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The Universe as described in Genesis 1: 6-10
The description of the Universe in the Bible is so naïve and radically different to the real universe, it beggars belief that there are grown adults who think the Bible is the inerrant word of a creator god.
There is nothing about the authors' description of it which can be described as allegorical or metaphorical, without the most contorted of mental gymnastics. It is not metaphorical or allegorical; it is quite simply wrong; spectacularly and conspicuously, with no shadow of a doubt, wrong!
What we now know are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with maybe half a trillion stars, many with planetary systems, the authors of the Bible thought were little lights stuck to the underside of a dome over a flat Earth, that can be shaken loose and will fall down to Earth where they can be trampled on by a goat! (Daniel 8:10).
They described this flat Earth with a dome over it as standing on pillars and the fixed and immobile center of the Universe, round which a small sun orbits. They described the sky above the dome as being made of water. Their universe ran on magic.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s new view of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) in near-infrared light is giving astronomers hints at the dynamical processes occurring within the supernova remnant. Tiny clumps represented in bright pink and orange make up the supernova’s inner shell, and are comprised of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon from the star itself. A large, striated blob at the bottom right corner of the image, nicknamed Baby Cas A, is one of the few light echoes visible NIRCam’s field of view. In this image, red, green, and blue were assigned to Webb’s NIRCam data at 4.4, 3.56, and 1.62 microns (F444W, F356W, and F162M, respectively).
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (University of Gent)
We now know Earth is just one planet orbiting a huge sun which is itself an ordinary star in the spiral arm of one of those hundreds of billions of galaxies. Between those galaxies is expanding space, full of quantum energy fields, not water and there is nothing fixed and immobile about it or anything in it. It is a dynamic, changing and expanding universe in which suns collapse under their own gravity when they run out of hydrogen, and some explode in violent supernovae whilst the large ones collapse further to become black holes.
The Bible, better than almost anything else, illustrates why ignorant intuition is such a spectacular failure as a source of truth and understanding compared to the careful observation, measurement, testing and logical deduction of the scientific method. Science is revealing facts which Bronze Age farmers could never have guessed at as they gazed upwards at a star-filled sky, trying the make sense of it all.
Here for example is the latest photos of a tiny fraction of the universe containing the remnants of a star that exploded about 1,340 years before Bible literalists believe the Universe was created. Photographed by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is about 60 trillion miles across and known to science as Casiopeia A (Cas A). It is about 11,000 lightyears away, which means the light which reached Earth about 340 years ago, left the exploding star 11,340 years earlier. It can be obscured entirely by the nail on an outstretched thumb.
Captured in this image is a phenomenon known as a light-echo. This is produced when the expanding light from a supernova heats up a dust cloud which then transmits light as it cools, creating an 'echo' of the original supernova. This particular light-echo is 170 lightyears behind Casiopeia A and scientists are calling it Baby Cas A because it looks like an offspring of Cas A. There are other light-echoes scattered about the image captured by the JWST.
The Bible, better than almost anything else, illustrates why ignorant intuition is such a spectacular failure as a source of truth and understanding compared to the careful observation, measurement, testing and logical deduction of the scientific method. Science is revealing facts which Bronze Age farmers could never have guessed at as they gazed upwards at a star-filled sky, trying the make sense of it all.
Here for example is the latest photos of a tiny fraction of the universe containing the remnants of a star that exploded about 1,340 years before Bible literalists believe the Universe was created. Photographed by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is about 60 trillion miles across and known to science as Casiopeia A (Cas A). It is about 11,000 lightyears away, which means the light which reached Earth about 340 years ago, left the exploding star 11,340 years earlier. It can be obscured entirely by the nail on an outstretched thumb.
Captured in this image is a phenomenon known as a light-echo. This is produced when the expanding light from a supernova heats up a dust cloud which then transmits light as it cools, creating an 'echo' of the original supernova. This particular light-echo is 170 lightyears behind Casiopeia A and scientists are calling it Baby Cas A because it looks like an offspring of Cas A. There are other light-echoes scattered about the image captured by the JWST.
This image provides a side-by-side comparison of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) as captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Objects in space reveal different aspects of their composition and behavior at different wavelengths. The outskirts of Cas A’s main inner shell, which appeared as a deep orange and red in the MIRI image, look like smoke from a campfire in the NIRCam image. The dust in the circumstellar material being slammed into by the shockwave is too cool to be detected directly at near-infrared wavelengths, but lights up in the mid-infrared. Also not seen in the near-infrared view is the loop of green light in the central cavity of Cas A that glows in mid-infrared, nicknamed the Green Monster by the research team.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (University of Gent)
This image highlights several interesting features of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A as seen with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera): NIRCam’s exquisite resolution is able to detect tiny knots of gas, comprised of sulfur, oxygen, argon, and neon from the star itself; Circular holes visible in the MIRI image within the Green Monster are faintly outlined in white and purple emission in the NIRCam image; An example of a light echo – when light from the star’s long-ago explosion has reached, and is warming, distant dust, which is glowing as it cools down; A particularly intricate and large light echo, nicknamed Baby Cas A by researchers.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (University of Gent).
The Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
Much of the Bible is vague, ambiguous, unclear, inconclusive, and full of contradictions. Christians are among the most divided and most confused group of people. The Bible has caused centuries of disagreement, division, confusion, aggravation. People can't agree how to interpret the Bible, can't agree on the authorship, can't agree on the dates and can't even agree on which translation is the correct one. It's estimated that there are more than a hundred contradictions throughout the Bible! If this is the word of God and the only true religion then why didn't He make Himself clear? Why the numerous contradictions? Why allow us to endlessly speculate and agonize? Why allow endless speculation, suspense, anxiety, apprehension, contradiction, confusion and fear? This is especially disturbing if our immortal souls are at stake. What a sloppy, careless, stupid, inept, incompetent way to communicate with its creation. There's not much of anything right this God has done.
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough this creator God screwed up with creating Nature and its bad enough He screwed up creating human beings, and it's bad enough He screwed up with the angels(Satan and demons resulted), on top of it He screwed up trying to communicate with His human creation. Sheer utter incompetence and gross stupidity describes this deity, as well as cruelty, carelessness, insanity. Can a real God be this stupid, incompetent, confusing, contradictory, insane, and cruel? These are all un Godlike and un Godly traits. A being who creates and allows cancer, Ebola, malaria, tooth decay, typhoons, cyclones, biological deformities and freaks, the carnage and pollution on roads and highways, serial murders, the Holocaust, the Vietnam War and the list of evils and horrors goes on and on, is unworthy to be called God. Allowing eons of evil, suffering, death and extinctions from Natural evil and from Human evil is immoral, cruel, insane, stupid. Author Gregory Boyd claims all Natural evil and all Human evil and Moral evil is the fault of Satan and demons. He has no evidence and no proof for this and He forgets that God is stronger and smarter than Satan and demons and God is supposed to love His creation and protect it. Why would God be allowing these evil entities to corrupt, ruin, and torment His creation? Is the free will of Satan and demons more important than the welfare, well being, safety, and happiness of His creation? Why tolerate and allow Satan to ruin the entire creation? It's demented.