sun and earth

[excubitor]

I’m glad you’re able to respond to my sillyness with sillyness of your own. I didn’t read in my bible anywhere that the flood burst from below, but that the flood fell from the sky in the form of rain.

You were the one who quoted it so you should know where it says that the flood burst from below
Gn 8:2 -NIV - Now the** springs of the deep **and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.

Also Gen 7:11 “states the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up”

It seems quite laughable to try to fit such a bizzare notion into the idea of science.

How is it a bizarre notion. It makes perfect sense to me. Sorry but if one scientist proposes a theory that supports the scripture then I will believe him whereas if another scientist proposes a theory which deliberately rejects the entire account of Gen 7,8 then I will reject that scientist and his theory.

I’ve worked 30 years in hydraulics and hydrology (the science of water and stuff like that). I also am a doctor of philosopy… in math. It just reaches far beyond the reasonable.

Can you explain why? Or are you here to mock and then run.

But if you like that theory, I prefer the simpler one of a universe of fixed stars in a crystal sphere with water outside where the floodgates are opened when it rains.

I am happy to believe that also even though I know that you don’t and you are saying this in order to mock the biblical account.You mock and all the people mocked Noah also.

With God everything is possible. However I am also happy to believe that the fountains of the deep ejected plumes of water into the upper atmosphere which fell from the heavens as rain. What I find an intolerable teaching is the notion that nonoe of it happened at all.

As, perhaps, the people believed at the time the oral tradition that led to the first 11 chapters of Genesis was developed. There was no church, medieval, modern or ancient. So maybe they believed in a flat earth. After all, you can still prove the earth is flat if you carefully define flat (like a table top extended without limit) And a table top is flat if a marble, at rest, will not roll.

You have no evidence to support your notion that the people of the oral tradition believed that rain was caused by God opening a window in heaven and causing the rain and then closing the windows to stop it raining, nor have you provided any support to claim that anyone in the Judaeo-Christian tradition believed that the earth was flat. These are just baseless mocking jabs. Even if the first chapters of Gen were an oral tradition it does not alter the fact that Moses wrote them down under the inspiration of God and therefore they are divine truth. Not only that Jesus Christ himself confirmed the story of the flood of Noah in this passage here
Matt 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Also Peter the Rock of the Church confirmed the story received by special revelation.
2 Peter 2:5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

So we have three of the most important figures in Christian and Jewish history. Moses, Jesus and Peter all confirming together the account of the global flood. They certainly never mocked it as you have chosen to do here.

O now we are getting into geodesics. An Einstein’s theory references positions remaining on a geodesic. We, on the surface of the earth, are not on a geodesic. For that we need to be falling freely. I don’t know who was bringing up relativity, but it’s nice to verify the hypothesis are true before one begins to quote conclusions.

It’s comforting to know, whatever we say, none will be convinced and none of us are ‘right’ and none of it matters.

This is like saying that there is no absolute truth. This is a lie of the modern world. The scriptures are absolutely true and the church is absolutely true when it rules upon the correct interpretation of the scriptures. And it does matter that truth is understood and believed otherwise the church would not have so vigorously opposed heliocentrism.

 

[excubitor]

Just clarifying a paragraph from the previous post

But if you like that theory, I prefer the simpler one of a universe of fixed stars in a crystal sphere with water outside where the floodgates are opened when it rains.

I am happy to believe that also if necessary as a special event which occurred during the flood but I don’t believe that this is describing a normal rain of which we would be familiar today. The scripture also talks about fire and brimstone falling from heaven to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. God can do whatever he likes and does not have to use natural processes of the physical world to do it. However I detect that you don’t believe the scriptures about water from the heavens and you are saying this in order to mock the biblical account.You mock and all the people mocked Noah also.

 

[Poco]

Geocentric teaching is that the earth is stationary, the sun orbits the earth annually (emphasis mine) and that the universe rotates around the earth once per day.

Ummm… Maybe I missed something. If it takes a year for the sun to orbit the earth, why does it get dark out every night? Well, maybe just a typo!

 

[excubitor]

Ummm… Maybe I missed something. If it takes a year for the sun to orbit the earth, why does it get dark out every night? Well, maybe just a typo!

Sigh.
Clearly you have not read any of my posts or tried to work through my examples which explain how it all works. I knew when I took all the time to write it that nobody would read it and that I was wasting my time, but it is still disappointing to have it made so painfully obvious.

 

[Evan]

This is like saying that there is no absolute truth. This is a lie of the modern world. The scriptures are absolutely true and the church is absolutely true when it rules upon the correct interpretation of the scriptures. And it does matter that truth is understood and believed otherwise the church would not have so vigorously opposed heliocentrism.

