Bible science parallels

Festus

I've often been fascinated by the regularity with which science comes up with something that "mirrors" what we already know from the Bible

Take this article NS 2785

New Scientist wrote:

IN THE beginning, there was water. Earth's life-sustaining liquid came from the dust from which the planet was born, a new look at these particles suggests, and not simply from collisions with objects that later crashed into the planet from space.

contrasted with

Genesis wrote:

[1] In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. [2] And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters.

Anyone got any others?

Morbert

I don't think this is a worthwhile exercise.

The appearance of new animals in genesis is all wrong.

Zombrex

Festus wrote: »

I've often been fascinated by the regularity with which science comes up with something that mirrors what we already know from the Bible

Take this article NS 2785


contrasted with


Anyone got any others?

Genesis has God creating the "light" after the Earth and the water, then separating them into day and night.

That doesn't correlate to any current scientific understanding of the formation of the Sun and the planets.

Don't most Christians consider Genesis a non-literal metaphor or poem for the origin of the universe and mankind?

Festus

Morbert wrote: »

I don't think this is a worthwhile exercise.

The appearance of new animals in genesis is all wrong.

Doesn't have to be Genesis

Festus

Wicknight wrote: »

Genesis has God creating the "light" after the Earth and the water, then separating them into day and night.

That doesn't correlate to any current scientific understanding of the formation of the Sun and the planets.

Don't most Christians consider Genesis a non-literal metaphor or poem for the origin of the universe and mankind?

Looking for similar parallels not a critique or analysis of Genesis.

Genesis puts water first. Science puts water from the begining.

Both statements have an earth covered with water.

Morbert

Festus wrote: »

Doesn't have to be Genesis

My point is science does not mirror the Bible.

Genghiz Cohen

Before this goes any further.
It is easy to see patterns once you know what you are looking for.
Your job now it to find some new knowledge in the Bible. Not look back and match some verse with current understanding.
The Qur'an also shows how some knowledge was in the book before it was discovered by science.

Festus

Morbert wrote: »

My point is science does not mirror the Bible.

I'm not looking for reflection. I'm thinking concurrency and support along parallel lines.

In the case outlined it was long thought that water could not exist on a hot earth and had to arrive from elsewhere thereby contradicting the Biblical account that water was always there.
Science now says that water was always there.

Festus

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Before this goes any further.
It is easy to see patterns once you know what you are looking for.
Your job now it to find some new knowledge in the Bible. Not look back and match some verse with current understanding.
The Qur'an also shows how some knowledge was in the book before it was discovered by science.

Not looking for patterns. Looking for parallels.

Not looking for new knowledge in the Bible. Looking for new knowledge in science that was already recorded in the Bible.

Looking back at some verse and match it with current understanding is acceptable and is to an extent the purpose of this exercise.

nozzferrahhtoo

I think what the users above are trying to say to you... before a breakdown in communication results in agro of any kind.... is that there are two different ways you can engage in the exercise at hand and it is not clear from your one example which you intend to engage in.

The first is finding genuine parallels where you can honestly hold it up and say that the bible clearly predicted the knowledge Science found.

The second however is selectively reading the text in such a way as to interpret it as predicting something.

The latter is actually insanely easy to do. Especially in cases where the Bible appears to say different things about the one subject. All you need to do then is simply quote the one that appears right and ignore the others.

For example it is perfectly valid to read some of the text in such a way as to suggest that the Bible predicted a flat earth. There is, however, also areas of the text that can be interpreted to speak of a round earth.

This form of retrospective reading of text is what gives power to texts such as the Bible, but not only the Bible. The Quran and the works of Nostradamus also rely on the readers willingness to interpret vague terms in the right way to fit current facts. So does the art of fortune telling where the seer tells the "mark" vague enough things that allow that person to later apply them to a variety of future real events

This means that the former approach, that of finding actual genuine predictions is much harder and as yet to my knowledge people have failed to come across a single one. This is the reason why people above would urge you to make a prediction before the event, rather than after it, because otherwise it is near impossible to achieve the result you claim to be currently setting out to achieve.

