Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
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We are studying Ephesians chapter 4 and the worthy walk. Last week we looked at:
BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger, Ephesians 4:26 NASB
We studied this last week, this morning I want to focus on the phrase, "Do not let the sun do down." This phrase used by Paul has become the ideology of modern science. They will do and say anything to keep the sun stationary.
As I'm sure most of you know, I'm a geocentrist. So do me a favor and indulge me as I take this phrase from verse 26 and go off on a geocentric rant. I am aware that there are not many people who agree with me on this, but that's okay. All I ask is that you do a little research on your own and come to an informed opinion, don't buy into the stasis quo. To me this subject is all about the authority and inspiration of the Bible. I believe that many of us have had our view of Scripture tainted by so called science.
Let me start by defining the terms: Geocentric actually means: "earth centered." The geocentric model places the stationary earth at the center of the universe with the sun, moon, stars, and planets circling it.
The heliocentric model means: "sun centered." Heliocentricity places the sun at the center of the Solar System with the earth and all the other planets orbiting it.
I want to ask the question, "Does the sun move, does it rise and set? Or is the Bible mistaken, and it is actually the earth that moves?" The frame of reference of the Bible is clearly geocentric: positions and motions are measured relative to the earth. There are around 67 scriptural references which tell us that it is the sun, and not the earth, that moves. Do you know how many references there are to the earth moving? None! Zip! Zero! Nada! But science says it's so, so we believe it. Most of us accept expert testimony about heliocentricity and other scientific discoveries because we believe they have been experimentally confirmed.
The Bible teaches geocentricity, and so the belief of Christians has always been geocentric until Copernicus. In the 16th century, the astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus built on the work of earlier scientists and published his heliocentric theory in his book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies. In this book, he made some radical changes, such as asserting that the stars do not orbit the earth and declaring that the earth's rotation is what makes it appear as if the stars orbit our planet. Copernicus' heliocentric model quickly gained acceptance, though not without considerable controversy. Then the verses that believers had always held to as teaching geocintricity all of a sudden didn't really mean what they said. We can't disagree with science, but the Bible can't be wrong, so those Scriptures that talk about the sun rising must mean something else.
Notice what the Scripture says:
Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. Genesis 15:12 NASB
In the Hebrew the word for "sun" here is shemesh, which means: "to be brilliant, the sun." And the Hebrew word for "down" is not in the text. It simply says, "the sun was going." The Hebrew word for "going" is bo, it means: "to go, to come, to fall or light upon." The emphasis is on the movement of the sun. Why didn't Yahweh just say, "As darkness fell or as evening came." Why use a scientific fallacy?
"...when the sun went down..." Genesis 15:17
"Down" here is also bo: "When the sun was going."
"The sun was risen upon the earth." Genesis 19:23
Here the word "risen" is from the Hebrew yatsa, meaning: "to go out, to come out, to go forth."
"...because the sun was set...." Genesis 28:11
"Set" here is bo. So, again: "the sun was going." The Bible sure talks a lot about the movement of the sun.
"...the sun rose...." Genesis 32:31
"Rose" here is zarach, meaning: "to rise, break out, shine."
This language was always held to mean what it said until science said otherwise. Then it became the language of accommodation. And men said Yahweh is explaining it how we see it, not how it actually is. The idea of divine accommodation is usually associated with the theology of the Protestant Reformer, John Calvin. According to Calvin, God has no actual hands or feet, yet He speaks as if He does. This is correct, but Calvin explains anthropomorphism by appeal to divine accommodation, and he adds only confusion. We are, after all, perfectly capable of conceiving a God without hands and feet and a burning nose.
Calvin used accommodation to explain the apparent "childishness" of biblical language. Some have called it "The Few Good Men Theory of Devine Inspiration": We can't handle the truth, so Yahweh graciously speaks to us in ways we can grasp, lisping to us like a parent to a tiny child. He has always known that the Solar System is heliocentric, but He pretends it's geocentric because that is how it looks to us.
