1.5 billion-year-old Earth had water everywhere, but not one continent, study suggests
By: Mindy Weisberger - SPACE.com (originally published by Live Science)
Science continues to discover Biblical descriptions of how the Earth formed and life began.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
What did Earth look like 3.2 billion years ago? New evidence suggests the planet was covered by a vast ocean and had no continents at all. Continents appeared later, as plate tectonics thrust enormous, rocky land masses upward to breach the sea surfaces, scientists recently reported. They found clues about this ancient waterworld preserved in a chunk of ancient seafloor, now located in the outback of northwestern Australia.
Around 4.5 billion years ago, high-speed collisions between dust and space rocks formed the beginnings of our planet: a bubbling, molten sphere of magma that was thousands of miles deep. Earth cooled as it spun; eventually, after 1,000 to 1 million years, the cooling magma formed the first mineral crystals in Earth's crust.
Meanwhile, Earth's first water may have been carried here by ice-rich comets from outside our solar system, or it may have arrived in dust from the cloud of particles that birthed the sun and its orbiting planets, around the time of Earth's formation.
When Earth was a hot magma ocean, water vapor and gasses escaped into the atmosphere. "It then rained out from the atmosphere as conditions got cool enough," said lead study author Benjamin Johnson, an assistant professor in the Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences at Iowa State University.
"We can't really say what the source of the water is from our work, but we do suggest that whatever the source, it was present when the magma ocean was still around," Johnson told Live Science in an email.
In the new study, Johnson and co-author Boswell Wing, an associate professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, turned to Panorama's unique landscape in the Australian outback. Its rocky scenery preserves a hydrothermal system dating to 3.2 billion years ago, "and records the entire ocean crust from the surface down to the heat engine that drove circulation," Johnson said.
Preserved in that craggy seafloor were different versions, or isotopes, of oxygen; over time, the relationship between these isotopes can help scientists decode shifts in ancient ocean temperature and global climate.
However, the scientists uncovered something unexpected through their analysis of more than 100 sediment samples. They found that 3.2 billion years ago, oceans held more oxygen-18 than oxygen-16 (the latter is more common in the modern ocean). Their computer models showed that on a global scale, continental land masses leach oxygen-18 from the oceans. In the absence of continents, the oceans would carry more oxygen-18. And the ratio between these two oxygen isotopes hinted that at the time, there were no continents at all, the study found.
"This value is different than the modern ocean in a way that can be explained most easily by a lack of emergent continental crust," Johnson said in the email.
Other researchers have previously proposed the idea that Earth was once ocean covered, Johnson said. However, there's less agreement about how much of that crust was visible above sea level. This new discovery "provides actual geochemical constraints on the presence of land above sea level," he explained.
The prospect of an ancient waterworld Earth also offers a new perspective on another intriguing question: where the planet's earliest forms of life appeared and how they evolved, the researchers wrote in the study.
"There are two major camps for the origin of life: hydrothermal vents and ponds on land," Johnson said. "If our work is accurate, it means the number of environments on land for life to emerge and evolve was really small or absent until sometime after 3.2 billion years ago."
The findings were published online today (March 2) in the journal Nature Geoscience .
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Maybe those stone-age religious freaks weren't so ignorant after all.
Yes they were as there is no way anyone living in the stone age would have a clue about the possible waterworld that may have existed 3.2 billion years ago, time and exaggeration has simply taken a regional flood event and turned it into a world event.
Still interesting research I look forward to confirmation studies. Lol a waterworld makes a nice addition to our history of also being a molten world, a snowball world and the forthcoming desert world
Interesting article. Thanks.
The nuts who claim the earth is only 6,000 years old have just been served the truth and they must be choking on it.
The Biblical Genesis account supports this. I’ve always maintained that the earth core materials are ancient but that creation here on this earth and solar system were created perfect around 6,000 plus years ago and then changed to what it presently is by the cataclysm known as the great global flood.
Good grief.
Funny how you never seem able to prove that demonstrably false nonsense or even provide a shred of evidence to support it. Funny, but not surprising either.
I know, right?
I don't know why I'm still sometimes surprised at the abject stupidity of some of these comments - but I am. I just find it hard to believe that anyone in this day and age is truly that ignorant.
