ak.yonathan
Active Member
I don't think that are any contradictions as to the scope of God's power in the Bible or the Quran.
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science and religion
- Thread starter zippo9211989
- Start date
Agricola aka Pam34
B'net refugee
You are confusing what you BELIEVE about God with what is portrayed by the text. God may or may not be omnipotent - God may or may not EXIST - but the text as interpreted can be used to support the belief that God is omnipotent, and it can also be used to support the belief that omnipotence is not an attribute of God, or not a necessary attribute.
gnostic
The Lost One
Sure, it is quite possible for the earth to stop rotating. What is not possible for the earth to stop spinning...AND THEN RESTART ROTATING, as if it didn't cease rotating in the first place. That's the absurdity of what Joshua 10 is suggesting.
The earth can't both stop rotating and then begin rotating after a number of hours again. The earth is not like those (toy) tops, that you can easily stop-and-start spinning, because the earth is not a toy.
You have to be utterly naïve or stupid to believe in such apparent supernatural myth.
Demonslayer
Well-Known Member
The earth can't both stop rotating and then begin rotating after a number of hours again. The earth is not like those (toy) tops, that you can easily stop-and-start spinning, because the earth is not a toy.
God has big gigantic human-like fingers, he can easily spin the Earth like a top. Let's hope for our sake He never takes up basketball.
God has big gigantic human-like fingers, he can easily spin the Earth like a top. Let's hope for our sake He never takes up basketball.
ak.yonathan
Active Member
I said in theory, it might not be possible given our current level of technology.
Agricola aka Pam34
B'net refugee
See, there's this thing called MOMENTUM and this thing called CENTRIFUGAL FORCE and this thing called GRAVITY and....
The actual point is, if you just say 'Goddidit' and 'miracle' you are explaining NOTHING and you are also not going to convince anybody without your particular belief system that your story is anything better than a fairy tale told by a particularly credulous fool. The most 'concrete' explanation is that folks involved in the battle felt very strongly that time was not passing nearly fast enough, AS IF it had stopped. If you 'insist' that the explanation is 'the earth stood still' then you have to explain why the story says the SUN stood still, because if the sun had stood still, that does nothing - from earth's POV, the sun is always standing 'still' and we are spinning.
Actually - I'm not a Christian, but St Augustine had something totally useful to say about this topic:
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) wrote about non-Christian scholars and natural philosophers that:
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.
(Augustine, On the Literal Meaning of Scripture, 1.19)
So did the Rambam (Maimonides) -
For with the masses who are people of the Torah [Jewish Bible], that which is beloved to them and tasty to their folly is that they should place Torah and rational thinking as two opposite extremes, and will derive everything impossible as distinct from that which is reasonable, and they say that it is a miracle, and they flee from something being in accordance with natural law, whether something recounted from past events, with something that is in the present, or with something which is said to happen in the future. But we shall endeavor to integrate the Torah with rational thought, leading events according to the natural order wherever possible; only with something that is clarified to be a miracle and cannot be otherwise explained at all will we say that it is a miracle.
(Maimonides, Letter Concerning the Resurrection of the Dead, quoted in Slifkin, p. 109-110)
The actual point is, if you just say 'Goddidit' and 'miracle' you are explaining NOTHING and you are also not going to convince anybody without your particular belief system that your story is anything better than a fairy tale told by a particularly credulous fool. The most 'concrete' explanation is that folks involved in the battle felt very strongly that time was not passing nearly fast enough, AS IF it had stopped. If you 'insist' that the explanation is 'the earth stood still' then you have to explain why the story says the SUN stood still, because if the sun had stood still, that does nothing - from earth's POV, the sun is always standing 'still' and we are spinning.
Actually - I'm not a Christian, but St Augustine had something totally useful to say about this topic:
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) wrote about non-Christian scholars and natural philosophers that:
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.
