I have a huge library of catastrophist books, both printed and now electronic. They range from horribly kooky and shallow to books that have millions of copies in their future. Dr. Jeffrey Goodman’s The Comets of God is closer to the latter. It will be read and re-read, particularly by Christians, and remembered as the best resolution of modern comet science and biblical text since Newton’s protege Whiston.
Any catastrophist worth his salt could tick off at least a few bible passages that seem to reflect his scientific understandings, if not his spiritual belief. But Goodman, clearly a bible text genius and Christian, has identified hundreds upon hundreds. The more I read the more it impressed me: Goodman, by applying the very latest science to his brilliant understanding of the Good Book, was interpreting the Bible more accurately than ever before.
Thou, even thou, art Lord alone; thou has made heaven (the solar system), the heaven of heavens (the Oort Cloud), with all their host (comets), the Earth, and all things that are therein … Job 38:22-23 NIV says, Have you entered into the storehouses of the snow? Or seen the storehouses of the hail (the Oort Cloud), which I reserve fr times of trouble, for the days of war and battle? Isaiah 13:3-5 says, I have commanded my sanctified ones (comets), I have also called my mighty ones (comets) for mine anger … the Lord of hosts mustereth the host of the battle. They came from a far (place), from the end of heaven (the Oort Cloud), even the Lord and the weapons of his indignation (‘wrath’ in NIV) to destroy the whole land.
Nehemiah 9:6
The Bible repeatedly refers to a reservoir or cloud of icy comets at the outer edge of the solar system. The above verses are just a few that do so. However, few people have understood the meaning of these verses. Job 38:22-23 (NIV) calls the cometary reservoir at the end of heaven “the storehouse of the snow” or the “storehouse of the hail” (astronomers sometimes refer to comets as “dirty snowballs”), where “snow” and “hail” refer to the comets’ cradle that holds them in “reserve for times of trouble; for days of war and battle.” This “storehouse” or reservoir is an important part of the greater solar system that astronomers did not discover until 1948-50.* This reservoir or cloud of comets begins at the edge of the solar system, and extending out about one-third the distance to the nearest star. Astronomers call this reservoir or “storehouse” the Oort Cloud.
Goodman, Jeffrey (2010-11-11). THE COMETS OF GOD- New Scientific Evidence for God: Recent archeological, geological and astronomical discoveries that shine new light on the Bible and its prophecies (pp. 423-424). Archeological Research Books, LLC. Kindle Edition.
Psalm 103:20-21, 104:4, and 148:8 also tell how the God of the Bible controls comets, and uses them as His “messengers” and “ministers.” Referring to comets as “messengers” was a common practice in the ancient Near East. (Psalm 103:20-21)
“Bless the Lord, ye his messengers (#4397 maw-lak – comets), that excel in strength (‘mighty ones’ in NIV – which relates to the ‘mighty ones’ of Isaiah 13:3-7 who come from the ‘end of heaven to destroy the whole land’), that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word, Bless ye the Lord, all ye his hosts (including comets), ye ministers of his that do his pleasure (‘his will’ – NIV)…. (Psalm 104:4) Who maketh his messengers (#4397 maw-lak – comets) tempests (#7307 ruwach – cometary); his ministers a flaming fire (cometary)…. (Psalm 148:8) Fire and hail, snow and vapours, stormy wind (all cometary) fulfilling his word (‘do his bidding’ – NIV or ‘execute His commands – Tanakh).
Psalm 103:20-21,104:4, and 148:8*
Goodman, Jeffrey (2010-11-11). THE COMETS OF GOD- New Scientific Evidence for God: Recent archeological, geological and astronomical discoveries that shine new light on the Bible and its prophecies (p. 88). Archeological Research Books, LLC. Kindle Edition.
Then the Earth shook and trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet. And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly: and he was seen upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place … At the brightness that was before Him, His thick (cometary) cloud passed hail stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave His voice: hail stones and coals of fire. Yea He sent out His arrows, and scattered them; and He shot out lightnings (‘to flash forth’-meteorites) and discomfited them. Then the channels of the waters (seabeds) were seen (tsunami withdrawl) and the foundations of the world were discovered (exposed by deep craters) at thy rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breadth of thy nostrils
II Samuel 22:8-16 (Psalm 18:7-15)
There can be little doubt that the catastrophes of the Bible and the catastrophes prophesied to come involve the God of the Bible, the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Comets, using comets as His “mighty warriors” (Isaiah 13:3 NAS) and the “weapons of His wrath” (Isaiah 13:5 NIV) to “worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in Earth” (Daniel 6:27). In a sense Psalm 11:6 NAS sums up the God of the Bible’s use of cometary material to punish the wicked when it says, “Upon the wicked He will rain coals of fire; Fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup.”
Goodman, Jeffrey (2010-11-11). THE COMETS OF GOD- New Scientific Evidence for God: Recent archeological, geological and astronomical discoveries that shine new light on the Bible and its prophecies (pp. 91-92). Archeological Research Books, LLC. Kindle Edition.
very cool thanks for the heads up!
I am jealous.
Millions of books equals millions of dollars.
One thing I did observe from Velikovsky’s “work” is that you want to put “G*d” in the title if you want sales.
I never got a chance to write “Man and Impact in the Ancient Near East”, but that’s the way things went.
George, do not mistake the ability to use a conconrdance or biblical text tools for top level ability – top level ability is when you write the text tools, or add edits to them.
If this sells, and it likely will, one of the fraustrating things is that I will have to read it.
I chose the America becuase so little work had been done – this was before Firestone et al remember. I got a limited market and every Electric Universe nut and New Age Fraud and Plastic Shamaan to deal with, along with a lot of confused archaeologists.
Oh well. With the kind of money this asuthor will make, he will be able to avoid Christian religious nuts, except those he deighns to speak with. He will be too busy spending the cash to wrotty about the religious text scholare, and his “readings”, all of which wer’ll have to check and verify, along with cognates in other semetic languages.
Oh well.
wah!
My reading of Nehemiah 9:6 would be more like:
BTW: Astronomers have learned quite some time ago to not look at comets as just “dirty snowballs.”
Also BTW, I blew past the last sentence a bit hastily. Try this:
(cont’d…) From our perspective, the Oort Cloud is much less a storehouse of dangerous objects to the Earth than the NEOs or even the Asteroid Belt.
(cont’d…) I would also argue that “hail” is talking about fragments raining down from air bursts rather than icy hail.
(cont’d…) The Oort Collud is just WAY too far to credit Isaiah with knowing about. If the argument against that is that Isaiah was channeling God, well that is the Biblical take on it, but should not be ours. We are looking for rational explanations for/interpretations of the uneducated observations and phrasings of witnesses of impactors, not magical explanations.
I would change the 2nd one to read:
*** Acceptable, but not the only interpretation
I would argue that not all peoples interpreted impactors as something from the Gods, even if from the sky. I give the peoples more credit than that. The author is buying into the arkies’ discounting of the intelligence of the observers/survivors, which I don’t do. I think religious sorts today are much more gullible than the peoples of the deep ancient past.
I’d note that this is certainly talking about multiple objects, either at one time, or arriving with some frequency.
I might want to amend the Progenitor from before to being a main object that impacted.
The last quoted part comes out more like:
Ed has done scores of such translations/transliterations of accounts. This is just one done with a religious slant, while allowing for the reality of impactors. This is to be commended, but it doesn’t all need the religious slant.
The main issue is that when impactors ARE considered, the accounts of many peoples make great sense – AND they do not have to have the archeologist-forced mumbo-jumbo religious stuff appended. If the translator isn’t stuck in the “gullible stupid ancient people assign everything to what the priests scam them with” meme, then where they put in the word “God” it can usually (if not always) be translated as simply “powerful force” of “powerful body”.
Knight and Lomas point out in “Uriel’s Machine”, where, according to The Book of Enoch, Enoch is taken “to the utter north” and shown a type of stone circle, that the circle’s builders/”operators” obviously knew a great deal of scientific principles – specific to astronomy and possibly even trigonometry. They also did briefly touch on the stone circle as possibly being able to help predict the arrival of an impactor. That is what I got out of their descriptions, earlier in the book. In the absence of an infrastructure that allows technical people to make or buy telescopes and such, the stone circle described seemed an amazingly effective way of lining up something low on the eastern and/or western horizons at dawn or dusk.
Enoch then returned to the Hebrew region, apparently after having been trained in how the stone circle worked.
It all sounds like there was more technology back then than is credited by archaeologists. The question is this:
Did Enoch convey any knowledge to his people about any of this? And did they make any practical use of it? If either is correct, then they would have known that it was not a God but what we call a comet or meteor. Who knows? They may have given them names like we do – and the name of an early one may have been “God.”
This guy even set up a corporation for tax purposes beforehand. And with e-books, he does not have to deal with flakey distributors. Aside from the distribution costs, its all profit.
It will be interesting to see if he made acknowledged or unacknowledged use of my earlier essays.
The other questions are how this will effect public perception of the impdct hazard, and how that will affect NASA impact hazard mitigation.
While the uthor will not have to deal with these, and likely will not, “we” will.
Also, the author did not have to link his reeadings with any real impacts. But that was not his prupose.
I would also argue that “hail” is talking about fragments raining down from air bursts rather than icy hail.” Steve I believe that hail can be many things that mere men might call ” stars falling from the sky” and that statement would still be true. there is a dream I had as a child that I have spent ages trying to explain to myself . the stars that fell from the sky at that moment were millions of something like static electric balls , not anything we might calls stars now , if they were all the same substance I will guess I don’t know that either nor would I be able to tell a real falling star from what I can only guess is a static electric ball falling stars. (((((( I don’t know how to say what they were except to say where he parted the light and dark on earth, or maybe where darkness was removed from the light , or where the light was removed from the dark,,but the balls plummeted “the Dark side” and that is where I suddenly found myself in the beginning of that dream. if it plummeted the light side it would have had to break through the atmosphere or what we would call a bio-dome sort of thing surrounded by a cloud or a fog like area. well you know the scripture which says now He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G4190&t=KJV Mat. 5:45. well maybe that isn’t always going to be the case. because my guess is someday it won’t and another guess I have from that dream is that hell won’t be hot either but it may burn because not just fire burns. but when one of the stars/ electric balls / electric ball like thing hit me it sent me to the light side and it didn’t hurt me because I seemed to have a tiny atmosphere around me. and so by another guess a definition that ‘life’ has a different molecular structure or weight than the dead. , and that awareness doesn’t have anything to do with what we would call the word “life”. and I don’t think it hurt that I also screamed “jesus help me ” as it was coming in to hit me . so there is many things which might be used as weapons by God or only viewed as weapons by men , but are just laws mankind and that includes me has no clue of what can be or what was because we don’t understand his laws of creation. All the those laws he keeps. and He only gave us twelve and only he ever kept those !
CL –
God, Jesus, Hell and Heaven are all delusions – myths every bit as unreal as the scams archaeologists accuse ancient priests of foisting on their victim populations.
For those who don’t know, there is literally NO documentary evidence from the era of 0 A.D. to 33 A.D. that Jesus ever existed – and that was a time when MUCH was documented. His supposed brother, James, for example, had a LOT of documentation, as did Paul and Joseph of Aramathea. Hell is an early version of the bogeyman. Heaven is like the Easter Bunnny and Santa Claus – something we are taught is true but simply ain’t. God – show me one person who has had a discussion with God and I will show you someone in an institution.
