Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Bible Proves Science

In Isaiah 40:22, it says, "It is He [God] who sits above the circle of the earth..." This shows that the Bible points to a circular, spherical earth. The word in Hebrew translated "circle" is "hug" which means circle or horizon, and since the Hebrews didn't have a word for sphere, they used that one. Now the word hug can mean to embrace, going around the person.
It was because Christopher Columbus was reading Isaiah 40 that he found that allusion that the eatth was round and he wanted to find out if it was right. Then, the world was living under the Ptolemy geocentric model under the name of science.

I think you are mistaken Tim.

Long before Christ or Columbus Earth people knew the Earth was a sphere.

http://www.gma.org/space1/nav_map.html

jjw

Tim,

I realize that all of people on this forum are a little rude to you. I hope you don't take this as an assault on your faith or belief in God. But the bible does not prove science, in fact it can't prove science. Science is not something that can be proven the same way that I cannot prove poetry. It just something that some people choose to do. It's no surprise the poetry found its way into the bible, and its no surprise that there may some kind of science in the bible. That doesn't mean that the bible is the source of all poetry or the source of all science

One can prove anything from the Bible if you want to; even that God is the same as Satan. It is NOT "THE WORD" of God. I am sure that God will have more sensible things to say in "His Word". It is mostly a narrative of how people have experienced what they have called "God". In addition, the historical context is questionable because it is not based on all the available information.

"Then, the world was living under the Ptolemy geocentric model under the name of science."

False. Eratosthenes knew the world was round and estimated its circumference. Most intellectuals of the period also knew the world was round.

OTOH, MANY religious people not trained in science believed the world was flat from having read another passage in the Wholly Babble. In fact, they were the ones who insisted on making maps represent a flat Earth among other things - look it up. Read a book called "The Discoverers," by Daniel Boorstin.

You don't have to make unsupported assertions. You can actualy do homework.

Wow, TFF:

"the Wholly Babble". May I quote that?
jjw

I didn't make it up and I only say it when I'm irritated, but knock yourself out. I actually have an immense respect for religion and for the Bible that isn't reflected in my posts here.

How can you respect something that is not true and has been the cause of countless human misery?

If put it into the same category as Communism and Fascism. Just another "ism" used to rally people to act in a manner that gives allegiance to those unworthy of being followed.

If there is an upside in teaching children to believe what isn't true I've yet to see it demonstrated.

I think that there are stupid or bad people who hold many different belief systems. Also, some systems are inherently flawed in that they actually promote - intentionally or not - abuses. Religion clearly has the capacity to promote evil action. But it hasn't been ALL bad. And in my view religion at its best is still useful, not just to its leaders, but to its average practictioners.

I think I recall your saying that you had children. Were any born in a hospital? You recall in the ward seeing these little babies all lined up with little sockies on their hands? The reason they have the sockies is because 1) their nails are a little sharp and 2) they have no control of their arms yet and continually stab themselves in the eyes. ("Ow! What the heck! Who's doing that? ow! cut it out, dammit!")

To me religion can be something like that sockie. I think there are people in this world who are born screwed or at least at some serious disadvantage - retarded, blind, deformed - but that most suffering in the west and probably a fair amount elsewhere is self-inflicted. There are people who are essentially like children, who don't understand how to control themselves or how to effect their environment in a way conducive to their own well-being. Religion, for these people, is very like the sockie. It's something that keeps them from harming themselves until they can figure things out.

There is another reason I have respect and even fondness for religion (at least the idea, if not always the practice) - the sense that it is part of our heritage, like it or not.

I think teachers often teach things pedagogically that aren't exactly true - to help acclimatize children so they will more easily grasp the full import of the ideas. An simple example is math teachers teaching about a universal set when it has been known for decades that there is no such thing as a universal set.

Well (its a streach but) children do need to learn things simply because they are told to do it when they are too young to understand the reason. Children are told not to play with matches "because I (usually mom) said so". for most of the last 2000 years, man has acted rather child like. So theorictically, having the bible around to tell people not to do things "because I (god) said so" was a good thing. Now man is more like older children and we are learning why "lighting matches in a forest (or house or other flameable place) is not a good thing". Perhaps in a few more thousand years well understand the laws of nature and thing better.

I respect your opinion on this IFF as it is obviously well thought out. My only disagreement is that I see the 'good' done by religion as being outweighed by the 'bad' and that often the charitable work it does is just undoing its own past wrongs.

If one took all the money used to run the Vatican, not to pick on the Roman Catholics alone, it would easily fund training programs capable of making very large number of people self-sufficient. And the damage they do by not endorsing birth control ... their charitable work doesn't even come close to alleviating the misery they cause.

dehammer wrote:
"So theorictically, having the bible around to tell people not to do things "because I (god) said so) was a good thing."

