Well, the Romans talked about him quite a bit too. There's documentation of many details about His life and the early church, including things as specific as three hours of darkness on the day of the crucifixion.
He tends not to show up unless a later christian is "quoting" an earlier roman.
The Romans didn't mention him or his events at all at the time. Later on Some Romans mentioned the Christians and their beliefs about him, but they're very quiet. That's unusual, considering how multitudes of people allegedly got out of their graves and walked back into town.
I know you're not a big fan of negative evidence, but come on. Someone was casting mass resurrection in the graveyard and NO ONE said "holy BLEEEP" and called the guards, the priests, the historians, the national guard, and a land speculator? (Come be burried in the amazing ressurection tomb! Death need not be permanent with the handy dandy reserectomatic coffins!)
Even the other gospels left that part out. They also left out his virgin birth... both seem to me like HUGE deals to remember if you're going off of the facts.
When Jesus's apostles first started preaching in Jerusalem that He had risen from the tomb, everyone still knew where the tomb was. All that the Jews would have had to have done was produced a body, but they couldn't. They claim the apostles stole the body, but every one of the apostles (except Judas and John) were martyred for their faith and died proclaiming the truth of Jesus's resurrection. Who is willing to die for a lie?
There's two problems with that.
The first is that in order for the resurrection to be an eye witness account the apostles all seemed to have lived a rather long time in order to get their chronicles into writing: exceptionally long (but not impossible) for the day. They also survived that long under pain of death from rome... witch strikes me as highly unlikely.
The second is there's no external record of the Romans persecuting Christians right after the resurrection: including the apostles. Those stories cropped up later when christians began to suffer persecution en masse.
The idea that the Jews blamed the Christians for stealing the body comes from the new testament itself.. which wasn't even written yet.
Also, FWIW, I'm pretty much an outsider when it comes to the conversation between you and BigNorseWolf because I haven't had as much of a chance to participate. I think that he was at least trying to be fair, even if he didn't come across as being entirely successful. Not that I agree with him of course, but it can be difficult dealing with assumptions about others, especially over the Internet
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
You're welcome.
Yes, I read it. He said pressure could alter rates of radioactive decay. He left out that 1) you needed a sun to alter it 2) earth could alter it only slightly 3) It has to be altered in such a way at different points at different depths so that their answers make sense if gradualism is true. The chances of that happening is beyond the impossible.
I quoted that part of his book. Did you see this part?
However, it was learned as far back as 1971 that high pressure could increase decay rates very slightly for at least 14 isotopes. Under great pressure, electrons (especially from the innermost shell) are squeezed closer to the nucleus, making electron capture more likely. Also, electron capture rates for a few radioisotopes change in different chemical compounds.
Beta decay rates can increase dramatically when atoms are stripped of all their electrons. In 1999, Germany’s Dr. Fritz Bosch showed that, for the rhenium atom, this decreases its half-life more than a billionfold—from 42 billion years to 33 years. The more electrons removed, the more rapidly neutrons expel electrons (beta decay) and become protons. This effect was previously unknown, because only electrically neutral atoms had been used in measuring half-lives.
Dude, you only get the gravity working on the plates from the weight of the water. If the weight of the water is negligible then the effects of the gravity will be too.
How so? It seems to me like the Continental Drift phase of his theory would function as advertised because of gravity. All water needed to do was release the pressure above the underlying rock and lubricate the hydroplates. Then they'd just slide down the newly forming mid-Atlantic ridge. What would have stopped that from happening?
We KNOW how sedimentary rocks form. You can go to the mississippi river, take a shovel and start digging in the deltas. You can see the sediments from the river being deposted there, year after year.
We know the older sediments are on the bottom. We don't need radioactivity to tell us the relative ages. All we need to do is look and see what order they're in
If they formed gradually, then why are the transitions between strata layers so smooth? Why aren't there more signs of erosion between the layers?
Yes you can say the same thing about that web page. Everyone has biases. In case it's relevant, Walt used to be an evolutionist.
Well, he believed in evolution and probably the big bang theory as well.
Well, as a Christian I find that the Bible is quite well supported by that model. As an amateur scientific researcher (more of a hobby really), I find that it makes quite a lot of sense scientifically as well.
This is a scientific model. It's irrelevant if it happens to match any particular book in many details, at least scientifically. The evidence should stand for itself. Part II has no mention of religion at all (well, apart from a thing here or there in the references.).
That last part is what I tell people who don't think much of the Bible. I'm not saying that you must abandon all other thinking and become Walt's mind-slave, but an honest open-minded evaluation seems reasonable.
Such as? In any case, it wouldn't matter if Mr. Brown murdered a bunch of guys. A theory needs to be evaluated on its own merits and what it can explain, rather than any consideration on who proposes it. That's the principle behind ad hominem that I see flying around sometimes.
Thank you.
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Nategar,
How often, in nature, are atoms stripped of all their electrons? I'd imagine it's not exactly common and is therefore irrelevant to radiometric dating which is consistent across various continents and timeframes.
Also, even if you can disprove all of geology, genetics will still screw you over. 8 people and either 2 or 14 animals is not a sufficent genetic reserve to produce a stable population. You are aware of inbreeding, right? At that level of popultion, you couldn't avoid it. So, if the world was as young as you claim, and the flood did occur, every animal species would be extinct from the deletarious effects of inbreeding. To say nothing of the plant species which weren't on the ark but were submerged by the flood.
EDIT: And just because I'm being thorough, here's a rebuttal of the whole notion of hydroplates from talk origins.
EDIT 2: And here's their response to the written debate offer.
Nategar,
How often, in nature, are atoms stripped of all their electrons? I'd imagine it's not exactly common and is therefore irrelevant to radiometric dating which is consistent across various continents and timeframes.
It only needs to happen once. A one time occurrence across the entire Earth would explain what we have going on here today. That section on radioactivity really is a great read.
In a plasma flow, trillions upon trillions of electrical charges are flowing along a long, narrow path—positive charges in one direction and negative charges (electrons) in the opposite direction. Their mutual electrical repulsions and attractions approximately balance each other. However, the magnetic field created by each moving charge squeezes all charged particles toward the axis of the path, continually narrowing (or Z-pinching) the flow. During the flood, gigantic piezoelectric voltages produced electrical breakdown in the fluttering granite crust, so each long flow channel became self-focused onto its axis.In that flow, nuclei of the different chemical elements that were stripped of some electrons were drawn closer and closer together. Normally, their Coulomb forces would repel each other, but with so many nuclei confined to ever smaller volumes, the Coulomb forces acting on nuclei near the axis of that flow tended to balance each other. Nuclei that collided or nearly collided were then pulled together by the extremely powerful strong force. Fusion occurred, and even superheavy elements formed. Thousands of experiments at the Proton-21 Laboratory demonstrated this phenomenon. Because superheavy elements are so unstable, they quickly fission (split) or decay.
Although fusion of nuclei lighter than iron released large amounts of nuclear energy (heat), the fusion of nuclei heavier than iron absorbed much of the energy of fission and decay. Therefore, staggering amounts of energy (heat) were absorbed in producing heavy elements such as uranium. The more heat produced, the more heavy elements formed. By “cooking” isotopes of uranium, for example, in a “hot plasma brew,” an equilibrium was achieved in the amounts of the various isotopes of uranium produced.
