well don't you know the bible was right all along
April 8, 2002 9:23 AM   Subscribe

well don't you know the bible was right all along Just what I was looking for absolutely irefutable and empirical evidence that the earth is indeed flat courtesy of a expert in the field (remove tongue from cheek).
posted by johnnyboy (6 comments total)
 
The part about the earth being flat is obviously wrong (just watch ships coming over the horizon), but the Earth can be the stationary center of the universe if you want. Einstein says you're allowed to pick any reference frame you want and call it "stationary."

In fact, for a lot of things it makes perfect sense to consider the Earth a stationary reference frame. It would be silly to insist on talking about the horizon falling towards the sun every morning instead of just calling it "sunrise."
posted by straight at 9:53 AM on April 8, 2002


This page is a scholarly examination of Biblical cosmology from someone who, judging by the rest of his site, has serious skeptic/debunking credentials. johnnyboy's post might mislead people who don't have their irony detectors set to high: I myself was expecting a crackpot. This, on the other hand, was a very interesting link.
posted by mcwetboy at 10:01 AM on April 8, 2002


pick any reference frame you want and call it "stationary."

An imagination experiment: two facing, wheel shaped space stations (i.e. "2001 A.S.O.") in an otherwise empty universe (they can't see anything else to relate to).

Viewers friom either one see the other one rotating, but which one is really spinning, or are both?

Oh, in one the people inside walk against the outer wall, the folks in the other are floating around.
posted by HTuttle at 10:17 AM on April 8, 2002


"Some take refuge in audacity."

Everyday, baby. Every single day.
posted by grabbingsand at 10:40 AM on April 8, 2002


I'll bite... the station with people walking against the outer wall is spinning. An inertial frame of reference (the kind to which Einstein referred) must not be accelerating (such as the radial acceleration that causes the apparent "artificial gravity". The trick is that it can be moving but still treated as stationary. Any sort of change in velocity throws it right out, though.

So the very rotation of the earth throws it out as an inertial frame of reference, at least on a cosmic scale. On a smaller scale (like playing baseball) it works just fine.

As far as the original post goes, I've never seen many of these scriptures cited in this manner. I will say that IMHO, the flat-earthers are similar to fundamentalist creationists (trying so very hard not to start a thread on that!) inasmuch as they take much of this literally when a figurative view yields an equally plausible but much more reasonable understanding.
posted by elvolio at 10:43 AM on April 8, 2002


"(remove tongue from cheek)"

I'll keep mine firmly in place, thank you very much. *smirk*
posted by ZachsMind at 12:44 PM on April 8, 2002


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