Patrick Reany (posted 5 December 2022)
Some Obvious Problems for the Flat-Earth Model
Do flat-earth believers really grasp the incredibly restrictive models one can
make to be consistent with both the flat earth hypothesis and the common
facts of observation? I don't think so.
If the earth is flat, why can't we get into an airplane and then see the "edge"
of the earth? Atmospheric interference, you say? Well, we can see the
stars that are supposed to be at the edge of the earth. Why is that, then?
If the earth is truly flat, why can't we see the lightning flashes from all over
the flat earth at every open place on earth? After all, lightning is happening
almost constantly somewhere on the earth. -- It seems that God has provided
for us an horizon to black out so much visible lightning flashes from all
over the world. But for this horizon to work everywhere, there has to be an
effective horizon at every place on earth. Gee, that's a tough one. I wonder
how God solved that problem? (Head slap!) Of course! The earth is a sphere!
If the earth is not embedded in space and if the stars are fixed in some celestial
dome, why isn't this dome enlightened at night from the lightning strikes from
all over the earth?
On a flat earth with Antarctica being the outer boundary of this model, then
circumnavigating the perimeter of Antarctica should be a much longer trip
than to circumnavigate the Antarctica of the globe earth model.
Flat-earthers have a difficult time building a model of 1) the eclipse of the
moon by the earth (a lunar eclipse -- the moon enters the shadow of the earth)
and 2) the eclipse of the sun by the moon (solar eclipse, the earth moves into
the shadow of the moon). (Though these are both easily explained in the globe-
earth, heliocentric model commonly taught.) Now, as we observe the moon
over its orbital monthly period, we see that it must be a sphere to make sense of
what we see. But when the earth's shadow creeps along the surface of the moon,
we can definitely see the curvature of the earth in its shadow. Again, naked-eye
observations and common sense is all one needs to figure out the most likely
shapes of the earth and moon (being spheres) for this to occur consistently
over the centuries.
One attempt by flat-earthers to solve this problem has been to locate both
moon and sun close to the earth's surface, a model which has innumerable
problems with known optics and physics. One thing we know, whether on a
globe earth or a flat earth, is that the moon must be far away from the earth.
We know this from common sense and naked-eye observation. Here's why.
Consider this experiment. You, take two friends of yours and place one of
them on your left, the other on your right. Place a ball with large random
markings on it in your hand and hold it directly in front of you at roughly eye
level. Each of these participants will see a different image of that ball. Now,
have someone else take the ball 30-40 meters away from you (who is holding
the ball) and place it on a table of the same height. This time, the three
participants will see essentially the same image by using just naked-eye
observations. Now, we know that wherever we stand on the earth and
observe the full moon, we only ever see one image of it (up to a rotation)
by using naked-eye observations. The only logical conclusion is that the
moon is not close to the earth. As for the rotation of the full-moon image,
how do you explain that on a flat earth?
We know that the earth has north and south magnetic poles, which are roughly
antipodal to each other. Logically, this makes the earth a giant magnet. We
can manufacture spherical magnets. And, we can manufacture "disk" magnets,
though the two poles are opposite to each other, at the centers of the opposite
faces of the "disk". But I don't know if we can manufacture a "disk" magnet
with one pole at the center and the other on the entire edge. However, the
flat-earthers not only have to propose such a bizarre model, they also have
to offer a solution within the discipline of geophysics on how it is accomplished
within the interior of the earth.
Conspiracy Theories
Proverbs 18:13 (KJV)
He that answereth a matter before he heareth it,
it is folly and shame unto him.
I remember (to the best of my recollection) a video of a middle-aged man who
told the story of when he was a teenager he went to the Smithsonian and saw
a replica of one of the lunar landers from one of the Apollo missions. He was
very proud of the fact that they couldn't fool him with such a nonsensical piece
of contrived fakery that could never be adequate for landing on the moon and
taking off again. He said that to him it was too flimsy for the mission.
I suppose the guy expected to see one of those bullet-shaped rocket ships like in the
old sci-fi movies. Was it 'flimsy' compared to one of those fictional bullet-shaped
rockets? Yes. Was it too flimsy to perform the task assigned to it. No. Let's just agree
that the Apollo missions were dangerous and people died in the process, but we
didn't have the option to build a space craft so safe as to eliminate every possible
risk. Compromises had to be made. I suppose that this teenager didn't know or
care that the gravity at the surface of the moon is much less than the gravity at
the surface of the earth. I also suppose that he didn't know or care that there is
no atmosphere on the moon, and thus the lander did not have to contend with
that factor. The lander was sufficiently robust to land on the moon's surface so
long as 1) it landed upright and 2) it didn't crash. But guess what? If it had crashed,
it probably wouldn't have been able to lift off regardless of how thick the lander's
hull was. A thicker hull brings up another issue. The thicker the hull, the heavier
the lander. The heavier the lander, the less maneuverable the landing craft. But my
recollection is that this teenager did not bother to ask anyone to answer his 'doubts'.
Instead, he merely jumped to his own uneducated conclusions and felt very proud
of himself for being so much "smarter" than everyone else.
Ignorance and pride seem to be commonalities among conspiracy theorists.
Anyone willing to employ a mode of falsification that ignores an abundance
of factual and logical evidence is risking a form of inevitable intellectual insanity
and hellfire, for Jesus told us in the Book of Revelation:
Revelation 22:14-15.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right
to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers,
and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.
In John 14:6, we have the words of Jesus telling us that "I am the way, the truth,
and the life." Notice that He did not say, I am the way, the conspiracy theory, and
the life. Conspiracy theories are nothing new to God, and He must surely hate
them. It was a conspiracy theory that the Devil told to Adam and Eve that caused
them to fall into sin. It was a conspiracy theory that the Pharisees told to the crowds
to explain how Jesus did His miracles: "This fellow doth not cast out devils, but
by Beelzebub the prince of the devils" (Matthew 12:24).
If you want to be one who is not guilty of 'loving and making a lie', you have
to love the truth -- all truth. What does that mean? To love the truth means to
commit to never believing or telling a lie, to the best of your knowledge. Be slow
to commit to any claim. If you have the time and means to test the claim, then
test it for veracity. Otherwise, put it on the back burner, by which I mean keep
it in mind but don't commit to it. Look, I know that most of us, including me,
have a bad habit of jumping to conclusions, but we need to get out of that habit.
And it won't come easy.
Wherever the truth is, Jesus is. Wherever a lie is, the Devil is. I was alive during
the moon landings. Telling me that they never happened is like telling me that
the Beatles never existed or that the Vietnam War never happened. It's just
plain crazy talk.
Gravity is Real
I can claim without any fear of contradiction that gravity is real. Gravity is the
name given to this observable phenomena:
If a sufficiently heavy object is mechanically suspended in the air and thenYou see, I gave the name "gravity" to an observable phenomena, not to a theory
released, it has a preferred tendency to fall to the ground, rather than to
remain in the air, suspended on its own.
Newton's theory of gravity is an offshoot of his more abstract Theory of Mechanics,
which is embodied in his Three Laws of Motion. This generic theory wants to
explain motion in terms of forces acting on masses, so, to use his theory, one has
to model that bit of the universe under investigation as a collection of mass objects
with forces acting on them and between them. His theory of gravity introduces a
specific force -- the force of gravity -- which is hypothesized to exist symmetrically
between any two mass points. One then explains the gravitational forces between
more complicated mass objects by summing the collective effects of all the mass
points in the objects. I suppose that anyone who graduated from high school has
learned this much. If you didn't, shame on you or on your high school.
So where are we at this point? We have the observable phenomena of gravity
and the Newtonian force of gravity. So, now, 'gravity' has two different but closely
related meanings. Next, in 1915, came Einstein's Theory of General Relativity,
which is a deeper theory of gravity. Instead of following Newton by treating
gravity as a force, his theory treats it as the effect of deforming spacetime away
from flatness. Or, put another way, Gravity results from the curvature of spacetime.
