Jimmy Akin, Catholic Answers Senior Apologist, tackles the claim that the Bible cannot be trusted because it has scientific inaccuracies, specifically the verses that mention the Sun orbiting the Earth.
This is an excerpt from our Catholic Answers School of Apologetics online course. Learn more below!
Master the art of defending your faith! Jimmy Akin teaches this course titled Bible Difficulties – Part 1. Watch lectures, read materials, and take quizzes at your own pace. Sign up now!
Transcript:
Some conflict difficulties deal with apparent contradictions between passages in Scripture and ideas proposed by science. The most famous of these deal with origins issues, like how old the universe is and whether God used evolution to produce the life forms we see today, including man.
Here, we’ll look at an example of what some have cited as a conflict between science and scripture. In Psalm 19, we read, “In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” This passage describes the sun as rising in the east and then moving across the sky to the place it sets in the west. However, you commonly hear it said that science has shown that it’s actually the earth that moves around the sun, not the other way around. So how can we resolve this difficulty? By looking both at science and the biblical text. First, we need to be clear about what science actually says, because it’s often popularly misreported. Science holds that there is no privileged frame of reference in the universe that would allow you to say definitively that any object is uniquely at rest and that other things are moving. What you have to do is pick your frame of reference, and that’s an arbitrary choice. If you pick our solar system as your frame of reference, then the motions of the objects in our solar system, including the sun and the earth, can be explained by the law of gravity, which was proposed by Sir Isaac Newton and later refined by Albert Einstein.
Based on the way gravity works, all of the objects in the solar system are in motion, including the sun. They all orbit a common point known as the barycenter, which is the center of mass in the solar system.
Because the sun is the most massive object, the barycenter is often within the sun, but often it’s not. The mass of the other objects in the solar system is strong enough that frequently the barycenter lies outside the sun. So science doesn’t actually say that the earth moves around the sun or vice versa. It says that within the solar system, all of the masses move around a common center of mass, which is near but not always inside the sun. Now what about the biblical text? The first thing to note is that this particular text is in the Psalms, and that means it’s a poetic text. You’ll notice how the sun is depicted as living in a tent and being like a bridegroom and an athlete running a race course. All of this poetic language should put us on our guard against trying to press the details of a passage like this. But there’s an even more fundamental question that we need to ask.
What’s the author’s intent in writing this passage? What’s he trying to do? Is he trying to give us a scientific, mechanical account of how the world works?
The answer is clearly no. This is a psalm, an ancient hymn praising God. What he’s trying to do is praise God by describing his amazement at the world God has made. That’s why he uses all the poetry about the sun being like a bridegroom and an athlete running a race. It’s the non-literal language of praise. So what’s the basis of his praise in this passage? It’s the psalmist’s own experience of the sun. I mean, just look at it, or rather don’t because if you do look at it, you’ll burn your eyes.
That’s how powerful the sun is. It’s this amazing, powerful thing. And we humans really need the sun. It gives light and heat to the whole earth.
And every day it goes from one end of the sky to the other. Wow, the sun is this – if the sun is that amazing, God must be even more amazing to have made it. And so the sun gives us cause to praise God for his amazing creation.
This is what the psalmist is trying to do. He’s not trying to give us a scientific or mechanical account of how the world works. He’s giving praise to God based on his experience. So now let us ask, is the psalmist accurately describing his experience regarding what the sun does in the sky?
Yes. From the perspective of a person standing on the surface of the earth, the sun does move from one end of the sky to the other every day. The psalmist is accurately describing what we all see.
Scholars have a name for this type of description. It’s called phenomenological language, or the language of appearances. And it’s a perfectly legitimate mode of language. We describe things based on what we see on how they appear to us all the time. Even today, when we have a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanics involved, we still say things like, “The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening,” or “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.” We still use the language of appearances in describing what the sun does from our earthbound perspective.
And if it’s legitimate for us to do so, it’s legitimate for the biblical author to do so as well. And so this scientific conflict is easily resolved. First, we noted that what science actually says is a bit different than what is often claimed. And more fundamentally, the biblical author isn’t trying to give us a scientific description of the world. What he’s trying to do is praise God. He’s using a perfectly legitimate way of describing his experience in the world to do that. In fact, he’s using a mode of language we still use today.
And this is normal. The biblical authors are interested in telling us about God and his interactions with his chosen people. They rarely, if ever, try to give a scientific account of the world. As Cardinal Caesar Baronius said back during the Galileo controversy, “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”
Principles to remember. When resolving conflicts of a scientific nature, it is important to determine accurately what modern scientific claims actually say.
It also is important to accurately determine what the biblical author is trying to say.
Biblical authors rarely, if ever, try to give a scientific account of the world.
If you enjoyed learning how to explain and defend our Catholic faith, make sure you check out the School of Apologetics. In our self-paced courses, Jimmy Akin teaches the fundamentals of apologetic dialogue. Trent Horn shows how to defend life beginning at conception. On top of that, other trusted experts give courses on church history, creation, purgatory, the saints, and more. Sign up today because a faith you can defend is a faith you can own and embrace. SchoolofApologetics.com.