Science has much better answers than "God did it" (punishment, Biblical)
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I thought French peasants were the first to notice that rocks could fall to the Earth. Someone named Ernst Chladini seems to have been the one to popularize it in science.
The Book of Revelation describes an Asteroid hit. It's so obvious a child could point this out to you. And such advanced information should not be ignored. And the Bible pointed this out to us long before science even knew asteroids existed.
And in your post you mention that science states that we may likely be hit by an Asteroid. Then you present a totally unrelated part of Scripture as it that was the Bibles responce. While you fully ignore Revelation 8:8,9.
And then you jump from there and start talking about who has experience demons as opposed to who has not. If you are going to adress this topic at all. At the very least you should adress the correct passage in Scripture that is being spoken of. The one that I claim has advanced knowledge. What John describes in Revelation 8:8,9 would be confirmed by most scientist as a description of an Asteroid hit. And just because you don't believe the Bible, is no good reason for you to ignore that passage. And then replace it with a totally unrelated one. That makes me think you some how want to divert attention away from Revelation 8. Now, why would you want to do that?
The reason I want to do that is to show that Revelations is purely imaginary.
As to my 'ignoring' the particular part of Revelations you had in mind, that is because YOU have to make you case, not make claims and expect us to look up your evidence for you.
The passage you refer to is equally fanciful with angels standing before God, a third of the earth burning up and the star 'Wormwood' fallen to heaven being given a key to shafts of the bottomless pit.
A Child could probably see this was a heavenly being opening the pits of hell and that fiery aerial mountain being Jesus.
Another child might take the passage in context with the rumblings, earthquakes, hail and fire mixed with (SOME RED SUBSTANCE - if I may use your paraphrasing technique )and see it as a vision of an earthquake with cherry -red magma.
Another, not up to the intellectual abilities of that child, might simply follow the cherry - picking of the evangelist site he had browsed and represent it as a vision of an 'asteroid' (it could equally be a large meteor which is a different thing altogether) crashing red hot into the sea.
I recently had the privilege of watching a 6 - second bolide flying over London with flames spreading out each side and even the rock cooling off for a second. It is not unlikely that many ancients - including the greeks, as I pointed out and you have seen fit to ignore - were familiar with such phenomenon and believed that rocks fell from heaven, as they do.
But to claim that Revelations is about a meteor rather than a volcano or even just an assembly of vague apocalyptic images rather than any particular occurrence is quite unjustified.
It is further utterly unjustified to link it with the findings of science as regards ancient meteor strikes and the possibility of another one and claim that the Bible writers knew all about it.
It is further totally unjustified by any stretch of the imagination to claim that Revelations shows advanced astronomical knowledge about asteroids, meterors, comets, ancient meteor (or small asteroid) strikes, with the intended implication that it could only have been written by a being with knowledge not current at the time.
It does not. It absolutely does not. Not even a reasonably intelligent child, once it was pointed out to them, could believe that. Only someone whose critical faculties have been warped by Faith could belief any such claim.
I think you can stick this one in the bin with the walking snake.
I thought French peasants were the first to notice that rocks could fall to the Earth. Someone named Ernst Chladini seems to have been the one to popularize it in science.
You may be right there. Yes, it is a bit too easy to accredit science with every discovery when many such discoveries were made by non - scientists and science then took note. As in quinine or the discovery of the Nile.
Science can of course claim the credit for finding out where these heavenly rocks came from (and also the Nile, since the fellows who were living there probably wouldn't have known or cared) and that's really the issue here.
Those French peasants, the greeks in Ephesus and probably those in the fertile crescent knew about rocks falling from the sky. But they had no knowledge of their being the remains of dead comerts in an intersecting orbit much less have any idea about the planetoids in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, which only science would later discover. It was certainly not known to John of Patmos and that is what our pal C34 here is trying to claim.
The reason I want to do that is to show that Revelations is purely imaginary.
As to my 'ignoring' the particular part of Revelations you had in mind, that is because YOU have to make you case, not make claims and expect us to look up your evidence for you.
The passage you refer to is equally fanciful with angels standing before God, a third of the earth burning up and the star 'Wormwood' fallen to heaven being given a key to shafts of the bottomless pit.
A Child could probably see this was a heavenly being opening the pits of hell and that fiery aerial mountain being Jesus.
Another child might take the passage in context with the rumblings, earthquakes, hail and fire mixed with (SOME RED SUBSTANCE - if I may use your paraphrasing technique )and see it as a vision of an earthquake with cherry -red magma.