Now, this theory, which contains Newtonian mechanics as a limiting case, is
typically only evident in precise measurements made in the vicinity of very
massive objects. For most predictions of celestial mechanics, Newton's theory
is sufficient.
Now, even though the difference of effects of Einstein's gravity is typically small
compared to Newton's gravity, it does show itself in two ways in the solar system.
First, even small effects can accumulate into large effects if observed over a large
enough time period. My case in point is that of the precession of the orbits of the
planets around the sun, particularly that of Mercury. There are many factors that
contribute to this precession and general relativity is one of them. Second, since
Einstein's theory of gravity insists that gravity has an effect on clocks (that is, the
rate at which they tick), general relativity is used to calculate corrections to the
clocks in the GPS satelite system.
Summing up, we have the ever present observable phenomena of gravity, the force
of gravity, and the effect of gravity being spacetime curvature. To my current
knowledge, Einstein's theory of gravity has never failed a theoretical prediction,
and is the accepted theory at the foundation of both cosmology and astrophysics.
Here are some other reasons to believe that gravity is real:
1) The use of a balance scale:
Einstein makes a fundamental comparison of two very different
ways to determine the relative masses m1 and m2 of two objects
(Einstein refers to them as 'carts' for specificity). The more
common way to do this is merely to employ a balance scale, one
mass on one dish, the other mass on the other dish. The method
employs the concept of gravitational mass. The other way is to
find the ratios of the masses by means of their inertial masses,
that is, how their accelerations due to applied nongravitational force
works. By the way, this is one way to find such a mass ratio if
one is in a micro-gravity environment, such as on the ISS
(International Space Station). We will perform a test with two
mass objects, each resting on a flat, perfectly smooth surface. They
are of different masses (usually) and they will both be subject
to the same constant external forces for a time interval T. They
will both begin their motions at speed zero. Then, the impulse
experienced by both of these masses will be equal. Simultaneously
solving these two equations, we get
m1v1 = m2v2,
from which we have that
m1 / m2 = v2 / v1.
For this measurement to work, all we need is a means to accurately
measure the speeds of each object after the impressd force has been
removed. (The masses will continue to move at constant speeds.)
Now, in this experiment, gravity acts on these two masses, but
only perpendicularly to their plane of motion, hence, gravity
does not play any role in the acceleration of the mass objects.
(This is just basic Newtonian physics.) Thus we have two ways
to determine the mass ratios of two masses. Einstein and Infeld
explain the relative merits of both methods:
How do we really determine mass in practice? Not, of course,I must point out that if we replace the balance scale with 1) a spring
in the way just described. Everyone knows the correct answer.
We do it by weighing on a scale.Let us discuss in more detail the two different ways of
determining mass.The first experiment had nothing whatsoever to do with gravity, the
attraction of the earth. The cart moves along a perfectly smooth and
horizontal plane after the push. Gravitational force, which causes
the cart to stay on the plane, does not change, and plays no role in
the determination of the mass. It is quite different with weighing. We
could never use a scale if the earth did not attract bodies, if gravity did
not exist. The difference between the two determinations of mass is that
the first has nothing to do with the force of gravity while the second
is based essentially on its existence.
-- The Evolution of Physics, Einstein & Infeld,
A Touchstone Book, 1938 [1966], pgs. 32-33
2) What holds the air to the earth?
No, it's not a dome. It's the force of gravity. If it were just a physical
dome of some sort acting as a physical container, but no gravity, then
the air would suffer no diminishing of air pressure as one goes higher
and higher. But it's a simple empirical fact that the air does thin out
as one goes higher above the earth's surface. At every height above the
earth's surface, the air at that level has to uphold the weight of all the
air above it. The higher up one goes, the less air to uphold. The direct
result of this is the diminishing of air pressure the higher in elevation.
There is a similar effect for water pressure in a deep body of water,
such as the ocean.
3) If you suspend a blob on an inextensible cord/string of length L
and set it swinging in a vertical plane at a small amplitude, it will
oscillate as a pendulum at a period T that can be calculated using
the value of g, which is the local value for the acceleration due to
gravity. If gravity isn't real, why does the following formula contain
this value of g?
