Slashdot Mirror
New Evidence About 'The Great Dying' 250 Million Years Ago
PornMaster writes "The Guardian is reporting that scientists have found the first direct evidence that the killoff of 80% of land species and 95% of marine species 2 billion years ago was due to a meteor." The project web site has more info, maps, etc.
So uh... A giant meteor hit the earth and all the dinosaurs turned into giant roasted chickens?
Does noone have a reaction to this?
About the most advanced lifeforms at that time were bacteria ... I wouldn't call it a great dying
IN YOUR FACE :P
This is the sig that says NI (again)
So, they are saying that until now there has been no direct evidence and now they just have one piece.
Doesn't that make believing it a little sketchy. On such little evidence.
Evolution or ID?
New clues to 2bn-year-old murder /. habit of not bothering to RTFA.
A buried crater off Australia could be the first direct evidence of a celestial assassin that wiped out more than 80% of life on Earth 250m years ago. Obviously, Guardian headline writers follow the
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
http://www.cookiethievery.com/old/041904/
Mmmm... unprocessed gasoline...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
They found the weapons of mass destruction!
Random rants about technology: http://technorants.blogspot.com
The next phase is to blame the Republicans for this!
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
I just got bango
more than 80% of terrestrial life?
more than 95% of marine life?
that would mean that whatever we have today, evolved from >20% / >5% of those species that survived?
that's a whole lotta evolution if you ask me.
Sounds like a *BSD article.
not "first evidence"...
just like in judicial cases you can have circumstantial evidence, scientific hypotheses can be supported by indirect evidence.
Did they find evidence of offshore outsourcing?
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
I knew I should not have put that giant can of Lysol in the time machine. But I did it anyway. Sorry.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
When I heard the story on NPR yesterday, it said the event was dated at around 250 million years ago. That's what the body of the linked article says too. Somehow, the headline has been changed to say 2 billion. Funny.
There wouldn't have been much on land at 2Ga.
I remember some Discovery piece about another giant meteor hitting around area of the Yucatan several hundred million years ago. I could swear that they were using that crator as evidence of the great die off too.
Here's hoping the "Bruce Willis/Armageddon" jokes don't start up. They are almost as old as making jokes about windows crashing.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
"...scientists have found the first direct evidence..."
Direct evidence my arse. Scientists have found a few holes in the ground and some sediments. It amazes me that so many people just blindly accept these theories (and they are only theories) about meteors wiping most of the life out on earth long ago.
Sounds like a *BSD article to me.
Two billion years ago there existed only prokaryotic bacteria. The impact the articles are talking about was the end of the Permian era. It happened about 250 million years ago (as stated in the article). Both the Guardian's and Slashdot's articles are mistitled.
So... It's a big meteor, or a volcano or maybe, just maybe... It was caused by a verneshot
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
I wonder if historians 2 billion years from now will come to a similar conclusion when they find the 125 mile-wide crater in Redmond.
"This was the time period when the Earth was configured as one primary land mass called Pangea and a super ocean called Panthalassa."
The end of unity...
Sig removed by order of FBI Patriot ACT
Obviously they are mistaking these things for the effects of Noah's great flood.
Oh where, oh where is my BSD?
I just loaded it yesterday.
It's gone to heaven, just like the dinosaurs,
That will teach me to use Open Source....
I'd started to load it in my roommate's Dell,
the hard drive was taking it pretty well.
During the load, it crashed the heads,
the distro was stalled, *BSD was dead.
I couldn't stop, so I yanked the cord.
I'll never forget, the sound , oh Lord--
the screamin' drives, the speaker's blast,
the painful scream that I-- heard last.
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
That load took it away from me.
Like my workstation was hit by a meteor,
I don't think I'll use *BSD no more....
When I woke up, the sparks were pourin down.
There were admins standin all around.
Some burned-out chips had fallen on the tiles,
but somehow I found my disc of files.
I lifted the CD, the devil winked and said,
"Load me darlin just a little while."
I held it close, I kissed the label--our last kiss.
I found the love that i knew i had missed
well now it's gone, even though I loaded it right
I lost my *BSD and the Dell-- that night.
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
I tried to load it yesterday.
It's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
So I can see *BSD when I leave this world.
When I next went to Slashdot, where so many had trolled.
Any so many times "BSD's Dead!" was told.
Tears fallin' on the keyboard, I checked "Anonymous"
and I eulogized *BSD, in memory, of us....
When I logged on next, my post was modded down.
In my heartbreak and sorrow, treated like a clown....
No matter what the mods do, it's in my heart and head
We'll always know "*BSD IS DEAD!"
Oh where, oh where is my *BSD?
I tried to load it yesterday.
It's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
So I can see *BSD when I leave this world.
ah, but when the church uses the term evidence but it's not direct evidence many say that because it's not direct evidence that you can't believe what is derived.
But, when the science claims that then have evidence but no direct evidence I am supposed to believe it. And now they have one piece of direct evidence and I am supposed completely believe it.
I know a bit about science and I still find this sketchy and I really wonder that if this were a court case and this level of info was provided if a conviction would happen.
Evolution or ID?
You never really see figures about how fast, and how big that chunk of rock (?) was. Gimme a nice scientific factoid, in standard Volkswagen units or something.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Finding a very thin layer of irridium in the rocks laid down at the very end of the Permian would be compelling evidence. A layer of irridium, together with the crater in the Gulf of Mexico off the Mexican coast, made a good argument of what caused the dinosaurs to go at the end of the Cretaceous period.
What kind of computers did they have back then?
Could I run linux on a Coelophysis?
With the moo and the cow and the fish. Minesweeper Record: 7 sec
So, a giant meteor crashes off the coast of a continent that has some of the strangest creatures on the planet, Austrailians. Oh, and think of all the weird animals there too.
The BBC have a much better version of the same story with addition information and some on the opposing view points BBC.co.uk
The earth was created in 7 days. Dinosaurs are a fabrication by atheists. God is perfect and didn't need to practice by making Dinosaurs, you twits. The fact is that they never existed!
Look at it another way: this just means that 80% of terrestrial life and 95% of marine life are completely useless.
Don't you think it's a bit weird that we now receive news about meteors flying all around, weapons against meteors being developed, and finally, to really scare people into accepting those weapons without second thought, an evidence for what happened to the dinosaurs?
