Surfing the gravity waves through history - now we know they really exist
In celebration of gravity waves being observed thus
proving once again Einstein’s general theory of relativity, I think the following
scripture is appropriate.
Bless the Lord, O my soul.
O Lord my God, you are very great.
You are clothed
with honor and majesty,
wrapped in light
as with a garment.
You stretch out the heavens like a tent, (Psalm
104:1-2).
This text
encapsulates the history of religion and science better than just about any
other scripture.
Medieval Times
God is great and
awesome and his works are so grand we can’t understand them. So don’t bother please. Let the church tell you what you need to know
when you need to know it.
Age of the
Enlightenment
What a quaint
primitive metaphor this is. Imagine,
comparing the heavens to a tent. I
suppose on a starry night you might be able to say this but fortunately, we are
much wiser now so we don’t need to waste our time with things like that. We’ll let the poets write stuff like this.
Einstein
Hey everyone, guess
what, the heavens really are like a tent, and I mean, like tent fabric. The heavens are a fabric and space/time is a
fabric too.
Establishment
science and religion
Einstein, you are a
nut case. You scientists, I mean
really. First you tell us there’s this
thing called an ether. Then we find out
it’s a vacuum out there and now you’re telling us it’s like a sheet or canvas
up there. What will they think of next? Obviously this passage represents the
imagination of the writer. And while we’re
talking about that, the resurrection of Jesus is also imagination.
February 11 2016
A.
Einstein was right.
B.
The Bible is right (at least about the tent part). We Christians, of course, would say the
entire passage is right.
C.
The passage is the beginning of a beautiful poem which
employs a number of metaphors to describe the universe around us.
D.
All of the Above.
Imagine that. After all our so-called enlightenment, the
answer is “all of the above.”
posted by Marc Breault @ 7:53 PM
2 Comments:
Psalm 104 was and still is used to support geocentrism: "He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved." Science has shown that earth does move and there is really no such thing as something "never being moved", at least when it comes to celestial bodies.
Ultimately using the bible to support scientific claims is a subjective exercise. Better just to read the bible as it actually is, man's effort of himself to understand the world that he lives in. A noble effort but also pretty far off the mark at times. There is no shame in this. Being wrong is a huge part of being human.
Yes I agree with you. My intent here was to celebrate both science and the poetry of the Bible by taking a light hearted look at how this sort of thing was viewed throughout history. That's why I put the qualification in that the Bible was right at least about the tent part anyway. I believe Genesis, for example, should be celebrated for what it is, and not for what we want it to say. In this instance, I think it is ironic that the tent metaphor was thought of as just that, a metaphor, but then it turns outthat this was more literal than we could have imagined. As for the text itself, it is a poem which employs metaphors.
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