[_ Old Earth _] DATING METHODS SHOWING A YOUNG EARTH

[Featherbop]

uh Quath, look at Rev. 1:7 again.

It says that every eye will see him, it deosn't say "every eye will see him at the same time."

 

[Quath]

uh Quath, look at Rev. 1:7 again.

It says that every eye will see him, it deosn't say "every eye will see him at the same time."

Yeah, I will even give you that the whole world could see him at the same time with TVs. However, I don't think the other explanations are as easily explained away. You really have to twist their meaning to make them physically possible.

Quath

 

[Barabbas]

Hi Quath,
First of all let me say that you did NOT answer my question, but thanks for trying. I still hope someone can point out the Flat Earth Scripture to me. Naw, just kidding, I know there isn't one.
Using a vision and various Scriptures to try to point out some kind of justification does not work, but perhaps the Scriptures you used were used historically to make that point. From what I can tell, the Scriptures speak of a spherical Earth, that "wobbles and teeters". Sounds a little like polar progression to me. This is something the Inca knew about also, but I wonder how. They didn't have telescopes either. Yet they could calculate days of the year and predict eclipses (which show the curvature of the Earth) So I would quess that ancient cultures DID know the Earth was spherical. Just a guess.
I think that what goes on in a lot of Scripture is the writer using the "language of the day", something that most are aware of to relay a concept. Nothing wrong with that.
Now you did mention something that made me curious, the "science known at the time" part. Sorry, I don't know how to move posts around.
Have you considered the impact of Job 38:31 concerning Orion and the Pleiades. The truth of that Scripture could not have been proven until the invention of the telescope, thousands of years later. It is an impressive bit of science. Let me know what you think.
Yol Bolsun.

 

[ThinkerMan]

Barabbas:

A telescope isn't necessary to discern polar progression. It is obvious just from sitting out all night (one night) that all the constellations revolve around Polaris (north star).

The progression takes about 26,000 years, so over the course of a few hundred years the progression could be quite noticable. The constellations would simple revolve around a different star then the one they were told about. As it keeps moving, ancients were able to figure out the "wobble"

In a couple hundred years, Polaris will be a little known, hard to find star of little consequence.

 

[Quath]

Have you considered the impact of Job 38:31 concerning Orion and the Pleiades. The truth of that Scripture could not have been proven until the invention of the telescope, thousands of years later. It is an impressive bit of science. Let me know what you think.
Yol Bolsun.

I have heard two things about this. The first is that it is unknown if the Hebrew words really refer to that constellation (Orion is a Greek god). The other is that it could just be a plain ole metaphor. It it were Orion, they could think the stars were part of a "belt" or "chains" like the ancients thought the constellations represented people.

Most of this science stuff come sup in hindsight. That is the same way Nostradamus worked as well. In hindsight, it is easy to find patterns. However, noone that read the Bible ever came up with new science that was known at the time. It is just in hindsight, people can try to make such a correlation.

Quath

 

[Barbarian]

Yes, before the earliest example of scripture we have, the ancient Greeks had figured out that the Earth was a sphere. Eratosthenes even computed how big it was, hundreds of years before Christ.

 

[Quath]

I looked up the flat earth stuff about a year ago. So I refreshed myself from Wikpedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_earth.

Basically, 240 BCE, it was shown that the Earth was a sphere and the radius was determined to within 2% of its present day value. Those Greeks were amazing. In another book I read, the author shows that there was little science from the ancient Greeks until the Renaissance.

Anyway, Christianity was slow to give up the idea of flat Earth. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

It is certain that several Christian writers explicitly argued against the spherical Earth. Lactantius (245-325) calls it "folly" because people on a sphere would fall down; Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386) saw Earth as a firmament floating on water; Saint John Chrysostom (344-408) saw a spherical Earth as contradictory to scripture; Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408) and Diodorus of Tarsus (d. 394) argued for a flat Earth; and Cosmas Indicopleustes (547) called Earth "a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four seas" in his Christian Topography, where the Covenant Ark was meant to represent the whole universe. There are relatively few historical records of the period between 600 and 1000 for either spherical or flat-Earth thinking (owning to the general scarcity of records from that time). Saint Basil (329-379) argued that knowledge about Earth's shape was irrelevant.

I believe when I researched this before, that it was debated among Christians. However, the threat of blasphemy kept most people from too strong of a discussion. I think I remember a 4th century monk being exiled to a small island in punishment for saying that Mary was no longer a virgin after giving birth. So sometimes, it seemed wiser to just go with the flow and not question.

Quath

 

[Barbarian]

Learning pretty much collapsed in most of Europe in the dark ages. However, in Ireland, Byzantium, and in parts of Italy, educated people kept the flame alive.

But the Church never questioned that the Earth was round. It was a given before the time of Christ.

Not to say that some people didn't have their own opinions, of course. Most of us are taught that Columbus' critics said the Earth was flat. They said no such thing.

