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Planets May Form in Hundreds, Not Millions, of Years
Seanasy writes "Recent simulations on the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center's Terascale Computing System suggest that planet formation may take a lot less time than previously thought. The results were published in SCIENCE."
I'm going to go build my planet RIGHT NOW!!
AFKCFPSBBI1H
(Away from keyboard currently forming planet should be back in 1 hour)
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
The headline will be: "Um, planets may be formed in slightly under a week. Scientists all over shocked and suprised." :-)
It has been discovered that scientists actually set there game of Civ^W^W^W planet simulator to run at several times normal speed. More on this as it developes.
Why not fork?
Planets obey Moore's law
The study actually looked at gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. My understanding is that these planets formed by scooping up gas as they orbited the sun. The interior rocky planets of the inner disk probably took longer to achieve final shape, though their materials would have been the first to cool into solid form.
Neat stuff.
Here's the Science abstract:
A Quickie Birth for Jupiters and Saturns
Richard A. Kerr
On page 1756, a group of astrophysicists presents computer simulations of the nascent solar system that suggest a possible mechanism for the formation of the gas giant planets: runaway fluctuations in the density of the protoplanetary disk. In their model, gas giants of about the right size, number, and orbit condense from a disk of gas to look like very young Jupiters. The trick was to simulate the process in fine detail so that the gas's own gravity could take over.
Full Text
After checking out all of the articles I did not see a mention as to a possible recalculation or restatement of the age of planets in our solar system.
Is it a possibility that any of the planets, including earth, are much younger than previously thought?
If so it could offer some information on how quickly life actually "forms".
Odd, they have a different abstract from the summary. Sorry, I don't have a full subscription to Science.... not that I would blow their copyright and post it here. :)
To wit:
Formation of Giant Planets by Fragmentation of Protoplanetary Disks
Lucio Mayer,1*dagger Thomas Quinn,1* James Wadsley,2 Joachim Stadel3dagger
The evolution of gravitationally unstable protoplanetary gaseous disks has been studied with the use of three-dimensional smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations with unprecedented resolution. We have considered disks with initial masses and temperature profiles consistent with those inferred for the protosolar nebula and for other protoplanetary disks. We show that long-lasting, self-gravitating protoplanets arise after a few disk orbital periods if cooling is efficient enough to maintain the temperature close to 50 K. The resulting bodies have masses and orbital eccentricities similar to those of detected extrasolar planets.
1 Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
2 Department of Physics & Astronomy, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M1, Canada.
3 University of Victoria, Department of Physics and Astronomy, 3800 Finnerty Road, Elliot Building, Victoria, BC V8W 3PG, Canada.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lucio@physik.unizh.ch, trq@astro.washington.edu
dagger Present address: Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
Here's a direct link to PSC's article, which does -not- require registration (bah).
As mentioned by another post, we're talking about "Jupiter-like" gas giants, not Earths. The reason it can't take millions of years: "The problem with [the current model], however, is that if the formation process takes too long, nearby stars will, in effect, boil off the gas envelope."
This is a troll, right?
God made the Earth about 6000 years ago so it couldn't have formed in millions of years.
Interesting logic. In other words, "Because CONCLUSION, then QUESTION must lead to CONCLUSION." I believe this is called a syllogism.
I don't care if oil forms in ten minutes, the Earth is not 6,000 years old to a 99.9% level of certainty unless God has a very odd sense of humor (possible). Personally I'm leaning towards 4.5 billion years.
Seriously, in defense of Christianity, and I am agnostic, scant few Christians subscribe to creationism or intelligent design, so whatever you may believe be careful not to stereotype Christians based on it.
Seriously, in defense of Christianity, and I am agnostic, scant few Christians subscribe to creationism or intelligent design, so whatever you may believe be careful not to stereotype Christians based on it.
I seriously disagree with this comment and I defy you to prove this with any sort of even remotely reasonable statistical evidence.
Don't presume to substitute your own opinions for fact.
Have you ever checked out the software user-reviews on Spyware Central ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H uhhh, I mean download.com? Talk about pimping for the man!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
The article says it took 30,000 processor hours to compute. The computer has 3,000 processors in it, so did it take 10 hours of actual time?
They say that they were able to include 10 times the detail of previous simulations because of the power of the machine.
Perhaps the Seti@home folks could lend some cycles to similar endeavors that are clearly related to their goals. It seems to me they could do it in less than 10 hours...
