Everything advanced to date indicates the "misconception" that the people thought in terms of the sun moving. But they can hardly be called as reliable witnesses to the occurrence of a work which transcends nature when they can't be trusted to know the way nature ordinarily works.
Which is central, the Sun or the Earth?
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Everything advanced to date indicates the "misconception" that the people thought in terms of the sun moving. But they can hardly be called as reliable witnesses to the occurrence of a work which transcends nature when they can't be trusted to know the way nature ordinarily works.
If you don't believe in the plenary inspiration of Scripture I don't think this is the forum for you.
It would be, and we could believe it happened if the Scriptures actually recorded it. But the Scriptures don't; therefore we have no basis for believing it happened.
She is referring to a quote of Joshua. Other examples of men who are quoted speaking error in the Bible include Satan, Job's friends, Sadducees, etc. However, since the Bible is inerrant, everything it says they said, they did indeed say. It does not make their quoted statements themselves accurate. Indeed, God reprimanded Job's friends for their errant statements.
OPC'n
Puritan Board Doctor
Jacob told Isaac that he was Esau. Now, do you believe that Jacob got a word from God to believe that he was Esau and to tell his father that he was? This is just one example of what I said.
-----Added 11/1/2009 at 09:51:41 EST-----
Thank you! I didn't think what I said was too astounding that it needed clarification.
Montanablue
Puritan Board Doctor
I think that you are grossly misunderstanding Sarah.( And I'm not sure how, because her statement seemed quite clear). She is not saying that the Bible is uninspired or that it is not God's Word. She is pointing out that in narrative sections, individuals are quoted. And those quotations do not necessarily reflect God's word or truth. There are many many examples of this - surely we would not maintain that every person that speaks in the Bible is the voice of God.
toddpedlar
Iron Dramatist
Huh? With all due respect, Lynnie, you have misunderstood the result of the MM experiment and its conclusion. Geocentrists need relativity just like everyone else. It is an experimental fact, borne out in a multitude of different experiments that have nothing whatsoever to do with the MM experiment.
This is also a misrepresentation. A model works insofar as it can explain observations. The geocentric model cannot explain why the whole universe revolves around the Earth (while the planets do not revolve around the Earth, but instead revolve around the Sun).
Would you like to explain yourself here? Where is there any postulated difference required for visible light vs. other forms of electromagnetic radiation? TO what experiment are you referring when you say this?
You probably need to look again at the MM experiment, because your answer here indicates that you seem to have misunderstood what was measured and how.
They may believe in the ether, and it's certainly convenient for them to do so since in their model its being disproven is an impossibility.
However, the existence or non-existence of the ether is irrelevant when it comes to proving that the Earth moves relative to the stars and not they relative to the Earth. Stellar parallax is a perfect example (the annual shift of nearer stars' apparent positions relative to stars that are farther away). This is a difficult measurement to make, but has been seen in many, many cases. Just as the apparent position of your finger changes relative to the background behind it as you hold your arm outstretched and look first with one eye and then the other, nearer stars shift position relative to those farther away on a six-month time frame that corresponds to the extremes of the Earth's annual motion around the sun.
The Earth also spins on its axis. This is easily proven through the Coriolis effect, which is a long-standing, well-known problem from very long ago. It is impossible to explain adequately if the Earth is not in fact spinning on its axis.
Montanablue
Puritan Board Doctor
Oops - cross-posted. Sorry. Austin said it better anyway.
God didn't reprimand the penman of Job for errant statements. The text in question does not pertain to different perspectives in a narrative, but to narration. To claim there is inspired and uninspired speech in the narration is to claim that the penmen were not fully inspired.
If that had have been pointed out, it would have been fair enough, but it would have been irrelevant to this discussion as this discussion pertains to the narration of the inspired penman not to recorded speeches by uninspired men.
But they do. Unlike you, I don't think that this passage demands a geocentric interpretation. You also still have not answered my question regarding space expeditions that have collected evidence of the heliocentric view. Is this just propaganda?
Montanablue
Puritan Board Doctor
This doesn't pertain to Sarah's comment. Neither she nor Austin claimed that the penman was uninspired - in fact they said the opposite. Their argument (and mine as well) is that the statements of Job's friends, while reported accurately by the inspired writer, do not reflect the voice of God. The same pertains to any comments made by Joshua. The inspired writer is reporting Joshua's prayer. Joshua's prayer itself is not necessarily inspired.
Edit: I cross-posted and didn't see your earlier comment, which is why the above doesn't address it. Anyway, I'm going to bow out of this and let others do the talking. This has simply become far too obtuse.
