Freethought & Rationalism Archive

external solipsism · 02-08-2004, 10:55 AM

Godless miracle

While I find this an interesting finding, however I think it's somewhat a dangerous conversation peice. While proper rational reasoning would tell us that since a scientific explanation can be established for the event the suggestion of divine cause ought to be abandoned, I would suspect that due to the nature of this incident providing scientific data that the event actually occurred would likely send many theists running around like kids with a bag of candy because there is proof that the Red Sea really was parted for during the exodus and thus it must have been a miracle.

I would expect that a typical argument would assert that Moses would have lead the Jews to the banks of the sea, and upon seeing the approaching Egyptian army Moses suggested that he would part the sea, and miracle of miracles the storm just happened to kick up just at the right time. But really, the storm didn't just happen to kick up, it was the work of God. The problem I see with this theory is that it assumes the explanation of events to be exactly as the bible describes. But there is a more likely explanation.

The Jews, lead by "Moses" make their way to the Red Sea. Perhaps they have already noticed far into the distance that they are being pursued. Perhaps not. There are two possible situations.

1) The Jews find themselves at the bank of the Red Sea, disparing at their seemingly inevitable doom. A storm is about them, and much to everyone's surprise they notice that the waters have been blown away by a strong wind. This would be a very uncommon event and the extreme likeliness is that nobody would have ever seen anything quite like this before. Being baffled by this occurrence, which would have seemed like something that was simply impossible, the first conclusion that one of the people would have come to is that it was the work of God. And of course, since this was a time of God's deliverer bringing the people out of Egypt, the miracle must be Moses's doing, right? They would record the event in their history as a deed of Moses bringing a miracle from God.

2) The Jews would approach the Red Sea and find that a path seemed to have been cleared for them in the waters. They may have been pursued at this point, or they may have not yet noticed the Egyptians and were merely proceeding. But the likelihood is that they would not have taken on what would have seemed to be a quite possibly dangerous trek unless they were attempting an escape from some other danger. The Jews continued on through the sea to see the waters swallow up the Egyptians shortly after the Jews emerge from the banks of the other side. Again, not understanding how this seeminly impossible event occurred, the conclusion that would be drawn would be that Moses had brought a miracle from God to the people.

The fact is that coincidences to happen. Scientifically speaking, every event to occur is a coincidence. By definition, any two events that coincide are a coincidence. Just look at the word...."CO*INCIDENCE." Incidences that coincide. Right now I am sitting at a computer typing. Somewhere else in the world, there is someone else sitting at a computer and typing as well. It is a mere coincidene that both that person and myself happen to be conducting the same action at the exact same time, even though we are possibly thousands of miles away and our lives have never ever coincided in any way before. Do we attribute this coincidence to a miracle? No, because the likelihood is, based on the number of people in the world and how many of them ever use computers and the frequency of which various people use computers, that this coincidence is to be expected to happen and in fact it would be more unlikely that the coincidence did not happen.

There are, as far as I can see, specifically two criteria under which a coincidence is often atributed to divine intervention.

1) When the likelihood of an event is so small that one concludes that it is impossible because it is so improbable, or because one does not understand how the event could be possible naturally.

2) When the magnitude of the relevance of the event is so large that one feels either incapable, or unwanting, to attribute the event to something as arbitrary as chance.

When a coincidence meets either one of these criteria it often is said to be a divine action. If it meets both of these criteria then its divine causality is proclaimed in an even stronger voice. However it would seem that many people either do not realize, or do not care, that there is no logical way to arrive at the conclusion of divine intervention from the two premises above. From the premises above, the conclusion that the parting of the Rea Sea, or any other coincidence, was caused by evolution is just as valid a conclusion as suggesting that it was divine intervention.

DetectedDestiny · 02-08-2004, 11:51 AM

You believe that? 4 hours for 600.000 people to cross 4.2 miles through the Red Sea?

Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

external solipsism · 02-08-2004, 12:27 PM

How long do you think it would take one person to walk four miles? An hour? Maybe a little more. How long would a column of 600,000 people be? Depending on how wide the column was, I wouldn't find it so odd to estimate that the total time of the trek was about four hours. In Maryland there is an annual event called the Bay Bridge Walk. The east boutnd span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is closed off for most of the day and people walk the 4.3 mile span of the bridge. In less then twelve hours, around 50,000 people make the trek each year, being pressed into a very narrow to lane bridge. If that many people can make the trek in 12 hours in that narrow a column, then it would take a column twelve times that width (24 road lanes) for 600,000 to make the same trek in the same time. Such a column would still be fairly narrow considering the size of the group. In order to make the trip in four hours, the column width would have to be threefold, or aproximately 72 highway lanes. What's the width of a highway lane? Isn't it about 13 1/2 feet? So the column of 600,000 people would have to be about 972 feet in width, or 0.1840909 miles, or 296.2656 meters. That doesn't seem so odd or unexpected. A column of 600,000 people, with a width of about a 1/5 of a mile, 324 yards, about 300 meters. Really, I might expect that the column might have been even a bit wider then this. But the point is that four hours for that many people to cross seems to be a pretty good estimate.

Rhaedas · 02-08-2004, 12:50 PM

Large number of people, limited time period, remarkable coincidence of timing, and unfavorable weather conditions to add to that. Sure, it may be possible...but highly unlikely. Not to mention the lack of evidence to support the jewish occupation and exodus of Egypt, and the great loss of life of the soldiers, by the scribes. Much the same way that the Chinese seemed to forget to write down anything about the great flood, even though they documented everything else quite well.

Maybe the loss of the jewish slaves was so terrible and embarrassing that the pharoah pulled an Orwellian tactic and rewrote all history, destroying any and all evidence to the contrary. Or maybe rather than all other sources being changed, the one source that claims it is questionable.

Rhaedas · 02-08-2004, 12:58 PM

Just another remark: if the scientific claim is valid, then why is it described differently in the bible? Wouldn't a more accurate description be of the winds making a land passage rise from the waters, rather than "the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left", which certainly can't have a valid scientific explanation.

DetectedDestiny · 02-08-2004, 01:19 PM

Keep in mind these people were loaded with Egyptian treasury (look up what they donated Moses to build the tabernacle), took women, children and lifestock with them (and according to the pictures in my bible for children they lived in tents during their stay in the desert, so they also had to carry those with them) and that they were 'camping' along the shore of the Red Sea. It would take a long time before all these people were actually walking and i think a speed of 4 miles/hour is way too high for them.

Sarpedon · 02-08-2004, 01:25 PM

Large groups of people take longer to go anywhere than small numbers of people. If someone near the front stops, or even slows down, a disruption in traffic spreads throughout the entire body. More time is spent standing around waiting for the people in front to move than actually walking. Furthermore, the floor of the sea is hardly a nice pavement, it is muddy, uneven, soft, and probably also quite treacherous. people would slip, they would trip, they would get stuck in the mud. If what you are saying is true, there is also a thunderstorm occuring at the same time, thunder causing problems with communicating, darkness leading to even worse footing. Also there are children and old people present, further slowing things. And also the bible states that the israelites were burdened with all the treasures of egypt that had been given to them earlier. No matter how you twist it, it is a stupid story. The most likely thing is that it is just a story, and subsequent people in subsequent ages do all kinds of gymnastics to explain it. It never happened at all.

sismofyt · 02-08-2004, 02:42 PM

Greetings,

Well, if goddidit, I guess there's no need to look for scientific answers.

There's no such thing as divine science..

I think it's just another tale from the bronze age goat herders (tm). And not even a good one. There where no exodus and no parting of the red/reed sea. At least not according to the egyptians, assyrians and babylonians.

Roland · 02-08-2004, 02:58 PM

If I'm not mistaken, the 600,000 figure refers to ADULT MEN only. It doesn't include women or children, not to mention all the livestock.

The number of people is, conservatively speaking, probably closer to 2 million.

sismofyt · 02-08-2004, 03:12 PM

And the goats. And whatnot livestock. Probably 3 million people, including all the old folks, kids and woman. The bottom of the Red Sea had to be a friggin' horizontal escalator in the highest gear!

Oh why, do these 'scientific answers' keep popping up, when the fundies reject the same science when it proves the Flood/exodus/creation to be utterly wrong. How convinient...

Is it a special xian feature?

