scourge99
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only you can question your faith.My opoligies sir, you are right and I am wrong.
I never was one to back from a mistake I made.
Perhaps it is because I have faith in God and get a little frustrated by some of the athiest and intellectuals queestioning my faith .
scientific theories often have evidence to support them. Scientific theories cannot be "proven", only supported. "Proofs" are for math. "Proof", is better known as "evidence".While some so called theories are often blured into fact although in fact there are still a theory, or speculation a beleif with no proof.
Theists often equiovocate with the word "faith". So it depends on how you personally define "faith".Should my faith in God be concidered that much differant?
I like how you just shut down your own argument by providing a factual history of the Santa tradition :lol:
First I would like to sincerely thank you for bringing these challenges to the table. Conversations like these force me to take a critical look at what I believe and see if I can actually validate those beliefs.Huh? The sun does go up and down in the first place, it only appears so due to the rotation of the earth. Relative to the earth the sun is in a fixed position.
Of the Earth's axis
The Earth goes through one complete precession cycle in a period of approximately 25,800 years, during which the positions of stars as measured in the equatorial coordinate system will slowly change; the change is actually due to the change of the coordinates. Over this cycle the Earth's north axial pole moves from where it is now, within 1° of Polaris, in a circle around the ecliptic pole, with an angular radius of about 23.5 degrees (or approximately 23 degrees 27 arcminutes [1]). The shift is 1 degree in 180 years, where the angle is taken from the observer, not from the center of the circle. The precession of Earths axis of rotation with respect to inertial space is also called the precession of the equinoxes.
<snip>
Discovery of the precession of the equinoxes is generally attributed to the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus (ca. 150 B.C.), though the difference between the sidereal and tropical years was known to Aristarchus of Samos much earlier (ca. 280 B.C.). It was later explained by Newtonian physics. The Earth has a nonspherical shape, being oblate spheroid, bulging outward at the equator. The gravitational tidal forces of the Moon and Sun apply torque as they attempt to pull the equatorial bulge into the plane of the ecliptic. The portion of the precession due to the combined action of the Sun and the Moon is called lunisolar precession.
It is reported that there is independent historical confirmation of a long day in the writings of other people. See Arthur Gook, Can A Young Man Trust His Bible?, (London: Pickering and Inglis Ltd.). Gook comments as follows: "There were three ancient nations in the East which kept records of their history - the Greeks, The Egyptians and the Chinese.
Each of these nations has a record of an unnaturally long day.
- Herodotus, 480 B.C. a Greek who is called 'the father of history,' tells us that some priests in Egypt showed him a record telling of the lengthening of a day far beyond the twenty-four hours.
- In the Chinese ancient writings it is plainly stated that such an occurrence took place in the reign of their Emperor Yeo, and their genealogical tables show that an Emperor of this name was reigning in China in the time of Joshua.
- Lord Kingsborough, who has made a special study of the aboriginal Indians in America, states that the Mexicans, who reached a high state of civilization long before America was discovered by Europeans, have a record that the sun 'stood still' for a whole day in the year which they call 'seven rabbits.'
Now, the year 'seven rabbits' corresponds exactly with the time that Joshua and the Israelites were conquering Palestine." p. 43
The Miraculous - Joshua 10:13
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To my theist brothers and sisters out there, yes, God can do any logically possible, however defying his own laws of physics does not appear to be one logically possible option. Therefore I do not accept that God simply made the Earth stop without consequence. That notion, I'm afraid, is to ethereal for me to accept.
Even God is bound by God's laws.
First I would like to sincerely thank you for bringing these challenges to the table. Conversations like these force me to take a critical look at what I believe and see if I can actually validate those beliefs.
I'll happily address your post in it's entirety tonight, however I wanted to chime in on the story of the sun seemingly standing still, as I find it to be one of the more intriguing biblical events from an astronomical point of view.
We agree that the earth did not stand still, as the consequences of suddenly stopping Earth's rotation would have ended civilization as we know it.
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To my theist brothers and sisters out there, yes, God can do any logically possible, however defying his own laws of physics does not appear to be one logically possible option. Therefore I do not accept that God simply made the Earth stop without consequence. That notion, I'm afraid, is to ethereal for me to accept.
Even God is bound by God's laws.
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IMO the challenge is to explain how the sun could appear to stand still while the earth is still moving. To me, the best answer is to change how the Earth moved.
