THE SUN, MOON AND STARS
Stars in space
The sun and the planets in their orbits. Can you name them?
GOD’S WORD AND SCIENCE The difference between the bible account and the natural science account is that of epistemology or method, and the means of knowledge. There are two sources of knowledge: 1 Revelation or what God reveals by his Word and Deeds, (for instance in the bible) and 2. Reason or what God reveals to reason, the universe and human life. There can be no conflict between God’s Word and Reason for God is a rational God and his creation reveals his REASON and HANDIWORK. So far we have seen how a famous scientist made mistakes and errors of calculation. The scientist that I have mentioned did not disbelieve in God. (See footnote) Scientists believed that God had created the universe but they wanted to understand how. They wanted to understand the reasons behind the planetary movements and how the earth and sun fitted into time and motion, and what they saw with their eyes. They were astronomers and just as scientists studied the land and geography so they studied the map of the stars. They saw God’s reason in the stars, in the earth and in the sun but they did not know God’s order and ordering of ideas. That is because God’s reason is the ORDER OF HIS MIND, and man’s reason is the order of man’s mind. That is perfectly logical. For what man can know God’s Mind like he knows his own? He knows there is a correspondence between his reason and God’s but there is a disjunction, a break, between God’s mind and man’s, quite naturally. That disjunction is the reason why knowledge of the universe and God himself is sometimes out of reach. Nevertheless, God has given us the gift of reason, which if used properly, can help us to discover the relationship between a cause and an effect and what is true and what is a lie. 
A sundial
THE FLAT WORLD DISMISSED BY GENESIS Without God’s Word to guide them ancient cultures and scientists believed that the world was flat because that is what it appeared to be. In a manner of speaking it is but only in a manner of speaking, for the earth is a sphere in space. Our everyday experience of walking on the earth is conditioned by gravity and what appears to be a flat landscape. The Genesis account of creation does not follow this reasoning for if God created a dome for the sky what is a dome but a sky over a sphere in space? Without a sphere there can be no dome. Just imagine the earth to be flat. Where would the dome begin and where would it end? But let us take a boat and go out to sea until we can see no land. There is the dome! It is as plain as a pikestaff. The sky dips down to the north, south, east and west because the dome has its circumference on the horizon and never ceases to be a dome either on land or sea. So the principle of shape becomes clear. The earth is a sphere in the sky and the sky is a dome encircling the earth’s sphere. God’s creation is intelligent and intelligence is conditioned by reason and sense. EXPLAINING THE CYCLE OF NIGHT AND DAY, TIME AND SEASONS Day and night is a twenty four hour cycle beginning at sunset and ending at sunrise. (The Hebrew clock) This picture of the twenty four hour day was recorded on sundials centuries ago, for day and night has ever been seen as a cycle. The cycle was never understood by scientist until the 17th century and even then many scientists did not believe the reasons given for night and day. If night and day is a 24 hour cycle of daylight and night why did scientists think that the sun produced the cycle by orbiting the earth? Can you answer that question? The sun began to shine by day and the moon and stars by night, which means that during the day the earth faced the sun and during the night it faced the moon and stars. That is quite obvious is it not? But what is not so obvious is how this happened. If you think with your eyes then the answer is clear that the sun moves around the earth and so shines on it during the day and disappears during the night. Since only one hemisphere of the earth faces the sun during the day and one hemisphere at night, it must be concluded that the sun shines first on one hemisphere and then on another hemisphere but not on both at the same time. How did it do this? 
Stars uncountable.
