It is a lovely image similar to that which was in my primary school KJV. Today I have the feeling that my faith is informed by holy scripture, however my cosmology might be further informed by science. I am not in that suggesting that science should inform my faith.
The truth of that vision of the cosmos is phenomenological, and is based in our actual sensory experience of the shape of our world. This is the world as we experience it at the most fundamental and basic level.
Dig into the earth, and the waters below well up. And sometimes, the firmament does not hold the water back, and it falls down as rain.
Within the limits of unaided human experience, this is a true depiction of the world and the cosmos.
As knowledge expands through extending our senses through technology, a different perspective paints a different picture. This does not make the original picture painted by the Bible as any less true, as long as the correct context is given.
Technology has expanded our ability to sense the shape of the world exponentially, and in ways that it is almost impossible for any of us to even visualize. Cosmologists tell us for example, that the entire universe is incredibly flat. It is really hard for me at least to visualize that in my minds eye.
And, while I can mathematically understand how a fifth dimension may be possible in the multi-dimensional universe or universes of modern scientific theory, there is no way that my human senses, evolved for survival in four dimensions only, will be able to paint a mental picture of that kind of world.
It is a lovely image similar to that which was in my primary school KJV. Today I have the feeling that my faith is informed by holy scripture, however my cosmology might be further informed by science. I am not in that suggesting that science should inform my faith.
The Bible tells us that God created the world, all things seen and unseen. It ought not surprise us therefore that as we stretch our senses every further into the vastness of this world, the limits of the creation become ever more limitless with every new discovery.
No, I am speaking about truth.