For Galileo, this notion of "accommodation" was science's declaration of independence, freeing scientists to explore the natural world without worrying that they might be attacked by the Bible scholars.
Bernard Ramm, under the influence of German higher critical thinking, was convinced that "language of accommodation" contained errors. Such language "employs the culture of the times in which it was written as the medium of revelation," and that all direct references to nature are most likely "in terms of the prevailing cultural concepts." This is essentially another way of saying that Scripture is always wrong when it contradicts modern scientific conclusions.
If the Bible adjusts to common beliefs in cosmology, does it do so with regard to history? Are the biblical accounts of The Exodus and Conquest accommodations to our feeble capacities? Are miracle stories accommodated to pre-scientific superstition? Perhaps even Scripture's theological claims are accommodated: Is The Incarnation a piece of mythology that describes something that is in fact not at all an incarnation?
A text that seems to go against the theory of accommodation is:
"He stretches out the north over empty space And hangs the earth on nothing. Job 26:7 NASB
The Bible describes the suspension of the earth in space, but that is not how the culture at that time saw it. According to the Harper's Bible Dictionary, "The ancient Hebrews imagined the world as flat and round, covered by the great solid dome of the firmament which was held up by mountain pillars, (Job 26:11; 37:18). So why didn't Yahweh accommodate to the views of the day instead of speaking of the earth hanging on nothing?
After leaving Egypt and wandering in the Sinai wilderness for forty years, Israel entered the land of Canaan late March to mid April, 1448 B.C. The Israelite leader, Joshua, had a clear-cut task set before him: to completely eradicate all the previous inhabitants of the land. The story is familiar to every Sunday School student: how the Israelites marched around Jericho until the city fell, the subsequent defeat at Ai followed by the judgment of Achan, the fall of Ai, and the ruse of the Gibeonites who tricked the Israelites into an unholy alliance. When the surrounding nations heard of that alliance, they attacked the Gibeonites who then sent to Joshua for help. The account of the battle that followed occupies about half of the tenth chapter of the book of Joshua where verses twelve through fourteen tell of the peculiar event which is commonly called, "Joshua's long day":
Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, "O sun, stand still at Gibeon, And O moon in the valley of Aijalon." So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies. Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. There was no day like that before it or after it, when the LORD listened to the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel. Joshua 10:12-14 NASB
The words "stand still" are from the Hebrew word damam, which means: "to be silent, to stand still." The word for "stopped" here is amad, which means: "to stand or remain."
Let's focus on the "moon" in these verses. Both heliocentrists and geocentrists agree that the moon is moving around the earth. No argument on that. Then we see that the Scripture says that Joshua commanded not only the sun, but also the moon to stop, and that both obeyed the command. He commanded both of them at the same time in the same breath in the same sentence to stop their motion. He obviously accepted as fact that the moon he was speaking to was a moon that was moving. Since, therefore, he addressed both sun and moon together in his command, it is a grammatical imperative that when he commanded a moving moon to stand still, he was ALSO commanding a moving sun to stand still.
Joshua 10:13 does not stand alone in the Bible. There are several similar verses. One of those is found in Habakkuk 3:11 which states:
Sun and moon stood in their places; They went away at the light of Your arrows, At the radiance of Your gleaming spear. Habakkuk 3:11 NASB
Now Habakkuk 3:11 is a double reference: In the first instance, it refers to a future event foreseen by Habakkuk; and in the second instance, it refers back to the taking of Canaan, back to Joshua's long day. As such, we may consider it as a unit with Joshua 10.
How does the Heliocentric Theory explain this event? If the earth were really rotating at 1,039 mph at the equator, it must have suddenly stopped and then started rotating again a day later. If this were true, then all life on earth would have been wiped out and the oceans flung out of their basins. There is no way to escape the conclusion that Joshua's long day was a miracle. But the miracle is said to be that the sun stood still.
