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Evidence Found of Lake, Catastrophic Flood on Mars
angkor points to this article on spaceflightnow.com, excerpting: "Scientists 'have discovered a large former lake in the highlands of Mars that would cover an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.'"
... except the massive flood which lasted 40 days and 40 nights was on mars not earth! now i wonder what happened to noah and all the animals?
Of course, it would be more useful to cover arizona and colorado with a lake at the moment.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
I'm packing my swimsuit!
uhh.. no.. wait.. "former"... *mumble*
/John Sjolander, project manager Contribio
Mmm. Mars.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Here on Earth we have a desert that covers the size of Texas and Arizona and New Mexico, easily.
I have been pwned because my
with that amount of area wouldn't it be better referred to as an inland sea like the Great Lakes or the Black sea?
Who run Barter Town?
I think I ought to summarize the current 'mars' situation. I don't have anything against exploring mars, etc, but it seems to me like people are trying to make worthwhile stories out of trivia.
I think we have been bombarded with the "news" of water on Mars for long enough so far. First it was the polar ice cape water residue, which was quite important. Then there was the hydrogen-trace confirmation, which is perhaps not so important, though it does show that there might be water close enough to the surface to be extracted. However this particular data is completely irrelevant unless there are plans to actually go there and extract water.
Now they have finished a high-resolution altitude map. They used this to calculate the possible origin of the water that shaped a valley, and traced it to something looking like a lake basin. Again, nice, since people theorize that if there were life on mars, there would be a higher chance that it had existed at a lake.
But, is this important? As far as I am concerned, the answer is no, unless someone decides to actually send a mission to the planet to gather hard evidence. Which currently seems impossible, considering the amount of money wasted on the ISS (which has no clear function IMHO).
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
What is it with texas these days ? ./ seems to measure anything extraterestrial in STU (Standard Texas Units).
Just for clarity : is this a metric unit ? Can we count in Millitexi, picotexi, GIGATEXI (drooldrool) ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
The BBC website has a related article about the formation of the Ma'adim Vallis. It can be found at News.BBC.Co.Uk
Just you're average nitpicker.
Like... When did this flood occur? How long was the water present? Was it triggered by a meteor impact, melting subsurface ice?
I'm not interested until they find a Martian nudist beach.
I love those Martian chicks!
To whom?
Slagborr
Is it totally accurate to call this a lake? What's known is that at some time in the past, a large body of liquid resided there. If it's freshwater, it's a lake. If it's saltwater, it's a sea. (Trying to recall geography....)
Then again, it could have been the little green guys' cellestial keg. Gives a whole new meaning to "Free as in beer."
95 here yesterday and it hasn't rained in months!
Albuquerque PC
Back, say, a year or two ago when another major "water on Mars" story broke, I registered the domain MartianSprings.com.
I had thoughts of slapping custom labels on bottled water and selling it as a novelty item.
I get these stupid ideas during sleepless nights, a problem I have.
Anyone want to buy: budgetdsl.com, instantonpc.com, nobootpc.com, peerat.com, etc etc etc?
Didn't think so.
(should I renew 19x.net? I think I will, but then again, it's late.)
This space available.
A peek in the future: in an embarassing statement the Mars scientist admit that what was previously thought as evidence for great Marsian flood (topomap.jpg) is, actually, the sperm sample (sperm.jpg) of one of the scientists.
Exactly what was catastrophic about it? Did people die? Were towns washed away?
This is mars we are talking about. Impressively large flood, yes. Catastrophic flood, I don't think so. Worst case, some large rocks got moved about.
Bob.
Greennecks.
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Richard C. Hoagland and friends have some odd theories, but one of them has been somewhat predictive along the lines of this finding. The theory is that Mars was in tidal lock in the not-too-distant past, ie. that it used to be a moon of a larger planet (which exploded or something).
Predicted by this theory: the distribution of underground water-ice at the equator being primarily in two areas 180 degrees apart. This is what was found, and funny thing, these are apparently areas of high-elevation, not low-elevation.
Also predicted, climate change on Mars due to cataclismic event as opposed to a slow decline. Such a rapid event would cause exactly the sort of thing described in this mars lake article.
Another good prediction: the 'stains' visible in Mars orbiter pics that look like liquid water on the surface, in fact are liquid water leaking to the surface. Others poo-poo this idea because they say Mars climate change was geologically ancient, and if water was leaking to the surface as frequently as the pics suggest, it would all be gone by now. Hoagland's theory says the climate change was relatively recent (millions of years), so this really is water and its not all gone yet. Look for this to be found next & lets see if the standard model can survive.
www.enterprisemission.com
Richard C. Hoagland is coincidentally is on the Coast to Coast AM (yes, Art Bell's radio show) tonight, not discussing this topic however (hmm, Speilberg producing TV miniseries about what??)
no sig, no plan, no clue
Alternatively, you could make a more celestial-based measuring tool with the "Antarctica". How many artarcticas to a texas, considering that the "texas" is a measurement based on human whim, a la the yard, while the "antarctica" is one based on solid physical reality, ie, the freezing point of water at sea level corresponding to a gravity field of one earth, and a partial air pressure corresponding to the current setup, etc.
