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The "Inspiration" of the Bible
Compared with discoveries of modern astronomy

There is no mention in the Bible of "nine" planets, or that the earth is a "wandering star" like the other planets. According to Genesis 1:16 only two "great lamps" were created [the Hebrew term translated "lights" means literally, "lamps"]. There is no trace of the modern idea that each star in the universe is a "great lamp" like our own Sun. Rather, the Bible depicts "stars" as relatively small bodies, created after the earth and set in the firmament above it, and which all "fall" to earth at its end. Neither is there any trace in the Bible of the idea that planets other than the earth were created with "lamps or moons" to light their surfaces at night, nor any reason why they should. Nor any trace that the earth moves, though there is plenty of evidence that it does not, and that the sun, stars, and constellations, move daily and seasonally around the earth. We have only recently learned that we live on the periphery of one arm of one spiral galaxy, like hundreds of millions of other spiral galaxies. Astronomers have recently detected matter circling stars other than our own, have recently detected a Pulsar star with planets circling it, have recently detected a Jupiter-like planet circling a nearby star. Astronomers have recently learned about multitudes of incredibly dim galaxies. And they have recently detected four dark objects, several kilometers wide, circling our sun a little beyond Pluto. Many more probably lay out there which have yet to be detected. All these things were set in heaven to "light the earth?" Even things that don't produce light? There is no evidence that such "Biblical" reasoning is valid. In terms of the cosmos the reverse is true. You can't see but two other galaxies with the naked eye, and those are so distant, they look like very faint stars. Over a billion more galaxies (each containing a billion stars) are invisibly distant. All created to "light the earth?"

E. T. BABINSKI

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