Also, even if you can disprove all of geology, genetics will still screw you over. 8 people and either 2 or 14 animals is not a sufficent genetic reserve to produce a stable population. You are aware of inbreeding, right? At that level of popultion, you couldn't avoid it. So, if the world was as young as you claim, and the flood did occur, every animal species would be extinct from the deletarious effects of inbreeding. To say nothing of the plant species which weren't on the ark but were submerged by the flood.
The genetic code was much purer back then (assuming a completely pure code in the first place, a reasonable assumption if Christianity is true.). We didn't have anywhere near the amount of mutations back then, especially because many mutations are caused by radioactivity that they wouldn't have been exposed to as much yet, since it began then. I never claimed to avoid inbreeding in repopulating after the flood (or indeed in populating after Adam and Eve in the first place.).
Edit (in interest of thoroughness}:
The rock that makes up the earth's crust does not float. The water would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or before Adam's time for that matter.
The water was COMPLETELY sealed until the flood. I love it when people saying they are refuting something don't even know what they're refuting. It's fun.
Even two miles deep, the earth is boiling hot (260 to 270 degrees C at 5.656 miles in one borehole; Bram et al. 1995), and thus the reservoir of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached.
Geo-thermal heat is an effect of the flood and it can't be used to disprove it by assuming it was there beforehand. As a matter of fact, the water WAS really hot (and supercritical) because of tidal pumping, but practically all of the heat was lost by the same process that cools air conditioners and refrigerators.
PS, I HATE the canopy theory. Now THERE'S an obviously flawed flood theory if you want to poke holes at it. I'll help you. :)
The escaping waters would have eroded the sides of the fissures, producing poorly sorted basaltic erosional deposits. These would be concentrated mainly near the fissures, but some would be shot thousands of miles along with the water. Such deposits would be quite noticeable but have never been seen.
I assume they mean the waters escaping upward from the chambers at the start of the flood. Those waters never went up through basalt, they went up through granite, providing much of the rock for the fossil layer, comets, asteroids, and meteroids.
As to the second link, even if that's true (which is debatable), that's nothing more than a fancy ad hominem attack and says nothing of the science. Given that I could refute the only three points of theirs that I saw and it's not even my theory, I doubt Walt was scared of a debate with them.
Have any other refutations?
Have any other refutations?
nategar, you've clearly firmly made up your mind on the issue before ever posting here -- and you've taken good notes from the standard Creationist arguing school: ignoring points that you can't address, and generally treating every aspect of math, physics, geology, and biology as unrelated fields in which anything goes. If I explain that bicycle works by pedaling, you can of course claim that Newtonian physics are wrong because of relativity effects near a black hole, and therefore don't apply to bikes, and that the bicycle really works by a new Pedeldynamo force that only applies to bicycles, by God's command.
I'll leave you to it.
Atheism was legally declared a religion in the USA. So like it or not, atheists are part of a religion as well. Kaufman vs McCaughtry 2005. Look it up as it is kinda funny.
Indeed, that's funny. Sure wraps up that debate. :P
Have any other refutations?nategar, you've clearly firmly made up your mind on the issue before ever posting here -- and you've taken good notes from the standard Creationist arguing school: ignoring points that you can't address, and generally treating every aspect of math, physics, geology, and biology as unrelated fields in which anything goes. If I explain that bicycle works by pedaling, you can of course claim that Newtonian physics are wrong because of relativity effects near a black hole, and therefore don't apply to bikes, and that the bicycle really works by a new Pedeldynamo force that only applies to bicycles, by God's command.
I'll leave you to it.
Fair enough. I'm working my way back through the thread and was going to address your post about looking at images of plates subducting. I'm not technically trained in interpreting images, even though I know how the process of getting the images works. I'm curious as to any of the other points about why he says plates don't subduct because that's the only one you mentioned.
And I don't treat the sciences as unrelated fields, at least not intentionally. What points do you think I was ignoring? I'll gladly admit ignorance of points if I'm aware that I don't know about it, such as interpreting of said images.
If you really want to leave me to it, though, I'm certainly not going to pressure you otherwise.
Fair enough. I'm working my way back through the thread and was going to address your post about looking at images of plates subducting. I'm not technically trained in interpreting images, even though I know how the process of getting the images works. I'm curious as to any of the other points about why he says plates don't subduct because that's the only one you mentioned.
I picked that one because it would be something we could look at together and discuss -- trying to make it is much as possible into a cooperative exercise, rather than a confrontational one.
As far as the other "points":
1. A subducting plate would experience too much resistance in diving down through just the top of the mantle. The blunt front end alone would stop movement. Also, the unspecified force needed to overcome these resistances would (if a pushing force) crush the plate or (if a pulling force) pull the plate apart.
Here he's claiming physical effects that defy observations, and also not even attempting to provide calculations to back up his assertions. I can equally say, "it's impossible to jump, because you'd fly off the earth, and even if you didn't your legs would break when you landed."
2. Sediments, volcanoes, and plateaus have not been scraped off “subducting” plates in trenches.
This is a completely blind assertion.
3. Sedimentary layers in trenches are undisturbed.
This assertion would be easy to back up -- just show imagery that indicates undisturbed sediment layers in trenches.
4. No known forces are available to break the crust into plates and separate those plates from their bases.
Friction isn't a known force? Convection isn't a known process? Rocks can't melt, either? "No known forces are available to cause the planets to revolve around the Sun" would be a similar assertion, with as much validity.
5. One plate cannot even begin its dive under an adjacent plate that is 30–60 miles thick, because cliffs cannot be higher than 5 miles
I have no idea what this even means.
6. Subduction cannot occur along an arc. Subduction is geometrically possible only along a straight line.
If you add up a bunch of short line segments, you can get something that looks just like an arc.
7. Most volcanoes are on the wrong side of trenches if subducting plates produce volcanoes.
Categorically false: look at the Andes mountains, the Cascades, Indonesia, etc., etc., etc.
... I could go on, but I really need to get to bed.
Fair enough. I'm working my way back through the thread and was going to address your post about looking at images of plates subducting. I'm not technically trained in interpreting images, even though I know how the process of getting the images works. I'm curious as to any of the other points about why he says plates don't subduct because that's the only one you mentioned.I picked that one because it would be something we could look at together and discuss -- trying to make it is much as possible into a cooperative exercise, rather than a confrontational one.
As far as the other "points":
Stuff
Ok, thanks. I'm just fine with cooperative type things and I appreciate that you wanted to try to avoid confrontation. Thanks for your time and good night. :)
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Nategar,
How often, in nature, are atoms stripped of all their electrons? I'd imagine it's not exactly common and is therefore irrelevant to radiometric dating which is consistent across various continents and timeframes.Also, even if you can disprove all of geology, genetics will still screw you over. 8 people and either 2 or 14 animals is not a sufficent genetic reserve to produce a stable population. You are aware of inbreeding, right? At that level of popultion, you couldn't avoid it. So, if the world was as young as you claim, and the flood did occur, every animal species would be extinct from the deletarious effects of inbreeding. To say nothing of the plant species which weren't on the ark but were submerged by the flood.
EDIT: And just because I'm being thorough, here's a rebuttal of the whole notion of hydroplates from talk origins.
EDIT 2: And here's their response to the written debate offer.
Nategar,
To be perfectly honest, I don't know much about this stuff. However, here is a Christian response (I believe) to the hydroplate theory -- that while a bit more technical, I believe that it basically says the same thing that Paul's links say.
Nice to see you in the thread. :)
Nategar,To be perfectly honest, I don't know much about this stuff. However, here is a Christian response (I believe) to the hydroplate theory -- that while a bit more technical, I believe that it basically says the same thing that Paul's links say.