Another, not up to the intellectual abilities of that child, might simply follow the cherry - picking of the evangelist site he had browsed and represent it as a vision of an 'asteroid' (it could equally be a large meteor which is a different thing altogether) crashing red hot into the sea.
I recently had the privilege of watching a 6 - second bolide flying over London with flames spreading out each side and even the rock cooling off for a second. It is not unlikely that many ancients - including the greeks, as I pointed out and you have seen fit to ignore - were familiar with such phenomenon and believed that rocks fell from heaven, as they do.
But to claim that Revelations is about a meteor rather than a volcano or even just an assembly of vague apocalyptic images rather than any particular occurrence is quite unjustified.
It is further utterly unjustified to link it with the findings of science as regards ancient meteor strikes and the possibility of another one and claim that the Bible writers knew all about it.
It is further totally unjustified by any stretch of the imagination to claim that Revelations shows advanced astronomical knowledge about asteroids, meterors, comets, ancient meteor (or small asteroid) strikes, with the intended implication that it could only have been written by a being with knowledge not current at the time.
It does not. It absolutely does not. Not even a reasonably intelligent child, once it was pointed out to them, could believe that. Only someone whose critical faculties have been warped by Faith could belief any such claim.
I think you can stick this one in the bin with the walking snake.
The Book of Revelation is written in such a way so that non believers can deny it. It is written so you can say it is a fanciful writing only. Yet those same verses are understood by many Christians around the world. Yet the verse in question you continue to ignore. And I believe you ignore it, because you know that John does present an accurate account of an Asteroid. To suggest this was a volcano would be total nonsense. Because when volcanos explode, it would never be described as it were a great burning mountain was cast into the sea. It would clearly state it was a mountain. Not something (as it were). Greeks may of thought rocks fell from heaven. Yet just like the Bible I guess science did not believe their account either. And a falling rock is one thing. A falling mountain is something else again. And no one but the Bible suggested that such a thing was possible.
To suggest this was a volcano would be total nonsense. Because when volcanos explode, it would never be described as it were a great burning mountain was cast into the sea. Nonsense you say? The tops of volcanoes near the ocean could NEVER be cast into the sea? Really?
Question: ever been to Hawaii, Tom? Those VERY mountainous islands are ENTIRELY volcanic, in fact they are mostly old volcano cones, and from time to time, as with the the famous Hanauma Bay {Oahu Island, HI} long-dead volcano, they do indeed explode and then collapse into the ocean. Ditto with the old island of Krakatoa...
(BTW, this link provides a quick geological summary of the hundreds of other volcanic islands which would fit the biblical description...
So... demonstrably, you FAIL again. ("Time to Learn, so you don't Burn...")
It would clearly state it was a mountain.
The bible rarely "clearly states", as you so often tell us when you provide yet another ultra-ambiguous Tommo-Interpretation. It does not "clearly state" anything about dinosaurs, it doe not "clearly state" anything about Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons, woolly mammoths up in Alaska, the Ming Dynasty, DNA, the Nordic explorers crossing the Atlantic Ocean, our solar system's other planets, ice flows and glaciers, the then prolific 40+M species on the planet during Jesus' time, and on and on ad infinitum.
It's a very local fairytale book of very limited scope, Tom, and you know it.
Greeks may of ("have", not "of") thought rocks fell from heaven. Yet just like the Bible I guess science did not believe their account either. And a falling rock is one thing. A falling mountain is something else again. And no one but the Bible suggested that such a thing was possible.
You just have to be open to suggestion, Tommo. Which we know you certainly are, if the suggestion points in the right direction.
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BTW, for our more open-minded readers, I hasten to point out that "science" is but a relatively modern toolset established to validate and standardize the questioning and answering process that man has always enjoyed. and to replace random prophecy and uniformed decisions, the staple of religious sects and dogma. An early "spiritual" observation of some amazing but inexplicable celestial event by a prophet in biblical times was fine and dandy, but if it wasn't corroborated by someone else, it can now be considered an "irreproducible result", for which science, with it's long-established sense of humor, even has a journal:
Nowadays, evil "science" (at least Tommo sees it) actually requires a full description of the process, equipment, methodologies and references, as well as the names of co-authors and prior research whihc the current study may be based on, for any research results to be considered potentially valid and credible and publishable. By the time it's in print in Science, or Nature, The Journal of Geological Science, or any other credible publication, it's passed muster with an academically distinguished and published panel.
