Again, this is all in a BIOLOGY text book, not a history book. From the same chapter as yesterday’s post;

Return to the Scriptures. The Reformation in Europe loosened the grip of superstition and allowed a renewal of nature study and exact description. The return to the authority of the Scriptures, which was the hallmark of the Protestant movement, made people very interested in the natural world which the God of the Scriptures had created. They wanted to discover the secrets that God has concealed in the universe (see Prov. 25:2) and wherever possible, to use their discoveries for the benefit of others. As science turned to the principles of the Bible, a great new era began - the era of modern science. Modern science is built on Biblical principles. Today if man rejects God and His Word, man’s science risks deteriorating into pagan superstitions as it did for Pliny and many other ancients. Only by holding to the truth of Scripture and a Biblical worldview can man hope to know more of God’s creation.

As I was typing this out, I had to check the cover and spine of the book many times to make sure I really was getting it from a biology text book.

Sorry it’s been almost a week since I last published something. I’ll make it up by giving you this beauty from the chapter entitled “Natural History and Scientific Investigation”. 

Book of modern discovery. When Pliny completed his work, God was in the final stages of revealing His inspired Word, the Bible. One hundred years after Christ, mankind had both the completed work of Pliny and the completed Word of God. The two stand in stark contrast to each other. Pliny’s Natural History contains numerous errors, as do Galen’s treatises and the works of Plato, Aristotle, the Egyptians, and the Babylonians. The Bible, on the other hand, contains no error. Although God did not primarily cause the Bible to be written to teach us science, He does in hundreds of ways teach us about His creation in the pages of Scripture. Someone has said that although the Bible is not a science text, whenever it speaks of scientific matters it speaks truly and accurately. Many items of “modern discovery” were written in Scripture thousands of years ago. God tells us of the heavenly bodies and about the climate and weather; He reveals truths about chemical and biochemical processes, the ocean with all its mystery, the earth, animals and plants, the composition of the human body and its characteristics, and diseases and their prevention. 

Yup, this is all in a biology text book.

Just one notice before today’s dose of stupidity. I will be away from my computer for the weekend, so there will be no posts Saturday or Sunday this week. That being said, let’s get back to the stupidity.

The Bible, the oldest record of man’s past, reveals to us the close working association between created man (Adam) and other living things. Adam gave names to the animals created by God to inhabit the earth (Gen. 2:19). Adam and Eve, living in perfect harmony with all of the earth’s living creatures, exhibited God’s perfection in creation. After the fall of man because of sin, God cursed the earth and altered man’s association with its creatures. Because of the curse of God, man was driven from the Garden of Eden to work among other living creatures for his survival. Henceforth, finding answers for his inquisitive mind would be much more difficult and would require laborious study. Being separated from God, many men sought for their answers in nature alone and totally ignored their Creator. Some, however, remaining true to God, realized that they were created in the image of their Maker and that by studying nature they were “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”

This isn’t so much a creationist point in the book, just good view of the contradictions in the book. 

Let’s start with this paragraph on page 616 of the book in the chapter about heredity.

Cystic fibrosis (CF), one of the most common hereditary diseases in the United States, is caused by a recessive gene. A child must receive the recessive gene from both parents before this respiratory disease manifests itself. Receiving a CF gene from only one parent makes the child a carrier. Roughly 10 million Americans are carriers of CF; thus the disease has a gene frequency of about 1 in 25 Americans. If any 2 of those 10 million people have children, the children may suffer from this disease.

Seems like pretty legit biology to me. I mean, that’s about what I learned in my general biology 1 course in college. Now let’s take a look at page 630 in this book, in the chapter entitled DNA: The Regulation of Life in the section about mutations.

Mutations that are passed from generation to generation also have harmful effects. Relatively minor mutations have been responsible for causing albinism, or lack of skin pigment, in people and animals; a near absence of feathers on chickens; extra fingers or toes on people; wrinkled skin and near hairlessness on mice; and other harmful effects. More serious hereditary mutations cause such diseases as cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, muscular dystrophy, PKU, sickle-cell anemia, and Tay-Sachs disease. Mutations are part of the meaning of the Scriptural observation that “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Rom. 8:22).

Now, I’m no medical expert, but I do know that though these diseases did start out affecting humans due to mutations in the alleles that carry the genes, but more than half, and in the case of hemophilia two-thirds, of each case of these diseases are now hereditary, and not original mutations. I would consider that to mean the diseases are now hereditary, not mutations as a whole. 

If there are any medical type people reading this blog and I am dead wrong, please inform me at wtfchristianbiology@gmail.com and inform me how I am wrong. Please have legit information, and not just telling me I’m wrong.

Sudden extinction. Even though the extinction of dinosaurs and similar creatures has never been fully explained, several theories have been offered. Some scientists think climatic changes may have brought about their extinction; other scientists believe they may have been forced into extinction by mammals which fed on their eggs. In the hypothesis which is presently most popular, scientists think that the dinosaurs may have become extinct suddenly as the result of some catastrophe. Many creationists think the dinosaurs probably could not cope with the environmental changes brought about by the Genesis Flood.

