One question for Christians

[Statler Waldorf]

The facts will speak themselves, SW. We know that NASA used those terms, but they also had knowledge of the cosmos. As for the writers of the Bible, we cannot even begin to assume that they had that same knowledge. We will know that NASA is not comprised of Geo-Centrists BECAUSE OF EVIDENCE.

As I already pointed out the writers of the Bible didn’t need to have such knowledge, the words are God-breathed and that’s why they never say anything that is actually wrong. I think you get my point about NASA though; descriptive language accomplishes more in certain situations than scientific language.

So...why are you still arguing with us on this? You seem like a smart cookie, but your attacks on this subject are getting repetitious now. What is your real concern here?

My concern is that you all apply a standard of criticism to scripture that you do not apply to anything else, and that’s illogical to do so. In a sense I am looking out for you my friend.

Using the word "perhaps" does not denote an assertion. You are desperately trying to turn this around, but we aren't asserting anything. We are merely asking you to confront the issues from other angles. And you're right, there's nothing wrong with the language - we just can't prove from that language that it meant anything other than what it seems. Really. That's all we're saying. No special pleading.

Seems to be a Mexican standoff, so fair enough, I think we’ve made our points.

I'm not assuming anything; he didn't use the term, so I'm simply stating a fact. It's not fair for me to make assumptions, so that's why I don't do it. If you're claiming that I'm making an assumption, I need to see quoted text where I am making a claim as if it is fact.

Perhaps I am getting my posters mixed up, but didn’t you claim that the verse is talking about a “light source” and not just a “light”? If not, then I apologize for the confusion.

You're right about the verse not saying anything inaccurate. I'm sure the authors thought they were being very accurate indeed. Can we prove they had extra knowledge? Can we prove they knew that the moon actually reflected the sun's light? If Yahweh has special knowledge of the cosmos, wouldn't he tell his prophets? There is no evidence to suggest that he ever did this, which is why we bring the verse into question, SW.

I now see where the confusion is coming from; you’re taking a view of Biblical inerrancy that is not what Christians hold to. Christians do not believe that the writer of Genesis (most likely Moses) had some kind of special knowledge about astrophysics. What Christians believe is that what Moses wrote down was divinely inspired, so even though he didn’t possess any extra knowledge on the subject nothing that he writes is actually wrong. Even if Moses believed the Moon was a light source, what he actually wrote (merely referring to it as a light) was not wrong at all. Here’s another example, the author of Joshua 10 says that during Joshua’s long day both the Sun and the Moon stood still (I find this to be amazing, because there’s no reason for a geo-centrist to say the Moon also stood still in order to have a long day). Now he doesn’t need to know that the reason for this is because the rotation of the Earth came to a halt and since the Moon revolves around the Earth and the Earth around the Sun that this would have caused both objects to stop moving (from the perspective of those on the Earth), he merely needs to state that they both stopped moving. So here you have a piece of information that is incredibly accurate based upon what we understand today, but the author did not need to possess that understanding.

How do you know that's how Biblical inspiration works? Did the invisible Pink Unicorn explain it to you? Seriously, don't try to lecture me about special pleading. "God-breathed". What does that mean? Is that some Christian slang to denote that God was a mouth-breather?

No, it’s a figure of speech (in Greek it is theopneustos) to mean that every word of the original text was directly inspired and determined by Yahweh. If you’re going to debate with Christians you need to accurately represent our positions and doctrines, and that’s one of our central doctrines.

"The author himself does not need to possess the understanding," okay okay, so your prophets were dumb as rocks. Nothing we read in their writings should be taken as reliable then.

Not at all, that’s a straw-man argument. They would have possessed the scientific knowledge of the day, but that does not mean they were dumb at all, using that same argument you’d have to claim that Newton was also “dumb as rocks” because he possessed a 17th century understanding of the Universe. The words in the Bible are inspired by God, who knows everything.