Einstein was right. There is no limit to peoples stupidity. We've achieved spaceflight and all manners of technological and scientific discovery & innovation. And yet, some people in this day and age still believe in Bronze Age BS like creationism, god/s, flat earth, ect..
That is what is known as forcing the facts to fit your pre-conclusion.
Confirmation bias too.
I've never understood why 'Christians' cant just accept the Bible as largely allegorical.
One can not take the Bible literally but still be a Christian. Many many millions of people already do that.
Many can, and do, as you pointed out. Yet some are just so emotionally attached to their myths that the slightest acceptance that one of the stories isn't literal would make them lose their faith. For them, it's all or nothing.
Although as we see here, some of them also jumble together a bunch of different sects' believes and make up their own personal religion - all while spouting off that they have the one true interpretation. Jesus would probably call them false prophets.
Imagine if they spent that time becoming educated and informed, instead.
I am confident that the vast majority do just that.
If anything, current scientific evidence refutes any claims of a global, biblical flood.
That truth has been served for a very long time; the YECs ignore
it.
In his best Dr Evil voice ...... it was a spinning sphere of molten MAGMA ..... a gazillion miles deep!
Watching the Science Chanel last night about dating coral reefs by counting the growth rings.
Evidence was presented that conclude that the earth used to spin faster resulting in 20 hour days,
and took 420 days to achieve one orbit of the sun.
They assume that different events involving comets and the moon
resulted in the modern calendar.
No mention of why, prior to the Gregorian calendar, the calendars were only 360 days...which caused calendar "drift".
The Gregorian is more of a solar calendar which had to make up for 10 days. Hence the day after October 4,1582,
was officially made October 15, 1582 and the "Church" began using the new calendar.
I'm thinking the faster rotation and shorter days was almost exclusively about the moon being closer. Remember that old classroom physics demonstration with a rotating chair? Someone sits in the chair with their hands held close and someone spins them. As they stretch their arms out their rate of rotation slows, and if they bring their arms back in they speed up again. Ice skaters do the same thing in those stationary spins.
When the moon was closer we shared a different gravitational center of mass, forcing our spin to be slightly faster.
You probably know this, but the moon is still moving away, so someday we'll have even longer days than we do now.
Well, we'll probably be long gone by then, but still.
The first ocean, ( 3.8 billion years ago from other sources ) was mostly fresh water, not becoming salty until the continents rose up and provided different minerals to be eroded down to the seas.
The saltiness of our oceans is the result of billions of years of build up of sodium and chloride ions.
Of course the planet could have been completely covered in water just after the crust started to form. With a thin crust mountains, volcanoes, and even meteor crater walls could not be supported let alone continents, so any water on a close to perfect sphere would cover the surface completely.
Don't think Earth would have been a perfect sphere.
Oops. You said "close to". Sorry.
Science continues to discover Biblical descriptions of how the Earth formed and life began.
Why preface a scientific article with a reference to the Bible? This article offers interesting scientific speculation. Why not focus on the scientific musings?
If you want to argue that the Bible is credible based on science then you should at least compare it to well-established findings in science like evolution.
You really resent people even suggesting that the Biblical Genesis account is right after all?
Resent is entirely the wrong word.
Disagree is the correct word.
Because it's not. It lacks any supporting evidence and is only mere belief. Nothing more. You want biblical nonsense to be right? Then produce the evidence to back up its claims!
Sometimes I can't help but resent willfully ignorant people. They're a drag on our society and our country, and make us less competitive globally. Plus - they raise stupid children, which I consider to be close to abuse.
The religious indoctrination they perform on children can be construed as abuse.
The true believers are always the most dangerous and i'm not talking about the religious.
Then who are you talking about? Religion goes by belief.
Rigid thinkers. The ones who believe theirs is the only proper way.
That sounds just like the religious to me.
And you are being different than that how exactly?
The key is to follow the evidence to wherever it leads and to not believe something is true without sufficient supporting evidence and rational reasoning.
Thats a nice opinion. Glad you seem to enjoy it.
Hopefully Gordy can answer my question with his own original "specific" thoughts on the matter.
I go by evidence, not belief. And I'm willing to acknowledge my position might be erroneous. I doubt the same can be said for some of the religious persuasion.