Think about it.
"I his bow, and spun and wove, likes you." Vere de Vere out of my mould's mouth dragged me of the voluntary apes.
That's easy. Noah's Ark was a spaceship. Duh!
Which reminds me of a German cartoon (http://www.nichtlustig.de/) recently: one sees the Ark in the background, and in the foreground is a small raft with a prophet-like guy and two unicorns. The caption reads "Noah's rival Ishmael was rather less successful", and one of the unicorns says to Ishmael, "By the way, we're gay."
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
'the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.'
FYI, the European version of the article translates this into:
'the size of France'
it's olds for nerds... images from as far back as Pathfinder showed conclusive evidence of catastrophic outburst floods. That's why Mars Odyssey carries the gamma ray spectrometer which is tuned to look for the hydrogen signal from subsurface water in the first place.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
did you plan on making a fetish site?
--
making up good sigs is a hard thing to do.
Examples of how strange this get are seen here. Ignoring the junk science nonsense, the pictures are interesting. If you scroll about halfway down, there is one mars photo, conveniently linked to the nasa archive, that looks for all the world like an actual sea shore. So much so it is startling.
Of course, the real scientists are taking their sweet time coming to any conclusions (insert plausible reason here), which is driving the hobbyists and others right up a wall.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Still waiting for the day they find those microscale computers the martians left behind when they escaped the planet...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Geology is way overdue for another Harlan Bretz. Who wants to step into the breach?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Flood on Mars?!
There is no even single internet connection on Mars yet! How somebody could flood it?!
if *I* was landing a robotic lander, I would say "gee,here's where water used to be...Let's look for Fossils!"
:)
duh.
if they can find where water was collecting, there is a batter chance to find life, and hence, even if the life is dead, find proof.what would all of those religous zealots say when we say, um, yes, we have definitive PROOF of extra terrestrial life?
This give us an actual BULLSEYE to aim for to cause a massive religous upheaval.
either way it would just be cool. can you imagine what those critters mighta looked like with the differences in planets?
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They neglect to mention if God then took a video of someone discovering it then sending it in to "You've been framed!" for a £250 cash prize.
By finding evidence of a huge body of water on Mars, we now know that all the theories of Martian geohistory (is that a word?) that rely on a small volume of past surface water are less likely to be true.
The words you're looking for may be areohistory and areology. See Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
I take it you've read Douglas Adams' "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" where Arthur and Ford get dumped by a Golgrinchen (sp?) 'B ark' (all the 'usual' people who don't actually do the thinking and the working - i.e. telephone sanitairs etc) on a certain blue-green planet and actually 'take over' from the Cavemen?
I know, I should turn in my Geek-Card right now... But seriously, how would we know if that is the truth or not. The Bush Administration recently admitted that we are indeed destroying the planet with our use of fossil-fuels, but they won't be doing anything about it because it would hurt the economy.
Which doesn't make much sense to me. I mean if you are doing something that is going to WIPE OUT ALL LIFE on the planet, you would think that you would have the common sense to say, "Hey, I think we might want to change what we are doing..."
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
How was any flood "catastrophic" if there is no life on the planet? If there's no one there to harm, it isn't catastrophic no matter how large the flood may have been. Jeez people, read a fscking dictionary.
...cover an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.
How many Rhode Islands is that?
Transcript show: self sigs atRandom.
.. because as any fan of SNL knows "Nobody messes with Texas"
How dare Mars have an old dried up lake bigger than Texas.
Live web cams
If you havn't read it your missing out. Middle class gets dumped. (Of course I believe the middle class is the backbone of our entire society)
All the pollution in the world will not induce an atmosphere to leak into space, that is the sole domain of gravity. Mars has what, 1/3 the gravity of earth? It will definitely tend to lose atmosphere, especially the lighter elements and volatiles, MUCH faster than the earth does (yes we lose atmosphere).
Nay, there may have once been life on Mars, and may yet still be deep in the crust where there is still latent heat to maintain liquid water, but the death of surface life is more likely due to simply the barely existence geochemical cycle on Mars. The geochemical cycle is absolutely required to maintain water on the surface and to keep generating atmospheric components, particularly CO2 and other gases. No geochemical cycle, no life.
One need in no wise postulate "advanced" civilizations self-destructing, etc, to explain a situation like Mars. Simple geology, chemistry, and physics will do.
It IS possible, by the by, that life on earth did get seeded from early life on Mars (meteorite impact ejecta). There could have been a time when there was no life on earth (yet...given good conditions it is likely inevitable to evolve) and Mars supplied a jumpstart. Life would have simply evolved first on Mars. Mars, being less massive, would have cooled faster from a molten ball. This would have produced a period of livability before the earth was ready. As the earth cooled enough for livability, a semi-continuous rain of organisms from Mars (ejecta) would have eventually found a fertile, livable home.
