Scientific errors in the Bible

Jonathan writes:

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Devine intervention? If God can create the earth and flood it Im sure he can preserve a few trees while they're under water. If God is real he certantly doesnt follow our laws of physics.

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This is fine from a faith perspective. It only becomes an issue when people want to teach it in science class.--Percy

I fear he may be serious. See Message 80 in the There you Go,YECs...biblical "evidence" of "flat earth beliefs" thread.--Percy

As Mister Pamboli has already stated, no one really believes you're unaware of the evidence for the sun-centric view, and so no one understands why you keep insisting that someone present it to you here. Next you'll be asking for evidence that objects actually fall or that water is wet.--Percy

The different responses are interesting, and remind me of a couple old engineer, scientist, mathematician jokes.An engineer, a scientist and a mathematician are placed in a room across from a beautiful girl and are told that every 10 seconds a bell will ring, and that each time it rings they may advance half the distance to the girl. The scientist and the mathematician laugh at this, and when the bell rings only the engineer advances toward the girl. The scientist and the mathematician laugh and scoff at the engineer's foolishness, and after the bell has rung a few more times finally call to him, "Don't you know you'll never get there.""I know," replied the engineer, "but very soon I'll be so close as to make no difference."This represents my approach. You can play all the semantic games you like, but the wrongness of the geocentric view and the evidence falsifying it have been public knowledge for centuries. Seriously entertaining the possibility of geocentrism is silly.

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An engineer, a scientist and a mathematician are spending the night in a hotel room. During the night the wastebasket catches on fire. The engineer wakes up, sees the fire, runs to the bathroom, fills a glass with water, dumps it on the fire and goes back to sleep.A little later the wastebasket catches on fire again. This time the scientist wakes up, sees the fire, scribbles equations furiously on a piece of paper for a minute, runs to the bathroom, fills a glass with water, dumps it on the fire and goes back to sleep.A little later the wastebasket catches on fire once again. This time the mathematician wakes up, sees the fire, scribbles equations furiously on a piece of paper for a minute, shouts, "Aha! A solution exists," and goes back to sleep.This represents the more rigorous logical, mathematical approach some others, like Mister Pamboli, have taken.

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I don't have a scientist joke (I used to, I've forgotten it), but that approach has also been taken by Karl when he listed some phenomena that falsify geocentricity, which is exactly what you requested.Yet despite all this you inexplicably continue in your chosen vein anyway. Do you really believe you're going to convince anyone that geocentricity hasn't really been falsified, and that therefore the Bible isn't really wrong?--Percy

Just to drive everyone crazy, here are some more engineer, scientist, mathematician jokes.An engineer, a scientist and a mathematician are asked to prove or disprove the theorem that all odd numbers are prime.Mathematician: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime, the theorem is disproven.Scientist: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime but that could be experimental error, 11 is prime...Engineer: 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime...

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A team of engineers are asked to measure the height of a flag pole. They only had a measuring tape, and were getting quite frustrated trying to climb the skinny flag pole while holding the tape.A mathematician comes along, finds out their problem, and proceeds to remove the pole from the ground, lie it down and measure it easily. When he leaves, one engineer says to the other: "Just like a mathematician! We need to know the height, and he gives us the length!"

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An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician were asked to fence off the largest possible area with the least amount of fence. The engineer made the fence in a circle and proclaimed that he had the most efficient design. The physicist made a long, straight line and proclaimed 'We can assume the length is infinite...' and pointed out that fencing off half of the Earth was certainly a more efficient way to do it. The Mathematician just laughed at them. He built a tiny fence around himself and said 'I declare myself to be on the outside.'

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A math/computer science convention was being held. On the train to the convention, a bunch of math majors and a bunch of computer science majors were on the train. Each of the math majors had his/her train ticket. The group of computer science majors had only ONE ticket for all of them. The math majors started laughing and snickering. Then, one of the CS majors said "here comes the conductor" and then all of the CS majors went into the bathroom. The math majors were puzzled. The conductor came aboard and said "tickets please" and got tickets from all the math majors. He then went to the bathroom and knocked on the door and said "ticket please" and the CS majors stuck the ticket under the door. The conductor took it and then the CS majors came out of the bathroom a few minutes later. The math majors felt really stupid.So, on the way back from the convention, the group of math majors had one ticket for the group. They started snickering at the CS majors, for the whole group had no tickets amongst them. Then, the CS major lookout said "Conductor coming!". All the CS majors went to the bathroom. All the math majors went to another bathroom. Then, before the conductor came on board, one of the CS majors left the bathroom, knocked on the other bathroom, and said "ticket please."

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Three hungry cannibals --- who were a chemist, a physicist and an engineer --- found a human thigh bone.

• The chemist licked it, and put it in water to try to dissolve it.
• The physicist tried to break it open to get at the marrow.
• The engineer took it, hit the other two over the head, and ate them.

Apologies...--Percy

Let's assume that your pose is not really a pose, but that you're really and truly ignorant of the evidence against the geocentric view. In that case the truly interesting question is how this dismaying lapse in your education could have happened. Were you excused from all science classes? Raised by bears in the woods? Did you recently suffer some mysterious brain malady? Come on now, tell us, we want to know! I'm sure there must be an intriguing story behind this.--Percy

w_fortenberry writes: You appear to have a good concept of gravity, so let me ask you what would happen if you were to attach a bowling ball to either end of the string and place the golf ball in the middle. If the whole were rotated, which ball would end up as the center of the system?

