Why Young Earth Creationism and Flat Earth Theory are false

[St.Roymond]

@graft2vine

• Gen 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

Not “hung from or embedded” - 5414 נָתַן nathan: To give, put, set

The firmament being a solid dome, setting them “in” the firmament means embedded in the dome.

@graft2vine

Not if the raqia is the surface of the earth and not an imaginary dome in the sky.

There’s nothing magical about it. And the raqia can’t be the surface of the earth since the stars are embedded in it.

@graft2vine

You are insisting that God made something that doesn’t exist.

No, I’m insisting that you follow the text! The raqia was a solid structure strong enough to hold up a massive ocean to keep it from crashing down on the earth.
If you want to put science into the account, at least stick with the account. For example, Genesis says that God gathered the waters so dry land could emerge; given the raqia, that could be done simply by pushing the raqia lower; the air pressure would push the water under the raqia lower. That’s still a silly abuse of the text, but at least it takes the text seriously.

@graft2vine

All of these things mentioned in Genesis we can identify with reality

Right, because it was all based on observations (and a touch of mythology): The raqia is the arc of the sky, which obviously has to be solid because it is plainly holding water up there (blue => water). The raqia rests on the edge of the round earth-disk, which was plain since the sky goes right down to the horizon, and the horizon is roughly the same distance away no matter where you are.

@graft2vine

The firmament separates water from water and you have a problem if is a solid dome in the sky.

There is no problem: the t’hom was what we would call infinite, and water falls down, so a solid dome would be the only thing holding it up.

@graft2vine

Is there something else in the Greek that tells us that there should be an ‘is’ between ‘one day’ and ‘with the Lord

The grammar connects “one day” with “thousand years”, so the basic structure reduces to “one day a thousand years” such that “is” goes between them: “one day is a thousand years”. “With the Lord” is a prepositional phrase that would be far more accurately rendered as “in the presence of the Lord” (or “beside the Lord”), thus “one day in the presence of the Lord is a thousand years”. The final “thousand years” is modified with an adverb, “as” or “like”, so “one day in the presence of the Lord is as a thousand years”.

@graft2vine

but its ‘with’ as in time with us.

No – it isn’t a relational phrase, it’s more locational (locative rather than dative); no one else has to be present at all.

And it’s not an equation; the “as” makes it a metaphor, which throws arithmetic out the window: “a thousand years” just indicates “a very long time”, and the two metaphors back-to-back are jsut saying that God doesn’t work on our time scale, He has His own. It’s no more meant literally than Jesus’ statement about forgiving “seventy times seven” times.

@graft2vine

It does not say ‘all’ flying creatures were created on the 5th day.

Actually it does – the structure of the account shows the establishment of three realms and then the filling of those realms. “Flying things” goes with “sky”, so when the sky is “filled” everything that belongs in that realm is included.

@graft2vine

These are some of the bad headlines?

Extremely bad. The first one made me cringe back when it came out, it was so bad; the second one prompted a letter to Smithsonian admonishing them to be more precise in their terminology, not just pick up what someone else wrote.

@graft2vine

Dividing none the less through natural processes.

Where in the text does it mention natural processes?

@graft2vine

Here the earth is almost synonymous with the open firmament, as the dry ground that is exposed (or open) is part of the firmament.

No, it isn’t – the earth is eretz, it is not shamayim or raqia.

@graft2vine

No need as its all within the definition of abundantly (8318. שֶׁרֶץ sherets), a swarming thing, creeping thing, swarm - which is often associated with insects.

Yes, need: if neither the rabbis (specially second-Temple) nor the church Fathers said it, it’s not even remotely likely.
Besides which, have you ever swum through a school of fish? They swarm!

@graft2vine

@St.Roymond

Genesis does not include evolution. Stop trying to turn ancient literature into modern science – it makes you look foolish.

Certainly it does.

No, it doesn’t – it contains no science at all.

@graft2vine

There is a lot of detailed information about evolution in the genealogical record from Adam to Abraham, but I am still working on the details and don’t want to derail this thread.