I would agree with you except that history says it just ain't so. Take for example a contemporary issue as it is rather poignant.

We have so-called pro-lifers running the US. People who openly advertise they believe in the sanctity of life due to biblical teachings. And yet these are the very same people that support the death penalty, support dropping cluster bombs on people, and stood in the way of ending a war just in the past few weeks? Do you see their religion as a break on anything they are doing? Even when I agree with them, which I do on some of these issues, it doesn't prevent me from seeing them as flaming hypocrites.

actually i was refering to most of the last 2000 years, not recent times. There comes a time in childrens life when they are suppose to start leaning to take responsiblity for their actions, which is (IMHO) the point where are race is now. Unfortuantely, not every child can learn to do so at the same time of their life. Many are still trying to do what daddy told them, even when its not exactly what daddy told them. Others are figuring out why daddy told them to do things and are basing their decisions on these. some of them are actually right.

then there are those of us who are listening to mommy ;-)

Why are you so opposed to Christianity? If it is false, then once you die, nothing will happen. You will be right although since you're nothing, you won't be able to even know you're right. But if Christianity is true, then 1) you're a sinner that needs the grace of God 2) you're going to go to hell and 3) The only way to go into heaven is to follow Christ. It seems to me that either way Christianity wins.

actually, i believe that i will know, even though i dont go to the christians heaven. you see, thats the problem. i and many others dont believe that we should have to accept someone elses view of heaven. To be quite honest, the christian view of heaven, mainly that people stand around for eternaty praising god and nothing else, is to me a form of hell. God supposedly is about free will. where is the free will in doing nothing but praising god.

personally, i believe that i will be in a form of heaven, a place of rest, and then will return to earth in another life. The time spent there would be spent in learning what i had done wrong in this life and planning on what to do in the next life to learn what i have yet to learn. then i would have a lot more time to enjoy heaven.

Pascal's wager is based on faulty logic. If christianity is wrong, then god might punish you for believing in it. I hold open the notion that some sort of god may exist. I doubt there is a god - it seems silly to me. But some sort may exist, I suppose.

However, I can no sooner believe that christianity is correct than I can believe that unicorns prance on the moon.

I too am willing to accept some form of god. Just not one that is sentient, and ill-mannered, and full of blood lust and vengence.

I believe the lord and lady are both sentient but no where near ill-mannered like the Christian god is. nor are they full of blood lust and vengence. Instead i believe they teach forgiveness and acceptance.

The biggest logical problem the Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept of god has when confronting reality is that an entity that is omniscient (all knowing) is logically incapable of changing its mind.

Changing ones mind is for those of us that are capable of learning new information ... things we didn't already know.

Read Judaic, Christian, or Islamic texts and you will find that god, as they define the term, is hopelessly incapable of knowing what will happen even a microsecond into the future.

Simple example ... god punishing Adam and Eve for that little thing with the apple. If you knew what they were going to do before they did it then the entire situation was a set-up. If you didn't know than you are not, by definition, omniscient.

And please don't throw back the tired nonsense about free-will. We may have free will meaning we don't know what is going to happen in the future. But to claim that OUR free will blinds god to the future is to paint god into the corner as close to powerless.

Tim, re your original contention:
You recite:
"In Isaiah 40:22, it says, "It is He [God] who sits above the circle of the earth..." This shows that the Bible points to a circular, spherical earth."

Your interpretation is unfounded. The Earth could be completely flat and still be a circle. A circle is not a sphere either by discription, lack of having volumn or not providing a curved surface. Consider that you may be re-writing the Bible to your own specifications, inproperly.
jjw

We can not rely on the Bible to support an all knowing God, or super superior being.
An example:
After the Lord God puts Adam and Eve in the garden of eden they eat the forbidden fruit and god returns to the garden not knowing this fact.

Genesis 3:9
and the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, where art thou?

Not even the bible consistently supports the concept of an all knowing entity. Their god did not know of their eating the fruit nor for that matter where Adam was hiding. More like a space visitor.
jjw

I agree. In fact they are examples I have used myself.

So now we have clearly established a god who not only doesn't know the future but in fact doesn't even know where Adam is in the garden.

So how do we rectify it when considering this:
"For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things." I John 3:20

Apparently that is not a true statement. Or consider this.

Does god know the future? If not the story of Armageddon is a cruel fairytale: Nothing more.

I have in times past tried to interpret the biblical use of the language as interpreted by the St. James Bible. We find, the Lord, God and the Lord God used at different times to denote the superior entity.

