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Huge Reservoir Discovered Beneath Asia
anthemaniac writes "Seismic observations reveal a huge reservoir of water in Earth's mantle beneath Asia. It's actually rock saturated with water, but it's an ocean's worth of water ... as much as is in the whole Arctic Ocean. How did it get there? A slab of water-laden crust sank, and the water evaporated out when it was heated, and then it was trapped, the thinking goes. The discovery fits neatly with the region's heavy seismic activity and fits neatly with the idea that the planet's moving crustal plates are lubricated with water."
... after Noah's Flood! This proves the existence of God! Suck it, James Cameron!!!12!!
Be like the Earth: use water-based lubricants, kids.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There goes my astroglide tectonics theory! Back to the drawing board...
but a tall glass of Prune juice always gets that trapped "slab of water-laden crust" out just fine.
The discovery fits neatly with the region's heavy seismic activity and fits neatly with the idea that the planet's moving crustal plates are lubricated with water."
This may explain why Venus, a planet of similar size, appears to have a very different resurfacing mechanism. Venus's surface appears to "explode" once roughly every half-a-billion years, and then stay mellow until the next cycle. Thus, pressure probably builds up until a giant venusquake is eminant and kabam! Water on Earth appearently provides some lubrication such that the pressure is releived relatively gradually in comparison.
Table-ized A.I.
So TFA states that there is good chance of there being lots of water beneath the crust in Asia. Okay, so that's water cooler (whoops...no pun intended) material.
What would make it truly interesting (to non-seismologists) would be if that water were fresh (i.e. drinkable) and accessible (so it could be used as a drinking water supply).
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I bet some water goes down into the Earth. I find it hard to believe that all of it gets evaporated into clouds/rain in a condensation cycle.
I bet gravity pulls a significant amount of it down into the ground(s), and into some sort of underground reservoir.
This is interesting none-the-less.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It really *is* turtles all the way down.
It has already been speculated by many that if Asia (well China in particular) gets its shit together it can wipe the world as a commodity agricultural producer (just like it has as a manufacturer). Water is a huge constraint to massive agricultural output. If they have a huge amount of water available, they're all go!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Whats to stop the America's from drilling through the planet to tap the water, or Europeans from slant drilling?
First they got all the tea in China and now they got all the water too?
It's not fair!
"Science" is easy when you've already stated your conclusion, and then you look for evidence to support it.
Common question and answer on CNN lately with the James Cameron documentary:
Question to some god fanatic: Is there any evidence that anyone could show you to convince you Jesus wasn't a god?
A: No.
There it is in a terrible little nutshell.
I see your snarky comment and raise it one Interesting one.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
And they WILL use this. In a video about how the Grand Canyon was formed in the Flood, they interview a U.S.G.S. scientist and he says "During the miocene there was a huge lake in north eastern Arizona", without mentioning that the miocene ended 5 million years ago.
...how soon until they try to find a way to extract this water/lubricant to provide the much needed drinking water for their bloated population. What could possibly go wrong??
My guess is extraction will commence on December 21st, 2012.
I'm not sold until we find four giant elephants to go along with it.
I'm just purely musing on this and have absolutely no scientific basis to even seriously wonder... but I can't help but wonder if this has anything to do with the Moon. If it was violently ripped from Earth via a collision with another body, would that leave some kind of geographic feature like this?
China recently found HUGE amounts of minerals in tibet. The thinking is that the recent train is not about passengers, but about delivery of ore (copper, iron, etc). So now, they have water and loads of raw materials. The one mistake that they have going is that they are trying to use the most expensive energy ; oil and coal. It is cheap to obtain, but will only contribute to their growing ecology problems. If they decide to move to alternative and nukes, they will control the next 100 years. Scarey for those that like democracies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A release of methane hydrate?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
How in the hell did this get modded +3 Interesting?
Should be more like -5 "God I feel dumber for reading this"
Its the sea of Valusia, of course...
Oh, so that's where bin Laden is hiding?
Full Tilt
Atlantis!! Just think, it sank beneath the ocean, and then under the crust! There's probably people down there right now protected by a force field! :-P
Honestly guys, it's so obvious.
The discovery fits neatly ... with the idea that the planet's moving crustal plates are lubricated with water."
I'm a fan of the Abiogenic theory of oil. This theory holds that crude oil does NOT come from 'dinosaurs' and swamps, but from some other source in the Earth system. IANACG (crackpot geologist), but I think crude oil is just a part of the earth's carbon cycle. Carbon gets sequestered in the ocean (coral/etc), said carbon gets submerged into the mantle, and millions/billions of years later gets transformed into oil, through one mechanism or another. See the 'proposed mechanism' section of above-linked page for details.
Could this story's 'water' patch also be a patch of oil? Oil would lubricate the crust much better than water, I think.
In light of this overview, hydrocarbon economies are bad not because of Carbon Dioxide, but because we're draining our planet of its lubrication. This is probably a Bad Thing - I expect some major seismic activity in the next 50-1000 years.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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Sorry.. That's a string bet. This isn't the wild west. You must make your wager in one continuous play.
For the sake of correctness, it's "R'yleh", not "R'lyeh." Granted, it doesn't make a difference -- because Lovecraftian names are just random letters pulled out of a hat.
Anyway, enjoy the last few days of freedom, fellow mortals -- I imagine Cthulhu will soon be making his appearance. Just in time for the 2008 Elections, too.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
>>The planet's crusts used to lubricate with oil based lubricants until it got the memo to switch to water based lubricants.
Hmmm -- Interesting. I wonder if removing all the oil in the ground is leading to more and more violent earth quakes, versus many less violent ones?
Very clever Mr Russell but it's turtles all the way down!
Especially if you're too stupid to realize it's a JOKE and lacks seriousness.
The vast majority of sea life is VERY sensitive to the salinity of the water they live in. The sudden addition of fresh water would dilute the salt water to about 1/7 or 1/8 and would have either directly or indirectly killed all sea-life, completely destroying the only ecosystem left.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Since we know that our hydrocarbon economy is bad because of Carbon Dioxide, does that then disprove the abiogenic oil theory?
Also coral can't be a mechanism in the abiogenic theory for sequestering carbon in the ocean because that coral is biological and hence any theory using it would be biogenic.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm pseudo-science... yummy. So a bunch of water, embedded in rock on the bottom of the earths crust is obviously fresh water.
Okay, Jules Verne is now officially creeping me out again.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Just FYI according to wikipedia the Artic Ocean is 1.5 times the size of the United States.
the biggest thing in favor of aboitic oil generation is that the likelyhood of useful energy containing material being allowed to sink that far into the earth is juist silly, something would have found a way to eat it on it's way down.
the energy coming from the heat of the planet is more reasonable, though it doesn't give us an out on conserving oil, since even with abiotic production there is no way to know how much to expect to be produced at a given time.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Minor correction to the article: Washington University is in St. Louis, Missouri. Washington State University is in Pullman, Washington.
should we just assume it's not freash water?
