I’m a biologist, Jim, not an astronomer! Someone else can have fun with this one: did you know The Sun is Not a Star?
How many of you have heard this before: "Our Sun is just another star. In fact, it is an average star – one of 100 billion – in the Milky Way galaxy". What if it isn’t just another star? What if what we know about the Sun does NOT apply to all the stars we see in the night sky? Would it throw the big bang theory into irreconcilable doubt? I believe it would.
The goal of this paper is to prove, using only the Bible, that the Sun is NOT a star. There are four major reasons from the Bible why I believe the Sun is not a star, and therefore the assumptions made about stars, their creation, their life, their death, their burn rate, the composition – basically every assumption we make about stars – are faulty. These faulty assumptions completely throw into doubt the theory of the evolution of the universe and the big bang theory.
I think that all that he has proved, using only the Bible, is that he is a ninny.
It’s a geocities website. Geocities and the Bible are always a bad combination. I am surprised there isn’t a blink tag.
I thought geocities was wiped off of the internets?
Goodness golly me. If you click his home link you get redirected to a webring. PZ stuck us in a timewarp!
So it’s toilet paper then?
You don’t need to be an astronomer. The whole premise is crap because it’s based on a 2000-year-old collection of myths and fairy tales.
Heh in the time it took m to log in, the “WTF? Geocities still exists??” point had already been made.
Not only that but the source says it was made in MS Word. It actually says Word 97 and in MOST cases I’d assume it was just the format the file was saved in but with this site…
Every time some religion-obsessed fool “proves” something at odds with reallity using the bibble, all they’ve done is demonstrate that the bibble is no useful guide to much of anything. Also that it’s delusional. As are the obsessed who use this strategy.
“Proofs” like this might play well in Peoria, but they do nothing to advance the human condition, and it would be fair to say they do something (how much, I can’t say) to undo the hard won progress humanity has made over the millenia.
The gist of his essay: iron-age writers made distinctions between our star and other stars. ERGO, the Big Bang is false! QED mother fuckers! Checkmate, evolutionists!
Well, I’m sorry everyone but this is a really cogent, well researched point. I think this is the nail in the coffin for “Science”.
Is our suns burning?
So: The bible differentiates between the Sun and the Stars. Therefore the sun can’t be a star, therefore science is wrong, therefore DONALD E. SCOTT’s Electric Universe model.
Wait wut?
RFW #& wrote:
Hey, what do you have against Peoria???
I think “proofs” like this will play very well in a children’s Creation Science Fair. You can write out the salient points on a few poster boards. The table can display a paper mache model of the sun and a Bible. Voila. A winner.
It’s so cute when creobots dress up and play scientist.
If Jesus doesn’t know it’s a star, it’s not.
Because he’d know, wouldn’t he?
Take that, evolution worshippers.
Glen Davidson
In the spirit of Rosa Rubicondior, how does our friend know the Bible wasn’t written by Satan? If it was, that would be quite a pickle, huh?
Why would “disproving” the scientific theory of the singularity disprove evolution without disproving electricity? After all, they’re all only “theories” and not related in any other way.
Using only the bible, I’m going to design and build a motor car. Erm.. wheel.. erm..
Well that’s your problem, right there.
What do you expect if the Moon doesn’t exist according to the latest insights?
http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm
One correction, he is a Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins, not merely a Ninny.
Well If bible says so, then they can have it the same way. I am not head-butting with morons and their moron-ble.
to prove, using only the Bible,
I think I spotted the mistake!
Thank you, PZ, I needed the laugh today.
Actually that was one of the few times I’ve seen a post and actually laughed audibly – I think this legally entitles me to say lol.
I think he’s correct in the sense that yes, *if* it turned out that the Sun is not a star, this might pose a serious problem for all of physics, and by extension thus also the standard cosmology :)
Ha – you think that’s SCIENCE?
Using this book only. I’m gonna prove that a man can get bitten by a spider and gain super-spider skills like the ability to walk on the ceiling and shoot webs out of his arms. And that J. Jonah Jameson is a jerk and that Mary Jane is a HOTTIE.
But you know what? I don’t have to use just that book. I could use a whole stack, and a couple tv series and a couple of good movies and a couple of bad ones too.
Take that Evolutionists.
A few years ago I came across a “thesis” that “proved” transubstantiation. I wish I’d saved it. It was serious, and it of course used the bibble.
(I’m so religious-naive that I hadn’t encountered either the word or concept of “transubstantiation” outside of a Philip K. Dick novel until I was in my 40s.)
And did you ever notice that “sun” and “star” are different words? Why would we have two different words for the same thing? Huh? Checkmate, Astrophysicists.
Seems to me he just did us a huge favor and disproved the bible.
If the bible is true, then the sun is not a star.
However, since we know the sun IS a star, the bible must not be true!
