I think some of this depends on the degree to which one takes every word of Scripture as absolutely literally true. Yet some scholars have opined that maybe some of the works are written more like an allegory or a parable (or a "fable") to illustrate how folks should strive to live.
For example, take the book of Jonah. Some pretty heavy-hitting scholars think this may not have been an actual historical event, but rather an instructive tale about obeying God. (For those who aren't familiar with the story, Jonah doesn't obey God's command, God puts wrath on Jonah which includes winding up in the belly of a big fish, and then God's grace allows the fish to expel Jonah and give Jonah a second chance to comply after seeing what God could do.) In reality, the message is more important than the specifics.
The story of Noah and the flood, also some believe, a parable about God's wrath on wickedness. (But why did Noah have to take mosquitoes?)
And then there are the absolute literalists who think the world is 6,000 years old. Is it really clear in Genesis 1 that the reference to a "day" really means the current equivalent of 24 Earth hours? Are we to believe that God had no "poetic license" in providing the inspiration for the scribes to write these accounts? If so, science renders that absurd unless you believe God set up science to contradict Scripture as a test of belief (personally I don't believe that). And starting with "let there be light" (the Big Bang?), the general evolution (yes, I intentionally chose that word) and sequence of developments in subsequent "days" -- cooling of the earth, development of plants and then animals and then humanity -- is fairly similar to what we've discovered about the earth's first few billion years. That was pretty impressive for a people some 3,000 years ago who recorded this stuff before science really had any of those answers. These aren't problematic contradictions unless -- again -- you take every single word of text literally and assume no errors in translation along the way from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.
I don't intend to persuade anyone here (or recruit or whatever), but in reality I think belief in the Bible only breaks down into a series of serious, intractable contradictions with science if you think every single literary reference is intended to read as historical fact. Just as Shakespeare wrote tragedies and comedies as well as histories, who's to say that every book in the Bible (or every chapter of a book) is history? There are other ways to get the Word of God out than simply citing historical events.
Some literalists and fundamentalists would have me stoned as a heretic, but that's how I see it. Maybe it's an excuse, but it's much easier to reconcile science and religion by allowing that possibility -- that some of the divinely inspired works were intended to send a story with a message rather than simply record history.
(Anyway, I have to be off to prepare for tonight's Lenten services, especially since we have choir practice in less than an hour.
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