Surprise: The Bible is scientifically ahead of secular scientists!

http://www.bible.ca/b-science-evidences.htm ^ | Uknown | Whoever ( atheismforum@yahoo.com )is

[OneVike]

Few people might be aware of this: There are passages in the Bible that coincide with scientific principles that weren't discovered by scientists until hundreds of years after the Bible had been written. Here are some examples:

[LeGrande]

For me to refer to "sidereal tracking in telescopes" seems to me to be the correct way to describe it - What's your point?

My point is that you have to continually adjust the direction of the telescope to compensate for the movement of the earth.

I found it was much quicker to sit in a rocking chair and measure the Sun's angle then rock it back 2.1 degrees and measure it again - and sure enough the sun was moved about 2.1 degrees. What do you know about that. Duuuuuuh. But the sun's gravitational and actual direction still lined up

The suns actual position and gravitational position do line up. The apparent position doesn't though, it is off by 2.1 degrees like you indicated. What were you actually measuring in your rocking chair?

Sorry, I wasn't too clear. I'm saying that your idea is the hybrid crippled idea - trying to somehow combine some of the ideas relating to mechanokinetic waves and EM waves. But I agree - this should indeed be fun!

Except that I never mentioned mechanokinetic or sound waves. I assure you I am not confused, at least on this topic : (

This is the crippled hybrid idea I'm talking about "Waves of nothing" almost as if you think that EM waves are actual mechanokinetic motions in the substance of nothing just like sound is mechanokinetic motions of a massy medium such as a liquid, gas, or solid. But sound waves don't carry magnetic or electric properties, EM waves do. sound waves require a massy medium, EM waves do not. Sound waves are induced by mechanical movement and not(directly) by electrical movement, while EM wave are just the opposite.

So you are claiming that EM waves do the opposite of sound waves? That they create mechanical movement? I think you would be better off not trying to combine sound waves and light waves together in your explanations. They just sound nonsensical. You do seem to understand that light waves don't require a medium. Since that medium doesn't exist what is your problem with my statement of Waves of Nothing?

It's sort of hard to believe some of the stuff you say. For example, you said that if the earth rotated 180 degrees in 8.5 minutes, the sun's apparent optical position would be 180 degrees off from its real (and gravitational) direction.

Hmm, I thought we were finally in agreement by your admission at the top : ( Let me put it another way. Let's put you on this hypothetical planet with a sun that turns on for 8.3 minutes and turns off for 8.3 minutes. Now at your dawn (when you are facing the sun) the sun turns on, will you ever see the light of the Sun? No? Why not? Because you are 180 degrees out of sync with the light from the sun.

I am truly mystified as to why this is so hard to understand. I must not be explaining myself very well : (

Let me give you another thought experiment, at dawn on this planet the sun turns on. The suns true position is due east, but you can't see it. 8.3 minutes later when you see the sun, the sun appears to be due West. It is off by exactly 180 degrees in your frame of reference.

If the speed of light was instantaneous you would have seen the suns position due east at dawn, a 180 degrees difference from your observed direction with the real speed of light.

I just had a thought, do you understand what a frame of reference means? Because that is critical to our discussion and to much of science. I have a suspicion that your frame of reference seems to be the sun and not the earth.

[ravensandricks]

I see your point, and fair enough, but I can’t help but wonder how many people have a “sincere interest in these issues” in the sense that they want to do anything but stick to their guns and ignore the evidence.

I commend you for what you’re trying to do. I don’t have the patience. I just think of the Creationists as a cult that’s largely limited to the U.S. South and Midwest and try to ignore them.

[Dog Gone]

Creationists are not a cult, nor are they limted to the Bible Belt.

They are people who willingly ignore evidence because they want to believe a particular conclusion. All of us are prone to do that, if not about creation, but perhaps regarding other matters.

However, minds can be changed. Many won’t, but some will. It’s tempting to simply shrug one’s shoulders and say, “People can believe whatever they want. No skin off my nose.”

But truth has its own agenda, which is to win out in the end. It’s a battle between facts and faith, and facts are harder to change. But faith is a pretty dang strong thing, too.

