Why the earth is the center of the universe

[Al Johnston]

jason said:

What use is worshiping something that is fundamentally unknowable?

What use is worshipping anything, period?

[Jason]

Obviously that would depend on the nature of the thing or person worshipped.

[Bill Thompson]

reynoldbot said:

Wow you guys sure are confident about God's will. Here I always thought God was unknowable. I think you're talking about somebody else's will.

Or is God so easily knowable that we look right past? Then we are drawn to the absurd and myths?

Einstien belived in Baruch Spinoza's view of God. I find it hard to disagree with it. If Mohamed got one thing right it might be that "God is as close to you as the beating of your own heart",

[Bill Thompson]

phantomwolf said:

One to stop the earth from spinning and another to get it going again. Plus, have you ever slammed on the breaks in a fast moving car? The people on the ground were not wearing seat belts. Humanity would have been set flinging through the air at both impacts.

You are still assuming that the Earth was stopped. I'd propose a different mechanism, and that is an orbit/axis change. As an interesting aside, most ancient calendars had only 360 days (we still have 360 degrees in a circle because of this.) I guess perhaps we'll gave have to accept that they were too dumb to count back then....

There are other problems as well. Like, this still does not explain why the moon stopped moving across the sky.

Yes this is a problem is you assume that the action was stopping the Earth's rotation, which is not what I'm suggesting.

And wouldn't the far side of the earth have frozen solid?

In 48 hours? Not likely. What is interesting though is that many ancient cultures have tales about the sun doing something strange. The Aztecs had tales about the sun not coming up and a sacrific being required to raise it. The pacific islanders have stories about the sun being captured in a cave and not let out. The Mexicans still have tales of the long night when the sun didn't rise. The Greeks had tales about the sun being out of control and staying in the sky longer than it should. But hey, that's right, they were stupid, couldn't count and just made thing up.

OK, this is interesting.

But if the axis shift was caused by an impact we are still talking about a pretty severe beating -- and still twice. I wonder what kind of force would be required to shift the axis so much that the sun would be overhead for 48 hours like that.

isn't the most likey answer still that the battle just seemed to be long?

[PhantomWolf]

isn't the most likey answer still that the battle just seemed to be long?

True this is possible, it's just interesting that there are myths from other countries about the world of the sun doing something strange.

As to the "impact" well again, why does there have to be one. I have to admit that I'm not sure of all the details, but I believe that if you pushed the earth towards the sun, conservation of momentum would return it to approximately the same orbit it was in, right?

From the myths we get that the sun either "stood still" or "was held and struggled" or "moved uncontrolled about the sky" and also reports that "it come close and was so hot it burned." Now, and obviously this is speculation since without a time machine we can't really do anything but speculate, if God nudged the Earth towards the sun, this would shorten the orbit and allow it to orbit about the sun at a rate equal to its rotation, add an axis shift at the same time to allow the sun to stay in the sky longer (so we don't have to do an orbit of the sun in about 24 hours [checking the reference it was about an extra 12 hours not 24]) and this could explain the observations of the people that created the myths. In the Pacific Islands they would have seen the sunrise, then stall and "struggle" as if captured. In Greece, it might have appeared to circle erratically and gotten brighter and hotter.

Of course this is total speculation, but interesting. I'd love for someone that knows a heck of a lot more about orbits and astronomical calculations to have a go at seeing if it is possible to put figures to the idea and we could see if there is merit. It'd certainly be an interesting exercise regardless of the result.

[PhantomWolf]

Just as a first test I just checked the timezones out to see if it indeed would have been dawn in the area the legend of Maui capturing the sun is thought to originate (somewhere near Hawaii) when it was late afternoon in Israel. They appear to be around 12 hours apart so late afternoon in Israel would have dawn in the Hawaii region. That part at least seem to fit, though again, this is only a very rough test.

[Tanalia]

phantomwolf said:

As to the "impact" well again, why does there have to be one. I have to admit that I'm not sure of all the details, but I believe that if you pushed the earth towards the sun, conservation of momentum would return it to approximately the same orbit it was in, right?

No, if an object is not at a point along an orbit, and moving with the proper speed and direction for that point on that orbit, it can only be following some other orbit. Returning an object to its "original" orbit would require one or more applications of delta-v (such as an OMS burn with a rocket) or the same sort of magic that moved it out of the orbit in the first place.

An orbit that would allow to the Earth revolve in anywhere near 24 hours would be way inside the orbit of Mercury -- close enough to incinerate pretty much everything -- and would require transfer orbits of several months in and out, assuming the planet isn't just magically teleported. Anything that could change the axis of rotation enough to possibly provide the situation you describe, regardless of the orbit, would have the same sort of effects as just stopping the Earth's rotation, assuming of course that the people, buildings, etc. aren't magically stopped or shifted at the same time.

In any case, with whatever magic, it could happen in any number of ways, with no way to tell later if it did or not.
Without magic, it couldn't happen at all (any physical system that might manage it, a la Velikovsky, would obliterate anything resembling civilization).

[echnaton]

phantomwolf said:

Just as a first test I just checked the timezones out to see if it indeed would have been dawn in the area the legend of Maui capturing the sun is thought to originate (somewhere near Hawaii) when it was late afternoon in Israel. They appear to be around 12 hours apart so late afternoon in Israel would have dawn in the Hawaii region. That part at least seem to fit, though again, this is only a very rough test.