I expect that this will mangle the text as badly and be as ludicrous as your Genesis 1 efforts.

@graft2vine

as science has moved forward and has a very good understanding of reality, its time to take another look at the Word.

Only if you think that science stands above the Word and can thus be imposed on it.

[graft2vine (Ethan אֵיתָן)]

@T_aquaticus

Are we agreed the vault of the sky separates the water on Earth from the waters above the Earth?

The vault of the sky is a bad translation which should be firmament (something solid). It separates water above the earths surface (in the atmosphere, rivers, lakes, oceans) from the water below the earth (subterranean waters, aquifers, and other water trapped deep within the earth).

@T_aquaticus

In the Noah’s flood story, God opens the windows of heaven and has rain from the waters above come down to Earth.

I describe a volcano as the ‘windows of heaven’, an opening in the earth that can send a ton of water up into the atmosphere, especially if it erupts in the ocean. A trigger for Noah’s flood no doubt.

When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in the South Pacific Ocean also blasted an enormous plume of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – enough to fill more than 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools.

Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere - NASA

[T_aquaticus (The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)]

@graft2vine

I describe a volcano as the ‘windows of heaven’, an opening in the earth that can send a ton of water up into the atmosphere, especially if it erupts in the ocean. A trigger for Noah’s flood no doubt.

Birds don’t fly through volcanoes either, nor does the Sun and Moon rest in volcanoes.

[Terry_Sampson]

@graft2vine

The vault of the sky is a bad translation

LOL!

• Robert Alter translates Genesis 1:6-10 this way:
  “6 And God said, “Let there be a vault in the midst of the waters, and let it divide water from water. 7 And God made the vault and it divided the water beneath the vault from the water above the vault, and so it was. 8 And God called the vault Heavens, and it
  was evening and it was morning, second day. 9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered in one place so that the dry land will appear,” and so it was. 10 And God called the dry land Earth and the gathering of waters He called Seas, and
  God saw that it was good.”

• Emmett Fox translates the same verses this way:
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Who are Robert Alter and Emmett Fox? Reputable Jews who are competent in translating Hebrew into English.

’

[St.Roymond]

@T_aquaticus

Your interpretation is so convoluted that you have birds flying through rock.

And stars embedded in the earth’s crust.

@Terry_Sampson

How does the Institute for Creation Research dismiss a Flat Earth interpretation of scripture?

I quit at this:

Isaiah 40:22 cites “the circle of the earth,” and Proverbs 8:27 also references the earth’s circularity. These match a ball-shaped earth.

Those only match a “ball-shaped earth” if you’re totally ignorant about the Bible.

@graft2vine

The water trapped in rocks deep within the earth is all still part of the Deep .

No, the Deep – the t’hom – is just water, it isn’t trapped anywhere.

@graft2vine

If you insist that it says the vault of the sky (a solid dome) is what they are flying through, the ANE people are also saying birds are flying through something solid.

No – it says they fly עַל־ פְּנֵ֖י (al-p’ney), across the face of, the raqia – that means near but in front of. So they fly between the raqia and the eretz.

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@St.Roymond

Thy pick and choose what to take literally.
YEC picks and chooses what to take literally.

Im a YEC, and come.from a church of some 22,785,000 members…few of whome have ever believed in a flat earth.

You are attempting to make a universal statememt based on a tiny minority…your claim is utter crap, the evidence doesnt support it.

[graft2vine (Ethan אֵיתָן)]

@Bill_II

Why assume there are always 8,766 hours in a year?

@Bill_II

While we have evidence that the earth’s rotation has gradually changed over time, is there any evidence that the rate of the earth’s rotation about the sun has changed? Don’t think so.

This is the speed that the earth orbits the sun which is believed to be a constant. It has to do with the center of mass of the sun. In a standard year there are 8,760 hrs and then a leap year would add another 24 hrs, so dividing that by 4 and you get the additional 6 hrs.

@Bill_II

Where did you get the length of the day?

I tried to use a few different sources and find an average. Its hard to find somthing that covers all of time. This one is in chart form and goes back about 2.5 billion years:

For a billion years of Earth's history our days were only 19 hours long,...