[js1138]

If you were much of a Bible reader, you would know that the first copy was written on stone by the finger of God.

Stone is so ephemeral. You'd think the creator of the universe would write on something that would last and could be checked, like golden plates.

[Dog Gone]

And writing with your finger. When is the last time you did that, kindergarten art class?

[ravensandricks]

Good points all, but how people find the time and energy to try to persuade people with cement between their ears is beyond me. I just don’t have the time of day to fight with creationists.

I disagree that they’re not a cult, however. What else could they possibly be called?

[mrjesse]

Even if you ignore the entire fossil record that clearly shows a progression from single cell organisms to complex critters like us, you still would have to explain the genetic record. The genetic record makes all of the old Darwin arguments moot.

Where is this entire fossil record? Don't I have to study evolutionary biology for four years in college in order to see all this evidence? Like I said, at most I would only be able to take it as a faith.

“Here we present a draft genome sequence of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a largely complete catalogue of the genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements. We use this catalogue to explore the magnitude and regional variation of mutational forces shaping these two genomes, and the strength of positive and negative selection acting on their genes. In particular, we find that the patterns of evolution in human and chimpanzee protein-coding genes are highly correlated and dominated by the fixation of neutral and slightly deleterious alleles. We also use the chimpanzee genome as an outgroup to investigate human population genetics and identify signatures of selective sweeps in recent human evolution.”

That's a nice little phrase you've been posting around. But a link to the full text it references would be really nice. I couldn't find it. It's just elephant hurling if that's all you can provide. It doesn't prove a thing.

Which brings me back to my original point: People who don't have a clue about the evidence for ASBE (All Species By Evolution) take it by faith and argue for it as true saying that it is science and is true. And they ought to know that they don't know what they are talking about! Furthermore, I well know that people have a vested moral interest in ASBE being true. My experience has been that people making these claims also have no logical moral reason to always tell the truth. And unfortunately the people writing these things fall into this category as do the people reviewing it and putting their stamp of approval on it.

which brings me right back to where I started - The evidence is not available to me to see for myself, and I have to trust the word of people I don't know about things I've never seen -- and that's faith! What's worse, I would have to trust the word of people who have no moral logical reason to always tell the truth! An atheist's only reason to tell the truth is if he thinks it will accomplish for him what he wants accomplished. And I've already seen how people want ASBE to be true and have faith in it even without knowledge of the evidence.

And to make matters worse, right now I'm in the middle of a conversation with LeGrande who's claiming that the sun's apparent position is ~2.1 degrees different from its actual (and gravitational) position due to the fact that the earth rotates ~2.1 degrees in the 8.3 minutes it takes light from the sun to reach the earth. If the sun orbited the earth, sure. But it doesn't. By his theory, Pluto would be about 60 degrees offset, and a heavenly body 12 light hours away would actually appear in the night sky when it was on the exact opposite side of the world. (But he has so far, in spite of my repeated requests, refused to answer my question as to how far lagged Pluto would be.)

Furthermore, he refuses to provide any references which also describe the same thing. So my reasons for not just taking as gospel a claim by an evolutionist are well founded and quite reasonable. People do make unsubstantiated claims and argue for them until the cows come home. How much more easy it will be for one to do such when thousands of his peers are also doing the same thing and everybody feels comfortable because everybody's doing it.

In any case, I would be interested in reading the article you talked about.

Thanks,

-Jesse

[Soliton]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16136131

[editor-surveyor]

Well, you’ve made up your own god anyway, so add those things to your list.

[editor-surveyor]

In Exodus

[MARTIAL MONK]

There are few enough of us left that it stands out, doesn't it?

...and is very much appreciated.

[mrjesse]

I just had a thought, do you understand what a frame of reference means? Because that is critical to our discussion and to much of science. I have a suspicion that your frame of reference seems to be the sun and not the earth.