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
Great. Now we'll never hear the end of it.
I wonder how those human-habitation-on-the-moon projects are going?
did anyone else read the subject and infer - oil reservoir, axis of evil, lets-get-rich, WMD, and so on and so forth? SOB W, he's got me all worked up.
Do you know where our drinking water comes from? It is filtered through rock and sits in vast reservoirs (lakes) deep under ground, I have never heard of someone digging a well and coming up with salt water. And even if the underground springs were salt water, the rain certainly wasn't. So maybe the salt level is only reduced to 25% or 50% or 75%, still enough to kill most(if not all) sea-life and eliminate the only food there would have been to eat.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
"IANACG (crackpot geologist), but I think crude oil is just a part of the earth's carbon cycle."
This comment isn't aimed directly at you; but...
1) No crackpot geologist ever thinks that he is "one of those crackpot geologists".
2) Even crackpot theories tend to have at least a few adherents, and they tend to be very vocal and argumentative. It can make it seem at first glance as if the theory has wider support than is actually true.
#DeleteChrome
The planet's crusts used to lubricate with oil based lubricants until it got the memo to switch to water based lubricants.
:)
.1% of waterlogged ocean bottom is made up of water, and if .1% of the bottom of Asia (?) evaporated out, then you would have an Arctic ocean worth of water.
.1% water density attenuate seismic activity significantly differently than dried out rock with a water bed over it (which once evaporated out, does not reenter the rock which apparently had the capacity to be entered before?).
What's even funnier than your joke is that it's rated Interesting instead of Funny and elicited some speculation on switching to water based lubricants. Holy cow
After reading the article (such as it is), it seems like awfully fuzzy science. They estimate that
What, it seeped together from all over the mantle below Asia into a structural breach of some kind and condensed back into water? At that depth and pressure?
From readings of earthquake seismic attenuation they're basing this on, could you really tell if it's oil versus water (if either) doing the attenuation? I doubt it. And for that matter, does the so called waterlogged crust at
What kind of science is this? It looks like it reads for fifth graders. I remember we had some kind of similar "ain't science just fascinating" type light reading material in grade school. Must come on a web page now. Probably patented because it's on a web page. Still the same light weight fluff though.
rd
Hey, it gets my vote. Any situation where massive numbers of human deaths can be associated with the word "hilariously" twice in the same sentence, is a situation that I want to be a part of.
All truly revolutionary ideas start as 'crackpot' theories. After years & decades of lonesome, dedicated research, some of these theories become widely accepted. ... Wouldn't have replied, but I have a '93 Escort Wagon too. Be sure to change your timing belt at the regularly scheduled intervals for more reliable transportation. Manual or Automatic? :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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Too bad its not oil. We'd have the government rushing to develop a Journey-to-the-Center-of-the-Earth type project to investigate.
Erm... Call me crazy, but I think the story says that the floods DID destroy all life - except those animals on the ark, of course. Whether or not the story of Noah and the Ark on the whole agrees with science may be arguable, but your comment suggests that you've only researched one side.
Just because it can't be explained doesn't mean it isn't true. Science fits into reality... not the other way around.
Pass me a bottle of that Gobi Gob, willya?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
More like the planet's crust switched to water-based lubricants after its amino-acid condoms started developing holes and some primordial soup leaked to the surface.
Picking and choosing Bible Quotes is a fun game.
If you follow up with Genesis 8:1-5, you'll notice that God "caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the [Flood] water subsided."
You want to explain how the >16,800 ft of water covering the world got dried up by God's wind? The version of the Bible that you quoted from is fairly explicit in saying that "the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed". Where did it all go?
Anyone can pick and choose quotes out of context.
I'm a fan of the Abiogenic theory of oil. ... I think crude oil is just a part of the earth's carbon cycle.
... a couple billion years? It's a little like arguing about the cosmic microwave background radiation, it's an interesting argument, but not terribly practical.
Does it matter? Under one set of theories, we have to bury a bunch of biomass, wait a couple hundred million years, and we have more oil. Under the other theory, the oil is a natural part of planetary development, so we have to wait
Never heard of a salt-water well? Here's one mentioned in Tibet: http://zt.tibet.cn/tibetzt-en/xzcwh/xzcwh_2_7.htm Also the word "sealt-wille" appears in Bosworth and Toller's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/html/oe_bosworthtoller/b 0852.html
Guess what "sealt-wille" means. They've been around a while.
The volume in the article doesnt match your math, but you're basically correct. Most natural sea water has a specific gravity of about 1.024-1.025. You can drop it as low as 1.009 without any real damage to fish, but invertebrates die pretty quickly if you do that (great way to treat saltwater fish for parasites, the lower SG of freshwater causes osmotic shock and they die).
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Geez, if it's heated and under pressure, this could make the geothermal stuff in iceland (greenland? I can never tell 'em apart) look like child's play. Nuclear reactors are used to heat water to drive steam turbines. Um . . . an ocean of water that deep, that hot? Who needs nuclear energy.
So China won't need the middle eastern oil, we in the U.S. can have it all, Chavez can suck it up, and the Arabs can get nervous.
What a world.
For the sake of correctness, it's "R'yleh", not "R'lyeh."
Umm, say what now again? Everyne of our cultists knows it's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R'lyeh you insensitive...
Just found that out on the Internet. They are just random ketters. There is no "Katoloo". Move along. Please?
My other SIG is a Sauer.
OK, that doesn't really change my point. If the ENTIRE worlds ecosystem was destroyed it would take some time to revive it (probably millions of years) if it wasn't beyond recovery. They were told to take enough food for the year on the arc, what did they eat when they stepped foot onto a completely world. it takes about 4 months for carrots to grow from seed (for example) that's a long time to go without food. When the water did "recede" there would be no fresh water anywhere anymore, plants don't grow well in salty soil and we don't do well drinking salt or "salty" water. If there were no fish left, where did the current ones come from? I don't believe Noah had any fish tanks on the ark.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Kyoto has nothing to do with the fact that China has almost zero environmental policy. Take a closer look at the environmental situation in China. It is very sobering.
While the USA is a huge CO2 emitter, our environmental policies are otherwise top-notch.
I won't address the political problems with Kyoto and its inequities in regards to developing nations.
60 years ago, the idea of going to space was unobtainable, let alone crawling on the moon.
The simple answer is that it is possible. The hard answer is, is it economically feasible. In particular, China may have no choice but to either consider how to go after it or go after desalination of ocean water combined with transportation from their east coast into their interior. They are facing a very real possibility of having their entire central to west be out of water. I doubt that they can afford to give up ground that easily.
But the idea of saying that it is unobtainable is silly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Are you serious?
Oil wells go down ~7 miles tops.