If A then B, if not B then A.
Well, if the sun is just another star then how come it hurts my eyes when I look at it through a telescope?
The stars don’t do that!!
Score one for babble larnin’.
^ missed a “not”
I find it funny that, even if we grant that the sun is not a star just to humour this nutbag, the big bang model will be unscathed.
GIGO
Given that some parts of the bible aren’t supported by other parts of the bible (e.g., where did Mary and Joseph live before the census), I have to laugh when it’s used to support something in the real world (e.g., said census).
Can’t we use this same logic to prove that Andromeda is a star and not a galaxy? It looks like a star, and the bible never uses the word “galaxy”, therefore it can’t possibly be a galaxy! Checkmate, evolutionist astronomers!
For extra fun and to make it look more sophisticated, let’s throw in some Aristotlean ideas about pure reason. The Greeks named a lot of stars and galaxies, and some Christians seem to venerate Greek philosophy, albeit in odd ways, so why not?
Of course the sun isn’t a star. It hasn’t had an interview on Entertainment Tonight or the red carpet.
To be scrupulously fair, the … er … thing was dated 2003. Word 97 wasn’t cutting edge anymore, but it wasn’t that outdated ten years ago. After all, once they did the … er…”research”, why would they feel the need to update the site to reflect current thinking and/or software? Unchanging and inerrant and all that jazz.
@27 (and @29) Catnamer: you are making a potentially unwarranted assumption: that his proof is sound.
I mean, sure, if you can prove that the Bible implies that the sun is not a star, then the demonstrable fact that the sun is in fact a star definitely implies that the Bible is false.
However, has anyone actually verified that he was successful in proving that the bible implies that the sun is not a star? His argument may be fallacious and faulty in ways beyond the appeal to (biblical) authority?
Right, but if you read the page his logic is “Because science is wrong about the sun being a star, therefore science is wrong, and the Electric Universe theory is correct, which means no big bang.”
Srsly. It’s a god of the gaps argument where “god” is used to create the gap, and the gap is filled by a fruitcake.
If I followed the train of thought in Rollercoaster Tycoon, the merry-go-round would be launched from one roller coaster track to another, then loop-de-loop into the snack cart.
(No… not really, but the mental image keeps me sane)
Wait, I found proof that the sun is just a huge ball of gas! They might be Nephilim…
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
A gigantic nuclear furnace
Where hydrogen is built into helium
At a temperature of millions of degrees
Yo ho, it’s hot, the sun is not
A place where we could live
But here on Earth there’d be no life
Without the light it gives
Fuck it, I’m bored. Might as well try to answer this.
Okay, what we know about the Sun doesn’t apply to all the stars we see in the night sky. Some are bigger, and produce more energy, either in total or per unit area. They have didn’t emission spectrum, the spectral classification are useful. Thanks to differing temperatures, they have different blackbody curves. Unless we are looking at a star that is the same class and mass as the Sun, it probably isn’t the same.
But they work via the same process as far as we can tell. Fusion is pretty much a defining characteristic. They’ll fuse up until iron. Stars like our Sun tend to work on the Proton-Proton chain. This doesn’t apply to all the stars in the night sky. Stars about 1.3 times the size of our star work on the Carbon Nitrogen Oxygen cycle, which is present in the Sun but not a major contributor. There’s even other cycles, even up into the heavier elements(Not past iron really, as that’s when the energy of fusion is a net lose, heavier elements are linked to events like supernovas).
Now, let’s just say he’s right, and our Sun works in the ways others stars like it don’t. What the fuck does this have to do with the Big Bang? This would be a problem with our understanding of Stellar Evolution and Stellar Nucleosynthesis. Not a statement about the Big Bang. I don’t even begin to see how this follows.
That should read “They don’t have the same….” Not the bad sentence I wrote because I’m a fuck up.
Oh, it’s almost cute. It’s like when my little nephew, who is 4, explained to me that when it rains, it douses the sun’s hot and glowing fire, which is why it’s cold and we can’t see the sun when it’s raining. I thought these were very sophisticated scientific ideas for a 4-year-old. And since David Lowe is a 4-year-old, I am totally so impressed by that paper I will just give him all sorts of squishy-tickles too!
Oh, wait. He’s not 4 years old? Yikes, then it’s just creepy, like a truckdriver wearing just a diaper. No squishy-tickles for you!
Hey now. EVERYONE knows the sun is the flaming chariot of the Titan Helios. Pfft.
This sounds very similar to a Creationist “journal” article I reviewed in 2009.
The s-process (really just slow process) in stars makes heavier nuclei than iron, up to bismuth, by neutron capture. Heavier nuclei won’t last long enough to accumulate..
Sure, it takes energy to do it, but there’s quite a lot in a star.