Yes, I understand what a frame of reference is. I also know that if I change my angle by 2.1 degrees, everything around me will also appear to change angle by 2.1 degrees as a result. But I also know that changing my angle doesn't actually move anything around me even though everything appears to move - and I'm smart enough to know that its apparent motion was due to my own motion, and that be sitting in a rocking chair won't cause a lag between the suns gravitational and optical position.

The suns actual position and gravitational position do line up. The apparent position doesn't though, it is off by 2.1 degrees like you indicated.

Let's just get to the bottom of this one thing for now:

How much angular separation is between Pluto's actual (and gravitational) position and its apparent optical position, for an observer on earth?

To save you time, here is the info you need to calculate it:

>Pluto's eccentric orbit takes it from 30AU to 49AU from the sun. For fun, let's use the 49AU this time. Furthermore, let's make it 6 o-clock with Pluto overheard, and the sun at 90 degrees from overhead (i.e. just coming up or going down.)

>49AU takes 6.8 hours.

>The earth rotates 102 degrees in 6.8 hours.

> pluto's orbital period is 248.09 years. That is 0.0009 degrees in 5.4 hours. I don't mind if you ignore this factor for this calculation.

So I ask you: How many degrees difference will be between Pluto's actual (and gravitational) position and its apparent position?

What about a heavenly body which is 12 light hours away from the earth?

There's no use in trying to figure out anything more complicated if we can't make sense of this simple geometry. Please answer these two questions!

Thanks,

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16136131

Thanks -- but I had already found that webpage in my earlier search. But what I am evidently not smart enough to find is the alleged draft. It says "Here we present" or whatever -- but who is "We"? where is the draft they are presenting?! That little blurb doesn't mean a thing by itself (Unless one has great faith in its authors, then one can take it as gospel - but that's religion not science!)

Remember anyone can write anything - and probably there are at least a few people who will chime in and agree with it. Can you please help a poor dumb person (me) figure out how to read the actual draft that you're talking about?

Thanks!

-Jesse

[Soliton]

The paper is on a subscription site.

[Soliton]

Remember anyone can write anything - and probably there are at least a few people who will chime in and agree with it. Can you please help a poor dumb person (me) figure out how to read the actual draft that you're talking about?

It was published in Nature, a peer reviewed publication

[mrjesse]

The paper is on a subscription site.

Ahh, so that's why I couldn't find it. Could you PM me a copy? I'm assuming you subscribe and actually read the draft.

(I hope you didn't just take the blurb as gospel and use it as evidence without ever reading the article. That'd be very unscientific.)

It's looking more and more like elephant hurling to me!

"There's this great article that proves everything, but you can't read it without paying." Science isn't going to go very well if all the good evidence is only available to paying subscribers.

-Jesse

[LeGrande]

So I ask you: How many degrees difference will be between Pluto's actual (and gravitational) position and its apparent position?

Which frame of reference do you want me to use? Be specific so that we can be clear. You seem to like to switch around.

[Dog Gone]

In Exodus

Nowhere in Exodus does it say God wrote Genesis, which is what you attacked me about in the first place.

Chapter and verse in Exodus please, where it says God wrote Genesis in stone.

What, you can't do that? You told me that if I was much of a bible reader I'd know that.

So who exactly doesn't know their bible?

I'd say it is you. You just proved it.

[mrjesse]

Said mejesse: Remember anyone can write anything - and probably there are at least a few people who will chime in and agree with it. Can you please help a poor dumb person (me) figure out how to read the actual draft that you're talking about?

It was published in Nature, a peer reviewed publication

Ahh, maybe I can barrow it from my library?

As to peer reviewed, it was reviewed by peers in the same camp. I know how that works. There well may have been other scientists who would have disagreed and disallowed publishing but were not allowed to review it. (probably because they aren't allowed to be hired to do so.) But that doesn't make it true, accurate, or honest.

Peer review only means that "a bunch of other people that agree with it read it and agree with it." But that doesn't mean that it is true! I'll bet that if you went and looked, you'd find that the peers who reviewed it are probably quite of the mind of P.Z. Myers - who seems to be quite a staunch atheist and taglines himself as a "godless liberal." Of course the peers agreed with it. They wouldn't be peers if they didn't. But it is clear that just because more then one person is saying it I still cannot rest assured that they are correct.

