I love urban legends. Not only are they fun to read but they sound so real that even though I I know they are not true, I want to believe them.
NASA AGREES WITH THE BIBLE...ACCORDING TO JW EMAIL
by whereami 29 Replies latest jw friends
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james_woods
I remember actually seeing this in an Awake magazine years and years ago. I had already heard it in a physics class, so I knew it was not of Witness origin.
I am still amazed that the Awake editors could just let this get published without any challenge or verification - but then, they also put up all that scientific mumbo-jumbo in the Creaton or Evolution book too.
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Awakened07
"Thou shalt not bear false witness (lie)" ?
'Meh - not so important. Spread it to everyone you know!!'
References: Joshua 10:8 and 12,13 and 2 Kings 20:9-11.
LOL - 'references'.
I guess we didn't need the NASA references as long as we had the biblical ones.
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Fadeout
Noted creationist (and presumably, gay porn star) Harry Rimmer related this tale in a 1936 book. Interestingly, on the WT Library CD there are six citations or quotations of his work supporting the WT's position (between 1952-1965). The last time he is mentioned (1970) is in connection with this bogus "missing day" story, and they haven't referenced him since.
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elder-schmelder
This reminds me of the famous episode on Jeparody.
The answer was "New World Translation"
The Question was "What is the MOST ACCURATE bible translation".
That was a good urban legend !!!
Elder-schmelder
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undercover
I remember actually seeing this in an Awake magazine years and years ago.
I would love to see that reference...anyone able to track that down, scan it and post it? Please? Pretty please??
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carla
I thought you were going to tell us that the wt was reverting back to its old teaching that God really does live in the Pliedes on star Alcyone. (sp?)
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MissingLink
A friend of mine brought this up a few weeks ago when we were talking. I busted out laughing at the idea that math could get stuck by running orbit calculations backwards. How does the math know that the earth stopped? What's it not jiving with. I thought this was obsurd and funny. My friend was pissed that I wasn't taking him serious (he believed it). I tried to clear it up with him. Hopefully he sees the funny side now. I sent him the snopes link the next day.
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james_woods
I haven't read the snopes link yet, but I thought that the NASA scientists who had to debunk NASA from ever saying such a thing was very good.
They did explain that the math of orbital equations can only really predict the expected future position of earth and other planetaries - it cannot be "run backwards" ,so to speak, to see if the earth had "lost a day" in the past.
To further illustrate the absurdity of it all, one of them ponders the mechanism by which a "day was lost, the sun standing at high noon for 24 hours". He quite reasonably asserts that one of two totally impossible things would have to have taken place:
a) - the Earth suddenly stops spinning on axis once per 24 hours. The implications would be enormous - the lateral speed of rotation at the equator would mean that horrific decelaration forces, monumental winds, and probably enough crust deformation to create the mother of all earthquakes would certainly be the result. And then you would have to accelerate it up to normal spin 24 hours later.
b) - the Sun perhaps took off on a weird spiral path, to match the earth's orbit and daily rotation? Even more absurd.
True believers in the biblical "lost day" would probably be better to suggest that some substitute form of light occured at the time, to keep a near-daylight level of light going for that time. Maybe a comet? The Tungusta event in the early 20th century was said to have this effect as far away as London - from the vast amount of dust it put up in the atmosphere. The sun's light was refleted and refracted far around the horizon to produce a twilight-like effect for many hours.
But no reasonable (or unreasonable) explanation could ever be mathematically derived from the present day observations of the solar system.