TiG is spot on and his view reflects my own.
Yeah, i knew you were not open minded enough to make the connection thus solidifying my point. You go by your opinion and have difficulty accepting other opinions that are not of like mind with you. Your post about child abuse proves that.
You are that which you say you abhor.
I don't expect you to agree and you can expect me to continue to disagree you on topics of this nature. I just found your comment in question to be incredibly arrogant and over the topic. Still do.
It sounds to me as though you think all opinions are equal. They aren't. Why should anyone accept someone's opinion when it has been clearly proven wrong? That's just insane.
And yet you're badmouthing Gordy for not treating a clearly ignorant and wrong opinion with anything but the derision it deserves.
I'm not bad mouthing anyone. You just think so because it disagrees with the narrative you push here regularly. Not even close to the same thing. On the other hand attacks on intellect are used regularly here against people of faith. That's just SOSDD for NT and probably okay with you.
I use proof when i need to. On an Engineering problem for example. It is of little consequence in other areas of my life where it isn't needed .... like faith. Oh and i'm really not interested getting into providing proofs for that which is not provable by definition. Several people here will likely chime in now to lecture those of us of faith how silly we are because we can't prove the unprovable. Not interested in your opinion on the matter.
That horse has been beat to death here on NT and you'll be talking to yourselves if you go that way.
Yes, you are. You're giving Gordy a hard time for not treating the bullshit YEC crap, which has been thoroughly debunked by science, as equal to his opinion which is formed because of evidence.
I hardly think you believe that the earth is only 6000 years old, or a bunch of the other horseshit C4P likes to post. He is claiming that this discovery proves his idiotic YEC beliefs, and of course that is going to be challenged because it's bullshit.
There's no reason to let outright lies stand.
Horseshit, no i'm not. I can't help it if some in this world resort to indignant snowflakery when someone disagrees with their life's manifesto.
Time to get over yourselves.
And careful with the accusations of lying. Next one gets reported.
I guess you weren't paying attention and/or just don't get it. I said I am open to evidence. Anyone can make a claim about anything. But without evidence to support said claims, there's no reason to accept them, much less take it as fact. Unless one wants something to conform to personal belief, bias, or emotional comfort. It's no different than making up a fairy tale and claiming it's true. So offer all the opinions you or anyone else wants. But unless there's evidence to support them, mere opinion is all it is. And religious indoctrination can be abusive. Teaching kids to accept dogma over established facts or science, no questions asked, promotes willful ignorance. Teaching them they'll go to hell if they piss off god or some other fear tactic can cause psychological harm. Teaching them sex is wrong or dirty, especially before marriage, can make establisting intimate relationships more difficult. All that is comparable to abuse.
Nah, i was paying attention but you weren't when i said i wasn't interested in the discussion of trying to prove the unprovable. Its a goat rodeo. Hopefully you are paying attention this time because that's my last comment here along that line of thinking.
Where did I say I was trying to prove the unprovable? I simply don't accept empty claims without proof, or at the very least, some evidence. So you clearly weren't paying attention. Of if you were, you clearly didn't get it. And if you're not interested in discussion, then it seems you're the one being close minded here.
Report away. XX posted a clear lie about the earth's origin, and we are allowed to point out when a comment is a lie, as far as I know.
Then put that on your response to them and not to me.
I don't respond well to being accused of lying since i don't lie.
I didn't accuse you of lying. I was pretty clearly talking about XX's comments and why you shouldn't expect people to let outright lies stand, or expect them to be given equal consideration with opinions based on evidence.
I wasn't talking about XX so i fail to see the relevance in using that comment in response to me.
My comment was about rigid thinkers. Know what i mean? People who are convinced, their way, is the only proper way.
Know what i mean?
Yeah, like certain religious individuals who reject science in favor of their own dogma. I doubt many theists would be willing to consider their beliefs to be wrong or BS.
Right, and your comment was due to Gordy's response to XX's comment. You were calling him a rigid thinker for not giving XX's opinion any consideration. Therefore I used that comment to point out that it contained an outright lie and that we shouldn't let those stand - we should not give bullshit opinions equal weight with ones driven by evidence.
It is not "rigid thinking" to refuse to give credibility to opinions based on bullshit and lies.
