Reasons To Believe

Hi Mike,I have no problem with anyone looking at the bible and believing that it fits with modern science.Now looking at modern science and attempting to make it fit the bible is another story. I do not believe you are doing this and so I say more power to you.

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Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com

Aha! I am glad you can see this. You see, if you have seen this program "reasons to believe" it's a strange thing, it's like, they mention God every half hour while ranting about science and paradigms etc.. I need a dictionary. And they just seem to express that the science/universe is a wonderful creative and glorious design by God - and it interests me. It's not just the bible though, as mostly they just talk science, and the science interests me itself. When you have a premise of "God the designer" some things become fascinating when they complete the picture, and you literally SEE how it comes together.And it's not that I am srguing "God the designer" - It's just a belief. That premise seems to uncover many things. The "fine-tuning" is very convincing, even if you just pretend to have the premise. So thanks for not calling me a daft punk today.

Your misinterpretation is harsh, yes. The point I was actually making is that it is very easy for creatively talented people to invent interpretations that support their views, and people have even been able to use the Bible to justify murder and slavery, views that most people believe are completely contrary to the message of the Bible. So if one can use the Bible to justify even murder and slavery, then it isn't such a large creative task to invent modern cosmological interpretations. I haven't seen any indication that you recognize this yet. Almost all the passages you've mentioned are OT. These interpretations are not possibly scientifically correct - they are scientifically correct. And they're correct because the people making the interpretations already knew what science said. The trick is to make the interpretation before science makes the discovery, not after. I, too, believe God is the author of the universe. I just don't believe the Bible is God's science manual for it. I don't know who you think "we" is. I've been addressing you. To state my point yet again, I believe you are attaching far too much significance to apologetics. There is no indication that God provided ancient prophets special insights into modern science that they wrote into the Bible. One reason I'm concerned about this is that it is a common evangelical argument that the Bible is true because it tells us things that couldn't possibly have been known at the time they were written, and so it proves the Bible is God's word. You don't seem to realize that this is part and parcel of what you're buying into.--Percy

But these interpretations leave us no choice. Did you read how that passages were consistent? Instead of just saying, "apologetics, apologetics" - Why not look at the claim and read it. It is obvious that the only way it was written, and the only way it seems to be interpreted to make sense, is when the universe was and is stretched, and/or spread. Therefore, the only way of interpreting it, seems to be that the heavens were stretched and are stretched. If scholars were convinced of a flat earth etc.. like you said, why would they dig any deeper? And what would the science of it mean, to those burning witches and letting demons out of the skull? Don't avoid these questions.What about, "for the heavens were of old" and the "elements will melt with fervent heat". Do these strike you as relevant? They are both NT. Now why would the earth melt? Possibly because of the sun?Now now Percy, I seem to have told you BEFORE it happens, yet somehow I still think you'll disagree. Ho hum...

I don't think we're connecting. That's okay, they'll be other opportunities to come back to this topic. I think it's great that you're reading science over at RTB, and I encourage you to keep it up.By the way, if you like RTB's take on Biblical cosmology, you should read Velikovsky!--Percy

Fair enough,

Are you aware there's some classic Velikovsky on-line? Cosmos Without Gravitiation, part of The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive.

Of course I'd disagree Mike. You know that. Now if about 500 years ago someone had described the sun swelling up and swallowing the earth it would be a bit impressive. Telling me what modern steller physics predicted decades ago doesn't really cut it does it?How come none of the interpretations are understandabel in any useful way before hand? I don't see how anyone can give it any credance at all otherwise.

Interesting. When I orginally read Velikovsky's books, Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheaval, I was left wondering what factors he believed caused the planets to bounce around the solar system like ping pong balls a few thousand years ago before settling into the nearly circular orbits they occupy today. Perhaps the answer was in the last few chapters, for I only made it through about 4/5 of each book before putting them aside as just too ridiculous to be believed. I only made it that far because I thought he was going to at some point propose a mechanism and wanted to know what it was, but near the end I finally decided he just wasn't going to provide one and gave them up.So it is very interesting to learn that he didn't accept gravity, instead advancing an electrostatic theory of attraction. His first evidence is that the gases in our atmosphere do not separate by molecular weight, but his statement that scientists say atmospheric currents kept them mixed seems clearly wrong. But I'm not sure I believe atmospheric scientists would have ever advanced that explanation. This isn't a topic I'm familiar with, but I would have thought that thermal energy would easily overcome the weak gravitational effects and be more than sufficient to keep the gases mixed.--Percy

When I started to read it, I thought I was reading science fiction. I was some distance through before I realized he was serious. By then it had stopped being decent SF even.

I know exactly how you feel. I had just finished Ring World when I got stuck on a delayed flight. Someone had left his book onboard and I picked it up thinking it might be interesting. What a shock!!!!!!!Longest 14 hours of my life. I got so board I actually went back and tried reading it several times.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Frankly I see the Bible as neither a science book nor a manual for living, but as inspirational literature with some history and travelogues (Acts).These attempts to claim modern science fits some scriptural interpretation seem as misguided and futile as attempts to link historical events to Nostradamus' quatrains. It's vague enough to vaguely apply but not specific ennough to really be of any informational value.