What Christian beliefs have been proven false by science...?

Question

... but have not been abandoned by any Christian community?

Please cite a source demonstrating that the belief was Christian in origin and not based on observations of the natural world that were attached to Christianity (like a geocentric universe), and please cite the source demonstrating that the belief has been proven false.

Answer 1

Uh, let's see... none.

Answer 2

Evolution only shows that small biological changes can occur over time. This isn't contrary to Christian belief. Stating that a monkey became man, is on a completely different level. All science is doing is discovering God's creations. Or think of it as a play, God has created the set (solar system/galaxy/etc), and science just discovered something in this set (evolutionary change). This does absolutely nothing to discredit religion...

Answer 3

Well, you're talking about a religion of 2 billion people divided into some 35,000 denominations. There is no such thing as a "Christian community," and there is no single doctrine that has ever been embraced by all Christian denominations. Honestly, you may need to refine this thing just a little.
Take, for example, the geocentric universe. What percentage of Christians, in your opinion, believed in a geocentric universe as a matter of religious dogma? Before Ghengis Kahn, there were more Christians east of Iraq than there were in all of Europe, Russia, the Middle East and North Africa combined.

Holy Crap - Look at what that cute little kiity cat has to say! The Church opposed Galileo for saying that the earth is round? Christians believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted? The Bible says that the earth is 2000 years old?

Answer 4

The problem here is defining "Christian beliefs"...
And what is "symbolic" and what is "literal"...
No scientist will ever prove that God does not exist, or that He did not create the universe, or that He did not create life, in all its diversity...
No scientist will ever prove that Jesus is not God, that He did not die on the cross in order to free us from our death penalty, that He did not rise again from the dead and was seen of many...
No scientist will ever prove that Jesus did not do all of the miracles He is credited with, or that prayer does not do any good...

IF any branch of science has managed to turn ANY evidence at all of ANY of these things, it is archeology, and so far, archeologists have pretty much confirmed the history of the Bible.
Doesn't it follow that, if the history is provable, that the rest ought to at least be considered??

Answer 5

Let me just mention some of the things that the bible said were true thousands of years ago and that science has just discovered to be true in recent years. These facts were all stated in the bible anywhere's from 2,000-4,000 years ago depending on which book you find it in.

1)The earth floats free in space(Job 26:7)---Job was written 4000 years ago. No one knew this fact 4000 years ago.
2)Creation is made of particle, indiscernible to our eyes(atoms, molecules, electrons,.......)(Hebrews 11:3)--- Not until the 19th century was that known.
3)There are mountains on the bottom of the ocean(Jonah 2:5,6)---This was discovered in the last century.
4)Blood is the source of life and health(Leviticus 17:11,14)---Up until 120 years ago, sick people were "bled" and many died as a result(e.g. George Washington). Today we know that healthy blood is necessary to bring life giving nutrients to every cell in the body. God declared that "the life of the flesh is in the blood" long before science understood it's function.
5)Our bodies are made of the dust of the ground(Genesis 2:7;3:19)----Scientists have discovered that the human body is comprised of 28 trace elements, all of which are found in the earth.
6) The universe had a beginning(Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 1:10-12)---Starting with the studies of Albert Einstein in the early 1900's, science has confirmed the biblical view that the universe had a beginning. When the bible was written most people believed that the universe was eternal. Science has proven them wrong but the bible was correct.
7) The earth is a sphere(Isaiah 40:22)---At the time when many thought the earth was flat, the bible told us that the earth is spherical. Incidently, for those who call christians 'flat earthers', that verse is 2700 years
old.
8)Scripture assumes a revolving spherical earth(Luke 17:34-36)----Jesus said that at his return some would be asleep at night while others would be working at daytime activities in the field. This is a clear indication of a revolving earth with day and night occurring simultaneously.
9)Light can be divided(Job 38:24)---Sir Isaac Newton studied light and discovered that white light is made of 7 colors, which can be parted and then recombined. Science confirmed this 400 years ago, The Bible declared this 4000 years ago.
10)The continents were created as one large land mass(Genesis 1:9,10)---Many geologists agree that the earth was originally one super continent.
11)Hydrological cycle described(Job 36:27,28)---About4000 years ago the bible declared that God "draws up drops of water which distills as rain from the mist which the clouds drop down and pour abundantly on man". The ancients observed mighty rivers flowing into the ocean, but they could not conceive why the sea level never rose.. Though they observed rainfall they had only quaint theories as to it's origin. Meteorologists now understand that the hydrological cycle consists of evaporation, atmospheric transportation,distillation and precipitation.
12)Circumcision on the 8th day is ideal(Genesis 17:12)---Medical science has discovered that the blood clotting chemical Prothrombin peaks in a newborn on the 8th day. This is therefore, the safest day to circumcise a baby. If you do it before that he'll bleed to death. How did Moses know that?
13)The universe is expanding(Job9:8,Isaiah42:5,Je... 51:15,Zechariah12:1 and other verses)---Seventeen times in the Old Testament it says that "God is stretching the heavens". During the 20th century most scientists(including Einstein) believed the universe was static. Others believed it should have collapsed due to gravity. Then in 1929 astronomer Edwin Hubble showed distant galaxies were receding from the earth and the further away they were, the faster they were moving. This discovery revolutionized the field of astronomy. Einstein admitted his mistake and today most astronomers agree with what the creator told us thousands of years ago--the universe is expanding.
14)Light travels in a path(Job 38:19)--- Light is said to have a "way"{Hebrew:derek, literally a traveled path or road]. Until the 17th century it was believed that light was transmitted instantaneously. We now know that light is a form of energy that travel at 186,000 miles per second in a straight line. Indeed, there is a way of light.
15)Air has weight(Job 28:25)--- It was once thought that air was weightless. Yet 4000 years ago Job declared that God established "a weight for the wind".
16)Ocean currents anticipated(Psalms 8:8)----About 3000 years ago the bible describles the "paths of the sea". In the 19th century Mathew Maury...the father of oceanography, after reading Psalms chapter 8, researched and discovered ocean currents that follow specific paths through the seas.

