What do you find, out of all the the impossible things which occur within the Bible, makes the most sense and logic. In your honest to (insert relevant thing here) opinion.
I personally say, that it was the burning bush which talked to Moses. For you see, there's lots of modern plants which talk to people when set on fire... in a sense. Very popular occurence among certain college students, and junkies. But it actually has scientifically verifiable occurence
Dorsk 81: this is why I support the separation of Aces eyebrow's, something that ugly should never be joined
Mayabird:You see what this place does to us? It's like how Eskimos have their 16 names for snow. We have to precisely define what shafting we're receiving.
"Do we think Israel would be nuts enough to go back into Lebanon with Olmert still in power and calling the shots? They could hook Sharon up to a heart monitor and interpret the blips and bleeps as "yes" and "no" and do better than that, both strategically and emotionally."
This thread assumes that the Bible is not accurate, the non-existence of claimed supernatural interventions, and then asks which events described in it are the least scientifically improbably.
Off to Science it goes.
It's not that I'm unforgiving, it's that most of the people who wrong me are unrepentant assholes.
Dispite the inaccuracies surrounding it, the tower of babel when viewed correctly.
I can't verify first editions of the bible or versions that haven't been translated, comprimised and altered over the centuries to get a true feel for how it was originally written so I'm going off of more current versions.
The whole story is in current versions that man was all of one people and were building a tower to heaven to reach God.
The bit with this, however, is if you look back at Babylonian architecture it seemed that on top of a lot of their buildings they had stones that were carved with various signs and sigals, usually of astrological items. Stars, moons, suns, etc. One could interpret their building a tower to heaven as a large tower that was topped with these stones representing such items. Or perhaps it was a tower that was somehow dedicated to God or their religion(because I'm not sure but I don't think Babylonians followed Christianity or Catholicism).
When looked at like this it makes a little more sense then a tower so tall it reached God. As for the sudden onset of xenoglossia one could speculate that it wasn't as sudden as the bible makes it appear.
A bit of research shows that the culture that existed before the Babylonians, the Sumerians, did indeed have a measurement for a calender that was 29 days per year, each day divided into 12 segments that were approximately 2 hours long, give or take. Babylonians also had a calender that was divided between altering 29 and 30 day months which gave them an approximate 254 day year.
So it's obvious they have some way of giving a basic idea of how long it was between the time that God apparently spread the languages among the populace and they left to form their own nations or city-states or what have you, but no timeframe is listed in any of the versions of the bible I checked, just that God went down to sow confusion amongst them. At some point they abandoned the project and spread out.
This could possibly be over a longer frame then the bible suggests which I guess is suppose to be nigh-instantly or within a very short time span. We can easily witness the changing of languages even in our own time as the addition of slang and new works creep into it and meanings are altered as we progress.
Hell it wasn't that long ago that Ebonics wasn't a language, and yet now it's taught in schools in some areas as a foreign language. I know it's based off of english but I'll be damned if I can understand about half of it.
So it could be that the tower project was abandoned due to other reasons not listed or not known and that as time progressed it was forgotten and as the population of the world grew and spread dialects were altered and eventually got to the point where we could not easily understand one another.
Saint Annihilus - Patron Saint of Dealing with Stupid Customers
I personally say, that it was the burning bush which talked to Moses. For you see, there's lots of modern plants which talk to people when set on fire... in a sense. Very popular occurence among certain college students, and junkies. But it actually has scientifically verifiable occurence Wink
Temporal lobe epilspsy or dehydration induced hallucinations combined with a bush that does tha naturally.
In that area there is a species of bush that secretes enough oil to be set on fire without burning. The oil is slow burning, and the fire is relatively low temp. And it just so happens that the geology of the area allows rocks to fall and create the occassional spark. IE the bush can be set on fire and either A) not burn for a while or B) be set on fire and eventually the fire burns itself out without damaging the plant.
On another note, one of the apostles being bitten by a venomous snake and surviving... hmm... happens all the time, even without antivenin.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
- Theodosius Dobzhansky
There is no word harsh enough for this. No verbal edge sharp and cold enough to set forth the flaying needed. English is to young and the elder languages of the earth beyond me. ~Frigid
The Holocaust was an Amazing Logistical Achievement~Havoc
I personally say, that it was the burning bush which talked to Moses. For you see, there's lots of modern plants which talk to people when set on fire... in a sense. Very popular occurence among certain college students, and junkies. But it actually has scientifically verifiable occurence Wink
Temporal lobe epilspsy or dehydration induced hallucinations combined with a bush that does tha naturally.
In that area there is a species of bush that secretes enough oil to be set on fire without burning. The oil is slow burning, and the fire is relatively low temp. And it just so happens that the geology of the area allows rocks to fall and create the occassional spark. IE the bush can be set on fire and either A) not burn for a while or B) be set on fire and eventually the fire burns itself out without damaging the plant.
What species of bush, if I may ask? Rather interesting. I might have to get one for myself. I can just imagine the entertaining pranks that could be caused by that.
On all the visions and voices and whatnot, hallucinations from schizophrenia could cover most if not all of them (though many could still be dehydration/exposure/lack of sleep/etc. hallucinations and so on). I've even read that many religions and maybe even religiousity and spirituality probably originated with schizophrenics. Some of the things one might say are nonsensical to us, since we have scientific explanations for phenomena, but a tribe that has just been nearly wiped out by a freak disaster wouldn't have an explanation. The guy screaming about angry demons does, however.
