Hi Christy.
Generally I keep my big mouth closed. At our church we have the rule that the Bible tells the historical truth and to behave accordingly. I have a different opinion, but I see the wisdom to prevent the useless and harmful discussions that don’t solve anything at all, because almost everybody is basically unwilling to change his/her opinion.
But honestly, I have more problems with the attitude of the settled Biologos members.
I have to add that I’m a bit exceptional, my I.Q. is beyond the scale, “where numbers have lost their meaning” said the man who tested me. (Consider that you were living in a world where everybody had far less than half your I.Q.-score. How would you handle that?)
Brad Kramer started this summer a conversation, “Do humans have a non-physical soul?“ in the category Theology/Philosophy. I followed the discussion but did not join it. It became a typical talk between alpha people, very intellectually and very friendly, but without a yes or no result.
What disturbed me was the absence of result and the inevitable popping up of Plato. At school I learned about Plato that he forced opponents to suicide by drinking poison, and about his stubborn refusal to test whether the idea’s he dreamed up were true. How can one like such a person and work? In addition, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, astronomer, co-inventor of radar, inventor of the stationary communication satellite, inventor of the satellite belt, teacher, one of the top three SF-writers, just to name a few of his capabilities, said about Plato: “If had not been there, then we would have gone to the stars two thousand years ago.”.
How would you say politely and without hurting feelings that there is solid proof that we have a soul, that our soul is possibly 4D, one dimension more than our body, that the soul is the bearer of our memory and our personality, that here are many proofs and testimonies on www.iands.org, that the study of near-death-experiences is now the domain of mainly atheists while it should be the domain of Biologos. In addition, to me it seems possible that our soul has us.
I’m not an alpha but a beta person. I have usually a different approach and also faster and better results than other people, or even completely different results.
Galileo was right but was not believed. Many other people ran into the same problem.
Watch Margaret Heffernan: Dare to disagree | Talk Video | TED.com and learn how doctors killed many babies at a single hospital, because they refused to let themselves be convinced by solid proof that Rontgen radiation is generally fatal for unborn children. And the same happened in all hospitals all over the world, resulting in many millions dead babies. For no other reasons than arrogance and stubbornness.
As example of my different approach a few serious questions, related to Genesis. Please try to answer them, before reading the answers below, 1) can a stone float on gas? 2) look at a map or globe of the Earth, what is clearly visible but never noticed? 3) give a different, more worldly and more likely interpretation of the story about the Tower of Babel.
On Internet I found an article by Mr Paul Seely, a theologian, “proving” that the Flood was not global by stating that the ice on Greenland would have floated away if the Flood had been global. I do not doubt his intentions and integrity, but it is my considered opinion that he only proved that he does not understand the principle and mechanics of floating: the ice could not float because it was glued to the ground by millennia of pressure and frost, and floating requires that the water can exert upward pressure on the bottom of the ice layer.
Prof. Robert Coe is a geophysicist whose primary research involves the application of paleomagnetism to a broad spectrum of problems. He did much research on Pole-shifts. Planets have generally a magnetic field, but only if they are turning and have a very hot gaseous interior. Why? Because generating a magnetic field requires an electric current. An electric current is a moving electrical charge. At home we use electricity by letting the negative electrons run from a spot with low tension to a spot with high tension. Generators produce electricity by forcing electrons in opposite direction by magnetic fields. Inside the Earth it is done completely different Atoms have a nucleus consisting of one or more positively charged protons and an equal number negatively charged electrons. If the atoms are part of a very hot gas, then the collisions of the atoms beat electrons out of their orbit, resulting in positively charged atoms. The Earth is turning East, so the charged atoms are also moving East, which means that an electric current is moving East, causing a magnetic field in and around our Earth. Some 12 to 25 times during each million years the axis of the magnetic field changes at irregulars intervals its position in relation to the turning axis of the crust. Those changes are called “Pole-shifts”.