Four fatal problems with this:

• Two bowling balls are no longer an analogy to the solar system, which has only one dominately massive body.
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• The bowling balls would do just about the same thing with or without the golf ball, which only reinforces John's point that the more massive body or bodies dominate.
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• Both the one and two bowling ball systems behave in a manner consistent with the mathematics for dynamic mechanical systems.
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• The orbits of planets around the sun and moons around planets is consistent with the mathematics of orbital mechanics.

quote: And secondly, the math doesn't work with geocentrism. ​ Please provide proof of this statement.

One proof can be found by examining the earth/moon system. We know from observation that the moon doesn't really orbit the earth, but rather that both orbit a point about 1000 miles beneath the earth's surface on a direct line between their centers. This agrees completely with the math for gravitational attraction between two objects:

F = Gm₁m₂/r²
F = force
G = gravitational constant (6.673x10^-11 N-m²/kg²)
m1 = mass of earth (5.976x10²⁴ kg)
m2 = mass of moon (7.351x10²² kg)
r = distance between centers of earth and moon (3.844x10⁸)

Clearly the common orbital point will be rm₂/(m₁+m₂) from the earths center, and plugging in the numbers we get 4671 km. The earth's radius is 6378 km, so that's 1707 km beneath the earth's surface, which is 1060 miles.This check is very simple, but you can use the same equation, along with F=ma, to verify the observed motions of all bodies within the solar system.--Percy

w_fortenberry writes: If such evidence is so readily available as you seem to imply, it should not require any great effort on your part to clearly state that evidence. That you do not do so, resorting to cynicism instead, does not support your claims.

Cynicism? I think derision is more like it. You're professing ignorance of common knowledge. I answered your math question because the basic equation underlying orbital motion is not common knowledge, but I'm wondering why you feel the need to go on and on trying to force someone into answering questions about things you already know. If you're trying to make some point why don't you just go ahead and make it?--Percy

Oh, definitely c. I've felt that from the beginning - thanks for providing the proper label. Your talent for breaking down a discussion into component elements is very helpful.--Percy

w_fortenberry writes: Where is the point about which you propose the sun and the earth orbit?

I was talking about the earth/moon system, but the earth/sun system also orbits a common point. The sun is so much more massive than the earth, more than a million times, that that point is probably well within the sun's surface.

I was deriding your position, not you. For good examples of arguing the person rather than the position see the Jet Retrospective at Message 20 of the Idiocy of the most amusing kind.... thread.

w_fortenberry writes: Let me once again repeat, I am not aware of any evidence of the falsity of the geocentric view found in the Bible.

As Mister Pamboli has already pointed out, and more than once, since you've already professed knowlege of evidence *for* the solar-centric view, then the only way you can claim ignorance of evidence against geocentrism is if the two positions were independent of one another, ie, that both could be true. However, the two positions are contradictory and mutually exclusive. Evidence for one is evidence against the other. What you're doing is a long drawn out exercise in wasting people's time. We're hoping you have some actual point to make at the end of all this.That new format is great, isn't it? I wish I could take credit for thinking of it, but I saw it at some other boards. I'll be adding a UBB code for it sometime soon.--Percy

w_fortenberry writes: But the planetary orbits are said to be eliptical. This does not fit with your statement that "the earth/sun system also orbits a common point." Can you provide an explanation for the elliptical orbits of the planets?

Sure, right after you give a straight answer for how you could possibly be ignorant of so much common knowledge, and right after you address some of the evidence already presented to you.--Percy

Sure you have. You claim to be unaware of any evidence against geocentric theory. If I recall my school years correctly, the information you're asking about was presented three times in three different grades in increasing detail. Did you not attend school?I guess you're not going to tell us why you're asking endless questions about things you already know, but I see no point in replying until you respond to some of the data already presented. For example, you were offered the evidence that spacecraft find their way to where we send them, and star parallax, but you show no interest in discussing or even acknowledging this evidence. You just ignore it and ask another question. I don't see the point in offering you more responses to ignore.--Percy

This evidence is common knowledge. Galileo has been touring Jupiter and the Jovian moons for the past six years. The Mariner spacecraft went to Mars. Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to leave the solar system. Magellan went to Venus. The exploits of all these and many other spacecraft are reported regularly on all the major news outlets. You deny knowing anything about all this? I don't know what game your playing, but I'm not playing it.How about addressing my question. Did you not go to school? Did you not study the solar system at least a couple times? Did they not talk about orbits, spacecraft and star parallax?Why is it always the Creationists with the weird positions. How come no evolutionist ever comes in here saying, "I have never heard of this Christ of whom you speak."--Percy

While motion is relative, acceleration is not. When the relative velocity of two bodies is changing it is said that they are accelerating with respect to one another, and with acceleration, unlike motion, it can always be determined how much of the relative acceleration is contributed by each. Another aid to analysis is the presence of the forces causing the acceleration, which are often amenable to measurement.Earth's velocity is constantly changing with respect to the sun due to the sun's gravitational pull, and a changing velocity is the definition of acceleration. Since it is earth's velocity that is in constant change while the sun's velocity is relatively constant, the earth must be in orbit about the sun and not the reverse.Even though I'm in non-Admin mode, I'm going to issue my standard rubric that EvC Forum will not be playing host to stupid debates. Mr. Fortenberry was permitted to continue because for a while it was suspected he had an interesting point to make about the difficulty of establishing such things with certainty. If you have a point to make along these lines, or even along some other interesting line, then please continue. But if you really believe in geocentrism then I'll be closing this thread, as I should have done long ago.--Percy