Earthquakes' points of origin are much much deeper than that.
From the U.S. Geological Survey
FAQ - Earthquakes, Faults, Plate Tectonics, Earth Structure:
Q: Can we cause earthquakes? Is there any way to prevent earthquakes?
Short answer: Yes, as a result of fluid injection into wells. No
Common Myths about Earthquakes:
Can you prevent large earthquakes by making lots of small ones, or by "lubricating" the fault with water or another material?
Short answer: No & yes, but it would be a bad idea.
Soo.... we can cause earthquakes by injecting fluids into wells, but I've never heard that removing fluids from a well can cause an earthquake.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Seems like there's a possibility there, but I'm not sure I'd want to pump water in there. Water has this nasty tendency to try and take up more space when you heat it than it does when it's cold, so I'd be concerned that in trying to reduce the pressure down there, we'd pump a few gallons of HOH in, and suddenly the pressure would increase as it all tries to become steam and escape. Obviously, the boiling point depends on the pressure, but you'd want to be very sure of what was going to happen before you did it. (You wouldn't want your high pressure steam to suddenly find a path that leads to a lower-pressure area...)
Maybe there's some other liquid we could use, one that would have a boiling point high enough to not have to worry about de-liquefaction. (How about those metal coolants they use in nuclear reactor cores? NaK is one, I think...oops,, it explodes on contact with air or water. Probably not a good choice either.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
OK, so if we accept that God flooded the entire world in a matter of days, why the heck can't you accept that He would just provide food as needed, or make all the sea animals survive because He wanted too? Essentially, if you accept one miracle, what's one more?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more."
Proverbs 31:6-7 (NIV)
I defy anyone to find a better passage to take out of context.
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Is that webpage's name actually 070228_beijing_anomoly.html?
Well, so much for respectable websites being able to write correct english I guess.
This theory holds that crude oil does NOT come from 'dinosaurs' and swamps
That's right, because oil comes from microbial biomass. Idiot.
Ark©
What's interesting is that that passage uses the Hebrew word "eretz", which gets translated as "earth" in all (English) translations I've seen. Now, "earth" in itself is a very generic term, and does not NECESSARILY mean "the planet Earth". And "eretz" could also be translated as "land", "country", "ground" etc.
So the choice is up to the translator, and if you have 2 millennia's worth of tradition (which was based on incomplete knowledge), it is quite hard to break free of the mould.
It is certainly possible that the Noah flood was a localized event, without invalidating the Scriptures (as seen in the original language).
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Over the life of the Earth, it seems the water would slowly disappear into the crust as the ocean plates are subducted.
If it is in a steady state, where is the water coming back out?
If it was salt-water then the flood would have caused the extinction of all freshwater creatures in the rivers and lakes.
Obviously, Noah had an advanced aquarium setup with a wet/dry filter and a cool sunlight-spectrum flourescent light.
I've always prefered Ezekiel 4:12 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it in their sight with dung that cometh out of man
thats one of the more amusing translations - there are several less literal (to the original language) but more accurate translations - but they are half as amusing to misconstrue
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I've read that some old oil wells, which had supposedly been 'tapped out' and capped over decades ago, have re-filled in the intervening years.
Recall that oil wells are pressurized, and are only economical to tap as long as that pressure stays high. Exploration for oil involves poking a hole where the oil is and measuring how much spurts out. If it's enough, they'll put up a permanent rig & piping.
Recall Kuwait in 1991, when some of the oil wells were bombed & set aflame... Took the special firefighters quite a while to put them all out.
Our understanding of the earth beneath our feet is as yet incomplete. I think the evidence indicates that oil originates from very deep in the earth. It's certainly problematic that we've removed so many billion barrels of oil from so many different places. The oil that recharges these fields comes from deeper in the crust - who knows what the usual (lubricative?) task of this oil is?
While it's somewhat topical: saw an interesting reference to Gull Island, Alaska. Apparently, back in the 70's, they drilled any number of test wells all across Alaska's North Slope, and there's billions of barrels worth up there. Due to the politics of the situation (Exxon makes a lot more money at $20/barrel than $10/barrel), the test wells were all capped over and "forgotten". (search for 'gull island', perhaps + 'oil')
Oil is everywhere on our humble planet - I think it possible that the present article's 'water reservoir' is some form of crude oil. The present "oil crisis" is a fraud to squeeze 'teh masses' (we the people) for every last drop. The U.S. has a ton of oil reserves - Alaska's North Slope, off the coast of California, off the coast of Florida. But in the last 40+ years, we've moved the messy business of extraction of said oil to poor countries, perhaps to save 'our' oil for the future, while we use 'their' oil up first. ?
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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This is reminiscent of an article I read about the deepest drilling endeavor ever put forth. While the scientists' educated guess was that the rock material would turn to basalt at around 3-4km in actuality they were confronted with metamorphic rock filled with water! According to the scientists the water might have formed out of O and H atoms "squeezed" out of the surrounding rock and having no way to escape - this would mean it would actually be drinkable water. Furthermore they found large amounts of hydrogen gas contained in the crust which could alleviate some of our energy concerns once we put more effort into hydrogen fuel cell research.
I wonder what else mother earth has in store for us considering we only scratched the surface - the drill hole went down to 12km while the earth's radius is more than 6000km..
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
One thing I found to be unusual, and possibly more worth examining, is how the areas illustrated in the article map are almost precisely the same shape as the major continents. See http://images.livescience.com/images/070228_beijin g_anom_02.jpg
Seems kinda weird, possibly a leftover effect from previous tectonic shifts?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
"The vast majority of sea life is VERY sensitive to the salinity of the water they live in. The sudden addition of fresh water would dilute the salt water to about 1/7 or 1/8 and would have either directly or indirectly killed all sea-life, completely destroying the only ecosystem left."
You should have said "potentially killed an unknown percetage of current sea-life." There are 'sea' creatures that live quite well in the fresh waters of the Amazon for example. Granted, the water would be more brackish then fresh, however, the salinity levels would once again force nature to change. And change/adapt it would. There would be new creatures showing up everyday to replace those that are lost.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I seem to recall a passage about a prophet asking God to send some bears to maul a bunch of kids...
The deepest hole ever drilled by human is "only" 12,6 km deep. Both links are a fascinating reading.
It's the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which was drilled from 1962 till 1994 to gather information about Earth structure. The drilling was stopped because the temperature rose too high (and the walls started deforming under the enormous pressure). They also had to make several branches because of that.
Today, the deepest hole ever created by humankind lies beneath the tower enclosing Kola's drill. A number of boreholes split from the central branch, but the deepest is designated "SG-3," a hole about nine inches wide which snakes over 12.262 kilometers (7.5 miles) into the Earth's crust. The drill spent twenty-four years chewing its way to that depth, until its progress was finally halted in 1994, about 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles) short of its 15,000-meter goal.