THE OBJECT OF CREATING THE SUN, THE MOON AND THE STARS
So let us go over this again. The lights were the sun, moon and stars. God had put them in place ‘for signs and seasons, for days and years.’ (Genesis 1: 14) The purpose then was for earth to have time divided into days and years as our calendars show. Without the cycle of night and day, spring, summer, autumn and winter, there would be no time at all, no springs, summers, autumns or winters. God created the sun, the moon and the stars and put them in place to create a planetary clock with precise timing and measurements of days, years and centuries. How then did God do this? His design must have been intelligent and accurate and work just like a clock. Scientist knew thousands of years ago that time was divided into day and night, into months and years because they counted it. They created a sun dial to measure the time when the sun reached its zenith and then went westward to disappear. But why did they not see that the sun does not orbit the earth? The Genesis account is God’s inspired Word. The relationship between the sun, the planets, the stars and the earth is NIGHT AND DAY, TIME AND MOTION. This is stated clearly and intelligently by Genesis 1:14f. The model or hypothesis chosen by Greek scientists was based on ideas of weight and measurements, i.e. The weight of the earth’s elements, the suns’ orbit of the earth and measurements of distances between the earth and celestial bodies. Had they based their hypothesis (guesses) on night and day, time and motion they might have come to a very different hypothesis. It is a certain truth that if you know what a thing is you also know what it isn’t. The fourth day is God’s creation of time and how time is divided into days and months and years. A clock as you know ticks at 60 seconds a minute and that is what God’s planetary clock does, too. Let us accept that our solar system is a clock put together to tell us the time. It was made for us. It was not an accident or a maize of atoms. Then let us consider the logic of God’s clock. |
Creation of the sun, the moon and the stars
On day four God said, ‘Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night, and the stars.’ (Genesis 1: 14-15) What God created on day four is before our eyes. We can see the sun, the moon and on very clear nights some of the planets and stars. We call it the universe. There is no contradiction between day four 0, and day the 25th December, 2011. The bible account has no flaws in it. Nevertheless, understanding what God actually did on Day four, - the details so to speak, - is quite another question. This question arises because of our lack of knowledge relative to God’s. Claudius Ptolemy, for instance, a Greek scientist, born about 87 AD, proposed that the earth was the centre of the universe because it was composed of heavier elements than any other planet or star. Ptolemy thought that all celestial objects, — including the planets, Sun, Moon, and stars, — orbited Earth. The earth, in the center of the universe, did not move at all. This account of the universe was believed in by scientists for one thousand four hundred years. It is not found in the bible. The bible does not say that the earth is the centre of the universe but that it was created before the sun, the moon and the stars. 
Sun setting over pasture land
Copernicus, Nicholaus (1473-1543)
THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE THROUGH REASON AND OBSERVATION Copernicus was a scientist who lived in the 15th century, about 1400 years after Ptolemy. Amongst his proposals were: the sun is the centre of the universe. The earth orbits the sun as do all the planets and stars. This formula agreed with his mathematical calculations of how planets move in space whereas before, Ptolemy’s varied and were not entirely reliable. The bibles account of the fourth day was not in question by Copernicus. But how did it work? That is, after all, what scientists want to know. Copernicus studied the sun, the planets and the stars and applied his knowledge of geometry and mathematics to their positions and movements. His conclusions were very different from Ptolemy’s. Copernicus did not discover the whole truth. He thought that the orbits of the planets were circular when in fact they were elliptical. His theory of the earth circling the sun was not altogether convincing. Many scientists disagreed but the sun centred solar system was later acknowledged by a mathematician and physicist, astronomer, and philosopher by the name of Galileo. He wrote the thesis, The Starry Messenger which was first published in 1610 and made him famous. Another philosopher and astronomer, Kepler, discovered the laws of planetary motion. He believed that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the light of reason. So it is important to know that great scientists like Kepler and Isaac Newton saw God in all the universe and were not scientists because they disbelieved in God. 
Our earth. Picture taken from space
The Moon
COMMON SENSE
It is common knowledge that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This belief was based on what scientists and everybody else saw with their eyes at least until the 17th century. But what they saw was an imaginary sun and an imaginary earth. They were deceived by thinking with their eyes that because they saw the sun rise on the eastern horizon and set on the western horizon that it was on a journey around the earth. They were deceived into thinking that the earth was flat and that it was the centre of the universe. They were deceived into thinking that the earth did not move at all. God did not deceive them. They deceived themselves by thinking only with their eyes. Seeing is not believing. 
