I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity

There is no mention of Gravity in Genesis or, as far as I know, the rest of the Bible. Without gravity, there would be no sun, no solar system, no Earth, no Adam and Eve ... there would be nothing. And yet there is no mention of the most fundamental force of the Universe.I think if there were a passage saying "In the beginning, God said Let there be Gravity" I'd be more likely to believe the rest of the story ... which I don't.I believe in Gravity, not God.Any thoughts?

Thread copied here from the I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

That this is just another thread to point out another apparent error in the Genesis story.

Okay, you don't believe in God.But there is no mention of steak in Genesis yet Steak exists and there is no mention of beer in Genesis and yet steak exists.

I guess neither beer nor steak are as fundamental to the existence of anything else a gravity is to the existence of steak, beer and just about anything else one can mention....On this basis 'Let there be gravity' would make more sense as an opening line in a creation story than 'Let there be beer' or 'Let there be steak'.Personally if I were the creator of all that is seen and unseen I might well start with 'Let there be beer' and see where things go from there - But (probably for the best) I'm not.

That's not really relevant to anything."Gravity" is just a name. Why should that be mentioned.I'm pretty sure you can find plenty of evidence that people understood that things fall. Science has singled out and studied that phenomenon, and given it the name "gravity". So the authors of genesis did not single that out and did not give it a name. But it doesn't follow that they did not know about it.Of course, they did not know nearly as much about it as today's science. But they would have been quite familiar with the phenomenon.To be clear, I am not defending Genesis. There's a lot of nonsense there. But, when we criticize it, let's not exaggerate its problems.

I don't believe in gravity. I accept gravity.I accept gravity because I can see its effects, which are predictable unlike the purported effects of "God". I expect that the writers of Genesis understood the effects of gravity about as well as I do. They didn't mention it but I don't mention gravity in every post either.

Thankfully, Genesis doesnt start like this...for if it did i would debunk it as zealously as critics do now!
In the beginning was human wisdom and that wisdom sought to explain (thus creating) everything now seen and unseen, known and unknown.

Human wisdom is all we have. It's only human wisdom that decides gods are talking to us.

Well... Not really. Humans and the capacity for any wisdom is a rather recent phenomenon. In cosmological terms we haven't even been around long enough to qualify as the proverbial blink of an eye. I assume you are being somewhat metaphorical here? You aren't really suggesting that nothing physically existed before humans started trying to make sense of the world in which they find themselves are you?

Your expectation is almost certainly wrong. The writers of Genesis, and essentially everyone else up until Isaac Newton's time did not think of gravity as being a universal attraction wherein everything attracts everything else. Almost certainly those writers did not understand that the sun and moon were attracted to the earth by gravity, and almost certainly you do understand that.Yes, they understood that objects on earth when raised to a height tended to return to the lowest point possible. But could they understand that exactly the same phenomenon explains the earth staying in orbit above the earth? Surely not. I'm sure you can do better than that.

I always thought the bible was the word of god. If so, it's irrelevant what the scribes who wrote the texts knew about gravity. Gravity is the fundamental force of the universe. Without gravity, NOTHING of what we know the world to be would exist. No world, no land, no seas, no people, no animals ... nothing.So, again, my question is, since gravity is the fundamental force of the universe as we know it, why isn't it mentioned as the very first thing god created?

The bible also fails to mention the weak force, the strong force, and electromagnetism, you know the other 3 fundamental forces of this universe.
Given that god built the thing it would go a long way to believe in him if he described those forces in his book. He could have included a chapter some basic stuff about his universe you one day might need to know. Edited by frako, : No reason given.

That's where you're wrong. I don't understand gravity but I accept the conventional understanding of it.That's my whole point here: you can accept without understanding. You can accept that somebody understands how an airplane flies even if you don't understand it. Creationists try to equate that acceptance with faith but it's different. We accept the explanations of people who can produce results. If you can build an airplane that flies, I'm inclined to accept your explanation of how it flies. If you can produce miracles at will, I'm inclined to accept your explanation of which god is responsible for them.

Most here "understand gravity" to the extent that they think of it it is an attractive force between bodies that keeps planets in orbits and makes apples fall to the ground.In short - Most here have some conceptual understanding of gravity a la Newtonian physics.As imperfect as this understanding may be it is well in advance of anything those writing Genesis had at their disposal. Because A) Newton hadn't done his thing at that point and B) Popular science books and the discovery channel hadn't spread the word to the masses of such cultural achievements.You might well claim to "accept" rather than "understand" gravity, and compared to Hawking or someone like that this is probably accurate. But your understanding is still considerably greater than those who wrote Genesis simply because the scientific explanation for gravity is a well documented cultural landmark in the mass media and scientific age in which you live.