I need help with a verse.

[Mr_E]

Isaias 40:22. It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

A theist sent it to me with a sort of "checkmate" attitude. He claims this means that it predicts something about scientific knowledge they could not have known with out god. Any ideas?

[Insert name here]

Um... Maybe it referencing the atmosphere? I don't really know what that person was trying to prove.

[Mr_E]

He sent it to me along with Job 26-7 "He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing."

That is meant to predict that we would find that earth is suspended weightless in space. I already addressed that one. But the other one is supposed to predict something similar. Im just not sure what.

[brimstoneSalad]

The Earth isn't suspended, it's moving very quickly in free-fall. And it's not over "nothing", it's over the sun.

This is inaccurate in every way.

[Mr_E]

i addressed the one from Job. But do you have any ideas about the Isaias one.

[brimstoneSalad]

The quote makes no predictions or scientific claims.

It's just a bunch of nonsense he's choosing to reinterpret. Like the Nostradamus prophecies which people claimed predicted 9/11. It's bullshit.

The text is more reasonably interpreted as the ancient claim the Earth is a flat sphere, as the Flat Earthers claim.
http://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html

The heavens are a vast expanse of stars, not a curtain or a tent with little shiny lights on the fabric. This language in no way resembles or accurately describes reality.

[Mr_E]

Not to mention that the bible is translated in recent times. The ones they use anyways (Jehovas Witnesses). And when you translate something and it does not make sense. You use your scientific knowledge that you have thanks to recent studies to interpret it into something that makes sense.