CX

[rant = on]
Are you farging kidding me!?!?!? He's an all-powerful friggin deity for the love of pete. He could very well have given his people the knowledge required to understand it from the get go. For that matter he could have circumvented the whole problem of writing it down by simply insuring that his people were born with all the knowledge required. Honestly why do people believe this rubbish!?!?
[/rant]

Hired Gun

What can I say? People on this thread don't even believe that there is a system of gravity (the gravity of the Barycenter, which causes one of our tides) that depends on the earth's rotation. Imagine that. A fundy having to inform skeptics of a matter involving physics. What IS the world coming to?

A.S.A. Jones

I wasn't born again yesterday.

Soul Invictus

I respect his point also, however I would say its few and far between the atheists that actually give an exorbitant amount of time saying the Bible is literal. I'd concur that the earlier writers wrote the best way they knew how. Just as the earlier Egyptians had multiple gods to explain the phenomena they experienced..isn't that the premise for the dying god saviors of the world? I think the theists use this to support the existence of God, whereas the atheists use this to support the existence of nature as the God force of the world.

Radcliffe Emerson

I went through an atheistic period in my 20's then returned to Christianity.
However, years later I also took the time (2.5 years to be exact) to completely read the bible all the way through from front to back, and it had the exact opposite effect on me. It was such mythical, fairy-tale, pure b.s., it made it even more clear to me that there is no supreme being at all, and the bible is absolute nonsense.
That and studying the history of the bible, how the books were voted on, how early beliefs in Jesus were crushed, make it even more crystal clear it's b.s.

I can't see how anyone would continue to believe it if they took the time to study the history of that period, the archaeological evidence, and the history of early Christians and the Church.

The laws of nature are the same now as they were 2,000 years ago, and things the bible portrays as true just do not happen, period.


Just my two cents.

Craig

Go look up what a Barycenter actually is before you start talking out of your ass about it. A Barycenter is essentially the center of mass for a pair of bodies.

That has absolutely nothing to do with gravitational attraction. Gravitational attraction is completely independent of rotation (or any kind of movement at all).

I'm going to quote what was said again-

Clearly this is implying that if the earth stopped rotating we'd all fly off of it. That is hardly the case.

The word used here is rotation which refers to the spinning of the earth about its N-S axis which has nothing whatsoever to do with a Barycenter.


Here are a few links that discuss it-

http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/barycntr.htm

http://www.bartleby.com/61/83/C0198300.html (definition of center of mass)

Hired Gun

I did not say 'gravitational attraction'. I very specifically stated 'the effects of gravity' (not gravity itself) that depend on the earth's rotation. One of the 'effects' of gravity is the second tide, not the one caused by the gravitational pull of the moon.

The Earth and Moon revolve around the center of mass of the Earth-Moon system which is called the barycenter. The gravitational attraction of the Moon pulls up a bulge of water on the side of the moon facing the Earth. The centrifugal force of the Earth's revolution about the barycenter causes a second bulge of water on the side of the Earth opposite the Moon (the Moon's gravitational forces are weaker on the far side of the Earth and the inertial or centrifugal effect is stronger). So as the Earth rotates on its axis, for any observer on the Earth there should be two high tides and two intervening low tides per day. The Moon rises about an hour later every day because it orbits the Earth in the same direction that the Earth spins on its axis. Therefore, the tides should be about an hour later every day. http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache...hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Tides - we have one tide because the Moon pulls the water and we have the second because the Earth-Moon system doesn't rotate exactly round the centre of the Earth, but around the centre of gravity of the system called the Barycentre. This means that a bulge of the Earth swings around sending water out in the opposite direction to the Moon. Without the spinning Earth, we'd only have the one tide. http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/databas...2/p01332d.html

Quote:

Clearly this is implying that if the earth stopped rotating we'd all fly off of it. That is hardly the case.

In no way did I think that Mark would interpret what I said to mean that we would all float away into space. I like the way that you proceed to tell me what I mean.

Quote:

The word used here is rotation which refers to the spinning of the earth about its N-S axis which has nothing whatsoever to do with a Barycenter.

I used the terms correctly. See the above. You are welcome to read anything you like into what I have said; the fun comes in the ability to misunderstand, and if no one was misunderstood, ii would be a dull world, indeed.

Quote:

Here are a few links that discuss it- http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/barycntr.htm http://www.bartleby.com/61/83/C0198300.html (definition of center of mass)

Gosh, thanks. I'll look into it.

A.S.A. Jones

Craig

Centrifugal force (a phantom force really, but I'll leave that for another thread) is completely unrelated to gravity. I would not call that an "effect" of gravity. It is an effect of the revolution, not gravity. I'm sure you'll come back with "the revolution is due to gravity" but that's not the primary cause of your second tide so I would say it's a stretch, at best.

Also, it is an effect of the earth revolving about the barycenter, yes, but the word in the original post is rotation which is something completely different than revolving.

Toto

This link seems to have broken vBB. This is a test to see if disabling smilies will fix it.

Hired Gun

I will say that it is refreshing to know that people can be picky with words, even if the subject being discussed is gravity and not religion!

A.S.A. Jones

Craig

Well, seeing as how they are two completely different things I don't know how that's picky.