Re: Round earth in judaism

On Tue, 9 May 2006 18:31:29 +0000 (UTC), in
soc.culture.jewish.moderated , "Lisa" <lisa@xxxxxxxxxxxx> in
<1147199366.203087.81380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Yisroel Markov wrote:
On Fri, 5 May 2006 18:10:07 +0000 (UTC), "Lisa" <lisa@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
said:

[snip]

There was a major, localized flood in Mesopotamia not long before the
beginning of the Early Bronze Age. Me, I'd equate that to the flood
that happened at the time of the Tower of Babel. As far as the Flood
of Noah goes, I'll point out that what ice does slowly, water does
quickly. And that there's actually no evidence for the Ice Age having
been caused by frozen water. It's just that if it was liquid water, it
must have been absolutely catastrophic, and there are scientists who
get squicked out at the thought of catastrophes, because they screw up
the linearity of the data.

Hmm... I used to live in glacier country. Those huge boulders don't
look like they could have been carried by water. Look at the same land
from space, and you see gouges that don't look like like stream beds.

I have. And you'd be surprised at what floodwaters can do.

http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/ They can do a lot. But they can't
make U shaped valleys. And floods can't make table mountains. Take a
look at Hekla volcano. http://www.simnet.is/gardarj/mapa/hekla.htm It
formed during the ice age. When lave hits ice it forms different rocks
than when it hit air. There are several thousand feet of ice formed
rock on Hekla before we find the air formed. *Thousands* of feet of
ice.

And we're
not talking Katrina-sized floodwaters, either, remember.

We don't have enough data to answer the question. That sucks. But
consider.

Uniformatarians believe, as a matter of faith or gut certainty, that
the Earth... well, "as it is now, so has it ever been."

That kind of Uniformitarianism was never real and that debate ended
well over 200 years ago. The modern notion of Uniformitarianism is
that the *rules* are the same. And it is not "gut", there are ways to
check this. For example, supernova SN1987A.
(http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/oct01.html) It exploded
some 170,000 years ago*. We saw it in 1987. You can learn about the
explosion by looking at the character of the light. If the rules were
different the light would look different. Read the above essay. Or
look up the Oklo natural nuclear reactor some 1,7 *billion* years ago.
If there were even tiny changes in the rules we would detect them in
the products of that reactor.

*The notion of that supernova is itself troubling if you want to
assert a young Earth. Did HaShem make the light of a star that did not
exist that just happens to look like a star that blew up?

That there've
been no fundamental changes in the major phenomena that we see now.
The Earth has always orbited the Sun at the same distance.

No, it has not.

The Moon
has always been there, also at the same distance.

Very wrong. Because of tides the Moon has moved further from the Earth
and the Earth has slowed down. Not only does this fit our
understanding of gravity but we can look at fossils (coral reefs in
particular). These fossils show monthly and yearly cycles and the
number of months (lunar orbits) per year has decreased over time. Read
this: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html

With very minor
exceptions, such as meteorites and the occasional asteroid every 65
million years or so, all of the mass currently on Earth has been here
since the planet formed.

Is any of that supportable? Can any of it be proven? Well, no. But
if you don't assume those things, you find yourself in an
epistemological chaos. Your conclusions can only be shaky, and you
have to, in all honesty, conclude that we may never really know exactly
what happened. The kind of mind that goes into the various scientific
disciplines is poorly prepared for such a statement.

You seem to choose nihilism over uncertain knowledge.

There is evidence, though not proof, that the pull of gravity on our
planet was weaker than it currently is.

No, there is not. There is lots of evidence (see above) that it has
not changed at all.

The fact that the average size
of plant and animal life used to be so much larger certainly implies
that. The size of many of the dinosaurs and the fact that pterodons
flew is really hard to reconcile with our current gravitational force.

Not really. I am not sure you understand the implications of this
claim. Gravity is one of the fundamental forces of the Universe. It
helps hold the Earth together, it helps maintain the Sun. Lessen
gravity and you don't get bigger animals, you get an unstable (as in a
great big boom!) Sun.

Was mass added to the Earth at some point? Suppose a comet had been
captured by the Earth and the force of its change of momentum was
enough to melt off huge amounts of water. Calculate the force of the
water that would have hit the earth. Calculate its temperature as
well.

A comet much smaller than that hit 65,000,000 years ago. It killed off
most of the large animals. Hit the Earth with something large enough
to add significantly to the mass and you will melt the crust, at the
least, or just blow it up.

There's just too much in the way of possibility. Again, it's not
currently provable, and may never be.

It is the stuff of bad science fiction.

But science cannot rule it out.

Sure it can. You are hand waving here. Do you make the same kinds of
claims about surgery? Building construction?

It cannot say with authority that the flood didn't happen.

Again, we sure can. Absent direct action by something outside the laws
of science covering up the evidence, it did not happen. How did the
ice caps form? How did kangaroos and koalas get to Australia (and only
Australia)? How did they get to the one place with kangaroo fossils
while opossums went to the one place with opossum fossils? How did
sloths get to South America? How did we get this vast diversity of
life in 4,000 years?

Only that
science can't support the idea that it did. And quite frankly, the
modern definitions of science, which rule out things that might have
occurred on the basis of non-replicability or non-falsifiability, are
not logically compelling. They're of pragmatic value, but cannot be
used to say, "This did not happen."

And yet you use a computer made by science. You fly in an airplane. I
suspect you go to the top of big buildings and take anti-biotics.

I have problems envisioning how a 40-day rain would create such
formations. Especially if it was uniform, and thus there were no
streams, except those flowing from higher to lower ground (if that's
what happened; I do like the "literally 15 amot" midrash).

You're assuming ground flooding. Overflowing seas. That's not what
the Torah describes.

Assuming an 18-inch ama, 15 amot in 40 days amounts to just under 7
inches of water rise per day, some of it from the "springs of the
deep" (probably seas rising). Powerful, but not nearly catastrophic
enough to create these formations (which should also be uniform,
rather than concentrated in the northern latitudes).

Not if the water came from outside our atmosphere. It would most
certainly hit in one particular direction.

This makes things worse. Rain releases heat when it falls. Assuming an
even rain as described above and you probably boil the water. Put it
all in one place and things get worse. And that does not even discuss
the horrible storms Noah would have experienced. But you are giving
the wrong answer. Just say "God did it". That is acceptable for the
cause of the Flood, that is what the Torah says. The problem is not
the cause, it is the results.

BTW, what do you make of the wind (Brei*** 8:1) that calmed the
water? Wind usually does the opposite.

Have you ever seen Minnesota Fats do trick pool shots? Anyway, the
wind did some strange things at the Red Sea, too. Wind is an issue of
vectors. Wind blowing in the right direction for the right duration
can cancel out other vectors.

<grin> I almost said, "It isn't rocket science", but in way, I guess it
kind of is.

--
Matt Silberstein

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