I may have found what changed nature in our past

Faith & Science Conversation
161

On a throne, one generally does what? Sit. If His thronemobile was over earth, as it was in Eze then one could picture Him as sitting. Nothing to do with being immobilized.
You can accept or reject whatever you like.
I doubt you want to try arguing that the One who holds the universe together could not change nature as needed.
Perhaps you think He has a problem getting around? Ha

Maybe bring things home to the topic and wrap up your position clearly

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If God chooses a circular orbit path why would I care?

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Take a globe on your desk. Move your finger around it and above a few inches. Do you claim your finger went on a flat straight line?

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What would that have to do with free fall?

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Not sure. What do you think is falling somewhere? Did you knock the globe off your desk with your finger? Was that in a frenzy of desperation trying to make God look silly?

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So you do not understand grade school geometry, modern or Newtonian physics, and think you can compensate for that with bluster. You have not found what changed nature in the past. You do not even understand the basics of what nature is.

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Try to understand that if God has a circuit over the planet sometimes, this does not mean a flat earth.
Enough of the off topic nonsense

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  • And there again you are interpreting Scripture. Isaiah says God “sits above the circle of the earth” and you interpret that statement in light of Ezekiel’s mobile throne and conclude that God may be moving over the earth while sitting.
  • Whether that interpretation is right or wrong is beside my point; it’s an interpretation.
    And that’s precisely the distinction I’ve been waiting for you to acknowledge: what Scripture says and your interpretation of what Scripture says are not the same thing.
169

If God is known to be up there over earth in a throne that flies (in something with wheels etc etc) then that is a good example of God moving over the earth and also sitting. A great example. What would you have us do, pretend the earth is flat and that He cannot be above the earth at times in a circuit He uses?
This is a good example of why His spirit is needed to understand what we read. Would you say you have that?

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  • There is a striking transition in this argument that is worth noticing. It begins:
    • “If God…”
    • “If He…”
    • “If He wanted…”
    • “If he did not want…”
  • These are statements about what an omnipotent God could do. Then, without any additional evidence, they become:
    • “That is the mechanism for the nature change that happened.”
  • But “God could do X” does not entail “God did X”. And Scripture saying that all things depend upon God does not entail that God altered gravity, the nuclear forces, plant-growth rates, human longevity, human neurological processing, and interaction between spiritual and physical beings at some particular point in ancient history. Those are dad’s “interpretations and inferences from Scripture”. They may be believed. They may be argued for. But they cannot simply be renamed “what Scripture says.” And that is the same point I’ve been making in the other thread: “What Scripture says and one’s interpretation of what Scripture says are not the same thing.”
  • dad’s post actually demonstrates the distinction exceptionally well: “could have” becomes “did,” and then “did” becomes “Scripture tells us.”
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There was major change. The One that holds the universe together made those changes. Scripture says that people lived many centuries for example. That changed. You simply try to deny or ignore what he did and call it something that needs interpreting. No it is something that only needs believing. Or not. No use trying the mask the latter

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  • About 30 minutes ago, in the serpent thread, you wrote: “Throughout the Bible it is interpreted as real.” I replied, “We finally agree.”
  • Now you’re back to claiming that your reading “only needs believing” rather than interpreting. You can’t have it both ways. Either you are interpreting Scripture or you aren’t.
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The moon’s path around the Earth[1] is flat, or at least it would be if it wasn’t slightly perturbed by the gravitational effects of other planets, asteroids etc.

The moon’s path around the Sun is almost, but not quite, flat due to the inclination of the Moon w.r.t. the Earth being different from both the Earth’s rotational plane and the Earth’s inclination w.r.t. the Sun.

The Moon’s path as seen from the Earth’s surface is not flat, but that’s because the Moon’s orbit is elliptical, is inclined w.r.t. the Earth’s rotational plane, and doesn’t match Earth’s rotational period.

Various forms of precession and obliquity also affect the flatness of the Moon’s orbit, but again only slightly, as do angular variations in Earth’s gravity.

Far more information is available e.g. here.

P.S. It’s not eccentricity that makes orbit’s seem not to be flat, it’s inclination. An elliptical orbit with no inclination w.r.t. Earth’s rotational plane would appear flat because the moon would always be above the planet’s equator. An inclined circular orbit would not.

Added:

‘Flat’ is not the same as ‘straight’. Orbits are ‘flat’ because they lie in a 2-dimensional plane. They are not ‘straight’, because they do not follow a 1-dimensional line. Orbits are flat (2-dimensional) curves as opposed to 3-dimensional curves, but the plane in which they are flat is not necessarily related to any plane associated with the body being orbited, so orbits could be considered flat from one perspective but not flat from another perspective.

This is not an excuse for insisting that orbital paths are not flat. That’s simply wrong, and attempting to shift from ‘flat’ to ‘straight’ to avoid admitting error is pathetic.

[Feel free to imagine there are comments about eccentricity and flatness w.r.t. distance from the planet’s surface here]

P.P.S. None of this has anything whatsoever to do with any circuitous path followed by a deity.

  1. Technically around the Earth/Moon barycentre. ↩︎

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Is this a new version of Last Thursdayism?

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Nope. What is meant by “history” today stems from the 19th century. The Biblical texts were written a tad bit earlier than that.

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leghorn
leghorn649×472 51.9 KB

[History existed at least as far back as 500BC, just not in the form it exists in today]

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  • @BuffaloMax17 I was trying to think of something or things that might help a kid see how a moving object could move in a flat circle, and I remembered two (a) the Spirograph and (b) a Plumb-bob Governor.
  • What do you think?