Which is central, the Sun or the Earth?

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If God says it figuratively, and Joshua said it with misconception, both are still in the text. What one might demand for figurative markers doesn't matter. If God said it so they would understand it, and yet it is figurative because we know it so, then demanding that God should have said it differently so it makes sense scientifically is not what we are able to demand of God.

The spanner in your works comes in the fact that there is no shift between (1.) Joshua's prayer, (2.) God's answer to the prayer, and (3.) The inspired narrator's statement of fact. From each and every perspective, the sun stood still. In a fight between the text and the interpreter the text wins every time. Just concede!

The text speaks in terms understandable to persons at the time (all three, Joshua's prayer, God's answer, and the narrator). And it is perfectly understandable today even as we know the truth more clearly (and yet would still use the exact same language). You are arguing that the text cannot state what it states in a manner which does not answer the question you want answered. You are demanding that it speak how you would want it to speak. I'm not demanding it say anything other than Joshua asked (in the way he could) for the day to be extended, that God answered (in the way Joshua would understand) and the narrator stated the same in the way that people of the time would understand.

What I see you doing is demanding that if the heliocentric model is true, and that what happened in the big picture was the change of rotation of the earth, that it would have somehow had to have been communicated. I hit the buzz, wrong question being asked of scripture button ... if the concept was not known, then the question answered would not be the one that contains the concept, and the expressions used would have been the most natural to the people of the day.

The question remains, if there was no concept of rotation of the Earth, how would they have expressed it? "Appeared to stand still" would have made no sense as the person of the day.

Joshua would certainly have asked for the sun to stand still. And God would condescend to answer in the terms the question was asked, and the narrator, having no more knowledge than Joshua, would have expressed the same thing. The passage does not loose anything if it does not talk to the physical motions involved, but states them uniformly as what would be observed. If the same thing happened today, it would probably be described the same way even if the writer believed in rotation of the earth.
 
Why would the writer have said it that way unless he knew the Earth rotated, and the sun was the center of the solar system? If the Bible is not a science book, why would it use even the clarifying term that we don't use even today when the general consensus is that the Earth rotates?
The Holy Spirit didn't know whether the Earth rotates or not when He inspired this passage? Wow. Good thing modern science has come along to properly educate Him!

Sorry Brian, no offense intended, but sometimes I think we're too easily blinded by the careful subtleties of mankind's attempts to deny the truth of God's Word.

It is not a question of whether or not the Holy Spirit knew that earth revolved around the sun. It boils down to the fact that the text of Joshua is thousands of years removed from us. Perception in reality and in language must be considered.

I think that our accusation again Brian is unfounded. I could just as easily have accused you of having a not so subtle attempt at avoiding study a physics text.

The fact of the matter is that the earth revolves around the sun. Go read up on this absolute fact.

And yes the sun does move, it rotates on its axis about once every twenty five Earth days. It could also be argued the sun revolves around the Milky Way.
Dear brother, I have made no accusation against my other very dear brother Brian. I simply used a bit of sarcasm to point out an inconsistency in his statement.

Rev. Winzer has done a fine job of explaining to you why your assertion of 'absolute fact' is not so absolutely factual as your physics prof alleged, so I will digress to his far superior understanding of these matters. There are a few other theories asserted as 'absolute fact' at your friendly ivory tower that may be a tad askew of scripture, so I'd recommend a careful approach to them.
 
If the sun doesn't move how does it stop?

This makes absolutely no sense in the context of our discussion!

Sorry about that. That was an editing mistake on my part.

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The Holy Spirit didn't know whether the Earth rotates or not when He inspired this passage? Wow. Good thing modern science has come along to properly educate Him!

Sorry Brian, no offense intended, but sometimes I think we're too easily blinded by the careful subtleties of mankind's attempts to deny the truth of God's Word.

It is not a question of whether or not the Holy Spirit knew that earth revolved around the sun. It boils down to the fact that the text of Joshua is thousands of years removed from us. Perception in reality and in language must be considered.

I think that our accusation again Brian is unfounded. I could just as easily have accused you of having a not so subtle attempt at avoiding study a physics text.

The fact of the matter is that the earth revolves around the sun. Go read up on this absolute fact.

And yes the sun does move, it rotates on its axis about once every twenty five Earth days. It could also be argued the sun revolves around the Milky Way.
Dear brother, I have made no accusation against my other very dear brother Brian. I simply used a bit of sarcasm to point out an inconsistency in his statement.

Rev. Winzer has done a fine job of explaining to you why your assertion of 'absolute fact' is not so absolutely factual as your physics prof alleged, so I will digress to his far superior understanding of these matters. There are a few other theories asserted as 'absolute fact' at your friendly ivory tower that may be a tad askew of scripture, so I'd recommend a careful approach to them.

