credoconsolans

We just had an airburst above a Siberian town in Russia. How many dead? Zero.

AdamWho

"I have these assumptions which I have assumed to be true and I demand that you provide an explanation!"

ThePainefulTruth

It was explained where?

First, thank you for putting up a post with some substance.

The only real question is which side of the Jordan the city/cities in question are. The Bible doesn't mention Lot crossing the Jordan to get to Sodom. But from where he started, at Bethel and Ai, he could see the fertile plain which would put it in the area just north of the Dead Sea, as well as being watered from the Jordan R., which flooded periodically like the Nile, which was supplemented from the mountain wadi's to the east.

There aren't any towns on the west side except Jericho.

As a picture they included a discolored rock, instead of the fused pottery which would have been much more compelling. They claim that they used microprobe analysis to determine the temperature that the glass formed under, but by my layman's understanding this sort of analysis would only tell us what the chemical composition is (note that EMPA is notoriously bad at doing even this with certain types of glasses).

The description clearly labels it a pottery sherd, of which it says there are many scattered over the area. The temperature analysis is based on the kaolin in the pottery clay melting to glass and then not running significantly, indicating a relatively rapid return to ambient temperature--another indication it wasn't a volcanic event. My knowledge of microprobe analysis is apparently less than yours, but showing the chemical composition would have revealed the kaolin and zircon, which is what the temperature analysis is based on.

It says the site is "currently being updated". :huh:

Bacillus anthracis

It can be. And in cases like this it's the archaeologists who have time and time again deflated the Big Fish stories of mythology. I think we can be pretty confident the same thing will happen here provided the team investigating the site isn't bent on bending it to fit their wishes.

ThePainefulTruth

I think the attitude of the article, and of most archaeologists, it to find the scientific Truth. Over the years, there have been regular letters canceling subscriptions due to the non-miracle affirming articles it contains. Add to that the fact that the mag's founder and editor, Hershel Shanks, is a Jew, and many Christians are automatically turned off as well.

skepticalbip

Unfortunately, the intent of this team (and the very reason they exist) is to "prove" the historical accuracy of the bible so anything they see will be "interpreted" from that angle - their jobs depend on it. A pottery shard with a surface that appears fused, for them, could only have been the result of "the fire ball that destroyed Sodom". Much as bigfoot hunters finding an odd tuft of hair in a fence "interpret" it as it could only have been left by bigfoot.

Both begin with "the answer" they know is "TRUE". Any observation is then spun to fit that "TRUTH".

I wouldn't think that an objective archeologist finding what appeared to be a fused layer on a pottery shard from that era would jump to the conclusion of "SODOM". There are much more reasonable guesses. It was the bronze age so we know they were smelting and mixing metals. A possibility is that that shard may be a piece of one of their crucibles. Maybe it was the result of a very early experimental attempt at pottery glazing that turned out to be too energy intensive so was never attempted again. There are many things that it could have been. The claim that it was from a fire ball that destroyed SODOM is just an attempt to make it fit their belief. Such a fire ball would have left a thin fused layer of glass covering the entire site (as at the Trinity site). Did they search for and find this thin layer of glass? If so I didn't see it mentioned in the article. Why would such a fire ball only selectively fuse the surface of this piece of pottery and nothing else?

ThePainefulTruth

No, their jobs depend on publishing and bringing publicity to their schools. I think you'll find, if you spend any time looking at them, that they are actually pretty evenly divided on how their motivated. The pro-supernatural ones are being slowly culled as time goes on. Hershel Shanks is an observant Jew but very much keeps the science separate. I don't know how it's possible, but he does.

The best example is how the scholarly community reacted to the James ossuary and the Talpiot "Jesus family tombs" finds. Both of those were brought to light by pro-science archaeologists and biblical scholars. Those opposed used some of the same empty accusations being used here. Some of the best evidence against the Bible is in the Bible, particularly against the New Testament.

Or what?

Yes. I used to try hard to explain away the evidence.

skepticalbip

Read the rest of the fucking post.
It isn't trying "hard to explain away the evidence". It is trying to explain the findings rather than trying to hand-wave a justification for a preconcieved belief.

ThePainefulTruth

I would have but it wasn't there. I had to leave my computer for a while which I guess caused me to miss your edit. In any case, as I said, they're finding such potter shards all over the area. Also the results on the surface would depend on what it was composed of and what the size and altitude of differing events are. Of course they could be uniform results if God did it.

Above all, the meter theory is mine. He is careful never to mention or imply it as an explanation anywhere in the article--which I actually found odd. I guess we can't eliminate the Israeli's hitting an incoming Iranian nuke at some point with a time warp ray deflecting it back in time and killing all those people in Sodom and Gomorrah who fortunately turned out to be evil after all.

skepticalbip

Or maybe god was really pissed at pottery and only destroyed ceramics?