That site doesn't deal with the theory properly; in fact it's obvious that Glenn clearly is as familiar with the theory as I am with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics (as in, not familiar at all). He apparently doesn't realize that the theory states that pillars connected the granitic crust to the rest of Earth (and by extension formed relatively short mountains.) and that meteoroids came from the flood. That explains 1 and 2. The third objection about people cooking I already dealt with.
The claims he makes about seismic data I'm not completely sure on. Perhaps shear waves pass through the Earth as freely as they do because the residual water layer isn't continuous enough to block them. They have found deep subterranean water though.
Fluids - The scientists at KTB expected deep crystalline rock to be bone dry, but to their surprise, water influx occured at several depths from open fractures.
===
Comparison of Hydroplate Theory with the Bible
Please let me know what you think. :)
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I think one of the problems is that the hydroplate theory has been developed specifically to conform to Biblical events, rather than a phenomenon discovered through scientific inquiry.
When I was nine or ten, and had just become interested in physics (and so was reading everything I could get my hands on, including plenty of sci-fi), I had this recurring dream that I had discovered a self-eliminating effect in universal constancy: if matter could neither be created nor destroyed; and if multiple universes separate from one another actually existed; and the matter/energy of one universe was containerized apart from that of the other universe; then a bridge between both, introducing just one particle from the one to the other, would result in the collapse of the deficit reality and the explosion of the surplus reality--and the end of Everything.
The point is, no matter how much I believed my dream, physics (including the special physics of Feynman) just doesn't work that way.
I think one of the problems is that the hydroplate theory has been developed specifically to conform to Biblical events, rather than a phenomenon discovered through scientific inquiry.
When I was nine or ten, and had just become interested in physics (and so was reading everything I could get my hands on, including plenty of sci-fi), I had this recurring dream that I had discovered a self-eliminating effect in universal constancy: if matter could neither be created nor destroyed; and if multiple universes separate from one another actually existed; and the matter/energy of one universe was containerized apart from that of the other universe; then a bridge between both, introducing just one particle from the one to the other, would result in the collapse of the deficient and the explosion of the surplus--and the end of Everything.
The point is, no matter how much I believed my dream, physics (including the special physics of Feynman) just doesn't work that way.
That is a fair point of view and I can see why you think that. However, it's based on the assumption that a scientific theory has to have its basis in scientific inquiry to be effective. Friedrich Kekulé discovered the ring shape of Benzene through a day-dream of a snake grabbing its own tail. The source of an idea isn't what's important. Its effectiveness at explaining observed phenomena is, and as far as I can tell this theory does that quite well.
Also, that's a really cool dream.
However, it's based on the assumption that a scientific theory has to have its basis in scientific inquiry to be effective. Friedrich Kekulé discovered the ring shape of Benzene through a day-dream of a snake grabbing its own tail. The source of an idea isn't what's important. Its effectiveness at explaining observed phenomena is, and as far as I can tell this theory does that quite well.
Kekulé and Benzene is a terrible example for you to use here. Before Kekulé had the famous dream (which is very likely apocryphal, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here) he already knew the chemical formula of Benzene from previous sceintific inquiry and knew that any monosubstituted Benzene derivative can only have one isomer, again from previous scientific inquiry. His theory of the structure of Benzene absolutely had its base in scientific inquiry. It would not be science if it did not.
However, it's based on the assumption that a scientific theory has to have its basis in scientific inquiry to be effective. Friedrich Kekulé discovered the ring shape of Benzene through a day-dream of a snake grabbing its own tail. The source of an idea isn't what's important. Its effectiveness at explaining observed phenomena is, and as far as I can tell this theory does that quite well.Kekulé and Benzene is a terrible example for you to use here. Before Kekulé had the famous dream (which is very likely apocryphal, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here) he already knew the chemical formula of Benzene from previous sceintific inquiry and knew that any monosubstituted Benzene derivative can only have one isomer, again from previous scientific inquiry. His theory of the structure of Benzene absolutely had its base in scientific inquiry. It would not be science if it did not.
Good point. Thanks. Even so, does my point still stand?
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Nice to see you in the thread. :)
Never left. Just will end up lurking a bit more.
Please let me know what you think. :)
The problem I have is that he's using the Bible to prove the Bible. Really seems a bit circular to me.
The other problem I have is that you are using one source. (Aside from the Bible that is.) I'm having a difficult time finding any real reference to this outside of Brown.
Again, this is really outside of my expertise. When I have science questions I trust Kirth and Paul to tell me straight. I also have friends of mine who are Christians and scientists if I want to double-check something.
Here is a lot of information on a lot of related things that you seem to be interested in. While it is one site's links, the thing I like most about this site is that they are not afraid to say "we don't know". EDIT: And they have references to where they are getting their information and data from. (Also, since this is outside what I know much about -- back to lurk mode.)
Yes, I read it. He said pressure could alter rates of radioactive decay. He left out that 1) you needed a sun to alter it 2) earth could alter it only slightly 3) It has to be altered in such a way at different points at different depths so that their answers make sense if gradualism is true. The chances of that happening is beyond the impossible.
I quoted that part of his book. Did you see this part?
Yes. I saw that part. In fact I was responding in part to that part. Let me break down that part and the response.
However, it was learned as far back as 1971 that high pressure could increase decay rates very slightly for at least 14 isotopes.
1) you needed a sun to alter it signifigantly.: 2) earth could alter it only slightly 3) It has to be altered in such a way at different points at different depths so that their answers make sense if gradualism is true. The chances of that happening is beyond the impossible.
You can alter it with pressure. That pressure is NOT going to be supplied by a little more water on the earth. You. need. a sun's worth of pressure.
Under great pressure, electrons (especially from the innermost shell) are squeezed closer to the nucleus, making electron capture more likely. Also, electron capture rates for a few radioisotopes change in different chemical compounds.
You do not get nearly enough pressure from a mere ocean on top of the entire huge freaking earth (remember the picture?) to do this.
There is "great pressure" and then there is "enough pressure to do this". An extra ocean IS NOT "enough pressure to do this"
Beta decay rates can increase dramatically when atoms are stripped of all their electrons.
And how is that occurring? WHY isn't that occurring over Jupiter?
How so? It seems to me like the Continental Drift phase of his theory would function as advertised because of gravity. All water needed to do was release the pressure above the underlying rock and lubricate the hydroplates. Then they'd just slide down the newly forming mid-Atlantic ridge. What would have stopped that from happening?
You would need to have a 100% waterproof surface under pressure over the entire globe. ANY point of weakness in it, anywhere the water could filter up, and you'd immediately have an enormous geyser.
I'm also at a loss to explain how the rock was supposed to float on the water.
I'm also confused as to why the water wouldn't just percolate back into the holes when it was done.
I don't think you understand enough science to realize all the problems with this idea, or to realize when something from that page has been corrected. Look for yourself. Look up how much pressure it takes to speed up radioactive decay. Ask yourself why Jupiter isn't bursting into a giant radioactive ball of death.
If they formed gradually, then why are the transitions between strata layers so smooth? Why aren't there more signs of erosion between the layers?
There's smooth transitions because the Mississippi never stops flowing: there's always something comming in. (and in answer to your next question there are transitions at all because rain and thus river output aren't equal year round)
As long as you get more dropped off than the river scrapes off you get deposition rather than erosion. At the mouth of the river you get so much deposition from the river slowing down that you get far more deposition that erosion.