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Spinningplates2
Puritan Board Freshman
The whole flat earth thing is/was a tool to make Christians and the people of the past seem stupid. The biggest lie being that Christopher Colombus was afraid he might sail off the edge of the world.
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And I reject your allegorical interpretation. We will have to leave it there.
I am not a scientist; I am addressing the issue from the perspective of exegesis.
If Joshua had said, "2+2=5" (for whatever reason), and an inspired author had written, "And then Joshua said, '2+2=5,'" the author would still have written inerrantly, but Joshua would have spoken errantly.
Vytautas
Puritan Board Freshman
You say this as an example of misconception as accommodation. But what is the misconception in saying that the sun stood still in relation to the earth?
Allegorical? I'm done here. Pilgrim's Progress is allegory. Apocalyptic literature is allegory. I am not calling this passage allegory, just suggesting that maybe it doesn't demand a geocentric interpretation.
OPC'n
Puritan Board Doctor
Nobody is claiming that parts of the Bible is uninspired and you know that. Arguing in this fashion doesn't get you any points bc we all know it's a strawman's argument. But I will this time play your game. All that's in the Bible is inspired. Everything that everyone said in the Bible (including Satan) was allowed by God to be said. HOWEVER! There were false prophets who stated things in the Bible which were directly contrary to what God was saying through His prophets. Now that we've gone down this bunny trail, I will bow out of the conversation.
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toddpedlar
Iron Dramatist
I simply do not see how the Bible requires geocentrism, when there are statements that are equally problematic (the four corners of the earth in Isa 11:12) if read with wooden literalism as those that on the face of it require the Sun to be moving and the Earth standing still. If I say "the sun stood still in the sky" while the Earth stopped rotating for a time, I would not be chargably speaking a falsehood. If I say "the sun rose today at 5:32am" I would equally well be held to speak truth, though the reason I could see the sun first at 5:32am is that the Earth had turned such that the sun was visible over the horizon at that time. If my words are not held to be false in these circumstances, then neither could the Holy Spirit be charged with an innaccuracy if He were to inspire words to similar effect under such circumstances. It is not appropriate to charge me (or others) with "allegorizing" Joshua's words in chapter 10 when we say the Earth spins, and was stopped from spinning for that time - it isn't allegorizing that's going on, but a recognition that the Bible does speak from the point of view of men even as it is inspired by the Spirit of God.
And I have repeatedly made the point that Joshua's prayer is instrumental in the miracle. "And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel." To cast doubt on the factuality of the prayer or the event is to cast doubt on the miracle. To cast doubt on the narration of these is to cast doubt on the plenary inspiration of the Bible.
There is no misconception as long as you accept it as fact and not merely the way it was perceived by people.
Brian Withnell
Puritan Board Junior
Jenny,
The "evidence" that some so called scientists use to support a geocentric model falls flat as soon as you ask them what the path of a rocket fired into space would follow and they cannot easily predict it without first finding the path with a heliocentric model. The same hermeneutic for saying the geocentric model is true would be the same hermeneutic for a flat earth. We have orbited the earth, seen that it is not flat, measured the curvature, and know that the language was figurative when it speaks of "corners of the earth" in scripture.
The idea of a heliocentric solar system is what enabled the sending of a probe to intercept a comet (you can find stories on the mission called "Deep Impact" in many places). The idea of having a geocentric model of the solar system actually connect with a comet is about the same as what you might expect of hitting a bullet fired from a gun with another bullet fired from a gun a mile away.
The same is true of prediction of things like the comet that struck Jupiter. Saying what the model had to have been after the fact is child's play compared to predicting the path and getting it right before it strikes. Sending a satellite into space to pass by Saturn (Cassini space probe) and having it work would be impossible without a correct model. For that matter, sending a Mars lander would be impossible with anything but the most accurate model (and proved the undoing of one probe when one of the engineers used English units instead of metric on one attempt).
So what do I make of these things and the scripture? The scripture speaks truth in all that it says. It is inerrant and infallible in what God said in it ... but that does not mean that I (or any church) is infallible in interpretation of what it says. When even the reformers such as Calvin stated that they believed a geocentric view of the solar system, they did damage to what God had said by going beyond what God had revealed. Why do I think that? For the same reason that I think those that had forcefully stated the Earth was flat were wrong in their interpretation. God gives us the truth He desires to reveal in his word, not what we might want to know.
