I’m using ‘fire-retardant fabrics’ as an analogy for the particular kind of polemic value that either (a) is contrived ‘whole cloth’, or (b) is less-than-ideally ordered).
An example of (b) is that implied in the status quo YEC belief that the term ‘darkness upon’ in Genesis 1:2 is fully explicit of the author’s meaning of that term, and therefore means cosmic darkness. That status quo seems willing to defend this interpretation nearly as much as to defend YEC itself. They admit that the Bible (as a limited instance of Ancient Near East language), in such a context, normally uses that term to imply dense cloud.
Not at all. Obviously the Maya were brilliant to figure out the exact length of a solar year to within fractions of what we now know it to be with our advanced instruments of measurements. Technology doesn’t make you more intelligent, but it makes you more capable of observing some things others without the technology would be ignorant of. The sophisticated wordplay in Genesis the is obvious to people who know Hebrew is evidence of a high level of literary sophistication. Acknowledging that people in the ANE were unaware of certain scientific facts we now take for granted is not labeling them as stupid. [quote=“Daniel_Pech, post:38, topic:35941”]
The way I see it, there is overwhelming evidence that most pre-modern humans knew most or all of the basic things that moderns observe of the geometry of the celestial realm, and of the shape of Earth in the midst of that realm.
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That may be the way you see it, but how many people agree with you? I am reading through Joy Hakim’s History of Science series with my daughter. Pre-modern (and by that I assume you mean pre-scientific revolution, not pre-modern in the evolutionary sense) people had a very different concept of how the celestial realm worked, even as they kept detailed astrological charts and records. Are you arguing that ancient Hebrews did have a concept of an atmosphere? Everything I ever read suggested they believed in a solid dome firmament.[quote=“Daniel_Pech, post:39, topic:35941”]
I’m not trying to defend YEC here. I’m trying to show why YEC is not equivalent to its merely status quo.
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Okay, but most people here don’t care what version of YEC you espouse, status quo or otherwise. They find it an indefensible position on the grounds that it does not make sense of heaps and heaps of observations about the natural world. If your argument is with some version of YEC, wouldn’t it make more sense to argue with people who share some YEC presuppositions as common ground? Here’s an analogy for you. It seems like you are expounding on the merits of supralapsarianism over infralapsarianism to a Buddhist. Why would the Buddhist care, you should go find a Calvinist.[quote=“Daniel_Pech, post:39, topic:35941”]
My point is that there are certain things that the merely status quo of YEC makes of Genesis 1 that nearly all YEC’s are determined to defend mainly because of its polemic value, not because it makes the best good sense in itself, either by the terminology in the account or by the sequence they seem determined to see from that terminology.
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Yeah, that sounds par for the course. But you are kind of forced into that corner when your entire position rests on defending “science” that makes no sense.
Do you agree or disagree that this oral Hebrew you speak of was spoken by Adam and Eve somewhere around 4000 B.C.?
It seems like you conceive of languages as some kind of fixed entity. Languages exist only in a community of speakers and they are constantly changing over time. There is no such thing as “Hebrew” as some kind of objective, timeless thing.
I meant overall, and therefore in regard to things that, to my way of thinking, would normally be known without any technology. This is why I posted on my disagreement with YEC Faulkner about non-modern’s capacity to see that the sensible substance of breath and breeze does not extend any significant fraction even toward the Moon. As I partly quoted in earlier posts in the present thread, Faulkner asserts:
The first heaven is the near distance above us. Today we would call this
the atmosphere, though the atmosphere was not a concept that ancient
people, including the Hebrews, would recognize. Clouds, birds, and
precipitation are phenomena associated with this first heaven. For
instance, Psalm 104:12 refers to the birds of heaven and Isaiah 55:10 speaks of rain and snow coming down from heaven. The second heaven is the astronomical realm, what we today would call space.
That may be the way you see it, but how many people agree with you?[/quote]
I am aware that it is common that people today think that pre-moderns essentially always were dunces when it comes to the cosmic limit of the air they breath. But, suppose that you, Christy, were to learn that a human being, with no technology, has the ready empirical ability, from the ground, to see that the air seems not to extend to any of the luminaries. Would your thinking change regarding what those like Hakim’s History of Science claims about what pre-moderns all thought of the sky?