It doesn't matter HOW someone comes up with something. If you slip in the bathroom, crack your head on the toilet and figure out time travel then well you've figured out time travel. Ideas stand and fall on their own.
With that said... ideas coming from religion or concussions still need evidence. The hydroplate idea is just... so wrong for so many reasons and is completely lacking in any evidence.
Good point. Thanks. Even so, does my point still stand?
There is certainly a place for intuition in scientific research, but trying to use that fact to defend hydroplate theory is not going to get you far at all. I admit that I might be missing your point a little though.
I think one of the problems is that the hydroplate theory has been developed specifically to conform to Biblical events, rather than a phenomenon discovered through scientific inquiry.
This is 100% correct. This theory is not based on controlled observations or predictive power, it is made purely to justify a preconecived notion. Therefore I would not call it science, since it is essentially nothing but wishful thinking.
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Also (and here's an old, necrotic equine argument), why would an all-powerful entity go to so much trouble? If it's transcendent of the universe, then it's transcendent of physics (and everything we know and understand of the nature of reality). It can do anything it so desires. Anything
Example, in colloquial English (for humorous purposes):
I was disappointed with humankind. They ignored my laws and scoffed at my guidance. In essence, they did everything I told them not to do, and nothing I told them to do--the whole planet is overrun with American teenagers!
I'm going to start over, sort of. I'll destroy all but the select few who kept their grades up and made their beds every morning. I'll keep them around so they can pass on the story to future generations--I could just implant the idea in their minds, but I'm fond of this concept of faith, and if I overwork it so everyone knows, it kind of defeats the purpose (which I'm still working on--obviously, it's not veneration of me; that's so tribal and won't make any sense once they populate the entire rock and build nations and start having post-modern thoughts and jazz music).
Instead, they have to believe there was disappointment (on my part), a kind of universal and unremitting immorality (on their part); and some amount of actual physical and emotional pain suffered by the destroyed population (this tells them I mean business).
So, I translate the select few to another dimension for a brief period of 'time', 40 days/39 nights, let's say; blink the planet out of existence; make the molecular disintegration process exceptionally painful for all the bacon-sandwich-loving asshats; tell my Select all about it; blink them back to the near earth, filled with trees and birds and the heavy earths necessary for laptops and cell phones, and give them all another go.
Also, I should mention I saved
FST=1-∏W/∏B=1-∑J(nj2)nij/nij-1//∑2ni/xi, or about 942 genetically unrelated 'Select' people (no I didn't have to do it that way, but why not?); and I will suspend disease and sickness amongst 70% of their offspring (1:3 gender ratio) to ensure someone makes an iPad somewhere down the line.
PS: If you can find the mistake here, I promise not to send you to a painful eternal torment; instead, here's a cookie.
V/R,
-Dad
Nice to see you in the thread. :)Never left. Just will end up lurking a bit more.
Please let me know what you think. :)The problem I have is that he's using the Bible to prove the Bible. Really seems a bit circular to me.
The other problem I have is that you are using one source. (Aside from the Bible that is.) I'm having a difficult time finding any real reference to this outside of Brown.
Again, this is really outside of my expertise. When I have science questions I trust Kirth and Paul to tell me straight. I also have friends of mine who are Christians and scientists if I want to double-check something.
Here is a lot of information on a lot of related things that you seem to be interested in. While it is one site's links, the thing I like most about this site is that they are not afraid to say "we don't know". EDIT: And they have references to where they are getting their information and data from. (Also, since this is outside what I know much about -- back to lurk mode.)
He's using evidence to support a scientific theory, and if that theory happens to match what the Bible said happened historically, so much the better.
Please read this section. The Bible and evolution / big bang theory simply are not compatible. You don't have to accept all of this science stuff if you can't understand it, but I hope you reconsider your position about what the Bible has to say about science.
Also, Walt says that he doesn't know things at several points at the website. Also, he has references to where he gets his information. He has huge pages filled with quotes, solved equations, and tons of other things to support his case.
Stuff
I get the very distinct impression that you don't know the theory itself very well yet, including any of the mechanisms of how he says it happened.
For instance, you asked how come the pressure of an ocean above the crust would alter pressure. It wouldn't, that's not the mechanism. I'd suggest rereading about the piezoelectric effect. As to it not happening on Jupiter, first of all it's not pressure from an ocean alone that he says did it. Second of all, I don't imagine Jupiter has enough quartz for it to have happened there.
You also don't understand how the rock floated on water. It didn't. The subterranean water was completely sealed under the granitic crust, and pillars connected it to the chamber floor. The crack started forming at the surface of the crust and expanded at both ends due to tension until it lapped the world (we know it as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Mid-Oceanic Ridge). After that, the only place the water left the subterranean chamber was at the crack itself. The rest of the continents were completely waterproof and under constant water pressure, just as you said would need to happen for the continents to drift.
I think one of the problems is that the hydroplate theory has been developed specifically to conform to Biblical events, rather than a phenomenon discovered through scientific inquiry.This is 100% correct. This theory is not based on controlled observations or predictive power, it is made purely to justify a preconecived notion. Therefore I would not call it science, since it is essentially nothing but wishful thinking.
Here's a quote from the section on radioactivity. HP = Hydroplate theory, CE = Chemical Evolution theory.
Experimental Support. Good theories must have experimental support.
1. HP: As explained in this chapter, every phenomenon involved in the hydroplate explanation for earth’s radioactivity is well understood and/or demonstrable: the piezoelectric effect, poling, electron capture, flutter with high compressive and tensile stresses, nuclear combustion, neutron production by bremsstrahlung radiation, Z-pinch, neutron activation analysis, rapid decay of artificially produced superheavy nuclei, and increased decay rates resulting from high voltages and concentrated electrical currents.
We know radioactive nuclei have excess energy, continually vibrate, and are always on the verge of “flying apart” (i.e., decaying). Atomic accelerators bombard nuclei; adding that energy produces radioisotopes and rapid decay.
2. CE: The various scales (such as time, temperature, and size) required—for example, in and around stars hundreds of thousands of times more massive than earth—are so large that experimental support for chemical evolution is necessarily limited. Experiments using particle colliders allow investigation of the interactions of subatomic particles traveling at very great speeds. By using computer simulations and extrapolating the results of experiments to larger scales, we can draw conclusions about the kinds of elements that would have been produced at extremely high temperatures inside huge stars billions of years ago.
Seems scientifically testable to me. In fact it all has been tested.
Also (and here's an old, necrotic equine argument), why would an all-powerful entity go to so much trouble? If it's transcendent of the universe, then it's transcendent of physics (and everything we know and understand of the nature of reality). It can do anything it so desires. Anything
I found your example humorous, but it's a little long so I left it out of the quote. Anyway, I see God as being extremely intelligent and rational (bit of an understatement :P). I see Him doing it the way He did for the same reason it took Him 6 days to create stuff instead of doing it all at once: he uses natural mechanisms to bring things about whenever "possible". Many of the miracles in the Bible weren't "miraculous" in the sense that they couldn't happen. It's more that they were timed PERFECTLY, and if God hadn't directed it that way, the timing would have been off. Example: the walls falling at Jericho. It was likely an earthquake, but a really really well timed one.
In summary, I think God uses natural means whenever He "can".