Our sun and planets Naza picture
Mars
Saturn
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MOTION LOGIC
A thing moves only if it is free to move. A fixed object cannot move. The sun, the moon and the stars and the earth are not fixed bodies. They are surrounded by space. All of these bodies are in the form of spheres. There is nothing to prevent them moving in any direction, up, down, left, right, in circles or ovals, or rotating. That much is clear of bodies that are not fixed. Examine a billiard ball or a tennis ball and see how many directions they can move in. It is obvious however, that God placed the sun and the planets and the stars in fixed orbits. They moved in these orbits without any visible external force moving them. Therefore they were moved by an invisible force. Isaac Newton called this the first law of motion. However, the earth was not seen to move by scientists so they concluded that it was stationary and fixed in space. They did not see it move, they did not feel it move so they did not they think it moved. Their reasoning was conditioned by their relative position in space, by imagining that their position was fixed in the sky. That conclusion was the result of thinking with their eyes and feelings, what they touched and what they felt. In other words they saw everything from one point of view. That is always a dangerous position to be in. Where there is uncertainty and doubt other guesswork is necessary. There is nothing wrong with guesswork based on possible scenarios of events. God does not contradict reason and it is God’s reasoning that we are trying to understand. We can, if that reason is an order and ordering of ideas that correspond with each other and explain things. As we have seen the earth, like all the planets and the sun, was a sphere in the sky or space. Now let us apply the logic of motion to a sphere. Unless hindered by an external force it can move in any direction. It can move forwards, backwards, to the left or to the right, obliquely or in circles, rotate or tilt in any and every direction. According to DAY 4 the purpose of the sun was to give light to the earth by a great ball of fire millions of miles of light and heat, composed of hydrogen and helium. How might God do this?
Let us imagine that you are the earth and the sun is the fire which you stand in front of to warm yourself. The firelight warms your body but not your back. It is a cold night and your back feels cold. So what do you do? Do you move the fire and place it behind you or do you turn around and let the fire warm your back? Of course you turn around! What would be the point of moving the fire around the room? By turning round like you the earth would be able to face the sun each day and face the stars each night and the time it would take to circle 360 degrees would be 24 hours. But the sun, if it had to orbit the earth and circle 360 degrees of space would take considerably longer than 24 hours. If, for instance, the earth as we now know takes 365 days plus a little to journey around the sun and if the sun took the same time to travel around the earth there would be no day or night. An intelligent God would never make a giant ball of fire do that if all he had to do was tell the earth to turn on its own axis.
GOD’S WORD
St. Paul said, ‘The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.’ (Romans 1: 19-21) King David who trusted God with all his heart said, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day to day utters speech and night after night shows God’s knowledge. There is not speech or language where their voice is not heard.’ (Psalm 19:1-3)
QUESTIONS
Q.1 Why did Ptolemy think it necessary to propose the sun went round the earth?
Q.2 Why do you think scientists saw God's reason in the stars?
Q.3 Is it reasonable to think with your eyes and believe what you see?
Who was Isaac Newton?
Isaac Newton said that ‘An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.’
Footnote: The Discovery that the Earth Rotates Around Its Axis
In ancient times, most people thought that the Earth is fixed and the stars rotate around the Earth. There were only a few who said that the Earth rotates. The first ones that we know about are Hiketas of Syracuse (a city on the island of Sicily) and Herakleides of Pontus (a region that is now in Turkey), who both studied in the school founded by Pythagoras (582 - 496 BC). We don't know much about them, not even exactly when they lived, but it was probably somewhere between about 530 BC and 350 BC. There may have been others before them, but in that case their history and books have gotten lost. The next one after them was Aristarchus of Samos (310 BC - about 230 BC). The most famous (at least in the middle ages) of the Greek astronomers was Ptolemy, who wrote the Almagest around AD 150, which was the most important astronomical book for about 1500 years, but Ptolemy thought that the Earth did not rotate, either around its axis or around the Sun, and so did almost everyone else for about 1500 years, until the Renaissance. www.astro.uu.nl/~strous/AA/en/antwoorden/planeten.html
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