T = 2\pi\sqrt(L/g)?
I think that if the flat-earthers were sincere, they would, at
a minimum, study up on calculus and Newtonian physics and
then see if they still believe their nonsense. You can't just
ignore the facts.
Flat Earth and the Bible
I don't know how you form your biblical doctrines, but me, I collect all relevant
verses and let the chips fall where they may. Although for this essay, I won't include
mentioning those verses that don't seem to lean toward one model, or those verses
that seem like duplicates. Let's start with this one:
Matthew 12:40This verse may be the weakest I will offer, but I will draw an analogy with it. A
For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly;
so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth.
Isaiah 40:22Well, the prophet Isaiah lived in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. I don't
It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth
out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as
a tent to dwell in.
So, we now have many possible interpretations of the 'circle of the earth'. The
flat-earthers think that it represents the circular rim of their Gleason projection
map. If that's the case, the Good Lord better bring an insulated cushion to sit
on because, according to them, that would be the great Ice Wall of Antarctica.
But from the point of view of a globe earth, we have three immediate possibilities:
1) the outline of the earth as seen from anywhere outside the earth. 2) The so-called
'terminator' of the earth, which defines a curve around the earth that separates
night from day. 3) The path of the earth around the sun, also known as its orbit.
Of course the orbit is an ellipse, but of small eccentricity. Although I don't think
that this fancy imagery is meant to reveal the actual sitting habits of God, I think
that all these options make sense. I also think that the purpose of this verse is to tell
us in the modern world a hint as to the shape of the earth as seen from space from
the perspective of the seventh century BC.
It seems that the flat-earthers think that this verse was meant to correct the modern
scientific community, but I take great exception to that view. I think it was meant
instead to anticipate the modern scientific view as evidence to this modern atheistic
world of the wisdom of God. So, when the modern angry, prideful atheist demands
some kind of objective proof that the Bible is true, we offer him or her this verse
(among many others), but do they ever receive it? Generally, no.
Getting back to the flat-earthers. They don't seem to know or care to know that the
Gleason projection map is just one of many maps designed over the decades to
represent the globe earth on a flat surface. I suppose the main reason to do this is
mostly for convenience. It's much easier to carry around a large, foldable flat map
than to carry around a large globe. But none of these traditional maps were intended
to represent the earth as actually flat. Go online and then look at various images of
the globe earth represented on a flat surface. I found many diverse maps.
Before we leave this flat-earth, circular-rim model, let's have one more verse on it:
Revelation 7:1So, is the flat earth bounded by a circle or by a square? For me, neither. This
And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four
corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the
wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.
Job 26:7To hang the earth upon nothing, there has to be a 'nothing' to embed the earth within.
He stretcheth out the north over the empty place,
and hangeth the earth upon nothing.
Psalms 75:3Comment: Well, do we have a contradiction here? I don't think so. The obvious
When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who
hold its pillars firm.
Job 40:8
Wilt thou also disannul my judgment? wilt thou condemn me,
that thou mayest be righteous?
Proverbs 3:19Next, a similar pronouncement from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah:
The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding
hath he established the heavens.
Jeremiah 10:12I find it interesting that this notion of the heavens being stretched is abundantly
But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom
and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
I have a number of comments to make about this supplemental list. First, look at
the esteemed company Job is in. Does this make Job a quasi-prophet? Second, I
have to assume that this notion of the 'heavens being stretched' is important for
God to get across to the modern world. But why? There are those in Christendom
who believe that that we of the current age should not interpret any prophecy
beyond the sophistication of the people who initially received the prophecy. Oh
really? What would be the point of God explaining to the average Hebrew in
seventh-century BC Israel that God is 'stretching out the heavens', as we speak?
At their level of sophistication, isn't it enough for them to be told that God made
the heavens and the earth? I should think so. This repeated phrase must be very
important to God, but it must be a praega tallea, for it speaks to modern-day
cosmology.
