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?

  • JakeBacon@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I agree with others, this seems like a flat-earther belief that has gotten mixed with Christianity’s creation story.

    I’ve heard of it before while browsing the internet, but not from any Christians I personally know. All the Christians I interact with (myself included) believe in a literal interpretation of the creation but nobe of us believe in a physical firmament. I will note that a single man I know denies the moon landing (for reasons I haven’t bothered to ask) but even he still believes in a spherical earth and heliocentric orbit.

    My understanding of Genesis 1:6-8 is that the firmament mentioned is the earth’s sky or atmosphere itself, and not a physical barrier at the edge of the atmosphere. The easiest way to show this would be Genesis 1:20 where birds are described as “flying in the firmament of heaven”. If the firmament was a solid object, birds could not fly in it.

      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        This is a classic conspiracy theory back from the days when you could have fun with them rather than hearing about “the global elite are drinking the blood of children in a pizza parlor basement” and having to actually defend against such nonsense.