02-08-2004, 10:55 AM	#1
external solipsism Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 840	Red Sea scientifically possible, and coincidences Godless miracle While I find this an interesting finding, however I think it's somewhat a dangerous conversation peice. While proper rational reasoning would tell us that since a scientific explanation can be established for the event the suggestion of divine cause ought to be abandoned, I would suspect that due to the nature of this incident providing scientific data that the event actually occurred would likely send many theists running around like kids with a bag of candy because there is proof that the Red Sea really was parted for during the exodus and thus it must have been a miracle. I would expect that a typical argument would assert that Moses would have lead the Jews to the banks of the sea, and upon seeing the approaching Egyptian army Moses suggested that he would part the sea, and miracle of miracles the storm just happened to kick up just at the right time. But really, the storm didn't just happen to kick up, it was the work of God. The problem I see with this theory is that it assumes the explanation of events to be exactly as the bible describes. But there is a more likely explanation. The Jews, lead by "Moses" make their way to the Red Sea. Perhaps they have already noticed far into the distance that they are being pursued. Perhaps not. There are two possible situations. 1) The Jews find themselves at the bank of the Red Sea, disparing at their seemingly inevitable doom. A storm is about them, and much to everyone's surprise they notice that the waters have been blown away by a strong wind. This would be a very uncommon event and the extreme likeliness is that nobody would have ever seen anything quite like this before. Being baffled by this occurrence, which would have seemed like something that was simply impossible, the first conclusion that one of the people would have come to is that it was the work of God. And of course, since this was a time of God's deliverer bringing the people out of Egypt, the miracle must be Moses's doing, right? They would record the event in their history as a deed of Moses bringing a miracle from God. 2) The Jews would approach the Red Sea and find that a path seemed to have been cleared for them in the waters. They may have been pursued at this point, or they may have not yet noticed the Egyptians and were merely proceeding. But the likelihood is that they would not have taken on what would have seemed to be a quite possibly dangerous trek unless they were attempting an escape from some other danger. The Jews continued on through the sea to see the waters swallow up the Egyptians shortly after the Jews emerge from the banks of the other side. Again, not understanding how this seeminly impossible event occurred, the conclusion that would be drawn would be that Moses had brought a miracle from God to the people. The fact is that coincidences to happen. Scientifically speaking, every event to occur is a coincidence. By definition, any two events that coincide are a coincidence. Just look at the word...."CO*INCIDENCE." Incidences that coincide. Right now I am sitting at a computer typing. Somewhere else in the world, there is someone else sitting at a computer and typing as well. It is a mere coincidene that both that person and myself happen to be conducting the same action at the exact same time, even though we are possibly thousands of miles away and our lives have never ever coincided in any way before. Do we attribute this coincidence to a miracle? No, because the likelihood is, based on the number of people in the world and how many of them ever use computers and the frequency of which various people use computers, that this coincidence is to be expected to happen and in fact it would be more unlikely that the coincidence did not happen. There are, as far as I can see, specifically two criteria under which a coincidence is often atributed to divine intervention. 1) When the likelihood of an event is so small that one concludes that it is impossible because it is so improbable, or because one does not understand how the event could be possible naturally. 2) When the magnitude of the relevance of the event is so large that one feels either incapable, or unwanting, to attribute the event to something as arbitrary as chance. When a coincidence meets either one of these criteria it often is said to be a divine action. If it meets both of these criteria then its divine causality is proclaimed in an even stronger voice. However it would seem that many people either do not realize, or do not care, that there is no logical way to arrive at the conclusion of divine intervention from the two premises above. From the premises above, the conclusion that the parting of the Rea Sea, or any other coincidence, was caused by evolution is just as valid a conclusion as suggesting that it was divine intervention.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

02-08-2004, 11:51 AM	#2
DetectedDestiny Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Netherlands Posts: 141	You believe that? 4 hours for 600.000 people to cross 4.2 miles through the Red Sea? Doesn't sound very scientific to me.

