'Rogue' YEC reads Genesis 1:1-18

[Daniel_Pech]

@pevaquark

Almost like the Hebrew writers thought of it like a dome or something and that is perfectly okay as God was communicating to them in a way they could understand about the world. Or maybe the whole thing was just made up.

Yes, most modern secular historians assume that the ancients’ depiction of the sky as a hard dome must itself have developed by the supposed fact that, without modern technology and ‘science’, the human being can perceive the sky only to be a solid-surface dome that resides far above the clouds.

But the fact is that humans had been seeing the sky for an effectively very long time before they ever began making beaten metal bowls (Hebrew ‘raqia’).

If Adam and Eve were made readily capable of deducing from the empirical information constituting the sky that the sensible air may well not extend to the luminaries, then such metal bowls originally were likened to the atmosphere, not the other way.

If God so made the readily visible information of the sky so that it matches humans’ natural abilities to observe that information on its own terms, then the origin of the solid-dome model of the sky is that in how humans originally understood the likeness of these shiny metal bowls to the atmosphere: these bowls depicted certain characteristics of the atmosphere, such as shiny in the light, thin relative to its contents, and firmly holding its contents.

The atmosphere literally shines semi-opaque blue in the Sunlight; is thin relative to Earth; and holds firmly round Earth despite its substance being easily blown about.

So the main difference here is that, whereas the metal bowl is solid and rigid, the air is not.

In fact, in regard to the atmosphere, the basic problem for the ancients was essentially no different than is ours today. Today we take for granted that what we are taught about the sky implies that the sky itself provides too little direct information as to the substance, and upper extent, of its daylit blue.

Thus we remain cognitively passive in regard to what we personally physically perceive of the sky.

…We presuppose that those perceptions cannot really help us determine the upper extent of that daylit blue.

So the cultural effects of clear photos of the atmosphere taken from orbit are not necessarily only those of a constructive nature. They are iconic not just of our collective advanced empirical knowledge. They also are effectively representative of our individual modern-chauvinistic ignorance.

[Daniel_Pech]

@pevaquark

Nobody knew or thought the Earth was rotating–there’d be no reason to think that as the Earth is an approximately inertial reference frame that appears locally flat.

Do I presume correctly that you yourself have no geo-locally visual and kinesthetic reasons to believe that you can deduce the spheriodicity of Earth without your own first travelling completely around it?

Say you are the only person on the planet, and say you do not have any testimonial knowledge to the fact that the Earth is spheroid.

Are you here implying that you believe that you would, under those conditions, simply, and ever, be bound to assume that the Earth is a pancake, and that gravity is mono-directional irrespective of any objects (such that if the Earth is a ball, then that ball must be resting on something, such as ‘tortoises all the way down’)?

You have got to be kidding me (but I know you’re not).

Are you like John Walton, who thinks that the Hebrew prophets had so little concern for physical cosmology that they found it perfectly justified to adapt some pagan Santa-Claus-of-a-physical-cosmology to the purposes of their Holy Spirit-led ‘literary genius’?

I mean, how solid, in their own minds, are any backwater hicks’ cosmological ideas? If they sense a local ‘flatness’, are they thereby pre-committed to that sense for the entire visible cosmos?

[Daniel_Pech]

@pevaquark

What do you mean the Earth was already rotating? Do you honestly believe that the Genesis writers wrote that secretly into the text using Hebrew magic? Nobody knew or thought the Earth was rotating–there’d be no reason to think that as the Earth is an approximately inertial reference frame

There is no kinesthetically normal reason for humans in the past to dogmatically defend the idea that the Earth does not rotate. Even the proximate deducible rate of rotation can be sensed to be no where near enough, relative to that of gravity, to fling us off into the sky.

You already have a sense of being your own inertial frame. For, when you spin at as slow a rate relative to your own size as the Earth would be spinning, and then imagine that your body is the Earth with very tiny people on it, those people could not be flung off at that rate.

And there is nothing holistically economical in explaining gravity as an arbitrarily mono-directional force.

So when all of these above things are added to all the other visual data that bear on the Earth’s size and shape, and on the sky’s three main objects, there is no good reason to maintain any presumed dogma that the Earth is a mounded pancake with edges, and this pancake resting on some finitely wide ocean that edges against a hard dome.

It is, by far, the simplest to account for all that data by the mass-gravity model involving a rotating spherical Earth.

[pevaquark (Matthew Pevarnik)]

@Daniel_Pech

Yes, most modern secular historians assume that the ancients’ depiction of the sky as a hard dome must itself have developed by the supposed fact that, without modern technology and ‘science’, the human being can perceive the sky only to be a solid-surface dome that resides far above the clouds.

Yes, this is well supported by studying other Cosmologies from the Ancient Near East. They all believed the same stuff. And just calling them ‘secular’- that’s not a way to dismiss loads of actual archaeological evidence.

@Daniel_Pech

then such metal bowls originally were likened to the atmosphere, not the other way.

I doubt it. I think such metal bowls were made like that because it’s a good shape to hold liquid and other materials. And since Genesis was written after we had these metal bowls, then that word was chosen to match the idea that all the people in that region of world had about the sky.

@Daniel_Pech

So the cultural effects of clear photos of the atmosphere taken from orbit are not necessarily only those of a constructive nature. They are iconic not just of our collective advanced empirical knowledge. They also are effectively representative of our individual modern-chauvinistic ignorance.

Caption: chauvinists of the modern era took this picture

@Daniel_Pech

Do I presume correctly that you yourself have no geo-locally visual and kinesthetic reasons to believe that you can deduce the spheriodicity of Earth without your own first travelling completely around it?