If however you do manage to find a parallel, a genuine one that is not just twisted interpretation and/or contradicted by a conflicting prediction elsewhere in the Bible I would be genuinely interested to hear about it. Given the number of people I have read about trying, people who have made bible study their life's work in fact, I would urge you not to get your hopes up too high at this time.

Festus

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

The first is finding genuine parallels where you can honestly hold it up and say that the bible clearly predicted the knowledge Science found.

That's what I'm looking for, or near enought for jazz as in post 1

Festus

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

This means that the former approach, that of finding actual genuine predictions is much harder and as yet to my knowledge people have failed to come across a single one. This is the reason why people above would urge you to make a prediction before the event, rather than after it, because otherwise it is near impossible to achieve the result you claim to be currently setting out to achieve.

No mention of predictions please. Not what is being sought - to introduce prediction is muddying the waters. Lets keep it simply to matters of record. Genesis records water as being present from the begining. Science, previously unsupporting, now supports this postition.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

If however you do manage to find a parallel, a genuine one that is not just twisted interpretation and/or contradicted by a conflicting prediction elsewhere in the Bible I would be genuinely interested to hear about it. Given the number of people I have read about trying, people who have made bible study their life's work in fact, I would urge you not to get your hopes up too high at this time.

If the Genesis water existed from the begining record is the only one so be it.

That is the purpose of the exercise - are there any others?

nozzferrahhtoo

This is alas my point exactly. The example in post 1 for example is just selective reading.

After all the line says that it created the earth and then moved over the waters…nothing there about how the water got there, when, by what method, or in what formation. It is simply there.

In fact the line says it was “void and empty” but then it “moved over the waters”. Containing water is, as far as I know, the opposite of “empty”. If I say “here is a glass: empty… I shall now drink the water from it” you instantly see a problem. Either there is no water, or the glass is not empty.

Again: If you operate with language this vague, you will be able to find parallels with a lot of science if you choose to read the text in the right way. This is why I think no one has yet found a single genuine parallel and know it or not you are actually engaged in the second methodology I described.

However do not give up hope and if you DO find a genuine case, please inform us.

Morbert

Festus wrote: »

I'm not looking for reflection. I'm thinking concurrency and support along parallel lines.

In the case outlined it was long thought that water could not exist on a hot earth and had to arrive from elsewhere thereby contradicting the Biblical account that water was always there.

Science now says that water was always there.

You said

I've often been fascinated by the regularity with which science comes up with something that mirrors what we already know from the Bible

Either way, the Bible is also not concurrent and parallel to science.

Festus

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

This is alas my point exactly. The example in post 1 for example is just selective reading.

After all the line says that it created the earth and then moved over the waters…nothing there about how the water got there, when, by what method, or in what formation. It is simply there.

In fact the line says it was “void and empty” but then it “moved over the waters”. Containing water is, as far as I know, the opposite of “empty”. If I say “here is a glass: empty… I shall now drink the water from it” you instantly see a problem. Either there is no water, or the glass is not empty.

Again: If you operate with language this vague, you will be able to find parallels with a lot of science if you choose to read the text in the right way. This is why I think no one has yet found a single genuine parallel and know it or not you are actually engaged in the second methodology I described.

However do not give up hope and if you DO find a genuine case, please inform us.

You're missing the point and I'd prefer to avoid selective pedantism

Science has long held that water could not have existed on earth in sufficient quantities due to the earth being too hot in its inital years and has surmised that water arrived here from elsewhere - comets, asteroids and such like. All of this is outlined in the New Scientist article and I don't think they are re-writing history.

The origin of the oceans has long been a mystery. Earth's birthplace in the dusty nebula around the young sun should have been hot enough to keep any water vaporised. So it seemed clear that the dust that coalesced to create Earth was bone dry, and that water somehow arrived later.

The Genesis account indicates that water was present from the begining. Lets not get into interpreting "the void" to mean something specific in English when we all know the Bible wasn't written in English. But if you want to play that game so be it. When you look into a glass of water what to you see? Nothing - the water is empty. No fish, no plants, no plankton it's just water and nothing else - devoid of colour, devoid or taste, devoid of life.