Free book: Science Toys You Can Make
No Uranus/Urectum jokes? Jesus God!
Why thank you. There is no complete proof to say that the world is 6,000 is 4.5 billion years old. I believe it is 6,000, but neither theory can be completely proved and never will be until God comes down and tells us. 6,000 is a lot more reasonable sounding to me. And in regards to the article, yes, evolution takes another blow :)
the Political Inquirer
They created a planet rather quickly at the end of Titan AE. Planet Bob, wasn't it? =)
If it takes hundreds of years naturally, could modern technology (read: nonexistant future technology) speed the process up (just like medicine can help speed up the healing of a wound)?
proton != antielectron
Wow. And to think that Velikovsky was just about run out of the scientific community 50 years ago for putting forth a similar idea, among others -- that planets could form rather quickly, in years or hundreds of years, rather than the millions of years previously thought.
This is also sort of the subject of James P. Hogan's novel, Cradle of Saturn. If you've never read James P. Hogan, you should. Good, good stuff.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Unremarkably, you miss that the study suggests the gas giants formed quickly not recently.
... why? A staggering amount of evidence point towards a time period much, much longer. "Reasonable" is believing things in reasonable accord with the evidence, and the estimate need never be completely proved to be accepted as fact. That's just not how people do things in real life.
6,000 years is a lot more reasonable-sounding
Evolution, for that matter, is a fact under the same principle of overwhelming evidence. The debate or theory now centers on how it happened, which might be Darwin's theory or something else; if Darwin is disproved the fact of evolution will remain. You are free to believe otherwise, but won't change the real world any more than your refusal to believe in the fact of gravity will enable you to fly.
Is this disrespectful? Yes. I think it would be untenable to grant any belief a held by any person person with equal weight. I thought creationism, with its tenuous basis in the Bible, had been left by the wayside long ago, though I realize there will always be a core that will believe anything.
I wouldn't presume anything; as a scientific type I am obsessed with fact.
I'm not sure whether you think the % of creationists is high or low, and I don't have time to research the web. There are however various surveys out there; the question has been studied extensively because of the evolution v. creationism debate for public school classrooms.
I should add that by Creationist I intend the fundamentalists who insist on a literal interpretation of Bible (if such a thing is possible given its complexities, various translations, and internal contradictions -- this is not a criticism but an acknowledgement I hope most of us can make) that leads to the 6,000-year figure and so on. These are the most conservatives.
As with most things, Americans cover the spectrum from Creationist to evolutionary-ist (?) with most kind trying to be accommodating. I don't count these accommodating Christians among the ones who claim their reading of the Bible is the end of all debate, and so the % who think maybe creationism should be discussed in school are not the hard-liners most folks think of when they hear "creationist." I personally think many of those who vote for creationism never had evolution properly explained to them -- note the correlation with less education. A poll may thus unfairly suggest their minds are closed to alternatives, as with the creationists. Better PR for evolution is part of why we've seen an upsurge of "intelligent design," a kind of soft-sell creationism.
What if we reverse your logic?
The earth couldn't be millions of years old because God created it about 6000 years ago. If the creation of the earth about 6000 years ago is accepted as truth, then we use this to eliminate the question of the age of the earth being 4.5 billion of year old.
As to the second part of your posting concerning christianity, it is impossible to be a true Christian and not believe that God created the world. You MUST believe what is stated in Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. If you do not believe the whole word of God, then you are not a true Christian. You might claim to be a Christian and profess to believe in God and Jesus, but if you can't accept him at his word, then do you truly belive.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
If you look closely, I don't make *any* firm assertion of the age of the Earth. I just know that 6,000 is ridiculous, beyond the pale of scientific plausibility, and unsupported by anything but the palpably ridiculous reasoning of creationists who start out with what they want to prove and warp everything else to fit that initial prejudice. Stated differently, what would it take to persuade you creationism is in error? For me, I'll pitch evolution is that evidence comes along -- I'm not bound by faith to ignore the facts.
You are mistaken about real-world Christians, though perhaps you would arrogantly say they are not "real" Christians. But to the rest of the world they are Christians, and I don't think should have to share the burden of criticism targeting the subset who are creationists. There is a reason the latter are called fundamentalist Christians; they represent only a segment of all Christians, though some of them may believe themselves better than everyone else.
