For what it's worth, I don't see any water above the big dipper, and you don't either.Shawn Henry wrote: ↑December 6th, 2022, 12:19 pm I'm not saying to credit anything I say. You are free to consider me an idiot and I won't take any offense to it. I'm just asking you to consider what JS's translation says. Let the English stand on its own as written.
Do you read it as saying all the stars and the entire firmament are underneath the earth's waters? Who cares what shape the earth is, the question is whether the Lord told the truth when he gave us the creation accounts.
Feel free to believe the heliocentric model, but at least explain how the earth's waters are above the big dipper, Andromeda, and the entire Milky Way. Do you really believe a future deep space mission would go past the Milky Way and then run into the earth's waters? If not, the creation account is flat out wrong. Are you comfortable with JS saying, well my intentions were right, even though I was completely wrong?
And just want to be clear: I don't consider you an idiot. I understand where you're coming from. I freely admit that Genesis and the PoGP give a flat-earth description of the creation. Fair enough. You're taking the Bible and PoGP as literal truth and an accurate account of how the universe is laid out, and everything else must align itself to that foundational principal.
But I take it the other direction, kind of the way Isaiah says to do: a person who claims to be a prophet makes a statement. If that statement is verifiable, then verify it. If it's false, then obviously the so-called prophet is wrong. I'm not going to stand on my head and cross my eyes for the rest of my life just to force some words on a page to be true, and brew up some centuries-long world-wide conspiracy that would be required to maintain it. If it's not accurate, it's not accurate. Done, end of story.