So where does that leave us? The earth as a dry place with oceans is discussed later so intially we have God, and a planet devoid of life covered in water. Reasonable? To me yes, to you probably not.

Now, it seems that water may after all have been present in Earth's building blocks. Simulations by Nora de Leeuw of University College London and colleagues suggest that the dust grains from which Earth formed had such a tenacious grip on water that they could have held onto the molecules despite the high temperatures.

The suggestion here is that water was not originally considered by science to have been present and was as such in conflict with the Genesis account.

According to the models, the dust grains should be able to hold onto water at temperatures up to 630 °C - high enough for them to have retained it during Earth's formation (Chemical Communications, DOI: 10.1039/C0CC02312D).
"Some of the Earth's water probably came from this source, and quite possibly most of it," says co-author Michael Drake of the University of Arizona, Tucson. As the planet coalesced from the dust, pressures and temperatures would have grown high enough to detach the water from the grains, freeing it up to become streams and oceans.

So avoiding selectivity and pedantism there appears to be a clear correlation between Genesis and current scientific thinking.

Zombrex

Morbert wrote: »

Either way, the Bible is also not concurrent and parallel to science.

I think that is a good point. Saying the Bible mirrors science because it matches one detail and then gets a whole load of other ones wrong, is simply inaccurate.

The Viking creation myth mirrors science exactly if we just ignore all the bits where it doesn't.

Festus

Morbert wrote: »

You said



Either way, the Bible is also not concurrent and parallel to science.

Fair got - I'll give you that one.

nozzferrahhtoo

Alas forcing text to match science IS selective pedantry unless it can be shown the link is in any way valid.

The article to which you refer says they have no idea how much water is on earth by this method. The suspect a large proportion but they do not know and still think it likely than another significant amount still arrived here by the methods previously proposed.

So in fact you have science here saying that water got here by many methods. This of course makes it easier to fit a vague sentence to it when claiming a “parallel”. If water came to earth in a variety of ways, you have more ducks in your barrel to hit. Had the Bible said a significant portion of water was there all the time, some more of it came from elsewhere and still more of it appeared when hydrogen met oxygen produced by photosynthesizing plants... then you might have a parallel on your hands.

However when I look into a glass of water I do not see nothing. I see water. Maybe our eye sight is operating on different levels. Suffice to say however if I describe a glass as being “empty and containing water” you would look at me funny as a glass can not be both. Forgive me if I do the same with your text.

Again how I think this is just your selective reading. "Empty" means "Empty" when you want it to and it means "Empty except for the ways in which it is not empty" when that suits more. This is, right on the dot, exactly what I meant about the willingness to create parallels rather than find parallels.

Festus

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Alas forcing text to match science IS selective pedantry unless it can be shown the link is in any way valid.

The article to which you refer says they have no idea how much water is on earth by this method. The suspect a large proportion but they do not know and still think it likely than another significant amount still arrived here by the methods previously proposed.

So in fact you have science here saying that water got here by many methods. This of course makes it easier to fit a vague sentence to it when claiming a “parallel”. If water came to earth in a variety of ways, you have more ducks in your barrel to hit. Had the Bible said a significant portion of water was there all the time, some more of it came from elsewhere and still more of it appeared when hydrogen met oxygen produced by photosynthesizing plants... then you might have a parallel on your hands.

However when I look into a glass of water I do not see nothing. I see water. Maybe our eye sight is operating on different levels. Suffice to say however if I describe a glass as being “empty and containing water” you would look at me funny as a glass can not be both. Forgive me if I do the same with your text.

Ah yes but

Ice-rich comets or asteroids from farther out in the solar system could have supplied it, but that raises a further problem. Comets are richer in deuterium, a stable heavy isotope of hydrogen, than Earth's oceans. And asteroids should have brought more platinum and other rare elements than have been found. These mismatches are difficult to explain if most of Earth's water came from impacts

So the arrival of water from other sources is conjecture.

nozzferrahhtoo

Again selective reading. The paragraph you quote said there should be "more than have been found" if and only if "Earth's water came from impacts".

