by middleman 101 Replies latest jw friends
Gravity. Yawn.
Ha. Gravity holds stars in place? Go back to your books. This does not explain how they are suspended, off by themselves. Try again. And sir, I just proved that hanging and suspended are synonyms. I thought maybe you actually were going to try to post an intelligent counter argument. Yikes. "Truly your intellect is dizzying."
This story reminds me of a door I called on one time out in service. The woman was convinced that angels were following her around because everytime she went by a streetlight in her car, the streetlight went off. Clearly a case of angels.
No. For anybody who knows anything about stretlights you know that they have light sensors on them. Often, when someone's headlight is maladjusted, the light from the headlight causes the streetlight to turn off. No miracle. No mystery. No angels.
This is a profopundly important story, (and a true one), because it illustrates that people only believe in angels or spirits when they are ignorant of some facts. If this person knew the technical aspects of streetlights, then she would never have even thought about angels when they truned off as she passed by. So... ignorance leads to spiritual explanations. This has been true since the beginning of time.
Our dear pathetic storyteller in this scenario, did not know that cop cars and ambulances had the ability to freeze or change stop signals, so he went straight from his ignorance to a spiritual explanation. Why? Because he just is not satisfied with simply not knowing why what happened happened. He must come up with an explanation because he is not comfortable in the position of honest non-knowing.
But what if we didn't have a scientific explanation for the poor impatient fellow. Would this then be permission to go speculating about angels, Whippowacks and Marglars? No. This type of speculation is what got us into the sticky business of religion in the first place. because the cavemen did not know what that bright light in the sky was, they made up a story that it was a guy riding a chariot accross the sky or (insert stupid made up story here.) It wsn't until many years later we knew the facts about the sun. stars etc.
Lesson learned: Even if we could not come up with a rational scientific reason for why something happens, that still is not a good reason to jump to angels, flippy flop monsters, gnomes, sprites, gods etc. Just because we can't explain something scientifically NOW does not mean that we will never be able to explain that thing by science. So why jump to the spiritual explanation before all other natural explanations are completely exhausted? Loneliness, not being able to deal with the fact that you are going to die alone in the universe with no god to welcome you home, being so attached to life that non-life is just too depressing, having psychlogical issues that haven't been dealt with and so on are reasons why people just can't wait... TO BELIEVE in something! OOOO it feels so warm and fuzzy to believe in something. Tell me a good story about a savior coming to make everything allright and I'll believe it no matter how stupid and ridiculous it really is. Just as long as I don't have to face reality in all of its harshness. Read me a story of damzels in distress and heroes slaying monsters and I'll drift right off to sleep. Anything but the cold hard facts... please.
Incidentally, stars are not hanging or suspended in any way. They are in motion, traveling thousands of miles per hour in massive rotations and swirls as the result of a very powerful "bang." Move your hand through water with suspended objects in it and notice how the objects swirl around your hand as it passes by. This is the type of motion the stars are experiencing. They are all ultimately traveling away from a central strting point it seems. Gravity and enertia play a part but do not hold stars still. What holds a baseball being thrown at 100mph by Nolan Ryan still? It is an absurd question because the ball is moving very fast and not still at all. So it is with stars. They only appear still because of the great distance they are from us. Another case of a puny human getting tricked by their insignificant subjective viewpoint.
The thing is, stars are not suspended in water, or swirling in water. They are in space. They keep their places, while hundreds of thousands of miles and lightyears away from any other thing. So the Big Dipper stays the Big Dipper. Magical thinking to think there is no purpose or design behind that.
Gravity holds stars in place? Go back to your books. This does not explain how they are suspended, off by themselves. Try again.
You're just embarrassing yourself here. Stars are held in their relative positions by gravity in relation to other celestial bodies in a similar manner to the Earth's gravitational attraction to the sun.
And sir, I just proved that hanging and suspended are synonyms. I thought maybe you actually were going to try to post an intelligent counter argument. Yikes. "Truly your intellect is dizzying."
'Hang' and 'suspend' both mean 'held in place', and again you demonstrate an extremely subjective view. Stars are in constant motion, as is the entire galaxy, and all the other galaxies. Simply put, their motion isn't discernable to you because 1) They're very far away, and 2) Earth is in relative motion. Please don't embarrass yourself further.
Duh, held in place. I am asking you how they are held in place. And by the way, earth is relatively close to the sun. You can't say this about the billions upon billions of stars in our universe. They are light years away from each other. No where near enough for gravitational pull to have an influence.
Galaxy , collection of stars, held together by their mutual gravitational attraction, and orbiting around their common centre. Galaxies range in size from dwarf systems of only a few million stars, to giants containing up to a thousand billion. The Sun and all the stars visible in the night sky to the naked eye belong to one such galaxy, our own Milky Way. Although principally recognized through the light given off by their component stars, galaxies also contain other material such as clouds of gas and dust, and significant quantities of dark matter whose nature is not yet understood.
http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761553870/Galaxy.html
The stars are not hanging or suspended. They are spatially extended. The appear to "hang" to an earthbound human at the bottom of this gravity well.
Gravity can--and does--make its influence felt over thousands and millions of light years. The Andormeda Galaxy is 2 million LY away, we are pulling towards each other in a gravitational embrace.
It is the force that shapes the Universe, that creates its macro structure, on the mega scale.
Burn, who believes in Angels.
Duh, held in place. I am asking you how they are held in place.
In absolute terms, they are not "held in place" at all, and in relative terms, they are held in place by gravity.
And by the way, earth is relatively close to the sun. You can't say this about the billions upon billions of stars in our universe. They are light years away from each other. No where near enough for gravitational pull to have an influence.
And this is based on your own in depth research I suppose? You should stop now. Really. People are laughing at you.
I believe there is a force holding them in place. It's bigger than just gravity though. When you leave earth's atmosphere, the pull of earth no longer works. Take a look sometime at the balls of liquid floating around the space shuttle and station. No gravity, but they stay in a ball. My point is that light years away from any other material object, stars keep their places. They do it for millennia. I don't believe this is accidental. It's just as amazing as it would be if you had rubber balls orbiting in your kitchen
