Ryle on science and the Bible

'The Bible was not written to teach a system of geology, botany, or astronomy, or a history of birds, insects, and animals, and on matters touching these subjects it wisely uses popular language, such as common people can understand. No one thinks of saying that the Astronomer Royal contradicts science because he speaks of the sun's "rising and setting".' Ryle,JC, 1878, Old Paths, 2005 ed, Banner of Truth, p25

Ryle goes on to quote (p.26) from Whewell's Philosophy of Inductive Science, Vol.i, p.686:
'The language of Scripture is necessarily adapted to the common state of man's intellectual development, in which he is not supposed to be possessed of the sciences. Hence the phrases used by Scripture are precisely those which science soon teaches man to consider inaccurate. Yet they are not on that account the less fitted for their purpose, for if any terms had been used adapted to a more advanced state of knowledge, they must have been unintelligible to those to whom the Scripture was first addressed.'

This is very prescient given that Ryle was writing BEFORE the advent of either Quantum Mechanics or Relativity and we're still struggling with getting those 'right' - maybe String Theory, maybe MOND, ...? If God really wrote 'scientifically' about the creation or about miracles no one alive today would understand what He was saying to us.

As Cardinal Baronius (1598) said "The Bible was written to show us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."