I find it infuriating that issues clearly within the realm of an acknowledged mystery gets guffaws as in several of the comments by various posters.
Several of the above posters have been rude, ignorant and apparently are unable to read intelligently. If a poster can't read the OP intelligently, but can only misconstrue it, better to just stay out of it.
Oooh. Someone's mad. The problem is, I take claims of martyrdom seriously. So let's look back through the pages of the thread.
Page 1: Dad comes up with a theory about hell. Note that right below his point of "scientists still don't know what the Earth's core is made of" he puts an article detailing
exactly the direct observation of the Earth's inner core's solid state characteristics.
Response? A hearty agreement from busterdog based on exactly
one verse of Scripture, some cute questions about how many people the outer core of the Earth can fit (thus determining the capacity of Hell), and some honest questions about whether a soul (if that is the right handle) physically exists at all.
Page 2: theFijian brings up WCF's take on hell, which is never interacted with in the rest of the thread. (In this case I'd say silence is a concession, isn't it?) A cute little jab by Parmenio which led to a serious entry by rmwilliamsll about how misinterpreting the Scriptures can lead to all sorts of physical insensibilities - again, this was never interacted with in the rest of the thread. Grimbly and KerrMetric bring up dad's past behavior, which I would deem relevant in this case.
Page 3: 8 posts of dad defending himself, with only another question from theFijian where he asks if dad's idea of Hell comes more from the Bible or from Dante (which, again, is not interacted with in the rest of the thread).
Page 4: Mallon reveals that the inner core of the earth can indeed fit a lot of people. A strange tangent on magnetism continues into ...
Page 5: busterdog complains about "gratuitous attacks", and theFijian complains that ancient Hebraic cosmology is being accepted.
Page 6: More martyrdom complaints.
Quite frankly, I don't think I've seen any rudeness at all here. The only thing that might possibly be offensive would be when some people raised dad's past records on other sites and forums - even then, everything that they said was quite strictly true, even if it was maliciously intended (which I doubt; you can report those posts as personal insults if you disagree).
The problem is simply that the claim "hell is in the center of the earth" really can't be interacted with much. The only issues it can raise are: why do we assume hell is a physical place, why do we assume souls have physical existence, and isn't this a good example of the Bible being misinterpreted to support a physically absurd conclusion? Each of these ideas were thrown out on the thread and then died for dearth of attention, leaving nothing but lightweight jests and prods, to which the label of "rude and ignorant" certainly seems excessive.
I
do recall one snide post here though (and yes, I'm being snide here myself), this was particularly peculiar:
Lets also be absurd and say that if Jesus was really resurrected and talked with his disciples, there must be archeological evidence of Wile E Coyote style holes in the walls of rooms that he entered without using door, as is taught of his post-resurrection appearnces.
I wonder who would make such a strange and obviously insulting extrapolation of perfectly fine TE thoughts.
The speculation of the OP is not without some scriptural support. That is, this is the cosmology of Jesus. You can debate whether that is literal or metaphorical, but you cannot disprove a spiritual reality by science. So why does this become an example of an ignorant YEC cosmology?
The "cosmology of Jesus", i.e., a single verse quoted out of context.
But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
(Matthew 12:39-40 RSV)
There is a perfectly simple explanation: Jesus was
buried in a
tomb for three days and three nights, was He not? A little hyperbole gets us "the heart of the earth". Furthermore, Jesus was specifically predicting a sign He would perform for the people. Now, which do you think more likely as the sign: Jesus was buried for three days, or Jesus went to hell for three days? Which formed the heart of the apostles' witness? Which does the NT put more emphasis on? The NT spends so little time on Jesus being in hell and so much time on Jesus being in the grave that it makes far more sense to think of "the heart of the earth" as a hyperbolic reference to Jesus' tomb.
And this gets compared to flat earth? Please. This is groundless insult.
Grounds provided in #15.
The science of what is in the earth's core is a completely different issue. If you think the science is nuts, well, I can understand that debate. But that was not the predominant basis on which the OP was attacked. It was on the basis of "cosmology" in an area that all agree to be outside of the realm of scientific proof.
It was attacked on the bases that souls (if that is the right handle on the afterlife) do not have physical existence, that hell isn't a physical place and so would be absurd to label it with a physical location, and that the whole thing is simply another example of Biblical misinterpretation.
I have no idea why you expend so much energy defending the OP. Enemy of my enemy?
