Is the Bible reliable?

[Root of Jesse]

I have to second all of this - rejecting the human element in climate change has nothing to do with being a Christian, and I have to say it seems to have almost everything to do with being an American.

Now - I do think in a very backwards way this is a problem caused by science - it is related in part to the lack of real independent voices in science, and the way science is used in public policy discussions and decisions - it doesn't show itself to be evidence based, to be neutral, or to come to the most rational compromise solutions. People don't feel that they can actually trust it.

Climate change however has a pretty unprecedented level of agreement, and I think what is more to the point is that it is not really a supposition at this point. We can see it, it is here, people are living with it every day. Ships getting through the Northwest Passage, no algae bloom in the North Atlantic this year - very serious stuff.

And yet the ice pack in the Artic is bigger than ever, as is the ice sheet of Antarctica.
And I am not trying to suggest that we shouldn't conserve resources, as long as you understand that this means consume conservatively.
But Climate Change is what God intended, and Mankind cannot do anything to shift it one way or another, with any permanency. To think that Mankind can do this is to say that we're as powerful as God.

 

[Root of Jesse]

If you drink that red grape juice every passover and once again you are celebrating the passover with the same red grape juice that is nowhere near the viscosity of blood - well . and no sign at all that the person you are having dinner with - has a broken body or shed blood -- then when he says that the bread in your hand is his broken body and the grape juice in your cup is his spilt blood... you just "might" think he means it symbolically.

Especially since he hammered you not too long ago when you failed to get the reference to bread as the teaching of religious leaders opposed to the Gospel.

Just maybe...

Just maybe you would have figured that out...

you say no... But I think you would have.

in Christ,

Bob

Hey, Bob, a question: What were the requirements of the Hebrews for the first Passover? Didn't they have to have a spotless lamb, roasted with bitter herbs, and consumed?
So if Christ's sacrifice was the true Passover, and he's the Lamb of God, didn't he have to provide himself for consumption?

 

[AmericanChristian91]

But Climate Change is what God intended, and Mankind cannot do anything to shift it one way or another, with any permanency. To think that Mankind can do this is to say that we're as powerful as God.

Not it does not mean we are as powerful as God, we after all, do not have the ability to create a planet, let alone, an entire universe.

What it does mean, is that apart of Man's freedom/free will, is having the ability to screw ourselves (make bad decisions resulting in loss of life), other life forms (many animal species have gone extinct because of us), and even this planet.

You remind me of someone denying that Nuclear War is a possibilty because the result would lead to parts of human civilization being destroyed, and parts of the world being heavily damaged, and this damage to the world is something God will not allow because humans do not have that much power over of the world, etc.

One of the things Climate Change has in common with Nuclear War (and other not as destructive forms of War) is that it can bring damage to human civilization and the natural world. If we can already cause massive damage because of war, why not through Climate Change?

And remember, to accept that humans are helping to cause Climate Change, does not mean we are the sole causer (there are natural reasons as well), nor does it mean we can fix and remove all climate change (we can not). But we can try to lessen its damaging effects (similar to how some people already try to fix parts of the natural world that Man has hurt not climate change related, such as animal/plant life, or lessening the damage we do to ourselves). And there is nothing wrong with wanting to try, and we are not playing God in trying to do so.

 

[BobRyan]

In other words, this is your opinion.
I have not seen anything in this entire thread that says that the Genesis accounts aren't historical.

Then you are not reading James Barr's statements, or Gluadys' or MC's all of them deny the historicity of the Bible in Gen 1-2.

MC' wants to make it all poetry so there is no historicity to defend - and Gluady knows better and so does James Barr (And so do many Christian Hebrew scholars) not to mention Darwin.

I have not argued against a 7 day timeline. FYI.

IF your posts are your way of declaring your support for the same sort of 7 day timeline as the real 7 day week at Sinai "SIX Days you shall labor.. for in SIX days the LORD made..." this is the first time I have seen you post it.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[gluadys]

And yet the ice pack in the Artic is bigger than ever, as is the ice sheet of Antarctica.
And I am not trying to suggest that we shouldn't conserve resources, as long as you understand that this means consume conservatively.
But Climate Change is what God intended, and Mankind cannot do anything to shift it one way or another, with any permanency. To think that Mankind can do this is to say that we're as powerful as God.