Contrary to all the jibberish you hear in todays secular humanist public schools about how we used to believe a lot of myths in the bible and then science came along and proved the bible wrong.....on the contrary, the bible was way ahead of science. Even though the bible is not a scientific book, when it does speak on science it is accurate. To quote Robert Jastrow:
"This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth... [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

- Robert Jastrow
(God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)

PS---Robert Jastrow is not a christian.

Answer 6

The ones that talk about creation should look in the new testament Peter quotes Psalms 90:4, saying a thousand years are a single day to the Lord. This says that it is a representation of creation not literal.

Answer 7

I'd have to look it up, but there was/is a widespread belief that it did not rain before the great flood. (we have fossilised raindrops.) There is/was also a belief that Adam was created about four thousand years B.C. This may have been written then, but archeology proves Homo Sapiens have been around for at least forty-thousand years. (however, one tranlation of the word 'beginning' is 'dateless past', so there is plenty of room for speculation.)

Answer 8

I doubt it's so much "ha ha, look where the bible is wrong!" as it is "there's less proof the bible is right than that science is right".

take near death expirences, for example. it has been proven in several studies that they are purely biological and not really spiritual at all (besides that no one ver seems to have an NDE and go to Hell, do they?)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/11/wdeath11.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/11/ixworld.html

it doesn't say "look, there's no heaven" but it does say "you haven't proven heaven exists". science is not about proving faiths wrong, it is about proving science right. there is a big difference between the two.

Answer 9

Noah's Ark

If it had happened there would be a world wide uniform signature in the geology that my cat could read. It ain't there. Not to mention the fact that the USS Enterprise couldn't carry 2 of every animal with the food an water for a whole year, let alone a wooden ship.

Answer 10

to the people who say "creation vs evolution," isn't that kind of stupid to say? evolution has to come from something already existing...so where did the very first organsism come from? isn't creation a better reasoning of existnece?

and to answer your question, none. most people who don't believe state teh bible's meanings to bluntly, and don't bother to think of other meanings. one atheist told me that he has evidence the bible is wrong because it says God rested on teh 7th day, but the bible also says that god needs no rest. I mean, GOsh. there's so many other reasons for the word "rest"

and in response to buthisattva, how the heck would scientists tell which set of bones (his body would've decayed by now) are jesus's? the people who buried jesus in the cave or whatever probably put other people there too.

Answer 11

Hard to say, because no two Christians have exactly the same set of beliefs. We know for sure that many of the Genesis tales are fiction, but for many Christians, these are only metaphors anyway and they simply don't care about them.