[quote=“Christy, post:42, topic:35941”]
Are you arguing that ancient Hebrews did have a concept of an atmosphere?[/quote]
Which ancient Hebrews? If you find that ‘ancient Hebrews believed x’, that does not mean either:
(a) ‘all, or even historically most, ancient Hebrews believed only x.’
(b) ‘all, or even historically most, ancient Hebrews believed x at all.’
Everyone who drives autos drive autos. Some ‘cars’ are (a) poorly designed, and, or, (b) need constant maintenance. I think you will agree that the status quo YEC is like a ‘car’ that is both (a) and (b). Even a Buddist drives ‘cars’, but a Buddist is, as such, not a Bible-believing Christian.
Granted. But I’m assuming (X) that humans were specially created, and this at only one time in the past, and (Y) that God did not ‘front-load’ a language into those first humans’ minds. Most YEC’s, and presumably many OEC’s, reason as if, if not that, God ‘front-load’ a language into the first humans’ minds.
I shall presume you grant that those who wrote the OT all were of one mind as far as the nature of the sky. I grant the same.
And even if you do not grant that they all were of the same mind regarding the sky, what do you make of each h’shamayim and raqia in Psalm 19:1? (‘heavens’ and ‘sky’).
I predict that your view of the latter is that it really is ‘firmament’. But consider that metal tableware post-dates the contemporaneousness of (a) the blue sky and (b) humans. Spoken Hebrew /raw-kee-ah/ is a fine likeness to the sound of hammering a sheet a metal. But if both humans and sky predated such hammering, then I think the only (possibly complex) question left is whether humans, as such, have a ready ability to see that the air seems not to extend to the luminaries. This question is possibly complex if that ability itself is in view of a complex phenomenon that is very well compared to the thinness and shiny-ness of beaten sheets of metal. The blueness of the daylit sky is the air’s shiny-ness.
It seems to me that the general, and seemingly by far most numerous, Biblical Hebrew word for sky is not ‘raqia’ or its related forms, but h’shamayim
I am aware that persons today tend to think that pre-moderns essentially always were unaware of the cosmic limit of the air around them. But, suppose a given such modern person were to learn that a human being, with no technology, has the ready empirical ability, from the ground, to see that the air seems not to extend to any of the luminaries? Would that persons thinking change regarding what pre-moderns must have all thought of the sky?
You are on an evolutionary creationist site. The people here do not think language was front-loaded into the first human’s mind. They think it developed over time from a more concrete semiotic system. I will go out on a limb and bet that no one reading this thread has any familiarity with the YEC articles you are critiquing. I don’t think many people care what they say. They aren’t considered reliable experts on anything.
No, the question is still why you think Adam and Eve wrote Genesis. That is still crazy. The fact that the Hebrew author was describing a long past event in contemporary language with reference to contemporary cosmology and possibly contemporary metal working is entirely understandable and expected. Air doesn’t extend to the luminaries, so why would anyone have seen such a thing?
There is no “biblical word” for the modern English concept referrred to as ‘sky,’ because they did not conceive of an atmosphere. The heavens were a realm above the earth, the firmament was part of their cosmic geography. ‘Sky’ as a permeable atmosphere was not in their concept bank, so why would we expect them to have a word for it. [quote=“Daniel_Pech, post:50, topic:35941”]
But, suppose a given such modern person were to learn that a human being, with no technology, has the ready empirical ability, from the ground, to see that the air seems not to extend to any of the luminaries? Would that persons thinking change regarding what pre-moderns must have all thought of the sky?
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You can’t see air. I have no idea what you are talking about.
Yes you can—and do—, every time you are outside in a clear-sky daylight.
Humans did not begin their existence staring at the front the classroom as the teacher speaks. They began their existence outdoors, and this in view of both (A) the sky above and (B) of a wide range of various horizontal distances.
You already have had plenty of visual perceptual experience of those various horizontal distances. What you have not noticed, it seems, is that, without any preconceptions, a human who sees both (A) and (B) will assume that they are one and the same substance, of that spatial depth of color.
Yet when the very bright light from the Sun goes away down below the horizon line, that same substance becomes transparent to the rather unlit expanse of the realm of the luminaries.