DA, note your quote above it refers to "God" as greater specifically. My working conclusion is that only the singular "God" was intended to denote the potential creator. All other references are to lesser living creatures. No way right now to prove it and not the right place for me try.
jjw

this is something i have never gotten an explination of from the bible thumbers. best answer i ever got was being told that the bible had many parables.

Hi dehammer:

Do you suggest it is not logical to tell people not to do something even though you know that they might or that they will do it? it was the "Lord God" that did not know the facts. For you to conclude anything you should get the parties identified, Do not confuse the entities that are involved. "God' is not really "Lord God" is it? If you want to lump it all- then OK.
jjw

sorry this did not make sense. i have not refered to "lord god" at any point. The closest i got was in quoting da, about the chritian god not knowing that eve was going to eat the apple. Or knowing and setting her up to eat it. Da brought up that point and i mention that i have never gotten a good answer from any bible thumper.

jjw wrote:
"All other references are to lesser living creatures."

Well that's a kick in the old monotheism but it is logically consistent with belief in the devil and Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology, and best of all doesn't conflict with the biggest indicator of all that there are multiple gods: Commandment 2.

God is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. God knows the beginning from the end. There are many astounding Bible prophecies. For example, in Daniel 9, Daniel has the most remarkable of all prophecies. Daniel lived in the Bablyon Captivity. He prophesied that "from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there will be [480 years]." We know that the decree to rebuild the temple came in the month Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes from Nehemiah 2:1. From archaeology, we know that Artaxerxes reigned form 465-425 to 424 B.C., so twenty years into his reign would be the year 445 B.C. The first Hebrew and Babylonian month is translated in English as Nissan. It is equivalent to the Julian calendar month of March-April. Since it doesn?t tell the date of the month that Nehemiah met with Artaxerxes, we can assume that it was the first of the month because it would mean the first of that year. The first of the Nissan month happened to fall on what we would know as March 14 on the Julian calendar. So that would mean that the decree to rebuild Jerusalem would have fallen on what we would know as the date March 14, 445 B.C.

As we have established earlier, one day is equivalent to one literal year. In Daniel 9:25 it says that ?from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.? The Hebrew calendar contains 360 days. If there are 69 weeks before the Messiah comes, then there are 483 days, but as we discussed earlier a day is equal to a year. So 483 years multiplied by 360 days is equal to 173,800 days. Archeological evidence along with Church history shows that Jesus entered Jerusalem on April 6, 32 A.D. Passover is celebrated during the time that Jesus was in Jerusalem (the last supper was Passover night), proving that he must have been at Jerusalem during the time recorded. So now we check if 173,880 days brings us from March 14, 445 B.C. to April 6, A.D. 32.

An unknown individual published an essay about this and figured out the calculations. They brought up the argument that from March 14, 445 B.C. to April 6, A.D. 32 would seem to be 477 years and 24 days in the Julian calendar . But we have to add one year from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1 because there is no year 0. So it comes to 476 years and 24 days in our Julian calendar. If we multiply 476 by 365 (which is how many days our Julian calendar has) we get 173,764 days. Add the extra 24 days and we get 173,764 days.

Where did the other 116 days go? If you ask that that question, let me remind you that our calendar uses leap years every four years. If you divide 476 by 4, you get 119 days; three days off. Why are we three days off? Our Julian years are actually 1/128 of a day too long. Which means that every 128 years, our calendar becomes off by one day. We solve that problem by skipping a leap year every 128 years. In 483 years, there are exactly three periods of 128. Which means you subtract three days off the total sum. Which would get you to 173,880 days. Wait, that sounds familiar. That?s exactly how many days Daniel prophesized would be between the decree to build the temple and the appearance of Messiah.

The seventy weeks of Daniel was not written at the time of Christ so his followers could prove that he was ?Messiah the Prince?. It was written during the reign of Darius I, King of Babylon who ruled from 521 B.C. to 485 B.C. It was written six centuries before the time of Christ. A prophecy so exact, it pinpointed that the Messiah would reach Jerusalem to the very day, could only have come from the God of Creation who knows the beginning from the end.
There are copies of the manuscript of Daniel dating back to the 100's B.C. Of course it was written when it states, but if it wasn't, it was still 100+ years before Christ. How's that for a prophesy? God can see the beginning from the end after all.

can you prove that it was not change. its also possible that it was created to fit the prophacy.

since your such an expert, please answer this.

if god was so allknowing, how did he not know that eve would eat the apple. If he knew that she would eat the apple, why did he put it with in her reach, then get mad when she ate it. If he was so omnipotent, then he would have none that telling her not to eat it would make her want to eat it. If he did not want her to eat it, he could have told her that is was a bad tree and that it would make her sick.

