ALTER2EGO -to- EVERYONE:

Unlike the bibles of other religions, there is EVIDENCE the Judeo-Christian Bible was divinely inspired by Jehovah. Not only does it contain almost 2,000 accurately fulfilled prophesies, but Bible writers had special information that was not discovered by scientists and explorers until centuries later. Below are two such examples.

1. The Prophet Isaiah gave a viewpoint description of how earth appears from outerspace and did it at a time in history when humans were earthbound. Notice below.

"There is One who is dwelling above the CIRCLE of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the One who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gaze, who spread them out like a tent in which to dwell," (Isaiah 40:22)

Isaiah's viewpoint description--of a circular earth, when viewed from outer space--was not confirmed or proven until the 20th century, when astronauts were able to view earth from space. In effect, Isaiah, who was earth bound at the time of his writing, gave a viewpoint description that was almost 3,000 years ahead of his time.


2. Similarly, it was not until 1687 that Isaac Newton published his theory that gravitational forces are the explanation behind the earth's stability. More than 3,000 years before Newton's existence, under divine inspiration, Moses wrote the viewpoint description that, when viewed from outer space, earth appears to be hanging upon nothing (indicating invisible gravity), as follows:

"He [Jehovah God] is stretching out the north over the empty place, HANGING THE EARTH UPON NOTHING;" (Job 26:7)


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. How could Isaiah have known that the earth is circular when viewed from outerspace, considering that the writing of the book of Isaiah was completed in 732 B.C.E. —more than 2,700 years BEFORE astronauts in the 20th century confirmed that earth appears like a circle when viewed from outer space?

2. How did Moses know that the earth appears to hang upon nothing, indicating invisible gravity, considering that the book of Job was completed in 1473 B.C.E. and it wasn't until 1687 AD/CE that Isaac Newton published his theory about gravitational forces—3,160 years AFTER Moses wrote that the earth hangs in space with no visible means of support?
http://inventors.about.com/library/i...s/blnewton.htm

3. Where did Isaiah and Moses get this information?


Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

Ok then. A few ancients write some poems that weren’t even particularly accurate and it means they were inspired by God. First off, all kinds of myths were told explaining the origin of the earth and it’s relationships with the rest of what humans could observe in the heavens. The “hanging on nothing” thing is nothing but a stopped clock being right twice a day.

And quit posting things you know nothing about. The Greeks had proven that the earth is spherical (not circular— you’d think an omniscient deity would understand the difference and make sure the people writing His book would too) several thousand years before the first launch of the space program. It’s really rather simple to prove, and you only need a ship, not a spaceship. Just watch a tall-masted sailing ship disappear beyond the horizon. First off, disappearing beyond the horizon is something that wouldn’t happen on a flat earth, so we really need not go further. However the hull of the ship disappears first, the top of the mast last. Even if you think there’s some maximum sight distance on a flat earth that causes the ship to disappear, a flat earth cannot explain why the hull disappears first.

Heck, the Greeks even did a pretty good job of measuring the circumference of the earth. Aristoches noted that at one location in Egypt he could see the sun shine directly to the bottom of a deep well on the day of the solstice, but at a location due north by a short distance, this was not the case. He realized that the shape of the earth was the cause. The sun was directly overhead at the southern location and at some angle at the other. By measuring that angle and the distance between the locations, he got a value within a few percent of the modern one.

The Greeks did this without the assistance of an omniscient, omnipotent deity. Why couldn’t the Hebrews do better with divine assistance? I would really think such a deity could get basic geometry right, and I’ve never seen any indication of the size of the earth anywhere in the Bible

Let's say for the sake of argument that a prophecy exists in the Bible.

This is a question to be asked, fine. But you are claiming to have answered the question. So present your evidence!

Here are a couple of possible answers:
Visiting aliens.
Time travelers.
etc.

Can you disprove either one?

I've heard whispers that the Earth isn't a circle.

To the extent that from some perspective it looks like a circle you'd only need to figure out the world was spherical. Balls look kind of like a circle because they're 3d versions of a circle. And that the Earth is round was figured out by several different methods through the ages, some of them gloriously simple.

