Why isn't the standing still of the sun and the moon not recorded by other cultures?

[Compassionist]

I am quoting from Joshua 10: 12 - 14, the Bible (English Standard Version)

"At that time Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,

Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”
And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.

Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel."

Why isn't the standing still of the sun and the moon not recorded by other cultures that had invented writing?

The event described in Joshua 10:12–14, where the sun and moon are said to have stood still to allow the Israelites more time to defeat their enemies, would - if taken literally - constitute a global astronomical phenomenon. If the Earth’s rotation truly stopped or slowed (which is what "the sun stood still" would physically mean), it would have had catastrophic global consequences, including massive earthquakes, tsunamis, and changes in atmospheric motion due to sudden deceleration.

Such an event could not have gone unnoticed by other civilisations and would have been recorded by other literate cultures that kept astronomical or historical records.

At the time (around 13th to 15th century BCE, depending on the dating of the conquest narratives), several advanced civilisations with writing and astronomical records existed, including:

Egyptians
Babylonians
Chinese (Shang Dynasty)
Minoans/Mycenaeans
Sumerians
Indus Valley remnants

Yet none of these cultures, despite their meticulous sky observations, record a day when the sun and moon stood still or behaved abnormally. I conclude that this is because the Bible is lying about the Biblical God making the sun and the moon stand still.

[1213]

Calling the ancient Hebrew cosmology “flat-domed” isn’t prejudice; it’s textual and linguistic evidence. Hebrew raqia means “something hammered or beaten out” - a solid expanse....

The "Can you beat out the expanse with Him, hard like a cast mirror?" can as well describe what we can see nowadays. In a way atmosphere is firm (strong) and it can be seen as stretched out.

...If the oceans merely “rose,” that water had to come from somewhere - atmosphere, ice, or subterranean sources. The total volume required to cover Mount Ararat exceeds all surface and atmospheric water combined several times over.
...

Bible tells the original continent was stretched above vast amount of water.

To him who spread out the earth above the waters; For his loving kindness endures forever:
Ps. 136:6

And it is said the flood water came from "fountains of great deep".

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep were burst open, and the sky's windows were opened. The rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.
Gen. 7:11-12

I believe the "fountains of the great deep" were mainly on the area of the Mid-Atlantic ridge. And it is the braking point of the original single continent that was above water. When the flood came, the water level rose, because dry land sunk to where the water was before the flood. So, actually water level never rose, it just looked like that, because land sunk.

And the amount of water was enough, because all the sunken stuff had not yet been compressed enough by the water. Now the reason why land seems to rise is that the material below water has been compressed and basically the ocean floors go down, which causes the illusion of rising land.

If Earth were stationary, all stars would maintain constant angular separation....

Or they are moving in a way that modern scientists don't understand.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to RBD in post #40]

Thank you for your reply. I’ll address the key issues in turn.

1. On “Lack of Confirmation ≠ Disproof”

You wrote that the absence of corroboration doesn’t disprove a supernatural claim. True - but it also doesn’t confirm it. History and science work by proportioning belief to evidence. A claim that the sun and moon literally stopped would, if true, have left worldwide observational, orbital, and tidal consequences still visible in astronomy and geology. Their absence doesn’t merely “lack confirmation”; it positively contradicts the claim’s physical implications. To call such a claim “false” is not to accuse the ancient scribe of deceit but to note that the described event did not occur in reality.

2. On the “Natural vs. Supernatural” Escape Hatch

You say that “supernatural events change natural law” and leave no physical trace. But the moment a supposed event affects matter - the sea parting, the sun halting, the dead rising - it does intersect the physical world. An event that interacts with matter yet leaves no measurable trace is indistinguishable from a story that never happened. By redefining “supernatural” as “beyond detection,” you render the claim unfalsifiable - and therefore outside knowledge, not above it.

3. On Burden of Proof

You claim that “the prosecution must prove its case,” implying skeptics bear the burden to disprove miracle stories. That’s a category error. In rational inquiry, the burden of proof lies on whoever asserts existence. If someone claims, “The moon once stopped mid-orbit,” the responsibility to substantiate that claim lies with them, not with everyone else to disprove it. Otherwise, we’d have to believe in every untestable story ever told — dragons, fairies, and contradictory miracles alike.

4. On Faith as “Its Own Evidence”

If faith is its own evidence, then all mutually incompatible faiths are equally validated - Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Scientology, Jainism, Bahaism, Daoism, Animism, Judaism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc. That collapses truth into subjective conviction. If you agree that not all contradictory religions can be simultaneously true, then faith alone cannot serve as epistemic proof of any one of them.

5. On Selective Credulity

You accept biblical miracles but reject those in the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, or the Bhagavad Gita. Yet your stated method (“faith is its own evidence”) would validate them all equally. To privilege one text over others requires independent, inter-subjective evidence - the very standard you dismiss as “naturalism.”

6. On “With God All Things Are Possible”

That verse simply asserts divine omnipotence; it’s not an explanation. Saying “God can do the impossible” does not convert an impossibility into evidence. If anything can be explained by “God changed the rules,” then nothing can be tested or confirmed. This is special pleading: you exempt your favored stories from every standard you apply elsewhere. That's inconsistent and hypocritical.

7. On the Alleged Historical Record

A written record is data, not a demonstration. Ancient texts record talking serpents, shape-shifting gods, and dragons; the mere presence of a record tells us what people believed, not what objectively occurred. Without independent verification, a document remains a claim, not evidence of truth.

8. On “Faith vs. Science”

Science is not “faith in naturalism.” It’s methodological naturalism - a process that tests hypotheses against observations. If the supernatural affects the natural world, that effect is testable. If it never yields observable effects, then it lies outside rational discourse altogether.

9. On Prudence vs. Prejudice

Withholding belief until sufficient, cross-cultural, verifiable evidence appears is not bias - it’s intellectual honesty. If someone asserts a miracle that leaves no trace, no confirmation, and contradicts physics, prudence requires suspension of belief, not accusation nor credulity.

Claims that violate known physics require proportionally stronger evidence, not an exemption from evidence. Labeling an unverified story “supernatural” is not an explanation; it’s an evasion. Faith may comfort, but it cannot verify. Absence of corroboration in every other civilization’s records and in modern astronomy makes the Joshua miracle empirically false, not merely “unconfirmed.” I remain open to any independently testable evidence that any such supernatural event occurred.

[Haven]

[Replying to RBD in post #31]

In this case, there evidence is not absent. It's written in a physical book for all to believe, unless predetermined not to be believe.

Why are you not a Hindu? The Vedas are written as a physical book for all to believe, unless predetermined not to believe (by your own standard). I guess Vishnu doesn’t love you enough to predetermine you to believe?

Can you not see how this line of reasoning is unfalsifiable (and therefore meaningless)?

Or, remaining skeptical unless confirmed elsewhere.

This is the only reasonable position on holy books and all unsubstantiated claims.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to 1213 in post #41]

Thank you for continuing the discussion. Let’s examine each point carefully.

1. On the Hebrew Raqia

“The atmosphere is firm (strong) and can be seen as stretched out.”

The Hebrew raqia (from raqa, “to beat out or hammer metal”) was not a metaphor for gas. Every ancient Near-Eastern culture - Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hebrew alike - described the sky as a solid dome holding back cosmic waters.
This is clear from Genesis 1:6-8 (“waters above the firmament”), from Ezekiel 1:22 (“like crystal, awesome”), and from Job 37:18 (“hard as a cast mirror”). No ancient language had a word for “atmosphere.” Translating raqia as “expanse” is a modern theological revision, not what the authors pictured. Calling this “flat-domed cosmology” is therefore not prejudice; it’s textual-historical accuracy.

2. On the Global Flood Mechanism

“The water came from fountains of the great deep… the land sank, so the water level never rose.”

This scenario contradicts physics, geology, and hydrology on multiple levels:

Volume problem: To submerge mountains like Ararat (≈5 km high), Earth would need three times the current ocean volume of extra water. No hidden reservoir exists large enough to supply that.
Density problem: Solid crust cannot suddenly “sink” several kilometres in forty days without producing planet-wide seismic and thermal devastation.
Energy problem: Compressing ocean basins to “make water look higher” would release enough heat to vaporise the oceans.
Evidence problem: There is no global sedimentary layer dated to a single flood, nor a simultaneous extinction/re-population pattern in fossils. Regional floods, yes; global deluge, no.

The “mid-Atlantic ridge fountain” idea is reverse geology: the ridge is a site of seafloor spreading upward, not a crack swallowing continents downward.

3. On the Supposed “Single Continent Above Water”

Plate tectonics explains continental drift precisely and measurably by paleomagnetic and radiometric data over hundreds of millions of years. No geophysical model allows all continents to have been simultaneously “above vast amounts of water” only a few thousand years ago. The continents are composed of less dense granitic crust, which floats higher on the mantle than denser oceanic basalt. They cannot “sink” wholesale into the mantle and then rebound within millennia.

4. On “Stars Moving in Ways Scientists Don’t Understand”

“Or they are moving in a way that modern scientists don’t understand.”

This is a non-falsifiable escape. Astronomical mechanics are among the most precisely confirmed domains of science: stellar parallax, proper motion, and planetary orbits are predicted to nine decimal places.
The heliocentric model successfully explains:

retrograde motion of planets,
stellar parallax measured since 1838,
Doppler shifts showing stellar radial velocities,
spacecraft navigation across billions of kilometres.

If the Earth were stationary, none of these would align. Dismissing them as “maybe misunderstood” is equivalent to claiming any evidence can be ignored if it conflicts with a preferred religious belief.

5. Methodological Point

Appealing to “maybe scientists are wrong” is not an argument; it’s an epistemic blank cheque. It places one’s belief beyond all possible evidence - which means it is not falsifiable and therefore not knowledge. A claim that could never be shown false, even in principle, is indistinguishable from imagination.

The ancient Hebrews described a solid firmament, not an atmosphere.
A global flood is physically impossible given conservation of mass, heat, and the geological record.
The “land-sinking illusion” contradicts plate-tectonic data and basic buoyancy physics.
Modern astronomy does understand stellar motion - with overwhelming, predictive accuracy.
“Maybe science is wrong” is not evidence; it is the surrender of rational inquiry.

In short, reinterpretations of myth that ignore physics do not rescue the literal reading; they merely relocate the impossibility. Until verifiable physical evidence appears for a planet-wide deluge or a stationary cosmos, these remain ancient myths, not historical events.

[Haven]

[Replying to RBD in post #40]

Thank you for your reply. I’ll address the key issues in turn.

1. On “Lack of Confirmation ≠ Disproof”

You wrote that the absence of corroboration doesn’t disprove a supernatural claim. True - but it also doesn’t confirm it. History and science work by proportioning belief to evidence. A claim that the sun and moon literally stopped would, if true, have left worldwide observational, orbital, and tidal consequences still visible in astronomy and geology. Their absence doesn’t merely “lack confirmation”; it positively contradicts the claim’s physical implications. To call such a claim “false” is not to accuse the ancient scribe of deceit but to note that the described event did not occur in reality.

2. On the “Natural vs. Supernatural” Escape Hatch

You say that “supernatural events change natural law” and leave no physical trace. But the moment a supposed event affects matter - the sea parting, the sun halting, the dead rising - it does intersect the physical world. An event that interacts with matter yet leaves no measurable trace is indistinguishable from a story that never happened. By redefining “supernatural” as “beyond detection,” you render the claim unfalsifiable - and therefore outside knowledge, not above it.