 

[Barabbas]

Hi again,
I have to make a correction on an earlier statement I made, someone should have caught it, but I meant to say the Mayan culture, not the Inca. Duh, on my part. Then again, maybe you guys were being too polite to the newbie. Thanks.
I'm not an expert on astronomy so I cannot sit out all night and tell polar progression about anything with my telescope or not. Also, it seems fascinating that the ancients could tell how many days there were in a year or predict eclipses. I have a hard time imagining that the ancient cultures of the Egyptians, Chaldeans (magi or wisemen), Maya, or Chinese believed in a flat Earth. Maybe they did, but with their predictable abilites concerning eclipses, a spherical Earth would have been well known. When I use my telescope at night, looking at the moon or planets, I can't tell the days of the year, or anything of that magnitude (pardon my pun). I just enjoy the scenary. Hopefully, I'll learn much more with time.
It is known that Magellan used a CHART to navigate around the Earth. Hmmm, makes me wonder where he got it from, or better yet, what did others of his ilk know? Seems like they would logically believe in a spherical Earth. Columbus also. I think the only confusion explorers had was in the actual SIZE of the Earth. Spherical was not the question. Yes, Europe was in the Dark Ages and there was only ONE church at that time. As a budding Historicist, I have my ideas about that, but then that is another story.

Now, I posed a question to Quath concerning Orion and the Pleiades and their usage and impact from Job 38:31 when he mentioned "current science". I think this was used to illustrate that Scripture was not able to predict, or postulate outside of Earthly wisdom or local knowledge of the time. Maybe I'm following that correctly. Anyway, I realized later that Job 38:31 may need its own post to further explain its impact, especially since science has proved the accuracy of Job thousands of years after it was written.
I have so much to learn.
Yol Bolsun.

 

[Quath]

I have to make a correction on an earlier statement I made, someone should have caught it, but I meant to say the Mayan culture, not the Inca. Duh, on my part. Then again, maybe you guys were being too polite to the newbie. Thanks.

Heh. I didn't catch it, so it slipped past me.

I'm not an expert on astronomy so I cannot sit out all night and tell polar progression about anything with my telescope or not. Also, it seems fascinating that the ancients could tell how many days there were in a year or predict eclipses.

Yeah, I read a book called "The Scientsists" which tells the history of science starting with Copernicus and alludes back to the Greeks. Basically, the Greeks did such a good job that people say them as the great ancients. So it actually took some self esteem for people to ever challenge the measurements of the ancients. It all started with people wanting to do some minor changes to some of the Greek calculations. That in turned showed some problems that eventually started science back up again.

It is known that Magellan used a CHART to navigate around the Earth. Hmmm, makes me wonder where he got it from, or better yet, what did others of his ilk know? Seems like they would logically believe in a spherical Earth. Columbus also. I think the only confusion explorers had was in the actual SIZE of the Earth. Spherical was not the question. Yes, Europe was in the Dark Ages and there was only ONE church at that time. As a budding Historicist, I have my ideas about that, but then that is another story.

One of the biggest problems of sea navigators was having a clock that could work on a ship. So they tried many things from studying Earth's magnetic field to trying to find better clocks.

Now, I posed a question to Quath concerning Orion and the Pleiades and their usage and impact from Job 38:31 when he mentioned "current science". I think this was used to illustrate that Scripture was not able to predict, or postulate outside of Earthly wisdom or local knowledge of the time. Maybe I'm following that correctly. Anyway, I realized later that Job 38:31 may need its own post to further explain its impact, especially since science has proved the accuracy of Job thousands of years after it was written.

Maybe this does deserve its own thread. From what I have seen, the reference is quite vague.

The ancient view was that there was a dome over the Earth and the Earth was flat. The top of the dome was a little flattened and that is where the gods hung out. Yaweh was just one of the gods at first until a priest found a scroll that said that only Yaweh should be worshipped. But the gods or Yaweh would sit on the dome and open a window to let rain, snow and sleet fall down to the Earth. Stars were either holes or small dots that moved across the surface of this firmament. You can see some of this in Genesis 1:

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And 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. And God called the firmament Heaven.

The two waters were the rain water and the ocean/lake waters.

Even Job 38:22 (a few versus earlier supports this idea): Hast thou entered the treasuries of the snow, Or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,

Around the time of Galileo, people had seen more planets and figured that 6 was a magic number. Many believed that the solar system was held in place by crystals and were moved by angels. Bruno (more heretic than a real scientist) said that Jesus was Egyptian. I guess he saw the stories of Horus and saw the similarities to the NT. So he really promoted the idea tha the sun was the center since it fit in with the Egyptian idea of the sun god. The Catholic Church didn't care at first about the Copernicus model (even though the Lutherns who published made sure to say it was a model and not reality). However, a true heretic promoting a scientific idea had to be stopped. Unfortunately, they wanted to stop the idea as well. Whoah, big digression there.

Basically, when people read Job, noone thought "wow.. these must be a lot of stars moving together and bound by a force." So it is more likely some metaphor.

Besides, if for some reason there was some great burst of knowledge by Job writing this, it is not appearent anywhere else in the Bible. It is very easy to twist metaphors to mean something physical when they did not mean that. It is also very easy to extrapolate what the author meant. For example in Job 38:24: By what way is the light parted, Or the east wind scattered upon the earth?, somone could say that this predicts the quantum mechanical nature of light in that it can part to give forth both matter and antimatter. However, that is a far stretch.

I don't want to scare you off from posting. You may have a lot to learn, but so do the rest of us. In a way, we are all learning together. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts.

Quath

 

[Barabbas]

Hi folks,
I'll be going to the Gulf Coast for a short vacation and next week I'm harvesting my honey, so I'll be quite busy. Since what we've been tossing around seems to be a little off topic, I've thought it best to start another post. I'm going to put it in Apologetics and you can see what you think. Its about Job 38:31 and its scientific relevance. I read about it many years ago, but had not thought about it till I was reminded of it in a discussion on this site.
I'll go ahead and put it up and see you when I see you.
Yol Bolsun.