NASA and the missing day

[Mister Agenda]

Which in itself makes them extremely problematic as reliable sources.

Why, many sources that were told later or copies of lost originals are accepted as historical fact, if it's good for what some will accept it should be acceptable for the rest, unless there's proof to the contrary.

Defies the laws of physics and leaves no physical evidence is proof to the contrary. No miracles are accepted as historical fact. We don't accept as historical fact that some jealous Greek gods started the Trojan War, for instance.

I'm not saying people aren't passing down stories they heard. I'm saying it's not reasonable to make much of stories that were passed on orally for centuries before being recorded and which even then don't have the details we would need to establish that they are talking about the same thing.

We have details, the writings denote that the long day occurred during the year of the Seven Rabits, this is the same time when the scriptures say the long day occurred.

Really? What year was the year of the Seven Rabbits? How do you know? The Olmecs didn't even have a calendar in 1400 BCE.

There's no way the ones who wrote the Mexican report could have known what was recorded in the scriptures.

And there's no evidence the two events both happened and are connected unless you can first show there's a good reason to believe they happened in the same year. No one today actually knows the corresponding BCE date for 'The Year of the Seven Rabbits', because in the 500 or so years that would have to be between the story and them inventing a calendar, it's unlikely even the Olmecs would still know what year that really was.

As neither of us are Egyptologists to the best of my knowledge, I don't think either of us can say either way, which means a figure of speech can't be reasonably ruled out, especially if the alternative is that the sun literally 'stood still in the sky' for hours.

Seeing how this was recorded in stone I seriously doubt the priest is going to waste effort to chisel out a term denoting he was having a bad day, especially knowing that trivial stuff would wear down his copper chisel and it would need to be reworked, a lot more difficult than sharpening a pencil.

I have to call shenanigans. You're claiming Egyptians didn't use figures of speech. Unless you've got credentials you're keeping to yourself, you don't have the Egyptogogist chops to make that call. It's not a waste of effort if you know what he means, as presumably any of his contemporaries would.

If the religion you believe didn't say this happened, would you buy it for a second? Would you hear about this priest's accounts and immediately jump to 'wow, that priest must have really seen the sun standing still in the sky for hours!'?

It would depend on what was presented, I believe many things that are not in the scriptures, they present only a history of a small area. I'm not saying we have absolute proof but, if one takes the written evidence and considers the sum all of it presents, I believe we have a reasonable amount to consider that this could indeed be factual.

Every bit of it is hearsay, and of uncertain interpretation and provinence. And it would have been the most significant astronomical event ever recorded at a time when the Egyptians, Chinese, and Babylonians were known to be keeping records of such events, and it's in exactly those records that no such event is ever mentioned. It WOULD give me pause if we discovered a record of an astronomical observation between 1400 and 1300 BCE that was confirmed by the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Chinese. There would probably be enough information to nearly pinpoint the day, too.

'Some priest mentioned a long day, which day we don't know, and why he called it a long day we do not know' does not give me pause. I'm not against ancient astronomical observations. We've discovered things by paying attention to them. But we have not discovered a day the sun stood still.

I know it's hard for an unbeliever to think such a thing could happen, it would indeed be a reason to consider at least some of scripture to be true.

I do consider at least some of the scripture to be true. I also consider some of the scripture to be tall tales or exaggeration or miscommunication or propaganda or symbolic. I use the same standards to evaluate what the Bible says as I would any other ancient text that purports to be historical. Real historical corroboration doesn't require you to grasp at straws to connect the dots.

They are phenomena for which there is evidence, which is how we know of them. It's the explanation for the phenomena that requires more evidence to arrive at conclusively. Importantly, science isn't claiming it has an explanation for these things it can't explain.

There could be dark energy and matter, it will be interesting to find out what's going on, but there's no proof and so even with evidence of something it doesn't mean it's either or one of the above.