It is an absolute fact. It has been proven and observed. You also fail to deal with Brian's arguments.
 
and the narrator, having no more knowledge than Joshua, would have expressed the same thing.

I already addressed the issue of plenary inspiration earlier in the thread. As noted there, if you don't believe in it this is not the forum for you.
 
Well, if the sun stood still, and the earth continued to move, then the sun would have still appeared to be in motion to the folks observing it.

Yet another non-biblical consideration. Whence in the Bible do you derive the idea that the earth moves? If you do not derive it from the Bible then you have no right to impose it on the biblical text.

Where does the Bible say that the sky is blue, that ice melts if it rises above 32 degrees F, or that dolphins have hair?

I feel that further sarcasm would only be beating a dead horse.
Andrew, I don't believe Matthew was being sarcastic. I, however, definitely was, so if any dead horses need beating, it would be me.

Scripture does not address those other topics, but it does this one.
 
Where does the Bible say that the sky is blue

Matthew 16:3, it says the sky might be red. Thankfully scientists are not so ignorant as to actually say the sky is blue. If they did, we would have to accept the Bible and leave the scientists to learn better in the future, as is the case with absolute heliocentric claims.
 
Why would the writer have said it that way unless he knew the Earth rotated, and the sun was the center of the solar system? If the Bible is not a science book, why would it use even the clarifying term that we don't use even today when the general consensus is that the Earth rotates?
The Holy Spirit didn't know whether the Earth rotates or not when He inspired this passage? Wow. Good thing modern science has come along to properly educate Him!

Sorry Brian, no offense intended, but sometimes I think we're too easily blinded by the careful subtleties of mankind's attempts to deny the truth of God's Word.
?

Brad, of course the Holy Spirit knows, and there are plenty of people that believe the Bible is absolutely true, but look at the physical attributes of what happened here in the context of what the writer could have expressed (meaning the human writer). The Spirit did not override the person who wrote the text and make them an automaton and move their hands such that they wrote that of which they had no concept. The scripture does not speak of quantum mechanics, relativity, or anything else that God placed into the workings of the universe that do not connect to the plan of salvation. All of the books were written by men with understanding of the words they used ... all but those passages that were visions. (If we view historical narrative as testimony of a person in that time and place writing what he actually saw, we have a much better chance of understanding the passage than if we attempt to view it as a modern reader would.)

There is no disregard for the truth of scripture, but only a refusal to view the Bible as if it were a scientific textbook. If I would write the same way, even being sure of rotation of the Earth, then the Bible is not wrong in saying the same things even if it is not answering the question being asked.

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and the narrator, having no more knowledge than Joshua, would have expressed the same thing.

I already addressed the issue of plenary inspiration earlier in the thread. As noted there, if you don't believe in it this is not the forum for you.

As I'm sure you know, I hold fully to the OPC version of the WCF, but that might mean that I do not hold to automaton inspiration (at least the OPC has not gone down that path to my knowledge, and my view has been open to my session from day one).

I hold to the infallibility of scripture, but I don't necessarily believe you know the single true interpretation of scripture for every passage. (Nor that you would hold the only possible orthodox view of plenary inspiration.) That there is no defect in the text does not mean that it speaks to the question you ask of it. It is not forced to answer what you are saying it answers, and yet is without error and impossible to fail.

All I'm claiming is that just because you want it to mean more than what it could mean doesn't mean that it has to.

What you have not answered is that if I (or anyone from a heliocentric view) would state the passage the exact same way, how does it force only what you are saying the interpretation can only be? (If the expression is the same regardless, then there is no error, and the passage does not speak to planetary physics.)
 
I hold to the infallibility of scripture, but I don't necessarily believe you know the single true interpretation of scripture for every passage.

Every reformed exposition of the doctrine of inspiration I have read at least includes within it an affirmation that the errors of the penmen were suppressed. I don't need to know the single true interpretation of every passage in order to affirm the reformed doctrine of plenary inspiration. If you want to teach otherwise, take it elsewhere. This point is not open to debate.
 
I hold to the infallibility of scripture, but I don't necessarily believe you know the single true interpretation of scripture for every passage.

Every reformed exposition of the doctrine of inspiration I have read at least includes within it an affirmation that the errors of the penmen were suppressed. I don't need to know the single true interpretation of every passage in order to affirm the reformed doctrine of plenary inspiration. If you want to teach otherwise, take it elsewhere. This point is not open to debate.

And I fully agree with that. It has no bearing on this passage.

added for clarification
I fully agree suppression of error of the person would be there. I just disagree that the passage says *anything* about planetary physics. If I were there, I would have prayed even as Joshua did. I fully believe God would have answered exactly the same way (in saying the sun would stop). And anyone reporting it (the narrator) would report the sun stopped in the sky. Regardless of planetary physics.

