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Author | Topic: Secularly Verifiable Evidence for Biblical Inerrancy | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Classical Greek statues of Atlas show him holding a globe on his shoulders but it is a celestial globe showing the constellations, not the Earth. check it out, that page was made using me.
quote: i so rarely see my other incarnation...
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Nearly all of these are simply mistaken statements. First, the Earth is NOT a sphere. This was hammered in to me by multiple physics professors during my grueling college experience (if you don't believe me, do a search on google for "earth is not a sphere" and you will quickly find what I'm talking about. Don't look at the Christian results - look at the secular results, usually notes from Physics/Astronomy courses). It is much closer to an ellipsoid, though that's not quite accurate either. an IRREGULAR ellipsoid. with a rather small eccentricity. for all intents and purposes, the earth is approximately spherical.
Still think the ancient writers using "circle" couldn't mean "sphere?" Then you're just being intellectually dishonest. no, i don't think it's out of the realm of possibility. we've all heard the two terms interchanged now and then. HOWEVER it is my opinion that authors of at least the majority of the hebrew bible (and christian) were under the impression that the earth was flat. i could cite verse, but they could all be read other ways (as is the case with ANYTHING in the bible).
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Immoros Inactive Member |
Man. Kind of hostile, PaulK. I wasn't attacking you, or anyone in particular, just a general trend on this topic. But I'll go through your rebuttals one at a time. (I don't know how to do the snazzy colored quote-boxes, so I'm just going to rely on old-fashioned quotation marks)
You said: "Firstly if you want precision remember that we are dealing with Hebrew and not English. And every source I've checked indicates that the Hebrew word ("chuwg") indicates a circle, not a sphere." Saying we're dealing with Hebrew, and that "chuwg" indicates a circle is irrelevant. I never even insinuated that 'circle' and 'sphere' are interchangeable, nor would I say that 'chuwg' means 'sphere.' The two words have fundamentally different meanings. My point was that 'circle' and 'sphere' can sometimes function as basic synonyms. A synonym is not necessarily a word that means the exact same thing. It is a word that has nearly the same meaning, or that serves as a figurative or symbolic substitute. You said: "Secondly the Earth is an oblate spheroid (and I did NOT need to look that up) rather than a perfect sphere - but that doesn't mean that "sphere" is not an adequate description in circumstances where that level of precision is not required. And "sphere" is still far more accurate than "circle"." I didn't mean to imply that /everyone/ would have to look it up. In fact, having seen some of the intelligent discussions on these boards, I'm certain there are plenty of people who have more scientific experience than I do. But either way, we're in agreement. Your second rebuttal is exactly my point. Sphere is completely adequate in circumstances where further precision is not required, though 'oblate spheroid' is far more accurate than 'sphere.' I analogize this to 'circle' and 'sphere.' 'Sphere' is far more accurate than 'circle,' I agree. However, that does not necessarily mean that 'circle' is not an adequate description in circumstances where that level of precision is not required. Tying together this with your third point, the context/importance of the term, as well as their vast audience, are essential. Think about how you would explain something to a large group of people with very diverse backgrounds, ages, and educational levels. If everyone I am speaking to is educated, I'll probably be as specific and precise as I can be. If there are many people with less education, I'll be less specific and precise; the more educated individuals will be able to add the specificity and figure out what I meant, but everyone will be able to understand me. Let me apply that analogy to this example. If I'm teaching a room of physics students, and one of them asks me what shape the Earth is, I'm going to reply "oblate spheroid," or "nearly an ellipsoid." If my reference to the Earth's shape is in passing conversation, or in response to a question posed by a random group of teenagers, I'm likely to reply more simply "sphere," even if some physics students are in the room; the physics students can pull me aside afterwards and ask me to elaborate, or they'll know what I meant. Finally, if I'm talking to a two-year-old about shapes, and she says 'The earth is a square!', I'll probably correct her by saying 'No, honey, it's a circle.' And I doubt anyone in the room would stand up and correct me on it; they would know what I meant. Further, the Bible is not intended to be, nor should it be, a science textbook. The use of the word 'chuwg' is in passing. A random book or warning on a hairdryer may mention that water conducts electricity, again in passing, because it does not want to go into a science-text-book length discussion about the fact that absolutely pure water does not conduct electricity very well at all, but the electrolytes dissolved in water do. Higher specificity is not always required, or even desired. You said: "Finally let us be clear about dictionary.com. It lists several SETS of definitions. The fourth entry of ONE set includes "sphere". None of the rest do (and we have NO examples of that usage other than the very verse in question - where such a reading is incorrect)." Again, this is exactly my point. Generally, circle does /not/ mean sphere. However, it is sometimes used synonymously - hence my pointing to one definition in a dictionary, and a listing of 'sphere' under 'circle' in the thesaurus.
