There you Go,YECs...biblical "evidence" of "flat earth beliefs"

http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=dan+4:10-11http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=mat+4:8http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=1+chr+16:30http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=psa+93:1Those passages clearly demonstrate that the writers thereof firmly believed that the earth was flat and stationary.

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Originally posted by gene90:
And don't forget, circles are flat.

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(Pre-emptive strike on the Creationist response)

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Indeed....Using the word SPHERE might have indicated undertanding of the world's actual form. I'm waiting for some YEC to explain to me how i am misreading those quotations

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Originally posted by Peter:

I'm sorry (especially as an evolutionist), but I'm not convinced
that any of those point to flat earth or static earth beliefs.

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Which, considering flat earth beliefs arose during the dark ages,
and prior to this (i.e. during the time the bible was written) it
was well-known that the earth was round, is not suprising.

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The world not being moved seems more of a metaphor for
'It exists, live with it!'

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Actually,the text of the Bible were writen well before the dark ages,whom' occured between the 12th and 16th century. Most of the ancient textament was writen 300 BC and the new testament was writen a mere few century after the death of christ. The many parts of the Bible were ASSEMBLED in the middle ages and TRANSLATED from the hebrew and greek to latin and then english...their content however was not altered,at least according to the church. But to adress your points,the first two passages mentionned refer to first an object tall enough that it can be seen by the whole world and second,to a vantage point high enough to allow one to look onto the whole world. This illustrates not only their belief that the earth was a flat circle but that the world was actually quite small,since they wrote that there could be a place where you could have a line of sight onto all areas of the world. The second two passages i agree dont refer to a flat world but rather an UNMOVING one,which is quite untrue,since the planet is hurtling around the sun at a whopping 29,8 km/second. So not only is it moving...its moving extremely fast. As for your metaphor comment,i always have problems with that position. The Bible is clearly an either/or proposition...either the entire thing is a work of literal truth,or the entire thing is a book of metaphore. If we say that unmoving world is a metaphore for the world exists,then why couldn't we say created in 6 days is a metaphore for the world rose to what it is today in 6 ages? Because there is no clear indication which part is to be taken literaly and which part is to be taken metaphoricaly,then this is all subject to personal interpretation,which makes it irrevocably flawed as a message from our God to us...

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Originally posted by Punisher:
Isaiah 40:22 "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in"

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That quotation says nothing about weather or not the world is a SPHERE and is MOVING in space...a circle by its nature IS FLAT.

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Originally posted by Peter:
The quote for the second two is the same, and since one of them
is from psalms (i.e. poetry) I think metaphor is acceptable.

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I am an EVOLUTIONIST and an atheist.
I do not believe that the Bible should be taken literally.

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Yes,ancient cultures DID know about the earth and the helio-centric solar system...they were called the Sumerians. they even knew about neptune and uranus,which cant be seen by the naked eye from earth and pluto,which requires the most powerfull telescopes we have. They also spkoe of a tenth planet outside the orbit of Pluto circling the sun in a large eliptical orbit which brings it back near earth every 3600 years. They called that Planet Tiamat and were somehow convinced that the Earth was at one time much larget,before it collided with one of Tiamat's satellites. On one of their ancient tablets,which is about 5000 years old,they have a pictograme of the solar system,with all the planets rotating around the sun in their correct position(their name for the earth was KI). No one know how they came about this knowledge with their limited technological means but the Sumerians often refered to their Gods having come down from "heaven" to impart their wisdom of man. One such Diety,refered to as Ishtar,is proeminently mentionned in the epic of Gilgamesh,which,interestingly enough,is the first writen account of a flood legend known to man...only the savior of animals in that story was Gilgamesh himself...no mention of any Noah in that story and that flood was not send to punish mankind...it was a natural catastrophy that the Gods warned Gilgamesh against out of concern. But most of their knowledge was lost when the Babylonians took over their empire. Only their legends,writen on their clay tablets survived the fall of their empire and those were recycled and transformed by the Babylonians,and then by the Hebrew who lived under their rule. At the time of the Hebrew,no one believe that the world was this large ball of dirt mostly covered by water and knowledge of other planets was also lost.