"An unknown individual published an essay about this and figured out the calculations."

Well that certainly *sounds* authoritative.

Numerology is not science.

Put some of your effort into studying real science.

Tim wrote:
"God is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient."

What you wrote is impossible. A reasonable representation of bible school theology but logically impossible and I will prove it to you.

Genesis 3:9 (King James version)
"And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?"

Well so much for omnipresent and omniscient. The poor sod doesn't know where Adam is.

Want a few hundred more proofs that your statement isn't correct ... they are all there in black and white.

Push yourself to a more adult, more nuanced, understanding of the text. You have a brain capable of asking questions for a reason and I'd like to encourage you to do so.

I do ask questions; a lot of questions. Just my bible has answers; a lot of answers. God was just testing Adam's obedience and for Adam to admit that he ate from the tree.

You ask questions that your parents and sunday school teachers have coached you to ask. You don't ask real questions. You're not interested in science. You're interested in proselytizing what you've been told.

they why did he get all mad and punish adams decendants to the end of time when adam admitted it. If god knew in advance that eve was going to eat it, and adam was going to share it, then he would not have gotten angry, merely disappointed. then he would have banished adam, but allowed his decendants to return.

Tim wrote:
"Just my bible has answers; a lot of answers. God was just testing Adam's obedience and for Adam to admit that he ate from the tree."

The issue here is not whether your bible has answers. For some it may for others it may not. To most people on this planet (Chinese, Indian, Indonesian) it is just so much fiction: But that is not the point I want to make. The point I want to make is that it is not the words ... anyone can read the words. It is about the interpretation. You are being fed a specific interpretation of those words. An interpretation that wasn't true 100 years ago and won't be true 100 years from now. Thus it is not something you should accept without using your brain in a more adult fashion.

Now with respect to God testing Adam's obedience that is clearly not the case and you already shot a hole into your own argument with a cannon.

You wrote: "God is omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient." Remember. Well if god is omniscient then he already knows the answer to the test before he gives it doesn't he. So the test is preposterous?

Here's another example and as I said I can cite hundreds more. God tests Adam and Eve with the fruit on the tree of knowledge. If he is omniscient he already knows they will eat it before he ever created the tree. So the tree and the fruit are just a set up. He created, obviously intentionally, imperfect beings that he knows in advance will fail.

This is what I mean Tim about using your brain. You are almost an adult. You need to start asking adult questions ... not children's questions. And demanding adult answers ... not children's answers.

True love requires a choice. God loved Adam so he gave him a choice to eat from the tree. Did he know Adam would fail? Yes. If God would have just tied Adam to the ground and not let him do anything, would that be a loving God? No; because true love requires a choice.
Let me use an example; For some strange reason a nuclear bomb explodes; killing everyone on the planet except one male and one female. They had know each other before that and utterly despised each other. Now since they're the only humans left they might decide to marry and have kids for the sake of humanity; not because they love each other, but because they have no other choice.
Now I know that that isn't the best example, but it works.
God created us knowing that we would ultimately fail. That's why he sacrficed His only Son so that our sins would be poured out on Him. Now we can have an eternal life seperated from our sins and failings simply by our faith in Jesus Christ; if God would have never created humans in the first place, they wouldn't have had the chance to experience this perfect, holy eternal life. God created us to have a purpose; and that is to live eternally with him seperated from our sins. That is our cause in life; to worship God.

Tim,
Do you have ANYTHING about actual science to contribute?

Tim wrote:
"True love requires a choice."

Stop repeating children's Sunday School nonsense and use your brain like an adult.

If a being is omniscient, all knowing, then there can be no choice: The answer is known before the question is asked.

You need some serious help growing up but, unfortunately, I fear you are being fed nonsense at home, nonsense at a religious school (or even worse being home schooled) and are heading for a captive religious college where you can be fed even more nonsense. When do you plan on becoming an adult that uses he own brain not someone else's?

IFF asks:
"Do you have ANYTHING about actual science to contribute?"

He doesn't even have anything about religion to contribute. He knows nothing of his own religion other than the level fed to children in Sunday school.

He either going to spend the rest of his life with his head stuffed into the sand or he's going to have to face a very adult decision very soon.

Personally I don't think he has the courage to morph from child to adult. Likely be someone's trained parrot for the rest of his life.

Wake up Tim ... wake up!

Dan,

I don't think you fully understand what you expect of him. I remember my own realization was accompanied by thoughts of suicide. To finally comprehend that everything you have been told by the people you trusted is a lie - and some of it obviously stupid - is overwhelming experience.