Say you are the only person on the planet, and say you do not have any testimonial knowledge to the fact that the Earth is spheroid.

Are you here implying that you believe that you would, under those conditions, simply, and ever, be bound to assume that the Earth is a pancake, and that gravity is mono-directional irrespective of any objects (such that if the Earth is a ball, then that ball must be resting on something, such as ‘tortoises all the way down’)?

Maybe. I mean it wasn’t until the early 5th century BC that a Greek philosopher Parmenides reasoned the Earth should be a sphere because it’s the most uniform geometric shape. That was a long time before anyone figured it out. Then we started measuring the radius of the sphere but it took a revolution. If I was alive in the time of King David, I’d probably just think its flat.

@Daniel_Pech

Are you like John Walton, who thinks that the Hebrew prophets had so little concern for physical cosmology that they found it perfectly justified to adapt some pagan Santa-Claus-of-a-physical-cosmology to the purposes of their Holy Spirit-led ‘literary genius’?

In part, yes. And this isn’t just John Walton’s ‘bad idea,’ but he is speaking from loads of information from the Ancient Near East. I’d recommend you reading a book called Scripture and Cosmology by Kyle Greenwood. All of this is also in line with Calvin’s divine accommodation where believe it or not, God actually speaks to us in ways that we can personally understand.

@Daniel_Pech

There is no kinesthetically normal reason for humans in the past to dogmatically defend the idea that the Earth does not rotate. Even the proximate deducible rate of rotation can be sensed to be no where near enough, relative to that of gravity, to fling us off into the sky.

Hence why the entire world held to Aristotelian Cosmology for about 2,000 years where the Earth didn’t move and we had rotating spheres around us that contained the Sun and stars. You would have been reasoning within the Aristotelian framework if you lived in the 1200s as well.

You’re a very bright guy though, that’s for sure! Excited for where God leads you.

[Daniel_Pech]

@pevaquark

Daniel Pech said:

then such metal bowls originally were likened to the atmosphere, not the other way.

I doubt it. I think such metal bowls were made like that because it’s a good shape to hold liquid and other materials. [/quote]

You completely mistook my meaning. I did not mean that they made bowls so that they were analogous to the sky. I mean that I posit that the Hebrew name for the action of making these bowls was used as analogically descriptive of the cosmically precious atmosphere.

If I was alive in the time of King David, I’d probably just think its flat.

I’m not asking you about your current assumptions about what people necessarily and strictly believed of the Earth and sky back then. Therefore, I’m not asking you about what you think that you would have thought back then. I’m asking you what you presently think that you would be compelled to think of Earth and sky if all you had to go on was what you yourself have seen directly outdoors of Earth and sky.

Are you like John Walton, who thinks that the Hebrew prophets had so little concern for physical cosmology that they found it perfectly justified to adapt some pagan Santa-Claus-of-a-physical-cosmology to the purposes of their Holy Spirit-led ‘literary genius’?

In part, yes. And this isn’t just John Walton’s ‘bad idea,’ but he is speaking from loads of information from the Ancient Near East. I’d recommend you reading a book called Scripture and Cosmology by Kyle Greenwood. All of this is also in line with Calvin’s divine accommodation where believe it or not, God actually speaks to us in ways that we can personally understand.

Here I’m not asking you if you believe that the ANE has such stories. I’m asking you if you believe that the Hebrew people were in line with what (according to Walton) their prophets made of these stories:

“Hi, we are the ancient Hebrew people. We are just like our prophets: we have very little concern for how the natural world came to be. Therefore, we assume that the cosmologies of all our neighbor-nations should mean nothing but a fine fiction that we can adapt for illustrating spiritual matters. So all those nations are just superstitious to be particularly concerned to how the natural world came to be. You see, we ancient Hebrew people are unique: we, of all people, just do not care much about how the world came to be.”

There is no kinesthetically normal reason for humans in the past to dogmatically defend the idea that the Earth does not rotate. Even the proximate deducible rate of rotation can be sensed to be no where near enough, relative to that of gravity, to fling us off into the sky.

Hence why the entire world held to Aristotelian Cosmology for about 2,000 years where the Earth didn’t move and we had rotating spheres around us that contained the Sun and stars. You would have been reasoning within the Aristotelian framework if you lived in the 1200s as well.

I think you misread my wording there. Here’s what I said, with the operative words in bold:

There is no kinesthetically normal reason for humans in the past to dogmatically defend the idea that the Earth does not rotate.

In other words, I am saying that I think that humans, past or present, have no kinesthetically normal reason to be dogmatically in favor of the idea-impression that the Earth does not rotate. Conversely, that their kinesthetic data very strongly suggests that the Earth may well rotate. Your argument from inertial independence of the planet in no way blinds humans to that data. What blinds them to that data is a passivity and dullness that results from an at least effectively dissociative cognition of physical perception. Biologically, this would be the result of being ‘under the weather’, so to speak, in terms of brain health. But the sub-par biological condition does not of itself suppress the worthy mental habits. For that, a person must have been brain washed.

[Richard_Wright1 (Richard Wright)]

Hi Mike,

@Mike_Gantt

This chastisement guides my perspective of biblical texts:

Luke 24:25 And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!”

One, the prophets were a specific group of biblical writers and their works would not include Genesis.

Two, the gist of the Luke passage refers to the coming of the messiah, not to phenomenological descriptions of the earth. Jesus was not interested in teaching unimportant aspects of the OT, he was interested in saving souls and taught from the OT what was necessary for that.