The point is you were pointing to nowhere.
Except I am not talking about the Dead Sea. The paper, which you referenced, is talking about the Med. The rivers that you want to say watered Eden would have been too salty.
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. No, the Nile and other rivers were as fresh then as they are now. Their water was protected from the salt below by several hundred feet of clastic sediment that now lays atop the major salt layers in the Med basin.
Farms built atop salt domes, (think Avery Is. in Louisiana, where they grow tabasco peppers) has fresh water all around it because the salt is covered by a few hundred feet of sediment. Thus the peppers grow well.
There is anothr process that keeps the Nile river and other rivers water fresh. As the sediment pours over the continental shelf the salt does not remain static. Salt is mobile. I was geophysical manager for the Gulf of Mexico for most of the 1990s and we dealt with salt tectonics all the time. Even the engineers had to worry about salt movement destroying the borehole.
Anyway, below are two pictures of seismic data which I have marked up. The salt is between reflectors N and M, which are the bottom and top of the Messinian salt, respectively. Salt was the lowest part of the M. This is from the article by Yossi Mart . William Ryan, âThe Levant Slumps and the Phoenician Structures: collapse features along the continental margin of the southeastern Mediterranean Seaâ Mar Ceophys Res (2007) 28:297-307
The bumps on this second seismic line are diffractions and they probably come from small amounts of remnant salt in that area, but even that wonât make the river water salty.
OK gbob. Science is not the handmaiden of myth. There is no IF. Except as science fiction but this doesnât compare with Julian (as in Dame) Mayâs fabulous The Many-Colored Land. And we can all do one stop short of Upney. I am one of those who have at least as courageously as yourself, âsurrendered to the atheist criticisms that the Bible is full of factless, scientific nonsense and then believe it carries divine theology anywayâ. I am sure which of us is more barking mad. And yes we both are. But there are many perfectly sane people who are in either camp. And as Viktor Frankl concluded in Auschwitz, any purpose will do. Your tale violates the science dog by making it wag. In excruciating detail.
The ancient Hebrew writing school that worked on Genesis for centuries, half a millennium, up until the C6th BCE, if weâre very generous, had at least as much sense of significance [as] to what they wrote as you[rself]. At least an order of magnitude or two more and more in justification. And God has no problems at all. Just yearn back when we do. Thatâll do it. If anything. I see nothing supernaturally unintended, no witless occult knowledge of the late Messinian stage of the Miocene, in anything they wrote.
And your arrogance, your dismissal of the humility of God the ground of eternal, infinite being is nauseating.
There is no need to look at Eden as anything other than faerie, although that denigrates both, so there is need. Eden is a timelessly beautiful, [the] most highly evolved, humane creation myth of all [its] contemporaries and ancestors. It takes more courage than trying to ice it on the salt cake of science by making IT correctly subservient to science. One can see the evolution of God far above the gods. The Hebrew peoples were chosen by their memes to a remarkable degree. A degree sufficient to let silver linings of the divine possibly limn the dark clouds of the Bronze-Iron Age. And yes, you go to exquisite lengths to fit your glass slipper to Cinderellaâs foot. My favourite story in Genesis is Abraham under the Terebinth Trees at Mamre (we have one in Leicester, Quercus coccifera, in the University Botanical Garden). The God evolved there is still Killer, but incredibly reasonable.
The falsest dichotomy Iâve come across for many a year. The Bible is a true evolving library of childe humanity reaching for significance. There is no falsity in that. No insincerity. No lie. I have no choice in knowing that. Just as I have none in accepting science and rationality beyond it. And in the turbulent void between those utterly separate, non-competing gyres, each occupying half a world or a star in a binary, the possibility of God is my heartâs desire.
Thank you for your factless opinion. I must say when you actually put a paragraph together you are eloquent. But just know, God loves you Martin even if you donât think so. God gave me my Turkish translator experience because he knew I would need it during my doubtful years. I am sure he has tried something with you to, even if you canât now think of what it was.