(Augustine, On the Literal Meaning of Scripture, 1.19)
So did the Rambam (Maimonides) -
For with the masses who are people of the Torah [Jewish Bible], that which is beloved to them and tasty to their folly is that they should place Torah and rational thinking as two opposite extremes, and will derive everything impossible as distinct from that which is reasonable, and they say that it is a miracle, and they flee from something being in accordance with natural law, whether something recounted from past events, with something that is in the present, or with something which is said to happen in the future. But we shall endeavor to integrate the Torah with rational thought, leading events according to the natural order wherever possible; only with something that is clarified to be a miracle and cannot be otherwise explained at all will we say that it is a miracle.
(Maimonides, Letter Concerning the Resurrection of the Dead, quoted in Slifkin, p. 109-110)
ak.yonathan
Active Member
Are you attempting to appeal to authority?
Agricola aka Pam34
B'net refugee
I'm not. But YOU clearly have been, so I've courteously supplied you with two authorities to inform your opinion. I wasn't sure whether one was enough, or whether or not you had a bias for or against the Catholics, so I pulled up two. I'm sure there are more, if necessary.
I'm a fan of Georgius Agricola, who said (though in a different context) that in some cases, authorities were not the proper source of information, because 'a reasonable man can go out and see for himself that this is not true' (or is true - his point was, that 'authorities' weren't the be all and end all of every question. Sometimes authorities may be correct, but sometimes they can be wrong. And a 'reasonable man' (GA was quite fond of the 'reasonable man') is capable of evaluating claims, including claims to authority.
There's also Occam (as in 'Occam's Razor'), saying 'don't complicate solutions' (basically), and the principle that we don't accept 'supernatural' explanations until very possible reasonable (mundane) possibility has been ruled out.
Re Joshua and 'the sun stood still', the most economic (and reasonable) explanation is that, to the ones involved that day, it sure SEEMED like time wasn't passing! Just like the last time I was in the waiting room at the dentist.
I'm a fan of Georgius Agricola, who said (though in a different context) that in some cases, authorities were not the proper source of information, because 'a reasonable man can go out and see for himself that this is not true' (or is true - his point was, that 'authorities' weren't the be all and end all of every question. Sometimes authorities may be correct, but sometimes they can be wrong. And a 'reasonable man' (GA was quite fond of the 'reasonable man') is capable of evaluating claims, including claims to authority.
There's also Occam (as in 'Occam's Razor'), saying 'don't complicate solutions' (basically), and the principle that we don't accept 'supernatural' explanations until very possible reasonable (mundane) possibility has been ruled out.
Re Joshua and 'the sun stood still', the most economic (and reasonable) explanation is that, to the ones involved that day, it sure SEEMED like time wasn't passing! Just like the last time I was in the waiting room at the dentist.
gnostic
The Lost One
The Earth is spinning or rotating at the velocity of 1,674.4 km/h (or 465.1 m/s).
You can't suddenly stop the Earth rotating, and then restart it again at this same velocity.
If you study physics at all, You would know that it is not scientifically possible. It is delusional wishful thinking that people still believe that such thing can happened.
I am saying that the Earth can stop rotating, but it will have to gradually slow down before it came to a full stop. A sudden or an instant stop is not possible at all.
And the Earth cannot instantly resume rotating at 1,674.4 km/h. It would have to gradually accelerate to reach this speed, and that may the Earth thousands of years to reach this rotational speed.
The reason being is "momentum" and "inertia".
Sure we can spin a coin on a table, and then stop the coin instantly with our hand, because a coin is a small object that doesn't have much mass.
But the earth is a really large object that you can't stop or start its rotations instantly, because of momentum and inertia. It will require a super massive force to stop it instantly, and even more massive force to move from zero km/h to 1,674.4 km/h, but only if you want to throw physics out the window. It is wishful fantasy, if you think that scientifically possible.
The more massive object, the more forces it will require to move an object. And the more massive object is, the more forces are require to slow it down.
A driver can stop his large massive truck with breaks, but because of it mass, it has to decelerate first to slow down the truck before it become stationary. The truck would have travelled some metres between applying break and actual stop, because of momentum.