Heliocentric apologists have tried to abstract the meaning of the sun's standing still to such a degree that the actual intent of the passage is virtually unrecognizable. Howard Rand suggested that perhaps the axis of rotation of the earth changed in such a way that for about one day the battle site became the rotational North Pole.
In this scenario, some event caused the earth's rotational poles to move in such a way that, for one day, Joshua's battle site was at the North Pole. One obvious problem is that the moon would still be seen to go around the sun during the battle. But the text says that the moon, too, stood still.
Notice what we see written in Isaiah:
"Behold, I will cause the shadow on the stairway, which has gone down with the sun on the stairway of Ahaz, to go back ten steps." So the sun's shadow went back ten steps on the stairway on which it had gone down. Isaiah 38:8 NASB
The shadow moved backward on the sun dial, undeniably the opposite of the way it always moved. The movement of the shadow is inseparable from the movement of the sun in this verse for it says the sun went back. In short, the sun's movement, not the earth's, is flatly declared here.
You can argue that Yahweh really meant that the earth and not the sun is moving in all these Scriptures. But this method of handling Scripture actually says that Yahweh has lied to us, or is so inept with words that He couldn't communicate a simple truth about whether it is the earth that goes around the sun or the sun that goes around the earth.
The Torah, the Law and the Prophets, and the New Testament all speak of the sun in motion:
So they passed along and went their way, and the sun set on them near Gibeah which belongs to Benjamin. Judges 19:14 NASB
When the sun rises they withdraw And lie down in their dens. Psalms 104:22 NASB
Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there again. Ecclesiastes 1:5 NASB
Your guardsmen are like the swarming locust. Your marshals are like hordes of grasshoppers Settling in the stone walls on a cold day. The sun rises and they flee, And the place where they are is not known. Nahum 3:17 NASB
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:45 NASB
"But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. Matthew 13:6 NASB
For the sun rises with a scorching wind and withers the grass; and its flower falls off and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed; so too the rich man in the midst of his pursuits will fade away. James 1:11 NASB
There is no way around the truth that the Bible is geocentric. Over and over it affirms this fact. By limiting the biblical language to appearances, it implies that science somehow has access to deeper truths that go beyond the appearances.
Look with me at Malachi 4, the last chapter of the Tanakh:
"But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. Malachi 4:2 NASB
What is this referring to? The ancient Jews, in one of their Midrashes say, "Moses says not they shall be for ever pledged, that is, the clothes of a neighbor, but until the sun comes, until the Messiah comes, as it is said, 'unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise.'"
The "sun" here is a reference to the Yeshua Ha'Moshiach who did arise with healing in His wings. The Hebrew word for "wings" is kanaph, which means: "an edge or extremity; a wing, a flap, a border or corner." This is referring to the tzitzit, we see this prophecy fulfilled in:
They begged him that the sick people might only touch the tzitzit on his robe, and all who touched it were completely healed. Matthew 14:36 CJB
So Malachi 4:2 is referring to Christ, but it uses the word "sun." If the "sun" does not rise, does this mean that the "Son" did not rise? Yeshua did rise and so does the sun.
In speaking of John the baptizer Luke writes,
To give to His people the knowledge of salvation By the forgiveness of their sins, Luke 1:77 NASB
So he is talking about salvation. Then he says:
Because of the tender mercy of our God, With which the Sunrise from on high will visit us, TO SHINE UPON THOSE WHO SIT IN DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH, To guide our feet into the way of peace." Luke 1:78-79 NASB
This is speaking of Yeshua, and it compares His coming to a sunrise and then quotes a messianic passage from Isaiah 9:2. So if the sun doesn't rise, did Yeshua?
A geocentric model of the universe was generally accepted until Copernicus published his heliocentric model in 1543. It was this Copernican heliocentricity concept that gradually broke the back of Bible credibility as the source of absolute truth in Christendom. Once the Copernican Revolution had conquered the physical sciences of Astronomy and Physics and put down deep roots in universities and lower schools everywhere. The evolution-based revolutions sparked by Darwin, Marx, and Freud in the late 1800's were totally dependent on the previous success of the Copernican Revolution.