After this statement, I can't help but picture some 13-year old, zit-faced forum troll. Wow, you must hate that we aren't gobbling up your religious rhetoric and appeal to your special knowledge. Well...I'm not sorry.

I made no such appeal to special knowledge, you yourself have already conceded that there’s nothing actually wrong in the verse itself, end of discussion.

It's quite sequitur...quite indeed. If I say a table is a flat, level surface, and then I tell you that tile floor is also a flat, level surface, would you think that they are both flat and level, or would you think, "No...they're two different objects, so one must be slanted!" You are a special kind of retard if you want to believe that.

Enough with the personal attacks, they only make your position look incredibly weak. Your analogy is fallacious because it is trying to use explicit descriptors to prove the author of Genesis was using implicit descriptors. I would say the table and the floor are both flat and level because you explicitly said they were. Just like I would believe the Sun and the Moon are both lights because the author of Genesis explicitly said they were. Guess what, they are both lights! They are not both light sources though, which the author never claimed they were.

I am applying this exact same logic to the Bible passages.

No, you’re not, you are trying to say that since the author claimed the Moon and the Sun are both lights, they must also both be light sources, that is like saying that since the floor and the table are both flat surfaces they must also both have four legs since the table has four legs. Since something can be a light (X) but not a light source (Y) it’s a logical non-sequitur to claim, “Object A and B both possess attribute X, therefore they must also both possess attribute Y.”

Oh, no, the Bible isn't in error because of this passage. This is simply a possible error. The Bible is in error because of all the other shit that's absolutely false in it. You can have the sun and moon argument if you want, but I'll stick strongly to the badly-formed Genesis account, the scientific inaccuracies, and the many many many contradictions found throughout the book to show that the Bible is wrong. If our musings about the sun and moon verse proves to be true, it's just lemon in the wound, my friend, and this wound is already gaping wide, wide, wide open.

You’d have to provide something other than a logically invalid argument to prove that the Moon/Sun verse is indeed in error, until you do there’s no reason to doubt Biblical inerrancy. Contradictions? Are you referring to an actual internal logical contradiction? That’s what it’d take, and those are tough to prove exist in scripture. Nobody could provide an actual one in the 30 plus page thread dedicated to the task.

I asked, "How do you know that Yahweh knows these things?" I think I threw "Or Yahweh isn't real" as a good ol' golly gee whiz atheist rhetoric that's a side note from what we were actually discussing. I apologize for confusing you there, and, to be honest, I meant to have a "but" right after the first sentence to connect my next train of thought, which was to ask you how you know how Yahweh thinks, because you were implying that you did in your last post. You need to get used to getting questioned when your assertions seem out of place.

I was not confused at all, it’s just my job to keep you from taking the discussion down rabbit holes that are not pertinent to what we’re discussing at the time. I know the way Yahweh thinks just like I would anybody else, by the way He behaves and by what He says.

How is that a claim, SW? That's a rule of thumb. Logic dictates it, not me, not you, not Yahweh. Logic. It's how legal proceedings are dealt with too.

It’s a logical claim, and I want to know how you prove it’s true, or else it’s a self-refuting claim.

If I tell you there's a pink unicorn standing behind you, you'll tell me, "No, there isn't. There is no such thing standing behind me." I'll reply, "Well, it's invisible. It's there, you just can't see it." The claim of the invisible pink unicorn, SW, is completely and utterly bogus, unless I prove it to be true by your standards of evidence. I cannot expect you to prove it for me, for it is not your claim, but mine.

This sounds eerily similar to Sagan’s invisible dragon analogy, you didn’t steal it and just change it to a pink unicorn did you sir? This doesn’t prove the claim, “all claims are false until they are proven true” though, it at best proves that, “all claims about invisible pink unicorns are false until they are proven true.”