I stuck some data in the impact effects simulator (http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/), took reasonable guess at most of it. Anyone else more knowledgable, please correct.
Distance from Impact: 1000.00 km = 621.00 miles
Projectile Diameter: 28280.20 m = 92759.06 ft = 17.56 miles
Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 30.00 km/s = 18.63 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 3000 kg/m3
Target Type: Competent Rock or saturated soil
Energy:
1.60 x 1025 Joules = 3.82 x 109 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is 2.6 x 109years
Crater Size:
Transient Crater Diameter: 173.30 km = 107.62 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 340.69 km = 211.57 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
Thermal Radiation:
Time for maximum radiation: 16.79 seconds after impact
Visible fireball radius: 425.5 km = 264.2 miles
The fireball appears 96.7 times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure: 6.13 x 108 Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation: 655 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 936.0
Effects of Thermal Radiation:
Clothing ignites
Much of the body suffers third degree burns
Newspaper ignites
Plywood flames
Deciduous trees ignite
Grass ignites
Seismic Effects:
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 200.0 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 11.0 (This is greater than any earthquake in recorded history)
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 1000 km:
VI. Felt by all. Many frightened and run outdoors. Persons walk unsteadily. Windows, dishes, glassware broken. Knickknacks, books, etc., off shelves. Pictures off walls. Furniture moved or overturned. Weak plaster and masonry D cracked. Small bells ring (church, school). Trees, bushes shaken (visibly, or heard to rustle).
VII. Difficult to stand. Noticed by drivers of motor cars. Hanging objects quiver. Furniture broken. Damage to masonry D, including cracks. Weak chimneys broken at roof line. Fall of plaster, loose bricks, stones, tiles, cornices (also unbraced parapets and architectural ornaments). Some cracks in masonry C. Waves on ponds; water turbid with mud. Small slides and caving in along sand or gravel banks. Large bells ring. Concrete irrigation ditches damaged.
Masonry C. Ordinary workmanship and mortar; no extreme weaknesses like failing to tie in at corners, but neither reinforced nor designed against horizontal forces.
Masonry D. Weak materials, such as adobe; poor mortar; low standards of workmanship; weak horizontally.
Ejecta:
The ejecta will arrive approximately 494.4 seconds after the impact.
Average Ejecta Thickness: 9.4 m = 30.83 ft
Mean Fragment Diameter: 5.4 mm = 0.2107 inches
Air Blast:
The air blast will arrive at approximately 3333.3 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 920445.5 Pa = 9.2045 bars = 130.7033 psi
Max wind velocity: 661.5 m/s = 1479.8 mph
Sound Intensity: 119 dB (May cause ear pain)
Damage Description:
Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.
Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.
Multistory steel-framed office-type buildings will suffer extreme frame distortion, incipient collapse.
Highway truss bridges will collapse.
Highway girder bridges will collapse.
Glass windows will shatter.
Cars and trucks will be largely displaced and grossly distorted and will require rebuilding before use.
Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.
stuff
This article is incorrect convieniently(sp?) enough I was listening to the NPR talk show yesterday and they very clearly said that is was 250 million years ago, which they said was the same that the tested core samples came out to be. They found the site they believed was it a crater on the sea floor with nearly a mile of dirt ontop of it, by using the same techniques that people looking for oil would. Incidentally the core samples were obtained 60 years ago while doing oil prospecting.
Hope that's atleast a little informative.
-RevSin
Here is the info
I wouldn't trust something written by a guy called PornMaster....
Wow, clues to a 2-billion-year-old murder? Sounds like Angela Lansbury's first case...
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Case in point, I just recently went on a fossil hunt in Florida where the hosts brought out a Mammoth femur they found this past year that was only 1 percent fossilized. Explain to me how something that big could survive even 10,000 years in the shifting sand that makes up Florida (with the rest of the skeleton still nearby)? Fossils in this area aren't embedded in rock, you can simply dig them out of the dirt here, so dating them according to the age of nearby rocks doesn't work.
Visualize Whirled Peas
Doesn't this just sound like the title of the latest "Land Before Time" flick, the cartoon series about the dinosaur kids?
Maybe it's the final one in the series.
I'd throw out that while whatever we have today evolved from the 5-20% that survived the Permian extinction, what we have today probably evolved from less than 1% of what was around right after the Cambrian explosion.
meteors kill YOU!
Whether or not the findings have any validity, their website designer is certainly not doing them any favors. Not with those bold, sensationalistic headlines and dramatic picture. It looks like something out of a tabloid rather than a serious, scientific report.
are all you people with mods freaks or something? this guy is pointing out your errors.
The great dying didn't kill everything. Dinosaurs still walk among us. Here's an example, Gary Condit, a gentleman with the appearance and predilections of a T-Rex. The facial resemblance is striking.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
At first, abiogenesis was centered around the notion that a possible, but highly unlikely, chain of events happened billions of years ago. Supposedly, through billions of years of evolution, man evolved from creatures more primitive.
The theory was made at least partially plausible by the "logic of big numbers" - given enough time, anything is bound to happen, no matter how small the probability. Their explanation relied on faith in statistics, rather than God, and contained very little that was actually scientific. This explanation was little better than the creationist dogma that God created the Universe, Earth, and Man in a literally 7 24-hour periods.
Now, instead of four billion years, they've got to explain in it 250 million years. Given that they've already posited that mankind's ancestors appeared about 50 million years ago, they're down to a mere 200 million years to go from single-celled to upright and walking.
What really gets me is that none of the so called "scientific" origin-of-life theories are logically sound. Nor are they scientific, in the truest sense of the word - their hypotheses cannot be tested.
Ultimately, I think, it comes down to faith. I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't know the mechanisms by which life came about - whether God created mankind as a series of steps taking millions of years, or constructed modern man in a single instant of inspired creation. But, because I believe in God, I don't risk having my beliefs invalidated by a scientific discovery.