It is not at all like saying there is no absolute truth. It said It’s comforting to know, whatever we say, none will be convinced and none of us are ‘right’ and none of it matters.

But I can see how you got that and I apologize for phrasing my response poorly. One or more of us may be right. We will never know. There is no way to test the hypothosis that the world was created and formed as in the pre-Abrahamic tradition of Genisis or the scientific evidentiary method of today or the physlosophical wanderings of those who hypothosize a multi-verse to avoid the mathematical problem of the creation of the universe and of life.

The earth could have been created in the 1980’s and I have false memories planted in my brain from that time, it could have been created last Tuesday. Or, if I reject false memories, anytime before my birth in the 50’s. It could have been created 4004 BC, but that supports the hypothesis that God is a deceiver. So, for my own comfort, I will accept God is the Truth. Therefore, the evidence He provided for our scientific exploration is accurate and related to the origin of the universe.

The bible, is not a scientific, historic, or phylosophical text book, but a collections of Books to aid us in knowing God. If there is some science, it is secondary to the message. Much of the science in the books are accurate for the knowledge at the time of their writing.

He made us in His own image, rational beings. So, using that capacity to learn, we can discover Truth. We have developed a scientific society based on the idea the the universe is rational. The only society that ever developed along those lines and it required a belief in a rational God who created a rational universe.

I’ll be back next week, but by that time, this discussion will have wondered far from this topic. All my best.

In Christ, with Love, Dr Evan

 

[excubitor]

It is not at all like saying there is no absolute truth. It said It’s comforting to know, whatever we say, none will be convinced and none of us are ‘right’ and none of it matters.

But I can see how you got that and I apologize for phrasing my response poorly. One or more of us may be right. We will never know. There is no way to test the hypothosis that the world was created and formed as in the pre-Abrahamic tradition of Genisis or the scientific evidentiary method of today or the physlosophical wanderings of those who hypothosize a multi-verse to avoid the mathematical problem of the creation of the universe and of life.

The earth could have been created in the 1980’s and I have false memories planted in my brain from that time, it could have been created last Tuesday. Or, if I reject false memories, anytime before my birth in the 50’s. It could have been created 4004 BC, but that supports the hypothesis that God is a deceiver. So, for my own comfort, I will accept God is the Truth. Therefore, the evidence He provided for our scientific exploration is accurate and related to the origin of the universe.

The evidence that he provided is faith. Faith in the scriptures. Faith in the teachings of the eartly church. Faith in the decrees of the Popes. Hebrews 11 makes this clear.

1:1 Now faith is the substance [1] of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good report. 3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

If you want to get a good report card from God then you better base your beliefs on faith, not on scientific evidence. Having said all that, I absolutely deny that science offers better evidence for heliocentrism or acentrism that it does for geocentrism. In my opinion the scientific establishment have grossly distorted the evidence in order to perpetuate the lie of a helio/acentric universe.

And there is plenty of stuff they don’t tell you because it does not suit their argument. For example. Examine these pictures. They say a picture paints a thousand words (Mainly because people are too lazy to read a thousand words). Here is a picture of a geocentric map of the motions of the planets. The swirls map the motions of the planets around the earth http://www.realityreviewed.com/Flower Pattern World.gif
Notice how beautiful and symetrical it is. Every other planet makes a symetrical shape around the earth. By contrast the heliocentric system is certainly symetrical but it is also very boring.

Now here is a picture of a mars-centric system. Earth makes a beautiful symetrical shape around Mars but every other planet is a mess.
http://www.realityreviewed.com/Flower Pattern Mars.gif
This could ONLY be possible in a GEOCENTRIC system.

The bible, is not a scientific, historic, or phylosophical text book, but a collections of Books to aid us in knowing God. If there is some science, it is secondary to the message. Much of the science in the books are accurate for the knowledge at the time of their writing.

No. Wrong. The Bible is divine and inerrant. It is divinely inspired by the living God. It is perfect and true in every respect. It can talk about science, history, logic, philosophy, religion, prophecy, faith, morals and every single other field of which it desires to speak and be inerrant and entirely true in every single point.

Anyone who says any different is dangerously prone to depart the faith. As I have also stated numerous times, science is proposing theories which cannot possibly be proven and therefore they are not matters of science but are in fact matters of philosophy. The physical sciences are overstepping their proper bounds and domains and are dabbling in articles of religion where they do not belong.

 

[excubitor]

He made us in His own image, rational beings. So, using that capacity to learn, we can discover Truth. We have developed a scientific society based on the idea the the universe is rational. The only society that ever developed along those lines and it required a belief in a rational God who created a rational universe.