Like i said Gordy, you shouldn't be talking with the comments you make in here.
Interestingly some of the best schools in this country are Jesuit institutions. An open mind can accept the possibility that science and religion can coexist just fine. A closed mind can't even begin to consider the possibilities.
Rigid thinkers ...........
Nope, don't agree in the least.
Feel free to keep rationalizing but i ain't buying the snowflaky bullshit being peddled here.
Like usual i stand by all my comments and continue to call bullshit appropriately when i see fit.
And at this point i could care less what you or Gordy think about it
Well, you butted in with an insult, and you appear to be triggered by our not giving XX's bullshit YEC views equal credibility with scientific theories, so deal with hearing what Gordy and I think about it or stop reading.
No teaching your child that they are a different gender than they biologically are, and then giving them life altering hormone treating, should most definitely be seen as a form of child abuse. Nothing worse than an indoctrinated progressive.
I didn't "butt in" with an insult.
You just read it that way because i had the temerity to question part of your lifes manifesto and now you appear to be projecting the real triggering.
No, teaching a child homosexuality or transgenderism is wrong or such people should be treated differently, hated, feared, or discriminated against, especially if the child them self is gay or whatever is abuse. Such mentality is also just plain ignorant and hateful. But children discover their sexual orientation and identity themselves, and make changes in their life if they choose to do so. Telling them there's something wrong or treating them differently or like crap because they don't conform to your ideas of "normal" is abusive. Nothing worse than willful ignorance and bigotry.
I never said science and religion couldn't coexist. Dr. Francis Collins is a perfect example of this. But religion is not a valid alternative or explanation for scientific inquiries and analyses. I don't know any credible scientist who espouses god as a valid explanation for scientific questions. But religion itself does not offer anything to objectively support its assertions. Not accepting views lacking evidence is not being close minded. It's being rational minded.
Really? That is arguing in the gaps.
Roman stoic philosophers claimed spirits are present in all things and spirits are the motivating cause for transformation. Diseases were caused by spirits. Sound familiar? But the Latin word is spiritus which describes a corporeal essence like vapor or air or ether. The concept of spiritus was consistent with Aristotle's elemental description of matter and causality for transformation.
The spirit of God conveys concepts that are consistent with Aristotelian science describing causality. The Bible contains more archaic scientific knowledge than is being recognized. The language and contextual meaning of words has changed drastically over thousands of years. Today's fundamental forces described by physics are descriptions of spiritus that are consistent with Aristotelian science.
The particulars of the Bible are as incorrect as Aristotle's descriptions of causality. But both convey conceptual descriptions of nature that are fundamentally sound and are mutually consistent. The Bible incorporates the natural philosophy available at the time it was written. Don't ignore the influence of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Middle East and spread of Hellenistic culture throughout the Middle East.
The Genesis account is what one would expect from ancient men observing the world and musing as to how it came to be. For example, looking out on vast bodies of water and concluding that with so much water, the Earth probably was all water in the beginning. There is nothing in this account that calls for knowledge beyond that of ancient men with imagination. If the Earth was entirely covered with water in its beginning (the scientific speculation of this article) then Genesis would coincide with that. That coincidence would be meaningful if it were consistent (i.e. the Bible correctly stating more than what ancient men could observe). The Bible, however, is anything but consistent and as one follows the balance of just Genesis 1 we see the difference between ancient men observing their world and using their imaginations and what we now know based on science.
For example, a mild mistake:
The moon is not a source of light. That is how an ancient man would see it, but we now know that this is merely reflected energy from the actual source — the sun.
Now a major failure:
God, after creating the Earth, moon and Sun, created the rest of the solar system (the other planets look like stars, other galaxies look like stars) and indeed the rest of the entire universe to give light and to govern the day and the night. Makes sense from an ancient human being looking at the night sky and musing how it came to be. But scientifically, this is absurdly wrong.
The Genesis account is also consistent with the thoughts of Middle Eastern astronomers and Greek philosophers. Genesis incorporates secular natural philosophy of the period. And archaic natural philosophy is not far removed from the modern scientific method. As you point out, the concepts were based upon observation (which is knowledge) and those observations were explained by logical deduction.