In any case, do you know what publication and what issue I might find the article you reference in? Or is this just elephant hurling?

Thanks,

-Jesse

[Soliton]

I can’t believe you are doubting that the human genome has been mapped or that the chimpanzee’s has been mapped too. I may not be likeable, but I never lie about this.

Scientists Have Mapped the Human Genome
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0102/11/sm.06.html

Entire article from Nature.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/full/nature04072.html;jsessionid=3E37583566B3F39DA0ECFE581A3387E0

[mrjesse]

Which frame of reference do you want me to use? Be specific so that we can be clear. You seem to like to switch around.

I find your response ridiculous. We're talking about the difference in angle of Pluto's actual+gravitational position and its optical apparent position, as viewed from earth, at a given instant.

Does that answer your need for a frame of reference?

So then what is the gravitational and optical displacement for Jupiter as described in this and my prior post on the topic?

Thanks,

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

I can’t believe you are doubting that the human genome has been mapped or that the chimpanzee’s has been mapped too. I may not be likeable, but I never lie about this.

First, I'm not saying that human and chip DNA hasn't been mapped. Second, I'm glad to hear that you would never lie about this. I hope you don't lie about other things either.

Scientists Have Mapped the Human Genome http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0102/11/sm.06.html

By the way, I would love to play with the data myself. Do you know where I can download a full DNA sequence for humans and chimps? (I don't mean like 20 BP series or whatever but the whole big thing in a dataformat. I write computer programs so I could have some fun.)

Entire article from Nature.http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/full/nature04072.html;jsessionid=3E37583566B3F39DA0ECFE581A3387E0

Thanks a million! I sure appreciate it!

-Jesse

[Soliton]

I hope you don't lie about other things either

Our society would collapse if we never lied

[Soliton]

I like you

[Soliton]

By the way, I would love to play with the data myself. Do you know where I can download a full DNA sequence for humans and chimps? (I don't mean like 20 BP series or whatever but the whole big thing in a dataformat. I write computer programs so I could have some fun.)

Just request it from the sources I cited. Scientists love sharing.

[Non-Sequitur]

ping

[LeGrande]

I find your response ridiculous. We're talking about the difference in angle of Pluto's actual+gravitational position and its optical apparent position, as viewed from earth, at a given instant.

Does that answer your need for a frame of reference?

No. Which instant are you talking about? When the reflected light leaves Pluto or when the reflected light is seen by your observer on earth. Is your observer (observatory) compensating for all the motions of the earth and pluto or not?

Answer the above questions, but let me ask the question a little differently. Lets say that your observatory is pointing straight up, perpendicular to the surface of the earth, directly at the actual position of Pluto, and lets pretend that Pluto is a flash bulb that flashes at that instant. Will the observer in the observatory see the flash of light at that instant? Knowing that the earth is rotating, and that it is going to take awhile for the flash of light to hit the telescope, how many degrees is the observer going to have to rotate the telescope to see that flash of light?

[mrjesse]

Our society would collapse if we never lied

Uhh, I'm not too sure about that. Our society is collapsing, in part because people are lying (and cheating, then lying about it). Look around. In any case, I'm pretty sure our society wouldn't collapse just because you and I refrained from telling a lie.

-Jesse

[Soliton]

If your wife asks you if she looks fat, what do you say?

[mrjesse]

Our society would collapse if we never lied

Oh, and PS:

It sounds like you consider it important that lying is sometimes OK which requires that God not exist, since in the Bible God tells us to not lie. Thus I can see that you have a reason besides science to hope that the universe came to be by some other means then God.

Am I wrong?

-Jesse

[Soliton]

It sounds like you consider it important that lying is sometimes OK which requires that God not exist, since in the Bible God tells us to not lie. Thus I can see that you have a reason besides science to hope that the universe came to be by some other means then God. Am I wrong?

Just as material lies harm our society, little lies make it work. Anoither name for little lies is politeness. You can deny it, but it is true, Imagine what would happen if everyone was honest with their boss.