That said, there is a very close question that follows: How can I be sure (100% sure, without a doubt) that I am correct in anything that I read in scripture? In one sense, I cannot. It is not my positiveness that saves me ... it is the finished work of Christ, applied by the Holy Spirit, through faith that saves me. Faith is not sight, but our faith is not a "I hope it is" like we have no assurance at all. Even so, it is not tied to salvation either. We have assurance, but that is not salvation. We accept what God says ... and yet we hear what he says imperfectly (we are sinners, and even when we read the word of God, our understanding of it is tainted by our sin in this world ... we see as in a glass darkly). The real issue is that I know I, in myself, cannot possibly hope to interpret any of scripture purely (even with the Spirit's help). What I can know is that I can trust that Christ will deliver me from my sin (even in my misunderstanding of the scripture).
Is the Bible correct? Yes. Are we correct in interpretation? No. While we work diligently to know what it says, even those that are great men of faith that have gone before are wrong, be they never so diligent in studying what the Bible says, and in some way or other off. Just because we study the scriptures, does not mean that we study them aright. We bring to them our own sin and misconceptions, even as we do every other area of life. Our confidence is not in our interpretation of scripture, but in Christ. Is there a paradox in there? Perhaps. What we know of Christ, we know from scripture ... so we have to walk by faith that God in Christ has removed our heart of stone and given us a heart of flesh so we are not among the reprobate on the last day.
Those that study both the book of God's word and the book of God's work have an advantage over those that only look to one ... while priority is given to his word, when there is uncertainty in the word, and there is certainty in his work, we can trust that God does not lie to us in either.
All right, fair enough. Our point was simply that you too quickly accused Sarah of denying the plenary inspiration of Scripture when she was referring only to a quote within Scripture. Your point may be valid, but it does not cast doubt on her belief that Scripture is inspired. I think you misrepresented her intentions.
But, to follow through on your analogy, the inspired writer effectively says, "God made 2+2=5, in answer to His servant," and that is what the allegorists refuse to accept.
No, I don't know that. All I know is that you claimed the narration may be the word of God or the word of man. If you repudiate that, very good. But then you have no reason for not accepting the words of the text as the word of God.
toddpedlar
Iron Dramatist
Another miraculous occurrence that is connected to Joshua's long day is the moving backward of the shadow moving backward on the steps in Hezekiah's day in 2 Kings 20. The clear indication there is that Hezekiah knows why a shadow advances in a forward direction, and thought it easy for the shadow to do this (as its cause, the Sun, would be moving forward during the course of the day, and its shadow would naturally advance).
Did the normal course of things change in this event? The text says nothing about the Sun, yet because of 'scientific advance' we know what produces shadows. Hence we'd infer here that something happened even more unusual than in Joshua's day - the Sun actually moved in the sky backward according to its normal course. Scripture tells us nothing about the Sun moving or not moving - am I wrong to infer that the normal state of affairs did change in this instance? Or should I, since the inspired recorder of the events did not tell us that the Sun had anything to do with it, just assume that the shadow moved without anything else happening?
Did the normal course of things change in this event? The text says nothing about the Sun, yet because of 'scientific advance' we know what produces shadows. Hence we'd infer here that something happened even more unusual than in Joshua's day - the Sun actually moved in the sky backward according to its normal course. Scripture tells us nothing about the Sun moving or not moving - am I wrong to infer that the normal state of affairs did change in this instance? Or should I, since the inspired recorder of the events did not tell us that the Sun had anything to do with it, just assume that the shadow moved without anything else happening?
Prufrock
Arbitrary Moderation
[Moderator]
I am by no means locking this thread down, but I may suggest that we all slow down a bit and take a breather. This is by far the "fastest moving" thread I have seen so far on the PB, and it seems to be creating much in the way of reading too quickly, and thus it can lead to either 1.) Missing what is being said, or 2.) Leaping to conclusions.
[/Moderator]
I am by no means locking this thread down, but I may suggest that we all slow down a bit and take a breather. This is by far the "fastest moving" thread I have seen so far on the PB, and it seems to be creating much in the way of reading too quickly, and thus it can lead to either 1.) Missing what is being said, or 2.) Leaping to conclusions.
[/Moderator]
I know you are not calling this passage allegory. You are interpreting it in an allegorical manner. The text says, Sun, and you say, Earth. That is allegory, where you substitute a literal referent for a figurative one which accords with your reason.
That's fine, I can see the logic there. My intention was only to point out that your accusation against Sarah was a bit rash.
On another note, given that you are approaching this from an exegetical perspective alone (which is fine; I'm not saying it's not), do you have a resource that we could read providing an answer to my second question above, for those who wish to see the scientific explanation?
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