The firmament of Genesis 1 assumes flat earth

[Vicomte13]

Actually, if the math is correct then one should observe the curvature on the surface of the earth. Consider two 6' men that are 3 miles apart. They would have a curvature of 6' between them. That is at only 3 miles. What about 40 miles? Well, that's 1,066.96 feet.

As far as seeing the earth from the moon I would suggest watching this video from the 5 to 6 minute mark. One minute may be all it takes to expose a fraud.

Only if the earth were smooth table flat. But the crust of the earth is assymmetrical and twists up and down.

Also, you're assuming that light travels in a straight line in air and isn't refracted as it moves parallel to the earth. Looking at sunset, we see something different.

As for the prevalence of life, it is my own thinking that since God is love, and God created such a vast universe, there should be oodles and oodles of other life out there. But what if that life is - unfallen? Could not communication then be done spiritually? In the same way that God speaks to our hearts? No radio receiver would ever pick up on the cross talk of such a situation. We would call the living things of unfallen nature "angels" or "sons of God", should we run into one of them.

Do we have evidence that Adam and Eve communicated telepathically before the fall.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

. . .

Do we have evidence that Adam and Eve communicated telepathically before the fall.

It is, of course, speculative.

 

[Vicomte13]

As for the prevalence of life, it is my own thinking that since God is love, and God created such a vast universe, there should be oodles and oodles of other life out there.

This is not a challenge, it is curiosity. Why do you equate life with love?

 

[Vicomte13]

Good thinking, seriously, but about one part only I have extensive and detailed information that is very uncommon, and can help, which you can see just above in post #145. Ergo, it may turn out something like algae could happen more than just once in a galaxy, but then.....here comes an asteroid, or here comes the endless deep freeze, or here comes steadily rising temperature, or here comes that bullseye hit from a CME or if lucky they don't come, in some very rare situations, and eventually some small creatures are crawling around, never, never to get to a civilization (again see post #145), but no matter these details, you are largely getting the main conclusion right in your early paragraphs I think. I do not expect a "hello" from an alien civilization for the reasons above.

I've thought about what you've said here again, and I understand it, but we're not thinking on the same wavelength here. What you have said is certainly possible, but it is based nevertheless on the concept of abiogenesis - that life spontaneously arises - as algae, bacteria, etc. - and progresses to some point, but then is wiped out by accident, and this is why the skies are silent.

I am coming from a really different vector. I've gone long before but I'll try to distill it. I am taking the silence of the skies as the proof that there is no abiogenesis at all - that life never spontaneously arises anywhere. I note the sheer number of earths (according to NASA) and consider uniformitarian principles, and determine that life must spontaneously arise on all of them, if it is truly a natural chemical process. Life must arise on all 60 sextillion earths, and it must therefore also evolve on all 60 sextillion, again because it is a chemical process and uniformitarian principles demand it. I do not think that, once life has inevitably evolved, the chance of it being wiped out or clubbed back on all 60 sextillion worlds is likely. It must progress everywhere, which means that there must be many, many civilizations. The mathematical odds would demand that.

But the skies are silent, so there aren't any. If abiogensis, with its inevitable evolution, happens at all, then it happens everywhere, and there are far, far too many earths for there not to be at least millions of civilizations, and the skies can't be silent.

Because the skies are silent, that means that live did not evolve at all - no abiogenesis out there, and none here either. Which means that no, algae could NOT arise anywhere. The only way there could be algae on any other planet is if God, or the gods, also separately created it over there - because abiogenesis and evolution themselves are disproven by the silence of the skies.

The logic is that there too many earths. If it happened on any, it happened on all, and there are too many earths for random accident to have taken out 60 sextillion other worlds. The sky would be teeming with life, and we would hear it. BECAUSE we hear nothing, that means that abiogenesis is quite impossible. It didn't happen anywhere - not even to the point of algae - and it didn't happen here either BECAUSE it didn't happen anywhere.