The Mediterranean flood happened. Everyone knows it. The geologic data does put the rivers mentioned in Genesis as pouring into the eastern Mediterranean. And it is a fact that the Bible said that Eden was in the Eastâit didnât say East of what. That is scientific fact. So how did Genesis get that info into it? blind chance?
Youâre welcome gbob. Facts are useless once and only viewed through a flawed, distorting prism. Godâs love is in Christ and all the love I receive and am barely able and allowed to give: my wife lets me love her. Not in any âGod-incidence ([coincidence/]incidents)â.
I have one gob smacking coincidence and the kindness of strangers but none of that is Him interfering in reality. I rely on Him not. His faith must be sufficient for me.
I know the Med flood happened. Iâve known it as long as you. Your use of data and your fact are utterly underwhelming. Genesis has no info except a surprising summary of human social evolution from gatherer-hunter to city slicker via pastoralist thru farmer with metallurgist and musician on the way.
Genesis works best as occult free literature.
You know, Freedom is a wonderful thing. Godâs gift to us. And it means we can all have differing opinions. I wonât bother to try to disabuse you of yours. I am glad your system works for you. This one works for me. We should rejoice in that, brother. But somehow you seem less than pleased that I have found my way. Some how it is important for you to get me to give this up. What is the big deal if I delude myself or you delude yourself? We at least have the freedom to do it. In Christâs love.
Jesusâ racism (looking back down the wrong end of the telescope in modern hindsight - not the article, which is excellent, but the charge).
gbob. Thank you. Brother. I once bought the complete works of Francis Schaeffer, going cheap. No wonder. I read the first page and no more. He attacked the culture that birthed him. Apologetics are best done from a position of⌠apology, of humility. As rhetorical devices. You donât have to mean it : ) Telling people with the vinegar that they are insane cowards will not catch flies. And itâs extremely suggestive of fear and its projection. I made a friend of a brilliant atheist by being agreeable. Being aggressive or even defensive would have ruined everybodyâs day. I donât want you to give up your religion, just change how you sell it. Which I see you have. You are appealing to something other in me. The big deal, as you are instinctively feeling toward, isnât delusion. Itâs honey. Christian love. I.e. transcendent in fully human ignorance. Thatâs how you catch flies. As your change of tack has caught me.
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You are correct of course, salesmanship is important. I know I have not been good at that. I also know I never would have arrived at a place where I have an entire historical scenario for the early scripture had I not been absolutely attached to fact vs nonfact, and having honored the words of Scripture.
Over the 50 years I have worked this problem I lost geologic friends for my merely being a YEC, got fired from a job for merely being a YEC(but my performance review was top). When I left yec, I was called lots of names, and lost most of my YEC friends. Old earth Christians didnât really like what I had to say about the need for historicity and so for a while, atheists were the only people who paid any attention to me, but it was because they were using me to advance their agenda. When I took my anti-yec web pages down, the atheists called me all sorts of bad names for saying I no longer wanted to be used to destroy peopleâs faith. I left this area from 2004 to late last year with occasional looks at the literature to see if my views had been disproven. I have been scared, and desensitized by my years of struggle to come to this point. We humans are social animals and we want to be in a crowd, but I have lived outside of, and rejected, all the various popular view for most of my life. Those views are YEC, OEC/accommodation, and atheism. As Marshall Janzen said of me when I first came here, âYou are one of a kindâ. And I am. Sadly, that tends to make a wounded animal response and you are correct to point it out. Thank you.
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Martin, you and I share something else in common. We both sound atheistic at times. We both have been influenced strongly by the atheistic criticisms of the scripture. We just took different solutions to the problem.
gbob. Iâm moved mate. Very moved. The sub-cultures, âethnesâ you have experienced are almost totally alien to me, despite being a cult member for 20 years. You have suffered all round, far more than I. And I have added to that for which Iâm sorry [I had got quite flinty eyed I admit], but itâs led to this meeting of minds, hearts. Dang! Moved again! How unmanly. It is an honour to further your acquaintance Glen. Thank you my friend.