[mrjesse]

Our society would collapse if we never lied

Oh, whoops, sorry, PPS:

The problem with me knowing that you do think it's okay to sometimes lie is that now I have no idea what you will lie about and what you won't lie about. For example, you said you would never lie about DNA sequencing or whatnot. But you might consider it okay to lie about whether you would lie to me about something - so it renders your word almost useless. How do I know whether you're really telling me the truth, or you're only lying and telling me it's the truth?

And of course you can't always tell me when you're lying or then it'll ruin the element of deceit and the lie will then be ineffective, so I cannot even depend on you telling me that you lie when you do.

-Jesse

[Soliton]

So being honest is cause for being disbelieved? I supply sources and information. Never believe anything on faith. Look at the data. Use scienc, but never, never believe anyone who claims they don’t lie. It is the surest sign that they are a liar.

[mrjesse]

Just as material lies harm our society, little lies make it work. Anoither name for little lies is politeness. You can deny it, but it is true, Imagine what would happen if everyone was honest with their boss.

If someone stinks, you can either lie to them and say "You smell fine" or you can tell them the truth and say "You smell but not fine" or you can be polite and say nothing - especially if they didn't ask!

Your idea is bankrupt which says the only alternative to an embarrassing truth is a lie.

But I can see how your mentality is shared by others in the scientific field and I have no doubt that many many scientists agree with you. I also suspect that many little lies (seen as politeness) among peers in the evolutionary scientific field are what make their society work, and have brought us what we have today.

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

So being honest is cause for being disbelieved?

Being honest about being dishonest, you mean?

I supply sources and information.

Yeah, after multiple goadings :-)

Never believe anything on faith.

So I guess you don't believe in the big bang, then that there was nothing and it gave birth to something?

Look at the data. Use scienc, but never, never believe anyone who claims they don’t lie. It is the surest sign that they are a liar.

You are operating on the false presumption that it is not possible for a person to have a highest goal of never lying. If you ask me, a person who says that it is their goal to never lie is much more trustworthy then one that says it is sometimes okay to lie. The first at least can be presumed to be honest until proven guilty, while the other has already proclaimed himself to be guilty!

It's also funny that on one hand you say it is sometimes okay to lie, while on the other hand you decry as a lier anyone who claims to claims to not lie, as if you think lying is bad when they do it!

-Jesse

[Soliton]

You never lie? You are a liar.

[Soliton]

So you aren’t interested in the truth at all? Trust or faith isn’t a path for truth, evidence is.

You aren’t what I thought you were. I’m sorry.

[Oztrich Boy]

That's a nice little phrase you've been posting around. But a link to the full text it references would be really nice. I couldn't find it.

Some people just don't have the search gene

It took me 0.27 seconds to find 7 references

In any case, I would be interested in reading the article you talked about.

Have at it

[mrjesse]

You never lie? You are a liar.

Just to be clear, as A child I did lie so yes, shamefully, I have lied. But I'm ashamed of it and now have as my M.O. to never lie. (That and to never kill anyone.)

You have my word that I won't lie to you or anyone else about anything.

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

So you aren’t interested in the truth at all? Trust or faith isn’t a path for truth, evidence is.

To the contrary, I most certainly am interested in the truth.

You aren’t what I thought you were. I’m sorry.

Cute demonstration - but I knew it was a demonstration when I saw the first "I like you" half! But I appreciate your eventual honesty on the matter anyway.

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

Some people just don't have the search gene

It took me 0.27 seconds to find 7 references

I suspect that you had read at least part of the article before performing that search :-) so it may have taken google 0.27 seconds to perform that query once submitted, but I highly suspect it took far more then 0.27 seconds to get a query which found what you wanted.

Furthermore, of those 6 google results (at the time of this writing) only a few of them actually had the full text I was looking for.

By the way, Solitan did (a while ago now) find and provide a full text version of the article, so my request was eventually satisfied.

Thanks for the link, anyway. By the way, providing exact links is a lot more useful in cases like this then providing a google search which returns more irrelevant results then desired. (And there was one exact PDF link which looks to be the full text.)