And it would require a lot of mechanical forces for the truck to start moving again, and it would continue to accelerate before reaching the speed it was originally, before applying the break.
It would be similar with the Earth's rotational velocity. It cannot possibly go from 1,674.4 km/h to zero km/h, instantly; nor can it go from zero km/h to 1,674.4 km/h, instantly. The earth is simply too massive for that to happen.
The whole idea that the sun will stop for a whole day, before resuming its course, is nothing more than make-believe fantasy. Joshua 10 is such make-believe, and people who believe that such thing can happened, are uneducated in science.
Miracles, as portrayed in the bible, is nothing more than - at best imaginative (would make a good story, if you can suspend reality while reading books) - at worse, superstition (if you literally believe that such thing being possible).
And superstition is nothing more than a belief triggered by one's ignorance and fear. But how is superstition any different from paranoid delusions?
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Agricola aka Pam34
B'net refugee
Incidentally - back in the dark ages even - earlier than that, actually- Jewish scholars (religious authorities, really) determined that there were only a very limited number of actual miracles (total suspension of natural law) in the Tanakh. Plus they were quite conservative, and said the miracles weren't REALLY totally 'miraculous' (suspensions of natural law) because, basically, God doesn't DO that! - instead, they were special one-off things created at the same time (or before) the world was created, so they could each occur at their proper time when they would be needed (since God was so omniscient and outside realtime/realspace, God would already know they would be needed). One was the parting of the sea, and another was Balaam's *** (an animal which spoke) and I can't remember the others right off the top of my head.
but here's an encyclopedia entry about them -
h**p://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10869-miracle
Basically - miracles are a one off thing, visible only in the 'eye' of the believer, and don't prove anything.
(Best story about a miracle - Exodus: the Israelites saw the dead Egyptians on the sea shore (their eyes observed drowned Egyptians) and the Israelites saw the hand of God...(they 'perceived' a miracle - in their minds)).
but here's an encyclopedia entry about them -
h**p://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10869-miracle
Basically - miracles are a one off thing, visible only in the 'eye' of the believer, and don't prove anything.
(Best story about a miracle - Exodus: the Israelites saw the dead Egyptians on the sea shore (their eyes observed drowned Egyptians) and the Israelites saw the hand of God...(they 'perceived' a miracle - in their minds)).
gnostic
The Lost One
In battle, a lot of things are going on at the same time: people fighting and people dying.
And with so many going on, you can lose track of time. What seemed to be hours of fighting to one person's mind, perhaps only 20 or so minutes have actually passed.
Now unless the fighting is a siege, a battle rarely last more than 2 hours in ancient times. There are exception of course, but often battles are decided in 1 hour or 2.
Perhaps, what Joshua 10 is possibly just narrating that. They thought that time was moving faster than it really did.
I highly doubt that God would stop the Sun, or more precisely - to stop the Earth from rotating, because there are whole lot of problem associated with it, like its impossibility.
And with so many going on, you can lose track of time. What seemed to be hours of fighting to one person's mind, perhaps only 20 or so minutes have actually passed.
Now unless the fighting is a siege, a battle rarely last more than 2 hours in ancient times. There are exception of course, but often battles are decided in 1 hour or 2.
Perhaps, what Joshua 10 is possibly just narrating that. They thought that time was moving faster than it really did.
I highly doubt that God would stop the Sun, or more precisely - to stop the Earth from rotating, because there are whole lot of problem associated with it, like its impossibility.
gnostic
The Lost One
Raining manna down to feed the hungry Israelites.
I've never understood what manna is.
Agricola aka Pam34
B'net refugee
Neither did the Israelites! The word 'manna' in Hebrew means 'what is it'.
gnostic
The Lost One
Agricola aka Pam34
B'net refugee
I've heard several possibilities about what it actually was - but in any case, apparently Moses told them it was something to be eaten.
The question is why He did not simply suspended their need to eat. I suspect He did it with Jonah during those three days in the big fish. Well, I hope, at least. For him and the poor fish. Obviously.
Ciao
- viole