The Greek secular influence at the time was to develop plausible conclusions by use of logic rather than experimentation. The natural philosophy of the period was not consistent because separate observations were explained by logical conclusions specific to the observations.
The Bible was not written in English. Simply assuming that the translations convey an accurate contextual rendition of the concepts presented isn't warranted. And focusing on the particulars (arguing in the gaps) ignores the fundamental concepts that are being conveyed.
The stars, the Sun, the planets, the earth were all made according to Genesis. Direct observation doesn't provide any indication that what is observed in the heavens hasn't always been there. People across generations can observe the moon and will not see anything to suggest that the moon hasn't always been in the sky. The moon was in the sky before there were humans; no human has ever observed a moonless sky. Or seen a sky without a Sun, planets, or stars. Those ancient people were not describing what they could see; they were describing what no human had ever seen.
And science has confirmed the concept of the universe not always existing. The concept of cosmology developed by ancient natural philosophers (and presented in Genesis) was fundamentally sound.
And, as I pointed out, there is nothing at all unusual about human beings writing down what they observed and then writing down what they imagine to fill in the blanks. The Bible is, based on the evidence, nothing more than the work of ancient men sans any divine or otherwise guidance.
True! So where do you go to get the original, pure content of even just the Torah? Where do you find the original, non-translated, non-transcribed content that reflects the words ostensibly spoken to Moses by God?
Per your point, any discussion of content in the English Bible is pointless since it is all suspect.
My point is that the fundamental concepts are consistent with what one would expect from ancient men observing their world and musing as to its creation.
They were imagining a reality that ostensibly existed before there were creatures to even observe it.
So you did not read this from me?:
You seriously do not see the fundamental flaws in this biblical description?:
While that may be true [not saying it is], it hasn't happened in this thread or by katrix so why bring it up?
Yet you have no issue with several people chiming in that the findings in the article support biblical descriptions and/or the Bible's Genesis account. THEY seem to need that in their lives and for it to be provable by science.
No one is forcing you to read or reply to anything.
Yet here you are commenting on a seed about that horse.
Yes, really.
No, invoking god/s as an explanation for why or how things occur is an argument of gaps.
Yes, and it sounds like ignorant BS used to explain something that was otherwise unknown.
Your point?
No, the bible at best contains what ancient men were able to observe.
Which only demonstrates that biblical validity is questionable.
That's quite a stretch there.
Many religious stories are borrowed from others. As more cultures and societies interacted, either through military conquest, exploration, trade, ect., it only makes sense for religions to also collide and their tenets be shared or made known to others.
As I said previously, that brings biblical validity into question.
I.e., "God did it." Ancient men can observe stars and planets. But they probably could not explain how the stars and planets form. Therefore, "god did it."
What period is that? Theologians claim that Genesis was written in about 1400 BC, about a thousand years before that of the Greek philosophers.
Seriously? Are you claiming to be reading the bible in the original Hebrew or Aramaic?
Are you also claiming that anyone who can't read Hebrew is incapable of garnering the concepts presented in the bible?
That pretty much eliminates 95% of the population of the US.
Even you have to agree that according to Genesis, nobody 'observed' that happen.
Why not? As it happens here regularly on this topic. As it has in this article numerous time already. So you don't think it has? No problem, i don't care what you think. See? No problem!
And no one asked you to butt in on a two day old conversation you were not even a part of and yet here you are.
Then go to one of those seeds and whine about it.
No it hasn't.
I KNOW that no one has attacked anyone's intellect Sparty.
It's not a matter of what I 'think'. It's a documented fact. Anyone can review the comments and see it for themselves. You are the first in this seed to say anything about intellect.
NT members aren't required to request permission to participate in a conversation and as long as a seed is open, it is open for comment.
You know Dulay, i'm not in the mood. I'm having a great day and have no desire to argue and pick nits back and forth with you. I'm leaving work early for a nice libation or two and a fine smoke.
Hope you have a great day as well! I am and i will .....
Your comment set the 'mood' Sparty.
After happy hour, I suggest you review the definition of 'ignorace' vs 'intellect'.
One can be intellectually superior while still being ignorant as hell about a given topic, even willfully ignorant as evidenced here so often.
So stating that someone is ignorant is NOT an attack on their intellect, it is a evaluation of the content of their posts.
Yes, Genesis is thought to have been written about 900 years before Thales of Miletus. However, the oldest known Genesis texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls which date from about 50 BCE which is about about 500 years after Thales and 250 years after Aristotle.
Obviously not. But that does not alter that the Bible we have today is the result of many translations from one language to another over thousands of years. And the sequence of books in the Bible doesn't correspond to when the separate books were written.
That is correct. The author(s) of Genesis weren't simply describing what they observed. Some sort of process of hypothesis and logic was necessary to arrive at the concepts presented in Genesis.
So?
Then WTF was your point?
Pontificating on and on about languages and translations is counterproductive and irrelevant to the discussion. As is what order the books are in.
The bible, as a subject of group discussion, there needs to be a standard text. Though I have 7 versions, I rely on the KJV in English as my go to. I'm pretty fucking sure that most American Christians use that or something close to the NIV.
Yet it's just as likely that the author merely documented a creation story from oral histories told around the fire, just as many other cultures have done and IMHO, ALL of them deserve the same respect.
Thanks for the suggestion but it’s not needed since as per usual you are completely off base
SOSDD considering ..... but I hope your mood improved and you had a better day as you were wished. Mine was fantastic.
How so? You were the first to mention intellect.
Are you still having an issue with understanding that fact that intellect has little to do with whether someone is ignorant?
You could change that yet you persist.
So what? You’re the one picking nits that aren’t there.
Nope, not in the least but thanks for the concern
Then stop butting into other people’s conversations and you won’t have to worry about it. See? Fixed it for you.
There are plenty of 'nits' there Sparty. You accused another member of 'attacking' another member's intellect when that did NOT happen. While you may not think that false accusations are important, many members here do.
Great. Glad I could educate you.
Why are you relying on MY reaction to change your day Sparty?
What lead you to the unfounded conclusion that I am worried about anything?
Oh and I have already explained how this shit works. Review it at your convenience.
Yes Sparty, I see your obfuscation.
Nothing needed to be fixed Sparty.
Bullshit, I did no such thing.
Yes, I hate false allegations as well. So please stop making them. That shtick of yours is getting very old in here
Cool, keep thinking that if it helps you sleep at night. Glad I could help keep you healthy. Sounds like you might need some help with that
lol again, if that helps you in some way to believe that then feel free go for it. You have my permission.
Like usual, you have explained exactly jackshit of substance to anyone. Absolutely nothing!
You’re response is argumentative only, with no cogent content whatsoever. Again, nothing new there .... SOSDD.
When I need something fixed by you, I’ll tell you. Until such time, don’t worry about it.
You most certainly did Sparty.
BOTH of those comments are about 'attacks on intellect' you claim were made by members against other members here on NT.
So STOP denying that you made the false accusation. Everyone here on NT can see that you did.
Like I said, be specific and in classic dulay fashion you chose not to be. I clearly didn’t call out anyone specifically. Otherwise you would have been the first to report it. Maybe you did and it got shot down. Who knows.
And attacks on intellect IS clearly a favorite gambit here. It’s a favorite go to debate tactic for a few here. Anyone who has been on NT for more than a hot minute has seen that so it can not be disputed. Not honestly anyway. Know what I mean? So too bad, so sad .... no false statements made from me no matter how hard you try to make it so.
So stop with the disingenuous nonsense. You are beginning to bore me again.
Well gee, in classic Sparty fashion, you chose to pretend to have said what you didn't and deny saying what you did. You never said 'be specific' in this seed until the statement in the block quote above. So NO Sparty, it's NOT like you said.
I didn't say you had, I clearly stated that you accused a member, and you did since ONLY a member can post "here on NT".
As I stated from the get go, while that may be true [not saying that it is] it did NOT happen in this thread.
Stating that anyone attacked anyone's intellect in this thread, much less 'numerous times' is a lie.
I’d respond to each item but you’ll just keep piling on the bullshit, deeper and thicker, so there is really no real productive point to it.
I’ll end my side of this discussion with my standard ending response to you when you are in argue mode like this.
I don’t agree with virtually anything you’ve said in this thread. Total and complete BS it be. But it’s just SOSDD considering ...... perhaps you can carpet bomb report my comments now to see what you can get but regardless ......enjoy!
