Slashdot Mirror
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.
Thanks for the info. Would you care to upload and link some photos of the trees? None of the articles I found seem to have any pictures, and an article like this NEEDS pictures!
The bible is not known to be contemporaneous with the time that Jesus is described to have lived in. The earliest codexes come from 250 AD if you take the scholarly consensus, and from about 150 AD if you buy the idea that while everyone else was using scrolls, the P52 fragment (aka "St John's fragment) just "happened" to be put into codex form. We don't have a single copy earlier than that, and so cannot establish that the books of the bible come from any earlier. The bottom line is that the bible we have cannot trace its own roots back to Christ's time, or to the time immediately afterwards - everything we have is much younger than that.
The problem with works of this nature - that arise after an event, or apparently do - is that history and historical fiction are both even easier to write later than they are when the events are occurring. So to validate the bible as a history, rather than a historical fiction, we need to trace it back further than we have been able to thus far. It cannot serve as evidence of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John any more than Tom Clancy's novels serve as evidence of John Ryan. We need evidence that shows that Jesus - not to mention the four putative authors - actually existed outside the context of the cult of the mid 0000's, and outside the context of that cult's book of the 0100's...0300's. But there isn't any, and that's the problem with saying "there is historical evidence about Jesus."
There's another problem, too. That is that the bible - the NT - reports countrywide events that go unreported by a whole slew of writers working in that period. Such as:
Add to that reporting of supernatural events, and we have every reason to distrust the bible as a historical document. If there is no contemporaneous evidence for Christ (and there isn't) and the bible is telling untruths (and it is) then it is clear that to bring any rational validity to this we need more than we have so far. Perhaps someone will dig it up tomorrow, but until they do... it's just one religion among many, and a book.
Come now. How about "The existence of the temples of the Greeks is more evidence there was a Zeus, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the cult of Mormonism is more evidence there was an angel Moroni, because obviously they got their info from somewhere." or "The existence of the remains of sacrificed children in Mexico is more evidence there was a sun god, because obviously the Aztecs got their info from somewhere." You see? Religions make things up. They write them in books, they drum up popular support, they build temples, sacrifice, pray, do good deeds, burn "witches"... this is what religions do. You can't say that because a religion, in this case Christianity, exists, that this verifies their central tenet, that their god or the son of their god existed as well. It just doesn't follow. In fact, if Christ were a blurry myth, it'd be a lot easier to raise him up to the status of the son of god, because there'd be no one around to say "No, I was there, and he didn't heal the leper at all, he just gave him a loaf of bread." Reality is a pain in the neck when you're trying to create a mythology.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
To be honest, I really have not had much of that at all. Now, granted I live in a university town (UIUC) and am probably pretty insulated, but even heading out to various towns around the state for field work or otherwise I just really don't get much!
Of course, my sample is my state... Illinois, which probably swings in the middle or a little blue.
Thats not what you are asking though. You would like to know what I say to people who would prefer to believe the earth to be 6000 years old.
Now, I have not said this to any person in particular, but one thing that comes to mind that I find a bit humorous. Coal seams are sometimes considered by the '6000' groups to be the remnants of the great flood. The idea being that a great peat swamp from an indeterminate area was torn asunder during the great flood and then covered by sediments settling out from the great flood. The evidence then being the thick sediments found on top of the coal.
In the Illinois Basin there are 7 major coal seams (each covering a good percentage of Illinois in map view) and a total of about 80 minor coal seams all stacked (roughly speaking) vertically on top of each other with 'thick' sediment on top of each seam... So are we to infer that God was practicing his flooding technique?!? Eighty times??
Sorry, maybe it's just my sense of humor, but I think it's woth a chuckle.
Seriously, it seems to me that the core of the issue here is one of belief and personal belief, not of science or investigative logic. It is entirely possible to layout all the necessary proof and interconnected evidence in as grand a scheme as you desire towards proving a thing, but in the end when this discussion is broached you are no longer talking about ideas. A comment that is made against a belief is inevitably a vicous strike against the very essense of the person. In effect a personal attack... no mater what you say!
My real answer is not a satisfying one I'm afraid. In truth I prefer not to engage anyone who wants to combatively challenge me in 'belief match' contest. I certainly respect others beliefs, no matter how incorrect I think them to be, and hope they would respect mine, but in the end it is not a battle to be won. The battle, to the extent it is a battle anyway, is in education and getting people to ask questions, wonder why, wonder how, wonder who, and what.
Actually, I know how you feel... last year I made my once-daily visit to Slashdot, and saw the movie I'm working on had made the front page... it's a weird, yet great, feeling. :)
On more serious notes... it sounds like you only had a short time to explore this find. Did the mining company keep mining? Is this the kind of thing that (would have/should have/could have) been preserved as a historic artifact? Why wasn't it? Because it's too big, or the coal is too valuable, or it's something you can look at and then be done with and not have to preserve much of?
I thought peat bogs had aquatic creatures in them still. Shouldn't you have expected to find some sort of prehistoric salamanders or something trapped in there?
And because I'm a little unclear on the actual process... did you actually find organic (or formerly organic) material, or just the imprints thereof? I know this isn't bugs-in-amber kind of stuff, but what's the actual state of the items you found?
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.