Daystar

[Purple Rabbit]

I am aware of your position on the matter, EvF, but the Bible is a remarkable testimony. A reliable witness. I think of it as more similar to a court of law than science.

We need some evidence to this wild assertion.

The bible being an untrue account starts on the first page (from King James version):

" 1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. "

So there can't be any doubt about it, according to this account the firmament was created AFTER the earth was created. Earth and firmament are treated here like separate domains with their own independent rules. Note that this in accordance with the Aristotelan view that prevailed in the early days of scripture. This however is in flagrant contradiction with all empirical evidence since the beginning of science gathered about the place of earth in the universe and the origin of earth. That evidence equivocally shows that earth is a place in a very big chunk of space and that the latter as seen from the earth only seems as a separate domain called 'the firmament'. Newton (according to anecdote thereby helped by a falling apple) demonstrated quite spectaculary that the heavenly bodies follow the same rules as earthbound objects and called these rules gravity. Later scientific evidence showed that space itself has formed some 13.7 billion years ago and that a prerequisite for earth to exist is space. This means that earth cannot have existed prior to space, the universe itself and that the above biblical account is nothing more than a fabel that fits prescientific views but grossly contradicts the facts as plain as they come.

To ascribe reliability to the bible in the face of this enormous error on it's first page is like defending flat earth theory on board of a space shuttle.