Flat Earth

[TorchDude]

Yes, there are some people, including Christians, that believe the earth is flat. They attribute much of science's findings to government lies and coverups. Just curious if anyone here actually believes these things.

Ive heard the Bible indicates a flat earth, but I don't see that as being true, even when I look at the verses in question.

There are also claims that the Bible is the first book to declare a sphere earth. I have found this inconclusive, the word used is more like circle than sphere but that doesn't mean they believed in a flat or round earth necessarily.

 

[jereth]

Does the BIble teach a flat earth? No.

Does the Bible use the language of a flat earth to communicate with ancient people who assumed a flat earth? Yes, it seems so.

 

[RealityCheck]

Yes, there are some people, including Christians, that believe the earth is flat. They attribute much of science's findings to government lies and coverups. Just curious if anyone here actually believes these things.

Ive heard the Bible indicates a flat earth, but I don't see that as being true, even when I look at the verses in question.

There are also claims that the Bible is the first book to declare a sphere earth. I have found this inconclusive, the word used is more like circle than sphere but that doesn't mean they believed in a flat or round earth necessarily.

The Bible, so far as I know, doesn't say "flat" or "spherical" or even "round". The creation story simply states that at the beginning there was "heaven" and "earth" and there is no story about how those were created - they just were created prior to the "six day creation" story. The important key here is heavens and earth - the division of the observable world into "where people live" and "what's above us". That is as far as ancient writers could conceive. If you look at the creation story, you'll see that the "heavens" are viewed as a dome arching over the earth, and this is an implication of a "flat earth" - that is, our land/oceans are a flat surface, the sky a solid dome over it. A logical way of looking at things three or four thousand years ago. However, even if you interpret the creation story as "spherical earth" with heaven above the earth, you still arrive at one view that is consistent in the Bible - the concept that the earth rests at the center of the created universe, with the sun, moon, and stars revolving around the earth, and God's heaven somewhere above and beyond the dome of the stars. This, of course, is not how the vast majority of people understand the earth and its place in the universe today.

 

[chaoschristian]

As jereth noted, scripture does not teach for a flat earth, so much as the language useage seems to indicated an assumption of a flat earth.

Think of it this way, the authors of scripture also knew that the sky was blue, yet there is nothing in scripture that would indicate this one way or the other. Yet, just as I do, I am sure that you visualize a blue sky when you read the stories of scripture and form mental pictures of them in your mind (assuming that you form mental pictures of them in your mind).

The notion that the earth was flat was such an obvious conclusion to ANE culture that it didn't bear mentioning, just as saying the sky is blue doesn't bear mentioning.

And here, for another reprisal is this nifty diagram:

 

[jereth]

And here, for another reprisal is this nifty diagram:

That's a great picture. Where did you get it from?

 

[chaoschristian]

That's a great picture. Where did you get it from?

I forget. I know I found it by Googling 'hebrew cosmology'

All credit goes to Gluadys though as she is the first one that I've seen post this.

But the need for it seems to keep coming up, so I search it out a while ago and filed it away.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

the authors of scripture also knew that the sky was blue,

is the sky blue?
no, it appears blue because of the difference in how the different frequencies of light scatter in the upper atmosphere.

YECists tend to explain these things in terms of "language of appearances", something that looks like a naive, prescientific common sense viewpoint. The big problem is that it is not how we view the world anymore, furthermore the more scientific education you have, the more you see that science is not common sensical.

How to compare the two languages: religion and theology, or even if they are commensurate? This is the problem of creation and evolution.

so how do you line up the Bible's usage of common sense and the modern notions of science, in particular, the sky is not blue, it appears blue.

 

[jereth]

is the sky blue?
no, it appears blue because of the difference in how the different frequencies of light scatter in the upper atmosphere.

You want to split hairs, eh?

Scientifically, there is no such thing as "sky". "Sky" is simply a human perception of "what I see when I look up". Sky does not correspond to any scientific reality.

Sky != atmosphere
Sky != interplanetary space
Sky != interstellar space
Sky != intergalactic space

Sky is all of the above and none of the above.


P.S. has anyone heard of olber's paradox?

 

[shernren]

has anyone heard of olber's paradox?

Yeah, I have, the others should Google it I've never gotten why it's called a paradox though, it isn't self-referentially false the way other paradoxes are.

I think the "language of appearance" idea is interesting, but if creationists really explored it, I think they would eventually arrive at a more mythical understanding of Genesis. That Genesis 1 isn't a "how", it's a "why", and the proto / pre / a-scientific language used (what a mess of prefixes!) indicates it. For example, this is my writeup on how the "language of appearance" argument undermines the creationist idea of separate fixed kinds: http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=24026139&postcount=384

 

[rmwilliamsll]

You want to split hairs, eh?

Scientifically, there is no such thing as "sky". "Sky" is simply a human perception of "what I see when I look up". Sky does not correspond to any scientific reality.

Sky != atmosphere
Sky != interplanetary space
Sky != interstellar space
Sky != intergalactic space

Sky is all of the above and none of the above.


P.S. has anyone heard of olber's paradox?

i dont see any reason not to define the sky as the atmosphere. we speak of birds and planes flying in the sky. we speak of the clouds in the sky. atmosphere seems a decent way to look at it.

