i'm not arguing that it says the earth is round. i'm saying that it doesn't say it's flat. i don't know where it describes four corners, but either way that was (and still is) a common way to describe a vast travel or something similar.

all too often we see presumptuous anti-creationists making fairytale claims on behalf of the bible in order to say it's wrong.

and they claim to be the more logical side.

julz

This is just one of many mentionings of the four corners of the earth. Four corners.

Has a sphere four corners? Can you tell me which geometric shape has four corners?

do you really take that to mean the earth has four corners? or that he'll "gather together the dispersed of Judah from [all over] the earth"?

i didn't ask where four corners of the earth are mentioned. where does the bible authoritatively teach that the earth has four corners?

julz

The bible teaches nothing. The bible gets interpreted by religious people. And they teach the interpreted content then. And dependand of their mood the content points in different directions.

But some stuff is written this clear that there is nearly no room for interpretation. You still have not answered my question. What geometric shape has four corners?

a tetrahedron or a quadrilateral.

my pillow has four corners as well.

julz

Why do you think they've chosen 'corners' here when they could have simply used the Hebrew word for 'all over'. I'm aware that Kanaph ís often translated as 'extremities', but it changes nothing as extremities is just another word for saying 'ends'.

To me and many scholars it's quite obvious they wrote this down as if they thought the earth had boundaries, where in reality it's a sphere that has no boundaries.

Perhaps the sea had no relevance in this case, perhaps they meant the boundaries of land (not earth) you can live on, but fact is the text isn't specific enough about what's really meant here.

Also, other parts of the Bible do not clarify that earth is believed to be a sphere either, quite the contrary;



A circle? A curtain? A tent? At best this a the description of a flat circular surface with half a sphere (of the sky above) on top.



'The Creator of the extremities of the earth'... sounds like the entire earth was meant after all.



and



If a text doesn't clarify what is meant with whatever shape it would mention, it still doesn't really mean anything. For example your pillow example shows that even though it may have four corners, how the three dimensional space was thought to be the earth is still open for debate so to speak as it isn't clarified. The upper part of the pillow may be a representation of the sky instead of earth itself.

It has little to do with presumptions and a lot to do with texts not being specific enough to really determine the world view. In my opinion it is very unlikely that they thought the earth was spherical.



Well, if I'm not mistaken the position of the sun relative to the earth is not constant though, sometimes it's closer to the sun, sometimes it's further away.

Cheers

I did not say it was Godmade. Neither did I say it was not a product of evolution. And yes, a chihuahua/great dane mix is possible. The reason you never hear about it is that because of the difference in size, they would have trouble mating. Google it.
As I said, that's microevolution taking place not macroevolution. The chihuahua is still a dog.



Instead of simply saying there's proof for evolution, why don't you post it. And yes, the Catholic church was ignorant in those times and dislikes change very much. But then it was called a 'church' but it's actions/beliefs could hardly be called Christian. It was a political organization using the name of Christ.



How then do you get a solar system with an EXACTLY correct distance from the sun/other planets, an EXACT ratio of gases forming the atmosphere with little to no toxic gases, an EXACT ratio of land and water (the simple fact that it HAS water in its liquid state is one thing that sets Earth apart from other planets), and that had the EXACT chemicals in the EXACT same place at the EXACT same time in the EXACT quantities with EXACTLY zero 'wrong' chemicals that would ruin the reaction. It simply is not possible. Think about it: I said in my previous post that the average protein has several thousands of amino acids, and one single cell needs more than one of each protein to funciton properly. How could thousands of amino acids join together in the correct order, and then do so agin a few seconds later? How could this happen with all the diverse numbers of proteins needed for life?



No it's not specific enough to assume it clearly says the Earth is round. It's not specific enought to assume it clearly says the Earth is flat either. Either way, 'from the four corners of the Earth' means from all parts of the Earth. It's a simple metaphore written so people from the present and from history could understand it.



Couldn't agree with you more.



Now about the atmosphere as mentioned above. Earth's atmosphere is comprised of: 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and 1% other gases (carbon dioxide, oxone etc etc. As it turns out, that's a perfect combination to sustain life. Breathing excess amounts of oxygen for long times can result in lung injuries and chest pains, and since oxygen is flammable, for every 1% increase of oxygen levels in the atmosphere, there's a 70% added chance of forest fires happening. This is not much of a problem however, simce the oxygen levels have been diluted wiht nitrogen. This is good, because most gases are toxic to humans and animals however nitrogen is extremely unreactive, so however much we inhale with each breath, it doesn't react with our bodies in any way.



In that case, Darwin's finches teach nothing, they were just interpreted by Darwin according to his mood. And then he taught others according to his mood at the time.



Yes they did think the earth was flat. But again that's not the point of the text.



Do you have ANY idea what a metaphore is?

Of course, but my point is it makes no sense as a metaphor when they would indeed have known the earth is spherical and not a flat surface with a spherical sky on top.

The text in my opinion, even as a metaphor, seems to describe nothing but a flat earth,

Cheers

In modern day speech we also refer to the ends of the earth. They are called "poles."

And the four corners couldnt possibly be referring to a cubic shape, for a cube has 8 corners.

No, the 'four corners' could mean the same as 'four corners' used elsewhere in the Bible:

Ex 25:12 description of the ark

These 4 corners are more directional then the actual corners of the ark because the ark had 8 corners, these corners refer to the sides in between the 8 corners. Which if you have a projection on a rectangle you actually have four corners.



This image of course has four corners which is what the Bible was talking about: in short, the four directions.

And the language is not even antiquitated. We use North, south, east and west in our daily communications.

The circle that the Bible was referring to was probably the equator.

But there was indeeed evidence that the ancient civilizations knew about the planets shape, and even the solar system:



In this sumerian tablet you can see in the top left corner a sun sphere surrounded by 11 planets, the same number we have:

Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune

and 3 dwarf planets::
Pluto
Ceres
2003 UB313


The 12th one you see on the tablet is the legendary nibiru. Note that the guy sitting on the throne in the tablet, if you straighten him out he is much taller than the other guys, this corresponds with the Bible teachings of: