From news@news1.digex.net Tue Nov 15 22:32:18 1994 Received: from relay2.UU.NET by aramis.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.5/3.08) id AA12375; Tue, 15 Nov 94 22:32:18 EST Received: from news1.digex.net by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP id QQxqfe15093; Tue, 15 Nov 1994 22:32:11 -0500 Received: by news1.digex.net id AA26588 (5.67b8/IDA-1.5 for soc-religion-christian@uunet.uu.net); Tue, 15 Nov 1994 22:31:01 -0500 To: soc-religion-christian@uunet.uu.net Path: access3!jdale From: jdale@access3.digex.net (John Dale) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sun standing still Date: 16 Nov 1994 03:30:47 GMT Organization: Home Lines: 315 Message-Id: <3abud7$poa@news1.digex.net> References: <39v03s$48c@geneva.rutgers.edu> Nntp-Posting-Host: access3.digex.net X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Christopher Scurlock (scurlock@sunchem.uucp) wrote: : We were having a discussion about miracles (reading Lewis' book Miracles) : and several of us from different parts of the country seem to remember an : article coming out supporting the story about Joshua, based on astronomical(?) : or geological evidence. This was several years ago, but does anyone have a : specific reference, or is this urban legend. : (Please e-mail replies) : Thanks : [If it's the story I'm thinking of, it's an urban legend. Supposedly : somebody did a calculation, and it could only come out correctly if : you assume the sun stood still at that time. I know I've seen details : posted. I hope one of our readers will have them. --clh] This was posted in another group shortly after the question appeared here. ALL of the following, from the from line to the .sig is from Marty's post, except that I edited out the copy of Christopher's letter. jdale@access.digex.net - - - From: Marty Helgesen Newsgroups: alt.religion.christian Subject: Re: Sun standing still Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 04:53:15 EST Organization: City University of New York/University Computer Center In article <39tb9a$ian@hobbes.cc.uga.edu>, scurlock@sunchem.uucp (Christopher Scurlock) says: > [Christopher's letter quoted.] As he requested, I sent him a personal reply. For the information of others, here is what I sent him: It's a legend. Here is an account of the legend, followed by some commentary: I received this from a friend: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's some interesting stuff that I got off of IVNet (sorry to those who have already seen it). I heard about this years and years ago, but this is the first time I've seen it in recently. It just goes to show what an awesome and totally amazing God we serve! *** Copied from "The Evening Star" Spencer, Indiana on December 6,1978 *** Did you know that the space program is busy proving that what has been called 'myth' in the Bible is true? Mr. Harold Hill, President of the Curtis Engine Company in Baltimore, Maryland and a consultant in the space program, relates the following development: "I think one of the most amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronauts and space scientists at Green Belt, Maryland. They were checking the position of the sun, moon and planets out in space where they would be 100 years and 1000 years from now. We have to know this so we don't send a satellite up and have it bump into something later on its orbits. We have to lay out the orbits in terms of the life of the satellite, and where the planets will be so the whole thing will now bog down! They ran the computer measurement back and forth over the centuries and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal, which meant there was something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the results as compared to the standards. They called in the service department to check it out and they said, "It's perfect." The head of operations said, "What's wrong?" "Well, we have found there is a day missing in space in elapsed time." They scratched their heads and tore their hair. There was no answer! One religious fellow on the team said,"You know, one time I was in Sunday School and they talked about the sun standing still." They didn't believe him, but they didn't have any other answer so they said, "Show us." He got a Bible and went back to the book of Joshua where they found a pretty ridiculous statement for anybody who has common sense. There they found the Lord saying to Joshua, "Fear them not, I have delivered them into thy hand; there shall not a man of them stand before thee." Joshua was concerned because he was surrounded by the enemy and if darkness fell they would overpower them. So Joshua asked the Lord to make the sun stand still! That's right ... "The sun stood still and the moon stayed ... and hasted not to go down about a whole day!" The space men said, "There is the missing day!" They checked the computers going back into the time it was written and found it was close but not close enough. The elapsed time that was missing in Joshua's day was 23 hours and 20 minutes - not a whole day." They read the Bible and there it was ... "about (approximately) a day." These little words in the Bible are important. But they were still in trouble because if you cannot account for 40 minutes you'll still be in trouble 1000 years from now. Forty minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. This religious fellow also remembered somewhere in the Bible where it said the sun went backwards! The space men told him he was out of his mind. But they got out the Book and read the words in II Kings. Hezekiah, on his deathbed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah said, "Do you want the sun to go ahead ten degrees?" Hezekiah said, "It's nothing for the sun to go ahead ten degrees, but let the shadow return backward ten degrees." Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees backward! Ten degrees is exactly 40 minutes! Twenty-three hours and twenty minutes in Joshua plus 40 minutes in II Kings make the missing 24 hours and the space travellers had to log in the logbook as being the missing day in the universe! * end of article * Another IVNetter responded with the following: I enjoyed the story that you posted to the net. I also came across something that you, and hopefully others on the net, would find interesting. When the sun moved backwards in the day of Hezekiah, it means that somewhere on the other side of the world where the sun has just risen, the sun would have backed up and then risen again. Several, thousand years ago, around the estimated time of Hezekiah, the Chinese recorded a day with two dawns. At the time, the Chinese were meticulous record keepers of astronomy. However, the scientists tried to accomodate this with the theory that they witnesses a solar eclipse and that they didn't have the means at the time to know the difference. Now, I don't know about you, but even if I was as thick as a post, I think that I would see a difference between a solar ecliplse and two sunrises. =================================== That's the story as it was posted. Here are some comments I wrote, not necessarily in reply to that appearance of the legend: The story of a NASA computer finding Joshua's long day has come up several times on the net over the years. Here is something I posted when it came up a while ago in another forum, followed by something James Kiefer posted several years earlier on the origin of the leg- end: The mention of the hoax/folk legend of a NASA computer finding Josh- ua's long day reminded me of an article that appeared in the July 16, 1990 issue of _Christianity Today_, "Scientists Discover Hell in Siberia: Stalking the Vanishing Hitchhiker and other Christian Fic- tions," by Rich Buhler. People had been calling his radio talk show about reports that scientists drilling in Siberia had broken through to an area of extreme heat. They lowered microphones into the hole--why they did so is not explained--and heard human screams. Buhler did what his callers did not do and investigated, tracking down the origin of this nonsense. He mentioned other urban folk legends current among some Christians, such as the Social Security checks that came with a statement that the holder must have an iden- tification number on his right hand and forehead. The Social Securi- ty Administration reportedly explained that the checks were intended for future use and had been sent out by mistake. He did not mention the NASA computer hoax. I recommend that anyone with access to a library that carries _Chris- tianity Today_ read this article. Christians who repeat silly sto- ries like those waste their time and the time of other Christians, and discredit Christianity in the eyes of unbelievers. It is impor- tant that unbelievers come to know Jesus Christ, but if they think that Christians believe nonsense like the Hell Under Siberia story or the NASA and Joshua story they are less likely to listen when people witness to them. There follows James Kiefer's discussion of the story: Subject: Re: The Sun stood still Anthony Ng has posted an account of a computer confirmation of the missing day in Joshua 10 and the missing 40 minutes in 1 Kings 20. He quotes a 1969 newspaper article which in turn quotes an engineer, Harold Hill. (Mr Hill has written several books for Christians, such as HOW TO LIVE LIKE A KING'S KID.) William Willoughby, at that time religion editor of the Washington (D.C.) EVENING STAR, inquired of the NASA Spaceflight Center at Greenbelt, Maryland, where the computer proof is said to have occurred. They denied all knowledge of it. He spoke with Mr. Hill, who says that he obtained the story from a reliable source, and is sure that it is true, but has mislaid his notes and cannot remember exactly where he read or heard it. Many of us know the feeling, and will absolve Mr. Hill from the charge of conscious dishonesty (he has never admitted "making it up," and I find no reason to suppose that he did), but at the same time will insist that his account is not acceptable as evidence. I first encountered the essentials of Hill's story some years before the Greenbelt facility was built. The book THE HARMONY OF SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE, by Harry Rimmer, written in 1936, contains the following account (281f), which I here condense: > There is a book by Prof. C A Totten of Yale, written in > 1890.... > Professor Totten wrote of a fellow professor, an > accomplished astronomer, who made the strange discovery that > the earth was twenty-four hours out of schedule! ... Prof. > Totten challenged this man to investigate the question of the > inspiration of the Bible. ... Some time later ... his colleague > replied: "In the tenth chapter of Joshua, I found the missing > twenty-four hours accounted for. Then I went back and checked > up on my figures, and found that at the time of Joshua there > were only 23 hours and 20 minutes lost." > ... the astronomer ... read on until he came to the 38th > chapter of the prophet Isaiah (NOTE by JEK: this recounts the > same episode as 2 Kings 20).... So the accuracy of the book was > established to the satisfaction of this exacting critic. Charles Adiel Lewis Totten is described in WHO WAS WHO IN AMERICA. He was a professor of military science at Yale from 1889 to 1892. His book (one of many), JOSHUA'S LONG DAY AND THE DIAL OF AHAZ, was published in 1890. In this book, the skeptical astronomer convinced by a study of the Scriptures does not appear at all. Totten's argument, so far as I understand it, goes like this. < We know from Daniel 9:27 and from various other passages < (mostly in Revelation) that the public ministry of Jesus lasted < three and a half years. Since He was crucified at the spring < equinox, He must have begun to preach at the fall equinox. < Since he began to preach when He was thirty years old, He