"The Bible says the Earth is flat." - Not Quite

In response to my "Bring it Atheists" article, Mark made the statement "The Bible says the Earth is flat." He used Daniel 4:11 as his reference. While I have heard many people make this claim before I have never heard anyone use this verse as a reference, so I was definitely intrigued.

It didn't take long at all for me to realize how faulty his argument was. If you simply read the verse before it you realize that someone is describing a dream.

Daniel 4: 10 (YLT) As to the visions of my head on my bed, I was looking, and lo, a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height [is] great: 11 become great hath the tree, yea, strong, and its height doth reach to the heavens, and its vision to the end of the whole land;

If you start at the beginning of the chapter, you'll realize the dream was that of a pagan king named Nebuchadnezzar.

How anyone can take a quote taken from a pagan king describing something he saw in a dream and use it to claim that the bible says the earth is flat is beyond me.

Bring it Atheists

I stopped writing articles concerning religion on OurTakes and started this blog because that site was getting flooded with debate between Christians and Atheists. That wasn't the point of the OurTakes website, so I decided to start a site where I can just answer questions about the bible and Atheist attacks on its authenticity.

One hurdle I didn't really consider was traffic. While Ourtakes has visitors, readers, and active posters, this little blog doesn't. So, I am writing this article as a challenge to Atheists out there. Post your questions, contradictions and problems with the bible here so I, and some of the Christian readers here, can try to answer them.

Atheists, this is your chance to show us why we are wrong. I know many of the posters on Netscape er... Propeller should jump at this opportunity.

Do you really seek the truth as you claim?

What issues do you have with Christianity being true?

I don't claim to have all the answers to the questions that will be asked. I probably don't know the answers to most of them. I really would like to study and find them. Atheists are skeptics, I am also a skeptic. I naturally question most things I hear and am told. But, I am skeptic that believes in Jesus.

1 Peter 3:15b (YLT)
And [be] ready always for defense to every one who is asking of you an account concerning the hope that [is] in you, with meekness and fear;

Can Christians argue the Earth is only 6000 years old?

In today's post by vjack on the Atheist Revolution blog, he makes the claim that sometimes Christians hide behind the "agree to disagree" statement in order "not to give serious reconsideration of his or her position." This argument definitely goes both ways. I have had similar discussions with Atheists who would pull out the "agree to disagree" or more often I find Atheists are quick to bring up Leprechauns and trolls as a way of relating Christianity to something ridiculous when their arguments come up small. But I digress.

The part of his post that made me think was "The claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old is factually false. Overwhelming evidence contradicts this claim. If the Christian makes this claim and I challenge him, we cannot very well agree to disagree."

Can a Christian argue that the Earth is only 6000 years old?

I am not going to pretend to know a lot about the aging process, or the testing of the age of the earth or anything else for that matter. I will agree with vjack that there is overwhelming evidence that contradicts the claim that the earth is only 6000 years old. On the other hand, Christians that argue that the world is only 6000 years old, almost always have the stance that God created the world with age. Basically that if God had created everything new, things wouldn't have functioned correctly. For example, when God created trees, he probably didn't just put seeds in the ground, he most likely just created a fully formed tree.

Now, I am not trying to argue that the world is only 6000 years old, but I will say that the argument can't be dismissed as ridiculous. If someone holds that view they can "agree to disagree" with someone who holds a view of a much older earth. It does not as vjack put it, "suggest that the Christian is delusional".

Did Elijah ascend to heaven?

The first question of the blog comes from a Wicca run site called Pendragon. This site seems to have many of the tough questions that I want to try to tackle in this blog. I will be going back to this list often, but I will try to use other sites, sources, and any questions posted in comments or emailed to me will take precedent.

Here is the question:
"II Kings 2:11 says that Elijah ascended to heaven in a whirlwind. John 3:13 says that nobody before Jesus ever ascended into heaven. Which statement do you believe?"

This isn't a very difficult question to answer, I figured it would be a good place to start. The word heaven in 2 Kings 2:11 means sky. Young's Literal Translation rightly translates this verse as heavens. Elijah did not ascend to heaven. Jesus was the first.

It is a shame, this is an instance where the "translators" of the King James Version and the New American Standard, among others, decided not just to translate, but to add just a little bit of their doctrine.