Biblical "contradictions" #1: Bats are birds?

[liduq]

Hebrew word ''owph'' mean : Flying creatures, birds or insects. So, it's just a bad translation.

The Bible was written by prophets and scribes under the orders of the prophets, and the prophets were inspired of God.

Nobody ever said that the Bible was written by God Himself. But it remains THE WORD OF GOD.

Who knew at that time, the hare was a ruminant? Leviticus 11:6. Yet science considers the hare as a ruminant.

[mikefromwa]

Only an imbecile would believe in any form of religion. Your pathetic attempts to justify the nonsense contained in the bible only makes you look like a complete idiot.

[liduq]

@mikefromwa You permit yourself to treat this boy as an imbicile and an idiot because he is young.

There are lots of very smart people who believe in God and His Word. Scientists, academics, doctors, lawyers, judges, businessmen, teachers, etc. Even your country is built on Christian principles.

At least this young man has the heart to defend his beliefs, and if you noticed, he did it without insulting anyone.

And I'm sure you've never read the Bible, you've just heard others talk about it...

[mikefromwa]

@liduq: "There are lots of very smart people who believe in God and His Word."

Just because "smart people" believe in something doesn't make it true. Lots of smart people used to believe the Earth was flat. They were wrong.

"At least this young man has the heart to defend his beliefs"

Good for him, but he's still an idiot. Belief in an invisible, telepathic super-being who created the universe in a few days is irrational at best, downright stupid at worst.

[888WulfDog888]

The whole argument is a strawman. The verse is quite plainly saying what not to ADD to the fowl, here: [verse13`And these ye do abominate of the fowl; they are not eaten, an abomination they [are]: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, ...] Young's literal translation

[MissChaceurz]

that was kool hey um give that guy who wrote tough questions for christians a go..God bless

[blackblood]

it's like saying well a dog and a cow are both the same type of animal, basis; well they've got four legs. no. you can't compare the two. you'd have to be a backward, uneducated person in order to liken a hairy, flying, toothed, solid-boned, beakless creature to a feathered, flying, hollow-bowned, egg-laying, beaked animal... they were obviously unesducated and had no idea what they're talking about. don't make an excuse for some idiot that existed thousands of years ago it's pathetic.

[JabberCT]

Terrible job trying to stick up for a all-knowing deity. A little below that he also says insects have 4 legs. Thats 2 blunders on the same page. No matter how you try to look at it, God failed 1st grade zoology.There are no excuses for that. Just cop-outs.

[PrinceWalter]

Scientific Classification necessitates a certain order:

1. Kingdom

2. Phylum

3. Class

1. Kingdom. Animalia OR Plantae. If we choose Animalia...

2. Phylum. Chordota. (invertebrates Lev 11:13-19) OR Arthropoda (invertebrates) Lev 11:20-23.

THEN, if we choose Chordota...

3. Class: Reptilia (Lev 11:13-19-) / Mammalia (Lev 13:-19 "the bat" listed last)

This is perfect scientific taxonomy.

[blackblood]

@PrinceWalter it's not even a matter of classification it's a matter of blatantly obvious differences.

[PrinceWalter]

Unfortunately, "mammary glands" are the only significant difference many... ahem, "critical thinkers"(?) come up with.

EVERY "oph" listed in Leviticus 11:13-19 is a VERTEBRATE.

EVERY "oph" listed in Leviticus 11:20-23 is an INVERTEBRATE.

I wonder if people TODAY know what a bird is.

[Peteyuse]

@PrinceWalter "I wonder if people TODAY know what a bird is." Are you saying it is a kind of bat?

Really?

[PrinceWalter]

@Peteyuse

No, but bats and birds are the only chordate fliers on earth.

Other chordates that use aerial locomotion do so by other means, i.e. gliding, parachuting, a couple of others methods.

[Peteyuse]

@PrinceWalter Right, so the bottom line is, nobody "informed" would mistake a bat, as being a type of bird, or vice versa.

[BowserKod]

Lol. It does not matter what classification we use now and what classification they used back then. The bible says this. You say the bible is true 100% of the time. Stop making excuses for your stupid beliefs, kid.

[GermanConquistador08]

@BowserKod Again, if the bible says the sky is blue, and then we change our definition for the word blue, this would make the bible wrong by MODERN standerds. God promised to preserve his WORD. He did NOT promise to perseve the definitions of the english language.

[VeggieTrunks]

If you think it's not stupid to believe that everything came from nothing, then I think you're the stupid one here.