I think that this is hard point to get across. Evolutionary biology is not necessarily contradictory to faith in God. However, faith in evolution as the ultimate explanation for our existence leaves much to be desired, and because atheists have accepted this notion as a de-facto religion, true scientific progress is often held up by such biases. No atheist scientist could ever admit any finding which would cast doubt on the pre-conceived notions of abiogenisis, because to do so would destroy his religion. Christianity, OTOH, is not diminished by scientific discovery. Rather, science often illumines our knowledge of God - we discover the perfection of the Creator in witnessing the beauty of the created.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I guess it depends on if you believe the article,which says % of LIFE, or the poster's interpretation which assumed it meant % of all SPECIES.
Big difference.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Let's see, 2 billions, is that 2 x 1024 x 1024 x 1024 years? Anybody has a calculator?
Scientists didn't find a way to blame President Bush and Republicans for this. At least they could have come up with Dick Cheney and a time machine or something. The last thing we can have is "nature" causing extinctions, it has to be Republicans and SUV drivers! Get with the program!!!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
We'll be safe as long as Bruce Willis is around.
Years ago, when Mariner 10 went and disovered the Caloris Basin and wierd terrain on Mercury, I immediately wondered if something like that could happen on Earth. I was one of the first to notice that the volcanic Deccan Traps that formed in India at the time of the dinosaur extinction just happened to be located (after taking contintental drift into account) on the opposite side of the Earth from Chixulub. (As I recall, I wrote a letter to Scientific American about it, way back then...but they didn't think it publishable) And now the evidence seems to be accumulating, in favor of exactly such scenarios.
The Guardian's headline is wrong. They're
talking about the permian-triassic extinction
event, 250 million years ago. There wasn't
much around to go extinct 2 billion years ago.
There was only one continent back then. You couldn't go overseas to do anything!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am reminded of my undergraduate geology professor's first lecture to our class. He took a candle and covered it with a jar. The candle went out. Then he asked the class for a show of hands, how many people thought the candle went out because all of the available oxygen had been consumed, and how many people thought the flame ceased because (if memory serves) the jar had become saturated with phogistan. Of course the vote was 100% for the oxygen answer. He then explained that 100 years ago, we all would have failed the exam. He then went on to discuss "vestigal organs," the fossil record, and other models that have not held up well in all cases.
His point? "Evidence" can often be made to support any number of theories, among them the 4.5 billion year age of the earth or in this case the cause of a mass extinction. In the future we will know more, but we should never assume we have all the answers right now.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
You're not "supposed to" believe it, where did you get that idea? Clearly you have no idea how science functions, why don't you learn what science is before publicly criticizing it? It is obvious from your post that you don't even understand the basics of the scientific method, despite the fact that you think you "know a bit" about science.
If you actually read up a bit about this, the scientists here are basically saying that this MIGHT BE a possible cause of one of the great extinctions (read "more research required"). Furthermore, this is now just one new "HYPOTHESIS" against two other major "HYPOTHESES" that alread exist that proposing other "POSSIBLE" reasons for this great extinction.
Certainly nobody has asked you to "believe" any of these possible explanations, and none of the scientists involved have claimed that their hypotheses are 'the truth' either. In fact, with things like this, scientists never really decide that any one theory is "the truth" - they basically often settle on a theory that is "the most likely" - they, however, ALWAYS "leave the door open" to other possible explanations that may appear in future that are better. Always. (This is all in refreshing contrast to religions like Christianity, where you are in fact expected to 100% completely believe something regardless of whether or not there is really evidence for it.)
The slashdot blurb has also spun this thing completely wrong. So even worse, now you make decisions about scientific theories based on a slashdot blurb. Sheesh.
Now we have the volcanic Siberian outpourings of the Permian era, accompanied by a giant meteor impact in Australia (and after taking 200 megayears of continental drift into account, they could well have been on opposite sides of the Earth at that time).
That's pretty compelling to me.
And no, I didn't read the article! It would be so disappointing in comparison.
the next orgasmic extinction event happening? If it's happened more than once before, does three times make a pattern?
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
How do you quantify those? Like, "I'm pretty sure that it's right... probably about 65% sure."
What would Brian Boitano do?
Apparently this article is posted by some guy called PornMaster, with the URL pointing to ilikepuffies.com. Anyone has any theories on why this guy should be worried about this issue?
C.E.
This should put a nail in the wrists of the YEC crowd, a sword in the side of their theories ... but not when the theory can magically res-a-fucking-rect.
Could you explain exactly who is "blindly accepting" these theories? We all know they're "just theories".
BTW they found a bit more than just "sediments" and a "few holes in the ground". It does seem likely in fact that they have found a meteor impact crater, just not necessarily one that resulted in a major extinction.
Actually, several clues tend to prove a meteor isn't the cause of permian extinction. For instance, there should be a thin layer of irridium (or any other stuff) coming from the meteor or its explosion/impact, and laying on the ground after the blast... Also their proof about having found the meteor impact site doesn't seem very convincing.
Now, they need to explain why we don't find such clues, and they haven't done it yet.
For now, the only convincing scenario involves volcanism and oceanic methan tanks (methan is stored inside ocean, both dissolved and inside seabed).
Big volcanism activity in what is today Siberia (and there are proofs of it) increases mean temperature for about 5-10 C by producing greenhouse effect. Then with such increase, methan starts to evaporate from ocean, induces more greenhouse effect, and mean temperature goes up 5-10C more. At the same time, it kills life in the ocean.
That 10-20C increase in mean temperature is enough to kill 80% of species on the surface of the ground.
So that scenario explains everything better than the meteor theory.
Forgive my bad English... I think that this explanation could be found on some american scientific website, so feel free to post the link.
Oh, and you can find more info there
Invalid opinions can and do get modded down, like saying that nothing lived before 6,000 years ago. If you are going to hang your huge bedsheet of ignorance on the clothes-line, don't be surprised if it gets covered in the bird-splats of ridicule.
isn't it amazing how many of them get elected or become lawyers?
There's lots of "Free lunches" in every situation. Does not take long to figure this out.
Separate what he actually said (and meant) from your own context. C'mon, you can do it.
He read the headline of the article. He made the statement that 2 billion years ago, bacteria was pretty much it.
What did he say that was wrong?
It could be any unusual deposit. The Iridium line from the K-T boundary is believed to come from a single meteorite impact; it's assumed that that particular meteorite contained unusual levels of iridium (or perhaps hit an iridium deposit?).
If you're looking for a boundary layer, it's a bit much to expect the same element to be the indicator, at least until we know more about the composition of meteorites.
In order to keep this from happening to us, we need to:
1) Advance as far technologically as we can, as fast as we can, especially in manned space travel.
2) Learn how to survive with a polluted atmosphere, instead of just avoiding polluting it in the first place, which would retard technological growth.
3) Get as many people the hell off this rock as fast as we can. A moonbase would be a great start.
So, if you want the human race to become extinct, vote for John Kerry. If you want us to survive, vote for George Bush.
Thanks for your support.
My Tarrot card reading said that "I'm not a good skeptic." and my horoscope says, "Today is not good day for science, and my intuition should meet expectations." Normally, I'd call that a tie with formulate and test, but with my lucky crystal I can feel a karma vortex heading my way.
I always thought the Republican Party was soley responsibile for such environmental and specieist devestation.
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
and your planned biological protectionism.
If you'd studied geology at all, you'd see we gained a great deal of net biodiversity by outsourcing our more evolved species to another plane of existance.
Click here
> "We think mass extinctions may be defined by catastrophes like impact and volcanism occurring synchronously in time," Dr Becker said.
Well of course we would witness the impact and volcanism occurring together!
An impact that large would have sent shock waves through the Earth's core, and caused the Earth's crust to ring like a bell.
It would have caused cracking, shifts, and stresses that would have resulted in thousands of years (or more) of seismic and volcanic activity before things settled down again.
So now you have the initial impact and its shock wave, followed by the fires and a global reduction in oxygen, followed by a nuclear winter from the dust thrown up, followed by earthquakes and huge tidal waves, followed by global volcanic activity, accompanied by volcanic dust and even more weather changes.
Given such a scenario, it is only through diversity that any life could manage to survive at all.
...in the way that creationists are now using the term "macro-evolution" when they attack science, instead of just "evolution". Just like the church, they're being forced to retreat from obviously dogmatic fallacies and admitting that scientific observation and theory are find the answers to questions that religion answers incorrectly.
Hopefully we can complete this process before the fundamentalists choke off our progress long enough that the Western countries lose out to the Eastern developing countries.
One NEW species will replace the losts - the robotbeings!
Anyway, have a look at these links.
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-103.htm
http://evolutionlie.faithweb.com/
http://www.creationists.org/switch.html
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/bias.htm
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/top.htm
Reading materials (Free on-line books)
http://www.nwcreation.net/booksonline.html
Reading materials (Books)
The Genesis Flood
Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics
21 Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible
Darwin's Enigma
Evolution: a Theory in Crisis
-=GuestFox=-
Let me tell you a story.
There once was a good person that didn't care about god or religion. he was intelligent and had a lot of potential. At age 24 he ran into a fundamentalist wacko that sucked him into this cult called "Christianity". This cult believed stupid things like the earth being created in 7 days, a child was born without the mother having sex with a man, and people being dead for 3 days and coming back to life.
The cult taught this man that he was NOT good, that he could not be good. Even though he was always kind and polite to everyone, he was still evil. Guilt was the order of the day. If he felt guilt was the only way he could be good.
One day, this man finally decided to leave the cult. He started thinking for himself and his life improved dramatically. Guilt stays with him for years, but eventually he got over it. Now his life is joyful and much more exciting.
The lesson: Christianity sucks. It's just plain stupid. You otherwise intelligent people that gimp your intellect with religious claptrap, PLEASE stop. Think for yourself. Live life. Ignore that 2000+ year old book in favor of real-life EXPERIENCE.
It's not the "directness" in the "evidence" claimed by a lot of religious nuts, it's that what is usually claimed as evidence isn't. When scientists criticize the flavor of such evidence, it's frequently because it's reported fifth-hand between 100 and 10,000 years later, because "God said so" is taken as evidence, and because the religious crowd is decidedly unscientific in "picking and choosing" its evidence, focusing on one single piece of crappy evidence while ignoring a wealth of good information.
Also, it's generally the religious crowd that's the worst about the whole "higher standards on the other side" thing. A while back, someone found a discrepancy of a few days over millions of years in the earth's orbit, and the religious crowd took this to mean that God made the sun stand still during the siege of Jericho. That sounds a bit stretched. However, they expect anthropologists to find every single Australopithecus variant, and anything left out is proof that evolution is dead wrong. Also, any single fossil that has its radioactive dating done incorrectly is somehow proof that the whole thing doesn't work, and the universe really is 4000 years old. Seems a bit off, there.
I know a bit about science and I still find this sketchy and I really wonder that if this were a court case and this level of info was provided if a conviction would happen.
Regarding this meteor in Australia? No, there wouldn't be a conviction. You might get a judgement in a civil court though. But the thing is, this isn't being reported as complete fact at this point.
If you have any particulary religious "science" that you feel has been unfairly treated, I'll report more specifically.
Is actually on a shaky foundation. The problem is that the early geologists used paleontologist opinions to date their strata, and paleontologists used strata to date their fossils.
Does anyone see a problem here?
And the dating using radioisotope decay is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the relative concentrations of isotopes have remained fixed throughout history. In fact, some geologists are taking flak because they've discovered that the strata dating based on uranium isotope decay is fundamentally flawed; they're finding additional isotopes in the samples which indicate that at least some the "decay" isotopes present may have come not from the decay of uranium, but of other heavy metals also present - which have a much shorter half-life.
As for the killing 80% of multicellular life - well, that's just speculation at this point - the number could up or down.
The problem, as I see it, is that a certain group of people are trying to transform science - which is at best a tentative explanation, and quite frequently wrong - into a religion. They seek science as the ultimate authority in all matters, when such authority is specifically precluded by the use of the scientific method. Modern science is founded on the assertion that we don't know everything there is to know about the Universe - if we did, there would be no point in further study. There are people who view questioning evolutionary theory as tantamount to blasphemy, in spite of the fact that the progress of science as a whole is dependent upon skepticism.
And this is what irks me - the valid questions and logical problems inherent in abiogenesis are simply left unaddressed by the current theories. If anything, it is an embarassment to science - it isn't empirically verifiable, and worse, it offers no enlightened understanding of the subject matter. It is claimed that the events by which life would come to exist on its own are extremely rare, and hence, an Old Earth is required for an extremely small probability to become a reality. Belief that God created life is not contingent, though, on the age of the Universe - regardless of whether the Earth is four thousand or four billion years old.