God, no doubt, intends natural climate change; there have been several cycles of warmer and colder climates over time from the snowball earth of late Precambrian times to the general hothouse of Jurassic times to the ice ages of the Pleistocene. And some of these have been associated with mass extinctions. And with significant shifts in evolution.

But human-induced climate change which is our doing and which we can put an end to ourselves (to get back to naturally changing climate) is our responsibility, not God's. It is not for us to precipitate a mass extinction any more than to try to force an early return of Christ to this world. It is our God-given responsibility to take the best care of this planet that we can.

 

[BobRyan]

Hey, Bob, a question: What were the requirements of the Hebrews for the first Passover? Didn't they have to have a spotless lamb, roasted with bitter herbs, and consumed?
So if Christ's sacrifice was the true Passover, and he's the Lamb of God, didn't he have to provide himself for consumption?

On the cross or are you claiming that the Bible supports cannibalism -- Lev 11 notwithstanding to the contrary??

The Jews and Pagan Romans argued that the Christians were claiming to believe in cannibalism. But that is because they were keeping "a certain distance" from the details in the text.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Yes.
That is why it has been moved from GT to here.

People wanted to make it about Darwin, rather than the reliability of the bible.

Actually they wanted to argue that evolutionism should be inserted into Genesis 1 -- or at least evolutionism-compatible vagaries eisegeted in so that the blatant contradiction between the text and blind-faith-evolutionism noticed by James Barr, and the Hebrew scholars of all world-class universities might cease to exist.

Didn't work so they asked to have it moved out of GT.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Who IS Christ to you? Is He God?

He is God who created all life on earth in 7 days according to His word.

A Word that is soooo clear that even the Hebrew professors of all world-class universities are in apparent agreement that this was the "intent of the author" whether or not they agree with the historicity.

How "instructive" for the unbiased objective Bible student to hear that the obvious meaning seen in the text is exactly the intent of the author.

And of course that is true - even though Genesis 18 describes God and 2 angels as men - because they appear in the form of men to Abraham.

Gen 18
18 And the Lord (YHWH) appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;
2 And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground,
3 And said, My Lord (YHWH), if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant:
4 Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree:

17 And the Lord (YHWH) said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do;
18 Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?
19 For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.
20 And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;
21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.


22 And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord.




Chapt 19
And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; 2 And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night.
3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat.
4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:
5 And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.


In this example - Moses explains explicitly two of them were angels and one of them was YHWH. But Moses says all three of them appeared in the form of men.

How could he be God and Michael the Archangel?

God and man? or God and the Archangel?

in Christ,

Bob

 

[gluadys]

Actually, he didn't. "He could not answer the strongest argument against it, which had been made nearly two thousand years earlier by Aristotle: If heliocentrism were true, then there would be observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun.

And this, of course, was based on Aristotelian estimates of the size of the universe and distance to the stars, which he seriously underestimated. Galileo did, however, have something not even Copernicus had: a telescope. By means of this instrument he detected bodies which circled Jupiter, not the earth, and the phases of Venus like those of the Moon. Such observations fit well with a heliocentric system but were not foreseen by a geocentric system.

So, Galileo had grounds for his confidence. Perhaps some would say, perhaps some did say, he was overconfident, but that's a different matter.

However, given the technology of Galileo’s time, no such shifts in their positions could be observed. It would require more sensitive measuring equipment than was available in Galileo’s day to document the existence of these shifts, given the stars’ great distance. Until then, the available evidence suggested that the stars were fixed in their positions relative to the earth, and, thus, that the earth and the stars were not moving in space—only the sun, moon, and planets were.

I think that description contains a serious error in terms of the thought of the time. The fixed stars were seen as fixed in relation to each other, not in relation to the earth. Anyone can see that they rise and set like the sun, and from a geocentric perspective that means they move, in concert, around the earth like the sun, moon and movable stars (aka planets). They stay fixed in their formations as they move, but they do move.

In 1614, Galileo felt compelled to answer the charge that this "new science" was contrary to certain Scripture passages. His opponents pointed to Bible passages with statements like, "And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed . . ." (Josh. 10:13). This is not an isolated occurrence. Psalms 93 and 104 and Ecclesiastes 1:5 also speak of celestial motion and terrestrial stability. A literalistic reading of these passages would have to be abandoned if the heliocentric theory were adopted. Yet this should not have posed a problem. As Augustine put it, "One does not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: ‘I will send you the Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon.’ For he willed to make them Christians, not mathematicians." Following Augustine’s example, Galileo urged caution in not interpreting these biblical statements too literally.