Now, I have been interested in dinosaurs for a long time, since I was a young child, but I have NEVER heard the theory that mammals ate their eggs into extinction. Strike three of course, is blaming the extinction of the dinosaurs on the flood. I however, propose a different theory;

Many extinct reptiles and reptilelike creatures are known ony form the fossil record. Probably the most famous of all extinct creatures are the dinosaurs, a large group of extinct creatures that resemble reptiles in many ways. Although the word dinosaur (Greek deinos, “fearfully great’ or “awe-inspiring” + sauros, “lizard”) would imply that dinosaurs were indeed true reptiles, there are actually many important differences between dinosaurs and reptiles. For this reason, dinosaurs are sometimes placed in a separate group (Dinosauria) instead of the class Reptilia. There are many fossil remains of dinosaurs, and the creatures also seemed to be referred to in Scripture. Although the Bible does not use the term “dinosaur” (the term was first used in 1842), many Bible scholars believe the two creatures God describes in Job 40 and 41 may have been dinosaurs living during the time of Job. Although some dinosaurs were as small as chickens, others were the largest land animals that have ever lived. 

Yup, because creatures that hadn’t been discovered yet 2,000 years ago would be mentioned in the Bible. To be fair though, I did indeed look up Job 40 and 41 to see if these creatures mentioned actually sounded like dinosaurs in context. 

Job 40:15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.

Can almost see that under the knowledge we have today, but not under the knowledge of the era that the bible was written, so strike 1.

Job 41:1 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?

Sounds more to me like God is telling Job to not tell fish stories. So, strike 2. 

I’ll let them sit and suffer for today, strike 3 comes tomorrow with a second update from the dinosaur section.

Both Bible quotes are from the King James version. 

“And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7; see also Job 12:10 and Isa. 42:5). What is a man without breath? He is dust. That breath, which started with God’s own breath, continues every minute of your life on earth. Without breath there is no physical life (Ps. 104:29).

God has designed your body with a respiratory system, which functions to supply the body with oxygen and to rid it of excess carbon dioxide. The primary organs of your respiratory system are your lungs, large, spongy organs located inside the thoracic cavity on opposite sides of your heart. 

More intelligent design bullshit from the anatomy and physiology section of the book. More to come later.

The Scriptures give us the truth about God and about man’s relationship to God and also provide us with a true account  of the origin of all things. In addition, God’s Word furnishes us with an interpretative framework by which to view life and the world. Basic to this framework are the three Biblical presuppositions without which science would be impossible:

1. There is an order to creation.

2. There is a cause, or reasonable explanation, for every effect, or event, in creation.

3. There is something real to be discovered and understood about creation.

It should be kept in mind, however, that although God has chosen to reveal some important scientific truths to man through His Word (such as the facts of creation and the principle of entropy), He has apparently not chosen to reveal the details of most day-to-day processes (such as photosynthesis, the motions of the planets, and the structure of the earth). Rather, these subjects He has left to mankind to investigate under the mandate of Genesis 1:28. 

I think I have dented the walls of my living room reading this crap. Yet I will soldier on to keep providing this to all my readers.

A disease is any condition which interferes with the normal functioning of the body. Since the Fall, man has struggled to conquer disease, one of the curses brought by sin; however, only in the past two centuries has God allowed man to make great strides toward curing and preventing disease. 

Yup, makes perfect sense. God allowed us to create the microscope to find the archaea, bacteria, and viruses that cause disease to let us fight them. Yup, perfect sense.

Somehow I managed to miss the three paragraphs that led up to the paragraphs I posted late last night. I apologize for this, and now rectify that mistake. Be prepared for head smacking goodness.

When God began to be pushed out of academic life by some scholars in the 19th century, science filled the void. Some people began to think that everything could be explained by means of scientific investigation. This thinking became so prevalent among intellectuals by the 20th century that it was thought that nothing could be known apart from scientific investigation. The idea that science can find answers for all the problems in life is called scientism. The religion of scientism eliminated several important forms of human knowledge, namely the Scriptures, the Christian heritage of Western civilization, and just plain “common sense.”

Modern science was created as a way to explain and control nature. Today, many people are attempting to use what they call “science” to explain and control human nature. If man were only a product of nature, then he could be measured and predicted, but he is not. Man is a spiritual being created in God’s image who reaches beyond the ability of science to observe and measure. An understanding of who and what man is lies outside the parameters of science. The scientific method is not a valid instrument with which to measure that which is spiritual. 

Sociologists attempt to explain and measure man’s interpersonal relationships, but the often fail to see man’s relationship to God. Psychologists attempt to explain man’s behavior, but many of them fail to see man’s sinful nature as a result of his rebellion against God. Economists attempt to explain and predict man’s worth, but they usually fail to see man’s value in God’s eyes. Progressive educators attempt to measure learning, but they fail because children are not little social animals or complex machines to be programmed. All of these fields of study and many others claim to be “science” and to use the scientific method to verify their theories, but by rejecting God’s design, purpose, and revelation, they often overstep the bounds of true science. 

And yes, this is all in a BIOLOGY textbook. Or at least, what passes as a biology textbook for Christian schools.