Earth's water... in other words ALL of it. What is being said here is not that water coming from that source is now conjecture or disproved. It is saying that water coming SOLELY from that source appears to be unsupported due to the levels being found not matching what is expected. Which is exactly what I just said. If it comes from various sources, including comets etc. then the levels of these things found suddenly starts to make sense and various mechanisms being found would be the likely history of the thing.

Read the article again that you are now selectively quoting. It supports what I am saying in this post.

Even if it was, this was probably not the only source of our water. Some asteroids are known to be rich in water, and some of these would inevitably have crashed into Earth during the chaotic early days of the solar system. "The key for us now may be figuring how much water was brought in by the different mechanisms," he says.

Your willingness to quote one passage from the article and ignore the other is a little worrying. Finding a user that is willing to quote the bits that support their case and ignore the rest is never a good find.

Festus

Saying it was "probably not" the only source of water is not the same as saying " there were definitively other sources of water"

It may one day be shown that all water on earth orginated on earth

According to the models, the dust grains should be able to hold onto water at temperatures up to 630 °C - high enough for them to have retained it during Earth's formation (Chemical Communications, DOI: 10.1039/C0CC02312D).
"Some of the Earth's water probably came from this source, and quite possibly most of it," says co-author Michael Drake of the University of Arizona, Tucson

A little more research and "quite possibly most of it" could easily become "quite possibly all of it"

Zombrex

Festus wrote: »

Saying it was "probably not" the only source of water is not the same as saying " there were definitively other sources of water"

It may one day be shown that all water on earth orginated on earth



A little more research and "quite possibly most of it" could easily become "quite possibly all of it"

But how does any of this relate to what is describe in Genesis other than a vague similarity.

The Norse creation story

Ymir

There was nothing in the beginning but seemingly almost endless chasm called the Ginnungagap. Ginnungagap was a void like the Greek Chaos. Ginnungagap was bordered by Niflheim, which is the place of darkness and ice, far to the north; and Muspelheim, a place of fire, far to the south. Out of this chaos the first being came into existence from the drop of water when ice from Niflheim and fire from Muspelheim met.

Look, water :pac:

housetypeb

Festus wrote: »

I've often been fascinated by the regularity with which science comes up with something that "mirrors" what we already know from the Bible


What other examples have come up ?

Festus

housetypeb wrote: »

Festus wrote: »

I've often been fascinated by the regularity with which science comes up with something that "mirrors" what we already know from the Bible


What other examples have come up ?

Second Law of Thermodynamics

Hebrews wrote:

[10] And: Thou in the beginning, O Lord, didst found the earth: and the works of thy hands are the heavens.
[11] They shall perish, but thou shalt continue: and they shall all grow old as a garment.

That one you get for free

Festus wrote: »

Anyone got any others?

The general idea being for others, not Festus alone, to help with the collection

nozzferrahhtoo

Festus wrote: »

Saying it was "probably not" the only source of water is not the same as saying " there were definitively other sources of water"

There most likely was. Many of them. Firstly as the article says the levels of things like deuterium do not match the theory that this is where all our water came from. But there still are levels of deuterium there which would be explained if collisions were a source of water coming in.

Water would also have been formed in the cooling process of the planet as elements went through several stages and intereracted with each other.

Water would also have been formed when plants started to photosynthesise and thus increasing the amount of Oxygen in the atmosphere.

That there are “other” sources is almost beyond any doubt. The only questions we have to answer really is how much came from each. Your selective reading of the article that it all came at the start however is simply not held up at all.

What your last quote has got to do with Thermodynamics I seriously do not know however. I knew this area was rife with selective reading and interpretation of the text in convenient ways, but I seriously with all my imagination can not twist that quote into being anything even remotely to do with Thermodynamics in any way.

Dan133269

How about Leviticus saying that bats are birds when they are not?

PDN

Dan133269 wrote: »

How about Leviticus saying that bats are birds when they are not?

It doesn't. In Hebrew they had a word that meant 'winged-creatures'. People who translated the Bible into English, quite understandably since this was 400 years ago, used the English word 'birds' as a less clumsy way of saying 'winged creatures'.

