I may have found what changed nature in our past

Faith & Science Conversation
141

I did not mention an ellipse but a path the moon takes. The orbital path. You are beating a dead horse argument

142

“I did not mention an ellipse but an ellipse.”

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143

You can mention whatever you like, God’s circuit in the heavens is not flat

144

What Isaiah actually says is circular and

What actually moves

  • There is a remarkably simple problem with the argument being made from Isaiah 40. The easiest way to see it is to read the relevant biblical statements one at a time and keep track of what the text says is:
    • where,
    • what has what shape,
    • and what moves.
  • Isaiah 40:22:
    • “He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth.”
      • A normal reader encounters three things here:
        • God sits.
        • The circle of the earth is below him.
        • Motion of the earth: none is mentioned.
  • Whatever “circle of the earth” means, the verse does not say that the earth makes a circuit around God. It doesn’t say that anything makes a circuit around God.
    • Yet dad has introduced an entirely different idea:
      • “The route and circuit of the sun was not flat. A Circuit of God in heaven is not flat, especially when called a circle."
  • Notice what just happened. The “circle of the earth” has somehow become the “circuit of the sun.” Those aren’t the same object.
  • Continue reading Isaiah 40:22: “He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.” Again the imagery is quite intelligible:
    • God stretches something out.
    • The heavens are what he stretches out.
    • A canopy or tent is what the heavens are compared to.
  • Nothing there says that the earth is spherical. In fact, if we simply drew the imagery being described, we could draw a circular earth with a great domelike canopy stretched over it. Whether that represents physical cosmology or poetic imagery is a separate interpretive question. But it certainly can be drawn.
  • Now consider Psalm 19:4–6, where Scripture actually describes something moving through the heavens. God has pitched a tent for the sun, and: “It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other.”
  • Now we finally have motion. And what moves? Not the earth. The sun moves.
  • The biblical picture is perfectly easy to visualize. Imagine one of those transparent half-dome cake covers sitting over a circular cake plate. Put God at the top-center of the dome. The earth is beneath. Now let the sun travel across the curved dome from one horizon to the other. The sun’s path is curved. The sun makes a circuit through the heavens. And absolutely nothing follows about whether the surface underneath that circuit is flat or spherical.
  • That is the elementary geometrical mistake in:
    • The circle/circuit/compass of a planet cannot be flat actually.
  • Of course a circle can be flat. A circle is a plane figure. And a circuit traveled above a circle doesn’t magically transform the circle underneath it into a sphere.
  • Put a toy train on a circular track around the bottom of our half-dome cake cover. Put God at the top-center of the dome. The train can make a complete circuit around God while the circular plate underneath remains perfectly flat.
  • Or let the sun travel over the curved dome. Its path can be three-dimensional while the surface underneath remains flat.
  • The geometry isn’t difficult. The problem arises because three separate biblical images have been conflated:
    • Isaiah says: “God sits above the circle of the earth”.
    • Isaiah says: "God stretches the heavens over it like a canopy or tent.
    • The Psalm says: "the sun moves through the heavens.
  • Dad’s reconstruction quietly changes that into something like: The earth is a planet >>> a planet is a globe. “Circle” therefore means something globular >>> a circuit in heaven isn’t flat >>> therefore Isaiah’s “circle of the earth” describes a spherical earth.
  • But the conclusion was inserted into the premises. The text never makes those substitutions. This becomes especially important because dad has insisted elsewhere that the issue is what Scripture “actually says”, rather than what somebody interprets Scripture to mean.
  • Fine, then keep the nouns and verbs exactly where Scripture puts them.
    • “God sits.”
    • “The heavens are stretched out.”
    • “The earth has a circle.”
    • “The sun moves.”
  • It is only after those statements have been rearranged—giving the earth geometrical properties inferred from the sun’s circuit—that Isaiah suddenly becomes a description of a spherical planet. That isn’t what Isaiah says. It’s what dad needs Isaiah to mean.
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145

You mentioned the ellipse. The moons path is an ellipse, so what you said is equivalent to “an ellipse but an ellipse.”

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146

No one said the earth makes a circuit around God. The path or circuit He uses when over earth (the circle of the earth) is not flat. No orbital path is flat. Any path around a planet has to be something other than flat.
Enough trying to make the bible and God look silly though.
Any refutation to how God holds everything together and changed nature?

147

He does wants to dwell with them, but I think based on the context, ‘pleading’ may be a better translation. And so why is He striving or pleading with them? Because of their wickedness! We can look at verses 1-3 as a summary, where God gives mankind another 120 years, and then He goes into more detail of what was going on. Compare v.2 with v.4-5 and v.3 with v.6-7 and really the whole chapter is 120 years before the flood when God is instructing Noah to build the Ark.

This word in v.3 is normally translated as ‘flesh’ and is used again in v.13. It was already established that man was mortal ever since he left the Garden, not suggesting that this was about to change.