This article has some number going back further including 4 hrs when the earthed was formed:
http://intercontinental-academia.ubias.net/nagoya/news/when-a-day-lasted-only-4-hours

This one has the most recent 500 million years:

Day

For other dates or to get additional sources I just googled something like “how many hours in a day 1 billion years ago”.

And then there is the time period before the earth was made, which the Spirit said to me just used 1 hr for a day. If we spend an hour studying the Bible each day, will it not make it a day with the Lord?

• Matt 26:40 Then He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “What! Could you not watch with Me one hour? 41 Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.

@Bill_II

What is your definition of an hour, 1/24 roughly of a solar day or 86,400 seconds as measure by a atomic clock?

I have no idea.

[Roy (Roy (Listener twice correct))]

@Terry_Sampson

• Dissatisfied with Gemini AI’s recap, here’s my version of Witteveen’s first article:
• The specific claims that Witteveen declares “unproven” are:

So Witteveen wants to replace those “unproven” claims with a large number of completely unprovable ones.

[Roy (Roy (Listener twice correct))]

@graft2vine

@Roy

Since when was Heaven underground???

I misspoke.

You didn’t. You misthought.

@graft2vine

The water trapped in rocks deep within the earth is all still part of the Deep .

Which change affects a lot of your ideas, but you’re not reworking them.

@graft2vine

@Roy

Fowl are birds, not insects.

This is in my response to St.Roymond:

@graft2vine

And of course “fowl” are birds. My point is that it is a collective of flying creatures and does not have to be translated as birds. It does not say ‘all’ flying creatures were created on the 5th day.

It does say that fowl were created on the 5th day. If there were flying creatures that weren’t created on the 5th day, then fowl (birds) aren’t among them.

@graft2vine

@Roy

Also, you seem to have forgotten that just as birds/bats came after land animals, flying insects came after non-flying ones. So whatever problem you are trying to solve concerning 5th-day birds coming after 6th-day beasts also applies to 5th-day flying insects coming after 6th-day creeping things. There are no flying creatures that weren’t preceded by non-flying ones.

Also this:

@graft2vine

• Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

No need as its all within the definition of abundantly (8318. שֶׁרֶץ sherets), a swarming thing, creeping thing, swarm - which is often associated with insects. Insects being the descendants of crustaceans, these swarming things are brought forth (according to KJV) from the waters and perhaps not only stayed in the water but also came up and lived on land before some of them also gained flight.

‘Abundantly’ (an adverb) does not mean ‘swarming thing’ (a noun).

@graft2vine

@Roy

What about the fruit trees? What function that led to fruit trees started on the 3rd day, before what function that led to fish and started on the 5th day?

Its based on a common decent with mankind. This tree of life diagram shows that our common decent (when we diverged from plants) lines up with the 3rd day of creation based on my chart in this post (between 1.82 bya and 1.33 bya).

Evogeneao: The Tree of Life

Then fowl/reptiles should be together on the same day, and whales/cattle should be together on a different day, and neither fish nor birds should be on the same day as ‘swarming things’.

@graft2vine

@Roy

Let me guess: you want to use actual fish to represent ‘fish’, because using the precursors of fish doesn’t fit your objective due to them appearing long before any land plants.

Our common decent with the precursors of fish appeared after the precursors of land plants.

Our ‘common descent’ with the precursors of fish appeared a long time before that of birds, and the latter was at the same time as that of reptiles and after that of amphibians.

You are ignoring information that doesn’t fit your ideas.

[Terry_Sampson]

@St.Roymond

They pick and choose what to take literally.
YEC picks and chooses what to take literally.

• Kind of funny, isn’t it? The stuff YECs take literally, non-YECs don’t. But when non-YECs insist on interpreting the Scripture literally, YECs insist that the same texts shouldn’t be taken literally, because they’d be Flat Earthers if they did. Mighty convenient, IMO. Mealy mouthed lot ain’t they.

[Bill_II]

@graft2vine

This is the speed that the earth orbits the sun which is believed to be a constant.