Nowadays, most Christians are convinced that the Bible is wrong, that the earth is in actual motion. Until scientists convinced the world that geocentricity was a primitive, foolish idea contradicted by vast quantities of evidence, practically all Bible scholars took it as obvious that the Scriptures taught geocentricity.
Is there scientific proof that the earth is moving about the sun? No, there is not! Helocintricity is a theory just like evolution. You may be thinking, "Everyone knows that the earth is moving." Yet if you ask anyone for proof, all the response you are likely to get is: Science has proven it. Do you think that? Has science proven that the earth revolves around the sun? No!
Physicist, Neville Thomas Jones, Ph.D. writes, "We feel no motion of the World on which we all live. Furthermore, no experiment in all physics has ever demonstrated that the World moves around the sun, or that it rotates on an axis."
In fact scientific experiments have proven just the opposite. The Michelson-Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of Physics, was performed in 1887 by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University. Their experiment was designed to measure the change in the speed of light due to the assumed motion of the earth through space when measured in different directions on the earth's surface.
Their experiment was a complete failure; they could find no evidence that the earth was moving at all. This sent the physicists into a tizzy. Something was radically wrong. Michelson tried experiment after experiment for the rest of his life and could find no evidence that the earth was moving relative to an aether or to space. Other scientists also tried various experiments and all failed.
Scientists have argued against the geocentric truth using a pendulum, saying the pendulum moves because of the earth's rotation. Well, Noble Prize Winner, Maurice Allais saw the pendulum during an Eclipse. The pendulum's movement was affected by what was happening "Up There." The angle changed radically. It had nothing to do with a "Rotating Earth" after all. As usual, NASA is stalling.. after every experiment proving the "Allais Effect" they say: "Just one more time, please!"..
Other experiments that prove that the earth is not moving are, "Airey's Failure" (Reference - Proc. Roy. Soc. London v 20 p 35). The Sagnac Experiment (Reference - Comptes Rendus 1913 v157 p 708-710 and 1410-3). Sagnac rotated a table complete with light and mirrors with the light being passed in opposite directions around the table between the mirrors. He detected the movement of the table by the movement of the interference fringes on the target where they were recombined. This proved that there IS an aether that the light has to pass through, and this completely destroys Einstein's "Theory of Relativity" that says there is no aether. It is for this reason that this experiment is completely ignored by Scientists. More recently Kantor has found the same result with similar apparatus.
All these experiments are never taught at universities, so consequently, Scientists, including most Christian Creationists, are ignorant of this evidence for geocentricity.
If the earth is rotating, why can't I simply hover in a helicopter and wait for the earth's rotation to bring my destination to me? The helocentrist will answer, "Because the atmosphere is rotating along with the earth."
If the atmosphere and the earth together constantly rotate from west to east, how is it that clouds, wind, and weather patterns often travel in opposing directions simultaneously? And why don't pilots need to make 1,000 mph compensation acceleration when flying east to west?
Experiments have been performed firing canons in all cardinal directions to check for earth's rotation. If the earth was really spinning as the heliocentric model suggests, then the East-firing cannonballs should fall significantly farther than all others, and the West-firing cannonballs should fall significantly closer than all others. In actual fact, however, regardless of which direction one fires a cannon, north, south, east, or west, the distance covered is always the same.
When we talk about science, what comes to your mind? What is science? Most people understand science as an objective and largely empirical process involving observation, analysis, hypothesizing, and testing. This is what Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen identified as "operations science." Yet, when it comes to the study of origins, earth history, and cosmology science works in a very different way. The process is much more subjective, involves many unprovable assumptions, and is based on a great deal of extrapolation rather than direct observation. Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen call this "origins science." Unfortunately, most people--including most Scientists--do not understand or acknowledge this difference.
In reality, many conclusions of modern science are neither purely scientific nor genuinely empirical. The common perception that science deals only with verifiable facts and direct observation is utterly naive, as is the notion that Scientists are purely objective truth seekers.