3. On Burden of Proof

You claim that “the prosecution must prove its case,” implying skeptics bear the burden to disprove miracle stories. That’s a category error. In rational inquiry, the burden of proof lies on whoever asserts existence. If someone claims, “The moon once stopped mid-orbit,” the responsibility to substantiate that claim lies with them, not with everyone else to disprove it. Otherwise, we’d have to believe in every untestable story ever told — dragons, fairies, and contradictory miracles alike.

4. On Faith as “Its Own Evidence”

If faith is its own evidence, then all mutually incompatible faiths are equally validated - Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Scientology, Jainism, Bahaism, Daoism, Animism, Judaism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Buddhism, etc. That collapses truth into subjective conviction. If you agree that not all contradictory religions can be simultaneously true, then faith alone cannot serve as epistemic proof of any one of them.

5. On Selective Credulity

You accept biblical miracles but reject those in the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, or the Bhagavad Gita. Yet your stated method (“faith is its own evidence”) would validate them all equally. To privilege one text over others requires independent, inter-subjective evidence - the very standard you dismiss as “naturalism.”

6. On “With God All Things Are Possible”

That verse simply asserts divine omnipotence; it’s not an explanation. Saying “God can do the impossible” does not convert an impossibility into evidence. If anything can be explained by “God changed the rules,” then nothing can be tested or confirmed. This is special pleading: you exempt your favored stories from every standard you apply elsewhere. That's inconsistent and hypocritical.

7. On the Alleged Historical Record

A written record is data, not a demonstration. Ancient texts record talking serpents, shape-shifting gods, and dragons; the mere presence of a record tells us what people believed, not what objectively occurred. Without independent verification, a document remains a claim, not evidence of truth.

8. On “Faith vs. Science”

Science is not “faith in naturalism.” It’s methodological naturalism - a process that tests hypotheses against observations. If the supernatural affects the natural world, that effect is testable. If it never yields observable effects, then it lies outside rational discourse altogether.

9. On Prudence vs. Prejudice

Withholding belief until sufficient, cross-cultural, verifiable evidence appears is not bias - it’s intellectual honesty. If someone asserts a miracle that leaves no trace, no confirmation, and contradicts physics, prudence requires suspension of belief, not accusation nor credulity.

Claims that violate known physics require proportionally stronger evidence, not an exemption from evidence. Labeling an unverified story “supernatural” is not an explanation; it’s an evasion. Faith may comfort, but it cannot verify. Absence of corroboration in every other civilization’s records and in modern astronomy makes the Joshua miracle empirically false, not merely “unconfirmed.” I remain open to any independently testable evidence that any such supernatural event occurred.

Thank you so much for this. I didn’t have time to continue participating in this debate, but this is essentially a perfect takedown of RBD’s fideism (and fideism more broadly).

Faith is simply not a path to truth. We could only cure diseases, build farming systems that feed billions and fly to other planets when we understood and accepted that when faith conflicts with evidence, evidence deserves priority.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to Haven in post #45]

Faith is simply not a path to truth. We could only cure diseases, build farming systems that feed billions and fly to other planets when we understood and accepted that when faith conflicts with evidence, evidence deserves priority.

I totally agree.

[1213]

...The Hebrew raqia (from raqa, “to beat out or hammer metal”) was not a metaphor for gas. Every ancient Near-Eastern culture - Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hebrew alike - described the sky as a solid dome holding back cosmic waters.
This is clear from Genesis 1:6-8 (“waters above the firmament”), from Ezekiel 1:22 (“like crystal, awesome”), and from Job 37:18 (“hard as a cast mirror”). No ancient language had a word for “atmosphere.” Translating raqia as “expanse” is a modern theological revision, not what the authors pictured. Calling this “flat-domed cosmology” is therefore not prejudice; it’s textual-historical accuracy.

The problem is, you offer lot of unverifiable claims.

The word "expanse" is literal translation of the text. So, I think it is more likely what the authors meant. To call it “flat-domed cosmology” is purely modern imagination.

The word raqia can be translated many ways. To beat, stamp, beat out, spread out, stretch. Why do you think to beat would be better than so stretch out?