[mitchtherevolution]

The only problem with your argument of us changing our classification to defer from god's higher knowledge is that this is simply erroneous. Fact of the matter is Bats are more closely related to whales than they are to Birds. If god had stated the animals of the air, rather than explicitly using the terminology fowl there would be no argument. But this isn't the case.

Don't be offended by my many rebuttals, I am but a scholar and a conversationalist with highly complex beliefs :)

[ellimist6]

if the bible is the word of god y didnt god tell the writer at the time that bats were indeed mammals and not birds it would give the bible more credit if it used words that only we know in this time age than using bronze age methods of classifying animals

[blackblood]

@ellimist6 because if he couldn't fuck with us he'd get really bored

[diunbelief]

So are bats birds, scotzbhoy?

[DHammerr]

i cant seem to explain how and why 1 John 4:2 says if a spirit confesses that God is come in the flesh is of God (remember Jesus was met with spirits who aknowledged his Godhood and even mentioned his name); there are two choices here, either spirit refers to humans, which doesnt make much sense, since John could have used a different word, or 2-nd, that confessing is different than stating. but how is that ?what exactly is the difference then ?

[Akita538]

That's just the way they categorised things at the time. It doesn't mean they thought bats were any more similar to birds than we do; they just lumped large flying animals together in one group. They also thought the sky was a solid firmament with the stars attached to it. Fair enough, so did just about everybody else until only a few centuries ago.

[GloomySunset]

awesomeness.

[pctopgs]

Wait a second, Christians say that the Bible is scientifically ahead of its' time. It's inspired by God! The Bible is supposed to be timeless.

[VeggieTrunks]

Think about what you said. How can it be timeless in the sense you are speaking? It would have to be written in every language, take note of every speaking change (imagine how different just people from America speak now as opposed to 10 years ago, or in two different parts of the country), etc etc etc. The Bible would be a million miles long :S that's just a dumb point.

[pctopgs]

@VeggieTrunks

Nah, now you're acting like your god isn't all powerful here. It's a good thing you rationalized it away (Tacitly admitting that god is limited by the human mind.....which furthers my speculation that god is created by humans...) instead of just saying "God works in mysterious ways, that's why we must have faith in him."

[VeggieTrunks]

@pctopgs

Ummm what part of that makes sense about what I said?? You are ignorant or blind, clearly. God can literally make it timeless but that would mean he would force meanings of words to never change for the rest of eternity. We would still be speaking as they spoke 2,000 years ago. Then you'd be nagging that he forced us to speak a certain way. You just don't want to hear reason because you are just as unwilling to believe as you claim we are unwilling to not believe in God.

[pctopgs]

@VeggieTrunks "you are just as unwilling to believe as you claim we are unwilling to not believe in God."

Please stop projecting.....I really don't want to get into personal insults. Anyways, I think you missed my point: I assume you believe that god is beyond human reasoning and he works in mysterious ways, yet you are rationalizing with you human mind as to why your god would do certain things. Which is my point that god is limited by your mind.

[blackblood]

@VeggieTrunks who wrote the bible? god or some dude thinking it was the will of god? either god's retarded enough not to know the difference between his own creations or the guy who wrote this was the product of his uninformed time

[VeggieTrunks]

@blackblood

*sigh* Maybe you're retarded. If I'm going to write a book for people 2,000 years ago, I'm not going to use 2011 definitions of things. I'm in a speech class and the first thing the teacher tells you is to kNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. If you make a speech meant for senior programmers to a group of toddlers, the message will go over their head because it's beyond their comprehension. And again, these classifications are a product of US. These animals do not come with stamps on (tbc...)

[blackblood]

@VeggieTrunks any 10th grader has taken a speech class... and biology... in which we cut open pig fetuses and note how similar their bodies are to human bodies... so similar that we have not only used them to make bacon (which i hear is delicious) but we also use their body parts to replace ours. but just because we are similar and can both walk, paint, get really fat, and have similar spleens does not mean that we are the same. whales aren't fish are they?

[blackblood]

i thought you valued my opinion... calling me retarded isn't very nice... i think your speech teacher would tell you that verbally attacking the opposition themselves makes your argument look a lot weaker 

[VeggieTrunks]

@blackblood

saying "this animals is from the Kingdom this and that, class such and such, etc." Pluto was a planet 10 years ago and now it's not! Does that mean we were all stupid for thinking so? And it was SCIENTISTS that told us it was a planet and then turned around and changed their minds! To people 2,000 years ago, I'm sure anything that flew was bird to them and anything in the water was a fish to them. Only people who want to pretend God doesn't exist make these dumb ass arguments.