Is one a lousy Christian if one doesn't believe what a creationist tells them to think? No, I'd suggest looking to the Bible, not the creationists, and remembering the difference between the literal and the allegorical. If we must be literal we must start stoning adulterers and all the rest.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Nonetheless - I'm going to press forward and show how it is evidence for my claim notwithstanding your syllogism dig.
Let me spell out my logic in full. I need to simplify greatly in order to do this but I am merely trying to illustrate the general form of an argument rather than give the actual argument (which would require much more time than I have right now).
Suppose we have two hypotheses: (1) The Universe is 6000 years old and (2) The Universe is many millions of years old. There are various bits of (on their own inconclusive) evidence in support of both of these hypotheses. Part of the evidence in favor of hypothesis (2) is that there are things in this Universe that apparently need >6000 years to form. Some of this evidence has been removed. As a result the pendulum shifts slightly away from hypothesis (2) to hypothesis (1). So I claim this discovery does, by an indirect path, provide evidence for hypothesis (1).
Not in the US where I live. Obviously we need to send more people over to spread the word. But truth isn't determined democratically anyway.And someone mod up my original comment. I am being persecuted for what are mainstream beliefs in much of the US.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Whether or not you believe, or believe in believing, it begs the questions of "what does it say?" Your definition addresses faith, not content. Reading "literally" supposedly promises some sort of absolute and unassailable interpretation, but such is impossible. Only some fundamentalists even accept the 6,000-year figure -- it doesn't appear in the text and was rather inferred by certain interpreters. Ultimately someone has to make the call.
Whatever the philosophical position, creationism is not science. Approaching a question with an predetermined result in mind is not science. The creationist doctrine has its place in theology, not science, because it is by its nature a rejection of science. My primary objection is the continual pitting of evolution against creationism when the two are apples and oranges, fact and faith, and neither can disprove the other.
It takes much longer to get the fjords just right.
My deviantArt site
Where do you draw the line as when the process begins/ends?
...but how long did it take for all the parts to form like raising the pig or growing the wheat?
You have a large number of events that need to be carried out before the actuall planet sphere begins to form...
1) Matter needs to be created
2) A vast ammount of gas needs to slowly collect together.
3) A stable center of gravity needs to be distinguished
4) That gravity needs to slowly (and exponentially) gather more mass around it to finally form the planet.
But when do you start the stop-watch? Step 1... or 4?
It's like saying "I can put together a ham sandwich in 30 seconds!"
If you go back far enough, it took billions of years for that sandwich to be created... since the beginning of time...
For anyone interested in more details, this story appeared here a week ago. An interesting comment pointed out that this theory has major implications in understanding the hundred or so "hot Jupiters" that have been found around other stars. Most have orbital periods of only a few days and orbit their star at a distance less than Mercury's. This new theory may suggest that hot Jupiters are actually newly-formed gas planets and perhaps even a transient phenomena.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
The earth couldn't be millions of years old because God created it about 6000 years ago. If the creation of the earth about 6000 years ago is accepted as truth, then we use this to eliminate the question of the age of the earth being 4.5 billion of year old.
If we start with the assumption that the world is 6000 years old, then given that assumption, it's 6000 years old. If you start without any assumption of Christianity's truth, it looks like the world is roughly 5 billion years old. If you start by assuming the Bible is true, and the information of our senses is true, then you have a fairly complex question, with different answers depending on the believer.
it is impossible to be a true Christian and not believe that God created the world.
No where in the Bible does it say the world was created 6000 years ago. I think the Bible has pretty good evidence that the Hebrews didn't view large numbers with the precision we did - notice the symbolic use of 70, 70 times 70, and 144,000 at various places in the bible. It would have been very hard to explain to them that the world was five billion years old. Christians* believe God created the world; but they don't necessarily believe that he felt compelled to give the exact blow by blow to the Hebrews, instead of giving them some version they could understand.
* Well, most Christians, at least.
Why do I always hear people mention that the Bible is riddled with contradictions but never hear them explicate those inconsistencies?
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Is the existence of evil in a universe created by an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good being. If you say we have free will to choose evil, then that goes against God's all-knowing nature and the ability for Mary and Jesus to always choose good. If you claim evil serves a greater purpose, then you take away the claim that all humans are of infinite value.
I'll try to wrap up one tiny detail....
The syllogism and its little brother the enthymeme date back to ancient Greece and are styles of argument. The reason the syllogism gets criticized to the point of being deprecatory is that it is easily abused.
Here:
Major premise: The universe is older than 6,000 years if some of its components took longer than 6,000 years to form.