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AdminAsgara Administrator (Idle past 2302 days) Posts: 2073 From: The Universe Joined: |
Hi Immoros,
This Assistance w/ Forum Formatting offers help with formating. Another good link is to our Forum Guidelines. AdminAsgara Queen of the Universe http://asgarasworld.bravepages.com http://perditionsgate.bravepages.com
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Firstly if you want precision remember that we are dealing with Hebrew and not English. And every source I've checked indicates that the Hebrew word ("chuwg") indicates a circle, not a sphere. actually, i'm not certain. the only time the word ball is used in an english bible, the hebrew word is use three other times - twice meaning encircled (such as an army surrounding a city), and once implicating fire (?!?). so, half the time "ball" is used, it means a FLAT circle. i don't see any reason to think that the word for circle implied flatness, at all. i do still think they thought the earth was flat, i'm just arguing a technicality here. the circles they're talking about relating to the earth appear to be the (half?) sphere that surrounds the flat earth -- the heavens. This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 11-17-2004 08:47 PM
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tsig Member (Idle past 2909 days) Posts: 738 From: USA Joined: |
Saying we're dealing with Hebrew, and that "chuwg" indicates a circle is irrelevant. I never even insinuated that 'circle' and 'sphere' are interchangeable, nor would I say that 'chuwg' means 'sphere.' The two words have fundamentally different meanings. My point was that 'circle' and 'sphere' can sometimes function as basic synonyms. A synonym is not necessarily a word that means the exact same thing. It is a word that has nearly the same meaning, or that serves as a figurative or symbolic substitute.
You contradicted yourself.
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Immoros Inactive Member |
Um... you'll have to be a little more specific than that. I don't see a contradiction.
I have a feeling you simply misunderstood, judging by the quote that you deem to be a contradiction. Perhaps I can use another example to help, with words that are even closer in meaning than 'circle' and 'sphere.' 'Pretty' and 'gorgeous' are not the same word. They are extremely similar, but they have fundamentally different meanings, even if it is only one of degree (quite applicable to the current situation, I'd say, since essentially the difference between 'circle' and 'sphere' is only one of dimension, i.e. 2-dimensional vs. 3-dimensional). If I say 'Jenny is pretty,' I do not necessarily mean 'Jenny is gorgeous.' Conversely, if I say 'Jenny is gorgeous,' I do not mean Jenny is merely 'pretty.' The two words have different meanings. If they didn't, then the following sentence would not make any sentence at all: She's not gorgeous, but she's pretty. They do, however, have /nearly/ the same meaning. They can very often be used interchangeably. If say 'Jenny is pretty,' but I am really thinking 'Jenny is gorgeous,' I am not lying; I am just not being as specific as I could be. I doubt anyone would argue that they are not synonyms, unless you choose a definition of synonym that requires the two words to mean /exactly/ the same thing. If you do, then you are using a different definition than I am, and you will find precious few words are actually synonyms. Sorry for the verbose answer on what's really just a semantic detail, but you shouldn't assume just because you don't understand something that it's contradicting itself. This message has been edited by Immoros, 11-17-2004 11:11 PM
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
My post was less hostile than yours - I didn't call anyone intellectually dishonest unless they agreed with me. That was you.
And your arguments just continue to get worse. Firstly it is HIGHLY relevant to point out that we are dealing with a Hebrew text and that the word written by the actual author was "chuwg". The definition of "chuwg" is obviously more relevant than the definition of "circle". Mreover your whole argument was to try to support the idea that "circle" could mean "sphere" and you even insisted that the original author could have written "circle" meaning "sphere". But the original author wrote "chuwg". Moreover it is fallacious to argue that if one approximation is adequate that a more distant approximation is also adequate as you do. The Earth is a close approximation of a sphere, it is not even close to being an approximation of a two-dimensional figure. A disk might reasonably be described as a circle but not any object that is roughly spherical. You are right to say that the Bible is not a science textbook - but I went further in my original post and pointed out that the context is poetic and the verse should not be taken as describing the shape of the planet. But you must remember the xontext - the discussion was dealing with the claim that the Bible staed that the Earth was spherical and that the verse SHOULD be taken as a fully accurate description. And finally I do not beleive that your point was to show that the definition was really obscure and virtually unknown (there is even the possibility that it is an apologist's invention). And completely irrelevant since there is absolutely no reason to assume that "chuwg" and "circle" are exact synonyms so that an obscure definition of "circle" would also be shared with "chuwg".
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MangyTiger Member (Idle past 6353 days) Posts: 989 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
We're not worthy
Confused ? You will be...
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