 

[shernren]

i dont see any reason not to define the sky as the atmosphere. we speak of birds and planes flying in the sky. we speak of the clouds in the sky. atmosphere seems a decent way to look at it.

But in colloquial, phenomenological, ascientific use, we also speak of the moon in the sky, the sun in the sky, and stars in the sky. It is hard to establish a concrete one-to-one correspondence between sky and atmosphere without invoking the language of appearance argument.

 

[chaoschristian]

Why do some folks lift their hands and faces skyward, upward, towards the heavens when praising God?

 

[jereth]

i dont see any reason not to define the sky as the atmosphere. we speak of birds and planes flying in the sky. we speak of the clouds in the sky. atmosphere seems a decent way to look at it.

Heh heh, I was just mucking around, mate

I really liked what you said in your post... so I just took it further!

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Why do some folks lift their hands and faces skyward, upward, towards the heavens when praising God?

Because various people/messengers have ascended to/descended from heaven.

 

[faithful one]

There are also claims that the Bible is the first book to declare a sphere earth.....

What? How can you believe such heresy; .... the earth clearly must be a square !

Read Rev. 7:1 "And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth..."

Square right? er,... rectangle?

Ummm; Well, I guess it could also be a three sided pyramid. he, he.

 

[RealityCheck]

Because various people/messengers have ascended to/descended from heaven.

This is one of the problems of clinging to a Biblical view of the world in an age when we have discovered and learned far more than people 2000 years ago did, and we now have a much different understanding of the earth and the universe now.

The whole idea behind "ascend" and "descend" is physical - and that's how it was understood Biblically. If Elijah "ascended" to heaven, the idea was he was physically lifted off the earth and went up into heaven. It's not metaphorical or symbolic - literally, it was believed it happened physically. That's because heaven was understood to be physically resting over the physical dome of the sky, so heaven had a physical location into which Elijah could have ascended. Same with descriptions of Jesus "descending from the clouds". Literally, the writer of Revelations believed that Jesus was physically "above the clouds" and when he returned, he would physically come down through the clouds!

Now, of course, it's nearly impossible to actually believe that this is physically correct any longer, because of how we understand the universe.

Ancients believed the earth to be at the center of the whole universe - which, to them, was a very limited realm indeed. But we now know the earth is one planet orbitting the sun, in a galaxy of billions of other stars, in a group of galaxies much like other galaxies throughout the universe. So where is heaven if it is a physical place? It can't be right around the earth. If so, God is only the God of earth, not of the universe. Likewise, we have sent planes and spaceships through the outer limits of our stratosphere, and nowhere have we found the physical heaven believed in by the ancients.

So in order to retain your belief in "ascending and descending from heaven", you have to bend the original meaning of the Biblical text and believe it is metaphorical and symbolic, not physical.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

This is one of the problems of clinging to a Biblical view of the world in an age when we have discovered and learned far more than people 2000 years ago did, and we now have a much different understanding of the earth and the universe now.
[]
Now, of course, it's nearly impossible to actually believe that this is physically correct any longer, because of how we understand the universe.

To quote from my response to Spong's 8th thesis:

8. The story of the ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

Do Hell, Earth, and Heaven make up a universe that is three-tiered in the normal physical space we inhabit?

No, of course not.

Does this mean that our Christ Jesus was not taken up into the sky before going to Heaven?

No, of course not.

 

[RealityCheck]

Do Hell, Earth, and Heaven make up a universe that is three-tiered in the normal physical space we inhabit?

No, of course not.

Does this mean that our Christ Jesus was not taken up into the sky before going to Heaven?

No, of course not.

Then you have to ask the question: why was Jesus taken into the sky in the first place?

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Then you have to ask the question: why was Jesus taken into the sky in the first place?

To reinforce the idea that heaven is a "higher" place than earth?

To gain velocity needed for the jump into hyperspace?

To protect/prevent the disciples from seeing into heaven?

For the same general reason GUIs use transitions, so their mind could process the information, that he went some place, he didn't simply disappear?

I dunno.

Why does it matter?

 

[RealityCheck]

To reinforce the idea that heaven is a "higher" place than earth?

To gain velocity needed for the jump into hyperspace?

To protect/prevent the disciples from seeing into heaven?

For the same general reason GUIs use transitions, so their mind could process the information, that he went some place, he didn't simply disappear?

I dunno.

Why does it matter?

Good question. Why does any part of the Bible matter?

I mean, if this one little passage about "ascending into heaven" is so insignificant that you can say "why does it matter", then really you can apply that to any part of the Bible. For example, why does it matter whether Mary Magdalene went to the tomb alone, or with two other women, or with two completely different women, depending on which Gospel you read? Why does it matter whether Judas hanged himself or disemboweled himself? Why does it matter whether Jesus remained on the earth for a few days before his ascent (Luke), or remained on earth for 40 days before his ascent (Acts)? Why does it matter whether the mark of the beast is the number 666 or 616, depending on how you translate your Greek and Latin?

In truth, I'd submit that a lot of that doesn't matter at all but not for your reason, which I interpret as "It's one of God's mysteries that I'll just never know about." My reason is, it doesn't matter because a literal reading of the Bible is the wrong place to start to begin with.