Minor premise: The gas giants took less than 6,000 years to form.
Conclusion: The universe probably (more so than yesterday) took less than 6,000 years to form.
To me, there are several logical flaws there, and this has not a thing to do with religion. The main one is that the major premise is false; the theories concerning the age of the universe are not based on the sum of series of events. You may be making this false assumption because (to my understanding) the 6,000-year version of creationism is derived from how long various individuals lived, added to their descendants, and so on.
So the gas giants might never have formed, the estimates for the age of the universe would not change because they are indifferent to gas giants. Really, the formation of the planets is a bit trivia in the view of the universe, and the difference in formation time proposed here, mere millions of years, are the 0.01% insignificant blink of an eye to a universe thought to be over 10 thousand million (billion) years of age, and a solar system of a sprightly 4.5 billion (again with a "b").
Another trivial bit of semantics is that you misuse the word "hypothesis." Science really doesn't use hypothesis in this way, and when scientists speak of theories they don't mean educated guess, but a framework to explain a fact. So the age of the universe is a fact to a very high degree of certainty; it is older than 6,000 years by billions; and various theories strive to explain the nature of or refine the fact. But whether a theory of good or bad does not alter the fact, and the age of the universe is something so well established that it is inconceivable it will someday turn out to be 6,000 years. Besides the huge difference between the estimates, there's enough evidence on earth -- even the weathering of a mountain takes millions of years -- the pyramids haven't weathered much in that time -- and I won't even bring up the fossil record.
But again, even if these events happened faster than we can imagine, the age of the universe is judged by independent data.
The only remaining hope for a doctrinaire 6,000-year view would be that the universe and earth were created pre-aged, but I doubt the Bible supports that view. I don't care how many people believe it, the majority has erred often enough before, is the name of many causes. You acknowledge that truth isn't determined democratically anyway -- then turn around and say "I am being persecuted for what are mainstream beliefs in much of the US." No, you are being criticized (persecuted? that's a little much) not for relating "popular" beliefs but for your faulty logic concerning astrophysics, and science generally. Don't take refuge in "mainstream." And I am not claiming that God lies, just that falliable humans don't get the message right sometimes.
I would think it obvious that the Bible makes heavy use of metaphor, and that things like the 6 days of creation may not be at all literal. Of course I'm not the first to wonder about this. But I think more and more people will eventually accept that the Earth is old and move on to that evolution debate, or something else. The truth of the Bible is hardly imperiled.
According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, look out! Here comes Genesis! We'll do it for you in six minutes!
They were using g=9.8 instread of G=6.67*10^-11
I know the secrets of the video game champs
Get out of here! My Grandpa is way older than that!!
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
The problem is, Christians are ripping of the creation story of an entirely different group of people.
Genesis and so forth cannot be taken for general fact, due to the contradictions therin. Even if you believe in Adam and Eve, what of Cain and Abel?
What of when Cain kills Abel and is marked so that no harm would come to him? Marked? Who would harm him, if the four were the only humans on the planet at the time?
Where did 'civilization' come from? Did God just put in a few extra hours of overtime that night?
At best, the early books of the Bible can be taken to relate the story of the creation of the Israelites, supposedly God's chosen people.
The rest of us, however, come from ancestors who ate things out of each others' back hair.
No wonder why I like bannanas.
but one with respect to the beliefs of Christians....
It is inconsistent to call onesself a Christian and also reject God as creator - regardless of your interpretation of the mechanism or timing of the creation of life.
The Bible is filled with descriptions of God as the creator of the universe. It is not just Genesis 1, or John 1, but virtually every place that lists God's resume' lists Him as creator.
If I claim to believe that aliens have visited the earth, but hold to a belief that rejects the idea of interplanetary travel, I don't actually believe what I say I believe.
Along the same lines, if I call myself a Christian and reject God as creator, I am not really a Christian.
Jesus said something similar Himself. (Mt 7:21-23)
Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers'
Going to church, maintaining a church membership, or doing good deeds doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to McDonalds makes you a hamburger.
I agree that there are a large number of people who might identify themselves as Christians in the world who reject God as creator. From a philosophical and logical point of view, I would agree with the previous poster that they are probably not Christians.
The other possibility is that they simply fail to understand the relationship of God as creator and redeemer of mankind to their belief in Christianity.
If a reader of this posting believes himself to be a Christian, and rejects the concept that God is the creator, please email me so that I can help demonstrate the rationale behind the importance of this concept to a Christian worldview.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Well, for starters there are the incositancies in the creation story (hey, we may as well start at the begining.)
In Genesis 1, we are told that God created the fish, and then the birds, then the animals of the land, and then created man, both male and female, in His own image (Gen. 1.27)
But Genesis 2 says that god created man to tend the garden of Eden, and then created all the animals as helpers for Adam (man is never refered to as an individual in Gen. 1, btw) but none of them were good helpers for him, so God took his rib and made a woman from it. (Gen.2 18-23)
Tada. An inconsitency in the first two chapters.
if I call myself a Christian and reject God as creator, I am not really a Christian
Nothing I wrote goes to who is the creator. I simply take issue with adherance to a 6,000-year timeline that flies in the face of so much else that we know. I also find deeply offensive the idea that anyone who rejects the 6,000-year figure is not a good Christian.
The identity of the creator, if one exists (again, I do not reject or promote God here) goes to the origin of the universe, not its age. So nothing you have said about God as creator, however fervently you believe it, is relevant to the question here.
Yet perhaps you mean that to reject the 6,000-year interpretation, developed by creationists, is to reject god as the creator. That bigoted view I do reject wholeheartedly.
There is nothing whatsoever in the Bible that claims that the Earth is only 6000 years old. Instead, the chronology of the Bible only makes the claim that the Fall of Adam happened about 6000 years ago.
Genesis 1 only talks about the creation (and the term "day" can also refer to a period of time, not just a literal 24-hour period). The Fall doesn't happen until Genesis 3. The funny thing is that the Bible doesn't say anything about how much time went in between the two events. The age given for Adam when he died was measured from the time of his Fall.
It's funny how people don't read what it is saying because they only see what they want it to say.
"Say lah vee"
Jesus Christ, man. look up a word before you try to write it.
C'est la vie.
"That's life"
Ciao.
It's funny how people don't read what it is saying because they only see what they want it to say.
:) As long as we can agree to discuss, without calling anyone insane or bound for Hell, communication is possible.
Amen.
Hmm. But if a day in Genesis is not necessarily a literal day, how do we know a year in Adam's 900+ year life is a literal year? (I know, I'm pushing my luck -- and I can see the appeal of rigid interpretation. And why did people live so long anyway?)
Yes, but Velikovsky was also run out of the scientific community because he thought Biblical and mythical miracles/catastrophes were caused by Venus being ejected from Jupiter and rampaging around the Solar System before somehow settling into its current orbit. That's still mighty unlikely.
:-)
For example, he stated that the "day the sun stood still" at Jericho, so the Israelites could take their vengeance, was caused by Venus making a close pass to the Earth. It passed just perfectly so as to stop the Earth's rotation. It then came back just one day later and perfectly restarted the rotation exactly as before.
Nevermind the fact that people didn't get flung into space when the rotation suddenly stopped... he's saying Venus passed INSIDE the orbit of the moon, twice! Don't you think they would have mentioned that somewhere in the story?
(You decide for yourself whether I was being redundant when I said "Biblical and mythical". Trying not to get too far off topic, here.)
as i recall, in tradewars 2002 you could launch a genesis torpedo into an empty sector, and create a new planet in about 5 seconds. game anyone?
Dont ask me...Im just the bass player.
What does this do to the Drake equation/formula?
Why do I always hear people mention that the Bible is riddled with contradictions but never hear them explicate those inconsistencies?
;-)
I'd say it's because it sparks an instant flame war.
Assuming this is an honest question, perhaps you should think about some of the following issues, and resolve them for yourself however you see fit.
I'm not interested in debating them; I've formed my own conclusions over twenty years of debate, and a discussion Slashdot isn't likely to add much to them.
Anyway, some notions to think about, that some people may consider inconsistant, (and some not, of course). These are conceptual difficulties off the top of my head, though I know of others that I can't recall, and I've heard of specific textual reference that are hard to reproduce without a photographic memory.
(1) The notion that God is kind and gentle
vs. The notion that God wanted his people to destroy their best goods and property for his amusement during the Old Testament.
Discuss: Why would a good God want people to destroy their best things? In a human, say a mighty king or warlord, such a demand would seem egotistical, and dictatorial. A cynic would say that much of the Bible was written in the times of kings and warlords. How would you choose to answer him?
(2) The notion that God both is good and omnipotent.
vs.
The notion that God wanted his Son tortured to death on the cross, rather than simply forgiving the sins of his people without bloodshed.