must < have been born at the fall equinox. Since the world was created < 4000 years before He was born, the world was created on < September 22, 4000 BC. Therefore this day must have been a < Sunday. But calculating back using a calendar, we find that < this date was a Monday. Therefore there is a missing 24 hours. < Since 40 minutes of this are accounted for by the story in 2 < Kings 20 (or Isaiah 38), we see that the "about a day" mentioned < in Joshua 10 must account for the remaining 23 hours and 20 < minutes. End of proof. CONCLUSION: It appears that the story began with Totten's calculations, which you will note are not based on any astronomical discoveries, bit on some questionable assumptions about Bible chronology. As references to Totten's work were repeated, persons who knew that Totten claimed to have calculated that the calendar was missing a day, but did not know how he had done so, assumed that the calculation must have been an astronomical one, and so we have the story as it appears in Rimmer. Later, it became natural to assume that an astronomical calculation of this sort must have been done with computers, and since Goddard is one of the chief centers for astronomical calculations with computers (I know an astronomer who works there), it was natural to assume that the calculation must have been done at Goddard. And so the story reached its present form, probably not through conscious fraud, but through the willingness of man to repeat the story, adding details of how they were sure it must have happened. REMARK: Even if I did not have evidence about how the story arose, I would still find it hard to believe, because it doesn't make sense. (1) If I drop a tennis ball from the top of a tall building, and use the Law of Falling bodies to determine where it will be x seconds later, my calculation tells me only where it will be it nothing interrupts the fall. It does not tell me whether anything (such as a tennis racquet suddenly stuck out the window by someone on the fifteenth floor) will interrupt the fall. (2) If I observe an automobile driving north at 60 miles an hour past a checkpoint on a long straight highway, I can calculate that 20 minutes ago the auto was 20 miles south of the checkpoint, and 73 minutes ago it was 73 miles south of the checkpoint, and so on, all on the assumption that it has been moving with constant velocity. If I have a report that it passed a checkpoint 80 miles south, not 80 minutes ago, but 90 minutes, then I have evidence that something has interfered with its constant 60-mile-an-hour progress. Perhaps the driver stopped for gas, or to change a tire, or to get a speeding ticket from a traffic officer. But if I have no information except for my observation of the car at the one checkpoint, then all my calculations about its position at various past times are based on the ASSUMPTION that it has been traveling north at the same velocity, with no interruptions. My observation and calculations tell me nothing about whether such interruptions may have occurred. (3) If I use the present positions and velocities of the Sun, the planets, and their satellites to determine by the Laws of Planetary Motion where every one of these bodies will be 10000 years from now, my calculation shows only where they will be if there is no unanticipated interference. It does not show whether there will be such an interference. (4) If I use the present positions and velocities of the aforesaid components of the Solar System to determine by the laws of physics where they were just before Joshua's time, my calculations will show only where they were at that time, on the assumption that there has been no interruption, no interference with their motions. They will tell me nothing about whether there has been such an interruption. Now, if I have a checkpoint in the past, I might be able to show a discrepancy. For example, if I had ancient historical records of a solar eclipse in a given year (preferably between 1200 and 700 BC), observed as total at some given point, and my calculations showed that the path of totality for that eclipse in fact passed 10 degrees to the west of that point, then I might conclude that between that observation and the present day something has happened to slow the rotation of the earth by ten degrees, and I might think of the dial of Ahaz and say, "Aha!" (Of course, I might also consider the possibility that the eclipse report was in error.) However, there do not appear to be any such reports. If anyone knows of any, I am always happy to learn. MORAL: When you encounter stories that appear to confirm the truth of the Christian faith, and you cannot trace them back to a reliable source, or when there are unanswered questions like "How do we know this?", it is best, in evaluating them, to err on the side of too much skepticism rather than too little. DISCLAIMER: I have read Hill and Rimmer, but my account of Totten is second-hand, being derived from several sources, including an article by Robert C Newman in the 23 August 1974 issue of the UNITED EVANGELICAL, a fortnightly published by the Church Center Press in Myerstown, PA 17067 for the Evangelical Congregational Church (which, despite its name, I conjecture to be a Pennsylvania Dutch offshoot of Methodism, possibly arising out of the preaching of Jakob Albrecht or Philip Otterbein -- anyone with better information?). I have seen Totten's book, but not read it. NOTICE!!! All this does not mean that the stories in Joshua and 2 Kings are false. It just means that the alleged computer proof does not in fact show them to be true. One can dismiss the Totten-Rimmer-Hill proof completely and still be a Bible inerrantist. Yours, James Kiefer +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Marty Helgesen Bitnet: mnhcc@cunyvm Internet: mnhcc@cunyvm.cuny.edu "If you don't approve of abortion, don't have one." If you don't approve of slavery, don't own slaves.