[blackblood]

@VeggieTrunks i couldn't care less what pluto is. if you want to start classifying every heavenly body you should start now. animals are easier though. and if you honestly want to tell me that the people who lived back then were scientifically more advanced than us simply because they wrote something in then bible, then i think you need to rethink this. and if you're saying that this one detail that they got wrong can disprove the rest of the bible, w/e... you make the job of others a lot easier

[blackblood]

they also killed people who said that the earth revolved around the sun... obviously if they get simple stuff wrong it's possible that they could get other stuff wrong... like why natural disasters are happening. believing in a certain thing is just an example of tunnel vision. if anything you should be searching for the truth not blindly following something you most likely do not understand

[VeggieTrunks]

@blackblood

I will tell you straight up, I don't care if you go to hell or NOT. I honestly could care less. I don't spend my time trying to convert and change people because we all grown as hell and can make our own decisions and I respect the decisions that people make about their lives but I'm not gonna sit around and have people making up ridiculous reasons to try and discredit the Bible, trying to make me look like I'm just a walking zombie with no free will because I believe in a God. KMA!

[blackblood]

@VeggieTrunks i can't go somewhere that doesn't exist... you sure do a good job of letting people know what you think is right in a not-so-nice way... i don't spend my time listening to ignorant people who can barely manage english. if you respect my opinion then you wouldn't be attacking it so violently. there are obviously things that are in the book that don't jive with today mostly because it's fucking old. you should accept it because even harry potter is going to look stupid in 300 years

[Jose94000]

Good work schotzbhoy! This brings to mind Romans 1: 18-23. Can't fit the whole thing on here so I would suggest you read it because my paraphrase is going to be stupid compared to the actual words! Ha ha. Here's my stupid paraphrase, "God made himself obvious to everyone. Yet some will not worship him despite the fact that he made himself obvious." Man my words are dumb compared to the bible's. Ha ha. Anyways.

God bless you scotzbhoy and everyone else. :)

Good day.

[dehountinge]

yes its obvious, therefore stupid that people have to read a book and believe whatever it says.

[grafight]

Good point

Also a prairie dog is not a dog

and a sea lion is not a lion

and a dragonfly is not...

well, you get the idea, its just

quirks of the language.

[frank3976]

I blame his parents! Poor fucker never had a choice. Let alone free will!

[777ForeverChristian]

I see Atheists parents destroying their kids free will way more than Christian!

[VeggieTrunks]

I have to agree. Atheists would be no more accepting of their child being part of a religion than a religious family having an atheist child. Anyone who tells you that is false is lying to themselves or you.

[DieHardXG2]

That omniscient being you speak of would have been quite readily able to explain to the people why the bat was not a bird.

[DieHardXG2]

Your sky-buddy would have planned for the future if he knew everything... Oh, and existed.

[DieHardXG2]

Still, if it was the infallible word of your imaginary friend, he would tell them it was not a bird.

[T0mNZ]

He said people that wrote the bible, then the word of god, make up your mind.

[cheezit1314]

Stone tool evidence from the Yunchanyan site in Hunan province suggests the possibility that Early Neolithic groups cultivated rice as early as circa 9000 BC.[27]

wikipedia

[howdoiusername]

The fact that they didn't have today's classification scheme is the point. An omniscient being would know better than to lump bats in the same category as birds.

[scotzbhoy]

If the Bible is supposed to be prepared for our every change in natural understanding of unalterable data -- then all we'd have to do to make the Bible "wrong" is change our terminology on things. If the Bible says, "the sky is blue," we can change our definition of what is "blue" and then say that the Bible is wrong.

[410xx410]

well said!!!!

[DieHardXG2]

Still, an omniscient being would have some way to plan for this. I mean, come on, he's supposed to be all-knowing, right? Scientists aren't out to refute an old collection of fairy tales; they are out to pursue knowledge. Your pretend god would have found a way to plan for the change in the bat's classification.

[VeggieTrunks]

@scotzbhoy

Exactly what I was trying to explain to blackblood -.- All of this is just human classifications of animals, it's not written in stone somewhere. Pluto was a planet, now it isn't. If China decides Bats ARE Birds, who's right; us or them? It's such a non-issue, it's insane.