Let's look to the Book of Acts for a moment (the pronoun 'he' refers to God):
Acts 14:17So, Paul told us that God was testifying of His existence and goodness to the
Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and
gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food
and gladness.
Let's look at Isaiah 44:24 in particular:
Isaiah 44:24We see that God is telling Isaiah that like He created the heavens and the earth
Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the
womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the
heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.
Next, we move to the question of how fixed 'in space' is the earth.
1 Chronicles 16:30Comment: We must be very careful when interpreting these Biblical metaphors.
Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable,
that it be not moved.
Isaiah 24:20Comment: So, I'd call it a draw on this issue of the fixity of the earth.
The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and
shall be removed like a cottage; and the transgression
thereof shall be heavy upon it; and it shall fall, and
not rise again.
Proverbs 8:27Comment: Well, either the King James version got it right or got it wrong
I was there when he set the heavens in place, when
he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
What Makes Man Special; What Makes the Earth Special?
What makes Man special is pretty obvious in the Bible: Adam was the direct
son of God. We can read this in Luke, Chapter 3, which goes over the genealogy
of Jesus all the way back to Adam:
Luke 3:38Furthermore, both man and woman are created in the image of God:
Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth,
which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
Genesis 1:27Man is also special because God loves him:
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him; male and female created he them.
John 3:16And,
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.
Matthew 20:28And finally, what makes the earth special? Well, it isn't that it is hung upon
Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
For hundreds of years now the angry atheists thought they had won a great
victory by declaring the Copernican Solar system as true. Well, they may have
scored a point against the Catholic Church, but not against the Bible, because
the Bible doesn't declare the earth to be at the center of the universe, nor make
any claim as to the importance of the notion of the so-called 'center of the
universe'. Now, I'm no scholar about the Catholic Church or of ancient Greek
philosophers, but my understanding is that the Catholic Church adopted their
belief that the earth was the center of the universe from Aristotle, not from the
Bible. (It was part of their Scholasticism.) If anybody knows a Bible verse
that proves me wrong, I'd love to know it.
Okay, then, what does make the earth special? Anything? Is there any
scripture that clues us in? I think so. It's all encapsulated in just one verse
from that great prophet Isaiah, and it's also a far-reaching prophetic verse:
Isaiah 45:18So, now we know what makes the earth special to God. Apparently the earth is
For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that
formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it.
not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is
none else.
And what is this dome, anyway? If they do not regard it as part of the earth
proper, then it is an object which has more area than their disk earth, making
it greater than their earth by some measure. But if they consider it as part
of the earth, then they have replaced the full-globe earth model with a
semi-globe earth model, the scallywags.
But I ask you, Why does relative size have anything to do with how God
thinks about the objects of His creation? Did God ever tell us a general
principle that 'bigger is always better'? No. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
God told us that He didn't choose Israel because they were the biggest.
In the following verses the Lord spoke to the Israelites a warning before
they were to enter Canaan, that they should stay humble in their own eyes:
Deuteronomy 7:6-7Did Jesus enter Jerusalem riding a majestic white stallion with royal horns
For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord
thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself,
above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord
did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were
more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all
people:
Zechariah 9:9It's almost as if God is gently mocking the rulers of this world for their self-
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just,
and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and
upon a colt the foal of an ass.
The following are the Gospel accounts of this entry: Matthew 21:1-9, Mark 11:1-10,
Luke 19:29-38, John 12:12-16. I suppose that the mother of the colt was brought
along so that the colt wouldn't suffer from separation anxiety.
And what did the prophet Isaiah have to say about the pomp and circumstance
of this Son of God, the Messiah of Israel? Just the opposite.
Isaiah 53:1-2The rest of the chapter is equally important, but not on the current topic.
Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as
a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when
we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
To those religious flat-earthers who claim that the earth must be bigger than
any other celestial object, or that there is some notion of the center of the
universe in the Bible, I accuse you of being carnally minded. If you reply to
me that Genesis claims that God created the heaven and the earth on Day One,
I believe that too, but so what? That doesn't tell us anything about where the
earth was placed within the heaven. Do you think that the Spirit of God couldn't
find the earth if it wasn't at the 'center'? You are committing the sin of presumption.