If life is found on Mars and is found to be significantly similar to earth life, it would be a strong support for my hypothesis...the other being that life evolved there totally separately and that life, in general, is more the same than different in regards to amino acids, nucleic acids, etc. What would be THE evidence in support of Mars life first, then earth, would be if any life found on Mars used the same, or substantially the same...evolution DOES change things...amino acid coding method. If the codons are substantially the same, then the life is connected.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I can accept the round-off of 4840 sqRI = 1 STU. Even though the base linear Rhode Island unit is demonstrably not only imaginary but also inconceivable (it ain't even an island ferkriesache!)
But ya gotta realize that 3 microTexi = 1 standard sandbox (SSB).
So does anybody know how many skoshes in a nanoTexas?
And another thing (to bring this back on target): is it really appropriate to apply units of dry area to Martian wetlands?
NASA seems to alternate between press releases of "Water/Life on Mars", "Yet Another Module of a Usless Space Station Launched", "Some 'Kids' Program" and "30 Years Since We Last Did Something (Orbit/Moon etc)".
I am a firm believer in space exploration but I'm really starting to loose faith in NASA. The search for life in the universe is important but should it really be the program's primary goal? IMHO, we should be trying to commercialize space (for humans not just satellites). NASA should help corporations build space hotels, start charging a $million a flight and fund their science that way. The Mars fossils aren't going anywhere! With a good space infrastructure looking for life becomes much easier.
Reply, don't mod.
As a resident of Rhode Island I'm terrified of the possibility that one of those floods "the size of Rhode Island" or wildfires "the size of Rhode Island" will someday actually happen IN Rhode Island.
I know I've asked the this question before: But why is it that everytime there's a story about life on other planets we have someone start talking about the "religious zealots" and how this is going to upset their faith? Like for some reason everyone who is religious will just pack their bags and go home and never give religion another thought.
Well here's a thought... the vast majority of religious people (like the vast majority of the population) probably don't care if there is/was life on other planets. For those that do care the vast majority of them welcome the idea and want to know more about it (myself included).
Yes there are some religious people who are short-sighted and have to put God in a box and declare that everything happened a certain way. For those of us who are not short-sighted its fairly easy to reconcile faith with science. We realize that God is much bigger than any science or logic. The Bible doesn't say that Evolution didn't happen, it just says that God had a hand in creating all that is. For all we know he used evolution to do it and put billions of life-forms all over the universe!
Finally all this begs the question, Why do you care if some people believe that God created the world in a certain way? They have free speech, they don't seem to be here bothering you. If you believe their wrong fine but why bring them up here where has nothing to do with the topic at hand?
Is it because you are equally short-sighted and believe that all religious people in the world believe a certain way because of the acts of a vocal few?
The Anti-Blog
No, its an English unit [...] Eventually you end up with smidgeons and skoshies.
For the record, skosh has a Japanese origin (sukoshi, meaning small).
- bp
bp
I think the new discovery of what was an ancient lake of water on that planet is kind of stating the obvious anyway.
Doesn't anymore remember the Mariner 9 mission? Mariner 9 in 1971 revealed what amounts of dried-up river channels, proof that there used to liquid water flowing on the surface of Mars in the distant past. The question that purplexed scientists was what happened to that water; the discovery from Mars Odyssey 2001 orbiter may have confirmed that a large portion of that liquid water has now turned into ice that is now underneath the surface of Mars.
hmmm... No bias there. We might as well get our tech stories from windowssucks.com.
What signature defines me as a person?
Kudos. Clear, concise argument. Good point.
BUT.
The reason I tend to get upset is that I don't like people showing up on my doorstep or stopping me at the bus stop or handing me pamphlets at McDonalds and telling me about how God will save me if I just give him a chance. Or the old guy in downtown Portland who screams out about Christ saving me. Sure, he's convicted. Sure, he's standing up for his beliefs. But I don't want to hear it.
Granted, these are not "typical" religious people. They are zealots, LDS or Witnesses. I understand. But these people drive me crazy. They get into little corners of my life and disrupt it, trying to get me to come and witness some^H^H^H^HGod and give money^H^H^H^H^Htithe to their churches. I don't like it, and I don't do it. How do you deal with it? One way, as I see it, is by letting your thoughts be known to large groups via message boards. Supporting your own belief that their IS no God, and that you think they're all nuts.
I used to (15 years ago) politely listen and nod, then go my own way. That didn't save me any time or make me feel better. Then (5 years ago) I started arguing with them about how stupid I thought their ideas were. Definitely a time-waster. Now, I just tell them to piss off, shut up, or get the hell out of my way. It's amazing to me that I could have the gall to be that rude to another human, but...
THAT's why all the comments pop up about religious zealots.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
... that little green men or some other highly evolved people used the water right? If there were higher forms of life on Mars, don't just show me *supposed* evidence of the water, show me *FOSSILS* and *EXCREMENT* (fossilized or otherwise).
If life did use the water there and now it is gone, then either it's too far under Mars for us to find yet *OR* something used it and *HAD* to have left evidence behind of itself. Otherwise, supposing past life on Mars is just philosophical!
amazing that http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_2 062000/2062429.stm was not covered by a single US news outlet...
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
have there been any troll postings regarding uranus and goatse.cx?
(or whatever that URL is... i never get it right)
dmarien
I'd say the Bible strongly implies evolution did not happen. HOWEVER, the Bible most certainly does not say life does not exist on other planets.
C.S. Lewis once said atheists wanted to have it both ways with extraterrestrial life. If life exists on other planets, that proves we're not unique and not special, and so there's no God. On the other hand, if life doesn't exist on other planets, that proves we're an accident, and therefore there's no God. (Gross simplification of what he said, from memory.)
To my atheist/agnostic friends: the Bible makes no comments about whether there is life elsewhere or not. Anybody who tells you otherwise is taking something out of context. If you don't believe me, ask them for the reference and go read it for yourself.
Some will say the sacrifice of Jesus makes no sense if there is life on other planets, because how could those races be saved? There are two possibilities. Perhaps such races never sinned, as we did, and thus don't need salvation. (C.S. Lewis treated this possibility in his Space Trilogy.) Or, perhaps the Son of God was born on multiple worlds to save multiple lost races. The Bible DOES NOT SAY.
So, evidence of life on other worlds should not faze a Bible-believer.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
...so damned dangerous.
_ do nt_kill.html
If you (and possibly your community) are the type that have a quiet, personal faith that sustains you during the difficult parts of your life....
...well, even though I (and many others) may find the first principles behind it (that there is an invisible, omnipotent and omniscient being who created us all and who has rules for us that we must all abide by or be consined to the flames) absurd, there's no law against the absurd, and you're not hurting anyone. There's no reason for anyone to piss in your cornflakes.
But you unfortunately - on the surface - share the same faith with a bunch of people who twist religeous writings to serve their own ends, and who simultaniously use these twisted interpretations to absolve them of any responsibility for their actions.
Somebody with the absolute conviction that an otherwise unconsciencable act is sanctioned by their God is a VERY dangerous person, the same way that a psychopath or sociopath is dangerous. The normal rules of conduct no longer apply.
So you get people who feel very strongly that "abortion is murder", but believe that killing doctors who perform abortions is just fine (because it is sanctioned by God,and thus not "murder")
And so on and so forth. There are so many examples that I don't think it's necessary to trot them all out. You don't have to search very hard to find examples of religiously-motivated abhorrant behaviour.
And this behaviour is very much inter-faith. All the major world religions preach peace, tolerence, understanding, and a virtuous life, and evey one of them has bred fanatics who have killed, raped, burned, and opressed (from individuals to entire populations) in the name of their God.
A common theme amongst these fanatics is an insistance on the absolute infallibility of their scriptures and the letter of these scriptures (or at least the part of it that they feel gives them leave to do whatever it is they want to do) Anything that can debunk or disprove these scriptures makes is more difficult to gain converts and continue spreading the disease. A world with no religious zealots would be a very fine place indeed.
So it's not that anyone believes that "all religious people believe a certain thing because of the acts of a vocal few" but rather that "the acts of the vocal few are so damned dangerous that they have to be contained somehow".
Note that you don't necessarily have to be burning witches or firebombing abortion clinics to be dangerous. If you seek the supression of the teaching of truth (because it contradicts your scriptures) you are dangerous. If you seek to deny people certain rights (because your scriptures claim such people are hated by your God) then you are dangerous. If you seek the supression of certain books or works of art because you feel they are counter to the wishes of your God, you are dangerous. Etc etc ad nausium.
Probably the best illustration of what I'm taking about here comes from the fine folks at The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3734/god_clarifies
The fanatics are the ones speaking for you, like it or not. They tar you with the same brush.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Hey, that's a pretty good way of putting it. God created the concept of evolution, truly showing what a bright entity he is.
Too bad the sequence in Genesis is slightly irregular. Then again, whoever reads the bible to the letter anyway? It's self-contradictory and by multiple authors (however divinely inspired they were).
Stop the brainwash
I would rather not hear about your crackpot beliefs, so please never mention them again. I don't want to hear about your ignorant views on software or your wrong views on copying music. I used to just ignore the pirates and free software jibberish, but now it is becoming too much. Just stop now.
It might be kind of hard to realise for you damn yanks, but America isn't the centre of my, or a lot of people's universe.
How big is Texas? Thats like a kind of little state isn't it? Its not even as big as the puny Victoria (22 million hectares?)? A mere spot on the map? A crappy dry shithole of a spot at that.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
Andv even without discounting the sedimental evidence , it doesn't explain where this water came from and is gone ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
HTF did you make the leap from an atmosphere becoming saturated with greenhouse gases and the atmosphere blowing off the planet? Seriously, if you want to see what a runaway greenhouse effect looks like, take a look at Venus. The atmosphere on Venus is much, much thicker than it is on Earth (and composed mostly of poisonous chemicals like sulphuric acid).
Liberty in your lifetime
I had it forced down my throat from a lot of different people.
I had a teacher who refused to admit there was a *slim* chance of it being possible. a science teacher.
she also refused to mention evolution(micro or macro) because "we didn't come from filthy apes."(never forget that comment, because it was so unprofessional)
Keep in mind this is the same school where I had a teacher tell me "the internet and computers are just a fad."(I'm not kidding)
obviously this comment wasn't aimed towards you, it was aimed towards ZEALOTS, the ones who refuse to examine anything that might contradict with the word for word interpertation of the bible.
I personally hope there is life out there. perferrable not-too-intelligent life, but just some weird critters. I think that would be cool. But I've had people get in my face for even saying THAT.
perhaps I am just childish.
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How'd he cram in all those animals?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
recalling from my theory classes, I remember something about
1) a perfect creature could not create something imperfect.
2) if man is imperfect(like a chipped ruby), and god is a perfect(like a ray of light, what happens when you shine the light through man?
you get a red distorted beam.
this is supposedly how it was written, yet I think some people fail to forget man is imperfect, and even being divinly inspired, there's a chance for misinterpretation.
of course now I'm just being an ass so I'll shut up.
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I looked it up and did the math. Consider an area a little over 4 times the land area of the entire UK.
FWIW, I don't even think most of us "damn yanks" have a concept of the size of Texas (or any of the states, for that matter).
Yup, it's full of contradictions!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
A common theme amongst these fanatics is an insistance on the absolute infallibility of their scriptures
:-). (Disclaimer: I'm not against Linux at all I just know a lot of ppl who wouldn't switch OS's if their life depended on it, and I find that quite interesting).
I am not a fanatic, but I do believe this in a sense about the Bible. I believe that the Bible holds only truth, and nothing false. However, this belief has little relevance when you consider the following points:
1) Humans are fallable. Therefore, even if the Bible is in fact infallable, our interpretation of it may be incorrect. Our interpretation must always be balanced with other forms of evidence and reasoning. Fanatics don't have these checks and balances and end up doing things like "murdering in the name of God".
2) Text in and of itself is a very limited form of communication. This releates to interpreation by considering aspects of historical context and culture. Although our translators have done an excellent job in this area, we have to be very careful about how we read these texts.
None of this means that it's impossible to learn truth from the Bible, it just means that I can admit that I may not fully understand a passage, or that I may be completely wrong about a passage. This is important because every fanatic I've talked to (even Linux fanatics!) "know that they're Right", and there's nothing you can say or no evidence that you can present to change their mind. And this, my friend, is why we have bin Laden, and Linux/RMS zealots
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Take a look at Venus. About the same mass as Earth, lots of volcanic activity spewing mucho greenhouse gases. Surface temp at ~900 degrees. No particularly high atmospheric loss. It is also closer to the sun so it also picks up a higher solar wind density.
Its atmosphere, for all practical purposes, is not going anywhere. Venus has a runaway geochemical cycle, Mars practically lacks a cycle entirely.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Blue Mars
Not really relevant to the discussion of wheteher or not water (or how much water) exists on mars right now, but interesting.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Clarification:
Sukoshi = small (amount)
Chisaii = small (size)
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
(We seem to be in agreement on the issue of the danger of fanatics - of any stripe - so I promise not to beat you up too badly :)
But the issue of Biblical "truth" is an interesting one, because so many people's concepts of what "Biblical truth" actually *means* are so different and so contradictory - often self-contraditictory.
If I understand your position correctly (and I agree that text is not a perfect communications medium), you believe:
1) Everything in the Bible is True
2) Mistakes may be made in translation, such that a False version of what was once a True statement may appear in later versions.
3) Even given a perfect translation, people may (intentionally or accidently) misconstrue what a passage actually means, and so the version of the passage as it exists in their heads may become False.
I agree wholeheartedly with statements 2 and 3 from the above summary.
Now let me make the following observations
1) There are some parts of the Bible that are very obviously False - the Earth was not built 6 days, for example. The four Gospels (which all discuss the same events) often contradict each other on dates, places, and sequences of events.
So there are passages to one can point to and state "this is False" and other passages one can point to and state "up to three of these may be False, but we don't know which"
2) Given the lack of access to early copies (which may not necessarily track the original texts themselves) and the lack of ability of most Christians to read the ancient languages (usually Greek) in which they were written, most people must thus read the Bible in the translation to their native language, and thus get the full force of any translation and copy errors.
This in turn means that in their copy of the Bible, there exist passages which are not the same as the "True" Bible, and so are False.
3) For a given person, there is some level of probability that they will misconstrue a given passage at any given time, and so their "internal model" of the passage becomes False.
When you tie this all together, this means that:
1) for a given passage, there is some probability that the passage is False
2) You have no way of determining what that probability is
This means that _every single passage in the Bible is suspect_!
How can one choose to base a life, make decisions, or answer questions, based on the contents of the Bible, if there is no way to know if the answer is True or not?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Religion basically drives me batty, I don't care what others believe in, but they certainly don't need to try and get me to believe in their stories either.
:)
Things the religious nuts believe in:
1) God
2) The Bible
3) Jeebus
Things they don't believe in, but let their kids believe in up to a certain age, and yet have as much proof of their existence that they have for God and Jesus:
1) Santa Claus
2) The tooth fairy
In my mind, if you're gonna believe in one mythical being and proclaim him/her/it your God, then ya may as well believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy as well, you have just as much proof (zero) that they exist.
It is little wonder that the brightest minds on our planet didn't/don't belive in a God, both Einstein and Stephen Hawking have both said they see no room for such an entity in the universe.
Religion is there to serve the weak, the folks who simply cannot grasp the idea of just being here without tying it to some unknown entity who created everything.
Then of course each religion says they are the correct religion, who is right?
Personally, I don't completely disagree that some being may have played a hand in creating the universe, since we do not know what lies outside our universe anything is possible, this universe could be some childs science experiment, this might all just be a huge computer program, who knows. I just don't think a God of any sort sat down and created the Earth specifically and all the beings that inhabit this place, paying special attention to the homo-sapien population, and wiping out the other races of humans that evolved along with homo-sapiens.
Indeed, the ancients who worshipped the sun as a God were likely more accurate than today's scriptures, after all, we are all made of star stuff, every atom in us once existed in a star at some point. We are certainly more sure that the stars came before the planets, and that Earth has not existed for as long as the universe itself, what was their God up to for those first 5-10 billion years? Drawing up plans?
Why do you care if some people believe that God created the world in a certain way? They have free speech, they don't seem to be here bothering you.
If that were true, we wouldn't care. The problem is with people who insist on passing laws that utterly unscientific myths, unsupported by the slightest objective evidence, should be taught in science classes as valid scientific theories. They're neither valid nor scientific. Science classes should teach science. We object to kids having their heads filled with nonsense, is what we object to. As long as creationist zealots insist on peddling their mythology as science, I'll keep objecting.
I don't have any problem with the view you stated. (That an intelligent "God" chose to use evolution by natural selection to create life as we know it today.) It's a religious question, not a scientific one; it's unprovable either way. My problem is with people who insist that science is flawed because it can't answer religious questions, or that religious myth is evidence to disprove scientific conclusions, or that science is a religion. These people are religious zealots, plain and simple. The fact that they are doesn't mean that everyone with religious beliefs is a zealot. It's just the the zealots are loudmouthed and annoying enough, as well as common enough in the US, to cause serious problems for people who prefer to know things, based on observational evidence, rather than to believe in them based on faith.
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Yep that's the problem.
With the hundreds of hobbyists pouring over the thousands of Nasa Mars photos, they are sure to find some wierd things.
But unfortunately, the fruitcakes are the ones who will be most dedicated to promoting their agenda, etc. When the weirdos get a hold of it, watch out! NASA has received more than it's share of heart burn from these guys.
Take for example this news story from a couple of weeks ago where a relatively recent collision spawned a family of asteroids. This story combines well with this one on the BBC, which goes into the comet that killed off the Dinosaurs. It note how something fundamental changed in the Solar system 65 Million years ago.
This starts to coordinate well with this proposition, that something destroyed a planet back then, but the wacko elements on the site make the whole proposition less palettable.
Interesting mars photos all the same. I have no explanation, yet.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Minor nit - the atmosphere of Venus is actually composed mostly of CO2. It's the clouds which are made up of H2SO4.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
It is little wonder that the brightest minds on our planet didn't/don't belive in a God, both Einstein and Stephen Hawking have both said they see no room for such an entity in the universe.
I've never actually heard this before (though I don't necessarily doubt it). Do you have any quotes or references for these two where they said something to that effect?
Why do americans feel the need to express everything in space, in how it relates to the size of texas?
Bruce willis: How big is that thing?
Some guy: It's as big as texas
Nasa nerd 1: I've found a lake on mars!
Nasa nerd 2: Really? where?
Nasa nerd 3: Up there on your left... It's about 1.2 texas'.
Picard: Number one, how fast are we currently travelling?
Riker: Approximately 200 million texas' per hour sir
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
It is little wonder that the brightest minds on our planet didn't/don't belive in a God, both Einstein and Stephen Hawking have both said they see no room for such an entity in the universe. That's really funny, because Einstein's great quote about quantum physics is "God doesn't play dice with the universe." He was also a pretty serious Jew, but other than that, I didn't know him, so I won't speak to his faith.
Put identity in the browser.
I'm going to assume that you live in the US, because of the Portland reference. Freedom of speech is just that: it is not freedom to listen to what you want. No one has a right to come into your home and say whatever they want, but the traditional understanding of the right to free speech is specifically to air unpopular beliefs, be they political or religious. I know that the constitution is mangled to death every day in America (heck, try living in a monarchy), so please don't rebut me about current practices. Freedom of speech was given to ensure the free exchange of ideas, whether you want to hear them or not. You are also "free" to close your ears. In short, what you want to hear is not important to the constitution of the US
Put identity in the browser.
He was also a pretty serious Jew, but other than that, I didn't know him, so I won't speak to his faith.
;)
His faith can't hear you anyway. He's been dead for awhile.
I wish I had a million moderator points for each time something like this comes up. Everyone gets all religious or anti-religious and I need hundreds of mod points (most of them -1 offtopic) to straighten the thread out. It's too far gone and pointless to even mention by now but if this was on a message board somewhere the mods would've locked it about 40 posts ago. Lame.
