How can christian believe the bible when it says the earth is stationary (implying a flat earth)?

Question

1 Chronicles 16:30: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable.”

Psalm 93:1: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm ...”

Psalm 96:10: “He has fixed the earth firm, immovable ...”

Psalm 104:5: “Thou didst fix the earth on its foundation so that it never can be shaken.”

Isaiah 45:18: “...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast...”

lol alpha i just joined up, i havent activated the e-mail thing yet. Besides why cant you just answer here?

Answer 1

Well, I fully agree with your sentiment, but your conditional logic fails... "Immovable" does *not* imply "flat." Better to ask:
"How can christian believe the bible when it says the earth is stationary when:
- techtonic plates clearly move over the mantle
- the planet clearly revolves
- the planet clearly orbits the sun
- the sun clearly moves in the galactic arm
- the arm clearly rotates around the Milky Way's centre
- the galaxy clearly moves in relationship to the galactic cluster (as demonstrated, for instance, by Andromeda's closing.)
- objects in the Universe are clearly moving away from each other as per the expansion/inflation of the Universe."

Answer 2

Psalm 93
1 The LORD reigns, He is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

Psalm 96:10
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.

1 Chronicles 16:30
Tremble before him, all the earth; he has made the world firm, not to be moved

Psalm 104:5
5 You fixed the earth on its foundation, never to be moved.

6 The ocean covered it like a garment; above the mountains stood the waters.

7 At your roar they took flight; at the sound of your thunder they fled.

8 They rushed up the mountains, down the valleys to the place you had fixed for them.

9 You set a limit they cannot pass; never again will they cover the earth.

Isaiah 45:18
18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I [am] the LORD; and [there is] none else.

Answer 3

It's a matter of interpretation. Modern Christians don't actually believe that the Earth is flat or fixed. It just like the "four corners of the Earth" thing. We know that the Earth isn't square and doesn't have four corners. That's probably just talking about four major areas, which, at the time the book was written, would have probably included Jerusalem, Canaan, Rome, and Babylon, or something like that.
Also, consider that the book was written by humans. Christians don't believe that God wrote the book, they mostly accept that it was humans who wrote it, and people didn't know much about astronomy back then, and the Bible's been re-written many times over the centuries. Surely, someone would have screwed it up over that time.
Just because the Bible says something, that doesn't necessarily mean that Christians believe it. If you look at the earlier parts, you read a lot about punishing people with death for minor crimes, but of course, Christians today don't think that a woman should be put to death for adultery.
The Bible isn't supposed to be a strict set of rules, but rather just a series of stories meant to inspire and preach good behavior. It's only the hard-core Christians that still actually believe the story of Noah's ark and all that to be true.

Answer 4

In most the these verses the context is talking about the earth as enduring, lasting. Nowhere is mentioned flat or mounted on pillars or turtles or on the shoulders of a man as was believed by the masses back then.

Isaaih 40: 22 says "[God} is dwelling above the CIRCLE of the earth." And Job 26: 7 goes on to tell God hung the earth upon "nothing". Speaking of orbits, spin axis, elipticals, decay rates would have meant nothing to the people back then nor would it mean that much to most people today.

What it does show is knowledge unavailable to man at that time. It shows the truthfulness of the Bible.

When you desire to find fault with the Bible in the future, please first examine the context of the scripture before crying wolf again. Stop taking one sentence and trying to make it the whole argument.

Answer 5

i'm not sure which version of the bible you are using

but 1 chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, 96:10 do not use the term earth but world according to both the KJV and NIV

only psalm 104:5 and Isaiah 45:18 use the term earth. and please note that both do not capitalize the word earth thus not meaning the planet. the term earth could mean the material or physical world or it could mean the soil personally i think it means the former

as for the term world it too may not mean the planet itself but world being the plan he has set for us

Answer 6

The claim seems to have an underlying assumption that it is impossible to be "fixed" and "immovable" and yet orbit around the sun. But the fact is, the earth has proven itself to be fixed and immovable:

• The earth is fixed and immovable in relation to its orbit around the sun. Have you ever known the earth to "unfix" itself and "move" itself out of its orbit around the sun? It doesn't happen, because the earth is fixed and immovable in relation to its orbit around the sun.

• The earth also is fixed and immovable in relation to us. There has never been a single day in which we had no place to stand, because the earth unfixed itself and moved itself out from under our feet.

The earth has always been fixed and immovable, both in relation to us and in relation to its orbit around the sun. In fact we've learned to take it for granted that the shine will shine during the day and that there will ground for us to stand on when we awake in the morning.

Having said that, one should at least consider the possibility that the verses cited above are actually using a figure of speech, to express the permanence of God's will and the permanence of his creation.

Answer 7

Nowhere does it claim the earth flat. It states it is solid from the perspective of a human. Wait............no I can't detect any movement when I push it.
As an intelligent being I understand that when I walk I push the universe behind me. And Jumping I bounce the earth off of my feet and that I am standing on my head supporting the earth so the heavens have a place to spin on.

Now can you make any further silly inferences between the lines that I can poke fun at?

Answer 8

From Isaiah Chapter 40 verse 22 we read:
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in
This word CIRCLE of the earth was written in the Bibles hundred of years before being discovered by scientists.

Answer 9

Maybe I am reading something differently but I do not see the words flat up there or the implying of a flat Earth.

Answer 10

With all due respect to the scientific community, according to the five primary senses of mankind, the world is a stable, flat earth.

If you are implying that the six sense, the mind, contemplates the earth in a multi-dimensional matrix of consciousness, then with all fairness, nobody knows what that implies, so nobody knows how the earth is really woven into the fabric of the universe.