I don't think it is necessary to say space is water, but how to prove space is not actually water? Plankton found on space stations window kind of shows it could be so. It could also be that it means it is faked in some pool on earth.

https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankt ... f-the-iss/

Volume problem: To submerge mountains like Ararat (≈5 km high), Earth would need three times the current ocean volume of extra water. No hidden reservoir exists large enough to supply that.

That is today. But the world was not exactly the same back then.

Density problem: Solid crust cannot suddenly “sink” several kilometres in forty days without producing planet-wide seismic and thermal devastation.

And the plates were large enough and there was water so that they didn't just collapse in hard way. I think the hydroplate theory shows quite well how it happened.

Energy problem: Compressing ocean basins to “make water look higher” would release enough heat to vaporise the oceans.

I don't think you understood correctly what I said. Sorry, if I explained poorly.

Many things sunk, because of the flood. For example animals and plants on dry land. They ended in the sediments and became for example oil and gas fields. After the flood there was lot of air in the mix, which has been released later, because of the water pressure. And that is the reason why the new ocean floors have gone down and it now looks like there could not have been enough water.

No good reason to think there was enough heat to vaporise the oceans.

Evidence problem: There is no global sedimentary layer dated to a single flood, nor a simultaneous extinction/re-population pattern in fossils. Regional floods, yes; global deluge, no.

There is no good reason to assume global uniform layer, when you understand how the flood happened.

And those dating methods can't be trusted, so they are useless.

What is clear is that there is lot of fossils around the earth and lot of sedimentary layers and oil, gas and coal fields, which are evidence for the flood.

The “mid-Atlantic ridge fountain” idea is reverse geology: the ridge is a site of seafloor spreading upward, not a crack swallowing continents downward.

I don't claim it is a crack swallowing continents. It is fault line in the original continent that collapsed down. No good reason to assume seafloor is there spreading to some way.

Plate tectonics explains continental drift ...

I don't think it is physically possible the way it is claimed to happen. If it would happen, the "stretch lines" that can be seen would have to be different.

...
If the Earth were stationary, none of these would align.

Sorry, I don't believe that.

Appealing to “maybe scientists are wrong” is not an argument; it’s an epistemic blank cheque. It places one’s belief beyond all possible evidence - which means it is not falsifiable and therefore not knowledge.

No. If there is a possibility that the scientists are wrong, then it is possible that their claims are not real knowledge.

A claim that could never be shown false, even in principle, is indistinguishable from imagination.

Truth can never be shown false.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to 1213 in post #47]

The word "expanse" is literal translation of the text. So, I think it is more likely what the authors meant. To call it “flat-domed cosmology” is purely modern imagination. The word raqia can be translated many ways. To beat, stamp, beat out, spread out, stretch. Why do you think to beat would be better than so stretch out?

The Hebrew verb raqa means “to beat out metal into thin plates” (see Exodus 39:3). In every ancient Near-Eastern text of the same period, the sky is pictured as a solid vault holding back heavenly waters. No ancient language had a concept of “gas” or “atmosphere.” Rendering raqia as “expanse” is a modern theological attempt to harmonise with later science, not what the Hebrew author imagined. So “flat-domed cosmology” describes their worldview accurately, not imaginatively.

I don't think it is necessary to say space is water, but how to prove space is not actually water? Plankton found on space stations window kind of shows it could be so. It could also be that it means it is faked in some pool on earth.

The ISS “plankton” came from Earth’s upper atmosphere, carried upward by air currents or spacecraft contamination. Space itself is a near-vacuum - less than one atom per cubic centimetre. Every radio transmission, telescope image, and particle detector confirms that space contains no liquid water. If it were a fluid, light and radio waves could not travel straight, and satellites would experience drag and heat - they don’t.

That is today. But the world was not exactly the same back then.

We can measure ancient seawater and atmosphere from ice cores and sediment isotopes millions of years old. They show no sign of triple water volume or collapsed crust. The same laws of physics applied then as now.