At the same time, Genesis (look it up) says that Heaven was created as a firmament BETWEEN the dark and the light, which means that Heaven is not the apex; something is above it. That is, if one can trust the translations or the original Hebrew text. And in Genesis God is not a singular entity, but plural (‘Elohim’ is the plural for ‘Eloi’) – so are we to understand that multiple gods created the Universe? It’s all a mish-mash. As it is applied, it is a means of getting people to hand over their autonomy and relinquish responsibility for their own acts (the Devil made me do it’).
Not an original thought: Given the vagueness of the Bible, one can read anything into it one wants to.
On the issue of impacts, one can read those into the Bible, too. And there would be no reason to take it seriously at all, except that so many OTHER cultures have impact accounts. None of the impact accounts alone is sufficient to make us sit up and take notice. It is only when taken as a whole genre that they make a coherent whole. In addition, when one tries to NOT read impacts into those accounts, the accounts read like utter silliness gobbledegook – but when impacts are considered a possibility, then the passages can be read as a coherent, internally consistent, gestalt.
We MUST assume that the witness accounts we have found were written by an educated member of the societies (of those who survived), not by some stumblebum. That being the case, we have to give some credence to the descriptions above and beyond the “ancients were gullible and ignorant” meme that has existed in archaeology since the days of the all white, all Christian, all male, all Eurocentric 1700s. It is far more sensible to assume that writing was something that only the privileged could do.
So when they describe violent actions/events up in the sky (‘the heavens’ as consistently translated), and when those descriptions consistently FIT with an impact scenario, then an impact should be at the top of the list of possibilities. And then when other cultures also have descriptions that FIT with each other, the coincidence factor of the descriptions has to be reduced for each additional cultural account of whatever it is they described. And then when each account talks about how it affected the whole world (as they knew it), then it only makes sense that – if real – it should have been observed in other locations, too. When that proves to be the case – as it has – logic has to trump previous consensus on the meanings of the various passages.
In the end, impacts must some day begin to be recognized as the most likely correct interpretation of the varying accounts. And that being the case, we need to accept that devastating impacts have, indeed occurred in the Time of Man. And THAT should begin to get us off the snide, off our asses.
Chelyabinsk, as little as it was, should add to the persuasion, since looking videos of that meteor any of us can read the passages like the ones quoted here and see that those people were not lying or making it up. And we should realize that Chelyabinsk could have been much larger. And even if we had spotted a much larger one coming in, we’d have been in the same pickle as the ancient peoples: We’d mostly have only had time to kiss our asses goodbye – or hope it hit somewhere else.
Let’s see: the Thunderdolt’s Electric Universe crap oombined with a “creationist” reaeding of the Bible.
So CL is just another EU believer. Steve, we haven’t heard you opinion on the Electric Universe yet.
I can be pretty sure that this author’s work iwll be useless for locating impacts. But that is not his purpose in writing: it is to confirm people in their existing beliefs.
rotf!!
Biography
Jeffrey holds a geological engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines, a M.A. in anthropology from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from California Coast University. He also earned a M.B.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He was accredited by the former Society of Professional Archeologists from 1978 to 1987.[1][2]
He was originally known as a proponent of psychic archaeology. Goodman is most well known for his idea that modern man was originally found in California 500,000 years ago. In his book American Genesis Goodman maintains that the conventional scenario is backwards, and that modern human beings originated not in Africa, but in California, where he cites the proverbial Garden of Eden, half a million years ago. He also attributes to these early humans many discoveries considered to be much later, from pottery to insulin to “the applied understanding of the physics behind Einstein’s gravity waves”.[3]
Later Goodman called for a Multiregional origin of modern humans.[4] Goodman’s next book was The Genesis Mystery: the Sudden Appearance of Man and according to Paul Dean of the Los Angeles Times it is “something of an academic brush with scientific creationism, the belief that a divine surge, without explicit adherence to the Bible, created modern man… 250,000 years ago.”.[5] His more recent work has been in biblical archaeology.
CL – I seem to have inherited the Shawnee very strange sense of humor, but I really enjoy a good laugh myself.
George – It is pretty clear from this guys background that his “work”, what you call a “great book” will probably do little but continue to tarnish impact studies and delay them further. If you have any political pull, I have not seen its effects.
Steve – We still have not heard from you yet on the “Electric Universe” theories.
Time to jump in. Jeff’s book is much like yours, Ed. Kinda hurriedly written, a lot repetition, and poorly edited and formatted — but fundamentally revelatory in its field, a truly great work.
I would give you much the props I offer Goodman. But he takes on the bible, and I am a Christian. Your gig was Cherokees, et al. That said now, they are my home tribe — and the greatest nation.
Take care.
GH
dang just another nut case. you know of course when I was 12 that would be 40 years ago ! are you saying at 12 all cared about was the politics of dim whits and blow hards with plastic bats and plastic brains that they remove regularly to that beat the crap out of humanity with their ignorant and goofy ideas.. ah right!! you got to know I was into that at 12..
I was just trying to get to school on the bus with out throwing up.. and to my classes with out getting beat up or felt up .
hey by the way what is a ‘Electric Universe” sounds like a rock band kind of like Electric light Orchestra … but more new agie.. or kind of like where some old farts who maybe smoke a little to much happy gas of some kind or what ever you all are on.
oh for the fool who wrote the book about how jesus didn’t exist and to all of the dim whits who believe him. How about reading heaven is for children and then blow yourself up… oh mean blow up a picture of the 8 year old and 4 years old Burpo’s which they identify with Jesus .. then do a study about the latest ” scientific jesus from the shroud of Turin.. now Just FYI you can look it up in those days when king was going to come back to finish his feasting he folded his napkin to say I will be back.. the disciples record that his head cloth was folded so the knew he has risen . second of all is it easier to get a 8 year old to paint a picture of jesus , she was home schooled and her parents atheist and never told her about jesus. was it easier for a real God to say get an ^ year old to paint that picture that just happens to be an exact match including every wound and every scar that matches the Shroud .. not only that she did it in a mirror image of the shroud.. which of course everyone knows the Shroud was the mirror… God seems to love to record mirror images kin of like the stuff all over the moon.. I suspect jesus just giving that fellow who suggested he never existed a royal finger since it all came out at about the same time.. ! oh just so yo know the little girl ask God to send her help after her parents demand she paint a picture of jesus.. she told them she needed help and so she pray for Jesus help then she asked her parents to hire a model , because she wasn’t sure she could do it with out help.. a few days later a man who needed work showed up at her door and he was a carpenter by trade and she told her parent he would do to be her model and she sketched and sketched and erased and sketched some more as I guess she had a hard time doing the pain and scared side of his face. you will have to enlarge the shroud images and the little girl painting to see the pain and scared side. oh but it is so there and so exactly the same.
so is it easier for a REAL God to get a 8 year( Akiane Kramarik sp?))old to paint a picture of someone who never existed but who’s image exactly is the same as on the shroud that I know you will say that never existed or is a fake and but her picture was painted first . or is it easier for a real God to say get a bunch of annal old farts from an up tight culture who most now days are like diamond cutters for them to record his words and thoughts and deeds to the very tittle and the jots to be exactly as he wants it to be every time ? which one would be easier for a real God ? because I am sure they were both very easy for him!! oh by the way the little girl grew up and still loves Jesus now the athiest are still atheist in spite of the miracles done in their presence !
well at 12 I wasn’t in anyway concerned about ignorant peoples theories nor any kind of sciences ideas or stupidities … I was concerned with getting through my days and did only God ‘s truths.. you truly are missing out a very fine fellow and very funny , with a very ironic kind of personality!
It’s interesting that many people who have commented here on what the Bible is really saying don’t even believe it’s true. If the spiritual narrative is false, then how can you trust the historical passages you are quoting here have anything worthwhile to say? The true skeptics among you know it’s all full of mythical imagery and hocus pocus. Virtually everything that was suggested here is a bunch of eisigetical conjecture. You want to see the Oort cloud in Scripture? Well pick any passage that refers to something in the sky, and that means the Oort cloud. Great hermeneutics there.
Real Hebrew scholars who don’t have a catastrophist axe to grind believe Job is far more literal and the imagery is pretty straight forward.
A young-earth creationist such as I who holds the Bible in the highest esteem sees a different picture. We believe the earth and the universe are less than 7000 years old. Hebrew scholars believe that Job is the oldest book in the Bible, being written some centuries before Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis. Genesis documents the Creation and the Flood in the first 11 books. After the Flood, the Bible follows the descendants of Noah, giving virtually no information on climatic conditions except for a few famines in the Middle East.
Back to Job. This book has many references to ice, snow, hail, cold, dark murky skies, dark clouds, etc. In fact, no other book in the Bible comes near to the number of these kinds of references to a cold, miserable climate. Sort of like an ice age would look to someone living east of the Mediterranean.
Young-earth geologists (with earned PhDs) believe there was a single, intense ice age about 500-800 years after the Flood. Job was likely written sometime in the middle or toward the end of that period, based on its internal references to ice and cold.
So, no, Job 38 isn’t all about the Oort cloud. That’s your idea. The storehouses of hail (the kind God used in combat against many of Israel’s enemies) is likely His abode. The storehouses of snow are simply dark, murky nimbostratus clouds. That is where snow comes from, after all. The heaven of heavens is God’s abode. God’s whole purpose in these rhetorical questions is to put Job in his place. Job was trying to justify himself apart from God in the first 37 chapters. As for the “messengers” in Isaiah and elsewhere, the Hebrew word has been translated variously, but the consistent meaning refers to angelic beings. They are even called stars in later books.
I could go on, but you folks will just dismiss this as a screwball rant, so I won’t bother. There is nothing new under the sun, and misinterpreting the Bible in this way is just one more example. Without the Holy Spirit to open your mind and heart to the message of God, you can see anything you want in Scripture.
Hell no it’s not a rant! Welcome back Terry Egolf, always a valued contributor to the Tusk.
I do not mind having the book I assembled compared with the Bible, George, and as I was dealing with the sacred texts of several of the Firt Peoples, I am very pleased that you understand that.
But my book has far far better science than Goodman’s book.
I am not a spiritual guide, but rather rely on others for that. I try to keep my religious views out of my science. The facts are what the facts are, and if there is anything wrong, it is usually in our understanding.
[And thus I agree with Hermann when he notes that G*d’s days are likely different than man’s.]
To the best of my knowledge,”shhhtuff” from space has never cared about anyone’s religion or political system.
Western nations have the technology to deal with the impact hazared, and the history that is generally most widely known by their citizens has been and is Bible based.
Thus pointing out the effects of impact on those ancient peoples and giving historical background to the Bible would have been a good way to raise their awareness of the imnpact hazard.
I am worried that Goodman’s work will likely lead to bad physics, fear, and cult activity rather than positive steps to deal with the impact hazard, which is something that mankind can now do.
Today’s word is “stewardship”.
Ed: “Steve – We still have not heard from you yet on the “Electric Universe” theories.”
I have not really read much on it.
I am open minded about it right now, though much that I hear I cringe at.
With the relative force of the EM field being what/ 10^40 times the gravitational field, and with the Sun and most (if not all) the planets having magnetic fields (and MUCH of the activity on the Sun so obviously electrical and magnetic), and with EM fields in space being so large, it seems a bit premature to assert that EM plays NO part in the mechanisms of the Solar System and the galaxies.