Albert Einstein wrote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research."
Despite this, many continue to think that what Scientists tell us is always true and reliable. Scientific analysis is assumed to be balanced and objective, and conclusions are presumed to be tested and proven. Indeed, many Christians appear to believe that what Scientists say is on par to what Yahweh says!
Let me give you some insight to a very important fact, the scientific community has an agenda. Pretty much all Cosmologists, and Astronomers hold to the Cosmological Principle, which involves two points. 1. Isotropy--the universe looks the same in any direction (and from any place). 2. Homogeneity--the make-up of the universe is more or less the same everywhere. This principle is also called the Copernican Principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, which states that the earth is not in a central, specially favored position.
These are philosophical assertions in the framework of which scientific findings are defined and explained. The aim behind these assertions is to steer all knowledge away from Yahweh and towards a naturalist religion.
Notice what Stephen Hawking says about these principles (A Brief History of Time). "...all this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe. In particular, it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe."
But this violates the Copernican Principle and Scientists can't have that, so Hawking writes, "The universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too. This, as we have seen, was Friedmann's second assumption. We have no scientific evidence for, or against, this assumption. We believe it only on grounds of modesty: it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe."
Ironically, atheists say it is arrogance to claim special privilege for earth and it is from humility to deny it!
In a Scientific American article, "Thinking Globally, Acting Universally," October 1995, George Ellis, a famous Cosmologist writes, "I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations. You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view, there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."
Both George Ellis and Stephen Hawking wrote in, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (p. 34) "We [i.e. Scientists] are not able to make cosmological models without some admixture of ideology." I know when I think science, I think objective and largely empirical process involving observation, analysis, and testing, not philosophical assertions and ideology.
When Edwin Hubble first discovered redshifts moving away from the earth everywhere he looked, which would indicate we are at the center of the universe, he wrote, (The Observational Approach to Cosmology): "ÉSuch a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe, analogous, in a sense, to the ancient conception of a central earth...This hypothesis cannot be disproved, but it is unwelcome and would only be accepted as a last resort in order to save the phenomena. Therefore we disregard this possibility.... the unwelcome position of a favored location must be avoided at all costs.... such a favored position is intolerable...Therefore, in order to restore homogeneity, and to escape the horror of a unique positionÉmust be compensated by spatial curvature. There seems to be no other escape."
The earth in a "unique position" is a "horror," "intolerable," etc., though "the hypothesis (of a unique position) cannot be disproved." They have to defend their ideology at all costs.
Notice what modern science does with evidence. Many decades ago the cosmic microwave background (CMB) was detected in space and it was argued that if these philosophical assertions are correct, and if the "big bang" model is correct, there should be uniform presence of the CMB across the universe as a whole. There should not be any patchiness and certainly no variations in the CMB in the large scale of the universe. To test and confirm this, numerous satellites were launched over the past three decades, and they are: COBE (1989), WMAP (2001) and PLANCK (2009).
COBE revealed that the universe is not uniform as predicted in the "big bang" model and as required by the Copernican and Cosmological Principles. In fact, it showed that the universe seems to have an alignment that points directly to the axis of the earth across its equator. To make sure they had things right, a more powerful satellite (WMAP) was sent up in 2001 whose data was processed in 2004 and it actually confirmed what COBE had indicated.
When Marcus Chown investigated the apparent alignment of the CMB and our ecliptic, he titled his article, "Axis of Evil Warps Cosmic Background, New Scientist," October 22, 2005. Why is data, why are the facts called, "the axis of evil"? Because it does not fit their ideology. The evidence went against the Copernican and Cosmological Principles, so it was called, "evil."
Instead of finding hot and cold spots randomly spattered across the sky as expected, the analysis showed that the spots in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) appeared to be aligned in one particular direction through space.