But the problem is worse than that. Even given the current accepted age of the Universe, with the currently accepted mass of the Universe, there is simply not enough atoms nor enough time for even one useful protein molecule to stand a better than even chance of coming about through random interaction. A statistician could easily poke holes in the "random chance" model of life's beginnings. Because it lacks empirical verifiability, abiogenesis isn't a valid scientific theory. And because the logical model is flawed, it isn't a good philosophy either. Even were we to accept abiogenesis on faith, it still provides no deeper insight regarding life than simply saying we were created by God; it provides us no mechanism of generation, it cannot explain why certain molecules were used as opposed to others (for example, why we don't have a hydrocarbon base as opposed to an aqueous one. Even though many more chemical reactions take place in water, the underlying assumption of abiogenesis is that unlikely events do occur, so such is a reasonable question. It would seem that if we ignore statistics, a hydrocarbon metabolism would be as plausible as an aqueous one.)
It is far more plausible to posit that we were created by God than to suggest life came about by a highly unlikely chain of events for which the exact mechanisms are not understood. Neither theory explains the exact mechanism, nor is empirically verifiable. The difference, however, is that the first does not claim to be science, yet is logically sound, whereas the second does claim to be science, but is neither logically sound, nor proper science.
As science prides itself on finding truth through skepticism, it should welcome new discoveries, even if they cast doubt on accepted theories. The problem, however,
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
What really gets me is that none of the so called "scientific" origin-of-life theories are logically sound. Nor are they scientific, in the truest sense of the word - their hypotheses cannot be tested.
Of course they can be tested. You can make a hypothesis about how cells form and you can go look for such cells in the fossil record. You can create evolving DNA and RNA strands in a test tube. You can make artificial life forms in the laboratory (this is in progress). There are many clear, simple and easy-to-understand ideas about how life can get started.
Now, instead of four billion years, they've got to explain in it 250 million years. Given that they've already posited that mankind's ancestors appeared about 50 million years ago, they're down to a mere 200 million years to go from single-celled to upright and walking.
No. The extinction killed off most species, but certainly did not reduce life to single cells. Left behind were complex plants, fish, reptiles. Its all there, clearly recorded in the fossil record.
Rather, science often illumines our knowledge of God - we discover the perfection of the Creator in witnessing the beauty of the created.
Apart from the aspects of the 'created' you refuse to look at. Surely its up to God (assuming he exists) to decide how life is created, and unless he is a huge practical joker and trying to fool us, there is overwhelming evidence that evolution is the method.
You crazy religious freaks are so stupid it hurts my head.
I believe it's called the end-Permian Extinction, one of the three mass extinctions (or is it two?).
I heard the same thing about a huge underwater crater in the Gulf of Mexico. How is this different from that theory?
server acts as if it was hit by a meteor.
Table-ized A.I.
Magnitude 11?
I guess these are Spinal Tap magnitudes.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
There is better evidence for creation then for evolution. You must hear both sides before you make a conclution. You have been told your hole life that the world was formed billions of years ago. This makes it hard for you to beleave any differently. Please check out both side be for you claim your right. Free divx Videos http://www.creationevidence.net/offers.shtml
For your dining and dancing pleasure, Slashdotters, we have a live, squirming specimen of the bane of the Info Age: "Echd'oh". The website publishes a story (about a 250My-old event), exaggerates the headline (pulling a 2Gy background detail into misrepresenting the entire story), a blogger doesn't RTFA, quotes only the mistaken headline, an irrelevant argument about the incorrect details blooms on the blog. For good measure, a carping blogger invents a neologism to describe the phenomenon, guaranteeing its easy repetition in the blogsphere, even a fad of its own overwhelming the original story, mistake and debate, which are lost in the memory hole.
For our next trick, this thread will pick a different term to describe this phenomenon, which plays on a minor characteristic, spawning mutated copycats trying to fulfill the new term, which will become more popular than the original phenomenon. Behold the mutamemic blogsphere!
--
make install -not war
Abiogenesis is not required for evolution. Evolution does not require a begining, it requires change.
As science prides itself on finding truth through skepticism, it should welcome new discoveries, even if they cast doubt on accepted theories.
Science does welcome new discoveries, even if they cast doubt on accepted theories. However, in order for the crank^H^H^H^H^H discoverer to have his/her theory replace the predominant one, the new theory has to do a better job of explaining the exisiting evidence AND explain any new evidence discovered at a later date.
Science is not athist. It is agnostic. It does not require the existance of some unknowable creator(s). It does not forbid the existance of some unkowable creator(s). It does place limits on the behavior of some unknowable creator(s). It does, on occasion, contradict the oral tradition of vairious mid-eastern and european cults.
So close, and yet so far from being right. I think you have a pretty good grasp of how science is supposed to work, but your grasp of Christianity is not quite so strong, grasshopper.
You are close. God expects you to seek Him through (i.e., because of) faith. The bible tells us this plainly. Once you choose to believe, you will find all the proof you need.
One of the things which first prompted me to doubt my unbelief was the realization that everything which I considered to be a proof that there was no God was being used by Christians to prove that there is a God. The logic was the same, but the underlying premises had one significant difference: we athiests assumed that there was no God, while the Christians assumed that there was one God, almighty, who cares for each of us, has a plan for each of us, and is deeply grieved when we turn our backs on Him[1]. That led each group to different conclusions from the same facts. Eventually, I realized that there are no testable hypotheses about God: we can't devise an experiment to trap Him and force Him to reveal Himself. Once I had chosen to believe I found that He does justify our faith.
The point to Christianity is not that ``... you are in fact expected to 100% completely believe something regardless of whether or not there is really evidence for it.'' The point here is that God wants you to first seek Him. If you seek Him, you will find Him. He'll see to that.
[1] We Christians believe that there is one God, who has three aspects (three different ways we can experience Him; that's all that trinity stuff), and who cares enough about us that He's deeply hurt when we place our fallible judgement ahead of His perfect judgement. Since He treats us with respect we haven't earned, He allows us to estrange ourselves from Him. Since He loves us, He is always ready to forgive us and welcome us back. Here's the vital part: unless you are perfect, by God's standards (and you aren't: He didn't make you that way), you can't spend eternity with Him. The good news is, He will take care of that, if you care enough to ask Him. Go to my website, get my email address, and write me if you want to know more.