GC, Dark Energy and Dark Matter are the labels applied to what is causing the observed effects. Whatever those causes are, they are what Dark Energy and Dark Matter are. Maybe we'll change the names or maybe these will stick and continue to cause confusion in literal-minded people for many years to come; but unless you believe in cosmic events happening without a cause, Dark Energy and Dark Matter are completely proven to exist. You're trying too hard to drag science down to the same level of 'whatever sounds plausible to me' that you're using with ancient stories. It really isn't the same thing at all.

[hide]

At least you are willing to consider the possiblity that you might be wrong, which is more than some people can do. It speaks well of you.

No I believe what the scriptures say, but with the things stated about Velikovsky I have doubts about his integrity. However Newton addressed the same thing and as far as I know no one has disputed his claim.

Newton hasn't been demonstrated to have made such a claim, but if he did, I dispute it. I can't find anything indicating that Newton believed Venus split from Jupiter and settled in its current orbit after flying around for a bit. If he did, should that trump the 250 more years of accumulated knowledge about astronomy we have now than he did? We've learned a few things since the 16-1700s.

Newton says it's not physically impossible, he showed how it could have happened, I know he was smarter than I am and I suppose everyone else here.

Showed when, where, how? You're being very vague. And a high school graduate of today should have a better understanding of the solar system than a brilliant scientist who has been dead almost 300 years. It's not always a matter of who is smarter, GC. Being smart doesn't actually automatically make someone right, especially if they have insufficient information. No famous smart scientist was right about everything.

What God hypothetically could do is a crazy standard for believing what he did do. What crackpot hypothesis do you NOT believe with that as your standard? If you can't say, given God, that there's ANYTHING that sounds too silly for God to have done, you're saying you believe in a God that does silly things;..... Do you really think God is whimsical, GC?

God does only things with purpose, who He is rules out whimsical.

Maybe you should take that into account when deciding to believe what God has done, especially when it comes from an extra-biblical source. Christian fundamentalism has no requirement that you be a Velikovskyist.

What God does, is what brings glory to His name and that is exactly what was going on in this event, whether by an asteroid or by His power God stopped the rotation of the earth. So you see I believe that things like a floating ax head are not crazy or silly, they have purpose. God does those things that no one else can claim to do and even if they did they couldn't do such things.

Even if the Egyptians and Chaldeans and Chinese confirmed that this event actually happened, and it really did, one thing I guarantee they would not have concluded is that the Hebrew God was behind it. They would have credited it to their own particular and varioius gods or other supertstitious explanations. If your religion's God wants the 'glory', he should sign his work.

Again God through nature proves himself if only people will listen.

As a rule of thumb from my observations, God proves himself only to people who already believe. Just like Ganesh and Amaterasu.

You should watch, you'll have to purchase it, the video "The Star of Bethlehem," and see how God looked down through the coming history and worked a wonder with what He created to give signs about a birth and a death, signs using the natural movement of the stars and planets. If you do not believe there is something in it to consider I'll buy the video from you.

GC

I appreciate the offer, GC, but if the star was proven to be real, an obscure video would not be the only place I could find that out. There are plenty of possible candidates: a comet, Uranus, a nova, or whatever. The problem is that none of them are so rare that anyone should be amazed that an unusual astronomical event could have happened between 10 and 1 BCE. You'll find such things in most given ten year periods.

Now if whatever it was actually hovered over Bethlehem, sort of 'pointing it out' THAT would be really weird and noteworthy. Yet even in the Gospels, it's only mentioned by Matthew.

In addition, Jesus is hardly the only famous person whose birth was supposedly accompanied by astronomical wonders. It's a pretty common trope, around long before the Bethlehem story, and God wasn't being very original if he jumped on that bandwagon.

In order to believe this story is literally true, you have to believe it before subjecting it to critical scrutiny. That's backwards. You won't get there through science, which will only get you as far as 'yep, stuff was happening in the sky back then, just like always'.