Bail away...
Well, the comment is rather tongue-in-cheek. The Bible is one of the most widely known ancient texts that really does convey human understanding of the universe around them. And modern science really is discovering the Genesis story of the Bible. Those stone-age religious freaks weren't stupid.
No, the Bible does not convey science. But that is because the books were written before science had been invented (or discovered, if you prefer). Humans were asking the same questions and developing rational, plausible conclusions long before there was science.
Artificial intelligence and Hubble telescopes weren't available to those stone-age religious freaks. The ancients had to rely on real intelligence and their innate senses. The stories are archaic but keep in mind that humans had not invented language to describe their observations and conclusions. And the lack of adequate language meant that the ancients relied more on analogy to get their point across. The ancients displayed a well developed intellect; they weren't stupid people.
They looked around at their world as they saw it and fantasized to fill in gaps in their knowledge.
The authors of the Bible were certainly not stupid. But it is stupid, IMO, for contemporary human beings to retroactively credit them with insight on every loose coincidence while ignoring the glaring contradictions with well founded modern knowledge.
That is basic confirmation bias at play; the suppression of critical thinking to further a desired belief.
Was it coincidence? The human population was tens of millions. The means for organized and widely accepted methodology wasn't available. There weren't enough humans to even organize and refine language to adequately convey thoughts or ideas. The sparseness of population meant that making up a new word to convey a new meaning required many years to be widely adopted.
Claiming that the ancients 'fantasized' overlooks several thousand years of population growth which allowed social organization, communication, and refinements in language. Such claims display an unearned hubris.
What the ancient texts reveal is that the human intellect was as well developed as it is today. Modern humans may possess more knowledge but that is due to population growth which allowed more refined organization and dissemination of that knowledge. Modern humans aren't smarter than the ancient humans were.
Wait. What?
Nothing in the Genesis story agrees with modern science. What are you talking about?
Worse, very loose coincidence. The kind of coincidence that occurs when someone is trying to make a correlation that simply does not exist.
Actually I am recognizing that with such limited tools at their disposal, fantasy was all they had. You do not realize this??
Do you recognize that modern human beings have far greater knowledge?
The human race were using science long before the bible was written. Metallurgy is one science that is EVERYWHERE in the bible, as is astronomy and geometry. Hell, mummification is a pretty intense process that required an understanding of organic chemistry.
It's all quite fascinating. I suppose vegetation started by comets or meteorites carrying spores from other planets struck the Earth, but it would be interesting to know how aquatic life (which probably included the original vegetation) actually first started, perhaps the same way.
Vegetation (plants) evolved right here on Earth.
Here's a quick excerpt from the timeline of plant evolution on Wikipedia:
Come again?
Biblical description's of how Earth & life formed is basically something like "God did it," which doesn't really describe, much less explain anything.
As oxymoronic a statement if there ever was one, lol.
Since this is the closest science article on the front page, I will post this here.
Hey, is there any new satellites orbiting the earth right now that, as I counted, there would be 15 lined up in a row following each other about a 1/2 degree apart? Just passed over mid-michigan just after 5:30 this morning.
They may have been some of SpaceX's new Starlink sats.
Here's something from an article I just found. Apparently, astronomers aren't very happy with the idea of companies adding tens of thousands of new satellites to the night sky.
NASA wants you to photograph Starlink satellites with your smartphone
The article includes a link you can go to and find out what satellites were passing over you at that time.
If you go there and find out what you saw, then come back and let us know. I've never seen a whole string of sats moving together before. That's pretty cool (but not for astronomers, I suppose).
Yep, that's what it was. What got my attention was what I thought was the ISS passing over, then 1/2 a minute later it was passing again, and it was like now which one was the ISS, looked up again and there is was again, being these were headed NE each track was shifted westward due to earth's rotation, and then watching another ISS noticed another heading East followed close behind by another and as I looked west it was a line with satellites appearing from nowhere out of the earth's shadow, it was cool to watch as yet another ISS traveled NE. I can see how this would be an annoyance for astronomers.
Awesome. Glad I could help.
Now, if I could just figure out what those 2 big red-orange lights were that I saw moving over a nearby property in the middle of the night last summer...
Freaked me out.