Unfortunately, throughout Church history there have been those who insist on reading the Bible in a more literal sense than it was intended. They fail to appreciate, for example, instances in which Scripture uses what is called "phenomenological" language—that is, the language of appearances. Just as we today speak of the sun rising and setting to cause day and night, rather than the earth turning, so did the ancients. From an earthbound perspective, the sun does appear to rise and appear to set, and the earth appears to be immobile. When we describe these things according to their appearances, we are using phenomenological language.

Now here you and I are on the same page.

Bob probably takes these passages literally.

If he did, he too would be a geocentrist. No, like most creationists who insist on an actual creation week (= sabbath) of 7 days, he likely insists that the passages referring to the movement of the heavenly bodies and immobility of the earth are not intended to be literal, but merely phenomenological. Indeed, I have seen YE creationists insist that Moses himself was consciously speaking in phenomenological language just as we do. It is a ridiculous position with no historical evidence to support it. But it justifies their selective literalism to themselves.

To me, this sort of selective literalism simply undercuts the whole argument in favour of reading the Genesis narrative as referencing actual, chronological days.

PS Love that line from Augustine. Thanks for citing it.

 

[Root of Jesse]

God, no doubt, intends natural climate change; there have been several cycles of warmer and colder climates over time from the snowball earth of late Precambrian times to the general hothouse of Jurassic times to the ice ages of the Pleistocene. And some of these have been associated with mass extinctions. And with significant shifts in evolution.

But human-induced climate change which is our doing and which we can put an end to ourselves (to get back to naturally changing climate) is our responsibility, not God's. It is not for us to precipitate a mass extinction any more than to try to force an early return of Christ to this world. It is our God-given responsibility to take the best care of this planet that we can.

And denying the whole "catastrophic global warming caused by man" doesn't preclude conserving resources in any way. Forcing entire populations to ride bullet trains and being more fuel efficient by making vehicles less safe is not the answer to that. But the global warming crowd that wants to blame it on man driving fossil fuel based vehicles and using aerosols doesn't take into account that the original natives of this continent would create a trap and then drive entire herds of buffalo over a cliff or into a pen and then mass-slaughter them (which then helped the demise of the buffalo). Certainly we are to be good stewards, and I don't believe people need Humvees, but I know that, to our ability, we need to use our resources intelligently.

 

[BobRyan]

God, no doubt, intends natural climate change; there have been several cycles of warmer and colder climates over time

The "mini ice age" was ... 1550-1850 (according to NASA)... but since then things have been somewhat warmer.

So ... "Is the Bible reliable" ??

in Christ,
Bob

 

[BobRyan]

If he did, he too would be a geocentrist. No, like most creationists who insist on an actual creation week (= sabbath) of 7 days, he likely insists that the passages referring to the movement of the heavenly bodies and immobility of the earth are not intended to be literal, but merely phenomenological.

A few errors there.

1. You yourself admit that the author intended 7 days - a normal 7 day week in Gen 1:2-2:3 so also does James Barr admit to that and neither of you are the much evil-spoken-of dreaded "creationist".

2. I insist that the observations be accept as literal in the case of the sun rising and setting - and even Einstein admits to the accuracy that is obtained describing motion with a given frame of reference assumed to be stationary.

I never claimed that Moses was standing out in space watching the sun come up.

Obviously.

in Christ,

Bob

 

[elliott95]

Actually they wanted to argue that evolutionism should be inserted into Genesis 1 -- or at least evolutionism-compatible vagaries eisegeted in so that the blatant contradiction between the text and blind-faith-evolutionism noticed by James Barr, and the Hebrew scholars of all world-class universities might cease to exist.

Didn't work so they asked to have it moved out of GT.

in Christ,

Bob

Evolutionism is a made up word that is basically meaningless.

 

[elliott95]

And yet the ice pack in the Artic is bigger than ever, as is the ice sheet of Antarctica.
And I am not trying to suggest that we shouldn't conserve resources, as long as you understand that this means consume conservatively.
But Climate Change is what God intended, and Mankind cannot do anything to shift it one way or another, with any permanency. To think that Mankind can do this is to say that we're as powerful as God.

