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The Big Picture

'Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.' -- Vizzini from "The Princess Bride"

Friday, December 08, 2006

TheologyWeb and biblical fun

Apparantly, I have picked a huge fight with some Christian theologists because I simply said the bible states that the God-endorsed value of pi is exactly 3.0. And because I am merely the latest to point this out, your humble jeffperado is the newest and most dangerous big giant poopyhead. Why? Because as the claim goes, that I as an atheist, believe the bible to be completely true in all its aspects. That because I don't beleive in God, I therefore believe everything in the bible is literally true.

Now that is such an absurd claim as to not need any sort of rebuttal at all. However, it has drawn the attention of TheologyWeb Campus. So thought I would throw some more biblical zaniness their way.
[UPDATE: They opened up a new thread just for me because I decided to respond to their unprovoked attack/insult. ]

In Matthew 24:29
Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken

(obviously I will be wrong for taking this verse literally, and not metaphorically) but what is scientifically wrong with this verse?

Let me first open with yet another bible passage, Isaiah 13:10
For the stars of heaven and their constellations
Will not give their light;
The sun will be darkened in its going forth,
And the moon will not cause its light to shine.

In Jesus' retelling of this prophecy, he changes a few things, you have to give the Knower-of-all-things some credit for that. Even though he is still wrong. The first thing to notice is that the moon does not produce any of its own light, it only reflects light produced by the sun. Thus the prophet Isaiah was flat out wrong, and Jesus was wrong by suggesting that the Sun not longer shining was an independant event from the moon no longer shining.

As for the stars, well they are all suns in their own right; massive, strong gravitational pull.. They would not fall to the earth like meteors, rather, they would pull the much smaller earth to them, making the earth falling in to them.

[Granted, I could also say something about the "powers" of the heavens being shaken as well as that is patently absurd both methaphorically and literally as well, but I won't. That one will stand for all to see as either God's omnipotence will be shown to be otherwise, or the laws of nature of the universe will suddenly vibrate.]

Next time on "Fun with Theologians" Why the only way God can let mere humans into heaven is by committing suicide as a sacrifice unto Himself -- even though he can't really die.

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1 Comments:

At February 02, 2007 1:20 PM, Blogger Bryan White said...

The guy who commented in your other blog post on this topic nailed you to the wall.
First, you failed to account for significant digits (you can't just assume that the figure in the text is not intended as a round figure).
Second, you need to make some kind of assumption regarding the measurement of diameter. The text says it was 'brim to brim' ... meaning outside of the brim to the outside of the brim? Midpoint of the brim on each side? Or the inside of the brim on each side?

No surprise, you pick the one that supports your thesis (the outside of the brim, assuming that the difficulty of wrapping a string around the midpoint or inside of the brim would be physically difficult to pull off).

It's amazing the hilarious lengths some will go to in order to try to discredit the Bible.

Your attempt is a flop.

 

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