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
About a year ago, some greedy, not too smart, oil drillers have managed to drill into a large reservoir of water, gas and mud.
So now a gigantic area is already covered in mud.
Did they manage to drill into this reservoir?? Then it will take a while to stop!
http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Im-QiS00qlcJ:n
More accurate translations? In context, the "less accurate" translation, as you describe it, makes perfect sense. It was a one-time example used to shock people.
"Prepare and eat this food as you would barley cakes. While all the people are watching, bake it over a fire using dried human dung as fuel and then eat the bread." Then the Lord said, "This is how Israel will eat defiled bread in the Gentile lands to which I will banish them!"
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
It has been said that where there is water, there can be life. Is that also true in these reservoirs?
...Genesis 8:1-5, you'll notice that God "caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the [Flood] water subsided." Those God Beans really clear out the gut, huh?I hope God gave Moses a gas mask.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The discovery fits neatly with the region's heavy seismic activity and fits neatly with the idea that the planet's moving crustal plates are lubricated with water.
How would that affect Tesla's plans to break Earth in two? I'm just asking, I do not plan to take this plan ahead!!
So say we all
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Guarani Aquifer in South America, one of the largest aquifer systems in the planet. According to Wikipedia: "(...) it covers 1,200,000 km^2, with a volume of about 40,000 km^3, a thickness of between 50 m and 800 m and a maximum depth of about 1,800 m."
The article about the reservoir in Asia says it is at least the size of the Arctic Ocean. I don't know how much volume that is comparing to the Guarani Aquifer, but it is much deeper (and therefore much harder to extract, in fact impossible with current technology), since Guarani's max depth is about 1800m. So I think this new reservoir is not nearly as significant as the water reserves in South America (even more if you factor the Amazon in).
My personal favourite, nay, my personal motto, is:
"One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind." (Ecclesiastes 4:6)
And since we're flaming spelling anyway, the 'h' goes before the 't'.
They ate the dinosaurs.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
"city-of-R'lyeh"
heh. That would fix things on the planet's surface fairly quickly, if we could wake the old bugger up....
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
They'll charge even more for their bottled water, saying they had to get it out of this reservoir.
You mean like the manna from heaven? If God is all powerful, anything is possible. Which is the big problem with the idea of gods. You can explain anything with "God did it." It's all so very convenient!
What causes flooding - God does it.
How was the world made - God did it.
Why do we need to go and kill those people - God says so.
See? Brilliant answers without the irritating need of rational thought. Which is sad, because if there is a god, it is obvious that he or she designed the world with our understanding in mind. After all, we have the power of rational thought and we can use scientific techniques to further our understanding of the world, apparently without the results being messed with by a god (either that or the god is very self-consistent).
What would make it truly interesting (to non-seismologists) would be if that water were fresh (i.e. drinkable) and accessible (so it could be used as a drinking water supply).
No, no, no. You're missing the point. The only way to make this interesting is to get a grant to study how (not whether!) this find demonstrates the need for Al Gore to make a sequel to his movie. If there's no global warming tie-in, then it can't be science.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just to save the mockers some time, I'll mention that I fully realize that the hydroplate theory:
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Of course, he could have also just saved all of the animals that he wanted saved. But it is soooo much more fun to screw with people, and convince them to build a big unnecessary boat, and sleep in cramped quarters with hundreds of thousands of animals (1,100 species of bats alone don't ya know?) for a year.
I had a boss once who gave people non-productive, frustrating tasks just to prove to everyone that he was in charge. If he had been immortal we might have called him Lord, but things being as they were, we just called him a dick.
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Ok, you're missing a HUGE issue. Hopefully, I can clear somethings up for you, otherwise, you can just ignore me.
You have to realize, that right now there are two BIG issues on the line here on Earth, being worked out.
1. Genesis chapter 3. Satan raised two questions regarding God. First, that God was lying to Adam and Eve about them dying after they ate of the tree of Good and Bad. Second, that he was withholding something good from Adam and Eve.
2. In Job chapter 1, Satan asserted that humans would only serve God for what they got out of him, and for no other reason.
God decided to let this course run, to show how humans would fare without his direct involvement. Things got so bad, that he had to bring the deluge upon mankind. He has since allowed humans to try many many different types of self rule. This has clearly shown (at least to me) that humans don't have the ability to govern themselves! Jeremiah 10:23 "Man cannot cannot direct his own step". Despite all the medical and technical advances, have we really made life better? Ask yourself, how many people go to bed hungry, how many people don't know if they can protect their family from the next band of rebels. This situation on this Earth is terrible, and if you deny that, you are putting too much trust in the media to keep you informed.
Wrap your "rational thought" around that? The end of this system is near. Please don't write my thoughts off as some zealot. Why else do you think I wouldn't post this Anonymously?
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
the place where the survivors of Atlantis escaped after the fall of their civilization :)
"Why do we need to go and kill those people - God says so."
The fact that in many wars (and there are countless examples, the Crusades being classic, totally refutable ones), both sides claim god is on their side, means if god is real he is either:
a) A really sick bastard who either enjoys watching groups kill, rape and torture each other,
or
b) the various clergies of the world do not actually know God's wishes are and so established religions are just as likely being blasphemous as godly.
Personally, considering what he (supposably) put his son through (torture followed by execution by one of the most excruciating means possible), I think (a) sounds most likely.
I have tried lubricating with water and IT DOES NOT WORK. nope.
How deep under Asia is this water? We've only been able to drill to 12,262m so far.
I come here for the love
However the translation I gave above has been used to suggest that the dung was used as an ingrediant, rather than the cooking medium.
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
so technically the English translation of the bible never uses the word "species", it refers to 2 of every "kind" of animal.
Creationists have this elaborate world constructed where they have divided the world animals into a few thousand kinds of animals. and use a hyper-evolution thing to explain the variety of species we have now.
it is really very strange.
--meh--
Actually China has taken a very keen interest in environmental policy the last decade - and even has an commission of international experts to guide it in both policy and lawmaking. The people on the commission range from European former cabinet members (Environmental Ministers) to scientists. China has realized it has some serious environmental issues that it needs to deal with and Kyoto is a part of that plan.
It is a real shame the US does not see it the same way. Before you say China is too different from the US - remember all of Europe is already implementing it. Calling the US environmental policies top-notch is actually not that true from my point of view, they are certainly good, but compared with European legislation it is not that great. My only reason for saying that is not because Europe is so much better - but because the American people deserve a better environment.
Oh, sorry. I didn't read it that way, and now I guess my response doesn't make sense. I guess it might be less of a translation issue than an interpretation of archaic English issue. :-P
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
John 3:16 For God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.
One perfect man (Adam) sinned and passed that sin onto all human kind.
One perfect man (Jesus) died without sinning, and canceled out that debt.