If you have merely a 'feeling' that God placed the earth at the 'center' of the
universe, then state your feeling as a feeling, and don't presume to know 'factual'
things you don't know. The only place on earth that God has claimed to hold as
preferred is Zion, and Zion isn't at the center of your Gleason projection map.
So, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Show me one scripture in the New Testament that claims that we have to believe
that the earth is at the center of the universe (or that the earth is fixed in space)
to be saved. Jesus never preached that, and neither did the apostles. Paul warned
us against such people who would introduce needlessly divisive doctrines.
Romans 16:17And also
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and
offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.
Titus 3:9-11
But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and
strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that
is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing
that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.
So, if God made the earth to be inhabited, does this mean that God does
not want us to inhabit the Moon or Mars? That conclusion would not
logically follow from Isaiah 45:18, unless all humanity were to evacuate
the earth to inhabit some other place. So long as one human being remains
alive on the earth, it's 'inhabited'.
And what about human space travel? Is that against the will of God? I don't think
so. Scripture declares:
Psalms 139:8Okay, thumbs up to astronauts, cosmonauts, spelunkers, cavers, and dirtronauts.
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell,
behold, thou art there.
So, who in ninth-century-BC Israel could care about ascending into heaven? It's either
pure poetry or it's another of those praega tallea that was meant to be understood by
educated people of this time. Well, people go to school, but that doesn't mean that
they come out educated. We who are born into the modern world of Western culture
are graced by abundant resources of the knowledge of science and technology, and
God will hold us accountable to use that to make informed beliefs about the world
and the universe. Jesus told us in Luke 12:47-48 that to whom much is given, much
shall be required. So, if you don't think that humanity has landed on the Moon, first
study to show yourself approved, and mums the word until you have.
If you weren't born in the 11th century AD, don't pretend that you were, and get
an education before you pontificate on lofty things of the factual world. If you
tell a lie, Jesus will hold that against you.
Appendix: Afterthoughts
Here I place some afterthoughts of 'lesser' importance. Some out there believe that the earth
is 'fixed in space' just because it was created before anything else in the Universe. Though
I do not dispute this claim of priority, that does not prove that God didn't fill out the
heavens, so to speak, disproportionately in some random direction with respect to the
fixed stars. We simply have nothing in the Bible that proclaims definitively that the earth
is the center of the universe. There are some "Christians" out there who think that the
heliocentric model of the universe has placed the sun as the center of the universe.
Not in modern science, it hasn't. The concept of the center of the universe does not have
much tangible meaning in modern science, and, as I have already proclaimed, it has no
scriptural basis nor established importance even if it did. The Copernican Model is kept
in modern science only as a very crude model of the solar system, not as a model of
the universe.
And what's with this 'priority' argument? God made the fishes and the cattle before He
made Man. Does that make them more important than Man? God made the Old Covenant
before the New, but it was supplanted by the New Covenant. Therefore, as a general rule,
priority does not guarantee anything in the New Testament way of thinking (that I can think
of at this time). Of course, Jesus was declared a first fruit of the New Covenant
[1 Corinthians 15:20], but I'm thinking in terms of some general hermeneutic principle
to go by.
One last 'contrary' verse.
Ecclesiastes 1:5Comment: This is suppose to be yet another proof that the earth does not move, but the
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his
place where he arose.
I want to present now a puzzle for the reader to work out. Suppose that there is a man
riding on a flatbed section of a train, which is in steady motion forward. Suppose also
that there is a man standing on the embankment, watching the train and, in particular,
the man on the train as they go by him. Now, suppose that as the man on the train is about
to pass the man on the embankment, he drops a stone so as to let it fall off the train to the
embankment ground. In his frame of reference (that of the train) he sees the stone fall
straight down, that is, on a straight path. But the man standing on the embankment sees
the stone fall in a parabolic path. Now I ask you (as Einstein did long ago), What is the
'true' path of the stone through space?
