A flat earth and an earth-centered universe
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SeventyOne
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I don't claim to know what's going on up there completely, but you can look on places like YouTube and the like for 'satellite balloon' and see footage of satellites being launched attached to high altitude balloons. There's also been several crashes of these satellites documented while still attached to these balloons, such as this one below. It should be enough to at least make a curious person realize it isn't all exactly the way they tell us it is.
The problem with ISS footage is that most times you can see their cameras also curving straight parts of the exterior as well. Plus, you never know what's real, if any of it. Myself, last year I was watching live footage of an emergency ISS 'spacewalk' and witnessed bubbles escaping to the top of the pool they were in. There's all kinds of stuff like that, bubbles, harnesses, wires, blue screens, glitchy VR gear, bad video layering fades, men in scuba gear, etc. Sometimes they act like there is a delay in communications, other times it's instantaneous to the point where a astronaut can sing a duet with someone on earth. It's all just a big corny joke. If there is anything real about it, it would be hard to tell.
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And how do you explain the motion of the stars in the Southern Hemisphere then?
And the fact that I've taken aeroplane flights that you people say don't exist?
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Nihilist Virus
Infectious idea
My curiosity is less about the science and more about the conspiracy. A global (Satanic?) agenda... and for what? Who has lost their faith because the earth is a globe? Clearly the plan hasn't worked. Why stick to it?
The methods were correct. The measurements were accurate enough to get it to within a 10% error margin in a globe model. Thats not worthless. In a flat earth model, the data would give you information about the sun's location (in the sky?), wouldn't it?
I'm not sold on the globe just because of parallel rays. There's... a lot. I assume you've heard it all by now. Again, I would like to understand the purpose of the conspiracy.
I definitely do want to dig into the flat earth. All the way down to whatever you think is down there. Just, again, not into the science but the conspiracy.
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"....Maybe Isaiah is saying God's presence is above the earth watching people as if they are grasshoppers. If it isn't saying that then what "truth" is it communicating?"
I guess you're saying that being a grasshopper means they are insignificant compared to God though comparing people to worms would make it more obvious it is about their status rather than them being viewed from a distance.
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In post #164 I gave many examples of metaphors that are based on an accurate idea - that the head is involved in thoughts. e.g. "it went over my head". So you can have metaphors that include some scientific truth - unlike the countless Bible verses that imply the earth is flat rather than spherical or that the heart, belly, bowels or liver is used rather than the head or brain.
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"The whole time I'm saying that the Bible doesn't say that the head is associated with thoughts and feelings - though it does say that when talking about the heart, liver, belly and bowels."
If the authors thought that our heads or brains were involved in thought/feelings why did they never use a metaphor that involves the head? In post #164 I gave many examples that our culture uses.
But we also talk about our head where I gave many examples. Talking about the head is accurate. So at least we are accurate some of the time, unlike the Bible that is accurate none of the time.
A light is still involved. In the example of "it went over my head" it is still talking about a head.
In ALL of those examples the nouns are still accurate, same with my examples involving the head, and in no cases where the Bible talks about the bowels, heart, belly or liver.
I'm not saying that the phrase needs to be literal as a whole - in the examples you gave the noun is still literal. And though we talk about the heart or the gut we still talk about mental processes in an accurate way sometimes - talking about the head.
Are you saying that the authors of the Bible actually thought that the head or brain is involved? If so, why aren't they like us and have many metaphors that involve the head? Instead they never use the head in a metaphor. (except when talking about a boss in a family or church) How could they be more knowledgeable about the heart and brain than Aristotle? They weren't not deep thinkers/philosophers/scientists. You have no evidence they disagreed with Aristotle. That explains why they always refer to the heart [many hundreds of times] (and other body parts) and never the head or brain.
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Aristotle was a very intelligent deep thinker who used reasoning to conclude that we thought using our hearts. Are there any Bible authors like that? (Well Solomon I guess) If not, how can you expect them to outsmart Aristotle and be ahead of their time? Revelation from God could explain it though there is no evidence (such as a single metaphor involving the head being for thoughts) that that was the case.
Solomon was meant to be incredibly wise but was he ahead of his time in knowledge about the world in any way? (e.g. believing the head is for thoughts, or working out that the earth is a ball and measuring the radius, etc)
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So are you saying that the earth is NOT literally hanging over nothing? That is just about the only verse about this thread's topics that is supported by modern science though flat earthers think it agrees with them still.