That is what I think you are missing. There would be no difference between the expressions regardless of the physics of the universe.
 
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And I fully agree with that. It has no bearing on this passage.

Then you need to rephrase your statement: "and the narrator, having no more knowledge than Joshua, would have expressed the same thing." Here you affirm that the narrator's lack of knowledge found its way into the text of Scripture.

You also need to correct your sceptical statement that you and I don't know what is true because God accommodated Himself to Joshua's misconception.
 
And I fully agree with that. It has no bearing on this passage.

Then you need to rephrase your statement: "and the narrator, having no more knowledge than Joshua, would have expressed the same thing." Here you affirm that the narrator's lack of knowledge found its way into the text of Scripture.

You also need to correct your sceptical statement that you and I don't know what is true because God accommodated Himself to Joshua's misconception.

Last post on this.

What I'm saying is that the passage says absolutely nothing about planetary physics.

The passage does not differentiate between heliocentric and geocentric views of the solar system, as a reasonable person would not change the language regardless of which position he held.

That is what I think you just are not seeing. What I believe you are doing is trying to force fit this to what does not hold up for all passages (are you really a flat Earther?)

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You also need to correct your sceptical statement that you and I don't know what is true because God accommodated Himself to Joshua's misconception.

I certainly had hoped I was done, but I did want to address this...

I did not make myself clear. Regardless of what is true, I do not believe we know fully what is true (it had nothing to do with accommodation to error on Joshua's part). There is a huge difference between what we know and what God knows. All of what we know is based on what God knows and has allowed us to know. Therefore, I stated that we (you and I) do not know what is true, but God does. (We can only know in part, and what we know we know only through the veil of sin that still remains in this age. In the age to come, what we know will be perfect, if not complete.)
 
That is what I think you just are not seeing. What I believe you are doing is trying to force fit this to what does not hold up for all passages (are you really a flat Earther?)

No; I am simply allowing the Bible to say what it says. The passage obviously does not teach us physics, astronomy, or any other science; but the passage makes a statement about the sun, that it ordinarily moves, and that a miracle occurred when it stopped moving. Whatever one thinks about physics, astronomy, or any other science, he has no right to impose his unproven, ever advancing scientific explanations on the Bible and make it say something other than what it says.

Therefore, I stated that we (you and I) do not know what is true, but God does.

Well, one thing is for sure, you will never be able to say with any degree of certainty that anything is true on the basis that the Bible teaches it while you allow that the Bible accommodates its teaching to the mistaken notions of men. Your doctrine of inspiration is not reformed so long as you do not consider the suppression of the penmen's errors to be an active part of it. You will simply never know what is absolute truth and what is mere accommodation. Like the liberal, the canon of reason is required to distinguish where Scripture speaks truth and where it accommodates error.
 
Say to any scientist that a celestial body stopped moving and their first question will be, "relative to what?"

Scientist A: The sun stopped moving.
Scientist B: Relative to what?
Scientist A: Relative to the earth.
Scientist B: How did it do that?
Scientist A: There were outside forces exerting on the system. (from God).

End of story. Science and the bible can easily agree - it is irrelevant to the issue whether one conceives of the sun moving around the earth or the earth rotating.
 
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I must say that unbelievers who read this thread are going to be laughing that we even debate this stuff.
I'm on my way out to work and this thread has moved on quite a lot, and into much better hands, overnight...!
This post caught my eye though, and of course it's true.
Similar worries got in my way for a long time when I was thinking about 6-day Creation.

But THE question is, should that ever be a consideration?? You can see where that's leading.
 
Armourbearer, how should the passage in Joshua 10 read if the heliocentric model were correct?

edit: Specifically, if it is to be understandable to the greatest number of people, regardless of their cosmology?
 
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Does anyone know how geocentrists explain why missile tracking/launching programs have the movement of the earth around the sun built into them?
 
Does anyone know how geocentrists explain why missile tracking/launching programs have the movement of the earth around the sun built into them?

The movement of the earth around the sun and the movement of the sun around the earth should yield the same mathematic trajectory. There shouldn't really be a difference.

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skyler....I really mean it when I say that I appreciate you trying to understand where I am coming from. Its like a credo-paedo debate where somebody actually tries to understand the other side. I mean, my poor PCA pastor has had people in his life tell him he must not have ever read the bible if he believes in infant baptism. God will use you greatly in ministry if you try and be the kind of person who attempts to understand the other side. I've gotten tired of the " flat earth" cracks over the years. So thank you.

you said: Basically, they were testing to see if the Earth's velocity would make a difference in the speed of light--and it didn't, confirming Einstein's hypothesis.