Kirth, he gives explanations behind all of his points about subduction. For example:
Points 2 and 3:
it would seem that the sediment sliding into the bottom of the trench should be folded into pronounced ridges and valleys. Yet virtually undeformed sediments have been mapped in trenches by David William Scholl and his colleagues at the U.S. Naval Electronics Laboratory Center. Furthermore, the enormous quantity of deep-ocean sediment that has presumably been swept up to the margins of trenches cannot be detected on sub-bottom profiling records
“Cloos and Saunders et al. have shown that large oceanic plateaus cannot be subducted. Such thick plateaus resist subduction, jam the trench and accrete to the arc.” Sheth, p. 16.u “It is disturbing that the proposed, exceedingly large differential movements between continents and ocean basins (especially where much unconsolidated sediment is involved) are not obvious. ... The present simple continental-margin model diagrammed with essentially rigid slabs does not relate well to observational data, and its value as a framework for interpreting observed structures of the continental margin is diminished by the large gap between theory and observation.” Roland von Huene, “Structure of the Continental Margin and Tectonism at the Eastern Aleutian Trench,” Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 83, December 1972, p. 3625.
u “... slippage of the oceanic crust beneath an overlying trench fill is unsupported by observational as well as theoretical data ...” D. W. Scholl, “Peru-Chile Trench Sediments and Sea-Floor Spreading,” Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 81, 1970, pp. 1339–1360.
What do you think?
For instance, you asked how come the pressure of an ocean above the crust would alter pressure. It wouldn't, that's not the mechanism. I'd suggest rereading about the piezoelectric effect.
Stop telling me to reread things I've already given an answer to. Particularly when you're ignoring every single problem with the hypothesis.
As to it not happening on Jupiter, first of all it's not pressure from an ocean alone that he says did it. Second of all, I don't imagine Jupiter has enough quartz for it to have happened there.
So i should be able to do cold fusion with my wrist watch.
How on earth did the carbon ratios get mixed up on every peice of tree, mammoth bone and fossil in the EXACT amount they would need to be to show gradualism?
Can you tell me why times of last separation correspond very well with the geologic time frames for the continents splitting?
You also don't understand how the rock floated on water. It didn't. The subterranean water was completely sealed under the granitic crust, and pillars connected it to the chamber floor.
Pillars made out of what exactly? Rock gets crushed under that much weight, and quartz melts under that much heat.
Where are these pillars? Where is the evidence that ANY of this ever happened?
The crack started forming at the surface of the crust and expanded at both ends due to tension until it lapped the world (we know it as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Mid-Oceanic Ridge). After that, the only place the water left the subterranean chamber was at the crack itself. The rest of the continents were completely waterproof and under constant water pressure, just as you said would need to happen for the continents to drift.
Ok, and how do you explain the plates in places like the himilayas, and why they're still getting taller? Why do we have plates all over the place?
The hypothesis is unevidenced, physically impossible garbage. Only blind faith would let you cling to it for more than 30 seconds.
Here's a few of the more blatant lies.
It’s not there. Nor have geologists found it anywhere else. Where did all the dirt—800 cubic miles of it—go?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Delta <---- Hey look , there it is.
Plate tectonics, currently the most popular theory in earth science, offers unsatisfactory answers to these and other questions
In what way are plate tectonics unsatisfactory?
That explanation is wrong, as detailed magnetic maps clearly show. There are no magnetic reversals on the ocean floor, and no compass would reverse direction if brought near an alleged reversed band
He completely misses the point of what the bands are. They're not areas of reversed magnetic polarity, they're areas where you can see the crystals in the rock have frozen facing different directions
Basaltic lavas contain iron-bearing minerals such as magnetite which act like compasses. That is, as these iron-rich minerals cool below their Curie point, they become magnetized in the direction of the surrounding magnetic field. Studies of ancient magnetism (paleomagnetism) recorded in rocks of different ages provide a record of when the Earth's magnetic field reversed its polarity.-http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/Metzger3.html
Why are strata so uniform in hardness?
They're not particularly uniform
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarowen/2240574515/
Look at the different striations. Note that some jut out further than others. That's because they've been differentially eroded.. because they're NOT uniform in hardness.
It is difficult to imagine mountains 23 or 75 miles high, because the world’s tallest mountain, Mount Everest, is only 5 1/2 miles high.
http://www.100gogo.com/cya.jpg
Sea level isn't the bottom of the crust. Far, far far from it.
Today, drilling efforts are finding that above the Moho the “rock had been thoroughly fractured and was saturated with water, and free water should not be found at these depths!”21 What is the Moho, why is the rock above fractured, and why does it contain liquid water?
His only citation for that is another creationist site. Looking around for more information i expected to find that the water wasn't free (just as underground water isn't usually a lake)
Instead i found
No one has ever been deep enough into the earth to see the Moho and no wells have ever been drilled deep enough to penetrate it. ....
There are a few rare locations where mantle material has been brought to the surface by tectonic forces. At these locations, rock that used to be at the crust - mantle boundary is present. A photo of rock from one of these locations is shown below.- source
Reaching the discontinuity remains an important scientific objective. A more recent proposal considers a self-descending tungsten capsule heated by radiogenic heat to explore Earth's interior near the Moho discontinuity and in the upper mantle.[6] The Japanese project Chikyu Hakken ("Earth Discovery") also aims to explore this general area.
-From wiki
So he's allegedly found water at a place... we haven't gotten too yet.
Large salt deposits are not being laid down today
Layered Fossils.
-Why aren't fossils burried by density? Why aren't we finding mammoth skulls and triceratops skulls closer to each other?
Few people realize that the origin of earth’s radioactivity and the origin of the heavier chemical elements on earth have never been explained.
A supernova allegedly can't do this.. but the flood can?!????
The water trapped under the crust would eventually explode the crust. Over a thousand years the water would attain the same temperature as the molten lava beneath it and burst through SOMEWHERE
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview7.html
Thi s would leave huge , vertical channels in the ocean's trenches that we don't see. They would then fill in with loose debris rather than form what we see today.
This is all I can quote and I'm too lazy to do the rest of it at the moment.
For instance, you asked how come the pressure of an ocean above the crust would alter pressure. It wouldn't, that's not the mechanism. I'd suggest rereading about the piezoelectric effect.Stop telling me to reread things I've already given an answer to. Particularly when you're ignoring every single problem with the hypothesis.
Well, when you're refuting an inaccurate version of the theory it's difficult to accept the answers. I'm only trying to help you understand the theory because it's clear that you don't from the questions that you're asking. That's perfectly fine and I appreciate you asking them, but you shouldn't expect me to just say "Oh wow, you're right, my bad." when you're not dealing with the theory properly, at least not as far as I can see.
As to it not happening on Jupiter, first of all it's not pressure from an ocean alone that he says did it. Second of all, I don't imagine Jupiter has enough quartz for it to have happened there.So i should be able to do cold fusion with my wrist watch.
If you can exceed the breakdown voltage and figure out how to sustain and harvest it, among other engineering challenges, sure. It's already been done in a laboratory
How on earth did the carbon ratios get mixed up on every peice of tree, mammoth bone and fossil in the EXACT amount they would need to be to show gradualism?
Essentially, a global flood affected everything in the world very similarly. The same mechanisms affecting pretty much the same environment for the same amount of time would cause this.
Can you tell me why times of last separation correspond very well with the geologic time frames for the continents splitting?
I'll have to look into that.
You also don't understand how the rock floated on water. It didn't. The subterranean water was completely sealed under the granitic crust, and pillars connected it to the chamber floor.
Pillars made out of what exactly? Rock gets crushed under that much weight, and quartz melts under that much heat.
Where are these pillars? Where is the evidence that ANY of this ever happened?