Mistake number one. The rotational speed of the earth around the sun is slowing. So there has not always been 8,766 hours in a year.

@graft2vine

In a standard year there are 8,760 hrs and then a leap year would add another 24 hrs, so dividing that by 4 and you get the additional 6 hrs.

This adjustment is just to keep the seasons in sync with our calendar. The actual length of the year actually doesn’t work out to an integer number of years. Which can throw the math off when you are using millions of years.

@graft2vine

I tried to use a few different sources and find an average.

So you are just swaging it.

@graft2vine

I have no idea.

Doesn’t give me confidence in your work given you are trying to argue the math works out magically.

[Realspiritik (Jennifer Thomas)]

@adamjedgar

My belief is that ALL Creation is negatively influenced by sin…isnt that actually consistent with the story headline here? It proves that Satan is directly involved in the negative impacts of our lives on this planet.

we know from the book of Job he can cause terrible storms, he tempts humanity into making terrible choices.

We know from the book of Job, and also from the tempation of Christ, that Satan can appear and dissapear, communicate directly with both heavenly and earthly individuals…

In Job he met in the heavenly council and spoke with God directly (face to face i would suggest)

In the New Testament, Satan took Christ up to the top of the temple, showed him all around and then said “all these things will i give you if you bow down to me”…

after Christ told him to worship only God in heaven, Satan left him alone (dissapeared)

The sheer facts of the above illustrations tell us that Satan is perfectly capable of interracting with creation enough to manifest himself in recognisable form.

Why should any of the above be a problem for any Christian (whether YEC or TEist)?

Id suggest its only a problem for TEism because it simply cannot entertain the notion that Satan is capable of interracting with the earth we live on, or has intent to ruin it/destroy it any which way he can. Your presupposition cannot cope with that notion…which should be no suprise because “there is no room for god in science” (Stephen Hawking)

Well, if your belief is that all Creation is negatively influenced by sin, my belief is that all Creation is positively influenced by love and forgiveness.

And where you believe that TEism can’t entertain the notion that Satan is interacting with the earth and trying to destroy it, I believe that YEC can’t entertain the notion of absolutely incredible God who would never allow an evil supernatural force to exist in reality (though talking about Satan as a metaphor is a means by which we can discuss the problem of suffering in our lives).

There’s no point relying on avowed atheists such as Stephen Hawking as proof for your beliefs about the history of Planet Earth. An atheist, by definition, does not believe in the existence of God, but not all atheists are scientists and not all scientists are atheists. So please don’t pretend you know what notions a scientifically minded person can or cannot entertain. Speaking only for myself, I’m a scientifically minded person who believes in evolution and in a loving God and in miracles and in an evolving universe guided by a loving Mother Father God. If I refuse to believe in a sin-ridden universe, it’s because I think God is much smarter than you give God credit for.

As @St.Roymond has pointed out, your interpretation of the Book of Job is incorrect.The point of this book is for us to humbly accept that it’s God who makes the storms and all the creatures on Earth (even the scary ones) and it’s not our role as human beings to question God’s wisdom in these matters (even when it means we have to go through some very difficult experiences). In the Book of Job, there is a being who acts as the Accuser (the original Hebrew meaning of “ha satan”), but his part in this divine drama is to represent all the religious teachers who think they know what wisdom is but don’t (according to Job).

God gives us Free Will, and as part of our Free Will, we’re called upon to understand our own choices, our own history, and our own capacity to change. As part of this process, we may or may not decide to embark on a path of knowing God as God really is (as opposed to various portraits of God that suggest God’s love and forgiveness are no match for the power of evil).

The most incredible conscious use of Free Will in the universe is Forgiveness. Jesus understood this and tried to teach it, but too often Forgiveness has been confused with sweeping mistakes under the carpet or making excuses for abuse or paying for crimes through some form of bartering.

To repeatedly blame all our suffering on supernatural forces such as Sin, Satan, demons, and occult forces is to say directly to God that you don’t believe God has created good souls-in-human-form who are capable of truly stunning feats of change, transformation, healing, and creativity through the Divine gift of Forgiveness.