I believe that there is no indication that Hawaii was settled at that time. Any stories dating back to the Israelite error would have been imported from Polynesia and a notable different time zone.

[lionking]

What use is worshipping anything, period?

it doesn't have to be worthy in a sense that you get a direct benefit. it is just like acknowledging a truth. if you don't state it and work within it, you're in deception.

by the way, anyone had a refutation for the NASA thing I linked to

[PhantomWolf]

I believe that there is no indication that Hawaii was settled at that time. Any stories dating back to the Israelite error would have been imported from Polynesia and a notable different time zone.

The story of the captured sun comes from Maori mythology, supposedly back when they were in the islands of Hawaikki. There is no actual known position for this place, though several have been suggested, including Hawaii and Taiwan.

[PhantomWolf]

Well going by these texts:

source - The Settlement of Polynesia

--Around 1600-1200 B.C., a cultural complex called Lapita (identified by a distinctive pottery and named after a site in New Caledonia) spread from New Guinea in Melanesia as far east as Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. Polynesian culture developed at the eastern edge of this region (i.e., in Samoa and Tonga).

source - Backgroud Book of Joshua

The date of the Conquest is tied up with the date of the Exodus. As there is an early and late date for the Exodus so there is an early and late date for the Conquest.

Early Date                 Late Date
Exodus 1440 B.C.              Exodus 1290 B.C.
Pharaoh Rameses II         Pharaoh Amunhotep II
Conquest 1400 B.C.          Conquest 1250 B.C.

Many conservative scholars prefer the early dates however there are strong argument on each side and archaeology does not settle the issue. Archaeologists call this period the Late Bronze Age. (1550-1200 B.C.) Part of the problem is that Archaeology dates the ruins by the presence of char in the levels of dirt and Israel did not burn all of the cities they conquered. Joshua 11:13 Also other nations were burning cities during this period. Egyptian Pharaoh’s and the Philistines were invading the Canaanites during the Late Bronze Period. All of this makes dating the Conquest difficult with any certainty. What is important is that the events took place as they are described in Joshua.

so in 1500-1200BC, the polynesians that went on to populate NZ would have been in Fiji/Tonga just 1 hour behind Hawaii, 13 behind Israel. Still possible for Dawn to be there at the same time as late evening Israel time, just depends on dates.

Anyway, this is total speculation, interesting in that different unrelated cultures seem to tell the same thing about the sun acting weird, but without some way of actually going back and checking, very little can be done to figure out why they have the stories, wether something really happened, or if it's just coincidence and vivid imagination. I suspect that most myth has a basis in truth somewhere, even if it is hidden behind layers of the culture of the time and since.

[Bill Thompson]

phantomwolf said:

isn't the most likey answer still that the battle just seemed to be long?

True this is possible, it's just interesting that there are myths from other countries about the world of the sun doing something strange.

As to the "impact" well again, why does there have to be one. I have to admit that I'm not sure of all the details, but I believe that if you pushed the earth towards the sun, conservation of momentum would return it to approximately the same orbit it was in, right?

From the myths we get that the sun either "stood still" or "was held and struggled" or "moved uncontrolled about the sky" and also reports that "it come close and was so hot it burned." Now, and obviously this is speculation since without a time machine we can't really do anything but speculate, if God nudged the Earth towards the sun, this would shorten the orbit and allow it to orbit about the sun at a rate equal to its rotation, add an axis shift at the same time to allow the sun to stay in the sky longer (so we don't have to do an orbit of the sun in about 24 hours [checking the reference it was about an extra 12 hours not 24]) and this could explain the observations of the people that created the myths. In the Pacific Islands they would have seen the sunrise, then stall and "struggle" as if captured. In Greece, it might have appeared to circle erratically and gotten brighter and hotter.

Of course this is total speculation, but interesting. I'd love for someone that knows a heck of a lot more about orbits and astronomical calculations to have a go at seeing if it is possible to put figures to the idea and we could see if there is merit. It'd certainly be an interesting exercise regardless of the result.

Reading this I had a different idea: Low Blood Sugar.

[reynoldbot]

jason said:

What use is worshiping something that is fundamentally unknowable?

That's not really my problem. But when you worship something as it is described by man, you are worshiping the words of man more than you are worshiping the diety. I see no important difference in worshiping an unknowable God and a thoroughly described God besides the one I listed above. Does knowing God really change anything about God's role as the creator? I find it absurd to say with authority that we know exactly what God thinks and wants of us. The fact that everybody disagrees about God's will is testament to how ridiculous a claim it is.

[Jason]

reynoldbot said:

But when you worship something as it is described by man, you are worshiping the words of man more than you are worshiping the diety.

I agree.

I see no important difference in worshiping an unknowable God and a thoroughly described God besides the one I listed above. Does knowing God really change anything about God's role as the creator?

No, but then we don't worship God for His benefit, but for our own.

I find it absurd to say with authority that we know exactly what God thinks and wants of us. The fact that everybody disagrees about God's will is testament to how ridiculous a claim it is.

I disagree there. The fact that there are disagreements doesn't automatically mean that none of them can be right.

[Bill Thompson]

I just had a thought of how the earth really could be at the center of the universe. We are all living in a virtural reality like the movie The Matrix where we are duped into thinking that the sun is in the middle of the solar system.