Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

To: exDemMom
"You can look back at that post (#42) and see that I did not comment that the Bible states that people are grasshoppers."

But under you position that everything must be taken in its most literal possible sense this is the obvious conclusion. Further, it we go to the Hebrew for the word tranaslated as "circle" ("Hug") it can mean anything circular in nature. As to the earth being flat you still have failed to show anything in scripture that states the world is flat. You take a few metahpors in isolation which don't make that point in the slightest. I could go to any scientific work, including Newton's Principia Mathematic, and do the same thing to make outrageous, and similarly false, conclusions. "Four corners" is a metaphor used thoughout history to descripbe the complete expanse of something. We can also find the phrase "from one end of the earth to the other" and it never is used to mean the planet is a straight line. And it is much easier for me to believe that God created animals the earth than it is to believe that inert elements just magically combined themselves into something as complex as life. Or that complex information just magically creates itself through a vague undefined process called "mutation", something we never see in real world experience.

50 posted on 11/27/2012 7:02:46 AM PST by circlecity
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies ]


To: circlecity
"You can look back at that post (#42) and see that I did not comment that the Bible states that people are grasshoppers."

But under you position that everything must be taken in its most literal possible sense this is the obvious conclusion. Further, it we go to the Hebrew for the word tranaslated as "circle" ("Hug") it can mean anything circular in nature. As to the earth being flat you still have failed to show anything in scripture that states the world is flat. You take a few metahpors in isolation which don't make that point in the slightest. I could go to any scientific work, including Newton's Principia Mathematic, and do the same thing to make outrageous, and similarly false, conclusions. "Four corners" is a metaphor used thoughout history to descripbe the complete expanse of something. We can also find the phrase "from one end of the earth to the other" and it never is used to mean the planet is a straight line. And it is much easier for me to believe that God created animals the earth than it is to believe that inert elements just magically combined themselves into something as complex as life. Or that complex information just magically creates itself through a vague undefined process called "mutation", something we never see in real world experience.

Context makes it very clear which phrases are meant to be taken literally, and which are meant to be taken metaphorically.

No matter how you try to spin it, a circle is a flat object. We have many terms in our language that reflect the belief that the earth is flat, even though we know through scientific study that the earth is spherical. For example, the sun rises and the sun sets--yet we know that in reality, the rotation of the earth causes the illusion that the sun moves across the sky. Until such time as scientists demonstrated that the earth is a spherical planet located within a heliocentric system, those phrases referring to the flat earth with a small sun racing across the sky were not metaphorical at all. They were thought to be accurate descriptions of reality. Our language is full of "metaphors" that were once thought literal.

If God speaking a word and causing animals formed of carbon to pop fully formed out of silicate dirt isn't magic, then I don't know what is. From a scientific point of view, the slow and steady evolution of life, which is based in very well understood chemical and physical principles, is a heck of a lot more believable than fully formed animals springing from lifeless dirt. The process of mutation is scarcely "vague" and "undefined", as you put it: it is a very specific chemical alteration of DNA that changes the DNA sequence. And it is common, unavoidable, and occurs frequently throughout life.

It's rather funny that not only has Christianity adapted to the reality that the earth isn't flat, but that many people who claim to literally believe the Bible have to try to deny that the Biblical describes the earth as being flat... even while they cling tenaciously to other beliefs that are just as demonstrably at odds with reality.

51 posted on 11/27/2012 5:53:06 PM PST by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 50 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson