Science is a tool that can be abused!

[_spotlight]

The study of plasmas in earth's upper atmosphere.

Why do I smell an Electric Universe crank?

[_Maksutov]

Why do I smell an Electric Universe crank?

Wasn't that a Sterling Allan hobby for a while? Mormon physics from the School of the Prophets?

[_Themis]

Ultimately, science is useful. That is undisputed. This is thanks to applied science. In order for science to have any real ability to comment on religious beliefs, it must also be correct. That is almost certainly not the case. This is thanks to theoretical science.

And we see a common apologetic, but a very poor one. Applied sciences have been shown to work in many cases and work correctly. This means we can use it to comment on anything religion claims that is testable. This is how we know Joseph was making it up. If a claim is not testable then we have no way to know it is correct. Not good argument for accepting a claim.

[_spotlight]

Wasn't that a Sterling Allan hobby for a while? Mormon physics from the School of the Prophets?

The fruits of Mormonism.

[_LittleNipper]

No one knows the true age of the earth or the universe. What is promoted is, if point A is true then point B is possible --- followed by C... There is no way a finite mind can understand the infinite without a revelation.

And I totally agree, it is foolish to base one's view of life on things that are constantly shifting. And Uniformitarianism and evolutionary thought have never remained unchanged. Only the Bible has remained constant.

"Sage" advice from a mind that can't comprehend the implications of permafrost 4,920 feet deep.

"All the gods and heavens and hells are within you." - 13 Hours, the movie.

And since there was a Great Flood and a wind to help dry the land and evaporate the water, it doesn't seem at all improbable that some regions began to experience freezing temperatures. And the truth be told that if the Siberian Permafrost can melt quickly, it can develop quickly. And frankly, most Uniformitarians are sooooooooooooo upset because they see climate change happening very quickly and yet they believe in millions and millions of years for things to be as they are. see> http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... te-change/

Sorry, I know that anything is possible with GOD. Some scientists simply leave HIM out of their equations and they arrive at some wrong answers.

[_Maksutov]

And since there was a Great Flood

Nope. Sorry, Nipper, that's a story in your book. It didn't happen. Neither did Noah's Ark. It's hard to take, I know, but there have been a few books written since your favorite one. The physics that has demonstrated an ancient Earth has made possible the internet that you're using right now. Nothing to do with "God", any more than it has to do with witches or magic.

[_huckelberry]

Christians still cling to the opinion that their Bible is infallible.

Well, here comes science to kick religion in the nuts once again: the Jews were never slaves in Egypt!

It turns out that there is no archaeological evidence of any kind relating to a separate settlement of religious people in Egypt during that time. There is also no evidence of any kind relating to a mass migration across the Sinai Peninsula.


Further, there is no evidence of any kind that Egypt even used slaves, and certainly no evidence that they enslaved an entire nation. The workers that built the pyramids are known to be well payed Egyptians. The pyramids weren’t even built in the right time period, being 800 to 2,000 years older than the supposed “Exodus”.

The same techniques used to track the migration patterns of ancient humans by examining DNA also show that there was absolutely no procreation between ancient Egyptians and ancient Israelites during the time that the story was supposed to have taken place. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if an entire nation was enslaved for hundreds of years, surely there would have been some inter-breeding.

In short, this story never happened.

And this isn’t even “news” – of course, the scientific community is across the subject, but even conservative Jewish sources admit that there is no evidence (but they still have faith! And some stuff about metaphors and such…)

Basically, everyone in the know admits that what is written in the Bible and Torah simply didn’t happen, not at all, not even the non-supernatural, core plot…

http://www.religiouscriticism.com/Bible ... -in-egypt/

Spotlight , i think there is substance in your comments here yet it also is such a clear oversimplification that it invites comment.

The core plot is two kingdoms eastern edge of the Mediterranean sea who fought each other but were both conquered by empires, peoples scattered but some of whom were resettled in the same area. These people became the foundation of a cultural religious group which has persiseted for over 2000 years and has had significant influence on the world. That core plot is most certainly historical.

It is also clear that the Bible contains poetry, argument, cultural warnings, worship and hopes and fears which are also most certainly historical. Then there is material such as in Genesis and scattered elsewhere which looks like folklore shaped and retold as part of a religious discussion. That should be pretty clear for things such as the flood.

It is not so simple with the Exodus story. On the one hand it seems questionable that the story suddenly got accepted as history when made out of thin air. It would seem more like that it arose from some collections of stories from some sort of events. Historians have suggested a process of both conflation of events and an expansion of size. The Exodus as religion is an event with mythical dimension which all Israel participates in , even those living today. Perhaps there was a much smaller but memorable leaving of Egypt. I see no reason to find that difficult to believe even if uncertain.

Your link oversimplifies. I am unaware of anybody who thought Egyptian pyramids , other burials, temples etc were made of mud bricks. (with or without straw) The building of such important buildings would not contradict the Biblical story. If there were nomadic peoples temporarily staying on the edges of Egypt who got put to work building minor buidings for Egyptians they may not have been celebrated or distinguished. They would not have been a nation of distinct religion. That sort of characterization would apply only hundreds of years later. (and that nation at least hundreds of years later is a historical reality.)

[_spotlight]

if the Siberian Permafrost can melt quickly, it can develop quickly.

The permafrost has not melted to a significant depth. They've detected a warming (not a melting) down to about 180 feet. But the deeper you go the slower the rate at which temperature change progresses.

This can be modeled on a computer using the law of heat transfer. Feel free to show us where creationists have bothered to do this and present your data that show permafrost down to a depth of 4920 feet in less than hundreds of thousands of years.

I understand that creation "scientists" don't do any science, they just misquote actual scientists. But can't they be bothered to confirm their nonsense with a computer simulation? Is this the depth of commitment they have to a search for truth? I mean, it looks as if perhaps they don't want to know the answer. Could that be the case LittleNipper? You don't want to know?

Base of Depth

Permafrost extends to a base depth where geothermal heat from the earth and the mean annual temperature at the surface achieve an equilibrium temperature of 0 °C.[26] The base depth of permafrost reaches 1,493 m (4,898 ft) in the northern Lena and Yana River basins in Siberia.[9] The geothermal gradient is the rate of increasing temperature with respect to increasing depth in the Earth's interior. Away from tectonic plate boundaries, it is about 25 °C per km of depth (1 °F per 70 feet of depth) near the surface in most of the world.[27] It varies with the thermal conductivity of geologic material and is less for permafrost in soil than in bedrock.[26]

Calculations indicate that the time required to form the deep permafrost underlying Prudhoe Bay, Alaska was over a half-million years.[25][28] This extended over several glacial and interglacial cycles of the Pleistocene and suggests that the present climate of Prudhoe Bay is probably considerably warmer than it has been on average over that period. Such warming over the past 15,000 years is widely accepted.[25] The table to the right (below) shows that the first hundred metres of permafrost forms relatively quickly but that deeper levels take progressively longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost

[_Gorman]

The study of plasmas in earth's upper atmosphere.

Why do I smell an Electric Universe crank?

Case in point. Space Physics gets a bad rap. Scientists tend to underfund it, and laymen on message boards think it's one step away from pseudoscience. If people aren't taught it in elementary school, they tend to not trust it. This has been going on since the beginning of the field. It's nothing new.

[_Chap]

Space Physics gets a bad rap. Scientists tend to underfund it ...

You think scientists have the means to fund science? I wish!

Governments, by and large fund the great majority of science.

If we are talking pharmaceutical research, there is also commercial investment in things that seem likely to make money (surprise!). But such firms tend not to invest in stuff that will, for instance, only deal with diseases that affect people in poor countries. Why should they, after all? They are businesses.