Fuss about Firmaments - Cherrypicking the Bible

In my many and varied disputations on the Web regarding Transsex and Intersex issues, I've often come across those who flatly disbelieve the science, as it "contradicts the Bible". In particular, Genesis 1:27.

²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:27, King James Version)

But that got me thinking - always a very dangerous thing to do when looking at scripture. About some lines immediately before that. Genesis 1:6-10 and Genesis 1:14-18

⁶And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

 ⁷And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

 ⁸And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

 ⁹And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

 ¹⁰And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:6-10, King James Version)

¹⁴And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

 ¹⁵And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

 ¹⁶And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

 ¹⁷And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

 ¹⁸And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:14-18, King James Version)

So what exactly is a Firmament anyway?

From Wiki :

The firmament or expanse was a great tent-like (Isaiah 40:22) ceiling made of solid crystalline material (Job 37:18 and Ezekiel 1:22), which might be pierced by skyscraper and gimlet (3 Baruch 3:7–8). It had many windows, some of which opened and closed for the sun and moon to travel through (1 Enoch 72:2–5) or to let water, which was held above, fall through as rain (Genesis 7:11). On top there were also warehouses of snow and hail (Job 38:22). Stars were small objects that were attached tenuously to its surface (Genesis 1:14–17, Daniel 8:10, Matthew 24:29, Mark 13:25, Revelation 6:13, 8:10, 9:1 and 12:4).

OK, it's Wiki, so let's ignore what it says and look at the original sources. Those (literally) Apocryphal are in Italics.

(Isaiah 40:22, King James Version)
²²It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

(Job 37:18, King James Version)
¹⁸Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten looking glass?

(Ezekiel 1:22, King James Version)
²²And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above.

(Baruch 3:7-8)
⁷ And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heaven, saying,
⁸Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest.

(1 Enoch 72:2-5)
^2. And this is the first law of the luminaries: the luminary the Sun has its rising in the eastern portals of the heaven, and its setting in the western portals of the heaven.
^3. And I saw six portals in which the sun rises, and six portals in which the sun sets and the moon rises and sets in these portals, and the leaders of the stars and those whom they lead: six in the east and six in the west, and all following each other in accurately corresponding order: also many windows to the right and left of these portals.
^4. And first there goes forth the great luminary, named the Sun, and his circumference is like the circumference of the heaven, and he is quite filled with illuminating and heating fire.
^5. The chariot on which he ascends, the wind drives, and the sun goes down from the heaven and returns through the north in order to reach the east, and is so guided that he comes to the appropriate portal and shines in the face of the heaven.

(Genesis 7:11, King James Version)
¹¹In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

(Job 38:22, King James Version)
²²Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,

Genesis 1:14-17 I've already mentioned.

(Daniel 8:10, King James Version)
¹⁰And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them.

(Matthew 24:29, King James Version)
²⁹Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:

(Mark 13:25, King James Version)
²⁵And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.

(Revelation 6:13, King James Version)
¹³And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

(Revelation 8:10, King James Version)
¹⁰And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

(Revelation 9:1, King James Version)
¹And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.

(Revelation 12:4, King James Version)
⁴And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Oh Crikey.

Well, it's interesting, in a surreal kind of way. Never mind, let's look at something else, my brain needs a clean-out after that stuff.

Cubits.

There's some argument as to how long a cubit actually was. It depends on who you ask, and when. But there's no argument that it meant about half a meter, perhaps a smidgin more. That leads me to a quick digression: one programme I was working on involved all sorts of measurements of length. Degrees of latitude. Thousands of feet. Flight levels. Cables. Metres. Nautical miles (admiralty). Fathoms. Nautical miles (US). Radar miles. Statute miles. Thousands of yards. It was all too easy to acquire some data in metres, possibly entered manually, possibly from a radar, and display it in miles (statute) instead of miles(radar).

So we converted on entry everything to cubits internally for all calculations, and explicitly de-converted it purely for display on screens, with appropriate units. We defined a cubit as 50cm exactly. Try to display a quantity of CUBITS_TYPE, and the system would barf - there was no such facility. It had to be the result of a CUBITS_TO_KILOFEET function (in KILOFEET_TYPE), or a CUBITS_TO_RADAR_MILES (in RADAR_MILES_TYPE) or whatever. All I can say is that it worked, and we never had any problems with feeding out a quantity in miles instead of kilometers, and causing Bad Stuff(tm) to happen. As happened with the Mars Climate Orbiter.

OK, end of digression, back to Holy Scripture.

I can understand, in an intellectual way, how someone might decide that a book is God's Holy Word, literally true in every respect. What I can't understand though is someone claiming that that's what they believe... yet not campaigning against the obvious frauds and giant conspiracies by Scientists and Evil-utionists: "Meteorology" and "Space Travel". Think of the money that could be saved if to get to the moon, all one would have to do is find spot where the tower of Babel was built, and erect a structure 463 cubits, no more, no less, high. Call it 250 metres or so.

Rather shorter than the Empire State Building, at 383 metres.

For a well-researched theological analysis of the Firmament, see THE FIRMAMENT AND THE WATER ABOVE by P.H.Seeley, Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991) 227-40 . This covers Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian and other cosmologies (as well as Hebrew/Biblical), and is a fascinating and well-written read.

So if anyone objects to Transsexuality or Intersex conditions actually existing, rejecting the UnGodly works of Scientific Secular Humanism... ask them why they're not campaigning about the fraudulent wastes of money on spaceflight and weather forecasting, the whole rain-falling-from clouds bit, instead of the Waters Above being let in as the Good Book says.

Or maybe not. I'm afraid of what they might answer. 40% of those surveyed in the USA believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, after all. They may just decide to stop cherrypicking, and get rid of this whole "round Earth" theory.