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Yes and no. When you're reading something that someone was thinking thousands of years ago, you need to factor in the limits of what they knew and what was widely being accepted by their social fabric about the Earth.
I would also appreciate if you would like to point to all those passages where God tells us His Earth is a ball hurling through infinite space.
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while the nouns are "accurate" (I'm not sure what the inaccurate noun would be, since non-abstract nouns are directly nominal) the literal semantic relationships that these phrases paint is not accurate as we actually understand these processes, and that's what your overall complaint seems to be.
Well, the noun isn't necessarily literal if it's an unspecified abstract phenomenon like "thoughts" and "light".
First of all, the idea of "individual thinking" is a myth, and that's the invisible glass door that you are running into again and again in this discussion. Please read...
https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Illusion-Never-Think-Alone/dp/039918435X
So, whatever YOU think you know today is a projection of your own confidence on our collective cultural state of knowledge. You are not who you think you are, and you don't really know what you think you know. If your TV or Phone breaks begins to malfunction tomorrow, you will throw it away and buy a new one. That's how much you know about how TVs work
In fact, we have a very limited amount of people in our culture who understand these complex functions to properly apply them for building and maintain the overarching functional complexity.But, you can't have that complexity apart from certain functional pre-requisites, and these have little to do with "scientific reductionist", and more to do with "sociological holism". The fact that you know that we are largely thinking with our brains is irrelevant when you live in a society of anarchists cannibals who think that anyone and everyone is a fair game. So, there are certain important sociological per-requisites that naturally result in broader collective thought, and compounding civilized benefits.
But you can't have civilized benefits of compounding knowledge without those structures existing first. That knowledge would be irrelevant. So, if you randomly teleported a group of modern-day scientist and doctors to Exodus Biblical time frame, they would quickly find out that their specializations are only relevant in context of societal structure of mutual trust and cooperation in which government collects taxes and funds their activities, which they exchange for food and goods, and that allows them to focus on research and solving specialized problems.
But, absent of that, they would need to focus on basic survival, and they would quickly find that the people in that time frame are more versed in basic survival than they are. Sure, they could patch up some minor healthcare problems, but most of their applied science is contingent on the rest of the societal progress, which can't take place if there are no catalyst for trust and cohesion that can serve as building blocks for societal frameworks.
So, what you consider "high intelligence" can quickly dissolve absent for contingent applications of such "high intelligence". It would quickly transform into ignorance and stupidity.
So, your continual insistence on "factual accuracy" as some validator of viability of religious narrative, is not only absurd, but extremely ignorant.
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You are misunderstanding the premises of Christian theology if you think that God assumes the function to communicate specialized knowledge that would result in very little ontological significance.
So, you assume that your present cultural understanding as to what we should be doing as humanity is in alignment with that of God's. So, since we decided that X is important, you seem to think that God should likewise see that important.
And since you don't find that in the Bible, then you seem to conclude that God either doesn't exist, or is a bad one, since he didn't make the Biblical authors "smart" beyond their present culture.
That's some good stuff
.No one is "ahead of their time", because "ahead of their time" is a pre-requisite for any comparative development that's different from cultural background of "then". Neither such qualification is necessarily "good".
If murder becomes legal for some odd reason, then present day criminals were all ahead of their time
.Thus, in all eventuality, if the present technological tangent that we took during the industrial revolution has disrupted ecological balance to the point of threatening our extinction, then many survivor may retrospectively curse at any scientific developments that merely engineered and accelerated our demise, while providing some temporary relief from our problems that we misinterpreted as "progress".
So, I would suggest you to look a bit broader when you are judging past generations with your present mindset as superior.
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If you can't trust the Bible about things we are able to check (e.g. the source of thoughts) then how can you be sure about whether the spiritual "truths" are literal? e.g. maybe people aren't tormented for a literal eternity.
So talking accurately about the world is not important God? That explains why flat earthers feel that the Bible confirms their beliefs - without exception.
If God can make people more knowledgeable about Heaven or Satan, etc, why can't he communicate special knowledge about the nature of the world? Or perhaps Heaven and Satan aren't accurate things either - maybe they don't exist since I haven't seen any evidence for them either.