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Indeed Glen. One has to do what one has to do. I feel we have a common overarching metanarrative. Looking for love.
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I gave you a heartâmy 2nd one. I know it was a little late for Valentines Day. lol
Wow, I just gave you a 3rd heart. I am moved that you are moved.
Luckily weâre too old too get a room Glen. And how could even my heart of sedimentary cryptocrystalline quartz chert not be moved?
When I wrote the last note, I thought, someone was going to tell us to get a room, but thought it might not be appreciated here on this forum. lol
We all have soft spots in our hearts. If we didnât, we would not have responded to Jesusâ call. Yes, we both are hard nosed guys, able to defend our positions. While I was living in the UK, we got a new country manager, Chuck, with whom I had worked in the US. We had had a somewhat rocky relationship. But to ease our dealings in the UK, I took him to a Schlumberger picnic his first weekend in the UK. One of the salesmen I worked with cornered Chuck and told him that I was a real hard-nose negotiator. Chuck replied, âI can assure you Ian that the hard goes much deeper than the nose!â lol
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How much time does a cube need to exist?
Einstein in spacetime, said reality is a cube, but he could not convince any one, of the idea.
Take the three dimensions, length being the first. Depth, being the second a flat plain. Height giving 4 sides, but nothing to bind the physical aspects of the space. Time, or the breadth of Godâs love is the 4th dimension holding space in the form of a cube together. If one could measure from a spot in Antarctica up through South America through the north pole, and then back down to Antarctica, it would give a good indication of the length. Some have tried to see how far into Antartica one could go.
Being a square, all sides being equal, a total volumetric space measurement. I mean we could, if we had exact measurement of one end of Antarctica in a straight line through the north pole to an end again on the opposite side, figure how much area above us that heaven consists of. Of course earth may not be in the exact middle, and there may not be an equal amount of area below the earth as above. Unless the north pole is the exact center of the cube?
The motion of the earth turning would be like a washing machine. The âearthâ would be spinning in the center with an ocean of water between the central continents and Antarctica. There is still centrifugal rotational gravity force for those obects launched by humans in the last 70 years. Revelation says there are four angels at the four corners blowing with four winds causing all to turn as in a rotation effect. Revelation 7:1
One cannot measure from east to west on a current map. It just keeps going in an infinite circle. But if you take a map and put 3 equal dots (Einsteinâs 3 dimensional spacetime) at the north pole, it would cause the map to form a cube placing Antarctica as a land border around all 4 sides of the map. East and west would follow the land in the center still as a never-ending circle, but you could then measure all the sides with the north pole in the center.
My question is, would time calculation change based on the shape of space itself as a cube, and not some virtual math reality, that by math, we think does exist? Also how would that effect quantum physics?
When? Where?
Einstein said reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
And this certainly wasnât Einsteinâs view of space-time. That was more the previous Euclidean view which he proved was incorrect. According to Einstein, space-time is a 2-sided cone-like structure.
P.S. Any picture which sticks a plain inbetween and calls that the present is wrong and displays a serious lack of understanding of relativity (which includes the relativity of simultaneity).
Even Minkowski?
There is no volume either. Remember time does not change in the whole of existence. It only changes while living in existence.
That cone may be the math needed to find the area, and even the length of the plain, if you put a finite time in.
I am no expert, just asking questions. The dot in the center, I guess would be existence?
I didnât follow very much of your post above, but much of it did sound suspiciously like a wordy cloak around what will end up being a variation of a flat-earth theory of some sort.
What is âcentrifugal rotational gravity forceâ?
So are you positing, then, on the strength of this Revelation passage that these winds are causing planetary (or apparent celestial) rotation?