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World's Largest Fossil Forest, and One of the Oldest
solitas writes in with news from last week of the discovery of a fossilized forest in Illinois. The forest was found in the ceiling of a working coal mine, 250 feet below the surface. It was drowned 300 million years ago in an earthquake, its discoverers speculate — here is a graphic of its formation. Geologists are excited because the huge fossilized forest, over 25 square miles in extent, preserves trees and other plants upright, as they grew.
because trees should still be standing upright underground.
I'm assuming the the 30 foot high wave of water, mud and debris that rushed in to fill the area would have knocked over and snapped most of the trees.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
did the ground below just sank/moved suddenly (25 square miles no less)?
Yes, the same thing happened a few weeks ago in the Solomon Islands. In an earth quake, a tectonic plate under one of the islands was thrust up ten or twelve feet.
Remember the tsunami a year and a half ago? There, an under water fault thrust up a tectonic plate just a few feet, but several miles long. That was the cause of the tsunami.
Go take a geology course at your local college (Junior College?). I did that last semester and loved it. I'm thinking about changing from Electronics to Geology. It's outside work, it pays pretty well, and there's actually a growing demand... And I'm getting really tired of computers kicking my ass on a daily basis.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Yes, they're speculating
..."
They're not asserting, they're not theorizing, they're not even hypothesizing. Because before you can get to that point, you have to ask questions. You have to say, "I wonder if
For every scientist who actually makes an outrageous claim, there are a million idiots saying, "Those damn scientists, always claiming stuff they can't prove!" whether or not that bears any relation to what's really going on. Sure, unsupported claims in science are a problem. But a bigger problem is anti-scientists who deliberately fail to differentiate between theory, hypothesis, and that first-step sense of wonder which is at the root of discovery.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"As a Christian"
Why do Christians say that like it's a badge of honour? It's not, it's an admission of belief in invisible super-beings, magic, superstition and other rubbish. It's no more rational than "As an Santa Clausian" or "As an Easter Bunnyite".
Let's assume the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Where did the oil come from? Was it created in the ground with the rest of the Earth? If so, is there a way to predict where it might be found? Or perhaps it really did form from plants and dinosaurs, but about 10,000 times faster than any chemist believes it could? Any way you look at it, a young Earth and a Flood would imply some very interesting scientific questions to ask, some interesting (and potentially extremely valuable) research programs to start. How come nobody's actually pursuing such research programs?
Why don't fundamentalists put together an investment fund, where people pay in and the stake is used as venture capital for things like oil and mineral rights? If "Flood geology" is really a better theory, then it should make better predictions about where raw materials are than standard geology does. The profits from such a venture could pay for a lot of evangelism. Why isn't anyone doing this?
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
A) There is historic evidence that a wandering priest called Jesus Christ did actually exist. So for the human person of Jesus Christ we can be pretty sure that he wandered the earth. We can't really say anything about his wondrous deeds, however.
B) The figure of Santa Claus has two origins one is Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra. But he was basically just used to "christianise" a much older pagan belief ( http://tinyurl.com/29sdow ). Anyway the Person of Saint Nicholas is a historic figure.
C) The easter bunny is apparently just a human invention
Why do you say it is just as irrational to believe in the easter bunny as it is to believe in Jesus or Saint Nicholas?
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Because when they say it they do it knowing that people (like yourself) will attack them for it and ridicule them, but they still say it because they want you to know they are proud of having their faith and are willing to display it even in the face of constant ridicule. Sure sounds like a badge of honor to me.
It's quite possible to believe in Jesus Christ the man and Nicholas the man. It's also quite possible to believe in the existence of bunnies, and even more specifically, in the existence of one bunny that someone observed on Easter morning a couple centuries ago.
To believe that Jesus both literally turned water into wine and arose from the dead, and that Nicholas has 8 magic reindeer and scoots down chimneys to deliver gifts, is akin to believing that a bunny hops around and hides eggs on Easter morning. They are equitably irrational.
No one over the age of 8 believes in the Easter Bunny because adults evenutally let them in on the game when they express doubt. This is opposed to Christianity, when all evidence to the contrary, adults continue to enforce the myth of a supernatural being to whom we owe our salvation. There's also no political structure to support the existence of the EB, as there is with JC the Son of God/God/Holy Spirit (or whatever you believe). Annually, weekly, daily, 8-year-olds are encouraged to believe in JC the Redeemer, and punished for expressing doubt. You wonder why 8-year-olds discover the truth about the EB but don't discover the truth about JC? That's it right there.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Jewish prophecy that the gospel writers needed Jesus to fulfill required that he be from Bethlehem. (Micah 5:1) But he wasn't- he was from Nazereth. So suddenly you have the entire census story being added in to get Mary to Bethlehem.
He was born a bastard. Oops- my bad, virgin birth.
He was betrayed by a follower. Ugh- well, bad things happened to Judas so it's ok. (Yet the entire sacrifical act was required for human salvation, so why exactly is Judas the bad guy again?)
He got himself executed messily. Um, that's what actually saves you! Yeah!
He was to return within the lifespan of those alive at the time. (Matt 24:34 and others) Christian apologists have had to dance around this one for almost 2000 years.
If you have a choice of making up a savior out of whole cloth rather than working with a real, historical person wouldn't you design someone better?
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"