Discuss: If God is omnipotent and good, why did Jesus have to die? The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is one answer; what are the others? Given that the "Holy Trinity" answer was resolved as cannon by a group of Bishops at Nicea, should it be considered a valid answer within the context of a Biblical discussion? Why or why not?
(3) The notion that God is peaceful and just
vs.
The notion that God told the Isrealites to
kick the people living there out, because he'd promised it to the Isrealites.
Discuss: To the people who weren't the "People of Isreal", God's commandment seems somewhat unfair. Why should believers consider God's commandment in this matter just? Or is God a just God? We know him to be a "jealous god", as the First Commandment tells us; does he have other mortal failings? What evidence do we have to support/reject this?
(4) The notion that God is like a kind, loving father
vs.
The notion that God would test the loyalty of his followers by commanding they kill their own children. (God's test to Abraham)
Discuss: God told Abraham to slaughter Issac on a stone altar. For the loving, father figure of the new testament, this seems a harsh thing to command, even though he later allows Abraham to slaughter a ram instead. The whole episode must have been traumatic for both Abraham (told to kill his son), and Issac (worried about being killed): why would a loving God inflict such anguish on his beloved followers?
(5) The notion of a "just" God
vs.
Him granting favour to Jacob, the trickster brother, versus Esau, his hard working brother.
Discuss: Esau was the older brother, and by law and tradition, should have gained his father's birthright. His brother is able to play upon Esau's weakness in a moment of hunger, and weasles his brother into giving up his birth right for a solid meal. He then lies to his father to complete the deal, convincing Issac that he is Esau, and not Jacob until the birthright is confered. God chooses to honour Jacob, the trickster as the valid heir. If God is good and omnipotent, why would he reward such a man?
(6) The notion that God is like a father
vs.
The book of Job.
Discuss: Throughout the book of Job, wGod and Satan are both presented as toying with Job's loyalties as a supernatural game. Job's family, in particular, is presented as a possession, not people with rights unto themselves. How can this characterization of God be reconcilled with the loving father figure of the New Testament?
(7) The dramatic shift in tone and presentation of God between the Old and New testaments.
Discuss: The nature of God, and his wishes, undergoes a dramatic shift in the second half of the Bible. How can this be reconcilled?
Consider the following quotations:
On vengence: "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" versus "Do not resist a man who is evil"
On use of force:
"the Lord caused a plauge to be cast upon the land of Egypt"
vs.
[ when his disciples are fighting for his freedom against Roman soldiers]
"Jesus touched the soldier's ear, and healed it"
Why would the same God who commands an "Angel of Death" to kill the children of the Egyptians suddenly consent to his Son's death on the cross?
Why would the same God who turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for a single mistake not be more forgiving? In the New Testament, Jesus presents God as being loving and forgiving, and claims his disciples should be as well.
Peter: "How many times must I forgive someone who has wronged me? As many as seven times?"
Jesus: "Say rather Seventy times seven"
Which version of forgiveness is appropriate? How can you justify your choice.
There you go. A few study questions for you to discuss -- to a believer, there's nothing that can't be solved with a "God's will is unknowable", and to an athiest (like me), there's nothing in the Bible that makes it seem more than ancient mythology.
By now I've learned that neither side is likely to agree, but whatever you believe, you may find considering these ideas gives you insights into why you believe what you choose to believe.
--
AC
And that's where we disagree. You call Titan AE science fiction; I call it fantasy. I agree that it makes very bad science fiction, but as fantasy goes, it's at least as good as the vastly more popular "Dragonball Z".
Of course, I wouldn't pay money to see either one of them...
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
The Bible says clearly that Adam had "many sons and daughters". It's pretty straightforward to figure out they were the rest of the populace. And for those who say "gross, how could Cain marry his sister": there wasn't much choice. And since genetic deterioration (aka mutations) had not progressed very far, there was no big reason not to marry a close relative. And since God did not outlaw close relatives marrying until Moses gave the law (note that Abram married Sarai, his half sister and that was not a problem at that time, much later than Adam but earlier than Moses).
Oddly enough though, Douglas Adam's Hitchikers Guide books (I happen to have been reperusing them) violate these principles every other page and yet are still excellent reads. Shrug.
Dyolf Knip
However, you're right about self-consistency and plot. Not that the time to form a giant gaseous planet is usually much relevant to any plot, but we all like our (fantasy) worlds solidly built.
Enoc