Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,919,895 times
Reputation: 4561
Advertisements
When you see this view from Mars, you can really see how inconsequential not only the earth is within the solar system, nevermind the universe, but how totally inconsequential mankind is in the greater scheme of things.
That greater scheme of things is natural as in nature, no woo needed.
What do you say to a child who wonders if the sun is so massive and we are so small, how are we able to visualize the whole face of the sun and it's diameter?
I don't know about the OP's premise ... we are the only location in the universe where life and intelligence exists to the point we can send something millions of miles away and have it look back and say - "there we are".
When you see this view from Mars, you can really see how inconsequential not only the earth is within the solar system, nevermind the universe, but how totally inconsequential mankind is in the greater scheme of things.
I'm certainly not arguing that point. We are not the center of the universe, and the Bible certainly doesn't present that idea.
Quote:
That greater scheme of things is natural as in nature, no woo needed.
No. It really isn't. It never suggests the earth is the center of the universe.
No one is seriously claiming it does ... anymore. Promoting heliocentrism, which is still quite a bit short of our current understanding of the cosmos, over geocentrism, could at one time in history get you excommunicated, jailed, or worse. Not because the Bible really teaches it, but because it violated the notion that the earth was a sort of stage where a redemptive drama was playing out before that heavenly "great cloud of witnesses" ... rather than an insignificant and far from unique planet orbiting an unremarkable star in a boring arm of a fairly boring galaxy amongst billions of similar galaxies. It was the implications of the vastness of the universe and the mundaneness of our place in it that made orthodox Christian's heads explode centuries ago. Now all that is priced in and the church has found other ways to spin it, is all.
The Bible does not systematically teach anything about the cosmos, it simply assumes the cosmology of its day ... pillars of the heavens, the firmament, the underworld, etc. Now we have those concepts mapped to more modern understandings. I used to think of "the heavens" and "the firmament" as just "the expanse of the sky as we now understand it". But that is just superimposing modern understanding on an ancient concept that was far more limited.
Odd that the Bible leads from behind like this, when one would reasonably expect a divinely inspired book from the Creator's own mind to be way ahead of its time.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