An exaggerated precession, or torque-induced precession (gyroscopic precession), is the phenomenon in which the axis of a spinning object (e.g. a part of a gyroscope) "wobbles" when a torque is applied to it.
From the link:
Without direct evidence, I can only speculate that a polar shift may have applied enough torque to send Earth into an exaggerated gyroscopic precession. I do not claim that this is in fact how it actually happened, only that it is my unqualified yet reasonably researched best guess.
My opoligies sir, you are right and I am wrong.
I never was one to back from a mistake I made.
Perhaps it is because I have faith in God and get a little frustrated by some of the athiest and intellectuals queestioning my faith .
While some so called theories are often blured into fact although in fact there are still a theory, or speculation a beleif with no proof.
Should my faith in God be concidered that much differant?
Well let's assume that is correct and that this phenomenon would make it appear as though the sun stopped moving, well there's still two problems 1) that is not what the bible says, what the bible says is that the sun stopped not that the earth shifted its rotation...
and 2) the sun isn't moving in the first place.
(shrug) I have no problem with believing that God could and did suspend the "law" of inertia (etc) to suit His purposes. If I assume an omnipotent God then there is no reason for me to believe that He is bound by so-called "laws of physics" which He created.
That's what the witness said.
The bible does not offer an objective technical analysis of the event, or barely anything else for that matter. In fact I would dare say that the only technical account in the entire bible regards the creation of alters, temples and arcs.
You know this, I know this, but we both still call it a sun-set, don't we
Since we know the sun isn't moving, we therefore know the story describes how the event appeared from the ground, just as we call it a "sun-set" or "sun-rise". When we say these things we are not objectively describing the event. We are describing our relationship to the event.
(shrug) I have no problem with believing that God could and did suspend the "law" of inertia (etc) to suit His purposes. If I assume an omnipotent God then there is no reason for me to believe that He is bound by so-called "laws of physics" which He created.
But this is in a book which is supposedly from the lips of an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient being.
I don't need it to be technical, all I need is for it to be logically consistent, the only reason why it would assert that the sun stopped is because it is describing a geocentric universe in which the sun revolves around the earth rather than the earth revolving around the sun.
But once again this is supposed to be the divinely inspired word of god.
Why? Why can't God do the illogical?
Only in the minds of literalists, who make up a very small % of Christians.
I am not of the school of thought who says the entire bible was dictated directly from God. Some portions, perhaps, but other portions are personal accounts, opinion, or matters of record. The 4 gospels, for example, are each their own witness to events. They were not dictated from God but perspectives of godly men.
To reiterate, again, it says the sun stopped because that's what it looked like.
In Revelations it says the moon turns red. It's not the moon itself that turns red, but something in the sky that makes it appear to be red from our point of view: something like a volcano eruption.
Christians as a group are not claiming that the sun revolves around the earth or that the sun then stopped for you to point to our book and object. It doesn't say what you claim in the first place for it to then be wrong.
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It's like you're a Creationist telling a Darwinist that humans couldn't have evolved from monkeys and apes. Well silly head Darwinists never ever claimed that humans evolved from monkeys and apes for you to then say they're wrong.
Did you understand the point I was making?
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Students of the seminary are taught actual contradictions of the bible. I hope one day I can meet someone who can set aside these silly mistranslations and quotes out-of-context and move on to real contradictions.
Actually evangelicals believe that the bible is the word of god spoken through the holy spirit to the authors and they account for 420 million which is nearly half of the worlds 1.6 billion Christians. Oh and they are the fastest growing Christian sect as well.
OK but if the bible is not to be taken literally then what is it? It's a work of fiction so why should anyone take it seriously?
they account for 420 million which is nearly half of the worlds 1.6 billion Christians.
420,000,000/1,600,000,000 = .2625 or 26.25 %
How do you attempt to support this claim?Knowing why doesn't change the fact that God can only do everything logically possible.
If God is omnipotent, then He can defy logic.Knowing why doesn't change the fact that God can only do everything logically possible.
If God is omnipotent, then He can defy logic.
Thats why the "can he create a rock so large He cannot lift" test fails.
Logic is like math.He can defy human logic, but what kind of logic do you think Gods go by??
Logic is like math.
Its not your or mine or His, it just is.
Logic is like math.
Its not your or mine or His, it just is.
If by 'logic' you mean 'line of thought' then yes.We clearly don't adhere to God's logic, as we don't fully understand it.
On the contrary. Logic is much narrower than that. Not all human reasoning contains logic.Logic is human-reasoning, nothing more.
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