{"id":166,"date":"2006-04-10T11:32:59","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T16:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/166"},"modified":"2006-04-10T11:36:50","modified_gmt":"2006-04-10T16:36:50","slug":"when-the-bird-and-the-bird-book-disagree-believe-the-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/166","title":{"rendered":"When The Bird And The Bird Book Disagree, Believe The Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay&#8230;it&#8217;s getting just plain medieval deep in the heart of Texas.&nbsp; Bill Nye, The Science Guy, was giving a presentation at McLennan Community College in Waco, and some people walked out after he told them that a literal interpretation of Genesis 1:16 just doesn&#8217;t square with the facts&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>And God made two great lights: A greater light to rule the day, and a less light to rule the night, and he made the stars also. <\/em>-Tyndale&#8217;s Old Testament<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Well&#8230;okay&#8230;&nbsp; As poetry it kinda works, but it isn&#8217;t right.&nbsp; The sun is a star, and a fairly common type of star at that.&nbsp; And the moon shines in the sun&#8217;s light (and also a bit of reflected earth light too from time to time, so we get light from it that&#8217;s been doubly reflected), not its own.&nbsp; The moon is not a light, anymore then the mountaintops that reflect the last light of the day as the sun goes down are lights.&nbsp; It&#8217;s the moon&#8230;a pretty amazing object in its own right, but it is not a light.&nbsp; And the sun is a star too&#8230;little different from most of the other stars whose light we see at night.&nbsp; But the person who wrote those lines could not have known any of that and you can see their intent well enough.&nbsp; <em>God made all the things which shine down upon us from the heavens above&#8230;the sun which gives us the day, and the moon which shines brightly in the night and also all the stars that shine in the night&#8230;<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Fine.&nbsp; I can dig it.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve spent many a night gazing up in rapture at the creator&#8217;s work.&nbsp; This is a beautiful amazing universe we live in.&nbsp; Depending on how expansive your view of God is (or how willing you are to admit you really don&#8217;t know crap about what God <em>is<\/em>, other then it&#8217;s that which created the cosmos), science and religion don&#8217;t really have much to argue about in Genesis 1:16.&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wacotrib.com\/news\/content\/news\/stories\/2006\/04\/06\/04062006wacbillnye.html\">But some people just don&#8217;t want to hear it<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"body\"><\/p>\n<p>The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse <em>Genesis <\/em>1:16, which reads: &ldquo;God made two great lights &mdash; the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He pointed out that the sun, the &ldquo;greater light,&rdquo; is but one of countless stars and that the &ldquo;lesser light&rdquo; is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light.<\/p>\n<p>A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We believe in a God!&rdquo; exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"body\"><\/p>\n<p>Fine, but you don&#8217;t seem very willing to embrace that which God hath wrought are you?&nbsp; What the hell were you doing in a science lecture lady?&nbsp; See&#8230;this is what&#8217;s a tad scary about this story.&nbsp; This fundamentalist woman took her children to a science lecture expecting to hear nothing that contradicted her religious conceits.&nbsp; So what have they been teaching in science classes in Texas for the past generation or two?<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay&#8230;it&#8217;s getting just plain medieval deep in the heart of Texas.&nbsp; Bill Nye, The Science Guy, was giving a presentation at McLennan Community College in Waco, and some people walked out after he told them that a literal interpretation of Genesis 1:16 just doesn&#8217;t square with the facts&#8230; And God made two great lights: A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}