What?

I are you suggesting that my rain dances have not been having any effect?
Surely you jest.

 

[MKJ]

And yet the ice pack in the Artic is bigger than ever, as is the ice sheet of Antarctica.
And I am not trying to suggest that we shouldn't conserve resources, as long as you understand that this means consume conservatively.
But Climate Change is what God intended, and Mankind cannot do anything to shift it one way or another, with any permanency. To think that Mankind can do this is to say that we're as powerful as God.

This seems like a very strange way of thinking, on many accounts.

For one thing, why do you think man can be responsible for significant sins on a small scale, but not on a large one? I can choose to murder someone, or burn down someones home, or raze a landscape, or release smallpox into the population (if I had access to it,) or contaminate an area with radiation, and destroy a person's life, or many lives, or the livlihoods of many, or even the livlihoods of their children or their ability to reproduce.

I can split an atom, or genetically modify animals, for evil ends, or just stupid and selfish ends.

Why would God allow the consequences of any sin, of these kinds of sins, of these kinds of carelessness, but not the consequences of burning huge amounts of fossil fuels in a short period of time? There is no difference in kind, and frankly not much difference in scale either.

I have no idea why you would think being able to affect climate by our actions would be in any way similar to having the power of God. That is not a matter of scale, it is a matter of kind - it is about being the ground of being, the divine logos, that which creates and sustains all things. None of us can do that. What we can do, and do do, is destroy things.

Screwing up the climate is just what we've always done, on a larger scale. And it isn't like it will destroy creation in some complete way - it will just really screw it up as a place for people to live in. It seems much less god-like than creating new elements that never existed before, or pulling them apart.

Permanence is a relative thing. If we go to a hot state, it won't be permanent, from the earth's perspective, it will likely only be a few hundred thousand years. But that will be a problem for us, because it will affect agriculture in a very significant way and the ocean's will be much less productive.

I am not sure why you think that larger ice sheets somehow negate overall trends. Changes to the temperature of the oceans have a lot of weird effects - they affect things like wind and currents which affect in turn how ice forms. In the short term, that can mean, for example, a lot of ice formation. Climate change can mean a variety of localized effects as it happens.

The long term is a different story, but anyone from a northern nation can tell you that climate change is already a reality for them. They are dealing with its effects on their infrastructure and plants and animals now, and it is a problem for them. (Ever wonder why governments are so interested right now in establishing arctic claims?)

The Catholic Church doesn't teach that people could not affect the Earth to the degree that would cause climate change, nor does the Orthodox Church for that matter. Why would you think that such a thing is impossible when the theology of your own church does not support it?

Patriarch Bartholomew said:

"The fundamental criterion for an ecological ethic is not individualistic or commercial. It is deeply spiritual. For, the root of the environmental crisis lies in human greed and selfishness. What is asked of us is not greater technological skill, but deeper repentance for our wrongful and wasteful ways. What is demanded is a sense of sacrifice, which comes with cost but also brings about fulfillment. Only through such self-denial, through our willingness sometimes to forgo and to say “no” or “enough” will we rediscover our true human place in the universe."

Pope Benedict similarly said:

The relationship between individuals or communities and the environment ultimately stems from their relationship with God. When ‘man turns his back on the Creator’s plan, he provokes a disorder which has inevitable repercussions on the rest of the created order.”

 

[gluadys]

And denying the whole "catastrophic global warming caused by man" doesn't preclude conserving resources in any way. Forcing entire populations to ride bullet trains and being more fuel efficient by making vehicles less safe is not the answer to that. But the global warming crowd that wants to blame it on man driving fossil fuel based vehicles and using aerosols doesn't take into account that the original natives of this continent would create a trap and then drive entire herds of buffalo over a cliff or into a pen and then mass-slaughter them (which then helped the demise of the buffalo). Certainly we are to be good stewards, and I don't believe people need Humvees, but I know that, to our ability, we need to use our resources intelligently.

You are really going over the edge, Root of Jesse. Where do you come up with such nonsense?

Forcing populations to ride bullet trains? How about solar powered automobiles? (My daughter's high-school class built one back in the 1990s for heaven's sake.) And pokey-old milk trains could be solar or wind powered too. In fact the LRT of the city of Calgary is entirely funded by wind power. And coming up are solar-powered roads which are very much safer than current highways.

