What kind of source are you using to alledge that ants have no "chief, overseer, or ruler"?!! Obviously, the writer is attempting to contrast this remarkable trait with other creatures who fail this particular standard. However, to choose a species which has a SLAVE caste is perhaps less than am overwhelming recommendation of God's scientific knowledge when He wrote that!
The Old Testament is an account of God's age-long effort to establish, in a world of Idol-Worshiping nations, the IDEA that there is ONE GOD by Building a NATION around the IDEA.
Perhaps we just need to give Him a few more trials. Perhaps He ought to have considered building a WORLD around the IDEA. In case you've missed it: a lot of NATIONS have followed the same theme, only with a different group of faces set in the center of the damn idea. Myterious, eh?
infidels.org
"...In the same way, the Leviticus writer was wrong when he said that hares and coneys "chew the cud." That he intended this to mean true cud-chewing was indicated in his use of the camel (11:4) as another example of a cud-chewing animal. Camels are anatomically equipped with the same Ruminantia as cattle, goats, buffaloes, antelopes, giraffes, llamas, deer, and bison. Camels are true cud-chewers, and the Leviticus writer's grouping them with hares and coneys as examples of animals that "chew the cud" leaves little doubt about what he meant. Perhaps he did superficially look at hares and assume from appearance that they were cud-chewers, but that is hardly a satisfactory explanation of the problem. After all, inerrantists ask us to believe that time and time again God gave to his inspired writers amazing insights into complex scientific matters. He did all that but couldn't reveal to one of his writers a simple fact about cud-chewing? It's too incredible to believe.
Jackson's final act of desperation was a claim that Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia has "classified the hare as a ruminant" and "considers the hyrax (coney) as a ruminant." His reference (1975, pp. 421, 422) did not cite a volume number, but I read these page numbers, as well as the entire sections about rabbits, hares, and hyrexes, in volume 12 and found no attempt to classify either the hare or the hyrax as ruminants. If Mr. Jackson will send us a specific reference and the exact quotation that classifies hares and hyraxes as ruminants, we will publish it in a future issue. While he is at it, we would like for him to answer this question: Do hares chew the cud? They either do or they don't, so there is no reason why he can't give a yes or no answer to the question.
Some errors in Bible biology concerned behavioral misconceptions. Proverbs 6:7-8 described the ant as an industrious creature, "which having no chief, overseer, or ruler provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in harvest." No one disputes the ant's industry, but what is this about its "having no chief, overseer, or ruler"? Inerrantists seem to like Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, so I suggest that they read what it says about ants (Vol. 2, pp. 441-453). The various species of this insect are therein presented as members of highly structured social hierarchies having queens, workers, soldiers, and drones. Clearly, then, ants have overseers and rulers. If inerrantists wish to dispute this, they should consider slave ants, because some species of ants actually take captives in war and make them slaves. Surely, it would be proper to speak of slave ants as having overseers or rulers. The Bible says, however, that ants have no chiefs, overseers, or rulers. The Bible is wrong. Why didn't God instill in this inspired writer's mind an insight into the social structure of ant colonies? Perhaps he was too busy telling Job about the physics of sound transmission.
Even Yahweh himself was a little rusty in his understanding of animal behavior. In speaking to Job from the whirlwind, he said this of the ostrich:
The wings of the Ostrich wave proudly; but are they the pinions and plumage of love? For she leaves her eggs on the earth, and warms them in the dust, and forgets that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may trample them. She deals harshly with her young ones, as if they were not hers: Though her labor be in vain, she is without fear; because Eloah (God) has deprived her of wisdom, neither has he imparted to her understanding (39:13-17, Bethel Bible).
Reflected in this passage is a primitive, but incorrect, belief that the ostrich is a stupid bird that lays its eggs on the ground, leaves them to be hatched by the heat of the sand, and then treats her young harshly after they have hatched. The New American Bible affixes this frankly honest footnote to what Yahweh said of the Ostrich:
It was popularly believed that, because the ostrich laid her eggs on the sand, she was thereby cruelly abandoning them.
Modern biologists know better than what the "scientifically insightful" author of Job mistakenly thought about the ostrich. Both Encyclopedia Americana and Britannica, as well as Grzimek's (vol 7, pp. 91-95), describe ostriches as very caring parents. The female lays her eggs on the ground, but so do many other species of birds. The eggs are not abandoned to the heat of the sand, but in the female's absence, the male incubates the nest. When the young hatch, they are given watchful care by their mother. As a biological creature, the ostrich has survived for thousands of years, so obviously it is a successful procreator. Its labor is not in vain, as the passage above incorrectly declares. Yet Yahweh himself, who presumably created all living things, didn't know these behavioral facts about the ostrich. He "inspired" Jeremiah to perpetuate the primitive misconception of the ostrich's careless maternal instincts by having him write this about the women of Israel:
Even the jackals draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: The daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness. The tongue of the sucking child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst: The young children ask bread, and no man breaks it to them (Lam. 4:3-4, BB).
Amazing scientific foreknowledge in the Bible? Hardly! Bibliolaters should stop trying to find insightful statements about electronics, oceanography, meteorology, etc. in the Bible text and worry more about explaining why a divinely inspired, inerrant book has so many obvious scientificerrors in it. And if the Bible is riddled with scientific errors, they should wonder too about the truth of that often parroted claim that the Bible is inerrant in all details of history, geography, chronology, etc., as well as in matters of faith and practice. It just ain't so!" |