But, of course, this is retrofitting anyway. You're going back and deciding "Well, the Earth isn't a circle, and the Bible doesn't say it looks like a circle from space, but it's close enough that I'll interpret it this way".

To me that's a perspective of a person standing on high ground seeing the horizon circle around him. That's why the heavens are 'stretched' over it.

Of course The Bible was never intended to be taken literally. It's more like a David Lynch film then a science text.

All the bodies in space are rounded and appear to be hung from nothing. Eureka moment: maybe earth is!! No, no, no. It had to be god. My god, the one they told me about in Sunday School. WTF is this stupid line of apologetics?

Pretty weak stuff.
Additionally, 3 seconds of research yielded this (from the same book of the bible!):

Isaiah 11:12 "He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."

So, apparently (in 29 chapters) the earth underwent a morphological transformation from square to "circular" (sic).

Maybe it's a a miracle? ;-)

The ancient Greeks knew the earth was round. Eratosthenes (circa 240 BC) even figured out the approximate circumference of the earth. That's much more impressive than someone referring to the earth as a circle in an obviously metaphorical passage.

The earth doesn't hang upon nothing, but moves according to the laws of gravity.

Original Position:

The Greeks, specifically Aristotle, also made the fallacious claim that Earth is the center of the universe--a blunder of enormous magnitude, which cost many people who contradicted that false claim to be executed.

"Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 BC, believed the Earth was round. He thought Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the fixed stars revolved around it. Aristotle's ideas were widely accepted by the Greeks of his time. The exception, a century later, was Aristarchus, one of the earliest believers in a heliocentric or sun-centered universe. In the 100s BC, Hipparchus, the most important Greek astronomer of his time, calculated the comparative brightness of as many as 1,000 different stars. He also calculated the Moon's distance from the Earth."
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs...cosmology.html

The book of Isaiah was completed in 732 BCE, nearly 500 years before the Greeks came along. So back to Question #1 from my OP: How did Isaiah known that the earth is circular?


"There is One who is dwelling above the CIRCLE of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the One who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gaze, who spread them out like a tent in which to dwell," (Isaiah 40:22)


Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

FellaGaga-52:

The problem with your argument is that you have no credible explanation for how Job, who was earthbound, could have known what is stated below in all caps and bold:

"He [Jehovah God] is stretching out the north over the empty place, HANGING THE EARTH UPON NOTHING;" (Job 26:7)

The book of Job was written in 1473 BCE, over a thousand years before the Greeks came along, so the Greeks cannot help you on this. It was not until the 20th century that astronauts in outer space saw what Job--by inspiration from Jehovah--had described more than 2,000 years prior, namely: that earth appears to be hanging upon nothing when viewed from outerspace.

Again, how did Job know this?


Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

Lunkwill:

The term "four corners of the earth" is an idiom that refers to earth in its entirety or all four directions: north, south, east, and west.

That terminology is commonly used even today, but I don't see anybody making an issue of it, except the atheists and other skeptics when making their usual attempts at discrediting God's inspired word, the Judeo-Christian Bible. Notice how one dictionary explains it.

"four corners of the earth, the
The far ends of the world; all parts of the world. For example, Athletes came from the four corners of the earth to compete in the Olympics. This expression appeared in the Bible (Isaiah 11:12): "And gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." Although the idea that the earth is a flat plane with actual corners has long been discarded, the term has survived."
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com...the%20Olympics.

Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

stremba70:

An astronaut from the 1972 moon landing confirmed that, from outer space, earth appears to be hanging from nothing. He was quoted saying that. And he did not consider himself to be a religious man at the time.

In fact, I will provide the quotation from this particular astronaut in a future post.


Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

stremba70

One of the ancient Greeks--Aristotle to be exact--also made the blunderous claim that earth is the center of the universe. Aristotle's blunder resulted in the execution--by the Catholic Church--of scientists who disputed Aristotle's false claim.

"Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 BC, believed the Earth was round. He thought Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun, Moon, planets, and all the fixed stars revolved around it. Aristotle's ideas were widely accepted by the Greeks of his time. The exception, a century later, was Aristarchus, one of the earliest believers in a heliocentric or sun-centered universe. In the 100s BC, Hipparchus, the most important Greek astronomer of his time, calculated the comparative brightness of as many as 1,000 different stars. He also calculated the Moon's distance from the Earth."
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs...cosmology.html



Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

stremba70:

It obviously wasn't all that simple to prove to many of the ancients, considering the fact the Ancient Egyptians thought earth is a square with four corners, despite the fact they spent lots of time at sea.

"The Flat Earth

by Donald E. Simanek

Early Ideas About the Shape of the Earth.
The ancients had many novel ideas about the shape of the earth. The Babylonians thought the earth was hollow, to provide space for their underworld. The Egyptians thought the earth a square, (with four corners) with mountains at the edge supporting the vault of the sky."
https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/flat/flateart.htm


So, what is your point? Crediting the Greeks for getting it right in some instances is a moot point, because the Bible writers that I quoted had already written their inspired words hundreds of years before the Greeks came along. And the Bible writers were always right.


Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

Aristotle was wrong. So what? He wasn’t guided by an omniscient deity; he was just a mere human. That was my point regarding the Bible-it’s authors supposedly were guided by an omniscient deity, yet they made many scientific errors that seem pretty sloppy for an omniscient being. Referring to the “circle of the earth” is just one. There are passages that imply that bats are a species of bird, whales are fish, and that the number pi is equal to 3. I’m sure I’m missing some, but the point is that an omniscient deity should not make these types of errors, especially ones that other ancient civilizations like the Greeks managed to get right, or at least more right than the Bible does.

The Greek ideas regarding the earth’s shape had zero, zilch, nada to do with Biblical inspiration. The Greeks knew solid geometry very well, apparently much better than the alleged deity who inspired the Bible authors. The Greeks certainly knew the difference between a circle and a sphere, and knew that the earth was the latter, not the former as the deity told his authors.

The Bible writers were demonstrably wrong on the shape of the earth. Another passage also refers to the four corners of the earth, (perhaps influenced by Egyptian ideas), so the Bible is not only wrong, but self-contradictory on the matter. It’s wrong on several other mathematical and scientific matters as well (and self contradictory to boot on some).

Here's something I am quite confident about: none of the multiple posts you've made have anything to do with why you are a JW in the first place.

A second thing I am quite confident about: every topic in your multiple posts has been expressed before by someone else (you've even posted it all before!). There is an acronym related to this: PRATT. It stands for Points Refuted a Thousand Times.

Given this, what exactly are you expecting to happen as a result of all this duplicated posting?

So you can pick a word or two and point to it as "evidence", when I do the same, it's just an "idiom"?
To quote "The Church Lady": How convenient!

Despite this, I agree with you that it's just poetry and not meant as evidence of anything, just like everything else in the bible! On the other hand, if you could point to something specific and unusual (like the bible explaining DNA, special/general relativity, or nuclear fusion) then you'd have something! But it would have to be specific! I'm sure there are stories in the bible about big explosions or flashes of light that you could point to and say: "See god is talking about fusion!"

It has to be specific.
For example:
"Behold: god stretched forth his mighty hand and chose the lightest of all the elements and smashed them together! Yea! For every two of the lightest of its kind did thereby create another element weighing twice as much along with great power to give birth to the sun for the benefit of life on earth!"

I'll gladly settle for you listing a mere one-hundred times where those points were refuted. Thanks.

It wasn't an enormous blunder. The evidence for heliocentrism was not superior to geocentrism at the time. However, knowing that the earth was spherical and the approximate size of the earth is more impressive than describing the earth as a circle (which doesn't imply that it is a sphere). If anything, a literal understanding of the verse you were quoting would seem to describe a flat circular earth, above which is the heavens in the shape of circular tent.

To answer your question, the earth is a sphere, not a circle.