See what I've been reading.
"The Great Dying"? We pay our scientists how much and the best they can come up with is "The Great Dying"? "The Big Bang"? I can't wait for the "Super-huge Thingamajigger"!
I'm not sure, but I could have sworn I heard this a long time ago...
You seem to be missing the point...
If creationism were true, there would be no evidence at all for evolution. There would be no fossils, no radioactive decay evidence, nothing. That there is pretty convincing evidence for evolution suggests that either:
(1) it actually happened, or
(2) God put it there as some kind of sneaky plan to fool most of us into thinking creationism is ignorant nonsense.
Which of these do you choose?
Vote Democratic.
"The U.S. is falling at warp speed into a dark age of ignorance, superstition and fear."
Only the Great American Heartland ("Praise jeezus, and pass me that rattlesnake!"). The Right and Left Coasts have enough cynnicism and free-thinking left (so to speak) to save it, though.
O.K. I'm an American. I've lived on the East Coast for (oh, roughly) 50 years. What's going on now is what's been going on since the original, intolerant, religious crackpots, er, our Glorious Founding Fathers, came ashore. It's a fight for mindshare.
"Truth" has nothing to do with it. It's all about control. For the past 100 years, one battle has been the Fundies vs. everybody else (the other battle has been Haves vs. Have Nots, but that one is as old as, pardon the expression, Adam).
The fundies are well organized and focused. The "rest of us" free-thinkers are disorganized and unfocused. Hey, if you're a free-thinker, you have a high tolerance for bullshit anyway.
We usually draw the line where evidence is considerable (look up the Scopes trial) or lives hang in the balance (Vietnam).
America is not sliding downhill. It's more like a drunkard's walk into a bad part of town. For goodness' sake, vote people. Vote for Homer Simpson if you have to (mmmm, WMD!), but vote, damnit!
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
One day humans will finally know how we came about. As we get smarter, we will realize how daft religion is and eventually phase it out. There will be the few crazy guys that still believe in a magical god, but they will be viewed by society as "crazy" and probably be social outcasts.
http://www.punahou.edu/acad/sanders/geometrypag
And since the stars shone on the day they were made, then He must have put years of light between here and there, with bogus spectroscopic evidence, to establish an alibi for where He was.
What is He hiding?
Who is He hiding from?
No - they do really mean that 80% or 95% of *species* died. We know this by counting the different types of species present before and after the extinction. It would be impossible to count the *numbers* of life-forms.
You did pretty well with your creationist troll, I must admit, since they're pretty hard to pull off.
But, this genre's old and busted. Move on.
Go back to doing "Absurd Liberal Myth" trolls. Those are instant classics.
Its nothing to do with strength. The species that tend to survive extinctions tend to be those that are most numerous and widespread, and those tend to be physically smaller creatures. The extinction 65 million years ago was not really the 'end of the dinosaurs', but simply the mass destruction of large creatures. After all, a particular type of small therapod dinosaur (the birds) are still around.
As always, the talk.origins archive and website should have good info on this or related topics.
2 billion years ago is smack dab in the middle of the preCambrian and there was no marine life that we know of then. There certainly were no land species. Early life in the oceans showed up in the Cambrian which is about 570 million years ago.
/.
A UK billion is a million million not a 1000 million as is used in North America. So by their own numbers they are out by a factor of not 8 but 8000 on their time scales.
Stories that are this factually wrong should not be welcome in
I almost believed you might not be a troll, but you went too far with that one. Good job though, you got a bunch of us!
The article mentions an interesting theory, that instead of an external meteorite triggering mass eruptions, it might be the volcanic eruptions that came first. The eruptions were powerful enough to fire a great gob of rock into space, and each big crater is where it re-impacted. On this view the eruptions would be the prime cause of the mass extinctions - at Permian, Cretaceous and Triassic - and the impact craters just a side effect.
I didn't RTFA, but is it about *BSD?
Assuming Mercury is mostly solid, due to having greater surface-to-volume ratio than Earth, and geologically cooled-off faster than Earth, then if the Caloris impact did that much damage on the far side of Mercury, then on Earth any decently large strike should be able to crack open the crust on the opposite side (remember to take direction of impact into account). That should be enough to let lots of magma pour out, because it does already, whenever the crust splits open, even without a meteor impact. And because of the way impact energy spreads and reconverges on the other side of the globe, a large region of cracks should appear, all letting-loose magma, while the impact site itself is a comparatively small puncture.
... all this stuff is about BSD, isn't it?
I don't wish to step on their copyright so I'm only going to quote the beginning of the story:
Four days that shook the world. New Scientist vol 182 issue 2446 - 08 May 2004, page 32
Just when you thought the dust had settled on the cause of the demise of the dinosaurs, there's a new type of catastrophe kicking it up again. Forget meteorites and mega-volcanoes, Verneshots are the real culprit, says Kate Ravilious
THE Earth exploded under their feet. Noxious gases spouted into the atmosphere and quickly circulated around the globe. The ground shook with the force of a hundred massive earthquakes, and 20 gigatonnes of the Earth's crust and mantle were blasted into the sky before raining back down onto the surface. It was a terrible day for the dinosaurs. They never recovered.
Is this, at last, a true description of what happened 66 million years ago? The argument over what killed the dinosaurs has raged for 25 years, and has polarised into two opposing camps: a meteorite impact, or a prolonged bout of mega-volcanism called a continental flood basalt.
But now a team from Geomar, an earth sciences institute at Kiel University in Germany, has come up with a completely new type of geological catastrophe to explain the death of the dinosaurs, as well as three previous mass extinctions. If they are right the culprit was neither a meteorite nor a flood basalt, but a colossal underground explosion called a Verneshot.
As yet the idea is in its infancy (Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol 217, p 263). But the Verneshot hypothesis has one big advantage over its rivals. It explains a mystery that haunts the debate over mass extinctions: why the extinctions always seem to coincide with both continental flood basalts and meteorite impacts when the odds of these happening simultaneously are vanishingly slim.
Be careful what you wish for...
Where your treasure is there is your heart also...
