Flat-Earth, Slander, and Christian Ethics

[MForbes]

This thread:

 

[Apple Sky]

There was no capitalisation in the Septuagint Old Testament. It was a translators choice to capitalise the word.

Well I'm sticking with KJV, it is a name, get over it.

 

[MForbes]

Well I'm sticking with KJV, it is a name, get over it.

 

[Apple Sky]

View attachment 343297

What ever, it's my Bible, it's a red letter & it can also be crossed referenced.

 

[Apple Sky]

If the earth is a sphere, how do the waters bend ?

 

[MForbes]

What ever, it's my Bible, it's a red letter & it can also be crossed referenced.

 

[trophy33]

If the earth is a sphere, how do the waters bend ?

If the earth is flat, why is inflation so high?

 

[ViaCrucis]

In the Middle Ages 99% of people were uneducated and couldn’t even read & write. They also used urine and dung for medical remedies. And as far as “nothing that is obvious is true” that’s all you, did you forget about the wet tennis ball conversation we had?

The idea that the Middle Ages was a time of intense ignorance and darkness is a mythology we modern people crafted. The first use of the term "dark age" was in the 14th century, by an Italian scholar named Petrarch. Petrarch, as a man of what would come to be called the Renaissance, romanticized classical antiquity, and viewed it as a time of "light" as compared to the time after the Western Roman Empire fell which he saw as "dark". The light of classical antiquity returning in the Renaissance--we see it in the art of the period where people imitated classical antiquity, or the renewed interest in ancient Greco-Roman works such as those of Aristotle or Virgil.

As the Renaissance gave way to Early Modernity we see a rise in what we might call "secularism", in part a response to the horrors which Western Europe experienced during the wars of religion as conflicts between Catholics and Protestants intensified, and nations fought other nations. In the wake of that violence came two things: a distrust of organized religion and the rise of modern western philosophy, so we get figures such as Voltaire and Nietsche. We see new political philosophies, such as those by David Hume and John Locke. This new era of "enlightenement" dawned, one that increasingly saw religion as ignorant mythology, and began to view history through a lens of human progress--that human-driven advancement could lead the world forward to a better and more civilized era.

In the 19th century the middle ages became a source of romanticism, where we begin to see romantic stories of brave knights and damsels in distress. But also we how the shadow cast against that period had become a fixture of popular imagination: a period of stagnation, darkness, ignorance, of violence. This is also when we begin to see the first claims of how Christianity was pagan. We get people like James Frazier who conjectured that Christian practices were descended from paganism; we see people romanticize supposed surviving pagan cults that must have existed, suppressed though they were by the Church (which would emerge as the modern Neo-Pagan and Wiccan movements). Even among Christians we see works produced, like Alexander Hislop's "The Two Babylons" which sought to place the old Christianity via Catholicism as pagan--largely by making things up--and in which Enlightenment-era Protestantism (giving way to 19th century Liberalism and consequently the reaction against Liberalism in the form of Fundamentalism).

Historians, scholars, and academics of diverse fields would tell us that all these ideas are outdated, wrong, and misguided because they are built not on historical data, not on the reality of what the middle ages were actually like; but instead based on modernistic prejudices. In fact, such modernistic prejudices having been fueled, and helped fuel, Euro and white-centric views of the world, "the white man's burden"; viewing modernistic European civilization as the latest social evolution of civilization compared to the "savage" cultures of indigenous societies in those places Europeans were colonizing. Responsible for racist views and policies that can be felt throughout the Western World even today.

The fact of the matter is that the middle ages was not a period of darkness, but was a rich though complex period of history in Western Europe. Political and social structures rapidly changing--without the centralized authority of Rome, new bases of power established by migrant tribes--Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, etc--emerged. A complex web of social structures emerging between newly established secular bases of power, and also the emerging secular authority of the Bishop of Rome. The growing distance between a post-Roman West and the still-Roman (aka Byzantine) East.

This was also the time when we see the institution of the university arise. Codes of law established which would become foundational for the later Renaissance and Early Modern periods.

Now, the average peasant probably didn't know a lot of things. But, I mean, come on, let's look at how things are even today. Even in the 21st century our education systems aren't doing that great if we are on here having to debate the shape of the earth with people.

People in the middle ages, at least anyone with any amount of education or who cared about such things, knew the earth was round. The earth was frequently depicted as a globe in this period.

When George Bernard Shaw said what he said, he was speaking as a prejudiced man of the Enlightenment who viewed the past as a time of dark ignorance--the very mythology I was describing above.

It's the same thing as how so many people have grown up thinking that Columbus sailed west from Spain to "prove the earth was round". But everyone in the Spanish court knew the earth was round, even semi-educated person, even regular common folk knew this. And they knew this a thousand years before Columbus. The ancient Greeks knew this nearly two thousand years before Columbus.

But we like our myths of human progress. And so we vilify the past, and praise ourselves as the pinnacle of human civilization. Though we shouldn't, all such ideas should have died at Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Because in one unglorious world-wide conflict we proved to ourselves that we modern human beings are brutes and savages, who for all our technological prowess will still use all of our power and knowledge to commit the darkest evils to ever happen on this whole planet. The horrors we committed in the 20th century would make men like Atilla the Hun and Ghengis Khan blush.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Apple Sky]

So come you guy's, how does water bend ?

 

[ViaCrucis]

What ever, it's my Bible, it's a red letter & it can also be crossed referenced.

And if you really cared about what the Bible said, you'd know that no translation is perfect. Which is why we have to often see what was originally written to get a better understanding.

Translations are good, but there's an Italian proverb: traduttore, traditore. It means "the translator is a traitor". Translations are, by their very nature, imperfect.

Now, someone who loves Scripture and cares about what it says and means would care about the source text of a translation. Those who say "I have my translation and that's all I need" don't care about the Bible, nor do they care about truth--what they treasure most of all is themselves and their private and personal opinions.

It's the same reason why those guys in ten thousand dollar suits in their mega churches get in front of a camera and tell millions of people that they are anointed by God and that we should all give them money so they can by their next megayacht or private jet plane.

{pictured above: totally real pastor and not evil huckster, Kenneth Copeland]

-CryptoLutheran

 

[MForbes]

If the earth is a sphere, how do the waters bend ?

Only squirrels can do that. They can also control lightning:

 

[trophy33]

So come you guy's, how does water bend ?

Water does not bend, its a liquid.

 

[Apple Sky]

Water does not bend, its a liquid.

So what does water do when it's in a container ? And why do we call it sea level ?

 

[trophy33]

So what does water do when it's in a container ?

Fills it.

And why do we call it sea level ?

We dont. Water in a container is not called sea level.

 

[MForbes]

So what does water do when it's in a container ? And why do we call it sea level ?

You just love rabbit holes, don't you Alice?

 

[Apple Sky]

Fills it.


We dont. Water in a container is not called sea level.

I know this, they were two separate questions

 

[trophy33]

Well I'm sticking with KJV, it is a name, get over it.

Thats fanatism, not truth seeking.

 

[Apple Sky]

You just love rabbit holes, don't you Alice?

Yes Tweedledum.

 

[MForbes]

Alice wants to know why we call it sea level, because we "globalists" think the earth is a sphere. Therefore, in her eyes, we shouldn't call the sea "level".

Please explain to Alice that there are different meanings in the word "level".

 

[MForbes]

Yes Tweedledum.

Nope. Tweedledum is one of your FE companions down that rabbit hole in wonderland.