The second reason is that the author of Ecclesiastes, Solomon, is noted for his wisdom
teaching, not his prophetic writing, as in the cases of Genesis, Job, Isaiah, and Psalms. The
only book of the Old Testament that I trust less than Ecclesiastes for the garnering of reliable
scientific insight is the Song of Solomon. From the standpoint of the Bible, Genesis 1
is cosmology/astronomy. Job, Chapters 38-41 is some astronomy (with other sciences mixed
in). But is Job himself smarter than Solomon about astronomy? I suppose so, because he got
a personal science lecture from God (out of the whirlwind). There's no question that Isaiah
is among the top of the Old Testament prophets. Jesus even quoted him (Luke 4:18-19).
Isaiah 53 refers to the ministry of the Messiah. Jesus specifically mentioned the Psalms as
being prophetic concerning Him (Luke 24:44). In particular, Psalms 22 foresaw the crucifixion.
The third reason is the shear audacity to miss the point of Ecclesiastes, especially in that
section. Solomon was (in my opinion) not granting us Holy Spirit insight into the universe.
Rather, he was just the world's biggest complainer of his day. He was, in his day, bemoaning
what we call in modern lingo 'the rat race', which Wikipedia defines as "an endless, self-defeating,
or pointless pursuit." Or, put another way, the futility of it all. Just listen to the guy complain
from Ecclesiastes, Chapter One:
1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.See what I mean? He listed one example after another of what he perceived as
2 Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
3 What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
4 One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.
5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
6 The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about
continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
7 All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place
from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
Anyway, Solomon continued fretting over the dismal state of affairs of
Mankind,
until Chapter three, when he finally hit on some true wisdom.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that
which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and
a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a
time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a
time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time
to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time
to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. What profit hath he that worketh in
that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the
sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time:
also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work
that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
The Lord God is a God of Facts and Logic
God has told us that we are to serve Him with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
These are four modes of service to God and four channels of communication with God.
Trying to grasp God with our minds is important, but it may not be enough to believe
on Jesus, which is why many educated people who try to grasp God or vet the New
Testament with only logic and facts do not attain salvation -- for to them the Gospel
is foolishness. But it is through our hearts and souls that we can be inspired and assured
that Jesus is the Messiah. I went over this in detail in my essay
Why You Don't Believe.
If you are a true lover of Truth -- all truth; and a kind and charitable person; and a
person who will diligently seek after God; if you love humility; and, lastly, if you are a
free thinker who will examine the words of Jesus with an open mind and ignore the peer
pressure around you, then you can believe in Jesus as the prophesied Messiah. But it will
also take courage and perseverance to endure to the end.
We are not discussing here the miraculous abilities of God, in which natural laws can
be temporarily suspended for God to show His divine power. We are talking about
forming theories and models about the normal functioning of the natural world around
us. The truth is, if you can't recognize the baseline of what is natural, you might miss
the supernatural when it occurs. If Moses had thought that it's normal for bushes in
the desert to spontaneously combust, he might have ignored the burning bush on
Mount Horeb.
We can't just say, "I am going to invent any Biblical doctrine I want and ignore all
logical, factual, and scientific evidence to the contrary." If you do, I'm sure that will
get you a well-deserved seat in hell. Yes, I know that there are plenty of historians
and scientists who disagree with the cosmology and historical timetable of the Bible,
but I'm not talking about those doctrines right now. Right now, I'm talking about the
natural laws and regularities of our little hamlet of the universe, which most of us
refer to as the solar system, which includes the earth, the rest of the planets, comets,
asteroids, and the sun, and their accepted theories of how they inter-relate to each other.
One doesn't need a doctorate in physics to be able to talk about these simple things
authoritatively.
But for those who graduated high school who had actually learned something of science,
if you take the heliocentric-Keplerian model of the solar system, you can explain,
without even bringing in gravitational forces, the retrograde motion of the planet Mars.
And if you add to that Newton's Theory of Universal Gravity, you can by it explain all of
Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, such as about the planetary orbits being ellipses.
In fact, you can go well beyond that by explaining the perturbative effects the planets
have on each other. It also explains the orbit of the moon around the earth and the earth's
tides.