"An historical" or "An hypothesis" is for those who are too lazy to pronounce the H. The H is a consonant, and as such you put "a" in front, not "an". If you can properly pronounce the words, put "a" in front of them.
Two reasons:
One - It is based on an object (computer/AI)we know is created by another entity. The setup dictates a creator/createe relationship.
Two - It presumes the evidence was left by some deity and that belief/atheist is just a matter of good or bad interpretation.
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
Australian scientist have discovered a link between cigarette smoking and cancer!
...we get to hear even more hilarious tap-dancing explanations for this new evidence from Christian Scientists.
I think they're still dancing over the fact that dinosaurs were never mentioned in the Bible.
Finding a very thin layer of irridium in the rocks laid down at the very end of the Permian would be compelling evidence.
An irridum layer is (an almost) sufficient condition to prove an impact, because some asteroids contain lots of irridium, but Earth's surface normally does not.
However, it is not a necessary condition, because not all asteroids contain lots of irridium.
So yes, it would be compelling evidence, but we cannot rule out an impact if this evidence is not found.
Tor
(2) God put it there as some kind of sneaky plan to fool most of us into thinking creationism is ignorant nonsens
"Does it bother anyone else that God...just might be fucking with our heads? 'Huhuhuh...I'm a prankster god! I kill me.'" -- Bill Hicks on the theory that fossils are a test of faith
Ah, I meant to say i.e., not e.g.
Posting too much today.
Is that this damn thing is too old. As is, the Chixilub crater, at 65MY, is severely degraded, and many of the continents were close to their present locations. At the end of the Permian Era, they were all lumped into one land mass.
Even an impact crater as large as 100 miles would be so worn over that even with sensitive geologic data, it would be hard to detect. Finding evidence of shocked quartz points to some sort of impact in that area... narrowing down the date and size is the tough part.
Could this be the smoking gun? Hard to say. My guess is that numerous phenomenon combined to cause this extinction. Massive vulcanism in what is now Siberia would have causes all sorts of problems ecologically. Then you have theories on methane seeps... which could explain why ocean life suffered the worst fate... And maybe this rock was the coup de gras of the Permian Era.... the final nail on the coffin for an already stressed ecosystem.
Though, these extinction events lead life on Earth to its current path. Poor evolutionary pathes were cut off, and only hearty, adaptable species survived.
This is just another piece of evidence among dozens that have been found relating to this.
DISCLAIMER: you have the right to believe as you wish. But by the same token I have the right not to believe the same thing and further I have the right to refute your argument just as scientists are allowed to question and refute each others theories and beliefs. So I am merely exercising that right, not trying to force you to change your mind because I can't FORCE that, nor would I want to. I'm just asking you to consider another point of view and the evidence for it. From all I've read today on this article that is the approach in science... consider one anothers' theories, beliefs, etc. and the evidence for or against and come to a conclusion. I have done this with evolution (several varieties of it), big bang, distant origins theory, etc. so I just ask the same of others with the Christian faith.
One - It is based on an object (computer/AI)we know is created by another entity. The setup dictates a creator/createe relationship.
How do you know the AI is created by another entity? Why does the setup dictate a creator/createe relationship?
Is it because the AI is a complex object that could not have occurred by mere chance? Does a car fall into the same category? How about a watch? If I showed you a fully loaded car with tons of bells and whistles and told you it appeared to me by chance, would you believe that? I know I sure wouldn't because the car is complex and could not have come about by mere chance. There must have been something/someone intelligent that created it.
No, it's because in your post you said: "Let's say I was smart enough to create an AI with the intelligence of a human and put it on a PC."
That statement alone sets the scene in a way where there is absolutely a creator, the only thing to figure out is how the created object interprets its origin.
I'm not attacking your beliefs, just the analogy you're using to support a position.
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
Haaarumph!! "The Great Dying" indeed!
I don't remember anything so great about it!
Did I not see any REAL evidence in that article?
the Political Inquirer
Not that the evidence isn't also compatible with creators / designers... but those designers are not only plagarists, but very bad plagarists. Not only have they never surprised us with original code, the copies / plagarism also include copies of all previous copying errors (like the primates having an almost working- but for a few errors- version of vitamin C manufacturing. Yay scurvy: other mammals don't have to worry about it.)
If it's all the same to you, I'd rather look at non-explosive fossils.
But Satan put them there, to try to mislead people. Or God put them there, to test our faith. ... and WHAT wiped them out (and whether or not they were really all wiped out simultaneously).
Don't you know they were all too big to fit on Noah's Ark? Noah could've lashed the big sauropods to the side of the ark, like pontoons, but he ran out of rope. The little ones, like Archaeopteryx, got on the boat but were eaten by tigers or something. After all, the Bible says they were at sea for over a year -- there couldn't possibly have been enough food for all the thousands of animals, so Noah decided to prune the food chain a little bit.
What One Famous Scientist Said About Evolution
"One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this [evolution] stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me ....."
"[The] question is: Can you tell me anything you KNOW about Evolution? Any one thing? Any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of Evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and eventually one person said, "I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school"." -- Part of a keynote address given at the American Museum of Natural History by Dr Colin Patterson (Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London) in 1981. Unpublished transcript.
A quote from Professor Stone...
"If you define science as repeatable, reliable, observational fact, it's obvious that Evolution doesn't really qualify as science. People make these huge jumps; they see these tiny changes happening today, and so they conclude that all life forms have arisen from chemicals by a continuous process over millions of years. That's not science, that's belief." [CEN, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1998 p:52] -- Dr Brian Stone (Australian Professor of Mechanical Engineering)
Links: http://www.unmaskingevolution.com/26-accuse.htm
May God bless you and Trode, I'll keep both of you in my prayers.
-=GuestFox=-
If you do a little Googling, you will find remarks by Patterson that he was quoted out of context, and what he was talking about was systematics (a method of classifying species into a hierarchy without outside reference to their evolutionary history). You will also find him complaining about how creationists ought to address actual arguments, rather than quoting authorities (himself or otherwise).
As for Stone, are we supposed to care what a mechanical engineer thinks about evolution?
Incidentally, by "tremendous number of scientists", I hope you meant "a tiny minority, which moreover consists almost entirely of non-biologists".