Gods perfect sense of justice forced him to make such a sacrifice for all humankind.
Looking at it that way, doesn't option B sound more likely??
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
*edit* It is supposed to say "when they stepped foot onto a Completly BARREN world". I am next to positive it said it when I submitted it.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
The bean passage is from the 'big bang'.
So it's easier to believe that over millions of years everything evolved from primordial soup than all animals hyper-evolving from like-kind animals? Interesting argument...
potentially killed an unknown percentage of current sea-life.
I don't disagree with your statement, I understand that there are sea "creatures" that can handle salinity variations well, salmon are born in fresh water rivers but live in the ocean. The majority of sea-life is not that "flexible". The food chain is delicate, the creatures that do survive would like have no food, which is what I meant by "indirectly". Although nature changes/adapts well, it can't do it in a few months.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
> They were told to take enough food for the year on the arc, what did they eat
What do you think happened to the Gironamous, the Hippalati, the Woola, and many other species that Noah "saved" but aren't around anymore?
Noah: "Woola, we have good news and bad news. The good news is we are inviting you to lunch..."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Just FYI...I'm sure that's true for many people out there, but for myself, yes, of course there could be evidence to convince me that Jesus wasn't God. Partly that means that if some of the evidence we do have were different, I wouldn't believe. But as for the Cameron documentary--if the ossuary belonging to the guy named Jesus still had the bones in it, and those bones showed nail holes from crucifixion... Well, I would wait for verification the bones hadn't been tampered with, but there's fair chance I would no longer be a Christian after that. Combining the names with crucifixion would be a bit much.
I haven't seen the documentary or read the book yet, so I can only evaluate the statements they've made so far, but they've said some truly silly things, so I'm not expecting much from the documentary. (For example, Cameron claimed on the Today Show that a document called the Acts of Phillip "definitely identifies Mary Magdalene as Mariamne". Go look up the text online, it's linked from the Wikipedia article. It includes a woman named Mariamne, but it definitely doesn't identify her as Mary Magdalene. The word "Magdalene" doesn't even appear. The Mariamne in the story is the sister of Phillip, and she turns into a glass box full of light and fire when she's threatened. Some scholars think that she's Mary Magdalene, others identify her as Mary of Bethany...But it's all quite speculative.)
The article says: "The finding, made by Michael Wysession, a seismologist at Washington State University in St. Louis, and his former graduate student .."
I think that should be Washington University in St. Louis, not Washington State University in Pullman.
If memory serves plate techtonics are needed to regulate temperature, since they take greenhouse gases out of the system. (Please correct understanding if needed.) So you need plate techtonics to have temperature for liquid water. And you need water for plate techtonics.
Are there any theories on how this got started?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Here's an interesting theory along those lines. Synopsis: Glaciation ends, rivers stop feeding the Black Sea (which was the Black Freshwater Lake at the time), evaporation and rising sea levels put it well below sea level. Waters in the Mediterranean overflow the Bosporus. Ten cubic miles of water flow into the Black Sea per day for at least three hundred days.
So we have a huge flood, in the right part of the world, at around the right time for the ancestors of the Jewish people to remember it and write about it in the old testament. And a possible reason Deluge mythology is so universal. A waterfall two hundred times the size of Niagra Falls flooding 60,000 square miles of previously settled land might be something you'd tell your grandkids about.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Not one passage, a joke I hear a preaher tell once:
Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.
Matthew 27:5 (NKJV)
Then Jesus said to him, - Go and do likewise.
Luke 10:37 (NKJV)
Then Jesus said to him, - What you do, do quickly.
John 13:27 (NKJV)
Thomas Galvin
There's a Washington State University, but it's in Seattle. If they can't even get the name of the research facility right, how can I trust anything else the article says?
This isn't the fisrt incredibly stupid error I've run across at LiveScience.com. In fact, I've seen so many egregious fuckups at that site I've quit going there completely. You should, too.
here is Michael E. Wysession's home page. From his page:
So to answer several earlier posters' questions, it's salt water.
His page links a press release and an article in Popular Mechanics.
Shame on anthemaniac and samzenpus. You guys do this again and I'm going to revoke your nerd licenses
-mcgrew (MRC="despairs" after getting an SDC for a damned hour and a half)
Where's the eminant kabam? There was supposed to be an eminant kabam!
Fine, but you have to imagine the frustration some poeple feel when they are talking to people who think that 2000 years ago people turned into glass boxes full of light and fire, burning bushes talked, snakes talked, people walked on water, people were raised from the dead, etc. Why is the world we live in fundamentally different today? If a single one of these things happened, I would have to drastically rethink my world view. But nothing like this ever happens, so I'd have to take any religion on a "say-so". I just can't honestly intellectually do that, so what am I to do? Isn't *a more likely explanation of the bible* that it was written in a superstitious time by people with their own political agendas? Is the alternative *really more likely in your mind*?
Well, there's also the part where one side of the argument is supported by facts, and the other made up by nutters.
I think global warming is a real problem. I think it's probably caused by humans.
The problem? I also think Al Gore is a pompous ass and his movie was the most boring piece of shit I've ever seen. By the end, I was rooting for global warming, on the theory that it might kill Al Gore. So, does that mean I'm crazy?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
DRINK! FECK!
Too long; Didn't read.
God decided to let this course run, to show how humans would fare without his direct involvement. Things got so bad, that he had to bring the deluge upon mankind. He has since allowed humans to try many many different types of self rule. This has clearly shown (at least to me) that humans don't have the ability to govern themselves! Jeremiah 10:23 "Man cannot cannot direct his own step". Despite all the medical and technical advances, have we really made life better? Ask yourself, how many people go to bed hungry, how many people don't know if they can protect their family from the next band of rebels.
How exactly do you cover "all the high mountains" and not cover the entire earth?
If, in fact, a hill or mountain, etc keeps the water from spilling over onto another area of land, then in fact not all the high mountains have been covered. In other words, everything would have had to be covered in order to qualify, thus the context puts the word "eretz" as translating to the largest, most vast sense of the word, making it a globalized event.
For reference, here's an alternative translation. I am not familiar with how accurate the translation is - but it is an alternative to the 'norm'. Someone who can understand hebrew could verify how literal it is. Since it is from 1898, it seems to have withstood the 'test of time'.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
"So the next morning when Balaam arose, he saddled his ass, and went off with the princes of Moab."
Numbers 22:21
China's government has its hands so far up the ass of its own economy that one incompetent move on the government could spell disaster for the entire nation's economy.
Farnsworth: If we can stimulate that nerve, the bowel will convulse, expelling the entire worm society.
Hermes: But what about the worms in the other parts of his body?
Farnsworth: Listen, this is gonna be one hell of a bowel movement. Afterwards he'll be lucky if he has any bones left.
Why do you think they brought all those animals on the Ark to begin with? BBQ!