In addition, when astronomers discovered that beyond a certain radius the gravitational force based on Newton’s law did not hold true anymore, it is rather funny that rather than consider that some other force might be included or that Newton’s formula might be wrong, the astronomers instead invented dark matter. And then later on, in regard to the Big Bang and the expanding universe, rather than consider some other force or Newton’s formula being wrong they then invented dark energy.
With the gravitational constant G being the value it is (which no one knows WHY it is that value), it is entirely possible that EM may contribute some of that value, if not all of it (though probably not the latter). I don’t proclaim to know one way or another.
However, with the knee-jerk reactions of astronomers and cosmologists to any suggestion that gravity is not the end all and be all of celestial mechanics, they don’t give me a whole lot of confidence that they have the final answer. It certainly wouldn’t be the first or last time that a paradigm was wrong.
If celestial mechanics can be so wrong that 96% of the matter in the universe is some unknown and untestable material such as dark matter, I currently think that astronomers have gotten it wrong. I find it laughable that they declare that the amount of matter in the universe is constant, yet when their equations and concepts show missing matter 24 times the previously known amount of matter, which is the real amount? Before or after? It is ROFL ridiculous that the amount of dark matter was miraculously determined to be exactly what they needed to balance their equations. That others also think the astronomers have gotten it wrong, which opens up a lot of avenues to attack astronomers, why should that surprise me? That failing is not the doing of the alternative researchers, but of the scientists themselves. That does not mean that the electrical universe folks have it right, though.
On that other side, I have had such experiences with people in the alternative field that I am convinced 90+% of them are idiots, ones I call “sloppy thinkers.”
So I am skeptical of both sides. At this time I am unconvinced of both sides. From what I’ve heard of the electrical universe side, they have all sorts of openings and still don’t seem to get it any better than the conservative forces.
Ed: “And thus I agree with Hermann when he notes that G*d’s days are likely different than man’s.”
Love the *.
And why not days that are 2 billion years long? Let’s do like the astronomers with amount of dark matter and just make the value whatever makes the equations balance. So 7 days vs 13-14 billion years (mas o menos) give a bit under 2 billion years each day. It would make for a long night’s sleep, but what the hey. And one would be awfully hungry, come morning.
CL: The next time you say something worth listening to will be the first time you did so.
BTW, a note to all, especially Terry and George, whose toes I do not really mean to step on: I studied the Bible for many years to determine what might have happened in both the Beginning and in the early days of what is known as the Christian era. I have perhaps the biggest personal library of anyone in my state about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostics. I approached it all from an objective viewpoint, open to whatever facts came out. In the end what came out was that the Bible did not exist before the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. (I used to have a direct Aramaic-to-English translation of the Earliest known Bible, known as the Peshitta Text.) That Council was called by Justinian, who was determined to merge all the religions in contentious Rome into one, and he wouldn’t let them go until they had all agreed to consolidate them into one. Prior to that, no such person as a Jesus of Nazareth had ever existed. Jesus Christ was then invented to satisfy Justinian’s dictates, as the savior of the new religion, named from one of the Druid gods and from Krishna, who happened to have been born to a virgin, healed the sick, raised the dead, and then died and rose on the third day. Some of the gods of other religions in Rome, such as Apollo and Mithras, miraculously had the same life histories.
I highly recommend the book, “The Greatest Story Ever Sold,” by Acharya S.
After about 40 years, I successfully found out enough about the Dead Sea Scrolls to know that they did not come from 200 BC, but to the times of the reign of Herod and the times of the Jewish Revolt in 70-73 AD. (They did have some connection to the Essenes, as many assume, but neithr they nor the Essenes had any connection to Qumran.) The Jewish Temple scrolls were hurriedly removed as the Romans approached Jerusalem, and then the scrolls were hidden, probably in various places. The last area of refuge of the Jews happened to be in the area of Qumran, so that became the last hiding place of the Jewish Temple scrolls. The so-called monastery at Qumran was actually a fortress overlooking the northern approaches of both coasts of the Dead Sea, as well as the Jordan River valley coming down from the north.
After the Romans had completely defeated the intransigent Jews, the Romans basically cleared out all the towns and villages of Jews and threw them all out of the “Holy Land.” That was the beginning of the Diaspora. The Jews were the only peoples under the Romans who were treated this way, and given the times, the Jewish folks had no one to blame but themselves. Among other things, they were not able to go back and recover the scrolls, and the scrolls were eventually completely forgotten.
I don’t know everything about what happened back then. I accept the Old Testament to be a reasonable history of the Jewish people. But as most Christians will have to admit, almost none of the Old Testament is taught in Christian churches, except for short passages that are used to support prophesies asserted in the New Testament, or to show how miraculous God is.
At the same time, it is not known who wrote the Old Testament. Obviously Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch, because it describes his own death. The last I saw, there were at least three sources of the Old Testament, with two being from different regions which has different gods, and whose gods were diametrically different. One was a kind god and one was a vengeful god, so the Old Testament tends to be a mix – a very confusing mix – of the two gods, who sometimes is vengeful and sometimes a real teddy bear. Those both are in some quarters seen as derived from one common source, which I believe was referred to as “the Q document.”
So, as you can see, I am not totally ill-informed about events in the middle east 2,000 years ago. I just didn’t do it with religious
With Moses not writing the five books of the Torah/Pentateuch and the New Testament having been compiled at the behest of Justinian 300 years after the events it alleges to describe, the Bible is an iffy source for religious and personal belief purposes. IMHO.
But as a source of impact accounts, it might prove to be a wonderful addition.
Ed refers to his having written the New World impact accounts first, and that he will not be able to write the Middle East accounts book, due to his stroke. That is too bad, because Ed I am sure has some doozies, some of which I am sure include the Bible.
I for one would like to ask Ed to at least write them up and post them HERE as blog posts, so that they at least get written up somewhere.
BTW, my copy of the Holy Bible from the Peshitta Text was signed by the translator, a native Aramaic speaker named George M Lamsa.
“Stewardship” , you think this stewardship is about saving the earth. No I don’t think so , it seems you have not studied to show thy self approved by God anyway . at best the earth saves man not the other way around.
‘ Stewardship ‘ now that is an interesting word. because there is no part of this story that makes men Steward of the earth at this stage of the game afoot . we ceased to be stewards His creation and of anything except the ” GOOD and Evil” which is all things men conjure and invent in their wee little minds. ‘ Good and evil’ is our only domain now. we rule
good and evil in the minds of men only.
now mr ED who exactly do you want to be in control of who lives or who dies ? because you are begging some Guberment agencies to be your savior? do really think they will pick you or yours or anyone of real value and real intelligence to save ? do you assume they could be ” good or evil” ? but what they can’t be is Right-ous in their choices, they are incapable .. They will try to only save their own , and only those who agree with them on all matters will they allow to be “saved” for their next experiment into highest levels of ” good and evil” ,, do you really want the Steve types of the world to decide who lives and who dies and who is smart enough and
good enough ” to be saved ? I mean really we can find the fruits of that kind of BS in Hitlers age and well how about the 1830’s and really every age men have existed, some narcissistic goofballs have ruled( yes that is the same word as steward) Reigned over.. only other men and with that rule have killed everything they touch sooner or later . and worse usually the weak and innocent first.
Mr Ed no Guberments of men will ever save anyone from what is coming. I say we let the Creator be our stewart / our ruler / our savior……….. or not …. but let him alone decided who lives and who dies who is in his way and who is out of his way for his reasons and his righteous judgements and the only one proven ‘good ” enough to make those kind of judgements . . but this will go down and he is prepared , it won’t be a surprise to him or his creation really ! no matter what the mice and men do , it still comes.
Steve,
No offense taken. But let’s consider the presuppositions of our views.
Let’s start with dark matter. Dark matter falls fairly far outside of observational science. By definition, it can’t be detected directly. The main reason it was posited was to account for the structure of galaxies and their arrangements in the intergalactic medium through gravity alone because there has been insufficient time, even given the ±13.5 billion years obtained from starlight and time calculations. There simply isn’t enough visible matter. Astronomers look for and infer evidence that supports dark matter and a naturalistic cosmology. But IF the universe isn’t that old, and it was supernaturally created, then there is no need for dark matter. Considering the inertia of galaxies and their seeming random distribution within the cosmos, there would be no observable change in their structure or distribution over the past 7000 years. The supernatural creation of the universe violates nothing in science except the secular definition of science itself, and agrees better with established the laws and principles of observational science.
Your view of Scripture is very low. You have accepted the allegations of Higher Criticism in the view of multiple authors for the Pentateuch. Your claim that the historical Jesus never existed is simply wrong as is your claim that the Gospels and most of the New Testament are political fabrications instigated by Justinian. This position ignores the reams of extrabiblical historical documents extending all the way back to the first century affirming Christ’s existence and addressing the followers of Jesus Christ. Nero was sending Christians to the lions and torching them in his garden three centuries before Justinian supposedly merged the religions. Who were those people dying for? You are a smart person, but you have been reading the wrong books. The skeptics who wrote those books don’t WANT a historical Jesus, because that would mean accepting the rest of the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament, and all that implies.
If the Genesis account of creation were intended to convey millions or billions of years for each phase of creation (a la Hugh Ross’s Progressive Creationism), why do you suppose Moses wrote “and the evening and the morning, first day”, etc. for the days of creation? The Hebrew is pretty clear that the Bible is speaking of literal, 24-hour± days. And why spend many chapters of Genesis providing detailed accounts of patriarchal, father/son genealogies covering more than 2000 years if Moses really knew that either these people were fictitious or the list had immense gaps in them? What would be the point in that? In any case, highly qualified Hebrew scholars much smarter than you or me for five millennia have considered Genesis to be a literal, authoritative account of nearly half of the earth’s history. And this ignores the fact that
If what you say about the Dead Sea Scrolls is true, you might want to correct Wikipedia’s page on them, and all the other authoritative web resources pertaining to them. Even though they may have been hidden late in the first century, they were written during the prior 400 years.
I don’t know which Christian churches you are familiar with, but the ones I have been attending for the past 35 years teach the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, as equally authoritative and necessary for a complete understanding of our God, of people, and why things are the way they are today. Without the history, wisdom, and prophecies of the Old Testament, the New Testament doesn’t make much sense. And Genesis is the foundation of all. Without Genesis 1-3, there is no need for a personal savior.
So, Steve, your presuppositions about the Bible are pretty clear. They leave it in the realm somewhere between mystical myth and political fabrication. Why would anyone want to hang their cosmic catastrophist hat on it? You want to see evidence for comet and asteroid impacts from wildly inaccurate interpretations of isolated biblical passages, but then quickly reject the narrative of a global flood, even though we are surrounded by vast layers of folded but unfractured sedimentary rocks.
A recent creation based on biblical chronologies requires resetting the timeline for posited earth impacts but does nothing to impugn their empirical scientific evidence. However, I don’t place radiometric geochronology methods in the category of empirical scientific evidence.
Terry
p.s. Hope the HTML tags work.
I was also going to say before being interrupted “And this ignores the fact” that Christians believe the entire Bible was given to the writers of the books through inspiration of the Spirit of God, who was more that just a journalistic muse. The Bible itself claims this. We hold the bible to be entirely God’s word, completely true and authoritative, including the historical books and passages. There is no other way to know of God or His plan for us except through the Bible, nor to know with any certainty the origin and history of the earth before secular records came into existence.