Its possible that knocking out 80% of terrestrial life could wipe out only 30% of the species or some number like that. I'd probably be a case of massive starvation, and lots of large communities of animals being dessimated, and breaking off into multiple and much much smaller populations. Obviously anything that happened to have a nice little niche at ground zero might not be quite so lucky.
Uh oh, silence from the creationism camp.... Probably busy trying integrate church and state so we can end up like the Middle East.
This guy is way out there
Well, I'm not that much of a geologist, to be able to say. However, in a way, the Mid-Ocean Ridges count as cracks in the crust, through which magma currently outpours. Maybe not as fast as perhaps happened in Siberia, the Deccan, the Columbia Plateau, and other places. What I wonder is what they would find, if they decided to LOOK for coincidental magma outpours and giant meteor craters. When the Columbia Plateau formed, what was at (or near, due to impact angle) the antipode? When the African Vredevoort Ring formed, was any magma event recorded at its antipode? And so on.
Sorry, that argument doesn't fly. There were just as many people then who were not creationists as now. One could hardly argue that everybody, at the time, was a creationist.
I find it extremely interesting that many refuse to look at the information presented. The number of scientists, present day and past, who reject evolution do so due to the fact that it is scientifically unprovable. These scientists still outnumber, by far, those who support evolution. This is driven home by the fact that many of these anti-evolution scientists are not even creationists.
Bit by bit he myth of our evolution from apes is being deconstructed.
Richard Leakey's Skull "Discovery"
Same thing goes for the "Big Bang" theory.
Ten Scientific Censored Papers overturning Big Bang cosmology
God bless you DunbarTheInept.
-=GuestFox=-
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyists, dabblers, and dilettantes. *BSD continues to decay, and nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time; for all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
You're saying in all of the bible, one word--"behometh"--is now refers to the giant lizardsthat walked the earth alongside man? Just one single reference?!
What a stretch. You're looking for things to fit the description, and you find "behometh" and say, "There! It's describing a dinosaur." Not convincing.
The Hebrew meaning for the word behometh was "giant, kingly beast." Do you realize how many of those we have around? The word "Behemoth" is not a direct translation; it is a transliteration. Which means that the original Hebrew letters were substituted with the equivalent English letters to enable us to pronounce it, because translators didn't know what to do with the word when they came across it.
Behemoth and Leviathan, and the context describes features which are only attributable to dinosaurs. Various schools of "higher criticism" have tried to "rationalise" (the wimpy losers) the descriptions back to hippos or alligators, but she's a no go.
Next question: why do you expect the Bible to be a comprehensive historical biology text? Are you still looking for that ultimate contradiction in terms: a supernatural being who behaves as you expect? A pet God? Turn to Paganism, most denominations of that have those by the bushel.
At least learn to spell. No wonder you couldn't find the text! (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Maybe not. Note that many of Mr Körtvélyessy ideas are better supported by the available evidence than meteor impacts are.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Atheists claim that there is no God. Theists claim that there is a God. Both are definite claims. Christianity is a (small) subset of Theism.
An Agnostic also makes a claim: that he doesn't know whether there is a God. This claim is definite only in the sense of the Agnostic's belief, it is not definite in terms of the existence or otherwise of God. Thus it is the defaultg position: an Agnostic has nothing to prove.
A devout Agnostic will make a definite claim: that the existence or nonexistence of God is definitely not open to proof. This is also not the default position, since the default position is a kind of double Agnosticism: one starts without deciding whether one can actually prove or disprove God.
So... either you are not an Atheist, or you don't know what an Atheist is.
However, your reading in the "Troll" mod is 100% on the money. Hope the metamods get the perpetrator.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I've tried that. I only get consistently modded down if the religion in question is Atheism.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...'coz Inherit The Wind was pretty close to 100% bullshit. The Scopes trial was quite different In Real Life; Scopes was a deliberate plant put up to making his claims of having taught evolution (of which there was zero actual evidence) and the opposing lawyers got on quite well together.
If you want to actually support your point instead of undermining it, do a bit more research before firing from the hip. The major untested assumptions in your worldview really detract from your post, because other than that ("...Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?"), your style was really readable and enjoyable.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
That "now many people" was supposed to say "how many people". I made a bad typo that inverted the gist of that statement entirely. Damn I hate it when that happens. (Espeically "now" versus "how" - that's a common one because H and N are next to each other, and it almost always results in a sentence that actually does grammatically and semantically make sense, so it's not obvious it's a typo.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
...supposed to be even meaningful, let alone rigorous?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Shinto, Bhuddism, Romanism have all tried religion-by-force, and are all Pagan derivatives. The druids may have been generally gentle, but there are proper pagan groups aplenty who weren't. Open your eyes and try a different tack.
A pair of Besser blocks [the fish is for scale], suitably employed, can also provide comfort to the dying. Which doesn't mean that it's a good idea in either case. Christianity, as opposed to the mindlessly violant political "us'r'better'n'them" zealotry which often calls itself Christianity, provides not merely comfort, but also purpose and a real future.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I was correctly pointing out the original meaning of the word in the original Hebrew texts. There is absolutely no concrete mention of dinosaurs in the Bible unless you actually go looking for things to fit onto it. I could find something to describe vampires if I wanted to and argue that the Bible is saying vampires existed.
Don't get me started on the original source of the word Lucifer and how it was twisted to become the anthropomorphic image of Satan we have now.
At least learn to spell. No wonder you couldn't find the text! (-:
I can spell just fine. Sorry, I have a life and don't waste my time proofreading hastily written Slashdot posts.
Where is the flood of Noah in the fossil record? Is carbon dating wrong? Where are the cave drawings of dinosaurs? How do you explain the proven movement of the continents over time?
You're arguing with science just to bolster your looney religious worldview. You're searching the entire Bible for one vague word and declaring that it's describing dinosaurs. I think if dinosaurs were roaming around Jerusulem, we'd have known about it. Or do you think the authors of the Bible were morons?
Someday, you should try reading up on how there were dozens upon dozens of Gospels coming out after the fact, and how a certain monk decided on four of them to represent "the Four Winds of the Earth--North, South, East, and West." Your Bible is a mish-mash of mistranslations and subjective editing. This is all proven historical fact.
Unlike one single word that magically becomes dinosaurs in your mind.