So I have a born again christian family member in their mid twenties who stated with complete confidence that there is a dome in the sky called the firmament and beyond it is where heaven is. She believes space doesn’t exist and rockets just blow up because the bible said so. She is not the brightest and normally I would let this sort of nonsense go but I work in aerospace and have multiple pieces of hardware in space so she is either calling me ignorant or a malicious agent for the devil purposely lying for her so I got pretty annoyed. I can’t find anything about this dome in a google search about religion and I suspect she ended up on a flat-earth YouTube channel that twisted a line in the bible to fit their beliefs and didn’t actually get it from her church. I know its probably hopeless to help her understand how dumb and frankly insulting this belief is but I can possibly talk some reason if I understand the source.

Are there any major or minor religions, christian or other that believe space is a lie and only god is outside our atmosphere?

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    72·
    1 year ago

    So. the firmament is a thing.

    Mostly these days, it’s considered to be allegory, as apposed to firm fact. but people- typically Young Earth Creationist types- will insist the english-translated bible is the absolute word of god meant to be taken absolutely literally. (and will reject things like aging and dino bones because it was made to look that way. for some reason.)

    there are some middle-ground type people who espoused a belief that there was a solid shell of ice- the firmament- and that it melted to create the cataclysm written of Noah’s flood to explain why it wasn’t there, but was there before.

    They, uh, also tend to go in for a flat earth.

    • Cstrrider@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      So she insists she believes the word says the world is spherical but that there is a dome in the sky. I think she got bored halfway through the video after they stopped talking about the stuff from the bible. I see that the firmament is real but as someone who was raised catholic I assumed all religions agreed that it was a metaphysical barrier between heaven and earth. After reading through the comments here I feel like she probably got this from YouTube/ticktock and not from her church.

    • dutchkimble@lemy.lol
      1·
      1 year ago

      But then why don’t they put 2 and 2 together and think the water fell off the sides when the ice melted

    • benwubbleyou@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      I believe the ice wall thing was a theory proposed by Kent Hovind. Pretty sure he is/was in jail for tax evasion or something? When I was a teenager I ate his young earth creationist stuff up like candy.

      Edit: I am aware that the firmament is a thing for a very long time, but I believe Hovind took that idea and proposed it as the reason for his flood and age of the earth theory.