As an interesting side-note, a Geothermal power project in Switzerland was recently discovered to have caused several small earthquakes, to the alarm of local residents: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16128362/
A Great Big Beef Fart?
I'll Answer your questions one at a time...
1. Remember, Satan never doubted God's power, but rather his right to rule. Imagine if after the rebellion, God just killed Satan, Adam, and Eve. Ok, problem solved? Not really, Satan raised some questions that WOULD NOT BE ANSWERED by simply killing all involved parties. People underestimate God's sense of Justice. It is one of his cardinal attributes, which is rather comforting, considering that God is all powerful. I'm sure you would rather have the type of power controlled by an amazing sense of justice.
2. Remember first off, Jesus wasn't an unwilling party. He wanted to do this for his Father. He was the one who offered to do it. Any perfect angel would have done the trick, and satisfied God's sense of justice, but this shows how close the relationship was between God and Jesus.
3. Insurance companies call them acts of God. Are you going to trust insurance companies to tell you what God does and doesn't do? Part of the issue was that Satan said Men could live without God. Earthquakes and by extension Tsunamis are a natural occurrence on this planet. If humans can take care of themselves, they should be able to stop them. But they can't. If we never rejected the guidance of God, then these things wouldn't be a problem because God would protect us from them. God doesn't directly cause the earthquakes and tsunamis, just like he doesn't kill children to have another angel, but if we want to live free of him, then why would he protect us from them? The food issue is pretty much the same. Why are people dying of starvation? Because the Earth not being able to produce enough food, or because of human greed? If you look at the container ships over in Africa full of rotting food, staying there because the governments can't get any money for it from an impoverished nation. Why would this be God's fault?
4. An experiment is a faulty illustration. Remember, as you mentioned before, God is omniscient, so why would he need to experiment? This whole situation is for us humans to be able to grasp the truth, and see why we need God. This is to show us the futility of living outside of God's Guidance and Direction. Sending down angels and Jesus was also FOR OUR BENEFIT.
5. Again, this isn't an experiment. Satan is trying to get all humankind to stop listening to God. He will do everything in his power to stop anyone from trying to worship God. Thats another reason why God sends down angels, to protect those who are trying their best to worship Him.
6. I think you might be referring Hell Fire. Immortality of the Soul is actually a concept that Satan perpetuated right in Genesis. Remember, he told Eve "You positively will NOT die". That idea really took root in Ancient Babylon. Ecclesiastes 9:5 says that the living are conscious that they will die, but the dead are conscious of nothing at all. You don't have an immortal soul. When you die, you simply cease to exist. There goes the theory of Hellfire. Too bad for all those religions that make billions off of that theory. Really, the wages sin pays are death. God has promised that he will empty the tombs after Armageddon. At that point, people who never had a chance to know God, will be given the chance. Really, the only ones who will be "punished" will be those who willingly and knowingly rejected God's authority.
7. That temptation was a was for Adam and Eve to prove that they wanted to serve and be loyal to God. God created all things, so it only makes sense that he calls for such reverence. But God doesn't get anything from that reverence. He doesn't need it. Rather, its for our own good, so that we stay close to him, listen to him, and benefit from a relationship with him. Loyalty is like a check, its no good until you cash it...
I hope this helps...
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
As a person living with MS, my life ( I shouldn't speak for anyone else) is probably better now than it would have been 100 or 1000 or 6000 years ago - due to medical and technical advances.
Still not great, but better, I'm guessing.
People have been predicting the end of the world since the beginning of time. Every generation of believers thinks the end times will happen in their lifetime.
They've all been wrong.
It's hard to comprehend that when one dies the world will go on anyway. But it will.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Father Jack posts on slashdot? That explains the mess.
Man, you really need that seminar!
1 Peter 3:3 For YOU know this first, that in the last days there will come ridiculers with their ridicule, proceeding according to their own desires 4 and saying: "Where is this promised presence of his? Why, from the day our forefathers fell asleep [in death], all things are continuing exactly as from creation's beginning." 5 For, according to their wish, this fact escapes their notice, that there were heavens from of old and an earth standing compactly out of water and in the midst of water by the word of God; 6 and by those [means] the world of that time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water. 7 But by the same word the heavens and the earth that are now are stored up for fire and are being reserved to the day of judgment and of destruction of the ungodly men.
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
Interesting. The second translation is a relatively accurate translation (I referenced the on-line linear translation at http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0107.htm to compare the original hebrew (and their translation), to the second one you referenced.
You're right about the idea that the flood is described as "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered." (Genesis 7:19)
I will add however that the previous poster is also right that the word used in the original hebrew to describe what is covered is Eretz, which is usually translated as "Land" (for instance "Eretz Yisroel" i.e. "the Land of Israel). The verse COULD be interpreted as referring to the land, literally the ground/earth, I could see the extension to translating that as "the Earth" (capital "E"), however the idea of it being tied to a relatively localized event does not seem in contradiction to the original text.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I've noticed a lot of engineers that are Christians. I'm starting to believe that the smarter and more logical you are, the better you are at deceiving yourself. Many paranoids and others we'd consider "Psycho" come from our ranks, I guess it makes sense that we'd spawn a bunch of Christians as well.
...satisfied God's sense of justice...
PS, just in case you actually think you were consistent. A huge problem that you don't get is what you actually are saying when you say god is all knowing and all powerful.
>Satan raised some questions that WOULD NOT BE ANSWERED
Umm, god knew all the answers. There is never a reason to "Test" or "Experiment", even with free will, he still knows what choices you will make. He never has to enter into a contest of any sort with Satan or anyone else, because the outcome is forgone. If Satan knows god even slightly, he would NEVER enter into a contest with God, etc. Knowing the entire future also means you don't have to "Prove" anything to anyone.
>
Again, the guy knows everything that will happen and every choice that will be made, so unless he's a total asshat, actually making someone go through being put on the cross when he knows exactly what will happen before, during and after is completely unnecessary.
> God doesn't directly cause the earthquakes and tsunamis
Here's another bit you have to get through your head. If you are all powerful and all knowing and you create something, then you cause EVERY SINGLE THING that EVER happens in that things future until some object that is OUTSIDE YOUR CONTROL effects it.
Since nothing is outside gods control, he placed the pebble in a specific place that he KNEW would give way and cause the earthquake--every earthquake. He had to be painfully aware of every war and every baby that would be murdered (Well, actually he punished the Jews BECAUSE they wouldn't murder a few babies, but that's another story)
As a programmer my program cannot do something outside my control. If I was a "Perfect" programmer, I could program an entity that could be vastly intelligent and perhaps even self aware, but I could not program it to do something I didn't program it to do. If I was a Perfect Programmer with a perfect knowledge of all input that would ever be given this program, I would even be able to predict everything it would learn and every action it would take as a result of its learning.