BTW about what the Jews believed regarding the heart:
HEART - JewishEncyclopedia.com
"The three special functions, knowing, feeling, and willing, ascribed by modern psychologists to the mind, were attributed to the heart by the Biblical writers"
Though it talks about Daniel saying "visions of my head". Usually "visions of his head upon his bed". So it seems to be saying that the visuals of dreams involved the head.
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We do have an expression today about getting to the heart of the matter. Why would these ancient authors use the word heart when ascribing it functions that are found in the brain?
You would have to consider how ancient peoples were using other relevant language like blood. "For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life." Leviticus 17:14 ESV. Without our life we're dead and they didn't have the science of brain function to see its role in keeping our heart pumping to keep us alive. Without a heart your life as a living thinking person ends. So ascribing properties of consciousness to the heart shouldn't be thought of as something out of the ordinary and wrong on their use of language.
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Excuse the pun, but that's the very reason why you have a head on your shoulders in order to be able to discern literal applicability from hyperbole.
Also, read some deep thinkers who spent considerable time thinking and writing about these subjects. None of this is new. The very questions which you are asking today were asked and answered thousands of times, and if you actually take some time to read philosopher of the past you may understand Christianity at the level that's a bit deeper than "colloquialisms".
It doesn't mean that it's not useful at colloquial level, but that's the entire point of Christianity being an accessible multi-layered religion that engages both uneducated, and those deeply versed in philosophy.
For example, read some Pascal:
Pensees, by Blaise Pascal : part4
There are three sources of belief: reason, custom, inspiration. The Christian religion, which alone has reason, does not acknowledge as her true children those who believe without inspiration. It is not that she excludes reason and custom. On the contrary, the mind must be opened to proofs, must be confirmed by custom and offer itself in humbleness to inspirations, which alone can produce a true and saving effect. Ne evacuetur crux Christ.
....
251. Other religions, as the pagan, are more popular, for they consist in externals. But they are not for educated people. A purely intellectual religion would be more suited to the learned, but it would be of no use to the common people. The Christian religion alone is adapted to all, being composed of externals and internals. It raises the common people to the internal, and humbles the proud to the external; it is not perfect without the two, for the people must understand the spirit of the letter, and the learned must submit their spirit to the letter.
For we must not misunderstand ourselves; we are as much automatic as intellectual; and hence it comes that the instrument by which conviction is attained is not demonstrated alone. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs only convince the mind. Custom is the source of our strongest and most believed proofs. It bends the automaton, which persuades the mind without its thinking about the matter.
253. Two extremes: to exclude reason, to admit reason only.
254. It is not a rare thing to have to reprove the world for too much docility. It is a natural vice like credulity, and as pernicious. Superstition.
255. Piety is different from superstition. To carry piety as far as superstition is to destroy it.
282. We know truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart, and it is in this last way that we know first principles; and reason, which has no part in it, tries in vain to impugn them. The sceptics, who have only this for their object, labour to no purpose. We know that we do not dream, and, however impossible it is for us to prove it by reason, this inability demonstrates only the weakness of our reason, but not, as they affirm, the uncertainty of all our knowledge. For the knowledge of first principles, as space, time, motion, number, is as sure as any of those which we get from reasoning. And reason must trust these intuitions of the heart, and must base them on every argument. (We have intuitive knowledge of the tri-dimensional nature of space and of the infinity of number, and reason then shows that there are no two square numbers one of which is double of the other. Principles are intuited, propositions are inferred, all with certainty, though in different ways.) And it is as useless and absurd for reason to demand from the heart proofs of her first principles, before admitting them, as it would be for the heart to demand from reason an intuition of all demonstrated propositions before accepting them.
The point that Pascal makes above is that you can't maintain the viable understanding of text without referring to the adequate culture and tradition that will provide proper reference for the language that's used. You can twist and turn any text into meaning whatever you want, but you can't assume that that's the actual meaning prescribed by the text.
Texts don't mean anything, and these don't accurately represent anything apart from semantics that exists in your head. So, you are assuming literal interpretation, and then you decry it as false, which is rather absurd thing to do for both atheists and religious literalists.
Likewise, what or who do you think God is and what is its alleged purpose with creating reality that we occupy?
They are not "accurate" in a colloquial sense, but then then no reified colloquial concepts are. When we call someone a "monster", we don't really mean that they are literally an ugly beast. We generally use the hyperbole to demonstrate their perceived relationship to the rest of the society.