02-08-2004, 12:27 PM	#3
external solipsism Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 840	How long do you think it would take one person to walk four miles? An hour? Maybe a little more. How long would a column of 600,000 people be? Depending on how wide the column was, I wouldn't find it so odd to estimate that the total time of the trek was about four hours. In Maryland there is an annual event called the Bay Bridge Walk. The east boutnd span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is closed off for most of the day and people walk the 4.3 mile span of the bridge. In less then twelve hours, around 50,000 people make the trek each year, being pressed into a very narrow to lane bridge. If that many people can make the trek in 12 hours in that narrow a column, then it would take a column twelve times that width (24 road lanes) for 600,000 to make the same trek in the same time. Such a column would still be fairly narrow considering the size of the group. In order to make the trip in four hours, the column width would have to be threefold, or aproximately 72 highway lanes. What's the width of a highway lane? Isn't it about 13 1/2 feet? So the column of 600,000 people would have to be about 972 feet in width, or 0.1840909 miles, or 296.2656 meters. That doesn't seem so odd or unexpected. A column of 600,000 people, with a width of about a 1/5 of a mile, 324 yards, about 300 meters. Really, I might expect that the column might have been even a bit wider then this. But the point is that four hours for that many people to cross seems to be a pretty good estimate.

02-08-2004, 12:50 PM	#4
Rhaedas Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: USA Posts: 3,440	Large number of people, limited time period, remarkable coincidence of timing, and unfavorable weather conditions to add to that. Sure, it may be possible...but highly unlikely. Not to mention the lack of evidence to support the jewish occupation and exodus of Egypt, and the great loss of life of the soldiers, by the scribes. Much the same way that the Chinese seemed to forget to write down anything about the great flood, even though they documented everything else quite well. Maybe the loss of the jewish slaves was so terrible and embarrassing that the pharoah pulled an Orwellian tactic and rewrote all history, destroying any and all evidence to the contrary. Or maybe rather than all other sources being changed, the one source that claims it is questionable.

02-08-2004, 12:58 PM	#5
Rhaedas Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: USA Posts: 3,440	Just another remark: if the scientific claim is valid, then why is it described differently in the bible? Wouldn't a more accurate description be of the winds making a land passage rise from the waters, rather than "the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left", which certainly can't have a valid scientific explanation.

02-08-2004, 01:19 PM	#6
DetectedDestiny Regular Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Netherlands Posts: 141	Keep in mind these people were loaded with Egyptian treasury (look up what they donated Moses to build the tabernacle), took women, children and lifestock with them (and according to the pictures in my bible for children they lived in tents during their stay in the desert, so they also had to carry those with them) and that they were 'camping' along the shore of the Red Sea. It would take a long time before all these people were actually walking and i think a speed of 4 miles/hour is way too high for them.

02-08-2004, 01:25 PM	#7
Sarpedon Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Minnesota, the least controversial state in the le Posts: 8,446	Large groups of people take longer to go anywhere than small numbers of people. If someone near the front stops, or even slows down, a disruption in traffic spreads throughout the entire body. More time is spent standing around waiting for the people in front to move than actually walking. Furthermore, the floor of the sea is hardly a nice pavement, it is muddy, uneven, soft, and probably also quite treacherous. people would slip, they would trip, they would get stuck in the mud. If what you are saying is true, there is also a thunderstorm occuring at the same time, thunder causing problems with communicating, darkness leading to even worse footing. Also there are children and old people present, further slowing things. And also the bible states that the israelites were burdened with all the treasures of egypt that had been given to them earlier. No matter how you twist it, it is a stupid story. The most likely thing is that it is just a story, and subsequent people in subsequent ages do all kinds of gymnastics to explain it. It never happened at all.

02-08-2004, 02:42 PM	#8
sismofyt Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: DK-PT-UK Posts: 974	Greetings, Well, if goddidit, I guess there's no need to look for scientific answers. There's no such thing as divine science.. I think it's just another tale from the bronze age goat herders (tm). And not even a good one. There where no exodus and no parting of the red/reed sea. At least not according to the egyptians, assyrians and babylonians.

02-08-2004, 02:58 PM	#9
Roland Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: California Posts: 748	If I'm not mistaken, the 600,000 figure refers to ADULT MEN only. It doesn't include women or children, not to mention all the livestock. The number of people is, conservatively speaking, probably closer to 2 million.

02-08-2004, 03:12 PM	#10
sismofyt Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: DK-PT-UK Posts: 974	And the goats. And whatnot livestock. Probably 3 million people, including all the old folks, kids and woman. The bottom of the Red Sea had to be a friggin' horizontal escalator in the highest gear! Oh why, do these 'scientific answers' keep popping up, when the fundies reject the same science when it proves the Flood/exodus/creation to be utterly wrong. How convinient... Is it a special xian feature?

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.