CL –
“you got to know I was into that at 12..
I was just trying to get to school on the bus with out throwing up.. and to my classes with out getting beat up or felt up.”
Sorry to hear of your bad experience. They go a long way towards explaining your behaviors.
As no one here was among those who beat you up or felt you up, perhaps you might want to re-consider wishing that we here would go to hell.
Steve –
I am fairly certain that Achariya S. is factually wrong.
But that has nothing to do with impacts.
Neither does the imaginary world of the Electric Universe “theorists”. While standard physics does not explain everyth8ng, thr EU crowd’s “theories”
predict phenomenon which simply does not exist, and they rely on non-existenet phenomenon as the factual basis for their “theories”.
I am damn sick of their imaginary impact and entry mechanics.
George –
While I am sure they are nice folks, the creationists beliefs make it ery difficult to discuss any phenomenon earlier than say 7,000 BCE.
That rules out discussion of the HSIE, the formation of the Carolina Bays, and the 27 million year stochastic periodicity of ELEs.
Terry: “This position ignores the reams of extrabiblical historical documents extending all the way back to the first century affirming Christ’s existence and addressing the followers of Jesus Christ.”
Can you show us one?
Terry: “You have accepted the allegations of Higher Criticism in the view of multiple authors for the Pentateuch.”
Not at all. The Book “Who Wrote the Bible?” was not written by critics of Christianity at all. And unlike its title infers, it did not address the entire Bible, but only the early books of the Old Testament.
The authorship of the Gospels is usually stated as “unknown”. Mark is considered the first one, chronologically, asserted to have been written about 66 AD, a full 33 years after the events it described. But no author is known.
I can’t recall the dates assigned to Luke and Matthew, but they were somewhere in the 70s, I believe. Still no one knows who Matthew or Luke were, although Luke is supposed to have been a medical doctor. I don’t recall where I got that from, so it may be wrong.
John – no one knows if that John is supposed to be the supposed disciple John. It is assigned a date of around 120 AD, which makes the supposed disciple unlikely. Many think that Luke and John were written by the same author.
No copies of “The Bible” are known predating the Council of Nicea. The first three centuries are hidden in fog. Though the Roman period has a LOT of documentation, the Christian early years are basically missing.
Robert Eisenmann, the man who more than any other made the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) finally available to a wide population of biblical scholars, believes that the DSS talk about Paul as The Liar, which puts Paul in with the Teacher of Righteousness, which he identifies as James, who he believes is the brother of Jesus. James IS in the Roman chronicles. But Eisenmann also identifies James as the “Stephen” who is supposed to be the first Christian martyr. But the Essenes, who many identify with the group associated with the Teacher of Righteousness, were not Christians. I do not ascribe to all of what Eisenmann has concluded.
The Nag Hammadi Scrolls (NHS), discovered also in the 1940s like the DSS, include several gospels that never made it into the Bible, such as the Gospels of Judas and Thomas. Those two were Carbon14 dated and the results show the scroll materials as having been certainly or almost certainly made after the Council of Nicea (325 AD). The Gospel of Judas has a median calibrated date of about 390 AD with a +/- of 150 years. The Gospel of Thomas has a median calibrated date of 465 AD with a +/- of 135 years. This puts these non-canonical in the same time period as the earliest Bibles, but all are after Nicea. (See http://tiny.cc/u4d5ww)
I will look into the Nero thing.
Terry: “So, Steve, your presuppositions about the Bible are pretty clear. They leave it in the realm somewhere between mystical myth and political fabrication. Why would anyone want to hang their cosmic catastrophist hat on it? You want to see evidence for comet and asteroid impacts from wildly inaccurate interpretations of isolated biblical passages, but then quickly reject the narrative of a global flood, even though we are surrounded by vast layers of folded but unfractured sedimentary rocks.” ***
Terry, the first two sentences don’t make any sense. You completely mis-characterize me. The third sentence has nothing to do with me: I don’t hang my catastrophist hat on anything to do with the Bible. I actually don’t see evidence for a “global” catastrophe from isolated Biblical passages; I was just showing how the author’s interpretation could mean other specific things. (I specifically deny the reality of the Oort cloud, so I left it out of the re-wording that I did.) In general, if those passages happen to ring true in the same way as passages in, say, the Chilam Balaam, then I think they are worth looking into. Standing alone – as I said – they may not mean anything but fables. Taken together with accounts from around the world, then and only then might they be seen to have significance.
I have never voiced here an opinion about a global flood. But while you mention it, No, I do not think there was a “global flood” as asserted by Bible folks. I would side with the arkies about Noah’s thinking that the flood he experienced was global: Noah could not have known one way or another how far the flood extended. I think the mega-tsunamis had a WIDE effect, but I do not know that I would ever call any of them “global floods.” Semi-global, perhaps. The idea of water covering the entire world is in itself foolishness. Such an amount of water doesn’t exist on the planet.
As to your additional commentary, Terry, I have no comment to make on someone else’s beliefs. You believe what you believe. You give authority to the Bible. I, however, give it to evidence. Call me Doubting Stephen. Too much scientist in me.
*** Terry, you DO make a good point about the unfractured yet folded sedimentary rocks.
Friedman and his ilk do not represent the main body of biblical scholarship. He, as do all “Radical Critics” of the higher criticism school of Bible interpretation, approaches the authorship of the Bible as strictly the product and compilation of humans. His four-author approach to the origin of the Pentateuch has been thoroughly refuted by qualified, conservative Hebrew and Old Testament scholars ever since the idea was floated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This view also relies on a strictly naturalistic interpretation of all phenomena mentioned in the Bible. Thus, 6-day creationism, a global flood, and virtually all miracles are denied. The historicity of Jesus and His disciples is also disputed as we have already seen through Steve’s comments. These views are held by a minuscule minority among Christians because they eviscerate the doctrines and theology of Christianity and contradict virtually all traditional biblical scholarship.
The inferences from the noncanonical Qumran scrolls are interesting but these are considered apocryphal and do not carry the same weight of authority as the accepted books. The canonical scrolls agree very closely with the extant Bible manuscripts and are the basis for showing that the OT Scriptures have been altered very little in the intervening 2000+ years. According to Steve’s estimation, the whole Christian faith is a lie perpetrated by a group of rebellious Jews who decided to fabricate a Savior to get out from under the heel of the Romans. Jews creating a completely new religion that set aside temple worship and all the other Levitical laws and trappings of their religion is quite far-fetched. The astronomical growth of Christianity from the few Palestinian disciples didn’t happen based on a fabrication. No one would have risked their life based on questionable evidence. The reports of the eyewitnesses were authoritative and corroborated by the testimony of numerous people, who spread throughout the Mediterranean and eastward. The allegations of biblical revisionists ring hollow, and only mostly unbelievers such as Steve accept their ideas.
It seems that I misunderstood the purposes of Steve’s comments about the Oort cloud, but his interpretations of the meanings of the various passages from Psalms on the 12th are simply incredible, for lack of a better word.
Understanding what the Bible says requires faith in the God of the Bible. When one approaches it from a strictly secular viewpoint, as many here do, a lot of it seems incomprehensible or downright ridiculous. I understand that because I was an nonbeliever as a young adult. My education was in evolutionary zoology and uniformitarian geology. While I accept the empirical aspects of those sciences today, I reject their naturalistic origins premises.
E.P. makes a good point, but only regarding chronology. According to the Flood model of history, it was likely accompanied by tremendous volcanic and tectonic activity that resulted in the breakup and rapid spreading of the continental plates during the early stages of the Flood. Millions of briefly active volcanoes erupted in the new ocean bottom crust. They have been detected today by gravimetric and sonar surveys on the ocean floors and near the mid-ocean ridges. These volcanoes would have spewed copious amounts of virgin carbon-12 from the earth’s interior, greatly diminishing the concentration of C-14. With the rapid reestablishment of life after the Flood, their organic tissues would have reflected this lack of C-14 equilibrium which, we interpret today as tens of thousands of RC years BP. This is the greatest flaw in C-14 dating assumptions, corroborated by assumptions upon assumptions involving other organic and inorganic dating methods extending back 100,000 years or more.
So I view the “Pleistocene” radiometric carbon dating as problematic (as I do OSL dating). But there is accumulating stratigraphic evidence for one or more important cosmic impacts, which I have no problem with. As George knows, my personal interest lies with the origins of the Carolina bays, which, based on their stratigraphic provenance, I would estimate formed shortly after the recession stage of the Flood. Considering that humans may have already reentered North America by whatever means, I would guess that the impact that formed them, if that indeed is the case, would have occurred less than 1000 years after the Flood, which would equate to about 4500-5500 years ago, near the middle or toward the end of the Ice Age that we believe occurred after the flood.
So, I don’t think any further discussion of the veracity of the Bible in this forum is going to get us anywhere. But, based on my presuppositions about Scripture, the book mentioned in the OP is way off base and will go nowhere, either with neocatastrophists or with main-line science.
Terry
E.P. Grondine wow you think I want you to go to hell… your kidding right ? that was almost funny if it wasn’t so damn sad.. .
that is a wrong assumption sir . I have seen at least one place we could all call hell and I know for sure there is more than one such place.
.. and no one will want to be there once they know they are there , jesus says ” weeping and gnashing of teeth” does that sound like fun? hell is man kinds invention. it is the void men created in their souls to escape from God! it is where we all go when we don’t want any god to see what we want to do.
I mean you have to want to be there to go there.
I will tell you that hell fire thing was not created for humans it was created to contain lawless immortals , but I am not talking about that place right now I am talking about the void men go to to hide from God what it is they want to do. and nope there is no god in that place. but that won’t stop men from demanding the right to go there! if for no other reason than they hate God and refuse to honor him for his gifts to mankind they choose to violate in the most disgusting ways usually.. . and those who want to do what they want to do have to go there to do it . I just think that is the saddest thing ever. not when he loves us so much.
no I don’t want you or anyone else to go anywhere near that place I’m going to call the Void.. . but I only have this crazy thing call words and prayers , to try and convince people of his love for mankind and their need to understand how much they really don’t want to be there.. but nasty lives there and everyone wants to go play.. .
I only have words to try and convey our need to now choose his life over our ideas of good and evil.. and by that acknowledgement start the process of gaining his life in us. and his breath in us . only after the process of life.. can we reign over creation, only when we have his breath to speak into his creation. but we have to give up our right to rule over other men and our own ideas of good and evil first . instead offer them only christ crucified because only there is life . real life..
men will go to hell because they want to.
I don’t want you or anyone to go to hell , but chances are you visit it every day .. I can’t stop that .. I know what hell is and I can tell you I don’t want anyone to go there ever ,. and neither does God ! that void and it’s death is his only enemy.. but I can’t stop men from going there and neither can He. you know that you know one of those dang ever lasting covenants again! Isa 24:5 The earth 776 also is defiled 2610 under the inhabitants 3427 thereof; because they have transgressed 5674 the laws 8451, changed 2498 the ordinance 2706, broken 6565 the everlasting 5769 covenant 1285. @ blue letter bible .com
My dear Chicken Little, my more sanctified greetings
……….one thing I have to agree with you. If the next cosmic event is probably the type that occurred 13,000 years ago, fragments originating from a disintegratedcomet, we do not have technology to protect the Earth, not to ourselves. We are left to pray, and seek a hole to hide. Or ask God just give us a good death, those who remain would wanted to go first….but after all, only the soul is immortal!