The apparent alignment is "evil" because it undermines what they thought they knew about the early universe. Modern Cosmology is built on the assumption that the universe is essentially the same in whichever direction we look. If the cosmic radiation has a preferred direction, that assumption may have to go--along with our best theories about cosmic history.
So the evidence is called "the axis of evil," and you have to understand the psychology here, it shows that Scientists are not as impartial as you might think. When empirical observational evidence suggests the earth is at the center of the universe, it is considered "evil."
Lawrence Krauss, a Theoretical Physicist, said back in 2006, in an article, "The Energy of Space That Isn't Zero," about the data available for that time (from COBE and WMAP): "But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us?...The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong, and we're the center of the universe, or maybe the data is simply incorrect, or maybe it's telling us there's something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there's something wrong with our theories on the larger scales."
He is stating explicitly that the data from the COBE and WMAP satellites puts the earth in or very close to the center of the universe. He say's "that's crazy," meaning that empirical observational data is crazy, because it does not fit in with his philosophical beliefs. You can see the psychology going on here.
To make absolutely sure there were no errors in the instrumentation and in the collection of the data, another satellite was sent up in 2009, The European Space Agency launched the Planck Satellite, which was ten times more powerful than WMAP, and all possible errors were accounted for in the design of this new more powerful satellite.
In 2013 Planck confirmed what was indicated by the COBE and WMAP Satellites. The observational evidence shows the earth to be at or very close to the center of the universe, and that there is a clear pattern in the universe which, through many different ways, points back to the earth and its axis about the equator as a central location. It was made sure with the PLANCK Satellite that all possible errors and miscalculations have been accounted for, so this is final, there is no doubt in these results and they have now been verified twice over with increasing levels of accuracy and sophistication.
The "Big Bang Theory" has absolutely no way of explaining this phenomenon. Indeed, it totally under-cuts the most basic assumption of the "Big Bang Cosmology"--the Copernican or Cosmological Principle. In other words, the Cosmological Principle has been invalidated by observational empirical data. The "axis of evil" has given the Copernican and Cosmological Principles a knock out punch.
The scientific community has an agenda! It is not possible to separate ideology from science, despite what these atheists claim. Numerous lines of evidence (empirical, observational) have invalidated the Cosmolological Principle, which underlies the naturalist religion and evidence indicates that the earth has a privileged position in the universe, a central location, in fact. But they can't believe it, they won't believe it.
When the Bible teaches something contrary to established scientific "fact," believers have a tendency to argue that Yahweh did not actually mean what the Bible appears to communicate. This is subjecting the Word of God to our own supposed knowledge. And so we say, We know that the earth revolves around the sun, therefore, when the Bible says, "the sun rises," it must be using accommodation. So we might as well say that the resurrection of Christ is a symbol, because we "know" that the dead do not come back to life!
Applying the same scientifically-constrained hermeneutic to the Gospels would eliminate all Christ's miracles. For example, in John 2:1-11 Yeshua turned water into wine:
Yeshua said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water." So they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter." So they took it to him. When the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew)... John 2:7-9 NASB
This is scientifically impossible. To create wine, both sugar and yeast are required, yet neither were added to the water. On top of that the process of fermentation usually takes weeks! So, according to those who believe Scripture should be interpreted in the light of known scientific facts, the account given in John 2 cannot be literally true, because it clearly goes against well established Science. Yet, Evangelicals who reject the geocintricity of the Bible are rarely prepared to give up on Christ's miracles, virgin birth, resurrection, and ascension, even though they are clearly not scientifically possible. In other words, they suffer from an acute theological blind spot.
Believers, scientific views should never play a part in the actual interpretation of Scripture. Interpretation must be based solely on the text and its context. Indeed, if the Bible is the Word of God, then no other authority, including scientific reasoning, should dictate how it is to be understood.
If the earth is the center of the universe, then the ideas of God, creation, and a purpose for human existence are resplendent. But if the earth is just one of billions of planets revolving around billions of stars in billions of galaxies, then the ideas of God, creation, and a specific purpose for earth and human existence become highly implausible.
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