By the way, as a glaring example, the Creationist Institute is in no way even vaguely credible since it panders to the suggestive, is highly biased solely towards a Christian God entity, provides absolutely no supporting documentation, and routinely ridicules honest work by real individuals who simply follow the rules of credibility. In many cases now well documented, it has also attempted to validate known prevarications (lies) by highly creative but fully debunked and in fact criminally oriented individuals and groups (the Delk footprint carver, and NAMI™ are good examples).
Thus scientist's careful and conservative declarations, per se, are entirely unlike Tom's lone-gunman simplistic, hand-waving denials and dismissals. The Lone DeRanger rides Again!
There is no such entity as "Science" as Tom tries to portray for us. No global conspiracy. There's only individual human beings, far better read and studious than Tom or the majority of the fundamentalist Christian tribe. Just reliable people who have chosen to expand our universal knowledge base, openly, vigorously and honestly through advanced education and years of defensible research.
Unfortunately, such an inevitable and truth-uncovering scientific process flies !*SMACK*! in the face of ancient-myth hell-for-leather, knee-jerk, mumbo-jumbo folk lore and fairy tales, which is exactly what the scientifically illiterate fundamentalists choose to flee from, demonize, and name-call.
As if the "Neener Neener Neener" approach to honest debate by information shunning Christian acolyte denialists carries any weight with any mature, intellectual folk, much less scientists who operate on the cutting edge of new information.
So, with that in mind, press on Tommo. You continue to amuse us all.
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Oh BTW, this morning on NPR, a university in Utah made an announcement of the discovery of the oldest flying carnivorous flying dinosaur yet found in a geological formation in Utah that dates to 125 million years ago, all counted and validated n'stuff! Holy Factual Truth, Batman! Danged Varves, huh?
The Book of Revelation is written in such a way so that non believers can deny it. It is written so you can say it is a fanciful writing only. Yet those same verses are understood by many Christians around the world. Yet the verse in question you continue to ignore. And I believe you ignore it, because you know that John does present an accurate account of an Asteroid. To suggest this was a volcano would be total nonsense. Because when volcanos explode, it would never be described as it were a great burning mountain was cast into the sea. It would clearly state it was a mountain. Not something (as it were). Greeks may of thought rocks fell from heaven. Yet just like the Bible I guess science did not believe their account either. And a falling rock is one thing. A falling mountain is something else again. And no one but the Bible suggested that such a thing was possible.
I will give it you that the fiery mountain could be seen as a description of an asteroid plunging into the sea. It could also be read as a threat of the biggest thing John of Patmos could think of plunging burning into the sea. Given the fanciful context (which is why I pointed it out) and bearing in mind that much of that sounds more like a volcano than a bolide, the suggestion that it is a prophetic vision - or memory - you don't seem too clear about it - of some event which it vaguely resembles (that asteroids are planetoid - shaped rather than mountain - shaped is a 'detail' which would of course be dismissed by you as not helpful to your case), is open to doubt.
Even if one takes it as a bolide, and bearing in mind the point agreed that the ancient greeks (according to Acts) knew about such things, one can only see it in very fanciful terms as yet another bit of punishment dished out by God and in no way does it show any advanced astronomical knowledge which is, I remind you, the point you were trying to claim.
Your sideswipe at 'science' is cheap and irrelevant and is quite obviously an attempt to pretend that scientific scepticism about events which turn out to be true should oblige us to believe without anything better than John's hellfire ravings the claims of the Bible, which are, despite your strenuous efforts, turning out, seriatem to be false.
It's unfortunate that so many religious people fall into the modern snare of trying to prove that religion is as good as science using scientific reasonign to do it.
Science is good, science is great, but it's only one form of reason man has at his disposal. Science has certainly existed as long as people have been thinking. It was there in our caves and campfires, it was there in our rafts and pottery, it was there in our religion. But in our best and fullest moments as a species, science has worked alongside and together with our other forms of reason like emotion, morality, pure logic, aesthetics and prophecy. And then the answers we come to are so much more complexly textured. They last longer.
It seems like we have a tendency to get unbalanced in society, though. For centuries favoring religion and prophecy as forms of reason and trying to shoehorn science and artistic reason into them. Or then swinging too far the other way so that science and materialism rule us and we lose the ability to even understand the prophecies and words of God that were once so clear to us.
Try to look into your mind and see how much more it can do than just figure out why that rock fell from the sky.
So am I to assume that Urbain Le Verrier created Neptune?
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)and see it as a vision of an earthquake with cherry -red magma.