Actually, chronologically it is the other way around. In 1887 M/M showed that there was no velocity of the earth. In 1905 Einstein published his theory. So yes indeed, the MM experiment confirms Einsteins hypothesis IF and only if you are heliocentric and need a way to explain why the earth appears to not have a velocity. If you are geo, you don't need the theory of relativity.

M/M showed that there was no "ether wind". This means either that the earth was not moving through the ether, or the earth was moving and the ether did not exist. If you don't believe in the ether, then it doesn't show that the Earth is stationary.

Like I said, both models work. The real scientific ( not scripture) debate in my opinion must come down to relativity- proven or debunked. You must accept that visible light behaves differently than any other measured wave velocity of the electromagnetic spectrum.

No, I don't think that's the case. Relativity applies to all frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, not just the visible wavelengths. Could you explain what you mean by that?

You have to accept that as the earth revolves around the Sun at a speed of about thirty kilometers per second, if we repeat the experiment six months later, we should expect to find a difference of sixty kilometers per second, as the Earth moves away from the particular star's light. And it does not. So either Einsten is right and visible light behaves differently than radar, x-rays, radio waves, microwaves, etc, or, the earth stands still.

The M/M experiment isn't measuring the speed of light coming from a distant star. It's measuring the speed of light coming from a single source within the experiment itself. I think that might be where we're getting mixed up.

By the way geocentrists do believe in the ether. They call it the firmament. All the heavenly bodies exist in something invisible but "firm." I am not sure if the dark matter theories are the same thing. Guess I need to go read up the geocentric sites one of these days. Been a while.

Then, theoretically, if we repeat the M/M experiment on the moon, geocentrism would predict that we should get different results than on the earth, because the moon actually is moving through the ether. Right?
 
(I can't believe I am even having to debate this, but...) I have worked for over 16 years on the computer systems (radar, telemetry) which are used in tracking the missiles we fire out of Vandenberg Air Force Base here in California. Allow me to introduce you to a number which has significant relevance on many of the calculations that run on the missiles, and on those tracking computers, and therefore is used in the software running on them: 7.292115147X10-5

What is this number? It is the rotation rate of the earth in radians per second. (For the ease of those who don't know, multiply that by 180 and divide by π to get it in degrees per second, which is about 4.178074X10-3, and which in turn amounts to 360.9856 degrees per day (multiply the 4.178074X10-3 by 86400 seconds in a day).

For one thing, notice that the rate is non-zero If we use zero instead of that number and attempt to compute the course of the rocket, the range might be obligated to destroy a missile which is perfectly on course, or even worse, might fail to detect that a missile which is off course and on its way to landing on someone, so as to destroy it when necessary. Even a very small error could threaten people's lives.

For another thing, notice the remaining ".9856" degrees. It is just slightly less than one degree in excess of a complete circle. That excess represents the motion of the earth around the sun in a single day, such that the earth must turn that amount more than a circle in order to reach the same exact time of day. Divide the 360 degrees of a circle by the 365.2425 days in a true solar year (calendar years handle the ".2425" by inserting a "February 29" every fourth year, except three out of four century years), and that gets our ".9856" degrees.

Geocentrism versus Heliocentrism
 
ChristianTrader said

I think a YEC Creationist has an incredibly difficult time denying Geocentrism. Geocentrism has an even better pedigree in church history than YEC, and YEC has a good pedigree. The Reformers, had no problem properly interpreting the "God has wings" and the "flat earth" passages while firmly maintaining their geocentrism. This seems to imply that their hermeneutics was a bit more nuanced than some want to give them credit for having.

What I also find interesting is how much ambiguity passages where no ambiguity was found for the first thousand+ years of church history all of a sudden has ambiguity all over it when "Science" starts to bark. First it was geocentrism, then 6 day creationism, then homosexuality etc. etc.

I am not accusing anyone of secretly being a liberal but this 500 year progression is frightening.
:amen::amen:
 
Armourbearer, how should the passage in Joshua 10 read if the heliocentric model were correct?

It should read correctly.

I haven't said the heliocentric model is not correct but have noted the two should not be placed in competition with each other. Astronomy is an ever advancing science. What appears contradictory today may be harmonised tomorrow with the unveiling of new discoveries. Any scientist worth his salt acknowledges this. To say that science must have the final word is to make an unscientific statement. Science is an open canon, therefore contradiction is to be expected. Christian scientists should be wary of reading the Bible like science or science like the Bible. We expect non contradiction in the Bible because it is a closed canon. What it says it has always said and will always say. Science is an open canon. It has said things which it no longer says and what it says today may yet be changed. The dogmatic statements made in favour of absolute heliocentricity in this thread are simply unscientific, to say the least.
 
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