……….so I prefer to discuss topics in an astronomical perspective…… specific websites like this with this goal are rare and so precious!
regards
pierson
“So, I don’t think any further discussion of the veracity of the Bible in this forum is going to get us anywhere.”
That is something of an understatement.
“But, based on my presuppositions about Scripture, the book mentioned in the OP is way off base and will go nowhere, either with neocatastrophists or with main-line science.”
I’ll disagree with you entirely there.
Terry, we know that the Carolina Bays predate the Holocene Start Impact Event, as they were being exploited by people with Clovis technology. But in as much as that is earlier than your date for creation, it is pointless to mention it to you.
Steve, Terry, CL –
I did not ask any of you for spiritual guidance.
Like myself, you are one of 7,000,000,000 people living on this planet.
I think that Christians are around 1,800,000,000 of those, and I do not have time to listen to all of their opinions.
There are 1,500,000,000 Moslems. I would guess around 800,000,000 Hindu. Maybe 1,000,000,000 Buhdist, and unknown number of Deists, something like 12,000,000 Jews. Then you have the agnostics and the atheists.
I don’t know how many of the First Peoples hold their original beliefs.
Ed: “Terry, we know that the Carolina Bays predate the Holocene Start Impact Event, as they were being exploited by people with Clovis technology.”
Ed, could you point me toward that? I’ve heard that but have not been able to find the source of it. Thanks!
Hi Steve –
George posted the document, and I noted it right here at the Tusk.
But my comment got drowned out by the usual nonsense.
So all you’ll have to do is find that post.
Terry –
I’ve referred recently (somewhere – maybe here) to what I call a paradigm crowbar. I usually reference it toward Gradualists, where they do all sorts of contortions to get catastrophe events to be explainable via Gradualist processes – and they do it without evidence. Reading some of your explanations of short-lived volcanoes and such seems a bit like that. No offense intended, because I am pretty sure I do the same sorts of things myself. I bring it up to point out that we all probably try to fit/connect disparate “facts” into our own paradigms. We all want our constructs to be true, and when something doesn’t seem to fit, we gerrymander the rest of it so that we can fit the “anomalous” fact(s) to fit – and then when we think we’ve accomplished that, we sit back and rest on our laurels.
As a for instance, I will point to physics and paleontology, where every individual researcher has a different overall construct, even though in public they put on a united front. Each one has assembled the known facts in a different way, so one might look at it that each one uses a different crowbar to fit the facts together.
We do the same thing. What is a good thing is the communicating. We will not any of us here will ever see the final real and true fitting together of the facts into “what really happened.” But by communicating what we understand back and forth we can/might help in some little bit toward that final resultant understanding. This very new area of inquiry is an open book, but not enough facts are known and not enough crowbars have been used in just the right ways, so we are all groping – including the “experts”.
In engineering projects I often started out with a “fumbling” period, when things were still vague about how exactly to approach a problem. Believe it or not, it is NOT just about taking a lot of knowns and calmly and logically and predictably, step-by-step moving toward a final design. More times than one might suspect engineers go down dead ends – concepts that are thought to likely work out successfully. The more efficient engineers spend less time on dead ends. I found that by separating out and addressing the areas that might not work out and spending a lot of time on those early on, that when those were hammered out the rest of the project went like clockwork. Hammering them out meant above all working on small things and collecting information about those so that a solution could present itself. I referred to that period also as listening to the machine, to find out what it would ALLOW me to do. We had a saying, “Well begun is half done.” I think that was my impetus for tackling the toughest parts of a project first; it always worked out that way – once the problems were seen and tackled, the rest was easy.
IMHO the YDB impact is like that – at an early point where collecting evidence is most important, where there tough things – the most vague areas – have to be addressed, where some of it will begin to reveal a picture of what ideas are going to work and what ones won’t.
In science IMHO the evidence is always “talking to the researcher,” and his job is to listen to what it says. Our crowbars get in the way; if we have to use them too much the researcher should realize the signs of a dead end idea and begin to prepare to abandon that line of reason. The REALLY COOL thing about the YDB is how much the continuing new evidence is talking in a positive way about the direction of the work being done; it is the opposite of a dead end. SOMEWHERE along this direction of inquiry is the reality of what happened. I think it stared with Firestone’s original effort to explain those C14 variations – he picked the right direction (partly by elimination, from what I remember). Like the fumbling/listening period in machine design, he seems to have “listened to what the machine would allow him to do.”
I think it is way cool to be this close to what is going on in a frontier of science, to have a ringside seat as each blow is thrown and to see the veil of uncertainty begin to blow away. Trowels are being used and crowbars aren’t necessary.
Actually, the Daulton Gang is the group having to use the crowbars, trying so hard to crowbar the evidence into Gradualism, so much so that their civility is sometimes missing, calling evidence “insect poop” and such. But they are defenders of the faith, and desperate defenders use desperate measures. We might even call them latter-day epicycle men.
Steve, yes, this YDB investigation is producing some very interesting observations. Can’t argue with that. Any research that contributes to the understanding of the dim reaches of our history is valuable in its own right. The YDB work suffers from the many of the same constraints as young-earth creationary research–not enough resources and push-back from main-stream scientists in the face of glaring discrepancies in their models.
E.P. claims that just because our calendars are discordant, we can’t even converse about the subject. But I submit that the calendar isn’t a settled scientific fact, any more than biological evolution or the nebular hypothesis of solar system formation are. All one has to do is read the two RATE books published by the Institute for Creation Research featuring research by highly qualified young-earth physicists to realize there are a lot of anomalous facts that don’t fit into a gradualist or old-earth paradigm. And you don’t have to even be a Bible-believing Christian to see this. I offer radiohalos and helium diffusion rates in igneous zircon crystals for starters.
I believe the key approaches to this research are stratigraphy and the law of superposition. Accepting (or at least tolerating the idea for the purposes of discussion) that the absolute dates may be out of whack, we can still agree on the relative sequence of events.
Terry –
There is a calendrical confusion, but from my view it is yours.
It is far easier to point out that your understanding of a biblical day is confused, than it is to throw out evolotuion, periodic extinctions, modern nuclear physics, and isotopic dating.
Aside from that, it is clearly impossible to discuss with you the formation of the Carolinaz Bays, as that eventr antedates your calendar entirely.
Once again, since the Carloina Bays were used by early man with a clovis toolkit, they predate the Holocene Start Impact Event, whic occured ca. 10,850 BCE.
Hi Steve, Terry –
Here’s the papers:
https://cosmictusk.com/southeastern-archaeology-carolina-bays-time-capsules-of-culture-and-climate-change/
It is interesting to briefly read both your comments again.
The data is what the data is.
first this thread is about the bible Mr Ed .
second Scientism dipped in sweat lodge won’t and don’t make science holy or right .. so stop the pitty party!
Given the “creationists” complete disregard of dating, all impact mega-tsunami data will suddenly become “proof” of Noah’s Flood.
This is a common phenomenon in impact research: the elliding together of separate impact events, and the phenomenon is not limited to “creationists”.
If you look at what has gone on here, the formation of the Carolina Bays has to haev occured at the same time as the HSIE (Holocene Start Impact Event). But the data clearly shows that that was not the case.
Steve and Ed,
this biblical event is the account of the Mesopotamian impact,
which wiped out Akkad and Lagash at 4.2 kyr BP. My paper is
out in a few days and Ed, I have sent you a private copy…Steve, Get one from Ed or tell me your Email….cheers, JS
HI Joachim –
I look forward to reading your paper. But there is not one single impact event alone referred to in the Bible, but rather several.
Given the problems of working with the text of the Bible, I have generally used contemporary or near contemporary written texts in my work. It is pretty well demonstrated that the Old Testament is really tertiary text material, and that is ignoring the arguments of teh “minimalists”.
When you get to Revelations, you are dealing with fourth hand materials handled by a bad translator.
Looking at this author’s web site, I see that he has used Chinese comet graphics from Bob Kobres’s site. This leads me to wonder what other parts of Bob’s work he may have used without acknowledgement.
If so, then it would be nice if Bob was paid for his work.
A few examples of ellision from studies of the Carolina Bays.
A signature characteristis of the Bays is the sterile sand that they are composed of – no fossils, no 14C inclusions. This leads many to propose aelian (wind) deposition. But wind dispositions in ice sheets will also be steriale.
There are more examples of ellision in the analysis of the Carolina Bays.
The Perigee Zero team assumes that all similar deposits elsewhere were formed by one ice impact event, and then backtrack to a hypothesized point of impact. Given the complete lack of dating for the structures, and the lack of ic sheet impact studies,this ellision may no be justified.
A final example. One hypothesized ice impact structure near Lloydminster Canada is often times unconciously assumed to be from the Holocene Start Impact Event. And this is yet another example of ellision.
The author does mention the following incidend in his passage explaining why Russia is not Magog (which view will come as good news for Orthodox Christians considerin what happened earlier):
At a dinner with California legislators in 1971 (before he became president), prophecy student Ronald Reagan concisely summed up his view of Russia’s end time role:
“Ezekiel tells us that Gog, [referring to Magog], the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn’t seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.” 13
Kind of scary, isn’t it?
Why some “christians” continue to expect the detruction of Israel is beyond me, except that it is the same mind set that led the Holocaust.
Apparently in their view it is now Turkey instead of Russia who will be responsible.
Ed: “George posted the document, and I noted it right here at the Tusk.
But my comment got drowned out by the usual nonsense.
So all you’ll have to do is find that post.”
Believe it or not, that doesn’t help one iota. “Here at the Tusk” means it can be anywhere. I assume the original sources are outside the Tusk somewhere.
Joachim –
My email is [email protected].
Terry –
My thanks for both of us being civil about this disagreement we have. If I seem to attack, it is not meant, but to be a skeptic and devil’s advocate, as in any debate.
You say, “I submit that the calendar isn’t a settled scientific fact.” I won’t argue that myself. However, I don’t think the scientific calendar is off by as much as young-earthers need it to be. I would suspect its error to be less than +/-75% at the outside (on things as recent as the YDB).
C14, though based on the physics of radioactive decay, originally was also compared against more historical datings, such as ceramics, architectural, stone point, and language styles styles, which were the backbone of archaeological dating before 1950. The original straight line decay assumption hardly had the ink dry before it was being revised (originally due to the effect of nuclear testing in the 1950s, a I understand it).
In fact, it is always being revised. I think the current standard calibration curve dates to 2009, which replaced the one from 2005.
But that is all small tweaks. Like you, I expect at some point someone is going to find a fairly large correction in C14 calibration curves at some point. Why do I think that? Because, like you, I have a favored idea in my head that I want to be correct. Mine is the dating of Atlantis. I think there was an Atlantis-like global civilization. I also think that Plato got the date of its destruction more or less correct. But right now the YDB’s 12.9 kya is off a little bit from Plato’s 11,500 kya. I arrive at that by assuming Plato at 500 BC, then adding 2500 years to his 9,000 years.
That doesn’t mean that the C14 curve is actually going to be shown to be off by about 15%. But our understanding of many things in the past have come to pass that were not expected. One example would be the Monte Verde site in Chile overthrowing archaeology’s Clovis Barrier, which had stood like a rock for about 70 years.
Another would be the Solutrean-Clovis point connection, that is being more and more in the news. When the Clovis Barrier existed, it prevented the time gap between Solutrean points in Europe and Clovis points in the USA from being reduced. Since the barrier has fallen, 16 years ago now, the gap has closed up, and there now seems to be an overlap in time – making their connection much more possible. I am certain the connection will be an accepted fact within a few more years.
