Does it matter whether the Earth stopped or the sun stopped? Not at all.
If you took my careful response to imply that it does not matter you have misread me. I made it plain that the historical account declares
the sun stood still. To deny this is to deny the verbal plenary inspiration of the Bible, as I have asserted carefully in my post. You want to substitute "earth" for "sun" in the passage. This is imposing allegory without warrant on the passage in question. Concede, please, for the Scripture is plain on the matter.
Your "harmonization" is bowing to man's science and imposing that upon Scripture. Hence, man's science becomes the regual fidei, and not Holy Writ. As I have noted at length, Scripture's view of the earth is geocentric. This cannot be denied. The verbal plenary inspiration of the Bible declares that the penmen were kept from error in what they wrote.
I am fairly well versed in the scientific method. I also assume I have a fairly firm grasp about the various discovered laws of nature. Indeed, they are reliable, and at times elegant. As I understand it from your past posts, we both possess advanced engineering degrees. We took many of the same classes and understand the mathematics and physics of the same.
But they are only
summaries of observations. They don't actually identify
what is going on—the ultimate reality that is only described in Scripture. Because God created his universe to be orderly, these observations do well at predicting positions of heavenly bodies. Indeed, I wouldn't gainsay that for a minute. Astrophysics is wonderful.
But do we really know what gravity is? Do we really know what happens when we observe momentum? No,
we take it as a given. We observe objects move a certain way, and we come up with formulas (that is why we say things like
let G=the force of attraction between body A and body B).
But that force is just a way of saying that under such and such circumstances,
body A tends to move toward body B. We could just as easily say that God is pushing them together by his Word, and He always does this when we look at such things—and our laws of nature could not disprove this statement at all.
Because, at its most basic level, science starts out with a few suppositions and goals:
Suppostion: the universe is orderly. (We have no actual proof of this, other than Scripture. Science only has empirical observations that seem to confirm it.)
Supposition: in a given model, repeated consistent observations increase the likelihood that our model is reliable for (for what?) for making future predictions. Nothing more. The model does not say
what is really happening.
Initial goal of science:
to leave out the supernatural, not to address it. (Which of course, means that it has nothing to say about it).
Primary goal of science:
to systematize observations to allow for predictive observations. Again, nothing more. Science allows for predictions, but does not do anything but describe what is observed.
So, if I'm going to launch a satellite for the purpose of relaying communications, certainly I would use the natural laws because they are pretty reliable predictors of physical behavior.
But if you were to ask me what keeps that satellite up in space, I'd respond: it is the hand of God, maintaining his universe according to his decree.
And I'd say, as I have noted in my responses, that Scripture
definitely speaks about a geocentric universe. It does not address astrophysics in detail, but it does tell us
God's focus: In the beginning God created heaven and Earth.
Two basic things. Heaven and Earth. After that, almost all the focus of Scripture is on Earth and, even more to the point, on Man. I take it that divine revelation tells us that God's focus is uniquely on this speck some call "
geo."
The exegetical level is where the discussion must focus. Given that man has dominion over the earth all manner of scientific theories may be put forth and be wonderfully functional. That is not the issue at hand. The issue is what does God describe in the historical account of His miracles. Let's not impose scientific theories upon Holy Writ without warrant.
AMR
