[HiTech RedNeck]

These are earthly-perspective statements, and would fit a scenario of an earth that started out with a continuously cloudy sky, but later the atmosphere cleared and the lights became visible. Funny that astronomers continue to talk of sunrise and sunset to this day; isn't that unscientific too?

[LogicWings]

Funny that astronomers continue to talk of sunrise and sunset to this day; isn't that unscientific too?

Funny you should mention that. Bucky Fuller pointed this out decades ago and tried his whole life to come up with better terms than sunrise and sunset. Never could. I ponder it once in a while, but would it really matter?

[jejones]

In a way it is, just as it's nonscientific to refer to "weighing" something when you're determining its mass, and atheists who speak Spanish, Russian, and English still say "adios," "spasibo," and "goodbye" despite the words' religious origins. OTOH, I'd say there's not a lot of point to coming up with a circumlocution for "sunset" and "sunrise."