Another is the erosion on the sides of the Sphynx enclosure at Giza. Its erosion has been shown to be water rather than wind erosion. But that creates a conundrum, which argues that either the area was rainy in much more recent times than currently thought, or the Sphynx (and thus the Giza complex) is thousands of years older than previously thought. If older by erosion’s evidence, then there comes the problem of the C14 dates. As of now, all of this is unresolved. Ultra-conservative archaeology, of course, pronounces that the erosion is simply wind erosion and the assessments of it being water erosion are totally wrong. But that is only one side of the argument. But for me the main issue is that thre IS evidence that the Giza complex is at least 5,000 BC (when rain was plentiful enough to possibly cause erosion there). But erosion takes time, so the beginning of the erosion was earlier than the 5,000 BC date. How much earlier? Who knows? But it also begins to breach the time gap between Plato’s account of Egypt’s priests claiming Egypt was around in 9,500 BC.
So, I keep seeing non-connections – in time, in particular – growing into or toward connections, more and more.
As a disclaimer, I don’t care what the name of a totally old higher-tech civilization was. I don’t insist on it being named Atlantis. If the Egyptian site at Giza is quite a bit older than 5,000 BC, though, it throws a monkey wrench in the dating schemes of other sites that have similar technically advanced working and maneuvering of stones, such as Baalbek, Ollyantaytambo, Malta, and Sacsayhuaman. C14 is the foundation of the dating of those sites. What happens when geological evidence disputes C14? Which trumps which? Or are both wrong to some extent? And to what extent? The physics of geology is no less rooted solidly, compared to C14, yet if they don’t agree, what happens then?
C14 dating certainly is based on an assumption: That we know, absolutely, the rate of decay of Carbon14. Assumptions in the history of science have a habit of needing correction. In fact, the currently used basic C14 half-life rate is somewhat different from Libby’s original value.
And Firestone was looking into C14 decay “problems” when he stumbled upon the YDB hypothesis.
So, the C14 Calendar” is subject to change. I need it to change much less than young earthers do.
However, as we all know, C14 is only good back so far – about 50,000 years or so. Beyond that the geologists and arkies use several other decay-based measuring sticks. Those are even bigger problems for the young earthers, because unless those are off by magnitudes upon magnitudes, the older evidence will never give dates in the <7,000 year range. I am only asking for 15% change in the calendar; you all are looking for 98% reduction or so. That is a tall order.
Hi Steve –
Actually, the most reliable dating before 14C was ancient astronomical texts. With the arrival of 14C, the need for those text skills declined markedly.
There are probably about 14 people in the world who actually are expert in reading ancient astronomical texts, including those from Egypt, and I can pretty well assure you that none of the finge authors are among them, no matter what they claim.
Plato’s creation of his story of Atlantis, and his sources, is covered in “Man and Impact in the Americas”. My date for the HSIE was off in it, due to the same 14C dating problems that led Firestone to his work.
Eadch copy now has a correction sheet pasted inside the front cover.
Ed: “…since the Caroina Bays were used by early man with a Clovis toolkit, they predate the Holocene Start Impact Event, which occurred ca. 10,850 BCE.”
This brings up an interesting point, often overlooked or left out of the discussion completely.
The Clovis story always includes Beringia and the “Ice-free corridor” – both far to the northwest. Somehow I only just recently became aware that the great majority of Clovis sites are in the eastern U.S. This suggests that Clovis technology came from other than across Beringia. It also has LONG been known that NO Clovis technology whatsoever has ever been found in NE Siberia, confounding assertions that that was the route by which Clovis technology came to the Americas.
The recent (last two years) finds of Clovis points in the area of the Delmarva peninsula that were dated to about 20,000-22,000 years ago closed up the time gap between Solutrean and Clovis technologies that had existed in the minds of archaeologists for several decades.
This possible route for the technology – direct from Europe to the U.S. – makes the density of Clovis sites in the eastern U.S. make sense. It also makes the orginal discovery near Clovis, NM itself an outlier.
The CBs are in the middle of one of the denser areas of Clovis tech.
The Clovis First people are still clinging to their paradigm, against mounting evidence. They are also being rigidly skeptical about many discoveries and the new connections being asserted – evidently either throwing a hissy fit or just trying to slow down progress. It is easy to liken them to buggy whip manufacturers in the early 20th century.
Hi Steve –
Clovis technology appears in South America very early on.
It is likely to be indigenously developed there, based on European lithic technology that arrived in South America via West Africa around 35,000 BCE.
After crossing the Gulf of Mexico, it rapidly spreads along annual game migration routes of around 300-500 miles length.
CL –
“you got to know I was into that at 12…
I was just trying to get to school on the bus without throwing up.. and to my classes without getting beat up or felt up.”
I am sorry to hear of your bad experience. They go a long way towards explaining your behaviors.
As no one here was among those who beat you up or felt you up, perhaps you might want to re-consider wishing that we would all go to hell.
I’ve just finished reading The Comets of God by Jeffery Goodman, which is brilliantly argued, and I think he’s right. However, there were or two
puzzling aspects to his theory. Firstly, however did the Bible writers come
into possession of this knowledge? Surely it implies the previous existence of
a scientifically advanced culture, whose scientific knowledge was as great as our own. He also implies that God is using comets to teach human beings a lesson, but surely there is no connection between cometary bombardment and
the acts of human beings other than that produced serendipitously. Also, his
argument depends upon the existence of the Oort Cloud and the dark star,
both of whose existence is only hypothetical as far as I am aware. What we call comets,the Bible calls God.
Hi Chris –
“Firstly, however did the Bible writers come
into possession of this knowledge? Surely it implies the previous existence of
a scientifically advanced culture, whose scientific knowledge was as great as our own.”
Wrong. It implies people got hit by comets, and they could watch them coming in. And those peoples records are where the compilers of the Bible got their material from.
“He also implies that God is using comets to teach human beings a lesson, but surely there is no connection between cometary bombardment and
the acts of human beings other than that produced serendipitously.”
Generally, the survivors always attributed some evil to their neighbors which caused them to get hit. We happen to come from a Judeo-Christian background. Other peoples do not.
“Also, his argument depends upon the existence of the Oort Cloud and the dark star, both of whose existence is only hypothetical as far as I am aware.”
I have not read his book yet. Thanks to the WISE survey, we now know that NO nearby Dark Star exists. NASA looked everywhere, and did not seee it.
As far as the Oort Cloud goes, the oribts of long period comets have been calculated, and it exists.
“What we call comets, the Bible calls God.”
Other people have had and currently have a very different view.
“What we call comets, the Bible calls God.”
What the Bible calls God is his interpretation.
Wherever the author “interprets” anything AT ALL, if you take them one by one, each item can be interpreted as a LOT of things. Just because someone strings a bunch of interpretations together means only that he made a list of X = Y and then went through and plugged the interpetations.
Biblical interpretations are like you-know-whats: everyone has one.
Oh, last bit I left out:
As far as biblical interpretations go, the ones with the idea that they have read the mind of God actually go out and publish. It’s called hubris, ego, megalomania, etc.
Or they go out and start one more church spin-off. And some poor souls will follow them. It’s been going on for longer than the USA has existed.
Steve G –
Church spin-off… like…
wikified cut paste from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven's_Gate_(religious_group)
Heaven’s Gate (religious group)
Heaven’s Gate was an American UFO religion doomsday cult based in San Diego, California, founded in the early 1970s and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985).[1] On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group who had committed mass suicide[2] in order to reach what they believed was an alien space craft following the Comet Hale–Bopp, which was at its brightest.
(and they all had the same brand of shoes – just an observation…)
Chicken Little – FYI the idea behind addressing the threat of Earth crossing bolides is to try to divert the objects from hitting Earth AT ALL, not to choose between impact sites. It seems from your post you may have been unaware of that idea. It doesn’t have to be some kind of Heaven’s Gate scenario, or some kind of choice of where to aim the dooms day vector.
DOOMSDAY NOT REQUIRED
1) First you find the object and determine its orbit very carefully. This stage is tricky since all astronomical observations are subject to some degree of error, no matter how small that error must be. Such error may be interpreted by some as God’s impenetrable veil, but its really just the laws of physics. All measurements contain some element of error. No God paradigm required. No doomsday required.
Typically the orbit determination takes multiple observations which are fed into a weighted matrix to get a best fit for the orbit parameters, that matrix derived from relative error estimates of each observation. A measurement platform outside Earth’s atmosphere helps reduce orbit determination error, but now there are also real time methods to quantify the perturbation of ground based observations due to the atmosphere to minimize the error. An orbital based observatory does give better line-of-sight field of view than an Earth based platform.
2) take action to alter the orbit of the bolide if that orbit crosses Earth’s orbit at a time and place coincident with Earth’s presence at time and place. In other words, if its going to hit Earth. There are many proposed ways to do this, and some folks may see such action as interfering with God’s greater plan.
Interfering with God’s greater plan…
In reality, exactly the opposite is true. Humanity is God, since the conceptual assignment of “God” is exactly that, a concept born simply of the human’s highly mutated nervous system. (The neurotic human, having the most highly mutated nervous system, save perhaps the elephant or dolphin).
If you don’t believe that, then just ask your favorite pet what “God” means. They won’t answer you in any meaningful manner, because they are not sentient beings with cognitive intellect as we humans are. And no matter how you interpret their barking, chirping, hissing, or other vocalizations or behaviors when you ask your simple question, your interpretation of your pet’s response is still purely and merely your own conception, largely formulated within the empathy center of your own highly mutated human nervous system. But don’t feel bad, because you are God. We all are. And if you don’t want to be, tough luck. You are anyway, like it or not.
Now if you DO get a “philosophy of religion” response from your (non human) pet, then its time to get back on your meds.
Continuing on this blasphemous thread – and yes, it is quite that indeed –
Will Humankind ever have the ability to alter the orbit of a celestial body? Is it at all possible that we, as such a puny species in the greater scale and scope of the observable universe in which we live (dark matter included just for the sake of the most massive possible universe), will we ever be able to alter the working mechanics of the universe and the many bodies that orbit within?
In plain fact, we already have. Many times. Simply by sending a space probe such as Voyager 2 (for one of many possible examples) though a gravitational slingshot maneuver to increase its heliocentric orbital energy, that same amount of heliocentric orbital energy is lost by the planet used for the slingshot maneuver. Voyager 2 used Saturn
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath114/kmath114.htm
and that planet’s orbit was forever changed as a result. Forever.
Now: does that mean that the Oort cloud will be disturbed as a result? Maybe yes, since ultimately all things depend on all other things in the multi-body gravitational environment. Likely no, however, due to the tiny effect the space craft has on the planet according to the ratio of mass of those two objects, spacecraft and planet. So we just have to keep things in perspective. No sloppy thinking allowed. Oort cloud – yeah we’re not really sure its out there, I know I know. Sorry, getting sloppy.
So we want to change the orbit of a threatening object. By “threatening object”, I need to clarify that as an object by which WE FEEL threatened, because remember we are the cognizant, sentient beings, not the bolide. Bolide is NOT God. Humans ARE God. The farther off the bolide is, the less delta velocity we need to impart upon it to make it miss our home planet, the planet we would like to keep from being “cleansed by fire”. So we give that inert, non-sentient bolide a nudge from a really long distance.
