Grace Kim Kwon #fundie

Grace Kim Kwon #fundie christianpost.com

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." (Psalm 19)

It's been only about 100 years since mankind found out that there are numerous number of galaxies in the space. Thank God the Earth (the solar system) is located in such a part of the Milky Way Galaxy where outside view is possible. Otherwise, we'd not know the existence of other galaxies or even survive if located in gassy parts on Milky Way. Micro worlds are another universe mankind cannot reach in tangible ways. There are no exactly same sand grains or exactly the same snow flakes. The number is truly staggering in our world which God created for us.

As amazing as the universes are around us, more profound and vital and eternal is the Holy Bible, the word of God. Why does Earth's mankind have it? We could have only myths that we can dismiss, but the Holy Bible and Israel stand forever on Planet Earth and none of them comply with the atheists or sugar (false gospels) lovers. In that sense, both behave like God's physical worlds. What is made by God never submits to natural men. And wonderous things happen here through the Church on Planet Earth. The Son of God was upon the Earth once before, He will do that again, changing the structure of all the universes including the Heaven.

29 comments

old comment by Quibbling Catholic

^ Can someone then tell me why Dante, faithful Catholic that he was (albeit perpetually at loggerheads with the a**hole pope at the time, Boniface VIII), described the earth as spherical? If there were any flat-earth die-hards in the hierarchy his work would have been censured.

I'd always thought people in those days viewed the earth as spherical, just with every other celestial body in existence revolving around it. Even in Galileo's day the assumed position was that the earth was round, though of course immovable. Again, there was the uncomfortable question of whether or not people lived south of the equator, but that was basically a theological query coupled with faulty geography -- they thought crossing the tropics was impossible because it was too hot, and that the southern hemisphere was mostly water anyway.

According to them, how could any men have crossed so great an expanse to settle down under, and how could those up north follow to evangelize them, if the tropics were indeed so impassable?

old comment by Creedence Leonore Gielgud

@Mister Spak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_sphaera_mundi

This was the primary textbook on astronomy and cosmology during the Middle Ages. It was used well into the Modern Era. It describes the Earth as a sphere, and gives arguments for why. It was largely derived from the works of Ptolemy, who was also extremely influential on Medieval astronomy, and he likewise argued for a spherical Earth.

The myth that Columbus was trying to prove that the world is round, is based on a fictional biography of Columbus, by Washington Irving, long after the fact. It is unfortunately still taught as fact in primary schools, though modern historians have thoroughly debunked it.

Columbus was not trying to prove that the world is round. He was trying to prove that the circumference of the Earth is considerably less than it actually is known to be, and which has been known since ancient times. He was also claiming that he could reach Asia in much less time than anyone thought reasonably possible, even if the distance were as small as he claimed.

old comment by Kuno

@Mimic Octopus:

The point being that any institution as central to the Medieval mind cannot be reduced to simplistic black or white.

Quoted for truth. As a big fan of the Middle Ages myself, it is sometimes frustrating how simplistic the public perception of these times is. Sure, I wouldn’t want to live back then, but that goes for other eras, too.

@Old Viking:

And you are committing the same mistake as so many of the fundies quoted here, treating a large group or entity made up of many individuals (and in this case spanning over several centuries) like some kind of hive mind, because it fits your preconceived opinion.

To quote Wikipedia:

One misconception, first propagated in the 19th century[323] and still very common, is that all people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat.[323] This is untrue, as lecturers in the medieval universities commonly argued that evidence showed the Earth was a sphere.[324] Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, another scholar of the period, state that there "was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".[325] Other misconceptions such as "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages", "the rise of Christianity killed off ancient science", or "the medieval Christian church suppressed the growth of natural philosophy", are all cited by Numbers as examples of widely popular myths that still pass as historical truth, although they are not supported by current historical research.[326]

old comment by Quibbling Catholic

@Mimic Octopus The Imperial Orb reminds me of a line in an ancient Christian hymn that outright calls the earth an orb: the Te Deum.

The line in question reads "Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur Ecclesia", or "Throughout the globe of the earth, the holy Church acknowledges Thee."

@FundieVision Inc. The Gospels of Thomas et al. are often referred to as the Gnostic gospels, presumably because they did contain some content that may smack of Gnosticism. Having not read them yet (we *are* permitted to read them though, the translated texts are somewhere out on the Web), I can't say for sure what kinds of esoteric philosophy they may or may not contain.

old comment by Kuno

@Mister Spak:

Columbus' proposal to reach China by going the other way was denounced as heresy at the time, because his plan assumed the earth was round and the bible said the earth was flat.

If that would really have been the case, I doubt the Most Catholic Majesties, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, would have financed the whole operation.

In fact, the oldest surviving globe, the “Erdapfel” (transl. earth apple) is from 1492. It doesn’t include the Americas because Columbus hadn’t returned yet.

Does that mean that everyone knew or accepted a spherical Earth? Surely not. Some were convinced the Flat Earth was the way to go. Most people wouldn’t even think about or simply didn’t care because it had no impact on their daily life.

old comment by Quibbling Catholic

@Fundie Vision Inc.

Fair enough. The little I know about the Gnostics is that one strain of their beliefs held that the entire material realm was evil and that only the spiritual was good. Sort of like the Chinese concept of heaven being Yang and earth being Yin.

That was probably why their books were excluded from inclusion in the canon of the Bible: such an idea was incompatible with God (who is of the spiritual realm) becoming human in the person of Jesus (thus taking on material form). (There was also the idea that the Church should only have FOUR gospels, four like the cardinal wind directions, or the four living creatures in Ezechiel's vision, but that's a theological quibble.)