-Jesse

[Oztrich Boy]

Right in the first google search item, which you claim you saw.

1: Nature. 2005 Sep 1;437(7055):69-87

You now know where it is, even if it's not immediately to hand.

[mrjesse]

Right in the first google search item, which you claim you saw.

1: Nature. 2005 Sep 1;437(7055):69-87

You now know where it is, even if it's not immediately to hand.

Huh? I did I had originally been able to only find the same short paragraph "Here we present a draft ....." but I could not find the full text. I ask solitan about it and he said "It's a subscription article" or some such. I didn't know that "Nature" was the publisher on nih.gov - I thought it was the category or something. But in any event, I now have the article and I'm all happy now and I'm not sure what your point is.

-Jesse

[Non-Sequitur]

2. The Bible described the Hydrologic Cycle:

Doesn't the whole Noah's ark tale completely invalidate the hydrologic cycle?

[muawiyah]

The genomes of several different people have now been mapped, not just one.

We do have some differences. I, for one, have at least one copy of all the smart genes. Many of my opponents in debate are missing several of those.

I would imagine you have had a similar experience.

[mrjesse]

Said mrjesse: Does that answer your need for a frame of reference?

No. Which instant are you talking about? When the reflected light leaves Pluto or when the reflected light is seen by your observer on earth. Is your observer (observatory) compensating for all the motions of the earth and pluto or not?

Sorry for the delay - I didn't see your post show up in my pings!

You're the one that so readily claims that at any given instant a gravitational sundial and a regular sundial will read 2.1 degrees apart for an observer on the earth for the sun.

Now all we need is for you to calculate the same difference between gravitational and optical angles for Pluto at any given instant for and observer on earth!

What's so hard about that? It wasn't any trouble for you and the sun, now just do it for Jupiter as well!

We don't need to compensate for any of the motions because we're measuring an instantaneous difference using two measuring devices. Either the gravity is pulling in the direction of about 102 degrees ahead of Pluto's apparent optical position, or its not.

To barrow your original question/statement but I'll change it slightly for Pluto instead of the Sun:

In other words when you look at Pluto, you are seeing it about 6.8 hours behind where it actually is, but if you had a sensitive gravity sensor where would it point? At the Pluto you see or 6.8 hours ahead of the Pluto you see?

So what's your answer to this question? Would Pluto's apparent optical position be 102 degrees (6.8 hours) behind its actual+gravitational position?

• Seriously, just apply the same math to Pluto which you applied to the Sun!
  
  Thanks,
  
  -Jesse

[LeGrande]

Ahh : ) You are afraid to answer my question, that shows progress.

We don't need to compensate for any of the motions because we're measuring an instantaneous difference using two measuring devices. Either the gravity is pulling in the direction of about 102 degrees ahead of Pluto's apparent optical position, or its not.

If light was instantaneous then you would be correct. The problem for you is that light is not instantaneous. It takes time for light to travel from objects to your eyes and things can and do move in that interval of time. Think of slowly rolling a marble across a table. I am able to start the marble and then walk around to the other side to catch it. Just like the marble, light takes time to travel. If the marble was light, I would see myself : )

Like I said before, I think you have a reasonable grasp of classical physics (with some holes, light is not instantaneous).

So what's your answer to this question? Would Pluto's apparent optical position be 102 degrees (6.8 hours) behind its actual+gravitational position?

Using the rotating earth as your frame of reference and recognizing that the light that you see originated 6.8 hours earlier from Plutos actual position, yes, from your perspective, Plutos apparent position is off by 102 degrees (close enough for government work anyway : ) ).

Seriously, the thought experiment that I proposed will help you visualize it. With a telescope pointed at Pluto when it lights up for an instant. How many degrees is the telescope operator going to have to turn the telescope to see the light when it finally gets to him 6.8 hours later? The operator will have to turn his telescope 102 degrees and hopefully he is high enough off the surface or lets start him at a 30 degree angle so that the surface of the earth won't block the light.