We do this most likely with a directed energy device of some kind to avoid having to send a slow, heavy, expensive and unreliable spacecraft half way to the (proposed) Oort cloud which would take generations of time en-route. And where does that get us? What do we get to show for all of our craftiness and mutated cranial grey matter ingenuity? What do we get for tampering with the heavens? For messing in God’s kitchen?
It gets us on with life and gives us plenty more time to live it. It saves the Earth, or a large portion of the Earth, from ANOTHER deadly visit. It puts us in charge of our own destiny, as we have the responsibility be, by the nature of our being GOD of course! Come on – you already know this stuff, you should have figured it out from your dreams by now. Gonna be a test later…
So to review, humans are born as ignorant animals, with a highly neurotic nervous system (most neurotic if you count by “units of mutation”).
We struggle to learn by forming a rationalized world view based on that which we observe around us AND (critically important) based on our own brain music, which comes out of our rather neurotic boom box brains. That conceptual convolution, as Dr. Hermann Burchard will likely attest, is the key. We observe and we process. Then we communicate and share meaning. But the meaning isn’t exactly what we observed. It is instead our CONCEPTION of what we observed. It is the brainwave that results from what we saw. Our “crowbar transformed” version.
We pick up a stick or a rock and learn to use tools, which pretty soon look like supercomputers running Hydrocode simulations of explosively fragmenting bolides or directed energy weapons after about 6000 or 600,000 years with the rock and the stick, the crowbar and the neurotic brain music, depending on who you want to trust on that pesky calendar matter.
And sure enough, we nudge the bolide and we live to tell about it. No big deal. Its what Gods do. Get over it!
We don’t bury our heads in some recursive and illogical sand pile with a trembling whimper of “the end is near”. Because we are survivors. That is why religion exists. Because we survived the earlier impacts BEFORE Mark Boslough and his generation of scientists were ever born into the chance of using Hydrocode. Some of our ancestors were lucky enough to read the memo from the future by Ed P. Grondine, with explicit instructions to run for the reed grass.
And yes, I did just say “memo from the future” because it does sometimes seem like we humans, as the mutated brain species, must have a timeless collective conscience and a shared primal memory. How is this possible? No idea. As a scientist it is one of the most impossible concepts I’ve ever heard of. But the ones who know about sheltering in the reed grass are the ones who get to procreate, so check your time machine for FAXes on a regular basis. And for NEOs.
Obviously we owe a serious debt of gratitude to Mr. Grondine. His insight is that of a surviving species. A species of survivors, with language and tools. A species with HYDROCODE! (If you don’t get that, look up “expanded equation of state” and see where that topic shows up)
Back to our topic, which now I feel safe to title “Gods of Comets”
Chicken Little, WE ARE GOD. You must face that with all of the humility of your conviction and faith, because to do any less is to accept failure, to not live up to our full potential as the human species, to quit, to give up. You know this already. That is why you read this forum. George knows this too, which is why he maintains the forum for us. Why did you read this?
Its pretty easy to see. Scanning electron microscopy shows compositional variation in the radial dimension of the larger impact spherules. Some of the bigger melt spherules are over 5 mm, which means they had a loooooong time in the heat to outgas and condense and all of those beautiful processes that Hydrocode modeling now tells us take place in large scale, high energy impacts.
Long time in the heat means the oven stayed on for a while. This means a huge rocky bolide to cause a huge crater, or… a surface contacting fireball oven with a big fireball(s) to keep the rock melting for a while. Then boiling.
The radial compositional variation tells us that the even the highest melt temp components like MgO were not simply melted. They vaporized. Somewhere above 3600 C. Boiled to vapor.
When rock boils to vapor, you can not hide. You can not conceptualize. You can not pay your mortgage. You have no credit rating. you are very screwed. That is why as a species, we take action and we survive. We are descendants of survivors. We ARE the surviving genetic. We are mutated, curious, neurotic, tool using communicators. We are the ones with the power to take action and transform our environment when we can no longer survive what it presents us. We are the ones who can migrate across oceans when we have to. We are the ones who can cultivate crops when we have to. We are the ones who can flake a point from obsidian, and we are the ones who can speak and teach that practice to others in our own neurotic species.
We are the ONLY Gods who ever will or ever can protect ourselves from some measly space rock or
“puny” progenitor comet, platinum or no. We are the ones who must act or lose that option. Possibly forever. The biggest risk of all is to do nothing.
If you don’t believe WE are the gods in this effort, why do you read here?
TH
I BEEN WAITING FOR 40 YEARS FOR THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE TO ASK A LEGITIMATE QUESTION.. seems now they may have found a real question. Let’s pray they will find the real answer! but maybe I can try and help in my own special way 😛
you say we are God’s, why does this reminds me of my favorite scene from the Avengers ..(a confrontation between Loki and Hulk)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy61Va1L4cM I’m telling you this one will go down as a all time classic! man that is an important lesson.. I will be lurking around .. if you need anymore special guidance! ;P
TH –
“It’s what gods do.”
Absolutely.
TH –
“Rocks boiled to vapor” and Magnesium, too. Melting and then vaporizing is what goes on in ablation, too, just to point that out.
But the expansion of a rock or MG during vaporization is pretty monumental, much above a liquid vaporizing as in water turning to steam as magma exits a volcano. Numbers don’t have, but the effects have to be horrific for anything within range. One type of lava is boulders that jet out the expanding steam, and it goes down the mountainside like an air hockey puck, riding a cushion of air – but also jetting outward hundreds of feet to the sides, scorching anything near its path. And they go down at high speed, too. You don’t want to be close enough to see it coming at you. With rocks vaporizing, I can envision something of the sort as the expand as they are ejected. Added to the radiant energy, it’s a nasty thing to contemplate. There are so many ways impactors do their damage, it is more than frightening.
As to God’s retribution upon man, you are right – that is all in the minds of religious tinfoil hat folks. Like the ones who assign 9-11 to God’s punishment of the USA. Silly season stuff, and not worth our time here. I give George credit for having the patience with CL, but that stuff contributes nothing worthwhile to the discussion.
As to our plans to divert an incomer, to my knowledge we have nothing effectual. The #1 plan, a kinetic impact by anything we are capable of putting up from Earth, isn’t going to move a 1 km object enough to pee on. We need a plan to launch from the Moon or from a trojan point, and it needs to be much bigger than what is planned. I favor sequential nukes or perhaps simultaneous nukes from 2 sides – to fragment efficiently. If the fragments are Tunguska size, mankind will survive, even if there are scores of them that size. Chelyabinsk-sized would be essentially harmless. Launching from Earth is a fart in a windstorm. IMHO. They have to figure on massive overkill with the most energetic interception possible. Too small and the problem is exascerbated, as everyone knows. But the solution to that is NOT to attempt a surgical just-enough approach, but to kick its butt into kingdom come. (Oh? Did Steve use a religious reference?…lol)
SMALL fragments are good fragments. Then we just let the atmosphere burn them suckahs…
hey boys you didn’t think I would let you get by with this did you really ?
.. Now for a book you all think as irrelevant and made up by men … it still seems to me that Gen 3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened , and ye shall be as gods , knowing good and evil . because forget about the fruit you two have to be main lining that stuff . seems you two never got far from that tree now did you! that book is reading your boys mail and you think that being like a god is cute… your so smart..
you got to know that’s the original lie, and not even a good lie.. and you were trying to persuade me with brilliance with that one … I mean the devil himself already tried a really good lie, that means a way better lie than that one me .
that book sure read your boys mail, you know it is as if it looked into the future and saw our time and the souls of a whole generation of the most arrogant people to ever exist and then told it’s story hum? ;P
Did you know a terrible 2 year old does think he is a terrible two year old?
so talking about Aliens and you being a GOD’ in order to save yourselves… and save the universe !!! fast as a speeding bullet , supermen !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEQdvYFMBAU&feature=youtu.be
And the two witness? well the anti -two
Wanna bet they save us of from other Awful Men, and give humanity the ‘freedom’ it’s deserves….’ freedom from other Gods” and ” freedom from religion” … and they will promise to give us back our real democratic freedoms..
Why will it be we can have those freedoms to be evil but never will they allow the freedoms to be righteous or holy or pure , and to be set apart or even have privacy . mostly they will promise to free us from men and will claim that we are “spiritual god’s like them ” just like he told Eve and she bought it and she was perfect……. wanna bet you do ?
You know the enemy knows his only chance is trying to get God to repent for his choices. by proving men to be stupid monkeys … it doesn’t look good does it ?
Unfortunately, irrational babbling does nothin to advance the technical discussion or knowledge base that actually serves some chance of contributing to the overall effort here – that of identification and mitigation of the currently mis-characterized cosmic impact threat.
At the risk of being overly negative- by irrational babbling I mean to include young earth babble, heaven’s gate or other nonsense cult teachings, and all other forms of blind faith that suggest or suppose that scientific understanding of our local and cosmic environment is not the best and most potentially useful means to protect human kind, both from ourselves as well as from the risks inherent in those environments in which we find ourselves as a species in this age of awakening.
Scientific awakening.
And I say this humbly and with complete respect for other people of faith such as myself. I just happen to place my own faith on a different number of the roulette wheel than some of those others. Faith is not a bad thing. As a uniquely human construct, I think faith is a very good thing.
I also faithfully believe that the powers of Human reason and Science have a better chance of protecting our species from threats around us than does any faith in whatever deity(s) of choice. And in that vein there are many choices…
As is often shown in history, faith in whatever deity(s) of choice, especially when combined with nationalistic pride and fear of those different from ourselves, is more likely to cause mass destruction of humanity and recorded knowledge through warfare, terrorism or crusade (other names for warfare).
That’s just how the numbers fall. Distasteful? Certainly. Offensive? ABSOLUTELY! Historically accurate none the less.
Faith in science and/or democracy merely frightens and enrages the very same fundamentalists whom those concepts ultimately threaten. Those threats take the form of self governance, empowerment of the individual, and a better hope for the survival of our species as a whole.
The thing is, if you wait for an impact while doing absolutely nothing, are you helping yourself at all?
TH
When the fireball or mega-tsunami arrive, it really doesn’t matter what you believe or where you place your faith, if you have any.
It’s what you do in the mean time to help yourself, and to help our species, that really matters or stands to make any difference at all. And of course by that I do completely discount any/all placebo effect of buryin one’s head in the sand or any other denial mechanism. But if that is your preference, keep any eye out down there near the Younger Dryas Boundary for some of those tens of millions of tons of cosmic impact micro spherules.
TH
Hi Tom –
Among the “faiths” that you list, you need to include those who believe in an Earth-like Mars, and the utopian visions they have of man living on Mars.
They are by far the most active in impeding impact research.
Other groups are the Electric Universe folks, who do not understand impact mechanics or scaling laws. And then you have the culot archaeology folks.
Dealing with all three can eat up all of your resources. But since you can not ignore them, you have to take them on.
Yeah.
Like I was sayin’.
Here is an interesting paper I found on anomalous microspherules in transition boundary sediments.