Anything we can do with fossil fuels can be done with other energy sources. So what really, really bothers you about switching to a different form of energy?

Less safe vehicles? Evidence, please.

And no, the hunting practices of indigenous peoples did not contribute to the near-demise of the bison. The evidence of that is that they lived off bison for centuries with no discernible diminution in the size of the herds. And they used every bit of all the bison they killed. Unlike settler trophy-hunters who killed thousands of bison solely for heads and horns and left whole carcasses to rot--not even using the meat or skins. Some didn't even take trophies, shooting buffalo from train windows.

Yes, conservation will help, but the aim is not to reduce emissions per vehicle or furnace or appliance, but to absolutely reduce emissions and absolutely reduce the ration of CO2 in the atmosphere (as well as other greenhouse gases.)

 

[gluadys]

And denying the whole "catastrophic global warming caused by man" doesn't preclude conserving resources in any way. Forcing entire populations to ride bullet trains and being more fuel efficient by making vehicles less safe is not the answer to that. But the global warming crowd that wants to blame it on man driving fossil fuel based vehicles and using aerosols doesn't take into account that the original natives of this continent would create a trap and then drive entire herds of buffalo over a cliff or into a pen and then mass-slaughter them (which then helped the demise of the buffalo). Certainly we are to be good stewards, and I don't believe people need Humvees, but I know that, to our ability, we need to use our resources intelligently.

btw do you know the difference between anthropogenic global warming and catastrophic global warming?

Anthropogenic global warming is that portion of current global warming attributable to human activity, especially use of fossil fuels, and amenable to regulation by changing human activity e.g. by switching to other forms of energy.

Catastrophic global warming is what occurs after tipping points are reached that pump so much new greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that nothing we can do will stop the near-annihilation of life on earth, very likely including most large animals like us. We are perilously close to several such tipping points. There are currently several areas in the Arctic where methane (a greenhouse gas 30 times more efficient at retaining heat than CO2) is bubbling from melting permafrost. Any serious erosion of more permafrost could spell game over in reining in climate change to manageable proportions.

Not only are we overfishing the world's oceans, we are creating oxygen depleted dead zones in many areas, and the rise in ocean temperature has sent many species from Mediterranean-latitude waters to North Sea latitudes. And to top it all off, climate change also alters the pH of the ocean. It takes only an extremely tiny change in pH to make the ocean unlivable for many species. When we consider that 50% of atmospheric oxygen is produced by photosynthetic ocean algae, any threat to their survival threatens every air-breathing animal on the planet, including, of course, us. So that is another potential tipping point.

Many such photosynthetic species inhabit coral reefs, and cannot survive without coral. But warmer ocean waters also bleach coral, killing the living coral in the reefs. Coral reefs have been called the jungles of the ocean as they support a richly-diverse biota, much as jungles do. With most coral reefs in mortal danger, it is like turning these jungles into deserts.

The ice pack in the Arctic may be denser than usual, but so is the rate of calving icebergs. And now I am going to speculate because I haven't looked into the whys and wherefores of a recently expanding icepack. But I wonder if it has to do with more snowfall? If it is, that would also be a warning sign of the Arctic warming up.

I don't know your geography, but I grew up in Saskatchewan. I know that in northern climes, cold days are also clear days. Snow came with warmer days. Why? Because cold air, really cold air, cannot retain enough moisture to develop precipitation. And Arctic air is normally really cold air with seasonal snowfall at a minimum--much less than you get in more southern latitudes.

As I said, I haven't looked into this, so it is my personal speculation, but I would not assume an expanded ice pack is evidence of against global warming. It could well be the reverse.

I would also ask, is the area of the ice pack matched by thickness in the ice. If we have a larger winter ice pack, but it is new thin ice that will melt in the summer leaving the Arctic nearly ice free again, that is still very worrisome for the future of the Arctic peoples, fauna and flora.

 

[gluadys]

The "mini ice age" was ... 1550-1850 (according to NASA)... but since then things have been somewhat warmer.

And that wasn't even global. It was only in Europe.

So ... "Is the Bible reliable" ??

in Christ,
Bob

Depends. What do you expect it to be reliable about? And in what way do you choose to interpret it when a common sense literal reading conflicts with known fact about nature and history?

Why should we think that writers who had no knowledge of deep time would compose literature that reliably depicts it? Why should we think that writers who were more interested in moral and spiritual teachings than historic accuracy would write reliably about history that was probably poorly preserved anyway?

