breathilizer

hehehe. I just posted this in reference to the title of the thread. After reviewing the OP more carefully, I now know that what he is basically saying is:

"If you interpret the Bible any which way you choose, it can have spiritual meaning"

... which is somewhat ridiculous since you hardly need a Bible to learn your own opinions.

buddahead

are so sure


The speed of light in the Bible?

Num:2:9
All that were numbered in the camp of Judah were an hundred thousand and fourscore thousand and six thousand and four hundred, throughout their armies. These shall first set forth.
A score is 20 so 4 score is 80 so its 186,400 m/s and the tribe of Judah faced East of the rising Sun. You see the referrence to light. Judah is the Tribe of Light.
Which you and I are a from the tribe of Judah.

from the website how stuff works:


the speed of light is 669,600,000 miles/hour or 186,400 miles/sec

THERE YOU HAVE IT, the speed of light in the Bible, and in english neasurement.

is it a coincidense?

Mageth

Yup, but not even exact. And why would it be in English miles?

The speed of light in vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s (metres per second) . Converting to miles/sec, you get 186,282.3970512. You've got a few too many in camp there.

Endymion83

But remember, the speed of light has been slowing down since the creation of the universe. Thats why we can see stars that are more than 10,000 ly away.

buddahead

the speed of light is a variable, and measures differently under various conditions, it has been measured at vrious speeds from186,120 to 186,320, to 186,400

just happens thet the website HOW STUFF WORKS says its 186.400.


the speed of light can be argued over indefinately, but light has been completely stopped under labaratory conditons, just type in google, light has stopped or sometging close, and youll see the science articles.

The bible makes reference to the Sun being the light in this verse, and then it says its inhabitants are the tribe of judha and their number is 186,400

sharon45

This is a very good example of why such writings are as though they were meaningless, when a person could find any answer to life within the bible, as long as they knew the answer ahead of time. Just like all the faulty talk about "bible codes", even though in Judaism, there are at least 4 levels to understanding the Tanach and more, Jews know that there are still no real "bible codes" as some christians think.

Once a writing can not be taken literal, that is an area which can be easily explained as that reader's personal opinion of the text or from much coaching from another's personal opinion. Many of the passages quoted above in the OP and afterward, were taken out of context so their true meaning is very blurred. While it is clear that not everything can be taken completely literal, with such extreme reaching as many do to interpret a passage, that handling is far too open and highly debatable. I myself have found many wise passages under my own personal interpretations, that does not in any way mean that those were intended by the writer at all.

Endymion83

I was just poking fun at one of the apologetics for why the visible universe is billions of light years across. Modern physics considers the speed of light to be a constant. No matter what speed you are traveling relative to the source of a beam of light, the beam of light will always appear to be traveling at exactly C. A strange but true result of relativity.

The speed of light can slow down when it is passing through a medium, such as a liquid or gas, but it is still a constant withing the medium. For freezing the light they used a medium under very special conditions.

Mageth

The 186,400 is due to rounding; it's an approximation, and is not accurate as light does not travel at that speed, to my knowledge. If you round 299,792,458 meters/sec up to 300,000,000 meters/sec (which is commonly done for convenience, but would never be used in a calculation that required accuracy) and then convert to miles, you get @186,411 miles/sec. That's then rounded down to 186,400 miles/sec, an approximation, but one that is higher than the actual speed of light in a vacuum. That's where 186,400 comes from; not from measuring the speed of light, but from rounding and converting.

The speed of light in a vacuum is its maximum speed, and that is 299,792,458 meters/sec; when converted directly to miles/second, you get 186,282.3970512 miles/sec.

OK, but a non-sequitur.

So it does; but that would imply some knowledge, then, that the speed of light in miles/sec would be approximated by rounding up the measured speed in meters/sec to 300,000,000, and then converting that to miles/sec. Quite a stretch to justify your claim, I would say. Note that, if the speed of light was measured in miles/sec, it would be rounded up to 186,300, not 186,400.

BTW, note that, for the original numbers you posted:

the speed of light is 669,600,000 miles/hour or 186,400 miles/sec

dividing 669,600,000 by 3600 (the number of seconds in an hour) gives 186,000 miles/sec, indicating that number was probably calculated by multiplying the commonly used, rounded to the nearest 1000 value of 186,000 miles/sec by 3600. The site apparently calculated the two different values using different means, apparently basing the first on the commonly used rounded version in miles/hour (186,000) and the second on the commonly used rounded version in meters/second (300,000,000).