Oops, sorry, wrong thread. Oh well. Enjoy.
http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/06/2013/royal-rhynie-focus-of-pictish-excavation
oh boy I wonder how many will understand that one Pictish stone Pictures scene …. looks pretty clear to me and I’m not Pictish (or am I .)
so the Picts claim their closest relations are real native Americans not the offspring of asians slaves brought here by the Europeans in the last 500 years.. the missing offspring of more than 1000000 asians.. and now people that are passed off as sciences pick for native Americans. so maybe the PIcts really are cousins of the real people here but separated by a history yet explained by the religion of scientism and it’s pure goofy beliefs.
but the Picts are obviously trying to record something and it seems so clear to me.. 😛 . can any of you interpret the circles story? it is pretty clear . I mean pre computer animation they did a great of drawing it out .
it is NOT explained by the myths , beliefs and circular reasoned
‘proofs” of the religion of scientism !
the eye witnesses WIN!!
Today I have ordered The Comets of God, second-hand 5 Euro less expensive than a new copy.
In Goodman’s The Earthquake Generation (1979) there are a few well readable chapters (4:Catastrophism vs.uniformitarianism; 7 Pole Shift). The author is well-read, and gives his references, though not always correctly.
However he is a christian, and seems to give a positive interpretation of the Earth and the human condition as created by God. That means he has read, like the other christians I meet, the Gospel of John without noticing its fascist passages, the source of all the crimes perpetrated during two millennia. One ex-catholic filled 10 heavy volumes with them (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums).
I am feeling more at home with the Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, the pessimist Bible books Job and Ecclesiastes,
and the Poetes Maudits.
Right now I am reading Chargraff: Abscheu von der Weltgechichte (Abhorrence of World History).
And I pray that, next time around, I’ll be born on a planet where the biosphere is not organised along foodchains.
Han –
I wonder if exposure to food chains on extraterrestrial biospheres would change us enough to change our food chain mentality here? If we really DID know that we are only one of any number of food chains? Our human exceptionalism should be altered, but in what ways? Hopefully not more of the “us vs them” driven by our warmongering fear mongers.
Han,
there are good reasons to suspect super-volcanoes are in fact generated by ET impacts excavating down to the mantle in the initial impact explosion. This requires a huge impactor or else thin crust as in ocean sea floor, or in regions were the crust has been thinned by geodynamic processes as for example in the Eifel volcanic field in the Rhine region (related to the Upper Rhine Graben, northward push of the Alps according to Gillian Foulger, see her mantleplume.org webpage). The timing of the Laach supervolcano at 12,920 BP is discussed in many YDB-related papers because it is suspiciously close to the YDB impact and may well have been the result to the impact of an ~100 m fragment of the YDB impactor, presumably a comet of known fragility. This impact (or volcano eruption for doubters) is blamed for widespread destruction in NW Europe, see your own 1999 paper, The Usselo Horizon, a Worldwide Charcoal-Rich Layer of Alleröd Age, which is often quoted in YDB papers. I found it online here: http://www.catastrophist.org/home/usselo-2002/
Hi Hermann
A meteoroid with only 100 m is too small to do any damage, maybe just a little hole, insufficient to cause a break in Earth crust and a localized destruction.
Were millions of fragments and the scars are everywhere.
Do You know this simulator? It can give an idea of power, comparable to atomic explosion.
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/
regards
pierson
Steve, I am dreaming of a planet with a vegetation cover devoid of carnivorous plants, full of producers of delicious fruits like mangoes, cherries and avocados. No carnivores at all, only bookish people like myself who, frugivorously, before dying have time to read all the books they want. A frugivorous cat on my lap.
Impossible? Aren’t G.d, God and Allah omnipotent? Or so they say.
Hermann, there exists a paper written by 2 Dutchmen on an exposure in Germany very close to the border with Luxembourg.
Unfortunately I have lost both paper and reference – that’s what can happen when you have an agitated life and often change your country of residence.
On that place the authors describe a thin layer of Laacher See tuff overlying, separated by only a thin layer of sand, the Usselo Layer (as identified by me from their description). That establishes the temporal sequence, but not the time interval, and doesn’t exclude a causal relationship.
The interval of 600ys postulated by Kaiser et al. is clearly inspired by the interpretation of the Usselo Horizon as a soil, which it is not.
Han…
Mangoes and avocados? It sounds like where I now live in central Mexico. The avocado capital of the world is abou 90 miles south of here. And the mangoes are to die for – or live for.
No carnivorous plants, either. Are strawberries okay instead of cherries?
I do have time to read all the books I want. On several subjects. To my heart’s content.
And it LOOKS and FEELS like paradise. Look up the city of Guanajuato. And in addition, it has a climate in the top five cities in the world.
Steve, and the all-wise christian God of Goodman can decide to teach you a lesson, and obliterate Mexico tomorrow by sending another comet Yucatan-way.
My God can do so also, with the difference that I am ignorant about his motivation, if any.
Han –
If my days are numbered due to an incoming object, I will remain here as long as I can, and if I go, I go. And I will blame it on NASA for not intercepting it. Not on God. Or G.d. Or Yahweh. Or Vishnu. Or Baal. Or the devil.
I am convinced that all the beginnings of religion came about because of impacts being witnessed by non-scientific-minded people. But not because they themselves thought it was the gods. Only because later people began to think it was something magical instead of rational accounts of what they witnessed. Without thinking that magic is real religion couldn’t exist. Without ignorance religion couldn’t exist.
And then, even later on, the arkies misread it all because the intervening peoples were unenlightened and the arkies couldn’t tell the difference.
Science is the attempt to take the magical out of our view of the world we encounter. It’s only been going for 350 years or so, so it is still a toddler. Give it another 2000 years.
That is, if NASA doe it’s job.
But Steve, I AM convinced that magic is real!
Science, your toddler, has grown up from its post-1860 positivism to its post-hippie tendency to become each decade more countercultural.
Please do some Internet research on Entanglement, and compare that p.e. with Backster’s data on primary perception, or with the astounding cases of twin telepathy.
If I were 60ys younger than I am, I wouldn’t opt for a university education, but search for a guru – some shaman in Siberia or Amazonia.
Han –
Would that be Cleve Backster, the polygraph expert?
And would that be quantum entanglement?
I’ve only recently become familiar with the term Positivism, but it seems I knew all about that already, without the name – as an outsider and one that thinks it is one of the blind alleys science has gone down.
It seems that when I myself was 60 years younger than you are now I did just what you said – I opted OUT of a university education. And in a way I DID find my guru. Not a shaman but a psychic. Mas o menos igual… So now I am 45 years on from that time, and have a lifetime of out-of-the-box real world education. But the real world – like college – is only an education if one is paying attention and not getting sidetracked too much.
I am VERY HAPPY that I left school when I did. My life has been filled with much learning, on many topics. I am not a one note singer; I have fingers in many pies. This one is the most fun – but not by a landslide. It is also the one I think is most important.
Your time in Brazil and such – I envy you that.
Han –
Also, like many, I think that magic is just physics/chemistry not yet revealed.
Steve
Yes Steve that’s him, Cleve Backster. And on twin telepathy it’s Guy Lyon Playfair, who spent 4ys in Brazil where I met him.
All such phenomena are now falling under the heading entanglement.
In the UK it was called the Group Mind, from observing thousands of young sparrows flying and suddenly turning together. I’ve seen fishes doing it also, on TV.
And it’s not only identical twins that are entangled, also less similar family members, and after years of marriage, married couples. I learned that the hard way, after my divorce.
Han –
The group mind thing with flocks of birds or schools of fish – I see it as if it is different organs or muscle cells of the same appendage of a body, just a body that is not physically connected. We assume that all bodies are physically connected parts, but is that necessarily so? Where there is one mind, there is one body – connected or not.
This is the kind of thing that Rupert Sheldrake deals with.
In reductionism the parts are assumed to make up the whole – but when they see apparently disconnected parts making up an obvious whole, which the birds and fish do in their movements, the reductionists are struck dumb and cannot accept it, even though every 4-year-old knows it is happening. Just because they cannot recognize that there may be connections at some non-physical level, the reductionists either ignore it or try to crowbar it into some silly self-important speculation (then after pontificating making themselves scarce for follow-up questions). Anything except that the birds or fish all DO have one mind controlling their actions.
Just so the reductionists claim that migrating birds navigate with an intrnal compass. Once they found a minute amount of magnetic material in the birds’ brains, the reductionists assumed that it was connected with navigating. But I lived for 37 years on a migration route, and 90% of the time when I’d see migrating flocks they weren’t going north or south; they were going mostly east or west or skewed. Sometimes I’d see two different flocks going in different directions at the same time. Why would they be doing that if their internal compasses point them north and south? My observations over many years argue against their hypothesis. I did not observe the flock directions until after I’d read of the internal compass. Immediately I saw the exact opposite of birds following a north south path, and thought, “Well THAT doesn’t agree with their idea!” They rarely flew north in spring and south in fall. My observations were always made with the hypothesis consciously in mind, and the vast majority of the time the birds’ directions did not agree with the hypothesis. It was not what I expected, but it is what I observed.
I know little about the entanglement you are talking about, though I have read about twins being psychically attuned – even ones separated and living separate lives. I don’t know enough to have an opinion. But my daughter has triplets, so maybe there will be some family tales in the upcoming years. The triplets are a pair of identicals and one fraternal third. It might be interesting to see if the identicals have more of a connection than the third. I am 1600 miles away so can’t observe them.
I am not a fan of statistics in science. The statistics are subject to misinterpretations and misrepresentations. IMHO if they need stats, they don’t have anything solid. And that goes for quantum physics, too. As Einstein said, “God does not play dice with the universe.” Science is about measuring distances, time, forces, frequencies, etc. When it is necessary to include the odds of something, I consider it to be pseudo science, or misguided science, or science that they haven’t gotten on solid ground yet (but are pretending that by attaching values to something it will look more like science). So far all the data-collecting people and model programs that are written are at the mercy of the interpretation of the researcher’s ability to interpret. It becomes like judging an ice skating routine in the Olympics. At least there they have the common decency to know that human factors alter the judging. In science, biased data is accepted as equal in status to the good data – and good data is not infrequently excluded.
As Mark Twain said, “There are lies, and there are damned lies – and then there are statistics!”
Steve, the first time I read about a manifestation of the group mind was in Euge’ne Marais, die Siel van die Mier (The Soul of the White Ant), dating from 1934. Not about ants, but about termites. The moment the Queen dies, all the termites start to return to the anthill. No pheromones but telepathy.
I share your distrust of statistics. The data are too easily manipulated, their interpretation is paradigm-dependant.
“The data are too easily manipulated, their interpretation is paradigm-dependant.”
Yes, isn’t that the truth!
I keep telling people that science is not an accumulation of facts, that it is an accumulation of interpretations of facts.
NO TWO researchers assign the same importance to each fact among a collection of facts. Assigning different weights to each means each researcher comes to different conclusions – even when they both THINK they are in agreement.
We had a saying in design: “If you give the same problem to 1,000 designers you will get 2,000 designs.”
It starts with the first step. Each goers in a slightly different direction, and they do an Einstein random walk from there.
But the more stats in a paper the more bias. It begins with the selection of data, and it never stops.
I once read (and never found it again) that 85% of all C14 dates are rejected, mostly due to the dates not fitting in the expected range. The reason given usually is “contamination.” Many times it isn’t even given. The lab results are just thrown away.
They simply do not want to deal with anomalies – which is sad, because in the anomalies is the route to really understanding the overall. Pretending they don’t exist is hubris and stupidity, all rolled into one ball. But it is good for careerism to simply not rock the boat.
YESSSSSS! This should be shown everywhere!!!! God should be in every ones hearts
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