Science is an iterative process, where new ideas are built on old ideas, sometimes past ideas are replaced with new ideas, and sometimes entire fields crash down and are replaced with something else.
Religion is more or less unchanging. Although interpretations may change, and occasionally translations may be challenged, the basic story of God as written doesn't change to a great extent.
When the two try to cross contaminate, where religion attempts to be found in fact, and science tries to use religion to explain natural phenomena, I'm reminded of the classic below exceprt:
Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim)
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion." [1 Timothy 1.7]
Now clever excerpts aside, does religion not suffer by attempting to lead faith to factualism? Instead of dealing with issues of the soul, is there a danger in weakening faith by attempting to find scientific plausibility and biblical claims of literalism as it applies to science?
I bring that up, for the actual thread question. If biblical literalism is going to be used as facts to explain the world and show biblical inerrancy, removing faith as a reason, does this not suffer when science changes? Modern medicine rarely uses blood letting as a healing protocol. If scripture was used to justify the protocol originally, doesn't this cause a crisis when it is proved that, in fact, blood letting doesn't work? Is there danger in linking biblical inerrancy with scientific claims as science is in a constant change of change and flux and what the religion claimed as fact today may end up destroying the literal "facts" and leaving lack of faith behind? Isn't there an inherent danger of driving people away from the bible or at the very least, literal interpretation?
Religion is more or less unchanging. Although interpretations may change, and occasionally translations may be challenged, the basic story of God as written doesn't change to a great extent.
When the two try to cross contaminate, where religion attempts to be found in fact, and science tries to use religion to explain natural phenomena, I'm reminded of the classic below exceprt:
Saint Augustine (A.D. 354-430) in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim)
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion." [1 Timothy 1.7]
Now clever excerpts aside, does religion not suffer by attempting to lead faith to factualism? Instead of dealing with issues of the soul, is there a danger in weakening faith by attempting to find scientific plausibility and biblical claims of literalism as it applies to science?
I bring that up, for the actual thread question. If biblical literalism is going to be used as facts to explain the world and show biblical inerrancy, removing faith as a reason, does this not suffer when science changes? Modern medicine rarely uses blood letting as a healing protocol. If scripture was used to justify the protocol originally, doesn't this cause a crisis when it is proved that, in fact, blood letting doesn't work? Is there danger in linking biblical inerrancy with scientific claims as science is in a constant change of change and flux and what the religion claimed as fact today may end up destroying the literal "facts" and leaving lack of faith behind? Isn't there an inherent danger of driving people away from the bible or at the very least, literal interpretation?
).