But does that mean that Newton's theory is true? Well, this is a deep and complicated
issue in the philosophy of science. I prefer to look at the theories of physics from the
Instrumentalist viewpoint. In this viewpoint we judge theories among themselves based
on how well they work to match their predictions against physical observations, and we
don't concern ourselves with the question of whether they are true or not. However,
there are many other viewpoints within the philosophy of science on how to regard the
epistemic nature of scientific theories, but this is not the place to go over them. In any
case, the short way to sum up Instrumentalism is with this epigram:
Physics is not metaphysics.I like what Einstein had to say about the nature of physical concepts that we place
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not,So, if the physical concepts we use in physical theories are free creations, doesn't
however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
-- The Evolution of Physics, Einstein & Infeld,
A Touchstone Book, 1938 [1966], p. 31.
The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those elementary universal
laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no
logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sypathetic understanding
of experience, can reach them.
"Principles of Research," Ideas and Opinions,
Three Rivers Press, New York, p. 226.
[Do atheists/evolutionists believe in intuition?]
The Foucault Pendulum: The love of truth includes the love of facts
There is this setup called a Foucault Pendulum that is operating all over the earth,
I suppose principally in universities and science museums. There was a large one in
operation at the university I graduated from. It is comprised of a weight suspended at
one end of a metal wire, the other end attached to the ceiling of a building, thus
creating a pendulum. They are usually setup inside to reduce random atmospheric
interference. Then, someone starts the pendulum swinging in a plane. Slowly over
the period of a day the pendulum will appear to rotate relative to the room it's in.
Now, we have two possibilities. 1) Either the pendulum is moving relative to a fixed
room, attached to a fixed earth (a belief common to most flat-earth models), or
2) the pendulum is fixed in a plane that does not move relative to the fixed stars, but,
instead, it's the room that moves because it is attached to a rotating earth. Note: The
time it takes for this pendulum to complete one rotation depends on where it is
performed on the earth. At the poles, it's period is approximately a day. The hard
question for the flat-earthers to answer is why the plane of the pendulum should
rotate at all?
For video presentations on it and for more details, see the following YouTube videos.
The scientific explanation is that the apparent rotation of the pendulum is the result
of the rotation of the earth relative to the fixed stars (and I agree with that interpretation).
The flat-fixed earth explanation seems to be to claim that all scientists lie, therefore,
that the demonstration is a fraud. Well, if you're going to accuse someone of fraud, you
better be able to prove it, because Jesus wants you to prove such things or say nothing.
Let me warn you contrarians out there, that to make a factual claim without proof is
'to love and make a lie'. Such arrogance. Such flirting with hell fire. But being scientifically
lazy and making false accusations of fraud is a whole lot easier than to actually demonstrate
anything with their own versions of the Foucault pendulum.
If you oppose facts and logic, then you oppose Jesus Christ, for He demanded of His
generation to be accepted on the basis of facts and logic. God wants us to believe in Him
on the basis of truth and facts and logic. It's a fact the Jesus fulfilled many of the prophesies
of the Messiah given in the Old Testament -- the rest to be fulfilled at a later time (during
the Second Coming and thereafter). It's a fact that Jesus had performed many miracles
in the eyes of His enemies. In fact, the miracles He performed were so factual and indisputable
in their nature that they did not deny that they had occurred; instead, they denied the
source of power behind these miracles.
Now, I will quote some of John Chapter 10 (verse 23-42), but you might take this opportunity
to read all of it. The point of it is that Jesus said that He should be believed on, on the basis
of His actions, not on blind faith.
And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. Then came the Jews round
about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be
the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not:
the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me.But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep
hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them
eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out
of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is
able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father;
for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, For
a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou,
being a man, makest thyself God.Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he
called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot
be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into
the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe
not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is
in me, and I in him. Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped
out of their hand,And went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized;
and there he abode. And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle:
but all things that John spake of this man were true. And many believed on
him there.
You either get control of your lusts and feelings of entitlement,
or they will get control of you.
-- Ilfinor