Glen Davidson
I thought the biblical literalists liked the Big Bang Theory! (Actually a frienemy of mine at a local watering hole does not approve of the way Mrs. Wolowitz is portrayed- he thinks she makes evangalists look silly.) In any event, if I were YHWH, i would have been a bit more helpful in Leviticus, perhaps suggesting: “If Thou Shall Build Thy Privy Too Close To Thy Well, I Shall Send Down A Plague To Molest Thee!”
Actually, even fusion makes somewhat heavier nuclei than iron, like cobalt, nickel, and copper. It’s an equilibrium process, after all. You wouldn’t get molybdenum at appreciable quantities that way, of course.
Glen Davidson
OOps , Sorry I meant Mrs. Cooper.
I don’t know…of the two, I think this one makes more sense than the “watching porn will make you gay” one.
As they say on Mythbusters : “Well THERE’S your problem”.
@Glen Davidson
Yea, I did put that badly. It isn’t that fusion after iron doesn’t happen in a star. But it is an energy loss. It is the end of a massive star as the process actually takes more energy than it produces. When this process starts up in a star due to the burning off of the rest of the fuel, it marks the end of the life-cycle of the star.
Of course, this end of life can go on for a very long time given the longevity of stars.
Obviously the sun is not a star. Stars come out at night. Irrefutable logic – who needs the bible.
You may be interested that Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem addressing that very point.
Natural Theology
Primitive
I ate my fill of a whale that died
And stranded after a month at sea. . . .
There is a pain in my inside.
Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith:
Look how the Gods have afflicted me!
Pagan
How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
Anything more than a harmless flea?. . .
The burning plague has taken my household.
Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
Though they were as good as good could be,
I will out and batter the family priest,
Because my Gods have afflicted me!
Medieval
My privy and well drain into each other
After the custom of Christendie. . . .
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer–
So are the clergy I used to fee.
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
Because the Lord has afflicted me.
Material
I run eight hundred hens to the acre
They die by dozens mysteriously. . . .
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker,
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour–
Not to mention the L. S. D!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
Because this God has afflicted me!
Progressive
Money spent on an Army or Fleet
Is homicidal lunacy. . . .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
Because my God has afflicted me.
Chorus
We had a kettle: we let it leak:
Our not repairing it made it worse.
We haven’t had any tea for a week. . .
The bottom is out of the Universe!
Conclusion
This was none of the good Lord’s pleasure,
For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;
But what comes after is measure for measure,
And not a God that afflicteth thee.
As was the sowing so the reaping
Is now and evermore shall be.
Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.
Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!
@gregbroulette
Jinx!
Site submitted to Crankdotnet..http://www.crank.net/index.html
Sadly it will not be the crankiest thing there…
Hey now. EVERYONE knows the sun is the flaming chariot of the Titan Helios. Pfft.
Wrong, heathen. It is the living manifestation of the Aten, which everyone would know had not its worship been stamped out by Horemheb.
Damn missed close bracket.
“Neutrinos are neutral particles similar to electrons.”
What ignorance.
I got as far as “What if what we knowabout the sun does not apply to the other stars in the night sky” and started looking for the website to sign up for the one way trip to Mars. How does this guy remember to fucking breathe?
Why would you need to indirectly refute modern cosmology by using the bible to prove that the Sun is not a star when you can do so by looking at Genesis 1 and reading that god created everything?
Mike.
Because only more science refutes science. And a proven book of mythology/fiction refutes nothing. Which they should know.
Also, if they sound sciency, it might convince a believer to ignore those pesky scientists with their evidenced facts.
TMBG did a correction in song format:
The sun is a miasma
Of incandescent plasma
The sun’s not simply made out of gas
No, no, no
The sun is a quagmire
It’s not made of fire
Forget what you’ve been told in the past
(Plasma!) Electrons are free
(Plasma!) A fourth state of matter
Not gas, not liquid, not solid
Ooh!
Congrats on the excellent reductio ad absurdum proving that the Bible is not true.
What? You mean that was not his intent?
Even if you grant the writer a lot of leeway, he is self-defeating. This opening implies that the assumptions we make are based on observations of the sun and are accurate as applied to the sun, simply inapplicable to other stars. This would, if true, have serious implications for theories about the origin of the universe, but it would also falsify the biblical account.
Doubtless if the authors of the bible were still writing it today, they would have devoted more space to the topic of stars. But alas, the authors are dead and the current editorial team just can’t keep pace.
thomasbloom @57:
Actually, that’s right. They are neutral leptons forming weak doublets with the corresponding charged leptons (electron, muon, tau).
How very pious, and how very good at ignoring tuberculosis, smallpox, and pneumonia.
Gee, those parents of children dying of diseases that they obtained by the simple fault of living would be chastised by such cherry picking.
What’s it like to live without thinking, carbon-based waste of space?
