RE: Firmament and the Water above was [asa] Re: Slug

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Paul Seely
Sent: Saturday, June 17, 2006 9:30 AM

>>>Morton tried to show from etymology that raqia' just refers to an
expanse, and that modern astronomy believes in a solid sphere.<<<<

I did no such thing. I didn't show the astronomers believed anything. I
showed how silly the raqiya argument was. I was engaging in a reduction to
absurdity argument.. If one takes the meaning of certain words and then
drives to the extreme to say that the words must be taken literally, then
the conclusion would be that astronomers believe in a solid dome. Since they
don't, it shows how poor the raqiya argument is. But you clearly have not
understood that argument.

>>>And he very inappropriately adds,"Frankly, I think the fact that you
guys want the Bible to be factually
false, means you won't go looking for alternative explanations. The
intellectually easy thing to do is to say it is false and move on."

No one on this list to my knowledge wants the Bible to be factually false.
<<<

Besides what you say, that I am being inappropriate (and I would add,
nasty), I am amazed at your last sentence above. That must be why no one on
this list is telling me that concordism is not to be sought for. Yeah
right. I see everyone rushing to be a concordist to prove how factually true
the Bible is. People have intellectual investment in it being factually
false.

Reality? There is no way to determine truth or falsity except by
observational concordance. If I am wrong, show me how you prove the Bible is
true without resorting to any observational facts.

>>>But I know I and others do not want to virtually rewrite the Bible to
make it factually true.<<<

So, you do leave it as a false thing to be pitied. This sentence contradicts
your previous sentence.

>>> As for etymology, it is only an adjunct to finding the meaning of a
word, and the verb raqa never escapes solidity anyway. As for modern
astronomy's solid sphere, it is not 100% solid as is the biblical firmament,
and it is not a hemisphere as is the biblical firmament. <<<

Boy did you go out of your way to miss the point I was making.

>>>And, most telling, it has no ocean above it. Concordists try to turn the
ocean above the firmament into all kinds of diffferent things, but there is
a strong consensus of Evangelical OT scholars that the biblical account of
the flood is saying the water came from the sea above the firmament (and
from the sea below the earth). <<<

Paul, you totally missed the point with those examples from astronomy using
words in a certain way. Everytime someone brings up raqiya as an example
that one can't concord, you guys miss the fact that even modern science uses
words in a way that don't strictly concord, but then you all expect us to
swallow the hook you lay out for us.

Take an example from Chinese. Ming means bright. Bai means white. But
ming bai means understand. Why? I don't know and neither do the Chinese.
Tai means too. Tai duo means too much, but Tai tai means wife. Why? I
don't know but if you want to say wife in Chinese, you better say "too too".
One word for peace is tai ping, tai you already know, but ping means flat.
Too flat means peace. The positive principle of the universe is yang, you
know ying and yang the taoist symbol. But one word for sun is tai yang--you
got it, too positive. Dong means 'east' and xi (she) means west. But
dong-xi means things.

Languages restrict how we can express things to the way our parents
expressed them. So, for you guys to trot out that old dog of the raqiya
argument is just ignoring reality.

>>I venture to say modern astronomy will never agree with that. <<

Sorry, Paul, it went over your head.

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Received on Fri Jun 16 22:55:54 2006