I prefer to trust in an amazing, wise, patient, forgiving, loving God who is willing to put up with our silly notions about Creation because God knows we’re learning about Free Will and the power of Forgiveness each time we make a mistake.

Genesis 1 isn’t about a loving and forgiving God. It’s about order and chaos, which are not the themes of Jesus’ teachings.

So take your pick: Genesis 1 or Jesus. You can have your 6,000 year old planet or you can have the teachings that build a loving, daily relationship between you and God. But you really can’t have both. (I’m simplifying, of course, but not by much.)

God bless.

[St.Roymond]

@graft2vine

The vault of the sky is a bad translation which should be firmament (something solid).

A vault:

It is solid. It holds up great weight. If it was metal, it would qualify as raqia.

@graft2vine

It separates water above the earths surface (in the atmosphere, rivers, lakes, oceans) from the water below the earth (subterranean waters, aquifers, and other water trapped deep within the earth).

“Subterranean waters” are not “the waters below”, they are part of the eretz.

@graft2vine

I describe a volcano as the ‘windows of heaven’, an opening in the earth

A volcano would be a “window of eretz”; it cannot be a window of heaven because heaven is UP.

[graft2vine (Ethan אֵיתָן)]

@St.Roymond

The firmament being a solid dome, setting them “in” the firmament means embedded in the dome.

The word ‘set’ is most often translated as give. Literal translations will translate it as give.

Literal Standard Version
and God gives them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth,

Young’s Literal Translation
and God giveth them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth,

Smith’s Literal Translation
And God will give them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

Part of the problem with all translators is that they believe as everyone else that the firmament is the sky, so they have no problem translating the word that is firmament (7549. רָקִיעַ raqia) as ‘in the firmament’.

Anything wrong with this:

And God gave them to the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

But perhaps in saying ‘firmament of the heaven’, with the added descriptor of heaven, firmament does not need to be something solid in this case, as firmament having multiple meanings can also just mean an expanse.

@St.Roymond

There’s nothing magical about it. And the raqia can’t be the surface of the earth since the stars are embedded in it.

Another example of the word for give (5414 נָתַן nathan) being translated as ‘set’ and paired with ‘in’ is with Noah’s rainbow:

• Gen 9:13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.

So with you saying to set something in means to embed in something solid, then the ANE people would believe that clouds are also solid?

@St.Roymond

That’s still a silly abuse of the text, but at least it takes the text seriously.

How is an abuse of the text taking it seriously?

@St.Roymond

Right, because it was all based on observations (and a touch of mythology): The raqia is the arc of the sky, which obviously has to be solid because it is plainly holding water up there (blue => water). The raqia rests on the edge of the round earth-disk, which was plain since the sky goes right down to the horizon, and the horizon is roughly the same distance away no matter where you are.

That’s not reality.

@St.Roymond

There is no problem: the t’hom was what we would call infinite, and water falls down, so a solid dome would be the only thing holding it up.

Unreal… The firmament is dividing the waters. The deep (tehom) is everything mixed together, chaos and unformed (tohu and bohu). If the firmament is above the sky, we have sky, land, seas, etc. all things that have been formed below the firmament. So if you say the waters below (your version of) the firmament is the deep, the firmament is not dividing water. It is only holding up water above from crashing down on the beautifully formed earth.

@St.Roymond

“With the Lord” is a prepositional phrase that would be far more accurately rendered as “in the presence of the Lord” (or “beside the Lord”), thus “one day in the presence of the Lord is a thousand years”. The final “thousand years” is modified with an adverb, “as” or “like”, so “one day in the presence of the Lord is as a thousand years”.

This is what I like to hear and confirms what I am saying, that ‘is’ does not belong between ‘one day’ and ‘in the presence of the Lord’. One day in the presence of the Lord is as a thousand years. Thanks for clarifying the grammar. So, ‘one day’ in the first part of the verse has the prepositional phrase but the ‘one day’ at the end does not.

@St.Roymond

No – it isn’t a relational phrase, it’s more locational (locative rather than dative); no one else has to be present at all.