No. Again you are wrong. The helio/acentric model is not rational. It is absurd. The absurdities of this vain philosophy of the world are masked over by clever sounding “scientific” mumbo jumbo, that the average man cannot understand, certainly not enough to dprove it. But men are so gullible that they assume that because they don’t understand it therefore it must be true. This is kind of like the soothsayers of ancient pagan Rome. They had a highly sophisticated system of augery . They understood the flight of the birds and the entrails of a goose with intricate detail. It was a full blown “science”. The gullible masses thought “How could such wise and knowlegeable men possibly be wrong?” And the soothsayers when they got their predictions wrong loudly and boldly clamoured their successes and hammered their critics. And then when they got it wrong they were masters at spin-doctoring. There was always an excuse. Oh well the wind was blowing from the East and not to the West and this effected the outcome etc. Meanwhile they maintained their prestigious positions in the wealthy houses of nobles and emporers of Rome.

Its no different today. The scientists loudly and boldly bang on about Galileo and when they get it wrong they bring in a spin doctor (called a physicist or a cosmologist) to come up with a convincing theory to explain away their massive error. Oh it was a black hole there which explains why our sum does not work out. Oh there is not enough matter in the universe so we will invent dark matter. Oh the deep space objects are moving faster in life so space must be bending. As time goes on the theories become more and more absurd to the point of utter foolishness. And yet the gullible people are so hooked on their bogus theories that they part with their common sense that they lap it up. People will believe ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING. No matter how outlandish. All I have to do is put on a white lab coat, have some crazy hair and a few letters after my name and then I can say anything I like no matter how fanciful and people will believe me. (provided of course I support their preconceived bogus theories)

We are no different to the dupes who handed over gold and chickens to the soothsayers in payment for reassurance that the sky will not fall on their heads. But in our age we hand over our gold and taxes in payment for reassurance that we do not have to believe the God of the Bible or the Decrees of the Holy Church.

I’ll be back next week, but by that time, this discussion will have wondered far from this topic. All my best.

In Christ, with Love, Dr Evan

Have a good week. Cheers.

 

[excubitor]

Here is an online orrery which can be adjusted to show the orbit of the planets and sun around the earth.
cuug.ab.ca/kmcclary/ORRERY/fastsolar.html

1. Destroy Nemesis and the outer planets.
2. Centre to Earth.
3. You might need to scale the planets by clicking and dragging. (experiment a bit to get this right)
4. Press Play.

Watch closely Mars the red planet and you will see the retrograde motion that confounded the early geocentrists but which is perfectly explained under Tycho Brahes model which this online orrery set up in this way effectively represents. The sun orbitting the earth and the planets orbiting the sun.

 

[Luke_K]

No. Wrong. The Bible is divine and inerrant. It is divinely inspired by the living God. It is perfect and true in every respect. It can talk about science, history, logic, philosophy, religion, prophecy, faith, morals and every single other field of which it desires to speak and be inerrant and entirely true in every single point.

Do you believe that you can make a circle 10 units in diameter and 30 in circumference? (1 Kings 7:23)

 

[excubitor]

Do you believe that you can make a circle 10 units in diameter and 30 in circumference? (1 Kings 7:23)

It’s quite sad that you cannot conduct the debate on its merits but must resort to changing the subject and poking disdain upon the scriptures. Do you really think that the artisans that made Solomons temple could not even understand the geometry of a circle. Or that even the writer of the book of Kings, inspired by the Holy Spirit could not fathom the circumference of the circle. You make out that these people were fools and that you are yourself greatly superior than them.

It makes me very sad to see how quickly Christians accept the accusations of error in our Bible. The Bible is inerrant.1 King 7:23 And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. 24 And under the brim of it round about there were knops compassing it, ten in a cubit, compassing the sea round about: the knops were cast in two rows, when it was cast. 25 It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set above upon them, and all their hinder parts were inward. 26 And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths.

The problem here is that there are two things being measured here.

1. The brim is being measured.
2. The bowl is being measured.

The brim is a handwidth thick which is about 11cm and 10 cubits in diameter which is about 457 centimetres.
A cubit is about 45.7 centimetres.
The bowl is 30 cubits in circumference which is 30 * 45.7 / 3.141 = 436 cms diameter.
So if we subtract the diameter of the brims 11 cms on each side from the diameter of the brim we get the following calculation
457 - 11 - 11 = 435 cms

Close enough considering we are not exactly sure what a handwidth is or a cubit is.

Here is a picture to help understand the brim in relation to the bowl.
biblepicturegallery.com/Pictures/JewishT/The%20molten%20sea%20of%20the%20Temple%20on%20the%20twelve%20oxen%20la.htm

The only potential fault I find with this logic is the thickness of the brass. In verse 26 is it saying that the bowl is 11 cms thick of solid brass; or is it saying that the brim is 11 cms thick? Even if the brass of the bowl is 11 cms thick (which seems likely to strengthen the bowl adequately to contain 18000 gallons of water) does not preclude the possibility of the brim extending by 11 cms from the outer circumference of the bowl.

