Find me one statement in all of the Bible that does not accurately describe cosmology in what it says about it.
Sure.....
Astronomy
Firmament
The "
firmament" is claimed to be a solid "roof" over the world.
[16][17] It is described in
Genesis 1:6-8 (KJV). This is obviously untrue, unless all those satellites in orbit are a hoax. Considering the views of
flat earthers, someone, somewhere probably thinks this is the case (don't ask them how GPS systems work).
Many Christians believe that this Firmament is what fell from the sky and caused the entire earth to flood, with only Noah and his family surviving.
Genesis 7:11 "... and the floodgates of the heavens were opened."
However, an explanation offered by inerrantists is that the description of the firmament is only what was
believed to be true and not necessarily stating that it is
literally true.
[18] This leaves literalists with the same problem, of course, namely that if part of the Bible isn't strictly accurate, how (they feel) can you trust any of it?
Illumination
In Genesis, the Moon is referred to as a "light" (specifically, a "lesser light"). The Moon is merely a reflector of the Sun's light, and produces no visible light of its own, although it does shine in different wavelengths not perceivable to the human eye, such as infrared. Of course, when talking to tribal nomads and other desert dwellers, the concept of referring to the Moon as a light was commonplace. Additionally, the Moon was made to "rule the night", but there seems to be no explanation for why it's visible frequently throughout the daytime or not visible on some nights. This last bit seems like a strange oversight even for a pretechnological society, let alone the words of an omniscient God.
Stars
The Bible makes it clear that stars are tiny objects in the sky that will fall down when Jesus comes back:
Revelation 8:10
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
However, other verses in the book of Revelation clearly use "stars" in a figurative sense (for example, see
Rev. 9:1 and
Rev. 12:3, 4), so it is possible that the writer did not intend to make a statement about literal celestial bodies in 8:10 either. Indeed, given the highly allegorical and symbolic nature of
apocalyptic literature in general, any literal understanding of Revelation is generally ill-advised until taking into consideration the idea that this is supposedly divine inspiration to which laws, societies and lives are proposed to be based upon.
Planetary formation
According to the
Genesis creation account, the
Earth was formed before the
Sun. Aside from bio-mechanical problems, this flatly contradicts the nebular
hypothesis of stellar formation, in which
planets form in the accretion disk created by a young star.
It should be noted, however, that when the Sun, moon, and stars are introduced in Genesis 1:16, they are said to be "made", which, in the original
Hebrew language, is different from the word "create" used in Genesis 1:1. If this is the case, then it could be argued that the Sun and moon were created in 1:1 as part of the collective "heavens" (compare, for example, the summary given in Genesis 2:4), and only in Genesis 1:16 (day 4 in the creative period) are they fully visible from Earth's surface.
The creation of the sun, moon, and stars on day four is meant to be a theological point, rather than a scientific one. As other cultures worshiped the sun and moon and divined by the stars (astrology), the Hebrew authors are making the point that none of them is the source of the light, but rather merely reflectors of the light (as lamps) whose ultimate origin is in their God. The creation myth also uses poetic parallelism to narrate the story: Day 1 and Day 4 are paired (light; sun, moon, stars), Day 2 and Day 5 (seas and dry land; fish and fowl), Day 3 and Day 6 (plants of the earth; beasts of the earth and humanity). Furthermore, given the similarity of this narrative to the creation myth of the Babylonians, whose god Marduk creates the cosmos by slaying his sea-serpent mother Tiamat, the Hebrew presentation of God creating over the deep (Hebrew: "tehom") by means other than violence and declaring the creation to be "good" is a rebuke to the Babylonian myth. The abundance of literary and theological devices in the narrative make it clear that the text is not attempting to be a scientific account of the origin of the world, but a theological declaration of the goodness of the creation as against competing religious systems (Canaanite, Babylonian, etc.).
Rotation of the Earth
See the main article on this topic:
Rotation of the Earth
Some fundamentalists argue that the Bible predicted the rotation of the Earth.
Instead, the Bible implies that the sun moves around the Earth, rather than the Earth rotating.
Ecclesiastes 1:5 shows a geocentric world view:
“”The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.