It's obvious to me that wordly knowledge is being hailed as "the light" which Biblically is supposed to be God.

Originally posted by Masonic Light
As mentioned, it was the scriptures that were used to condemn Galileo. No less than Martin Luther called Copernicus a "fool", saying that the latter had placed his own authority above that of the Holy Spirit by theorizing that the earth revolved around the sun.

Martin Luther had quite a lot to say. Just because he we right to question some things about the current church leadership does not mean he was right to condemn Copernicus nor from what I understand, the Jews of the day as well. It's a good thing our example is Christ and not Luther. Furthermore "call no-one good - except the Father in heaven". That includes all of us.

Originally posted by Masonic Light
Galileo proved this mathematically, pointing out its eliptical orbit in detail. The Bible is quite clear in stating that the earth doesn't move, and this contradiction with the scriptures landed Mr. Galilei in hot water.

Other than an aforementioned Psalm (which is a song by the way) by David, where is this at? Also, when you talk about relativity, it is possible to map the earth as stationary, it's just a whole lot harder!

Originally posted by Masonic Light
Were the Christians who told Magellan that the earth was flat in need of more light?

Any educated person knew full well the earth was round by Magellan's time. What source is this coming from?

This is actually a very famous quote, and was used by Mark Twain. Nevertheless, you can find it in many places online, including here:

quotes.prolix.nu...

Originally posted by Masonic Light
Ah, now we're getting somewhere. If God is Light, and if Knowledge is Light, then God is obviously the giver of all Knowledge. It must come from Him.

Originally posted by Masonic Light
So, the question here is: who gave us better knowledge of the empirical world's relation to the solar system....was it the Bible (through David's claim that the earth sits still), or was it Science (through Galileo, who said the earth revolves around the sun in an elliptical orbit)?

Originally posted by The Axeman
Of course. I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt; unless, of course, they are an obvious troll, which you are not.

Originally posted by The Axeman
I'm going to assume you meant to add the words in brackets; if so, what does that make me?! Am I a fool for being of the opinion that I understand the concepts and principles of Freemasonry? I'm not a Master Mason... indeed, I have yet to even be initiated. I've simply done my homework and applied some critical thinking.

Originally posted by The Axeman
If that's not what you meant, please explain.

Originally posted by saint4God
Isn't that what got us into all this mess in the first place? Seeking knowledge instead of seeking God? (Genesis 3). Seeking the creation instead of (and without) God gets us into trouble. That's what the whole Old Testament is all about.

Disclaimer: I do not necessarily agree with this; just pointing it out:

*Blasphemy alert* (sorry I couldn’t help it. )

There are those who would argue that the God of the Old Testament is not the Father, the God who sent Jesus to save us; rather that The Father sent Jesus to save us from the God of the Old Testament.

from: en.wikipedia.org...

Gnosticism also presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable "alien God" and the "creator" of the material - the Demiurge. However, in contrast to Plato, many systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Creator: this sort of Demiurge focusses solely on material reality and on the "sensuous soul". In this system, the Demiurge acts as a solution to the problem of evil. In the Apocryphon of John (in the Nag Hammadi library), the Demiurge has the name "Yaltabaoth", and proclaims himself as God:

"Now the archon who is weak has three names. The first name is Yaltabaoth, the second is Saklas, and the third is Samael. And he is impious in his arrogance which is in him. For he said, 'I am God and there is no other God beside me,' for he is ignorant of his strength, the place from which he had come."

Yaldabaoth literally means "Child, come hither" in a certain Semitic language. Gnostic myth recounts that Sophia (literally 'wisdom', the Demiurge's mother and aspect of the Father) desired to create something apart from the Father to which he did not consent. In this act of separation, she gave birth to the Demiurge and being ashamed of her deed, she wrapped him in a cloud and created a throne for him within it. The Demiurge did not see her, nor anyone else, and thus concluded that only he himself existed, he did not know the source of his power and did not know that there was someone above him. The myth is full of intricate nuances portraying the first separation which later turned into the entrapment of the divine spark, Sophia, within the human form. This spark is latent until awakened by a call and the knowledge of one as this divine spark is the beginning of restoration of Sophia as well as gnosis.

from: en.wikipedia.org...

Gnosticism generally taught that the Earth was ruled over by a lesser "god" called Yaldabaoth, also known as the Demiurge, after Plato (Gr. demiurgos - "one who shapes"). The Demiurge was the head of the Archons, "petty rulers" and craftsmen of the physical world. But human bodies, although their matter is "fallen", contained within them a divine spark or pneuma that fell from the Source, or Nothingness from which all things came. Knowledge (gnosis) enables the divine spark to return to the Source whence it came.

It is improper to declare that all Gnostics felt matter to be completely negative. In many instances, matter is merely described as "evil", as in Plotinian philosophy, as a method of depicting its extreme separation from the primary source of being. Many Gnostics also made use of ritual; ritual being the manipulation of material objects in imitation of divine events or occurences, this presupposes at least the ability of matter to be used for positive effect. Valentinus himself, often referred to as the Gnostic teacher par excellence, only referred to matter as an obscuration of the truth, and its creator only as ignorant of higher powers, not as evil.

In another similarity to Plotinus, many Gnostics (especially the followers of the aforementioned Valentinius) taught that there was the One, the original, unknowable God (sometimes named Bythos, the Monad as it is called by Monoimus, or the first Aeon); and then from the One emanated other Aeons, pairs of lesser beings in sequence. (Valentinius listed 30 such pairs.) The Aeons together made up the Pleroma, or fullness, of God. The lowest of these pairs were Sophia ("Wisdom" in Greek) and Christ.

In the Valentinian Gnostic creation myth, Sophia sought the unknowable One. In one account, she saw a distant light which was in fact a mirror image, and thus drifted even farther away from the pleroma.
Sophia's fear and anguish of losing her life, just as she lost the light of the One, caused confusion and longing to return to it. Because of these longings the matter (Greek: hyle) and the soul (Greek: psyche) accidentally came into existence through the four classical elements fire, water, earth, and air. The creation of the lion-faced Demiurge is also a mistake during this exile, according to some Gnostic sources, as a result of Sophia trying to emanate on her own, without her male counterpart. The Demiurge proceeds to create the physical world in which we live, ignorant of Sophia, who nevertheless manages to infuse some spiritual spark into the creation of the Demiurge. This spark is the pneuma.

After this the savior (Christos) returns and lets her see the light again, bringing her knowledge of the spirit (Greek: pneuma). Christ was then sent to earth in the form of the man Jesus to give men the gnosis needed to rescue themselves from the physical world and return to spiritual world.