‘With the Lord’ is relational but the ‘one day’ is dative.

@St.Roymond

And it’s not an equation; the “as” makes it a metaphor, which throws arithmetic out the window: “a thousand years” just indicates “a very long time”, and the two metaphors back-to-back are jsut saying that God doesn’t work on our time scale, He has His own. It’s no more meant literally than Jesus’ statement about forgiving “seventy times seven” times.

A thousand years is not just a very long time… same with seventy times seven. Different numbers have different meanings. Seven means completeness. So keep forgiving until they are completely forgiven. A thousand can mean to rule or reign over like in Revelation where Christ reigns for 1000 years.

@St.Roymond

Actually it does – the structure of the account shows the establishment of three realms and then the filling of those realms. “Flying things” goes with “sky”, so when the sky is “filled” everything that belongs in that realm is included.

And birds did not originally belong to flying things. This is a beast of the earth:

@St.Roymond

Where in the text does it mention natural processes?

Let there be light, let there be a firmament, let the waters bring forth, let the earth bring forth, etc. Its all throughout the account.

@St.Roymond

No, it isn’t – the earth is eretz, it is not shamayim or raqia.

erets is dry land, the portion of the raqia with no water covering it.

@St.Roymond

Besides which, have you ever swum through a school of fish? They swarm!

Birds flock, fish school and insects swarm. Flocking is different than swarming. Bird and fish do things together in tandem whereas insects swarms look like a chaotic mess:

@St.Roymond

I expect that this will mangle the text as badly and be as ludicrous as your Genesis 1 efforts.

It may appear that way to you.

@St.Roymond

Only if you think that science stands above the Word and can thus be imposed on it.

I have never held science above the Word but did not trust science. I believe the Word and science just happens to line up with it.

@St.Roymond

No, the Deep – the t’hom – is just water, it isn’t trapped anywhere.

No the Deep is an unformed mess of stuff.

@St.Roymond

No – it says they fly עַל־ פְּנֵ֖י (al-p’ney), across the face of, the raqia – that means near but in front of. So they fly between the raqia and the eretz.

They fly above the erets, across the face of the raqia, in the shamayim

[St.Roymond]

@adamjedgar

@St.Roymond

They pick and choose what to take literally.
YEC picks and chooses what to take literally.

Im a YEC, and come.from a church of some 22,785,000 members…few of whome have ever believed in a flat earth.

You are attempting to make a universal statememt based on a tiny minority…your claim is utter crap, the evidence doesnt support it.

You didn’t even address the claim.

@graft2vine

This is the speed that the earth orbits the sun which is believed to be a constant. It has to do with the center of mass of the sun.

Point of fact: the Earth dos not orbit the center of the sun’s mass.

@graft2vine

It has to do with the center of mass of the sun. In a standard year there are 8,760 hrs and then a leap year would add another 24 hrs, so dividing that by 4 and you get the additional 6 hrs.

This shows you don’t know enough science to be engaging in the game you’re playing – someone who knew what they were doing would have just used a sidereal year.

@Roy

You are ignoring information that doesn’t fit your ideas.

To be clear, he’s ignoring both scientific and textual information that doesn’t fit his scheme.

[St.Roymond]

@Bill_II

Mistake number one. The rotational speed of the earth around the sun is slowing. So there has not always been 8,766 hours in a year.

I missed that one – one more bit of evidence that he doesn’t know enough science to be playing this game.

@Bill_II

So you are just swaging it.

Now there’s a term I haven’t seen in a long time! One of my best buddies does blacksmithing, and he says swaging is “banging it around till it looks about right”.

[Terry_Sampson]

• A timely video especially appropriate for this thread: “The Earth is Flat in the Bible. Get Over it.” Single-handedly, Ben Stanhope demolishes Rev. Jim Witteveen’s posts,

[St.Roymond]

@Terry_Sampson

A timely video especially appropriate for this thread: “The Earth is Flat in the Bible. Get Over it.” Single-handedly, Ben Stanhope demolishes Rev. Jim Witteveen’s posts

Awesome video! I knew that the ANE cosmology view was held well into Asia and Europe, but didn’t know about the Americas or Australia; that was great.

