6. Has the Bible been sufficiently mined for knowledge about science and evolution? Are there new discoveries in it about science?
Scientific discovery is a process of collecting data, analyzing data, looking for a pattern behind the data, making a hypothesis and testing the hypothesis and using the hypothesis. Scientists might teach by writing books and learn by reading them, but they don’t “discover” by reading them. We might look at the Bible in the light of science and history. We might be delighted to find confirmation that it records historical events occurring in a scientifically conceivable manner—that it doesn’t appear to be myth or fictional fabrication, and that it includes details not known to be scientifically significant to people at the time it was written. That might convince us that the author knew what He was writing about, and even that the author is God. But I don’t think God wrote the Bible to teach us science any more than I think He wrote it to teach us ancient Hebrew. I think He had much more important things on His mind, and I think we should too when we study His word.
Of course, linguists who are experts in ancient Hebrew can teach us a lot about how to reach and understand the early books of the Bible. And the Bible's revelation of a God who is the same yesterday, today and forever formed one of the bases of Western science, making the experimental method worthwhile. But neither of these issues constitutes "mining" the Bible for information, and I would hate to think of Christians arguing that the Bible should be treated as just another text book.
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