Re: Does the Bible teach a flat earth?

From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Jan 05 2003 - 23:10:33 EST

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    --- Jim Eisele <jeisele@starpower.net> wrote:
    (SNIP)
    > >Every writer or thinker is a child of their time
    > and thus expresses things
    > >in the science and thought of their day. If this
    > makes the Bible invalid,
    > >then every other writing is invalid too.
    >
    > Oh boy, logic flaw. I'll leave it to others to
    > point out if they
    > so choose (I'm the atheist/agnostic outsider here
    > :-)

    Jim, please enlighten us to the flaw. If a writer of
    a biblical text thought the earth did not move and the
    sun moved around the earth, how does that invalidate
    their writing about God's concern for the poor or the
    social outcast? You rarely answer my questions, but I
    would appreciate if you would please answer this
    question.

    (SNIP)
    > Non-YEC Christianity (at
    > least at this point
    > in time) poses absolutely no threat to humanity.

    Jim, it is these kind of broad statements that really
    baffle me. While I may disagree with YECers on
    numerous issues, how exactly are they a threat to
    humanity?

    If you could, what steps would you take to protect
    humanity against YECers?

    > I
    > don't know what
    > else to tell you, Michael. You have much more at
    > stake here than I
    > do. All that I'll say is that you don't seem aware
    > of skeptic thought.

    The point, as I made in an earlier post, is that the
    Bible does not state any of the things that you assert
    that it did. Those are interpretations on the text.
    Even if you can make a good argument that the author
    of a particular book contained in the Bible believed
    one or more of those things, what difference does it
    make for what is being related in the text?

    If you believe that Einstein's general relativity is
    correct, and it turns out that some other theory is a
    more comprehensive and correct explanation, does what
    you say about the accuracy of the bible lose its
    validity? If not, why would the text of a particular
    book in the bible lose its validity if the author was
    unaware of the contents of the human genome?

    What you fail to see in these issues, Jim, is that the
    questions you ask about the biblical texts in these
    regards are really meaningless. There are some
    meaningful questions about the biblical texts, but you
    have yet to explain how these are among them.

    Please put your best skeptical resources and thought
    process together (I am quite familiar with skeptical
    thought, so don't worry about over taxing me), and
    explain in a coherent argument (something more than
    bullet points), how geocentrism, flat earth or young
    earth, (or being unaware of the human genome or
    genetics, general relativity, electromagnetism,
    bacteria/virus causation of diseases, etc. take any
    scientific fact discovered in the last 200 years)
    affects the validity of a particular biblical text. I
    will even let you pick the text and tell me how any or
    all of those assumptions would vitiate the text.

    The truth, Jim, is that they don't, but please prove
    me wrong.

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