Glen Davidson
Is there anything you can prove using only one book?
I think a few hours with a good dictionary would do him wonders….looking up words like ‘assumption’…and ‘evidence’… and ‘science’…..and……hell, just keeping him busy enough not to be able to post these “proofs” (and ‘proofs’)…..would help us all.
@baroncognito:
That the book exists. If you still have a copy to show anyone who asks, of course. And if it’s generally identifiable as belonging to the class of objects commonly described by the broad standards of human culture as books, rather than as big wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey space oranges or somesuch.
Rich, I think you’d need the book and the ability to interact with reality in some fashion.
Thomas Aquinas could prove it using only a paper-clip and a drop of hydrogen peroxide.
@ 52, I lurk regularly and I’ve seen your nym but I can’t say I’ve remembered past posts to interpret how this is meant; if you mean we (as people in general) assign terrible things to god when we are often agents in said ‘thing’, I would have to agree. If this is, however a Christian/Calvinistic absolution of a god in which you actually hold faith, then you’re going to have to explain his fucked up sense of humor and what free will has to do with Tay-Sachs disease, sickle cell anemia,Trisomy 13,(ad nauseum)….again, apologies if I’ve misunderstood the intent of your post.
But can he prove, using only the Bible, that Justin Bieber is not a star?
Re: baroncogito @ #67:
Since you didn’t specify *which* book, to prove any number of things, I suggest:
Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Physics and Chemistry.
Since the big bang theory began with the observation of red-shifted galaxies (evidence of an expanding universe), and was confirmed with the detection of background radiation coming from all directions (predicted by the theory before it was detected), the sun could turn out to be flaming cheese fondue and it wouldn’t make a lot of difference.
Also, spectrum analysis, dipshit. We can actually determine things like composition and temperature for stars and sun.
And I seem to remember a Biblical description of the moon that implies it shines by its own light. If only there were some way we could determine the accuracy of that one.
re @55;
The Aten? Ptah! The rantings of a solitary megalomaniacal madman.
The sun is a chariot. Specifically a Helium-Carbon chariot.
The most powerful stars, of course, are IRON chariots, and even gods have trouble dealing with those….
Using only the bible, you can prove anything is anything — but only to your own standards of proof. And from what I see of bibblers those standards are pretty darn low.
Chariots? The Aten? Bah. Everyone knows the Sun is a flaming ball of dung rolled across the sky by a scarab (Scarabaeus sacer).
@baroncognito:
Ignorance?
Talking of stars, I came across a passage recently that proves that stars are eternal.
“Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.” (Isaiah 40:26)
It’s now in the Skeptics Annotated Bible.
“1. Stars are obviously tiny, sparkly decorations stuck to the firmament.*”
*Firmament: a thin, solid bowl of the sky.
The sun and stars have different names in the Bible; therefore they are different things.
And so Jesus, the Christ, our Lord, Emmanuel, the Nazarene, and the Anointed One are also six different people.
I don’t know what you lot are on about. I have clear evidence that the Sun is dragged across the sky by a pair of dogs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fargo_Sundogs_2_18_09.jpg
See ? how can you possibly refute such concrete evidence?
It used to be called the Great Andromeda Nebula. THEREFORE NOT A GALAXY DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN
First thought – “Geocities???!” – but that’s been covered.
So if he’s proving the Sun is not a star using only the bible, why does section 4 go into all the “electric cosmos” babble? Not enough faith in ‘goddit’ to not use some pseudo-science?
The Sun is a giant arc-welder? Really?
But wait – then it is explained that stars are also giant arc-welders…
so…
Sun = star
but…
(!Brain asplodes!)
I can prove, by picking letters from the Bible alone, that the Sun is in fact God’s arsehole, and that the stars are the dandruff He suffered with before reaching the state of perfection, and scattered throughout the Universe as a reminder to us all to use anti-dandruff shampoo.
Using the same method, I can prove that Armstrong never went to the moon, the holocaust was a hoax, that PZ is Satan, and that some people will resort to any old bullshit to justify their beliefs in fairy tales..
Well *duh*…the sun is obviously not a star, it’s the exploding TARDIS with River Song in a time loop inside of it!
Oh he of little faith.
This guy needs FOUR places in Scripture to refute the idea that the sun is a star, and with it, evolution? So, is he saying he would refuse to believe the Word of God if it only gave him three references from the Bible? Or does he think God Almighty is so damn otiose and otherwise incompetent that He wastes four Biblical passages where one would do?
I’ve got a lot more faith than this guy. I can believe seven impossible things before breakfast, and I don’t require a single word from Scripture to get he to any of the seven. Give me something really simple and radically unimpossible to believe in, such as the bathroom idiocy of this guy, and I would think it an insult to Scripture to look anywhere in its pages for prooof of that idiocy.