By the way people, in case you missed it, evidence of a big flood and lake were discovered on Mars.
I feel sorry for you for having such a terrible science teacher. Evolution is taught in many science classes, if for no other reason to show you relationships between species, classes, etc. Once you get past the basics with Gregory Mendel and move on to genetics, everything becomes clear. Creature X is a mutation of Creature Y, went on to become successful in a different niche than Creature X, and therefore a clear branch on the evolutionary tree emerges. There are still those who cling to 17th century thinking and they're only doing themselves damage by living in a small-minded world.
As for your last comment "perhaps I am just childish", that's not a bad thing. One of the defining attributes of children is their open-mindedness and ability to think and imagine without boundaries. Tell some first graders to draw their ideal car and see what they come up with, or even kindergarteners (german sp). It'll be much more interesting than something a child in 7th grade will draw for reasons mentioned.
I have a strong feeling you grew up in the south in a small town...lotta regression down here in some parts. Actually smalltown anywhere usually fosters xenophobic and 'filthy ape' mentalities.
Yah, noticing its reduced rate of flow, it just reached over and wound up the dial marked `erosion rate'. D'ya happen to have a reference to hand pegging its reaction time? Teleology, anyone? (-:
Another point of mind that you didn't address is directly supported in your metaphor. The canyon didn't require a knife; something more akin to a shovel is in order. And if it did cut as you say, where are the alluvial fans at the mouths of the side canyons?
Try keeping up with the research. Actually, finding this was an education in itself. I ran across several evolutionists positing rapid rock formation in answer to Creationist claims of rapid rock formation. Um, what? Own goal? (-:
Those of you who modded the parent of this down did the right thing. Keep down the bad work!
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Here in Oz, we have places that don't get rained upon for years at a time too. They have creeks. We also have totally level mudflats. They have creeks too. Want to do some special pleading before you're buzzed off the show?
Since you're in the mood, you might want to have a stab at explaining how the Great Unconformity got itself so neatly planed off. That should be funny too...
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`Too simple, he missed.'
Odd how it ate the (mostly harder) rocks in the middle faster than the (mostly softer) rocks at the ends, isn't it? D'ya think maybe this river, er, rises to a challenge or something? (-:
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Yo, and wouldn't it be such an important point for me to make if they did? D'oh? I wasn't marketing to the `would-you-like-brains-with-that?' crowd, which perhaps I should be on SlashDot.
We're talking silty deposits tens to hundreds of meters thick, and well above the river bed. There's also the matter of tens of thousands of cubic kilometers of sediment which, if borne away gradually by the Colorado River, should have formed a really noticeable alluvial fan at the river's mouth - but didn't.
If that seems answerable (-: please!
If you want something a bit more narrative, try here.
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Austin answers the footprints and dunes here.
There is a much more detailed treatement of the Coconino footprints here.
Read about Tapeats in a bit more detail here
You will no doubt notice that all of these giant oysters, found many km up in the Andes, died closed.
And so on. Reams of answers, only a Google away. How so, since the mast majority of researchers in this world hew to the materialist/naturalist worldview constantly hammered into them by school, television, even comics? How are so few - and such ill-equipped - opponents able to uncover so much that speaks of a short and violent history for our planet, if its history is truly long and meandering?
Personally, I was a little disappointed that you got moderated into the dirt even though your material is all pretty much standard and imaginitive. You did at least put some effort into putting those obsolete ideas across.
Nevertheless, it's bedtime for me. Do your own searching. Sayonarah!
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On behalf of religious people everywhere I thank you for your comments.
There is no greater compliment than to be told that you (or your ideas) are "dangerous".
Yes we have "dangerous" ideas. It is "dangerous" to assume that we will all have to answer for our actions, "dangerous" to believe that all that exists, is but the thought of a creator. "dangerous" that we have an obligation to put our lives on the line for each other and family for more than just self-preservation.
It is further "dangerous" to society at large that there are men who believe that there are things for which they must be willing to surrender their lives, even their reputations.
An example of this "danger" would be the Abolitionists in Mass. who proposed secession in response to their perceived abuses from the south, did I mention that their "dangerous and subversive" activities stemmed from their religious belief?
Well, I applaud you for recognizing the "danger" that we of religion represent. Certainly a harmless atheist like yourself can be counted upon to determine such a thing.
-ballantrae
Texas is big. Real big. And empty. Oh there are lots of things in Texas - it's not all desert. In fact just about any climate on Earth can be found in Texas. However the big cities are far apart and you will drive for hours and hours and hours to get to the next big city. It is kind of like star travel. Between the big cities there isn't a lot that is very interesting. I think that is what makes Texas seem even bigger than it actually is. Texas really is big enough to be it's own thrid world country. The U.S. relies on Texas immensely. Texas can get along fine on it's own without the U.S. but the U.S. cannot make it without Texas.
All of your other bulldust was basically a leadup to this: `If you don't agree with me, you're a nutter!' In terms of reasoning, you just blew it.
When did Kansas ban the teaching of evolution?