So, while that might be interesting in terms of how language can evolve and change, it has no relevance to any discussion of science.

ISAW

Festus wrote: »

I'm not looking for reflection. I'm thinking concurrency and support along parallel lines.

In the case outlined it was long thought that water could not exist on a hot earth and had to arrive from elsewhere thereby contradicting the Biblical account that water was always there.
Science now says that water was always there.

I don't think it does. It suggests oceans were delivered to Earth over time from space.

ISAW

housetypeb wrote: »

What other examples have come up ?

to every season there is a time

science has discovered a mechanism for seasons

That organisms eventually die -
and discovered apoptosis

ISAW

PDN wrote: »

It doesn't. In Hebrew they had a word that meant 'winged-creatures'....
So, while that might be interesting in terms of how language can evolve and change, it has no relevance to any discussion of science.

I thought the thread was about parallells of similarity in concept and not about gnit picking for concrete factual difference in definition. I mean anyone can just access the skeptics Bible for that.

Festus

ISAW wrote: »

I don't think it does. It suggests oceans were delivered to Earth over time from space.

That's the point - science thinking "was" oceans delivered over time. The New Scientist article points to research that suggests that there was always enough, or at least most of what was required, water here to begin with.

nozzferrahhtoo

Actually no you are reading too much into the article again. They have not shown that all, most or even ANY of our water came here by that method. They have merely shown that that method if possible and build models of how it could have worked.

Showing X is possible and how is not the same as showing X is what in fact happened. This article you have referenced is indeed exciting stuff, but you are jumping the gun a little by suggesting it is saying a lot more than it actually is. There is still much more work to be done to establish if this is indeed what happened at all. Figuring out HOW it could have happened this way is only the first step in finding out IF it did happen this way.

PDN

ISAW wrote: »

I thought the thread was about parallells of similarity in concept and not about gnit picking for concrete factual difference in definition. I mean anyone can just access the skeptics Bible for that.

True, but sometimes I prefer to swat the trolls with facts rather than infractions.

Monty Burnz

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Your willingness to quote one passage from the article and ignore the other is a little worrying. Finding a user that is willing to quote the bits that support their case and ignore the rest is never a good find.

It's not worrying. It's religious. That's how it works: you need to switch off large parts of your brain.

That's why it's called 'faith'. If it proceeded logically it would be 'science'.

Festus

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

There most likely was. Many of them. Firstly as the article says the levels of things like deuterium do not match the theory that this is where all our water came from. But there still are levels of deuterium there which would be explained if collisions were a source of water coming in.

I'm not saying that collisions didn't happen, they most likely did, or that they didn;t bring any water, they most likely did. The point is science used to say that the earth could not have had enough water and therefore most of our water came from off planet. This contradicts Genesis which says water was there from the start.
Science now suggests that most, if not all , of what th eplanet needed was there from the start. Sure there is deuterium and yes ir most likely came from off world but do we need dueterium?

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Water would also have been formed in the cooling process of the planet as elements went through several stages and intereracted with each other.

That's a change of state you are describing.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Water would also have been formed when plants started to photosynthesise and thus increasing the amount of Oxygen in the atmosphere.

that's the result of a biological process which without water to begin with would not have happened or if it did could not have produced the amount of water that exists on the planet.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

That there are “other” sources is almost beyond any doubt. The only questions we have to answer really is how much came from each. Your selective reading of the article that it all came at the start however is simply not held up at all.

It's not almost beyond any doubt. There is now significant doubt.

"Some of the Earth's water probably came from this (earth based) source, and quite possibly most of it," says co-author Michael Drake of the University of Arizona, Tucson

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

What your last quote has got to do with Thermodynamics I seriously do not know however. I knew this area was rife with selective reading and interpretation of the text in convenient ways, but I seriously with all my imagination can not twist that quote into being anything even remotely to do with Thermodynamics in any way.

In the simplest terms the second law of thermodynamics with regard to entropy says that entropy will be maximised over time. In plain english this translates as everying will tend towards chaos. Stars burn out and planets cool until there is equilibrium across the universe.
More simply disorder is the natural state. Whatever energy that is required to maintain order will be given up to its surrondings.

