Which Argument Should One Use?

Alex Coleman

7.XI.2023

[shared]

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church
https://www.facebook.com/stnicholasil

7.XI.2015

Trust The Scriptures. Look how often they are proven right.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I am sorry, but the part of the meme that says "science then" is very imprecise. As to time.

If the time when St. Paul wrote Corinthians is included, it is wrong to include "the earth is a disc" in "science back then" ...

For Isaiah 40:22 it could be argued that the wording is compatible with both flat and spherical earth.

Alex Coleman

Hans-Georg Lundahl. How much authority did Eratosthenes actually have among the learned pagans? Perhaps the anti-Christian Enlightenment thinkers have overemphasized his authority and influence among the educated heathens of Antiquity?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

No.

As a historian of scholasticism, I am pretty sure.

Details, but they detract from the whole of the meme.

Alex Coleman

Hans-Georg Lundahl. The whole of the meme is wrong in demonstrating the divine wisdom contained within the Holy Scriptures?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

The whole meme would be better without the erroneous details.

"Sick people must bleed" actually is a medical trend from late Middle Ages to when George Washington was bled too much.

There is some truth to it when it comes to high blood pressure -- if it's done correctly with leeches. When it's done with knives as in late 18th C, the dosage can be overdone.

In this context, it looks like if the medical trend was raging in the time of the Bible writers. Not the case.

Alex Coleman

Hans-Georg Lundahl. The Bible contains knowledge otherwise unknown to the ancients. This a strong piece of evidence for it being a divinely inspired document.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Possibly, but it is one which gets bogged down by fake examples.

In fact, anyone who can only do "science back then" instead of looking up what non-Jewish and non-Christian sources from the precise time of a certain Bible book give you, is not doing the best for the meme.

I would state, while modern geographical knowledge confirms 4 corners on a globe, and they would not be 4 outer corners on certain flat earth maps with the N pole in the middle, as far as the audience back then could make out, the hagiographers were not taking sides.

I'd give you a real example if you like. The Bible hints at a) a hunter gatherer society that was generalised and b) spoke one language c) just after the Flood.

How so?

1) Name of Noah involves a prophecy of him giving "rest" from agricultural sweating
2) Genesis 9:2 states sth about intensified hunting
3) Obviously, the time from Flood to Peleg is the time from Flood to Babel, and before Babel all had one tongue.

This is in fact confirmed.
a) From the Upper Palaeolithic after last Neanderthals and Denisovans, we have found some, but exceedingly few traces of any kind of agriculture, but lots of traces of hunting and fishing.
b) Genevieve von Petzinger has found 32 symbols (that's like an alphabet) in cave art all over the world, mostly from this period (the hashtag is one of them and was found from a Neanderthal inhabited cave, presumably carved into the wall before the Flood (note: the cave walls of that one had no paint, which might obviously have been damaged in the Flood, if the Neanderthals thought of doing it). Same script suggests either same language, or at least same culture.
c) Unrealistically, for those taking uniformitarian dates at face value, that script, those 32 symbols, and the art style and roughly speaking the motifs, lasted 10 000 ~ 20 000 years. But those dates are mostly carbon dates. If you presume the Flood is what wiped Neanderthals out, and the Denisovans too, you get a carbon date of 40 000 BP or (Campi Flegrei) 39 000 BP for a real year 2958 BC (you would presumably say for 3267 or 3367 BC), this gives a carbon 14 level back then of 1/61 to 1/62 of the present one. The ensuing rise explains why just a few centuries of real time (a more realistic perspective for Upper Palaeolithic) is in carbon dates drawn out to several myriads of years.

The Bible very clearly directly says, after Babel, you had different languages, and you also began to get kingdoms.

This is confirmed by the fact that the 32 symbols cease before Göbekli Tepe (1000 years between 9600 BC and 8600 BC meaning real time 2607 to 2556 BC), and after Göbekli Tepe you find DIVERSE scripts, including the undeciphered proto-writings.

As to kingdoms, you find settlements with longer habitation, and the ones surrounding Göbekli Tepe seem to have five major cities lining up with the list in Genesis 10 (Niniveh wasn't great in Nimrod's time, but Qermez Dere later became the greay Niniveh). You find traces of what seems to be either ritual murder or capital punishment from Göbekli Tepe (severed skulls stringed onto a rope through holes in the skull roofs) or Çatal Höyük (pottery depicting men lying down without heads and vultures going for them).

Vulture like birds have been associated with power in lots of cultures since then. Condors in South America, American Eagle in Aztek Mexico, Eagles of Rome ...

To me, it looks like Apocalypse 19 is going to involve Christ's payback against Nimrod in the use of vultures / eagles.

By contrast, the example on Eccl. 1:6 seems to be another error, not just because it is pure guess work to say "winds blow straight" according to "science back then" but also because it's not even sure the verse mentions winds at all.

Ver. 6. Spirit. The sun, (St. Jerome) which is like the soul of the world, and which some have falsely asserted to be animated; or rather (Calmet) the wind is meant, as one rises in different parts of the world when another falls. (Pliny, [Natural History?] ii. 27.) (Menochius)

1) St. Jerome takes it as the sun. Note, attributing an angel to the sun would literally fulfil it, even without the Sun itself being animated.
2) While Calmet takes it of winds, he clearly takes an authority, not in modern science, which perhaps he didn't much read, but precisely in "science back then" (though Pliny admittedly is 1000 years after King Solomon).