Being a perfect programmer, I could not "Choose" to un-know any of this. I would not be all-knowing if I did, I would be all-knowing-except-for-stuff-I-choose-not-to-know- about which I've never seen in the bible.
> Sending down angels and Jesus was also FOR OUR BENEFIT.
Another aside. More horrid torture and murder has been done in the name of Jesus than pretty much any other in history.
> God sends down angels, to protect those who are trying their best to worship Him.
If you're all powerful, you NEVER need an intermediary. This whole "Battlefield" between god and Satan tends to attract the mentality of Christians, they love this shit, but it's totally insane when you realize that god DELIBERATELY created all these things to happen exactly as they have happened.
And before you start going on about Free Will--as I tried to say above (but possibly not explicitly enough), if your creator is all powerful and all knowing, it is absolutely impossible for you to do anything he didn't know about at the time you were created (and, in effect, create you to do). Satan could not have surprised god by "Turning" on him, because God knew what Satan would do the second he created him (or is Satan outside god's power, or did god not create all things, or what?)
>will be those who willingly and knowingly rejected God's authority.
Great now I have this parallel in my mind between God and Cartman--and it actually holds out. God, as described in the bible, could actually Be Eric Cartman.
> That tempt
Additionally on China, even in Al Gore's film the chinese admit they plan
on bringing on a few "hundred" coal fired power plants due to their small foot print.
Clean coal tech is coming, but it is going to be "awhile" and what china has
planned currently is not cleaner coal plants.
In less than 10 years China will surpass the US as the #1 pollution creator
in the world, not per capita, but per country; china has roughly 4 times the ppl.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
If you like I receive very nice e-mails with working products; which make you too rock hard so you can have >b>tectonic pleasures too!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
If I could prove to you that God was actually a truly loving God, would you care?
The only reason I ask, is to make sure I'm not wasting my time. If you do care, and you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing, I'll address your questions.
Plus, I promise not to kill your family! =)
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
People have been smugly quoting that verse for 2,000 years, fully expecting the end times in their lifetime. It just never gets old somehow, even though every person who has quoted it has been wrong.
Quoting scripture as your entire response isn't a conversation. I made some good points and you ignored them. Oh well, I guess I still have room to lower my opinion of Christians a bit further. Hiding behind scripture, ignoring valid points, unwillingness to think and self-satisfaction are among the reasons I rejected Christianity.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Interesting side-note to the fault lubrication thing: where I live, Denver, there were a series of earthquakes in the '50's and '60's. Small ones, to be sure, but still, since this area hasn't had noticeable earthquakes in centuries, as far as anyone can tell, it made people wonder. Specifically, it made a bunch of mine owners wonder why their shafts kept collapsing and shifting -- on a regular schedule. Like, once a month, near the end of the month, there would be a quake.
It turns out that Rocky Mountain Arsenal was overproducing nerve gas for our enormous stores of chemical weapons that we're not supposed to have, so to get rid of them they had the bright idea of injecting them down into the earth a couple of miles. Tons, and tons, and tons, of nerve gas.
Talk about bad ideas in action...
If you do a googlesearch on injection-caused earthquakes there are hundreds of hits. This is one of the ones that talks about the Arsenal injection earthquakes.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
It should comfort me that my pain is just? That my glory is not my own, that my failure has some unknown purpose?
(Regarding 3., this is deliciously circular, and the mind that created that argument must be in on the joke)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
You don't really have to prove anything. I believe in God and that he is loving. I hate what Christians have made him look like--esp in the Christian bible.
I think to be an atheist takes as much faith as to believe, so I choose to believe, but in order to get there I had to throw out the "Christian" view of the bible (as the direct word of god) and take it simply as people trying to understand god and for the most part failing miserably.
Can you honestly tell me that a omniscient being can create an isolated space-time continuum (for lack of a better term) with full control over it and the knowledge of every detail of it's future and somehow abdicate responsibility for everything that happens in it--did not actually create it to happen exactly as it did?
Oh, and I don't believe most Christians would kill me, but I do believe that if one read this in the future while processing a job applicant, he would let it influence his decision. (Actually I've known some very good Christians--few and far between, but a couple are among the best people I've known. For the most part I like them but I don't like the way they lend credulity to the current white house and the psycho born-again groups that swept them into power, so I can't just ignore how they are still destroying the world)
I didn't quote that scripture to say the end time was during my lifetime, because I'm willing to admit that it might not be, but your attitude is matched in that scripture quite well. And, eventually, when that time comes, there will be people with that same attitude, but that won't prevent the end from coming.
Armageddon is coming on God's timetable, and no one else's.
As to my belief that I am living in the time of the end, there are multiple prophesies in Revelation and Daniel and Isaiah that point to a time that uniquely matches our own.
As to your "good points"... Inflammatory statements made to elicit a heated response are not good points. Quoting scripture, I find, is a great way to diffuse what could be a heated argument...
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
While I will be the first to admit that there can be multiple translations of the same word (I read the ancient greek, but have not had the hebrew training yet; and there are multiple translations for greek words as well, though in reference to this, I am not going to refer to any greek translation); however, looking at a single word (in the case "eretz") and trying to determine what happened based on that single word is incorrect in any translation context. When translating you have to look at the entire context, not simply a single word.
While the word "eretz" can be translated in those different forms, the broader context of the passage yields criteria for the translation that requires a broader translation. In this case in particularly, the context gains additional information from verses 19 and 20, which put requirements that make it exceed a localized event. (Again - explain to me just how could the "all high mountains" be covered an not the entire earth? This is rather simple logic.)
Now, one could possibly say that the term "high mountains" referred to all those within the "land of Israel", however, the passage would date to a time when the people of Isreal did not know of the land of Israel[1]. But that too would still have problems of its own. Add to it the fact that similar stories are pretty much universal among all cultures, which means the context of the story is not limited to that of the Israeli culture or land holdings.
On the assumption that the flood story is 100% true then the fact of the matter is that there is little knowledge (scientifically or otherwise) about what the Earth was like prior to the flood account[2]. The environment could have been tremendously different[3]. It could have been different enough that it would very easily throw off our modern studies as modern science pretty much assumes that there is a consistent enough environment (e.g. barometric pressure, humidity, etc.) to make its predictions of the past. If for example, there was a larger amount of oxygen in the air at one time with a rapid change of a lower amount over a short time, then the conditions would differ enough to throw off our modern studies. Any how...to get back to my point, we don't know what the land was like (topology, etc.) prior - there could have been thousands of mountains, or few. And an event as disruptive as the flood would have changed the topology and landscapes.
[1] While it is disputed as to when exactly the original texts were written and by whom, the content of the texts itself would have dated to before the Israelites took over the land of Israel.
[2] What little is spoken of with respect to the layout of the Earth in the early parts of Genesis (e.g. 1 to 7) we can only hypothesize that it was likely more of a tropical environment wherever humans lived - something warm and not harsh or changing between extremes (e.g. summer/winter).