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Originally posted by Mister Pamboli:
I thought this thread was a joke at first. Apparently not! Oh well, here goes...

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Originally posted by LudvanB:Actually,the text of the Bible were writen well before the dark ages,whom' occured between the 12th and 16th century.

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I think you'll find the 12th to 16th century comprise what historians often refer to as the High, Late and Post-Medieval periods. The dark ages are much earlier, roughly from the fall of the Roman empire to the start of the Carolingian period. Oh and they were a European period - the Bible is Middle Eastern in origin, and they were having a jolly enlightened time while Europeans were "in the dark."
Still, I'm sure the rest of your historical analysis is right. Let's see ... [b] [QUOTE]Most of the ancient textament was writen 300 BC and the new testament was writen a mere few century after the death of christ. The many parts of the Bible were ASSEMBLED in the middle ages and TRANSLATED from the hebrew and greek to latin and then english[/b][/QUOTE]

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300 BC was busy year for someone! The Bible was assembled in the Middle Ages? This must have been awkward for Bishop Ulfilas of the Goths who translated the Old and New Testaments in the 4th century, or Mesrob who completed his Armenian translation in the first decade of the 5th century.

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Mr Pamboli. I thank you for correcting some of my historical innacuracies,although i would say that most historians would readily consider the spanish inquisition as the dark ages. I was apparantly given some bad info on when the Bible was actually writen...You did not,however,adress my initial post itself i noticed. I was not joking when i QUOTED DIRECTLY FROM THE BIBLE that the earth is described as a FLAT,IMMOBILE WORLD. Would you care to comment on that?

And i firmly believe that confronting fundamentalism can only be done be constantly demonstrating how silly it is by showing exemples of what they recognize as fundamental truths as complete nonsense.

Yes but Neil Amrstrong could see the earth rotate on its axis and would never conclude that the earth was anything but a Sphere...Khud means circle,not spherity. And this does not in any way adress the quotations i linked to,which not only describe the earth as something that can be observed from a montain top in its entirety but as something that is completely IMMOBILE,thus,NOT rotating on its Axis.

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Originally posted by Peter:

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The idea of a flat earth arose during the dark ages (or possibly
a medieval era), and that PRIOR to that, during the time the
bible was written, people knew that the earth was NOT FLAT!!!

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If the hebrew who originaly authored the Bible KNEW that the earth was a huge ball of dirt hurtling through space at a wopping 29.8 km/s,they certainly did not make this knowledge self evident in their writings. Only on a small flat earth could there be a mountain that would allow one to see the WHOLE WORLD. And when they say the earth cannot be moved,i dont see how else this can be interpreted with any level of credibility

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Originally posted by Mister Pamboli:

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Originally posted by joz:
The Greeks were very much enamoured of pi and circles/spheres so they probably reached that decision a priori based on the "perfection" of the sphere.....

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I really doubt that it was an empiricaly derived conclusion...

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It almost certainly was emprically derived. Eratosthenes was involved in mapping the trade routes of the time. Sailors can intuitively see the spherical nature of the earth by observing how ships disappear over the horizon gradually and the simple observation that the higher you are, the further you can see. There is a good, if brief explanation fo this here ...
http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Scolumb.htm

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Eratosthenes' teacher, Lysania of Cyrene is thought to have been the first to have wondered how the circumference could be calculated. The information would be have been of great use in cartography.

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Astronomers, including Ptolemy, who were writing later than Eratosthenes remark how the spherical nature of the earth and heavens can be seen by the path of the sun and moon "round" the earth - the observations from many distances apart only make sense if there path and the earth itself are round. They do not present the information as new, so it was probably well established in the canon of
scholarly knowledge by the time they made use of it.

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Reguardless,this knowledge obviously was not prevalent in hebrew cultures,since it can be easily infered from reading their writings that they saw the earth as something that could be seen in its entirety from a mountain top...in other words,small,circular and flat