But to further answer your whining ramblings, I actually don't need to prove my above "claim" to you, as you think I have to (in fact, the above paragraph covers the stipulations of a claim rather nicely). It's a rule of thumb, common sense, and was put in place long before I wrote it there. If you still don't like it, then you need to Google, "Burden of Proof". You'll get the rest of your answers there because, maybe I'm wrong, but it feels as if you don't value anything that I have to say. Perhaps you'll hear it better from a third party.

It was put in place by whom? How did they know all claims are false until proven true? This seems all too convenient; essentially you’re like the guy who says, “Trust me when I tell you to trust no one.” If you’re claiming “all claims are false until they are proven true” then I want to see that claim proven true. Are you really going to take the position that if you cannot prove something is true then you believe it is false?

Because tradition is a powerful thing. It seems to be human nature.

They subconsciously do it? How do you know that?

You missed the part about "...who didn't know any better". In this case "primitive" underscores their primitive, superstitious and limited understanding of the universe.

They do not have to know any better and Christians are not claiming the Human authors did, see above for clarity.

OK. Let's start at the beginning, so to speak: Genesis chapter 1.

Sure.

Yahweh creates light and calls it "day" in Gen 1:5. However, he doesn't create the sun until "day" 4, in Gen 1:16. Scripture claims that he created the sun (or "greater light") to "rule the day". But the sun doesn't "rule the day". It rather defines the whole concept of "day", as well as "evening" and "morning" mentioned on days 1, 2 and 3, referenced respectively in Gen 1:5, 1:8, and 1:13. So how exactly were there "evenings" and "mornings" without a sun?

Your mistake is that you assume days are defined in Genesis by the Sun, which is obviously not the case. All you need in order to have a day is a source of light and a rotating Earth, which are both present on day 1. The Sun is created later and from then on rules the day.

Curiously, the sun isn't created until "day" 4, whatever "day" must mean since the sun, the very thing that defines what is a "day" wasn't created for the first three of them. Plants, which require sunlight, were created on "day" 3 in Gen 1:11-12. Now, plants, which thrive on photosynthesis, were created prior to the very thing that feeds them. You'd kind of think a designer would work the other way.

Plants just require light of a specific wavelength spectrum. Since we have light on day 1, plants would have been receiving light and been fine on day 3, also if plants did require sunlight (which they do not, hence why grow lights work) and not just light they’d surely be fine surviving without it for 24 hours from day 3 to 4. I hope this isn’t the best you’ve got.

But of course, we know the sun is older than our earth and plants came much later, after the earth cooled sufficiently. So "day 3" would need to come after "day 4" to even be accurate in terms of poetic metaphor.

You know no such thing, that’s your current scientific theory of origins. What we do know is that science is fallible, so no appeal to science can be used to prove that scripture is not infallible.

Yahweh also creates the stars in the sky in 1:16 almost as an afterthought. Primitive Hebrews didn't realize the stars were distant suns. Had they (or their god) known this, they would have had some of the stars created on "day 1", instead of "day 4". Not only are many stars older than our sun but they are much older than our earth. The earth was created on "day 3", Gen 1:10.

Again, more appeals to fallible science; that proves nothing in regards to the infallibility of scripture.

And all this doesn't touch upon the "firmament" created on day 2 (Gen 1:6). He calls this firmament "Heaven" (Gen 1:8). Interestingly enough, the ancient Hebrew word for "Heaven" and "sky" were one and the same. So the verse in Gen 1:8 could be accurately translated to "and God called the dome 'sky'." To the ancient Hebrews, the sky must have looked like a dome and, judging by scripture, they thought it was.

I am not sure what your objection is here, so you’ll have to be more specific about what error you believe this verse is committing.

Day 7: "I'm bushed. Gotta rest."

That’s not what the term rest means there, when a violinist “rests” during a piece of music it simply means they stop playing, it has nothing to do with being tired. Nice try though.

Now a poetic but accurate representation of the actual order of events might look like this:

Day 1: Time, space, matter

So at this point in time…time was created? Were time, space, and matter all created at the same….time? Talk about non-sense.