Theology always takes priority in scripture, because that is where it reliably teaches what we cannot learn from other sources.

 

[gluadys]

A few errors there.

1. You yourself admit that the author intended 7 days - a normal 7 day week in Gen 1:2-2:3 so also does James Barr admit to that and neither of you are the much evil-spoken-of dreaded "creationist".

That is because we consider the days to be literary while you consider them to be historical. We keep them in the text, but you want to take them outside the text into actual history.

2. I insist that the observations be accept as literal in the case of the sun rising and setting - and even Einstein admits to the accuracy that is obtained describing motion with a given frame of reference assumed to be stationary.

You can't do both. Einstein, (as anyone else in our time) agrees that to an observer on earth, the sun actually appears to move while the earth stands still. But he agrees that the explanation of that phenomenon is that the earth is turning on its axis relative to a fixed light source. The sun is moving relative to the galaxy and as part of the galaxy, but not moving in orbit around the earth.

But a straight-forward literal reading of the relevant passages of scripture is that the earth is immobile and the heavenly bodies move across the sky relative to the earth. And until we had the ability to show that the earth moves in orbit around the sun, virtually no one considered that the literal meaning was not also the actual natural fact.

So, the observation is the same in both cases, but the background knowledge that informs one's perspective makes a difference in whether one holds the literal meaning to refer to actual motion or only to an appearance of motion.

The grounds for holding it was Moses intention to present the 7-days of Geneis as actual days in history apply just as well to his intention (and that of all biblical authors) to present the motion of the sun across the sky as an actual, not a merely apparent, motion. Same, of course, goes for the fixity of the earth. In all these cases Moses and other biblical authors presented a literal meaning which they understood to be factual as well as literal.

So, if you choose to believe scripture is speaking phenomenologically, not factually, in the case of earth-sun stillness/motion you have already allowed for the principle that permits others to hold that scripture is speaking in something other than terms of factual history in the case of the 7 creative days of Genesis. IOW, that the 7 days are theological and literary, not historical.

And this in spite of Moses intending them to be received as factual.

After all, what reason do you have to dispute the intention of biblical authors to present the earth as fixed, firm, stable and unmoving and the sun as actually moving across the sky and hurrying during the night back to the place of its rising? On what grounds "in the text" would you not take the literal meaning of this terminology to be the intended factual meaning?

I never claimed that Moses was standing out in space watching the sun come up.

Nor did anyone else, so we can dispense with this red herring.

 

[MKJ]

The ice pack in the Arctic may be denser than usual, but so is the rate of calving icebergs. And now I am going to speculate because I haven't looked into the whys and wherefores of a recently expanding icepack. But I wonder if it has to do with more snowfall? If it is, that would also be a warning sign of the Arctic warming up.

I don't know your geography, but I grew up in Saskatchewan. I know that in northern climes, cold days are also clear days. Snow came with warmer days. Why? Because cold air, really cold air, cannot retain enough moisture to develop precipitation. And Arctic air is normally really cold air with seasonal snowfall at a minimum--much less than you get in more southern latitudes.

As I said, I haven't looked into this, so it is my personal speculation, but I would not assume an expanded ice pack is evidence of against global warming. It could well be the reverse.

I would also ask, is the area of the ice pack matched by thickness in the ice. If we have a larger winter ice pack, but it is new thin ice that will melt in the summer leaving the Arctic nearly ice free again, that is still very worrisome for the future of the Arctic peoples, fauna and flora.

Yes, I would not be surprised if moisture is a part of it. Wind apparently plays a role as well, because you get more wind with increased ocean temps, but wind can help with ice formation.

But as we both know, ships are getting through the arctic where they couldn't before, at times they couldn't before, and there is permafrost melting, bears ar having problems because spring is coming earlier and earlier with less ice. Icebergs were not making it as far as Maine this year, nd as I mentioned above, there was no algae bloom. I am not sure if people realize how very serious THAT is - it speaks doom for the northern fisheries which are far more productive than southern ones can ever be.

James Lovelock, who is no intellectual slouch and doesn't owe anybody anything, thinks we are already past the tipping point, by a fair bit, and that within the 21st century - he suspects no later than 2060 - most of the temperate zones will be scrub desert with no agricultural potential.