And the plates were large enough and there was water so that they didn't just collapse in hard way. I think the hydroplate theory shows quite well how it happened.

The “hydroplate theory” violates conservation of energy. If subterranean water had burst out with enough force to lift continents, the released heat would have boiled the oceans and melted the crust. No geophysicist accepts it; it appears only on creationist websites and has never passed peer review.

Many things sunk, because of the flood… oil and gas fields… new ocean floors have gone down…

Oil, gas, and coal form over tens of millions of years as buried organic matter slowly heats under pressure. Their chemical structure and isotope ratios prove long-term formation, not a one-year catastrophe. If they were flood-buried in days, the material would be raw plant mush, not petroleum and anthracite.

There is no good reason to assume global uniform layer, when you understand how the flood happened. And those dating methods can't be trusted, so they are useless.

Radiometric, ice-core, and tree-ring dating all give consistent results that agree with one another. If those physics were wrong, nuclear power plants and medical radiography would also fail - but they don’t. A global flood would leave one mixed layer of marine, land, and air species; instead we find a precise, ordered sequence through time.

I don't claim it is a crack swallowing continents. It is fault line in the original continent that collapsed down. No good reason to assume seafloor is there spreading to some way.

Magnetic minerals in oceanic crust record reversals of Earth’s magnetic field as lava solidifies. These “zebra-stripe” patterns are mirror images on each side of the ridge - direct evidence of seafloor spreading measured by satellites and seismographs. This is observed data, not assumption.

I don't think it is physically possible the way it is claimed to happen. If it would happen, the "stretch lines" that can be seen would have to be different.

Those stretch lines are the symmetrical magnetic stripes produced by spreading. The physical measurements fit the model exactly, including the age of the crust increasing away from the ridge.

Sorry, I don't believe that.

That’s fine, but belief and evidence are separate. Stellar parallax, Doppler shifts, and spacecraft navigation all confirm the same rotating, orbiting Earth to nine decimal places. To dismiss it without counter-data is personal disbelief, not scientific critique.

No. If there is a possibility that the scientists are wrong, then it is possible that their claims are not real knowledge.

Science never claims infallibility - it reports the models best supported by all available data. Saying “maybe scientists are wrong” is true in principle but empty in content unless you present better evidence. Otherwise every claim becomes equally “possible,” and knowledge stops.

Truth can never be shown false.

That confuses truth itself with claims about truth. A real truth can survive testing because false claims about it will fail. If a claim cannot be tested or shown false even in principle, it’s indistinguishable from imagination, not verified truth.

[1213]

The Hebrew verb raqa means “to beat out metal into thin plates” (see Exodus 39:3). In every ancient Near-Eastern text of the same period, the sky is pictured as a solid vault holding back heavenly waters. No ancient language had a concept of “gas” or “atmosphere.” Rendering raqia as “expanse” is a modern theological attempt to harmonise with later science, not what the Hebrew author imagined. So “flat-domed cosmology” describes their worldview accurately, not imaginatively.

The word raga means to beat, stamp, beat out, spread out, stretch. It can be used about beating metal, but on its own it is not “to beat out metal into thin plates”. The idea of solid dome vault is just an interpretation.

The “hydroplate theory” violates conservation of energy. If subterranean water had burst out with enough force to lift continents, the released heat would have boiled the oceans and melted the crust. No geophysicist accepts it; it appears only on creationist websites and has never passed peer review.

It seems you don't know what the theory says.

Oil, gas, and coal form over tens of millions of years as buried organic matter slowly heats under pressure. Their chemical structure and isotope ratios prove long-term formation, not a one-year catastrophe. If they were flood-buried in days, the material would be raw plant mush, not petroleum and anthracite.

All of those can be formed in a short time, if the conditions are what they would have been after the flood.

Radiometric, ice-core, and tree-ring dating all give consistent results that agree with one another. If those physics were wrong, nuclear power plants and medical radiography would also fail - but they don’t.