Dan, go a little easier on him

It was very hard for me to go from the believe the witches and anything but christians were evil to the realization that friends i had had for years, people that i trusted with my life, loved like brothers and sisters, were in fact pagan, druids and witches. I cant imagine how hard it would have been if i had not already begun to question the teaching of the church. Even then it took me a while to get over the shock and begin to ask quetions.

given time he might take the questions we ask and begin to ask them of his own. Then he'll have to find answers that are either more than what someone else says, or he will begin to find that the answers are not good enough.

I am not being hard on Tim. I've raised two past the age of 16 and have been there myself. I know precisely what it is.

Tim will get there when and if he is willing to face the challenge.

But one right-of-passage is survival. I made it. The two of you made it. So do most people or we wouldn't have a population of 6,000,000,000.

Tim will receive no encouragement from his parents or his peers to get out an explore the real world. This may be the only place for him to come in contact with people who think he is in a cult or cult-like environment.

true, so we should encourage him to ask question, rather than quote the bible.

there is a saying something along the lines that its hard to learn with your mouth open.

And it is impossible to learn when you think you already know all the answers.

It would seem that a conspiracy of being 16 years old, when everyone thinks they know everything, and being in a cult have conspired against him.

Yes Tim you are a member of a cult. That is how we view you. If it feels uncomfortable ... and it should ... you best consider that the only reason we have this impression is that you have given it to us.

I guess you could call it that; although cult usually refers to some unorthodox religious movement; not an orthodox, conservative religion. Because cult comes from the Latin route "cultus" which simply means "worship" which is a particple of the stem "colere" which literally means "piece of tilled land" and is how we get the word "culture". And yes, I worship God; not man as many evolutionists do.

"Evolutionists" don't worship man, Tim. Evolution is not a religion.

There are many Christians who know evolution to be true. Consider Professor Kenneth Miller of Brown University, for example (http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/index.html ).

I have little doubt that your brand of Christianity considers Catholics to be non-Christians, but you may gain some insight into the way modern Christians integrate their religious beliefs with scientific facts from some of his essays.

What Tim "knows" about evolutionists is what his parents and sunday school teachers have told him.

Tim wrote:
"cult usually refers to some unorthodox religious movement"

You are in one Tim. I know you find that hard to believe but YOU ARE INSIDE A CULT.

What you are parroting here is either fundamentalist cult material or straight out of a Sunday School coloring book. The world isn't the way you perceive it. It really isn't. And you best get outside and look around you before you waste your life pursuing someone else's trumped up version of reality.

If it looks like a cult, sounds like a cult, smells like a cult, and feels like a cult (can it taste like one?) then it is most certainly a cult.

Dehammer,
Most people who are in cults don't think, "Hey! I'm in a cult!" If cultmembers were that aware, there wouldn't be any cults.

The first test of whether you are in a cult is when people who don't know you hear you talk or read what you've written and all come to the conclusion you are in a cult.

The second is to tell those who are the leaders, whether they call themselves mom and dad or minister or whatever that you are thinking of changing your life goals and becoming something else. The stronger their reaction the more likely you are in a cult.

For Tim I'd thinking telling his parents he wants to go to a public high school for his senior year and then go to UCLA might be enough to get him dragged off to a re-education camp.

IFF is correct. If cult members were able to recognize that they were being brainwashed by a cult ... there wouldn't be any.

TFF, that is true. Dan, there are some that would want to belong to something so badly that they would join even if they knew what was being done to them. rare, but they do exist.

And there are people that shoot heroin and people that jump off tall buildings. I don't think Tim is one of them. He is a just victim of circumstances beyond his control. Or at least beyond his control until he is an adult. Then if he chooses to do as he has been instructed he is responsible for his bad choices.

Consider that had he been born under different circumstances he would have been led by his parents down an entirely different path in a different country with a different culture and an entirely different religion. He didn't choose his parents and he didn't choose to be raised in a cult. But he is and he needs to learn how to deal with it and extricate himself from it.

And i say "good luck to him."

I'm sorry guys. As I said earlier, I have been humbled and realized that arguing with you guys won't do anything. It takes death of self to bring reconcilliation which is what I'm doing. I will let you say all that you want about me. I will love you either way and more than you know, because He first loved me. So I'm showing you guys that love; and I pray for your salvation and softening of hearts every day.
P.S. I do go to a public school contrary to what DA might think.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot; here's the website that I made. You don't have to go to it, but I thought one of you guys here might want to: www.freewebs.com/biblicalcreation

Tim, you continue to talk about anything except actual science. Is it your conviction that God wants you to be an ignoramous?