The bolded is "quite correct" (as Mr. Spock would say).

I believe that even to this day that the Roman Catholic Church has not officially renounced Geocentrism. If they did, it would undermine their Papal Infallibility Doctrine.

It's also exactly how the moon looks from Earth and I can't imagine that the first guess that the Earth looks like that from far away is in the bible.

The whole notion of cherry picking factoids that the Bible got right and using that as “proof” that everything in it is correct is logically incoherent anyway. Even if it did get the shape of the earth right, so what? The Harry Potter books describe many features of the city of London, and presumably do so accurately. Am I supposed to make the logical inference that because these books were accurate in their description of London, they are accurate in all other respects? There really are wizards in the world and there really is a school dedicated to training young wizards?

Obviously that’s ridiculous, but it’s logically the same jump that Biblical believers make in going from more or less dubious claims of Biblical accuracy in historical or scientific matters to claiming accuracy in the matter of the existence of God and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Accuracy in one area, even if it existed in the Bible, would not imply that everything is accurate.

My point is not to convince anyone to give up their beliefs. If you believe in God and in the accounts of the Gospels, I cannot argue against that. My main point is that using the Bible as a history or science text is counterproductive. Presumably believers are more concerned with the religious aspects than the scientific ones anyway. Isn’t it more important to believe that God created the universe than to argue about the details of how He moved atoms around to do it? It works the other way too — scientific inaccuracies do not imply the inaccuracy of everything in the Bible. It only means that if God does exist, the scientific accounts in the Bible are misleading or incomplete. Arguing about those details kind of misses the whole point of the Bible for believers though, doesn’t it?

stremba70:

You earlier praised the Greeks for their speculations, and then as soon as I pointed out one of their large blunders, you try to minimize it by declaring “so what.”

Now, that’s rich.


Alter2Ego

________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18

stremba70:

The writer of the Bible at Isaiah 40:22 was giving a viewpoint description of how earth appears to someone in outer space if they happen to be at a specific position above earth. Below as a reminder is the scriptural quotation.


"There is One who is dwelling above the CIRCLE of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the One who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gaze, who spread them out like a tent in which to dwell," (Isaiah 40:22)


Isaiah specifically said he was giving the viewpoint of "One who is dwelling above," and he obviously wasn't referring to himself. This viewpoint of earth appearing like a circle to someone far above it, at a particular angle, was confirmed by astronaut Charlie Duke--the 10th man on the moon--during an interview. He gave the intereviewer his VIEWPOINT DESCRIPTION of how earth looked from his vantage point far above it, during his 1972 space flight. Keep in mind that Charlie Duke was not a religious man when he was interviewed. Focus on the words that I have bolded in red from his interview.

"But I had a beautiful view of Earth as we orbited prior to landing and after landing. We had about 24 hours in orbit before we landed and about 24 after. So you could see the Earth rise above the lunar surface, and it was a half Earth in the sky. So you saw the polar ice caps, the clouds in between, and a lot of blue ocean. Rarely could you make out a landmass from the lunar distance of what, like Europe or Asia or anything like that. It was beautiful. It just suspended in the blackness of space. The two verses come to mind in scripture. In Isaiah, the 40th chapter, God says, it says, "God sits enthroned above the circle of the earth." Of course, we didn't see God, but we did see the CIRCLE of the earth. And then in the book of Job, I think its 26th chapter it says, "When God made the earth, He suspended it upon nothing." And that's exactly how it looks to you as you look back at the Earth, just hung in the blackness of space."
https://hope1032.com.au/stories/fait...th-aaron-erin/

Charlie Duke's quotation will be the first paragraph below a pink box when you click the weblink.

Your repeated claim that the Bible is "demonstrably wrong" is debunked by the viewpoint descriptions of astronauts who confirmed the viewpoint descriptions given by Isaiah and Job. And remember, neither Isaiah nor Job were capable of viewing earth from above.



Alter2Ego


________________
"That people may know that you, whose name is JEHOVAH, you alone are the Most High over all the earth." ~ Psalms 83:18