May 3
“And these you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten; they are detestable: the eagle, the bearded vulture, the black vulture, the kite, the falcon of any kind, every raven of any kind, the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, the hawk of any kind, the little owl, the cormorant, the short-eared owl, the barn owl, the tawny owl, the carrion vulture, the stork, the heron of any kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.
(Leviticus 11:13-19) ESV
People have found some ingenious reasons to reject the truth of the Bible. There are some others which aren’t ingenious, not by a long shot.
One of the most absurd is the notion that the Bible can’t be authoritative because it says that bats are birds. The basis for this claim is the passage above which is part of a list of dietary restrictions placed upon the Children of Israel.
We’ll show you how the bats are birds argument is fallacious, and we’ll also show you how bats and birds can both be fowls. The claim that the Bible says that bats are birds is based on two false assumptions: It requires using the words “bird” and “fowl” as synonyms, and the misapplication of phylogenetic systematics to a spherogenetic creation.
- Spherogenetic, not Phylogenetic
- Imposing phylogenetic classification on to a system which isn’t phylogenetic.
- Winged Fowl
- Equating the Biblical word fowls (everything that flies) with the taxonomic subclass Aves (birds)
For more discussion of these assumptions read the post on mattysparadigm.org.
The Naked Prophet 