harmonious relationship with it through action whereas the Taoists took on a passive role with heavenly and human nature. If you allow nature to take it's course without interfering all will be well. Shintoist had a creator gods who created other gods but they acknowledge the writing of the Nihongi and Kojiki were not inspired. The Japanese, or specifically Shinto concept of god (Kami) is arguably more accurately translated as spirit. Spirits, for example, of dead ancestors, inhabit objects such as mirrors, swords, mountains. They were national myth and histories to promote appreciation for the Royal family and instruct youth. Hinduism and Scientology don't promote creator gods as the Abrahamic faiths do. They leave belief in gods up to the individual. Hinduism has a creator god created by the ultimate creator god which isn't an intelligent being but a metaphysical concept of an ultimate reality. Brahman. Brahma, is a mortal god created by this ultimate reality. Scientology has a similar concept with MEST (Matter, Energy, Space and Time).

Islam and Mormonism are offshoots of Judaism and Christianity. The Quran makes no claim of divine inspiration and isn't in harmony with Jewish or Christian beliefs. It appears to be a collection or series of sociopolitical proclamations by men who were disgruntled by the hypocrisy and apostasy of Judaism and Christianity. The Book of Mormon claims to be a continuation of the Bible but isn't in harmony with it and can't be corroborated like the Bible can. No archaeological remains of cities or events etc.

Judaism is the result of the Pharisees, who desired what they perceived as the prominence and prestige of the Aaronic priesthood, were able to take over once that priesthood dissolved with the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. Christ fulfilled the Hebrew scriptures as the Messiah and Jehovah's promise was extended to gentiles. Jewish thinking had suffered apostasy to the extreme with the influence of Greek philosophy at the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE just as Christianity would with the politically motivated Constantine the Great in 325 CE.

They manage it by building on prior knowledge and the axioms and "truisms" that exist as tools for explaining new observations. There is no faith involved in whether the answer is true or false ... it has to be demonstrated to be true or false by experiment and observation. Einstein developed the Theory of Relativity (Special and General) and provided predictions based on his results. There was great skepticism as it was new and not all that intuitive, so great efforts were made to accurately measure certain things that he predicted (specifically, early on, the apparent position changes in stars as their light passed close by the sun causing it to bend as it followed the curvature in spacetime caused by the sun's mass ... only directly observable back then during eclipses ... and the precession in the orbit of Mercury). Einstein may have had faith that his theory was correct, but it wasn't accepted by the scientific community until these observations were made to confirm it, and since then there have been many more observations and everyday use of his theory (eg. in adjusting the clocks on the GPS system to correct for time dilation) that confirm it precisely. No faith needed.

Needed? It really amazes me when scientific atheists deny natural circumstance because of a connection to religion or the Bible. For example, sin, faith, gods, the soul, prophecy. It just indicates, quite clearly, a profound ignorance. There isn't anything supernatural or necessarily religious about any of these things. But you perceive it as such and so deny them. Now, I would hazard a guess that this sort of superstitious aversion didn't come from Darwin so I wonder if you've ever done any research on where exactly these bizarre sentiments originate? It must have been fairly recently.

I've discovered some time ago that it doesn't do any good to explain it. Where do you think it comes from and why is it so entrenched in atheistic thinking? I would really enjoy a discussion on those things like I attempted with the soul.

You do indeed have an unusual definition of the word faith in a discussion area called science and religion.

It's taken right out of the dictionary, dude!

My statement is not a statement of faith, it is a statement of fact. I stated that, for unsolved scientific problems, work continues until there is a resolution. If there is no resolution (ie. the hypothesis is either shown to be correct, or disproved) then it remains an open problem. Those are the three possible outcomes, and one of them is that work continues (implying that the problem is not yet solved). If I do believe that science will find a solution to a problem that is not faith, but an expectation based on the prior record of science in doing just that.

Faith is the expectation based on the prior record. We'll go over it one more time. What you are describing above is faith. From the dictionary: "complete trust or confidence in someone or something." Used in a sentence: "This restores one's faith in politicians." In this context it has nothing to do with any god. It isn't a metaphysical concept. It isn't supernatural and it isn't religious. For you to say: "Many issues can remain open scientific problems for decades or centuries, and may currently have no resolution (eg. origin of life, origin of the universe, explanations for dark matter and dark energy, etc.). So work continues until the problem is solved or a hypothesis is disproved" is a fact. It's factual. It's a fact describing faith.

If I thought some god would swoop down and provide the results on stone tablets then that would be faith, and I could pray to this god to do that. But I know what the result of that exercise would be, again based on the fact that there has never been any demonstration of prayer actually working.

Not that you know that, but just out of curiosity how could it be in your opinion? Namely demonstrated to actually work. What would be the requirements expected for it to work, how do you know it hasn't, and how would such a demonstration be conducted?

What on earth gave you that idea? You couldn't be more wrong. Why do I have to keep explaining this very simple concept? Perhaps some examples:

Statements like this (especially the third one):

Post 60: "For example, it's common for some new scientific finding that starts out with "we used to think [insert science here] was true, but now we know [insert some other science here].""

