"You're making an arbitrary distinction - desciptions of the earth vs. descriptions of events."
I don't think it's arbitrary...imagine if "He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble. (Job 9:6)" was "He shook the earth from its place and made its pillars tremble". I think there's a difference. In terms of language, the two sentences are trying to achieve different things. The first one is written to make a point that is quite unrelated to the structure of the earth. The second one is trying to tell us about an event; something that happened to the earth, and the structure of it immediately becomes important.
The only difference is that the second is past tense. Both are events.
If you really wanna get that picky, look at 1 Samuel 2:8:
He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For
the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and
on them he has set the world.
It's describing a past event. You can't argue here.
"The only reason you reject cosmology from the Bible is that there is "clear scientific evidence" to the contrary."
When the Bible talks about a cosmological event, such as God creating the world, I accept it. For example, when it says "in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth", I take it as it is. But when the Bible talks about cosmology as a metaphor to make a point about something else, like in Job 9:6, then I take it symbolically, because it's meant to be symbolic.
Again, who's to say it's a metaphor? The ancient Hebrews thought it was literal (or more specifically, they didn't care since the moral of the story was more important than the details). Without scientific knowledge, you wouldn't know. You're letting science influence your interpretation of scripture. The creation account could be just as metaphorical, but get the same basic message across - God created the universe.
"You accept those things literally which you see as being in tune with reality. That's why you reject geocentrism."
Well yes, everyone knows now that the earth is not the center of the universe, but even if science had never told us that, there wouldn't have been much cause to believe it because the Bible doesn't tell us that either.
The Bible strongly implies it. References to pillars, the Earth standing firm, and the sun and moon stopping their movement make much more sense in a geocentric system, and the Bible was written with this cosmology in mind. The Church had a reason for adhering to geocentrism - it seemed obvious given the
scriptural references.
I used to be an agnostic, and stories of a Man who came back from the dead and walked on water didn't seem very 'in tune with reality'. I had to accept it on faith, or not at all. Now I feel convinced it's the truth, but I wasn't convinced back then. It's a similar case with the rest of the Bible...I don't want to reject it just because it doesn't fit my limited perception of "reality", which is mostly based on my own experience and what others have told me.
That's the thing - rejecting a strictly literal interpretation is not rejecting the Bible. It's really a modern concept - something can't be true unless it's literally true. For the ancient Hebrews, the moral or lesson of a story was more important than the detail. Obviously you can't throw everything out - without the Resurrection we're wasting our time, but a literal interpretation of things like the flood adds no moral weight to the Bible and requires constant mental gymnastics.
edit: something I've found on 'the earth not moving':
http://creationwiki.org/Bible_says_the_sun_goes_around_the_earth
Maybe it's a similar case with Job 9:6, etc?
Maybe we should all just learn Greek and Hebrew?
I've found most of those arguments to be weak. The intended meaning was literal since the Hebrews were geocentric. It'd be like saying Genesis 1:11 is really referring to abiogenesis when it speaks of the ground producing plants. It's much easier to just dump the literal meaning altogether. Let science speak on what God's created. Let the Bible speak on his message to mankind.