[3] One hypothesis is that a canopy of water surrounded the earth; there are other hypotheses too, but no way to truly prove any of them. Of course, this goes right back to the original post of this thread, which was kind of jesting that a lot of the water came from these aquifers whereby (if indeed true) a lot of the rest of the earth would have had a similar water/rock composition - so instead
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I know it's a bit late in the discussion, but figured I'd go on record to disagree with this assessment of the slower travel times. I realize I don't have a shred of proof to oppose this except a healthy disbelief that some enormous amount of non igneous rock "sank" to the depths they seem to be talking about.
That there's a difference in the rock/rock type I can believe. That there's water involved in the difference in sonic travel times... at that depth?... no. I'd love to see some opposing viewpoints on this, and suspect that there will be some quite vigorous ones.
Does it matter? Under one set of theories, we have to bury a bunch of biomass, wait a couple hundred million years, and we have more oil. Under the other theory, the oil is a natural part of planetary development, so we have to wait ... a couple billion years?
It matters greatly. Think about it. The earth is a sphere of roughly 8,000-mile diameter, biomass exists as a less than one mile deep layer over sections of that sphere (exclude the poles). Actually, much less than one mile. Plant bio mass (which matters the most due to photosynthesis) generally cover a less than 100 feet (0,02 mile) deep layer over the earth surface. The proportions are equivalent to a pool ball (the earth) spray-painted (plant coverage). And the conditions for that bio mass to turn into oil had to be a very specific (and not terribly probable) series of geological events.
Supposedly there would be much more oil if it came from the core material of the pool ball than if it was scrapped (even over a long time) from the pool ball paint. Well I am not sure whether I used the best analogy here, but I hope you get the angle.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Water-spraying party at my house next saturday, no need to be careful with how we use our water now!
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Assuming you are a programmer or scientist or engineer or someone in general familiar with logic, I would highly recommend considering Pascal's Wager, at the very least...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
> Despite all the medical and technical advances, have we really made life better?
In my opinion: Yes. Not perfect, but definitely better. Picking just one example, Antibiotics have made life better. Very few people have to die a horrible death or lose a limb because they got a cut. We still have more to learn, but we're doing it. Most important: the process continues.
Assuming you are familiar with logic, I highly recommend considering The End of Pascal's Wager by Richard Carrier, at the very least...Assuming you are a programmer or scientist or engineer or someone in general familiar with logic, I would highly recommend considering Pascal's Wager, at the very least...
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
As to your belief that the prophesies in Revelations, Daniel, and Isaiah point to a time that uniquely matches our own, there are enough sufficiently vague references to keep us perpetually living in the end times for another 10,000 years. It seems quite clear that these books are intentionally vague given how remarkably accurate and specific a timeline should be when written by an all-knowing being.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
"Again - explain to me just how could the "all high mountains" be covered an not the entire earth? This is rather simple logic."
Just like already said in a parent post, a possible theory is that the Black Sea was at the time a depression BELOW sea level but without water as the Bosphor strait was closed. So what appeared as high mountains on the floor of this depression could have easily been covered by water (my atlas says the deepest point of the Black Sea is at -2244 meters, largely enough to have something high enough to qualify as a mountain covered by water).
This could explain why IIRC Amernian Christian sect believes Noah's Ark lies on top of mount Ararat.
Similar events happenned in the Mediterranean Sea with the Gibraltar Strait opening and closing at different times, resulting in different coastlines over times.
Anyway, about the "entire Earth" part, I have to say it's vastly dependant of when you lived : wether you lived in a time before America's discovery (Middle Age), when the Mediterranea constituted the whole known world, or even before.
Just like Homere's Odyssea, the Old Testament could just be a recollecting of impressive events/places/myths that people of the times couldn't understand. But I understand this notion can be hard to admit for someone looking for a word by word exactitude of religious books to support his belief. (- intentional cutting remark from an atheist)
Your mind is a closed door. You will believe what you want to believe.
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
I had a really well-written reply for you, and then I got the joke. Please don't fool me again.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
While the explosion itself and resulting immediate effects might well wipe out anyone within a few hundred miles, the ash would stop a lot more than just helicopters. Yakima and other cities nearby spent huge amounts of time and money digging out from the ash after Mt St Helens erupted:
n t_St._Helens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mou
Fine-grained volcanic ash stops internal combustion engines, contaminates oil, clogs air filters and short-circuits electrical transformers, among other things. Imagine the volume of ash produced by a supervolcano eruption in Yellowstone spreading east along the gulf stream, and the impact that would have. Anything that uses an engine or pump, unless it's completely sealed from the air, would stop working. Power transmission stations would fail.
And how would you clean up ash when vehicles don't work and you don't have reliable power? How do you distribute food and water and medicine?
That's not just an inconvenience, that's death to a modern civilization. It'd be doubtful if you could restore enough agricultural production to feed even the people growing the crops, much less enough transportation to feed the rest of the population, or the rest of the world which buys and relies on US agribusiness.
If Yellowstone blows, within 18 months there will be nothing recognizable as the United States left on the North American continent.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
You're a goat farmer living in the dried out sea bed. You live next to what used to be a small island. the big flood comes in and hits you. The island is subsumed... You look around and see nothing but sea from horizon to horizon where there used to be homes and mountains. How do you describe that to your children?
Of course you decide to declare victory by accusing me of doing what you're doing. My mind is wide open and I believe whatever I am forced by the evidence to conclude. I would love to believe in happy endings, life after death, justice for everyone, damnation for the wicked, and a master plan which organizes this apparently chaotic universe. Reality, however, does not always bend to my desires.
Oh, and let me end this with "I'm rubber, you're glue, what bounces off me sticks to you!"
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
I'm sorry if I came off trollish, but I smelled an odor of sarcasm where, apparently, there was none.
My faith allows me to give more credence than most to what the Bible says. Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as "The assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld." The "not beheld" part is what a lot of people have a problem with. I get a lot of flack for having that Faith, and was getting defensive, where apparently I didn't need to.
Please accept my apologies.
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
I try to enjoy my life, it is a precious thing. I try to live by an ethical code, and I think I do pretty well at that. If there is a god, and so far there is zero evidence that there is, I am hopeful that this alleged god will admire the fact that I enjoyed my life and tried to do right. I'd be pretty tired of pinched, bitter hypocrites who hate all the good things in life right around now. If by some retarded fluke there is the christian god of the bible, who will put Haggert in heaven and Sagan in hell, I'd prefer hell.
Any god worth his improbability would reserve a special place in hell for bastards that have "fire insurance" faith. Besides, do you have any idea how many religions there are? You'd be nearly certain to pick the wrong one.
Man, you really need that seminar!
On IRC
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
However, even if the ark was found, many would still likely deny it. But finding it is highly unlikely.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)