Ham and Nye in Historic Creation Debate

Very fascinating information. But you still haven’t answered my question about the relevance of this.

However, what Russia Today doesn’t tell you is that the nation which first launched a satellite did less well in similar scientific tests than the nation which first put a man on the moon ! Also, it did very badly at reading, especially considering that its language is spelt phonetically using a tailor-made alphabet.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/03/pisa-results-country-best-reading-maths-science

My two articles on the persecution of Christians have moved to here.

Copernicus’s theory does not contradict the Bible, and this is a point I would be willing to argue if it is truly important to you.

To assume that because most Americans are nominally Christians and because many Americans reject the Copernican theory, that said rejection is therefore being done for religious reasons analogous to the rejection of evolution, is an illogical way to reason. You would need evidence for why they are rejecting it. I suspect it is just simple ignorance.

I agree, it is certainly simple ignorance for most of them, as even you and Stephen do not find it anti-Christian to disagree with Copernicus in the 21st century.

I implied this all along. What you are really asking me to do is merely repeat what I wrote originally, on 8th February :

“ I think the error here is in placing Evolution up against Religion in the first place. This is a very Victorian thing to do…………But the ideas of Galileo in particular were much criticised by the Church at the time. Joshuah stopped the sun, therefore the sun was moving, not the earth. Nowadays, everybody seems to accept Copernicus”.

I wrote that before I (or probably you) knew that so many American don’t see the universe in quite such a sophisticated way as Galileo and Copernicus, even after their school science lessons. So for them at least, the Bible would not conflict with what they feel is the actual way things work.

The passage in the Bible is Joshua 10, verses 12-14 :
“Then spake Joshua to the Lord … “Sun, stand thou still….and thou, Moon… and the sun stood still, and the moon stayed … So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it.” (AV).

The pope would have been reading this in the Vulgate,
“tunc locutus est Iosue Domino ….sol …..ne movearis et luna … …..steteruntque sol et luna …….stetit itaque sol in medio caeli et non festinavit occumbere spatio unius diei. non fuit ante et postea tam longa dies”
So that’s perfectly clear. (The Latin, of course, says “such a long day”).

Of course, you could argue that what Joshua did was merely to stop the earth rotating, but then he would have commanded the earth, not the sun.

You may think this whole business is trivial nonsense, but the pope and others did not take that view at the time. At least, Copernicus in his lifetime was lucky, and it was only in the time of Galileo some 70 years later that the controversy really flared up.
In fact, Luther himself had backed Joshua against Copernicus, but with less publicity than the Holy See.

Thank you for the key to finding your earlier article (but shorn of all the interesting comments for and against, which is disappointing). I don’t see how it can be both there and not there, or how one would normally access it.

The thing about Joshua commanding the sun to stand still is easily cleared up by considering the nature of relative motion. Relative to the ship, the coast appears to be moving; relative to the weatherman, the sun will rise and set at such and such a time. In between it will reach its zenith. Everyone speaks like that and it reflects Einstein’s point that motion is relative. The Biblical writers are not out on a limb at all. So it all depends on your vantage point.

As for Galileo, I know that the Catholic church’s reaction to him is taken as the paramount example of the alleged antithesis between science and religion, but this is mostly a myth. The true history of what happened with Galileo is explained in a book written by my friend Mitch Stokes.

Where we’re on the subject of Galileo, it is worth noting that he gave a very helpful explanation for the event in Joshua in his Letter to Benedetto Castelli. The full letter is available here, but I will quote the relevant portion:

Let us then assume and concede to the opponent that the words of the sacred text should be taken precisely in their literal meaning, namely that in answer to Joshua’s prayers God made the sun stop and lengthened the day, so that as a result he achieved victory; but I request that the same rule should apply to both, so that the opponent should not pretend to tie me and to leave himself free to change or modify the meanings of the words. Given this, I say that this passage shows clearly the falsity and impossibility of the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic world system, and on the other hand agrees very well with the Copernican one.

I first ask the opponent whether he knows with how many motions the sun moves. If he knows, he must answer that is moves with two motions, namely with the annual motion from west to east and with the diurnal motion in the opposite direction from east to west.

Then, secondly, I ask him whether these two motions, so different and almost contrary to each other, belong to the sun and are its own to an equal extent. The answer must be No, but that only one is specifically its own, namely the annual motion, whereas the other is not but belongs to the highest heaven, I mean the Prime Mobile; the latter carries along with it the sun as well as the other planets and the stellar sphere, forcing them to make a revolution around the earth in twenty-four hours, with a motion, as I said, almost contrary to their own natural motion.

Coming to the third question, I ask him with which of these two motions the sun produces night and day, that is, whether with its own motion or else with that of the Prime Mobile. The answer must be that night and day are effects of the motion of the Prime Mobile and that what depends on the sun’s own motion is not night or day but the various seasons and the year itself.

Now, if the day derives not from the sun’s motion but from that of the Prime Mobile, who does not see that to lengthen the day one must stop the Prime Mobile and not the sun? Indeed, is there anyone who understands these first elements of astronomy and does not know that, if God had stopped the sun’s motion, He would have cut and shortened the day instead fo lengthening it? For, the sun’s motion being contrary to the diurnal turning, the more the sun moves toward the east the more its progression toward the west is slowed down, whereas by its motion being diminished or annihilated the sun would set that much sooner; this phenomenon is observed in the moon, whose diurnal revolutions are slower than those of the sun inasmuch as is own motion is faster than that of the sun. It follows that it is absolutely impossible to stop the sun and lengthen the day in the system of Ptolemy and Aristotle, and therefore either the motions must not be arranged as Ptolemy says or we must modify the meaning of the words of the Scripture; we would have to claim that, when it says that God stopped the sun, it meant to say that He stopped the Prime Mobile, and that is said the contrary of what it would have said if speaking to educated men in order to adapt itself to the capacity of those who are barely able to understand the rising and setting of the sun.

Add to this that it is not believable that God would stop only the sun, letting the other spheres proceed; for He would have unnecessarily altered and upset all the order, appearances, and arrangements of the other stars in relation to the sun, and would have greatly disturbed the whole system of nature. On the other hand, it is believable that He would stop the whole system of celestial spheres, which could then together return to their operations without any confusion or change after the period of intervening rest.

However, we have already agreed not to change the meaning of the words in the text; therefore it is necessary to resort to another arrangement of the parts of the world, and to see whether the literal meaning of the words flows directly and without obstacle from its point of view. This is in fact what we see happening.

For I have discovered and conclusively demonstrated that the solar globe turns on itself, completing an entire rotation in about one lunar month, in exactly the same direction as all the other heavenly revolutions; moreover, it is very probable and reasonable that, as the chief instrument and minister of nature and almost the heart of the world, the sun gives not only light (as it obviously does) but also motion to all the planets that revolve around it; hence, if in conformity with Copernicus’s position the diurnal motion is attributed to the earth, anyone can see that is sufficed stopping the sun to stop the whole system, and thus to lengthen the period of the diurnal illumination without altering in any way the rest of the mutual relationships of the planets; and that is exactly how the words of the sacred text sound. Here then is the manner in which by stopping the sun one can lengthen the day on the earth, without introducing any confusion among the parts of the world and without altering the words of the Scripture.