The Biblical quote suggests that same. All will become disordered and pass away.

nozzferrahhtoo

Festus wrote: »

Science now suggests that most, if not all , of what th eplanet needed was there from the start.

No, again it does not.

So far all it has said is that there exists another possible mechanism by which water could have arrived here. That is all that has been said. Anything else you have added after this is solely in your own imagination. You are reading far too much into the article, things that no one in the article has said at all.

Festus wrote: »

That's a change of state you are describing.

Errrr yes it is. This is where all water would have, at some point, come from. Either on this planet or off it. There is no reason to think that any molecule of water anywhere in the universe did not at some point come from a change of state.

Monty Burnz

Festus, I presume you are able to rationalise why God was so vague in his descriptions of things? And why was he so wrong about most things? For example, it would have been quite simple to state that the planets revolve around the sun, and that stars are distant suns which in turn have other planets revolving around them. Or that eclipses are caused by the interaction of the moon, the sun and the earth and are quite predictable.

For some reason he didn't say any of these things, which leaves you scrabbling around for one or two scraps in the whole bible where something the bible says might - at a stretch - align with current scientific understanding. Instead there's loads of incorrect waffle about cosmology etc. - the sort of thing that some primitive ancient tribesmen might believe.

So how do you rationalise this?

I'll give you one possible explanation - please stop me if this sounds nuts, and point out the flaw in my logic please; the bible is a collection of creation myths and stories created and passed down by some primitive tribesmen, which is why the understanding of science and cosmology (and indeed mores, rites and rituals) reads like that of primitive tribesmen.

Yours in Christ,
Monty.

Monty Burnz

Apologies, double post

Festus

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Festus, I presume you are able to rationalise why God was so vague in his descriptions of things?

Yes

Monty Burnz wrote: »

And why was he so wrong about most things?

No, not with you there.

Monty Burnz wrote: »

For example, it would have been quite simple to state that the planets revolve around the sun, and that stars are distant suns which in turn have other planets revolving around them.

Ah, that old heliocentrism, geocentrism chestnut. Have either been proven beyond all possible doubt? Not sure - I'll look that up.

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Or that eclipses are caused by the interaction of the moon, the sun and the earth and are quite predictable.

They are quite predictable as you say and ancient Jews were as good as ancient Greeks at performing this simple feat and so wasn't really a requirement to put it in to the Bible.

Monty Burnz wrote: »

For some reason he didn't say any of these things, which leaves you scrabbling around for one or two scraps in the whole bible where something the bible says might - at a stretch - align with current scientific understanding. Instead there's loads of incorrect waffle about cosmology etc. - the sort of thing that some primitive ancient tribesmen might believe.

Scrabbling around? No. Noting something interesting in New Scientist and seeing a probably parallel? Yes

Monty Burnz wrote: »

So how do you rationalise this?

I'll give you one possible explanation - please stop me if this sounds nuts, and point out the flaw in my logic please; the bible is a collection of creation myths and stories created and passed down by some primitive tribesmen, which is why the understanding of science and cosmology (and indeed mores, rites and rituals) reads like that of primitive tribesmen.

The flaw in your logic is that your present no logic. You presented an assertation.

For Christians the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Not a collection of myths and stores as you assert.

Morbert

Festus wrote: »

Second Law of Thermodynamics

[10] And: Thou in the beginning, O Lord, didst found the earth: and the works of thy hands are the heavens.
[11] They shall perish, but thou shalt continue: and they shall all grow old as a garment.

That one you get for free.

That's not the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics is a very strict description of how the trajectory of a system passes through different regions of phase space. It might help us understand why things perish (an occurance the authors of the Bible would surely be aware of) but the Bible in no way alludes to the second law of thermodynamics.

to every season there is a time

science has discovered a mechanism for seasons

That organisms eventually die -
and discovered apoptosis

That there is a time to every season, and that organisms eventually die are facts that were well known at the time. I wouldn't call it prophetic regarding later scientific discoveries.

Monty Burnz

Festus wrote: »

For Christians the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Not a collection of myths and stores as you assert.