Adam should watch this all the way through.

[graft2vine (Ethan אֵיתָן)]

@Bill_II

Mistake number one. The rotational speed of the earth around the sun is slowing. So there has not always been 8,766 hours in a year.

It is the rotational speed of the earth on its own axis that is slowing, not its orbit around the sun. This causes there to be more hours in a day over long periods of time but the number of hours in a year is a constant.

Lets ask Gemini AI:

Is there an increasing number of hours in a year over time?

No, the number of hours in a year is not increasing over time. A year is defined by the Earth’s revolution around the Sun, and this duration remains relatively constant.

However, there are different ways to define a year, each with a slightly different number of hours:

• Gregorian Year: 365 days (or 366 in a leap year) = 8,760 hours (or 8,784 in a leap year)
• Julian Year: 365.25 days = 8,766 hours
• Sidereal Year: 365.2564 days = 8,766.15264 hours
• Tropical Year: 365.2422 days = 8,765.812536 hours

While these variations exist, they are not significant enough to change the number of hours in a year in any meaningful way over time.

@Bill_II

This adjustment is just to keep the seasons in sync with our calendar. The actual length of the year actually doesn’t work out to an integer number of years. Which can throw the math off when you are using millions of years.

Which is why I use 8,766 hours instead of 8,760.

@Bill_II

So you are just swaging it.

No, its just not of high interest and there isn’t complete data that I have found in one place.

@Bill_II

Doesn’t give me confidence in your work given you are trying to argue the math works out magically.

Definition of an hour is not really relevant. We are not talking seconds, but its also not 1/24th of a solar day given that the number of days in a year gradually increase. I would say that an hour is 1/8,766th of a year.

[graft2vine (Ethan אֵיתָן)]

@St.Roymond

It is solid. It holds up great weight. If it was metal, it would qualify as raqia.

That is some nice architecture. Seems more decorative than loadbearing though.

@St.Roymond

“Subterranean waters” are not “the waters below”, they are part of the eretz.

@St.Roymond

A volcano would be a “window of eretz”; it cannot be a window of heaven because heaven is UP.

I disagree. Heaven is all around us.

@St.Roymond

This shows you don’t know enough science to be engaging in the game you’re playing – someone who knew what they were doing would have just used a sidereal year.

So you just want more decimal places? 8,766 hours is what I used. Sidereal year is 8,766.15264 hours

Years ago	Hours in a year	Hours in a day	Days in a year
Today	8,766.15264	24	365.2564
100 million	8,766.15264	23.33	375.7459
200 million	8,766.15264	22.66	386.8558
300 million	8,766.15264	22	398.4615
400 million	8,766.15264	21.33	410.9776
500 million	8,766.15264	20.66	424.3055
600 million	8,766.15264	20.33	431.1929
700 million	8,766.15264	20	438.3076
0.8 - 1.5 billion	8,766.15264	19	461.3765
2.0 billion	8,766.15264	18	487.0085
2.5 billion	8,766.15264	17	515.6560
3.0 billion	8,766.15264	15	584.4102
3.5 billion	8,766.15264	12	730.5127
4.0 billion	8,766.15264	10	876.6153
4.5 billion	8,766.15264	4	2191.5382
13.8 billion	8,766.15264	1	8766.1526

	Literal length of Day	Days in a year	Beginning of Day	End of Day
Day 7	365,256,360.00	365.2564	0	-365,256,360
Day 6	410,977,620.25	410.9776	410,977,620	0
Day 5	461,376,454.74	461.3765	872,354,075	410,977,620
Day 4	461,376,454.74	461.3765	1,333,730,530	872,354,075
Day 3	487,008,480.00	487.0085	1,820,739,010	1,333,730,530
Day 2	515,656,037.65	515.6560	2,336,395,047	1,820,739,010
Day 1	2,191,538,160.00	2,191.5382	4,527,933,207	2,336,395,047
Beginning	8,766,152,640.00	8,766.1526	13,294,085,847	4,527,933,207