Pillars made out of granite, the same material the rest of the crust was made of. They did get crushed as the flood progressed. They didn't get crushed beforehand because the extremely pressurized subterranean water supported much of the crust's weight. As to where they are now, according to the theory some of the rocks in the pillars were launched into space to become meteroids, asteroids, and comets. That would explain the formation of chondrules in meteorites.
The crack started forming at the surface of the crust and expanded at both ends due to tension until it lapped the world (we know it as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Mid-Oceanic Ridge). After that, the only place the water left the subterranean chamber was at the crack itself. The rest of the continents were completely waterproof and under constant water pressure, just as you said would need to happen for the continents to drift.Ok, and how do you explain the plates in places like the himilayas, and why they're still getting taller? Why do we have plates all over the place?
As the plates crashed at the end of the continental drift phase, they broke into many pieces. I'm not sure why they're still getting taller, I'll look into it.
Large salt deposits are not being laid down today
I don't know. My guess is that you and him disagree on what large means. He should have been more clear though.
Layered Fossils.
-Why aren't fossils burried by density? Why aren't we finding mammoth skulls and triceratops skulls closer to each other?
Few people realize that the origin of earth’s radioactivity and the origin of the heavier chemical elements on earth have never been explained.
A supernova allegedly can't do this.. but the flood can?!????
But when fusion creates elements that are heavier than iron, it requires an excess of neutrons. Therefore, astronomers assume that heavier atoms are minted in supernova explosions, where there is a ready supply of neutrons, although the specifics of how this happens are unknown. [See Eric Haseltine, “The Greatest Unanswered Questions of Physics,” Discover, February 2002, p. 40.]
Where the heaviest elements, such as uranium and lead, came from still remains something of a mystery. Ibid., p. 41.
Speaking of quotes:
“It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological ‘clock.’ ” William D. Stansfield, Science of Evolution (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1977), p. 84.
I could fill a few quite large posts with nothing but quotes from scientists listing problems with current scientific theories. Maybe they don't explain things so well after all.
The water trapped under the crust would eventually explode the crust. Over a thousand years the water would attain the same temperature as the molten lava beneath it and burst through SOMEWHERE
What molten lava? That hadn't formed yet.
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview7.htmlThi s would leave huge , vertical channels in the ocean's trenches that we don't see. They would then fill in with loose debris rather than form what we see today.
Ok you lost me here.
Well, when you're refuting an inaccurate version of the theory
Its not a theory. A theory is a well tested set of observations with vast explanatory and predictive power.
That's perfectly fine and I appreciate you asking them, but you shouldn't expect me to just say "Oh wow, you're right, my bad." when you're not dealing with the theory properly, at least not as far as I can see.
Then try "hey, this is the part you missed" and link to a page, because I'm not reading the entire book again. Its VERY hard to tell where I'm not following the rails of his crazy train and where he's not following reality.
As to it not happening on Jupiter, first of all it's not pressure from an ocean alone that he says did it. Second of all, I don't imagine Jupiter has enough quartz for it to have happened there.Electric voltages of about 10 million volts, and currents of 10 million amps Р a hundred times greater than the most powerful lightning bolts Р are required to explain the X-ray observations. These voltages would also explain the radio emission from energetic electrons observed near Jupiter by the Ulysses spacecraft.
Also, the math on the generation of voltage seems to be ignoring that a 27% quartz structure won't get nearly the voltage he needs because the quarts is all spread out. Most of the electricity would be resisted by the rock.
Its already been done in a laboratoryCan you give me a real science link to it?
Essentially, a global flood affected everything in the world very similarly. The same mechanisms affecting pretty much the same environment for the same amount of time would cause this.This isn't an answer.
Why did it consistantly act in such a way that the stuff further down appears, when you carbon date it, to be older than the stuff above it?
I'll have to look into that.Its a real problem because biology, chemistry, geology and physics are all giving the same answer. All you have is a lot of unsupported suppositions.
Pillars made out of graniteLike i said, thats not going to work. Granite gets soft and plastic under that much pressure if its as hot as it is down there. The continent is going to get wobbly: you basically have a record spinning around on a warm marshmellow.
Also, something i should add here: the moon. You've got essentially a hollow earth with a near infinite amount of pressure exerted outward from a 1,000 degree source of pent up water.. and then you're going to have that planet stretched and pulled by our abnormally large moon spinning around it, and it doesn't crack in even one spot?
I don't know. My guess is that you and him disagree on what large means. He should have been more clear though.
-You mean the great salt lake should be producing salt deposits larger than the great salt lake?
Seems clear to me.
This doesn’t contain an explanation. If you had random sinking and rising with earths quakes the mammoth and triceratops skulls should still wind up in the same spots together. Triceratops skulls should be close to mammoth skulls and archaeopteryx skulls should be near raccoon skulls.
Instead what we see is that the relative ages of the fossils match evolution, not density. The hypothesis runs utterly concurrent to our observations.But when fusion creates elements that are heavier than iron, it requires an excess of neutrons. Therefore, astronomers assume that heavier atoms are minted in supernova explosions, where there is a ready supply of neutrons, although the specifics of how this happens are unknown. [See Eric Haseltine, “The Greatest Unanswered Questions of Physics,” Discover, February 2002, p. 40.]
So an article 10 years ago didn’t know the specifics, but had a general outline for it happening. But because we only have a general outline we need to assume that the physics are wrong and that the bible is right….
No. Dear gods... no. Rational science based on observable evidence has beaten theology at every turn. If you don't want to loose your religion entirely learn some humility and accept that you can interpret the bible incorrectly.
I could fill a few quite large posts with nothing but quotes from scientists listing problems with current scientific theories. Maybe they don't explain things so well after all.
No, you couldn’t. You could do some more disingenuous quote mining like you have there where someone tells you that when they age a 200 million year old rock they might be off by a couple million years.
Kirth already called you out on that behavior.
What molten lava? That hadn't formed yet
So the core of the earth used to be solid?
Ok you lost me here.
This is hard without a picture.
You have superheated, minieral rich water shooting out of the earths crust over a small area. It would be like taking a pressure washer to a rock: you make a smooth, strait line in the side. That isn’t there at the trench… or anywhere for that matter.
1. HP: As explained in this chapter, every phenomenon involved in the hydroplate explanation for earth’s radioactivity is well understood and/or demonstrable: the piezoelectric effect, poling, electron capture, flutter with high compressive and tensile stresses, nuclear combustion, neutron production by bremsstrahlung radiation, Z-pinch, neutron activation analysis, rapid decay of artificially produced superheavy nuclei, and increased decay rates resulting from high voltages and concentrated electrical currents.
All you have done here is to name drop some scientific principles. It does not change the fact that this theory was developed solely in order to justify a preconceived notion, which is essentially exactly the opposite of the mindset needed to do real science.
Just from looking over the source you cited briefly, I can see a few problems. The entire argument about the piezoelectric effect is predicated on the fact that quartz is piezoelectric and that quartz is the most common mineral in the earth's crust, comprising ~25% of granite. This is all true, however what is conveniently left out is that something which is only 27% quartz is not piezoelectric overall, since the process of creating charge from stress works because of the symmetry within crystal, symmetry which only exists in bulk quartz, not in a quartz-containing rock.
Also I am not sure where the idea that bremsstrahlung radiation can produce neutrons is coming from, since the definition of bremsstrahlung radiation is when the kinetic energy of a charged particle is turned into electromagnetic radiation as it decelerates in an external magnetic field. For those of you keeping score at home, electromagnetic radiation is photons, not neutrons.