Thanks for the reply Festus. I don't expect you to agree with me, I'm just trying to point out the futility of conflating science and religion.

Festus

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Thanks for the reply Festus. I don't expect you to agree with me, I'm just trying to point out the futility of conflating science and religion.

It's not confalting. It's compare and contrast if you will. I'm not looking to combine the two but note observations where the inspired Word of God has a parallel in science and as such is far from futile as it adds to broader understanding of both science and theology.

Festus

Morbert wrote: »

That's not the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics is a very strict description of how the trajectory of a system passes through different regions of phase space. It might help us understand why things perish (an occurance the authors of the Bible would surely be aware of) but the Bible in no way alludes to the second law of thermodynamics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

Entropy is a thermodynamic property that is a measure of the energy not available for work in a thermodynamic process. It is defined by thesecond law of thermodynamics. In the microscopic interpretation of statistical mechanics, entropy expresses the disorder or randomness of the constituents of a thermodynamic system or, analogously, the availability of accessible quantum mechanical states. A closed system always tends towards achieving a state with a maximum of entropy.

The Universe is a closed system tending towards maximun entropy

Morbert wrote: »

That there is a time to every season, and that organisms eventually die are facts that were well known at the time. I wouldn't call it prophetic regarding later scientific discoveries.

Maybe best take the issue of apoptosis up with whoever mentioned it. It's a different argument and not directly related to entropy in this sense.

Zombrex

Festus wrote: »

. It's a different argument and not directly related to entropy in this sense.

Neither is the Bible. Entropy is the change from useable energy to used energy. The fact that things on Earth die isn't a result of entropy. Our energy source isn't going to be gone till the sun dries up, and as such we are not a closed system.

Morbert

Festus wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

Entropy is a thermodynamic property that is a measure of the energy not available for work in a thermodynamic process. It is defined by thesecond law of thermodynamics. In the microscopic interpretation of statistical mechanics, entropy expresses the disorder or randomness of the constituents of a thermodynamic system or, analogously, the availability of accessible quantum mechanical states. A closed system always tends towards achieving a state with a maximum of entropy.

The Universe is a closed system tending towards maximun entropy.

What does this have to do with my point?

Festus

Wicknight wrote: »

Neither is the Bible. Entropy is the change from useable energy to used energy. The fact that things on Earth die isn't a result of entropy. Our energy source isn't going to be gone till the sun dries up, and as such we are not a closed system.

I would contend that they are - in the Bible that is - and things on Earth don't die as a result of entropy - don't know where you got the idea I suggested that from - perhaps just mashing up select parts of what I wrote to make up words you can put in my mouth - but that the Bible presents them in a more poetic sense.

Also the reference was not just to Earth but to the Universe and until we know that the Universe is an open system it can be considered to be a closed system.

Festus

Morbert wrote: »

What does this have to do with my point?

It has whatever you want it to have. I was supporting my point that the maximising of entropy as the ultimate end of the universe is described in the Bible.

Zombrex

Festus wrote: »

I would contend that they are but that the Bible presents them in a more poetic sense.

The Bible said that God created everything and all shall perish except those saved.

How you get from that to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is beyond me.

But if it makes you happy...:P

Festus

Wicknight wrote: »

The Bible said that God created everything and all shall perish except those saved.

How you get from that to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is beyond me.

But if it makes you happy...:P

There may be much that is beyond you and yes it makes me happy :pac::P

btw: "except those saved" is not part of the Hebrews quotation - where do you get your stuff from?

ISAW

Festus wrote: »

That's the point - science thinking "was" oceans delivered over time. The New Scientist article points to research that suggests that there was always enough, or at least most of what was required, water here to begin with.

"points to" "suggests that" ?

and if the surface was all molten in the Hadel Period how did water exist on it?

ISAW

Monty Burnz wrote: »

It's not worrying. It's religious. That's how it works: you need to switch off large parts of your brain.

That's why it's called 'faith'. If it proceeded logically it would be 'science'.

That is out of order. In fact large parts of science ignore other fields as well. Suggesting religion is without reASON as opposed to SCIENCE which is TOTALLY CONSISTENT IS nonsense.