It doesn't stop some naive people turning these hyperbolic tales of monstrous beings into some version of reality with perpetuated urban legends. It doesn't mean that urban legends don't have some utilitarian truths, like being alone in the woods leave you unprotected from monstrous people. So, colloquialisms can fill the gap where reason will be too slow.
So, if you are going to point to colloquialisms as an indicator of veracity of something not being "literally true", then you either have not really thought about these things deeper, or you don't think there's a way to think about these deeper, or you are refusing to think about these on that level and use that slippery logic as an excuse not to.
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There's also this:
Body memory - Wikipedia
And the typical argument is that the brain alone is too slow to control complexity of all of the functional organs and body parts. So, there is a "holistic" approach to human being that we can't see via reductionism if we merely place FMRI on the brain and correlate the brain activity alone responsible for certain continuum of "thought", which actually transcends our bodies even in physiological context of reductionism... in which you can't have a thought without the continuum of external triggers that "in-form" the mind.
There's also the "anecdotal realm" of cellular memory, with various unexplained phenomena of organ recipients coincidentally shifting into some of the personality traits of the organ donors. I'm not going to refer to it as a solid science, but I will point out that we may not yet know or be aware of function hidden in holistic complexity of our body, that in Aristotle's terms, would be anti-reductionist proposition that we are more than the sum of our parts. Of course, these kinds of concepts are unlikely to be studied, because in the reductionism paradigm these are "woo woo science", and promoting these kinds of ideas can be dangerous for one's career and legitimacy in scientific realm. And no, it's not a conspiracy. It's just a natural bias of the system to normalize against established norms.
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Because like Aristotle, they literally believed the thoughts, etc, were from the heart.
That verse says that because the life is in the blood, you can not eat blood - or you will be "cut off". Many people these days eat blood - do you think that is immoral?
I think if a student that said the thoughts came from the heart in science class would be marked incorrect. Though we sometimes say the heart is involved, we also sometimes say the head is involved as well.
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"If you can't trust the Bible about things we are able to check (e.g. the source of thoughts) then how can you be sure about whether the spiritual "truths" are literal? e.g. maybe people aren't tormented for a literal eternity."
HEART - JewishEncyclopedia.com
"The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia"
"The three special functions, knowing, feeling, and willing, ascribed by modern psychologists to the mind, were attributed to the heart by the Biblical writers"
If the authors actually knew the truth but always talked in metaphors, how can you be sure that their talk of Satan or Heaven is literal? I mean some Christians don't believe in a literal Satan.
If torment lasts literally forever, then it is infinitely longer than a googolplex years - that is a number that has more zeroes than there are atoms in the known universe. Are you sure it is a literal eternity?
Well it could have said "head" and the earth is like a ball, etc. Uneducated people would be able to understand that (as much as they could understand a heart was involved).
I'd prefer you state things clearly and concisely. Those quotes from Pascal are just confusing me.
Well from a clear reading it seems the writers thought the earth was flat and I don't see any reason to believe they thought the earth was actually like a ball orbiting the sun.
There are dozens of verses that imply the shape of the earth. None conflict with the flat earth interpretation.
For his glory or something. It isn't important to me.
Like how people say I love you "forever".
I'm saying that without exception flat earthers believe the Bible supports their view that the earth is flat and that the earth does not orbit the sun. Similarly, there are hundreds of verses about the heart being used for thoughts/understanding/feeling/etc and none (besides Daniel talking about dreams) about the head. This implies that they didn't believe that the head was used.
HEART - JewishEncyclopedia.com
"The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia"
"The three special functions, knowing, feeling, and willing, ascribed by modern psychologists to the mind, were attributed to the heart by the Biblical writers"
If the authors actually knew the truth but always talked in metaphors, how can you be sure that their talk of Satan or Heaven is literal? I mean some Christians don't believe in a literal Satan.
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Not if such understanding was not characteristic of the listeners.
Use idioms that they are not accustomed to ... and you have just just set up a real barrier to communication ... and/or a path to miscommunication ...
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When examining ancient writings today, people are aware of these things, how they were using language. But not as many are aware of the reasons why they believe them. They didn't have our system of education with its knowledge base of centuries of cumulative work.
When talking about the immorality of certain foods today, rather than questioning people from ancient civilizations, you may find certain people from PETA and a number of vegetarians today who like to engage you in that discussion. Personally I do not think it's best represented by using the word morality, it's better suited to the word faith.
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