If the observer was stationary in relation to Pluto then the apparent position and actual position would be identical. Our earth though, is not a stationary platform it is spinning, orbiting and traveling through space all at the same time. Because of that fact and the fact that light is not instantaneous none of the objects that we see in the sky are where they appear to be, from our frame of reference, the rotating earth.

Let me summarize. Our frame of reference, the earth, is constantly moving and spinning. The speed of light is 300 million meters a second. As a result, everything that we observe is time shifted and nothing that we see is where it actually is (although the Moon is pretty darn close : ) ). Of course all the other objects in the Universe are moving too.

So what is a good astronomer to do? Well for one thing they don't really care : ) All they care about is the apparent position. There is no practical value at all to determining the actual position (well some, like NASA, like to know the actual position, but the math is easy).

[mrjesse]

Ahh : ) You are afraid to answer my question, that shows progress.

Not at all afraid - but rather your question is irrelevant filibustering :-) You're trying to introduce more aspects then needed in order to confuse the issue. "Go pound a stake in and wait 6 hours," I can already hear you thinking. But we don't need to pound any stakes in or wait 6 hours. Remember, for the use of this thought-experiment, we've got a sensitive gravity meter which we've agreed tells us exactly the current position of pluto, and a nice sundial that tells us the exact optical position of the sun. We can operate both instruments at the same time right next to eachother. We don't need to wait and we don't need to talk about the light's path from sun to Pluto to us -- all we need to do is measure the angular difference between the gravitational pull and optical angle! Just like we did for the sun, where you claim that the gravity is 2.1 degrees off from the optical position at any given instant, for a viewer on earth, due to the fact that the earth rotates 2.1 degrees in the 8.3 minutes it takes the sun's light to reach the earth.

If light was instantaneous then you would be correct. The problem for you is that light is not instantaneous.

I well know that light is not instantaneous and travels at about 300MM/S. I also well know that by the time a given light wavefront reaches me from Pluto, the earth will have rotated 102 degrees and the apparent position of Pluto (along with the stars) will also have appeared to move by 102 degrees -- but the gravity will still be coming from about the same place as the light - because it's the earth that rotated, not Pluto that moved 102 degrees!

Using the rotating earth as your frame of reference and recognizing that the light that you see originated 6.8 hours earlier from Plutos actual position, yes, from your perspective, Plutos apparent position is off by 102 degrees (close enough for government work anyway : ) ).

Yeah yeah I well know that the earth rotates about 102 degrees in 6.8 hours! I also know that the light I would see from Pluto is 6.8 hours old. But that's not the issue here! You claimed that at a given instant, the gravitational(and actual) direction of the sun is 2.1 degrees ahead of its optical/apparent direction for an observer on the earth.

You still didn't answer my question! I asked you how much was the angular seperation between the actual(gravitational) position and optical position! (I also asked about a heavenly body that was 12-light hours away.)

So are you saying that if I were to see Pluto in my telescope (granted my telescope is not good enough I'm sure) that at the instant I saw it, Pluto would actually be 102 degrees off and not even in the night sky, most likely?

You seem afraid to answer this question. Why is that? You answered it readily for the sun. Now for Pluto!

Thanks,

-Jesse

[Ron Jeremy]

Revealed in the Bible: Job 36:27-28 The water cycle was not fully understood until about 30 B.C. by a Roman engineer named Marcus Vitruvius. Yet every aspect of the water cycle was fully revealed to mankind in 1600 B.C.! The Bible's description is in perfect harmony with modern science. Eccl 1:6-7; 11:3; Job 26:8; Amos 9:6. Vitruvius was 1600 years too late! In various passages, the Bible describes a hydrologic cycle, the process by which clouds are formed, rain is produced and ground water is replenished. Science made the same discovery in the 1600s, long after the Bible passages were written. Here are the related Bible verses: "He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight" (Job 26:8, NIV).

That's just retarded. Do you think that people living prior to 30 BC didn't know that water evaporated, and then didn't know that it fell out of the clouds?

[Ron Jeremy]

6. The Bible stated that stars differ from one another centuries before scientists reached the same conclusion: .

Also retarded. The eye tells you that they are different from each other.