IIRC, evolution simply lost it's protected status. Which is necessary if science is to avoid religious stagnation. Or don't you think it can stand on its own merits?
You're a bit north of target, an you're going to miss the interesting silty bits over towards Vegas.
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Yeah, wind-blown, right... for starters, there's nothing wrong from a catastrophist perspective with wind having blown on dunes; for seconds, those dunes were not formed by wind. For a sweeping overview, see here and for a more specific treatment of the dunes (and footprints, but see below) try this.
One of the things about floods is that they come up, and they go down. The kind of flood postulated here is not the polite little rush of water one envisions when one hears the word `flood'; think of facing a set of tidal waves several kilometers high, then map that around the horizon a bit (in many places) and throw in constant off-the-richter-scale earthquakes and vulcanism to make Ragnarok look like a penny-bomb. In between all of this chaos, things ebb and flow. For weeks, maybe even a month or so, your continent - or at least your bit of it - might be high and dry, only to suddenly be tipped over or drenched in the aftereffects of yet another Krakatoa. Everything gets some airtime, and some time underneath devastating mudflows, some time getting lava poured onto it, some time under many kilometers of water.
Land animal tracks, particularly tracks hurrying through water, are an expected feature of such a Deluge. They are evidence for it, not against it.
See for example `Brand, L.R. and Tang, T., 1991. Fossil vertebrate footprints in the Coconino Sandstone (Permian) of northern Arizona: Evidence for underwater origin. Geology, vol. 19,pp. 1201-1204.' and try to tell me that they're a Creationist source. (-:
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One of my Atheist friends delights in adding `Atheists are the reason there is reason' stickers to things. You appear to be a living refutation of his stickers.
William Dembski's book Intelligent Design includes one of the best and most complete exposures of the mindlessness and fearfulness which goes into the `goddunnit' refrain, and shows how removing that fear frees science to be science instead of a self-limiting slave of materialism. It also supplies a number of thoughtful and agnostic approaches to dealing with design in nature. Read it.
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It's more likely to be a story on a number of volcanic lava runs which have formed blockages in the Canyon, and scientists' amazement at how fast the Colorado River seems to have eaten through those blockages. I have had materialists tell me in consecutive breaths that volcanic rock is very hard and that water dissolves the silicates in volcanic rock very fast. Take your pick, I guess.
If you did, it will almost certainly be so slanted as to seem horizontal.
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Gimmie a break. I love how your 'research' links point to religious web pages. You think they have a motive behind their theories? Some of their references are terribly outdated and misrepresented. I'm sitting in the same room as 16000 geological and geophysical journal publications and 2200 books going back to the 1880's. I did a quick skim through the referenced GSA and JSP publications and needless to say, they had NOTHING to do with what they were referenced for.
I liked the giant Andean clam page too some of my prof's got a kick out of it. As everyone commented on the page, they are most likely concretions. You can't really go on hearsay and fuzzy pictures, but a sample -loan would be nice. And like I said, dieing closed != cataclysmic death. Even if it were for these unlikely monster clams, who is to say that they were not suddenly killed and redeposited by a storm?
Evolutionist != Scientist or geologist. Sorry. Who knows what your evolutionist was smoking? I sure don't, and he probably wasn't a geologist.
I'm glad you're interested in educating yourself. Here's a non-intensive link that explains away some of your logic with noah's flood and the grand canyon. I can explain again why you're wrong regarding the river's erosion (a first semester geologist would understand) if you're interested. I'm getting tired of feeding the religion trolls in the science forum and I have to get back to my thesis.
NMG
Yes, the link supplied was `written by real scientists doing real science'. You will also find many references in it to other `real scientists doing real science' and in fact it relies on some conclusions reluctantly arrived at by `real scientists' who don't like the direction their research is talking but are honest and so publish anyway.
If you can agree that the process of `doing science' can be categorised as two general activities, namely research and synthesis, it should be blindingly obvious that a lot of synthesis is omitted and a lot of research mis-reported either because it does not fit the worldview of the scientist(s) doing it or the scientist doesn't dare report it for fear of offending the worldview of others. Which of course makes it handwaving and not science.
Short on examples? Pick almost any homonid announcement ever made, or the peppered moth and its sticky situation. Big fanfare on the day, mumbled apology in footnote later. Only in the last few years have scientific journals been shamed into frequently reporting the failure of each icon with an actual indexed article.
Short on a really clear illustration of that stupidity at work IRL? Search for Harlan Bretz and read about forty years of shunning because his basic research did not fit prevailing scientific worldviews.
Pffft! As if anything from t.o has any integrity! They've been shown time and again to consistently skip over or misread (ie talk past and fail to address) inconvenient facts; I remember seeing one incident in which they were given a text from Darwin and another from Hitler, only to get them the wrong way around. Like, d'oh? It's not as if ten seconds in a search engine wouldn't conclusively settle the issue, yet they were too arrogant and stupid to bother. Frightening, given the number of degrees available...
Come out from behind your non-pseudonym and I'll bother giving you an argument with extensive links. To materialist scientific research, no less.
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