  • Gen 6:3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

‘indeed’ as in of course he is flesh, and by that nature he is also mortal. Word is gam (1571 גַּם) - “also, even, indeed, moreover”

‘forever’ can be translated as ‘any more’ or ‘continuance’ - “always, ancient time, any more, continuance, eternal, for, everlasting, long time”

So if I can paraphrase: God is saying that His Spirit will not continue to plead with the wickedness of mankind anymore. They are mortal flesh… have free choice (not robots)…, so He is going to give them another 120 years.

Paul in Romans says that God subjected creation to futility in hope:

  • Rom 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Mankind has another nature besides our flesh, and that is a spiritual nature as children of God. It is us that He calls ‘sons of God’ in Genesis, because He created us, we are His children and wants to have a relationship with us. It was yet to be revealed that Jesus would deliver us from corruption and put us in a right relationship with our Father.

  • Gen 6:6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

The NKJV says ‘sorry’ while other translations say ‘regretted’ or ‘repented’. God did not make a mistake in making man, and then regretted it. The word is nacham (5162 נָחַם) - “To comfort, to repent, to relent, to be sorry”. It is most often translated as to comfort. When God made man it was a comfort, for the purpose of having a relationship.

We could paraphrase as: It was a comfort for God when He made man (for the purpose of a relationship), and so He was grieved of heart at seeing them turn away from Him in their wickedness.

148

You keep using that word but I don’t think you know what it means. The moon’s orbit around the earth is elliptical / nearly circular, with a low eccentricity of about 0.055 (this means only slightly different from a true circular orbit). Viewed from the side the orbit is flat. If you drew the earth and moon on a sheet of paper the orbit would look like a circle.

Again, what do you mean by flat?

Haven’t we beaten this poor horse enough.

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149

Their wickedness was still there after the flood.
The suggestion is that it is a countdown to something big. The best place we can graph sudden changes in lifespans is Peleg’s day.
When flesh dies some 9 centuries earlier than before, that is a lot less time God needs to plead with them
The sons of god are angels. Such as in Job appearing before God.

150

This is not the thread to make a case for a lie. The bible does not say the earth is flat etc.

151

I am not. I am trying to understand you.

Not talking about the earth, but you keep saying orbits are not flat. How can a circular orbit be anything but “flat” (the orbit not the earth)?

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152

All orbital paths are flat.

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153
  • Isaiah says of God: “He SITS above the circle of the earth.”
  • dad’s interpretation has now become: “The path or circuit He uses when over earth … is not flat. No orbital path is flat.”
  • Just to keep track of what Scripture actually says: According to Isaiah: “God sits above the circle of the earth.”
  • According to dad: God apparently travels an orbital circuit over the earth.
  • There is no “path” in Isaiah 40:22. There is no “circuit” traveled by God. There is no “orbit.” There isn’t even a verb of motion. God just sits.
  • This is becoming an exceptionally good demonstration of the distinction I’ve been making between “what Scripture says” and “what somebody thinks Scripture means”.
  • And in this particular case, the distinction could hardly be clearer: Scripture says God sits and dad has God orbiting.
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154

Anything going around a planet does so in a way other than flat.

155

The path the moon takes around earth you thought was flat? OK. Have fun making up definitions. Are you sure you are not a flat earther?

156

Did you think astronauts stood the whole way to the moon? Look at Eze and see that His throne is mobile

157

This makes the distinction even clearer.

Nobody has argued that God cannot move. Nobody thinks “sits” means God is permanently immobilized any more than saying an astronaut sat in a spacecraft means the spacecraft couldn’t travel to the Moon.

The question is much simpler: What does Isaiah 40:22 say?

  • Isaiah said: “He sits above the circle of the earth.” dad introduced the path or circuit He uses when over earth. and then: “No orbital path is flat.”
  • There is no path traveled by God in Isaiah 40:22. There is no circuit traveled by God. There is no orbit traveled by God. God sits.
  • Now Ezekiel’s vision of the mobile divine throne has been introduced to supply the missing motion. But Ezekiel having a vision in which God’s throne moves does not change the verb in Isaiah from “sits” to “orbits.”
  • In fact, this provides an almost laboratory-quality demonstration of the distinction under discussion:
    • “What Scripture says:” God sits above the circle of the earth.
    • “What dad has constructed from Scripture:” God travels a non-flat orbital circuit over a spherical planet.
  • And the second proposition is then presented as though it were simply the first proposition “accepted for what it says.” It isn’t.
  • It requires importing motion from Ezekiel, an orbit from nowhere, and a spherical planet from modern knowledge into Isaiah 40:22.
  • Nobody is making God or the Bible look silly. The point is considerably narrower: Isaiah does not say what dad says Isaiah says.
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158

“History” didn’t exist until the 19th century.

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159

It doesn’t say it is a sphere; it says it is a circle – and a circle is flat (that’s grammar school math).

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160

If you have a problem with the plane of an orbit, here is some real fun for you.

An object orbiting the Earth is traveling in a straight line through space-time. So not three dimensional, not two dimensional, but one dimensional. :open_mouth: :satellite:

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