I will need to take a closer look at the arguments put forth by your source in order to make a more thorough explanation of what is wrong.
“It is disturbing that the proposed, exceedingly large differential movements between continents and ocean basins (especially where much unconsolidated sediment is involved) are not obvious. ... The present simple continental-margin model diagrammed with essentially rigid slabs does not relate well to observational data, and its value as a framework for interpreting observed structures of the continental margin is diminished by the large gap between theory and observation.” Roland von Huene, “Structure of the Continental Margin and Tectonism at the Eastern Aleutian Trench,” Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 83, December 1972, p. 3625.
New seismic reflection data along closely spaced lines reveal deeper structures than did earlier records. The new records show sediment in the trench continuing as much as 12 km landward under the continental slope, that large slumps and extensional structures are common on the slope, and suggest that in earlier periods the sea floor now under the trench was receiving sediment from an eastern source rather than from the present western source. Large tectonic displacements appear to be absent from oceanic basement beneath the continental margin because undisturbed linear oceanic magnetic anomalies and a fracture zone continue from the abyssal plain at least to the continental shelf. However, since vertical displacements in the overlying sediment are greater than any in the basement, thrust faults are indicated even though they are not visible in the reflection records. No single zone of deformation marks the emergence of the Benioff zone, but instead the zone probably emerges in the whole complex of tectonic structures across the continental margin. There are enough data to estimate roughly the maximum amount of abyssal sediment that may have been plastered against the continent during the Tertiary.
Typical Creationist tactic, to take a single quote out of context -- from a paper strongly supporting subduction in this case -- and claim it somehow "disproves" what it's helping to develop. Whenever possible, it's better to read original sources, not someone else's quoting of them.
Don't you hate it when someone quotes, say, Samuel 27 out of context and claims that means that Christianity is a genocidal religion? Same thing going on here.
I don't think we NEED religion much anymore, but we want it and people have lots of things they want and do not need. Some people find it helpful, so why not leave them alone and let them have it? The answer "because it is stupid and holds people back," and variations there of, is a response I have heard many times. This is a totally ignorant response and just pushes intolerance and stupidity.
I'm an atheist and partially disagree, we don't necessarily need religion, but we do need the concepts and teaching methods.
Douglas Adams and the 4 ages of sand. First off, I'm a DNA fanboy. He's the only person I've never met who I shed a tear for when they died. Growing up learning about Zen and reading his books at the same time had a huge influence on my life.
The speech itself is kind of a ramble (as is his style) but there's a lot of good information in there. One of the concepts he talks about is how religion can help us think and learn better, it's not always the case but it's something we should examine carefully, baby in the bathwater and all that.
An often overlooked part of the Buddha mythology, the first time he went out to teach others, he tried acting like a normal person, no fanfare, no mythology about his enlightenment. The first person he came across was unimpressed and didn't believe him. The next time, Buddha adds all the color to his story, instead of "I sat under a tree and realized how to do it" it was "I was tempted by thousands of demons, the earth and sky opened up and all this crazy s~!* happened". Now people believed him.
If you're not familiar with Joseph Campbell, I highly recommend him. He was the first modern scholar to do comparative religion studies that focused on the similarities instead of the differences. If you have Netflix, look for Joseph Campbell: Mythos. It's divided into 2 sections, each section having 5 chapters, each chapter is 1 hour (so 10 hours total). The lecture is partially a final summation of his life's work and it works as a great introduction to what he's talking about.
One of his interpretations of how things have got so wrong with modern religion is that they confuse the metaphor for the message. For example, the story of creation, the difficulty is when people see it as literal, it took X time and was done in Y order. Really it's about the power and majesty of the world and how all things come from the same source. The world and life itself are precious miracles to behold. Few religions argue with each other about how special life is, they only argue about the details of how it got here.
All you have done here is to name drop some scientific principles. It does not change the fact that this theory was developed solely in order to justify a preconceived notion, which is essentially exactly the opposite of the mindset needed to do real science.
First of all, everyone is biased and capable of letting that influence their interpretations. Everyone is capable of developing and advancing a theory from biased motivations, including many of the founders of the currently popular worldviews. Buffon, Lamarck, Hutton, Laplace, Werner, and Lyell all heavily influenced scientific theory toward gradualism and uniformitarianism, the foundations behind today's theories of origins. As far as I know, none of them were Bible believing Christians and they may well have been hostile toward Biblical thinking.
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Secondly, let's see what happens when you do science based on the Bible. Matthew Maury is considered the father of oceanography. He saw Psalm 8:8 and decided to find "the paths of the sea" as they were so called. He then discovered ocean currents. So starting with the assumption of the Bible being true can lead to scientific discoveries.
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Thirdly, let's see what the Bible has to say about science, even if nobody in particular that I know of used it for discovery:
The Bible says to circumcise infant sons on the 8th day. It was recently discovered that the platelet count of a newborn peaks on the 8th day.
Imagine how many lives were lost because of bloodletting, when Lev. 17:11 says "For the life of the flesh is in the blood." That could have all been prevented by taking what the Bible has to say seriously.
Until the mid 19th century, conditions in hospitals were not very sanitary at all. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis saw that the doctors didn't wash their hands after handling the recently deceased patients. After they started washing their hands in running water (instead of a bowl) the mortality rate for delivering mothers dropped from about 30% to about 2%. Lev. 15:13 says to wash in running water to get rid of uncleanness.
I'm not saying that the writer of the Bible at that time knew WHY they were inspired to write those things, but what matters is that the Bible was right.
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So, it seems as though the Bible and science get along just fine. Saying the Bible is wrong for saying that pi is 3 is ridiculous when you consider the fact that the verses in Kings were approximating the diameter and circumference. There's no reason that pi shouldn't be approximated as well given how the numbers were reported. Besides, pi is approximately 3, so the Bible isn't wrong, even if it's not as precise as some people arbitrarily insist it should be (no offense to whoever raised that objection. I don't even remember who that was.).
Just from looking over the source you cited briefly, I can see a few problems. The entire argument about the piezoelectric effect is predicated on the fact that quartz is piezoelectric and that quartz is the most common mineral in the earth's crust, comprising ~25% of granite. This is all true, however what is conveniently left out is that something which is only 27% quartz is not piezoelectric overall, since the process of creating charge from stress works because of the symmetry within crystal, symmetry which only exists in bulk quartz, not in a quartz-containing rock.
Did you read about poling (there's more about poling just below that section on the same page)?
By symmetry within crystal, do you mean the axes of crystallization aligning? If so, that's how it is:
“All quartz-rich rocks (quartzites, granites, gneisses, mylonites) did show [statistically significant] piezoelectric effects when stressed.” J. R. Bishop, “Piezoelectric Effects in Quartz-Rich Rocks,” Technophysics, Vol. 77, 20 August 1981, p. 297.
u “... frequently in quartzite, the quartz occurs as grains with isometric form but shows a preferential orientation in terms of internal crystal structure, that is, in terms of the axes of crystallization.” E. I. Parkhomenko, Electrical Properties of Rocks (New York: Plenum Press, 1967), p. 6.
How about the fact that electricity is generated in the crust during earthquakes?
Also I am not sure where the idea that bremsstrahlung radiation can produce neutrons is coming from, since the definition of bremsstrahlung radiation is when the kinetic energy of a charged particle is turned into electromagnetic radiation as it decelerates in an external magnetic field. For those of you keeping score at home, electromagnetic radiation is photons, not neutrons.