It is erroneus to insist that the molten sea had to be a perfect cylinder without any lip in the brim. I feel disappointed that Christians would prefer to say that the Bible is in error or that the artisans who built the temple could not measure correctly or they were sloppily rounding off; rather than conceding that they themselves do not absolutely understand what is being described.

 

[Luke_K]

It’s quite sad that you cannot conduct the debate on its merits but must resort to changing the subject and poking disdain upon the scriptures. Do you really think that the artisans that made Solomons temple could not even understand the geometry of a circle. Or that even the writer of the book of Kings, inspired by the Holy Spirit could not fathom the circumference of the circle. You make out that these people were fools and that you are yourself greatly superior than them.

It makes me very sad to see how quickly Christians accept the accusations of error in our Bible. The Bible is inerrant.

It is erroneus to insist that the molten sea had to be a perfect cylinder without any lip in the brim. I feel disappointed that Christians would prefer to say that the Bible is in error or that the artisans who built the temple could not measure correctly or they were sloppily rounding off; rather than conceding that they themselves do not absolutely understand what is being described.

I was just wondering how exact and at-face-value you interpret the Bible’s statements on math and science. I didn’t intend to mock Scripture.

 

[excubitor]

I was just wondering how exact and at-face-value you interpret the Bible’s statements on math and science. I didn’t intend to mock Scripture.

Good question. This is a fairly involved subject. The problem is that the biblical fundamentalists push a strict literal interpretation of scripture. They make it such an overwhelming issue that it becomes the driving force of the religion. Catholics who see this conclude that they don’t want to be Biblical fundamentalists so we have to go to the other extreme and be biblical allegorists. However I strongly recommend against such an approach. Forget about the Biblical fundamentalists and their hysterical treatment of this issue. Just concentrate on the Councils of the church and be guided by their directives and don’t even think about the fundamentalists.

I think the Catechism has a pretty balanced approach
107 The inspired books teach the truth. "Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and **without error **teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures."72

113 2. Read the Scripture within “the living Tradition of the whole Church”. According to a saying of the Fathers, Sacred Scripture is written principally in the Church’s heart rather than in documents and records, for the Church carries in her Tradition the living memorial of God’s Word, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives her the spiritual interpretation of the Scripture (". . . according to the spiritual meaning which the Spirit grants to the Church"81).

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: "All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal."83

If we follow these precepts we will avoid this kind of heartless static intepretation of the scriptures which Biblical Fundamentalists exhibit. This approach described in the catechism brings the scriptures to life. The tradition of the church brings to fullness the correct interpretation of the scripture which is based upon its literal accuracy. The magisterium applies these principles as the Word of God and teaches us how to apply the Word of God to our changing societies and cultures.

Therefore I cannot call a helio/acentrist a heretic. I have made a point of never saying so to any of my opponents, for the specific reason that the church of this time has not burdened upon her people a mandate to believe geocentrism or young earth creationism.
Some people get so worked up about their pet belief that when the church does not seem to support them they rebel and accuse them of apostasy.

However Cardinal Newman made some interesting observations about the Arian Heresy. He showed that the great majority of the clergy had been taken over by the Arian heresy and that it was mainly the laity who stood up and would not forsake the true Catholic teaching. This shows that each of us have a responsibility to stand up for the traditional Christian teachings as we understand them, but to do so within the constraints of obedience that the church allows us. It is not permissable to form a schism no matter how bad a heresy within the church might be.

So my approach is to believe the literal interpretation of the scripture wherever possible and certainly when sacred tradition demands it, and will not apply an allegorical sense unless it is completely apparent from the context that it is allegory and especially if the sacred tradition of the church suggests an allegorical intepretation, and to always be guided by the decrees of the magisterium. I would never adopt an allegorical interpretation when the sacred tradition indicated a literal one and vice versal. Sometimes on rare ocassions you might find a decree or canon of a council, or a papal decree of the past contradicts a lesser letter by a modern Cardinal or Pope. In this case we may not prefer the modern teaching authority over the ancient or medieval one. Only when the modern church deliberately and most directly abrogates the former teaching of a previous teaching of the church may we prefer the modern teaching. In this way the sacred tradition of the church may be preserved in much the same way as it was preserved during the Arian crisis. In all of this scenario the oppositions of modern atheistic scientists, astronomers, cosmologists and historians has a weight of precisely zero when they come into contradiction with the enlighted teachings of the Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium of Holy Mother Church.

So you see my approach is quite different to the Biblical Fundamentalist. My approach entirely defers to the church and to the sacred tradition which enlivens the heart of Christ, the Sacred Scriptures.