[randomwindowsstuffz]

@VeggieTrunks Who knows, because it's the genetics and the DNA studying that decides that. And that's kinda writen in stone. (LOL). It could change easily though since the term "birds" is a class when the term "bats" is an order. By the way, Pluto was never a planet, we were just fixing a mistake. And I don't see any problem with that. So if China decides Bats ARE Birds, (You're not supposed to capatilize them, but who cares, you did!)then that might change the world... It's called PROGRESS.

[randomwindowsstuffz]

@scotzbhoy Not neccesarily, because no one would actually "change" a definition of something unless it has a flaw or a "curable paradox" or anything like that. And even if we did, the BIble would still be correct because that was what they recognized at that time, so further copies of the Bible would probably change slightly as well. (Not to say i believe in God or anything, I'm neutral.)

[ukchristian28]

That is a wonderful English accent. Almost as good as mine:) lol!

Deprived Ape. The Hebrew word owph translated "bird" refered to a number of animals that owned a wing, rather than creatures that could fly. You will note that the ostrich is also in the list.

[jesuslives57]

Is an Ostrich a 'kind'?

[DerivedApe]

I have been thinking about this and I think you are correct. However one thing still buggers me.

Is the word "bird" in leviticus meant to be understood as bird or flying creature?

How do we know which the original author meant and how do we know by choosing one over another were not making horrible tranlation error?

[AmI2Hvy4ya]

Wonderfully put.

[lilshnappinturtle]

Hail! Hail! scotzbhoy.

Echolocation is a very complex system of navigation, so how is it were Bats able to develope  this seemingly impossible 'mutation' overnight ?

God Bless and Keep up the good work.

[lilshnappinturtle]

Sorry typo.....

It should have read "Bats were..."

:D

[DerivedApe]

oh I'm such absent-minded bugger.

The most primitive bat was described earlier this year under name onychonycteris. and it lacks structures related to specialized echolocation. As such, powerflight developed prior to echolocation.

[lilshnappinturtle]

"and it lacks structures related to specialized echolocation. As such, powerflight developed prior to echolocation."

Possibly, but the 52millionyr old fossil is inconclusive, they may or may not have had different shaped ears.

52 million years.........no chance!

:D

[DerivedApe]

eh? what?

How is it inconclusive? elaborate please.

Larger pinnae are not the only characteristic related to echolocation. besides theres similiar aged bat fossils known from messel oilshales that infact show soft tissue structures including pinnae.

[DerivedApe]

I guess not huh?

[lilshnappinturtle]

I think you're too quick to interpret the evidence, for a start there's no way the fossil is 52million yrs old, not a chance!

As for it having "soft tissue structures including pinnae." is mere speculation..... a combination of the imagination running wild,

and then quickly jumping to the conclusion you want to hear.

:D

Peace!

[DerivedApe]

"I think you're too quick to interpret the evidence, for a start there's no way the fossil is 52million yrs old, not a chance!"

I think thats argument from personal incrudelity.

52 million years is where evidence point.

"As for it having "soft tissue structures including pinnae." is mere speculation"

I think I have photo of the specimen somewhere in my archive. You think I'm hasty to jump conclusions? Where is this based on?

[lilshnappinturtle]

"Where is this based on?"

I've researched the fossil.

Peace!

[DerivedApe]

you have researched a fossil and thats why you come to conclusion that I'm jumping to conclusions?

[DerivedApe]

How much have you researched exactly?

How many technical papers have you read?

[DerivedApe]

Specimen of Paleochiropteryx from eocene messel shales showing pinnae:

senckenberg(Dot)de/messelaust/­12_141_2005/l0_a_1Bc_F1286ko3(­Dot)htm

And thats not the only specimen to show pinnae.

[DerivedApe]

Who says they developed it overnight?

Some shrews and tenrecs use echolocation while searching food. It's more than likely that echolocation evolved prior to the powered flight capability.

[JohnHasSeriousQ]

As militant atheist I feel this video is very well thought out for your age. I accept your argument that ancient people had a different way of classifying animals than modern people.

However, it is a bit naïve to assume that you could refute ALL contradictions in the Bible. I don't want to provide a contradiction for you to refute, I only want to point out that thinking is good.

Keep thinking!

4 Stars

[ShellySummers]

I just thought i would drop you a line real quick. Great video well thought out. When you get older your faith with be brought into question and certain portions of the bible will be disproved to your satisfation. Remember on that cold day. That man wrote the bible and god wrote the heavens and earth. That man deals with the mind and god the heart and keep jesus close to your heart no matter if even the church tells you that your wrong that god will move your heart :)

Stay safe stay frosty

SHell

[coonkiller92]

Great job dude. trust me they will send you more