Bremsstrahlung radiaction can cause free neutrons:
Neutrons will be produced in any material struck by the electron beam or bremsstrahlung beam above threshold energies that vary from 10–19 MeV for light nuclei and 4–6 MeV for heavy nuclei.
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This report briefly describes the three mechanisms by which bremsstrahlung radiation releases neutrons from nuclei.
Source: N. E. Ipe, “Radiological Considerations in the Design of Synchrotron Radiation Facilities,” Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC-PUB-7916, January 1999, p. 6.
Those neutrons being absorbed by the subterranean water would explain the abundance of Deuterium in the solar system quite nicely.
I will need to take a closer look at the arguments put forth by your source in order to make a more thorough explanation of what is wrong.
Please do. :)
Typical Creationist tactic, to take a single quote out of context -- from a paper strongly supporting subduction in this case -- and claim it somehow "disproves" what it's helping to develop. Whenever possible, it's better to read original sources, not someone else's quoting of them.
Don't you hate it when someone quotes, say, Samuel 27 out of context and claims that means that Christianity is a genocidal religion? Same thing going on here.
Unfortunately, I don't always have time to read the original source. Thanks for pointing out that it's out of context. I'll have to take a closer look at it. Do you have a link for it?
BNW, I'll get to your posts in a day or so.
Yes, I meant hypothesis in that sentence. Thanks.
Well, for one thing he's made predictions, a few of which have already been confirmed.
I'm not getting your point here.
It's ok, thanks for contributing.
Until the mid 19th century, conditions in hospitals were not very sanitary at all. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis saw that the doctors didn't wash their hands after handling the recently deceased patients. After they started washing their hands in running water (instead of a bowl) the mortality rate for delivering mothers dropped from about 30% to about 2%. Lev. 15:13 says to wash in running water to get rid of uncleanness.
I'm not saying that the writer of the Bible at that time knew WHY they were inspired to write those things, but what matters is that the Bible was right.
I think I see the point that you are trying to make, but again you chose a terrible example. Ignaz Semmelweis' discovery had nothing to do with Leviticus. He noticed that the babies birthed by midwives had a far lower mortality rate from what we now know as infection than those birthed by doctors, since as it turned out, doctors did not wash their hands between autopsying bodies and birthing babies. He used observation to come to his conclusions and not relying on coincidence. In any case he said nothing about running v. still water; instead he advocated washing with a weak bleach solution instead of not washing at all.
The fact that the Bible gets the occasional fact about nature correct does not mean that you can start making up theories to support your preconceived notions, which is what hydroplate theory is. IT begins with the idea that the biblical notion of the flood is correct and then tries to contort various scientific principles to "prove" it. That is exactly the opposite of how scientific thinking works, as I and many other commenters have noted.
On the subject of poling, the external refrences that I found say that it can only happen within a crystalline domain and not between multiple crystalline domains. By symmetry, I mean essentially the shape of the crystal., not the arrangement of the individual small crystals in the quartz.
The Bible says to circumcise infant sons on the 8th day. It was recently discovered that the platelet count of a newborn peaks on the 8th day. Imagine how many lives were lost because of bloodletting, when Lev. 17:11 says "For the life of the flesh is in the blood." That could have all been prevented by taking what the Bible has to say seriously.
Your conclusion, then, is that no one was capable of making observations or inferences until post-Biblical times? That God gave us the gift of reason only within the last 3,400 years? Because it would seem obvious to me, were I a rabbi, to observe what day of circumcision gives the best results, and then record that result in my instruction book. I don't even need to know about platelets -- I only need to watch and see that the wounds bleed more profusely if I don't wait at least that long.
Likewise, the prohibition against shellfish in Leviticus could easily be a response to the observed effects of a toxic algal bloom, or high concentrations of heavy metals in the local sediments, or whatever. Anyone who isn't an idiot will eventually figure out that the people who ate the oysters got sick, and prohibit shellfish in general -- at least until the cause could be understood. This knowledge doesn't have to be divinely imputed; it could easily be gained by direct observation.
A benevolent God will allow His creations to figure these things out for themselves, rather than having to tell them specifically which animals are "an abomination unto Him." That's why He gave us eyes, and brains, and memories, and the ability to learn writing so that we could record our observations and thoughts.
Unfortunately, I don't always have time to read the original source.
nategar05, you strike me as an earnest and intelligent fellow, so it pains me to see you being misled by someone whose arguments are fundamentally dishonest. The truth of God's creation should stand on its own merits, from your own studies -- that's why God gave you the gift of reason. No one should have to sell you an intentionally incorrect interpretation of it.
To that end, I'd recommend steering clear of lines of argument which rely on sources you aren't familiar with, because this is usually where it ends up. Generally, if you tell me "Schlepp et al., 2010" supports some claim you're making, I'm going to go look at it, not assume a single secondary source -- already proved incorrect on more than one occasion -- is paraphrasing it perfectly. So you might want to look at them yourself, espcially if you're going to actually make arguments that rely on them. In this case, you might take a look HERE.
I would very strongly recommend doing this for most of the points you're inclined to blindly defend, because as near as I can tell, essentially all of the scientific research papers cited on your originally-linked site are being misused in this manner.
Kirth, I found the full paper and will look it over when I get the chance. Thanks.
Well, for one thing he's made predictions, a few of which have already been confirmed.
Test out the theory itself step by step and double check his math I suppose. Really look to see how well conventional sciences can explain what he claims to explain and see what really makes more sense. At least for the unprofessional scientists like me, that sounds like a good way of doing it.
I'm not getting your point here.
Yes, I already knew that. I just didn't see where you were going with that line of thinking. :)
At the risk of being controversial I'll take this one. The inner core rotates slightly faster than the rest of the Earth. Earth's magnetic effect was started by many, many (many) magnetite crystals lining up in the inner core as the inner Earth melted. Or a dynamo effect in the outer core, depending on who you ask. :P
Of course, others have the right to disagree.
...
Thank you for taking it seriously. According to the theory:
Assumption: Subterranean Water. About half the water now in the oceans was once in interconnected chambers about 10 miles below the entire earth’s surface. At thousands of locations, the chamber’s sagging ceiling pressed against the chamber’s floor. These extensive, solid contacts will be called pillars. The average thickness of the subterranean water was at least 3/4 mile. Above the subterranean water was a granite crust; beneath the water was earth’s mantle.
To clarify: the inner Earth hadn't melted yet, so it was solid throughout if I understand the theory correctly.
Likewise, the prohibition against shellfish in Leviticus could easily be a response to the observed effects of a toxic algal bloom, or high concentrations of heavy metals in the local sediments, or whatever. Anyone who isn't an idiot will eventually figure out that the people who ate the oysters got sick, and prohibit shellfish in general -- at least until the cause could be understood. This knowledge doesn't have to be divinely imputed; it could easily be gained by direct observation.
I call this the lazy shaman hypothesis.
Shaman: Look, we gotta stop the guys from eating those blue flowers.
Chief: Huh? Why?
Shaman: Last time we came through this patch and ate those flowers Grolm, Grog, and Ulga were puking for three weeks.
Chief: Yeah, but I ate them and I'm fine.
Shaman: well, people are different. You can eat them and be fine, but some people can't. We don't know how much it takes to get any person sick, so we should avoid them
Chief: ....but i ate them and I'm fine.
Shaman: ... alright look, the spirits said don't eat the blue flowers.
Chief: OH!.. why didn't you say so.. hey guys.. no salad tonight!