No good reason to think so. The problem is not that the theory is wrong, but that the assumptions required can be wrong. By what I see, the dating is just circular reasoning, based on poor reasoning.

A global flood would leave one mixed layer of marine, land, and air species; instead we find a precise, ordered sequence through time.

If the flood happened as Bible tells, there would be many layers exactly the way they are now. And because all animals are not the same and not in the same place in the first place, they would not be mixed in the same place.

Otherwise every claim becomes equally “possible,” and knowledge stops.

Guessing the most likely answer to be true is not knowledge, it is a belief.

[Compassionist]

[Replying to 1213 in post #49]

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will address your points one by one.

The word raga means to beat, stamp, beat out, spread out, stretch. It can be used about beating metal, but on its own it is not “to beat out metal into thin plates”. The idea of solid dome vault is just an interpretation.

In Biblical Hebrew, raqa is consistently used for hammering or beating metal flat (Exodus 39:3; Isaiah 40:19; Jeremiah 10:9). When Genesis 1 reuses that verb for the sky, the natural sense is “something beaten out and solid.”
Ancient Near-Eastern parallels - Babylonian, Ugaritic, Egyptian - also describe the heavens as a solid firmament separating waters above from waters below. Calling that “flat-domed cosmology” simply reports the linguistic and cultural evidence; it’s not a modern invention.

It seems you don't know what the [hydroplate] theory says.

The published version of the Hydroplate Theory (Walt Brown, In the Beginning) states that subterranean water once covered the globe and burst out with enough force to raise mountains and open ocean basins. Those energy levels are calculable: releasing even 1 % of the crust’s mass as pressurised water would deliver ~10³⁰ joules - thousands of times more than required to melt the crust and boil the oceans. That is why no geophysicist, seismologist, or thermal-modeling study supports it; it violates conservation of energy and heat-transfer limits.

All of those [oil, gas, coal] can be formed in a short time, if the conditions are what they would have been after the flood.

Laboratory “fast-coal” experiments produce grams of immature carbon, not megaton seams of anthracite. Natural coal and petroleum show crystallisation, pressure, and isotope signatures corresponding to millions of years of burial at specific depths and temperatures. Their host rocks contain volcanic ash layers dated independently by multiple isotopes; every method converges on long-term formation. No post-Flood scenario reproduces those signatures.

No good reason to think so. The problem is not that the theory is wrong, but that the assumptions required can be wrong. By what I see, the dating is just circular reasoning, based on poor reasoning.

Radiometric dating isn’t circular because the decay constants are measured directly in the lab today. Each method (U–Pb, K–Ar, Rb–Sr, Sm–Nd) relies on different isotopes, half-lives, and closure temperatures, yet they agree on the same ages for the same rocks. Tree-rings and ice-core counts - completely independent of radioactivity - match those numbers. For all of them to be wrong, every branch of nuclear physics, climatology, and dendrochronology would have to fail simultaneously, even though the same physics runs nuclear reactors and PET scans correctly every day.

If the flood happened as the Bible tells, there would be many layers exactly the way they are now. And because all animals are not the same and not in the same place in the first place, they would not be mixed in the same place.

A single year of flooding cannot explain the global ordering of fossils: marine in Cambrian strata worldwide, amphibians higher, reptiles above them, then mammals and flowering plants near the top—each layer containing unique micro-fossils, pollen, and isotope ratios. Those patterns repeat on every continent and in deep-sea cores thousands of kilometres apart. Such consistent order requires long-term ecological succession, not one chaotic year of sediment.

Guessing the most likely answer to be true is not knowledge, it is a belief.

All human knowledge is provisional, not absolute. We know things in 2025 that we didn't know in 1925, 1825 and 1725 and so on. Science doesn’t guess; it infers the model that best predicts and explains all available data. That’s why aircraft fly, GPS works, and radiotherapy cures cancer - because those models correspond to measurable reality better than any rival hypothesis. Belief without testable consequences stops there; empirical models continue to work.