And when the Moon, at night, is seen to reflect that Sunlight, yet not even the realm around the Moon is lit up blue. So the Moon, indeed, appears not to be enveloped in any of the same ‘invisible’ substance that becomes blue in the brightness of the Sun.
Without any technology worth noting, can humans readily observe that the air around them seems not to extend to the luminaries? The typical modern answer is a resoundingly intuitive “No.” But this answer assumes the very intuition by which the answer passively is simply maintained as being self-evidently true. So it essentially is no more objective than is that which it presumes upon any non-moderns who, in some way, seems to have espoused that the sky is an actually solid dome. In the Ancient Near East, this solid dome model seems to have been likened to beaten sheets of metal. So it ought immediately be obvious that the crucial problem here is that of a perceptual passivity, whether: (A) on the part of any ancients about the sky, or (B) on the part of moderns about that to which the ancients supposedly must have been limited in regard to the sky. So it should be obvious that this passive ignorance is a key to why us moderns continue to grant that pre-moderns did not, and could not, know that the the air around them did not extend to the luminaries. For, it is only on the basis of our granting this condescending view of pre-technology humans that we ever fail to realize that humans’ ability to see the sky predates the advent of such things as beaten sheets of metal.
This is really rather contrived. Have you any evidence that these “pre-moderns” knew that the atmosphere ended someplace? We have ample evidence (textual and archaeological) that the ancients believed the earth to be flat and the sky to be a solid dome. This doesn’t make them stupid, mind you; ignorance is not a measure of brain capacity (something that should be patently obvious but seems to escape the best of us).
By the logic you are using here, we could say that, since
(A) nearly all moderns give plenty of evidence of believing the Earth is a spere(oid) ‘hung on nothing’ in the midst of the starry realm, then
(B) the few moderns (‘flat Earthers’) that insist that that belief is being maintained by a huge hoax,
means
(C) that no moderns are (B).
Presumably, most moderns with an internet connection are aware of (B), but that’s not the point of my analogy here. My point is as to the point of view of some science-fictional, far-future Martian who unearths lots of the evidence of a long-since vanished human race. Are you not being like that Martian?
The total evidences of the actual ancient world—which includes the Bible—are like the remains of that vanished human race. Are you not insisting on measuring the Bible according to (how you want to simplistically interpret) merely “all” of the unearthed remains of dead ancient cultures?
For every “established” claim that every ancient culture, and every person or subgroup in each of those cultures, was cosmologically backward, I can show you articles that clearly show that those claims are grossly over-simplistic. But will you read those articles, is the question. Or maybe you have read some of them, but you have rejected them as being mistaken?
Wrong. A clear sky appears blue and solid. As a child that is what I thought sky meant, the blue dome over my head. With clear air various horizontal distances tell me nothing about the sky above my head. The air is transparent and to my eye there is nothing there. In fact clouds over my head and fog on the ground appear the same to me and proves that clouds exist in front of the blue dome and also on the ground.
You know it is the same substance. The ancients didn’t. As the sun drops below the horizon the sky becomes blood red almost as if the sun is dying. Which is why many ancient people believed the sun god died every night and was reborn in the morning. Such as Ra in Egypt.
Only modern people know the moon reflects sunlight. The ancients assumed the moon was a source of light.
Genesis 1:14-15 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so.
Notice it says the moon is a light not just reflected light. The sky was dark because the bright light of the sun was gone and the moon only gives a faint light on the nights that it is present. I am sure the ancients could notice the differences in the amount of light. You are aware that in the absence of light it gets dark right? On a moonless night the sky is very dark except for the stars which had been hung in the sky.
Edit to add a final thought.
Ask any child what color is the sky and what will they say? Blue.
Ask any child what color is air and most will give you a puzzled expression as they have no comprehension of air.
Of course a few of us do remember when air was pink. Bonus points for the first person to identify the source of pink air.
I’m not sure if you see what I’m referring to about horizontal ‘distance’. I’m talking about the gray-blue color of the fading of objects relative to distance. The trees and rocks right next you appear much darker and greener than do those halfway to the horizon. And those halfway to the horizon appear less blue and faded than do those at the horizon.