Post 64: "When someone says this is scientific fact and it changes 20 years later it wasn't scientific fact it was faith."

Post 64: "Just come back in 40 years and it will all be rubbish."

For the first two simply replace science with theology and the same applies. For the third all I would have to do is show you the evolution I was taught as fact and truth in school and you would find it to be laughable. These are only descriptions of the self correction which you will confidently admit is a part of science so why do you suppose I find them problematic? Why do you seem defensive? Do you project this upon me? Do you think that if I were wrong I wouldn't change my thinking? I have many times and will, hopefully, continue to do so. I've explained this repeatedly.

It only becomes problematic when absolute truth infallible is claimed. You know I'm influenced by Jehovah's Witnesses. Here's a video I just watched a few minutes ago. It applies the same principle to Bible based faith. It isn't wrong that they were wrong, it's wrong because they claim Jehovah's guidance as if they are directed by God and therefor absolute truth. Then changed. It never was true. My solution? Never do that and never become a part of anything that does.

Claim: The Bible is wrong in it's claiming of the age of the universe. Fact: The Bible makes no such claim and therefor isn't contrary to science.
Claim: Celestial phenomenon in the Bible is a product of primitive superstitious people. Fact: It is symbolic for political and social upheaval.
Claim: The Biblical soul is imaginary. Fact: Soul is life, blood.

The age of the universe does not have to be explicitly given in the bible ... it is inferred from the stated "begats" and geneology when those are taken literally. Have you not heard of Ussher and the many other people who have done this exercise?

Genealogy only points to the creation of Adam. The Bible doesn't imply nor can the age of the heavens and earth be determined through scripture.

Either the bible is wrong with its chronology and all the "begats", or it is contrary to science. If you don't take the bible literally and say things like early on days were actually years, or millennia, then anything goes. But if you take it literally, it very much is at odds with science ... by some six orders of magnitude.

Read my post on Genesis chapter 1. It's fairly brief.

You know for a fact that "soul is life, blood" (whatever that actually means)? You should publish this important information as the scientific community seems to know nothing about such a discovery. You can't state that as "fact" as by all observation "soul" is not a real thing.

What I can do is define the word soul as is commonly used; provide an etymology; present the Hebrew and Greek interpretation; demonstrate how the word was used by Bible writers and compare that to Greek philosophers and the superstitious; trace the historically documented adoption of Greek philosophy by the Jews in 332 BCE and the Christians in 325 CE; and then submit to public debate.

What I can't do is state as fact that the immortal soul is not real. Even if I defined real. Specifically I can't determine, even having done all of the above, that it isn't real and I wonder how you are so bold to do that without having taken any of the aforementioned steps. Science?

[brunumb]

1. The important part theism played in establishing modern day science.

Theism played no part in establishing modern day science. Theists may have practiced the scientific method, but that in no way means that any god belief was involved. It's actually quite contradictory. Sheesh.

[brunumb]

If Adam didn't exist he didn't sin and so what need of a savior?

Precisely. There is no need for any savior and there never was a savior. The Bible simply invented a disease and then offered a cure. Munchausen syndrome immediately springs to mind.

[DavidLeon]

Precisely. There is no need for any savior and there never was a savior. The Bible simply invented a disease and then offered a cure. Munchausen syndrome immediately springs to mind.

It's funny when a "scientific" atheist attempts to prove impossibility with uninformed opinion because it demonstrates very effectively how important scientific methodology REALLY is.

King David was a savior. Did you know that?

[DavidLeon]

Theism played no part in establishing modern day science. Theists may have practiced the scientific method, but that in no way means that any god belief was involved. It's actually quite contradictory. Sheesh.

Wrong again.

[Difflugia]

Begs the question what problem should atheists have with theism?

The same problem doctors have with homeopathy, geological engineers have water dowsing, and physicists have with perpetual motion.

If Adam didn't exist he didn't sin and so what need of a savior? The entire meaning of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation can be summed up as the vindication of Jehovah God's name through the ransom sacrifice of Christ Jesus.

The "sin inherited from Adam" thing is just something Paul came up with and the rest of "Genesis to Revelation" wouldn't be affected much by a metaphorical Adam. John describes the sacrifice of Jesus as taking away sin, but that has nothing to do with Adam. When any other New Testament author describes Jesus as a sacrifice, it's not for sin as such, but as the Passover sacrifice which signifies deliverance. A metaphorical Adam only means explaining away a few verses in Romans and 1 Corinthians and even those aren't that explicit. That should be child's play for any apologist.

Belief in evolution negates the Bible.

It's no worse than reconciling a spherical Earth with Isaiah's "four corners."

[brunumb]

The Quran makes no claim of divine inspiration and isn't in harmony with Jewish or Christian beliefs. It appears to be a collection or series of sociopolitical proclamations by men who were disgruntled by the hypocrisy and apostasy of Judaism and Christianity.

Not to Muslims.

It is thought by Muslims to be not simply divinely inspired, but the literal word of God. According to tradition, several of Muhammad's companions served as scribes and recorded the revelations.

Sounds just like the opinion of their book held by Christians.