But Pole-shift is misleading and incorrect name. The crust and the interior under the crust are both turning flywheels. And the mass of the crust is completely negligible compared to the mass under the crust. So it has to be the crust that shifts and the correct name is crust-shift. Have a look at Cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis - Wikipedia. Charles Hapgood was completely correct. But he and Albert Einstein lacked only the insight that the interior of the Earth is mainly gas and that the Earth is continuously is expanding, which causes additional unbalance of the crust. Also the size and the speed of the floods caused by the shifts are beyond the imagination of anyone, until it is explained. Geologists are still convinced that the interior of the Earth is solid and fail or refuse to see that if it is solid, then there has to be a temperature gradient of a few degrees Celsius per kilometer depth, which means that the temperature has to be above the critical temperature,of any known material within an additional thousand kilometer depth. That is why it has to be gas. And then there are still several thousands kilometers below, where the gas-law rules, meaning that the temperature goes up with the pressure to 6-figure numbers. Aside from this there is according to geologists more water under the crust than above the crust. And that water has to be steam.
I have repeatedly tried to contact Prof. Coe, but I never got any reaction at all. Maybe you or someone you know is able to ask his opinion about this.
The pressure and temperature immediately under the crust are some 20,000 bar and some 2,000°C. The specific weight is 3,000 kg/m3. The specific weight of stone is some 2,500 kg/m3, which implies that a stone will float there on gas. Vapor of basalt will condensate against the somewhat cooler underside of the crust, forming liquid lava, floating on gas. This has the advantage that any new crack or hole in the crust is immediately filled. Please note that geologists do not know why, how and where lava is formed. Ask them where and how lava is formed if you cannot believe me.
If you look at a globe of the Earth, you see continents and large islands surrounded by water. In Genesis you can read that the Spirit of God was hovering above the wild waters. (Dutch translation). After the creation Earth had a crust of granite, completely covered by a worldwide ocean. Then the Earth started expanding, which caused that the crust broke into pieces. The cracks were filled with lava, which started to form the bottom of the future oceans. The expansion continued and slowly the volume in the cracks increased, finally resulting in dry land on the pieces of the original crust.
The Tower of Babel. Previous human civilizations had lots of time to emigrate into Space and colonize other planets or to build habitats near another star and live there. (Don’t be too surprised if they are not Homo Sapiens, but Neanderthals and/or Denisovans.) Their descendants are still in Space and must have visited, in my opinion, Earth for fresh food and human company. At least that is my interpretation of the “Sons of the gods” who are mentioned in the Bible. Some local ruler or warlord must have dreamed to go also high in the sky and steal his share of the riches of those spacers. Not hampered by lack of knowledge about space, the distances, the lowering of air pressure and temperature with hight, and worse, the lack of knowledge of building towers. If you design a tower, you have to do that top-down. If you have reached the maximum weight capacity of a wall, then the next meter of that wall has to be slightly thicker. because it has to bear the weight from above plus its own weight. And every next meter will have to be the same percentage thicker. Presume that after 40 meters the wall thickness has doubled, then the next 40 m the wall thickness has to double again. Start with a wall thickness of 0.20 m, then the wall thickness doubles every 40 m height, which means that the wall thickness for each additional 400 m will require a 1,000 times thicker wall as foundation… Start with 0,2 m and 400 m lower the wall has to be 200 m thick. Building a mountain is cheaper and easier.
Because they did not start with really thick walls, the lower part of the wall stated crumbling under its own weight before they had reached some 100 m high…The builders did not understand why their building material failed and could not come to an agreement about a problem. “Not speaking each others language” still means not being able to agree about something. The failure of that pretentious project and the loss of the investments that had been made, must have caused a severe economic crisis, total collapse of the local government and moving of the population.
It seems to me that Biologos should slightly modify its approach and look for several subjects more for physical explanations instead of religious explanations. Noah and his crew survived the Flood. But they were not the only survivor group. That he survived was a miracle, but there were also 32 other small survivor groups.
Other subjects deserve a more religious approach. Many people believe that death is the end of our existence and are scared of death. Proving that death is like birth, a passage to the next phase of our existence, might reduce the fear for death. It also might reduce the sorrow of people who lose loved ones. And it might reduce murder: getting rid of someone by killing him is no longer a solution as your victim will wait until you die and will get even before a Higher Judge.