The silence of the skies means that life was created - POOF - by an intelligent God and did not spontaneously generate and did not evolve. That is really my point. That is the implication of the silence of the skies.

BECAUSE the silence of skies disproves Genesis, it proves God must exist - and I assert that because it proves God must exist, we would be better served figuring out how to apply science to contact God and communicate with him, rather than seeking for what we know is a unicorn that can't exist (extraterrestrial life).

It's a really offensive viewpoint that I have.

 

[Dig4truth]

Only if the earth were smooth table flat. But the crust of the earth is assymmetrical and twists up and down.

Also, you're assuming that light travels in a straight line in air and isn't refracted as it moves parallel to the earth. Looking at sunset, we see something different.



Do we have evidence that Adam and Eve communicated telepathically before the fall.

There are some smooth flat tables called salt flats. Very large areas where it is extremely flat for miles and miles. In these areas, you guessed it, no curvature.

 

[Vicomte13]

There are some smooth flat tables called salt flats. Very large areas where it is extremely flat for miles and miles. In these areas, you guessed it, no curvature.

Have you ever been on a ship at sea? Where there is water, meaning that the surface of the earth is fluid and follows the shape of the earth, you can see ships go over the horizon and come up over the horizon. You can see the curvature of the earth in play.

On land, the land itself does not particularly follow the curvature of the earth, because it's not fluid. GENERALLY, over the course of great distances, there is curvature, but locally, land is below sea level, land is above sea level, land curves upward, land curves downward. And, of course, light flowing parallel to the surface is bent by the atmosphere.

Pull out into a far orbit, and you see the shape of the earth, and you see the continents on one side of the world and you don't see them on the other side.

Are you actually arguing that the earth is flat? Or are you just pointing out odd inconsistencies with what we would expect from a simple cue-ball planet model? Sure, the real shape of the earth is not a cue ball, and there are things that complicate local measurements and make for interesting phenomena, but obviously the world is a sphere. Right?

 

[Halbhh]

I've thought about what you've said here again, and I understand it, but we're not thinking on the same wavelength here. What you have said is certainly possible, but it is based nevertheless on the concept of abiogenesis - that life spontaneously arises - as algae, bacteria, etc. - and progresses to some point, but then is wiped out by accident, and this is why the skies are silent.

I am coming from a really different vector. I've gone long before but I'll try to distill it. I am taking the silence of the skies as the proof that there is no abiogenesis at all - that life never spontaneously arises anywhere. I note the sheer number of earths (according to NASA) and consider uniformitarian principles, and determine that life must spontaneously arise on all of them, if it is truly a natural chemical process. Life must arise on all 60 sextillion earths, and it must therefore also evolve on all 60 sextillion, again because it is a chemical process and uniformitarian principles demand it. I do not think that, once life has inevitably evolved, the chance of it being wiped out or clubbed back on all 60 sextillion worlds is likely. It must progress everywhere, which means that there must be many, many civilizations. The mathematical odds would demand that.

But the skies are silent, so there aren't any. If abiogensis, with its inevitable evolution, happens at all, then it happens everywhere, and there are far, far too many earths for there not to be at least millions of civilizations, and the skies can't be silent.

Because the skies are silent, that means that live did not evolve at all - no abiogenesis out there, and none here either. Which means that no, algae could NOT arise anywhere. The only way there could be algae on any other planet is if God, or the gods, also separately created it over there - because abiogenesis and evolution themselves are disproven by the silence of the skies.

The logic is that there too many earths. If it happened on any, it happened on all, and there are too many earths for random accident to have taken out 60 sextillion other worlds. The sky would be teeming with life, and we would hear it. BECAUSE we hear nothing, that means that abiogenesis is quite impossible. It didn't happen anywhere - not even to the point of algae - and it didn't happen here either BECAUSE it didn't happen anywhere.

The silence of the skies means that life was created - POOF - by an intelligent God and did not spontaneously generate and did not evolve. That is really my point. That is the implication of the silence of the skies.

BECAUSE the silence of skies disproves Genesis, it proves God must exist - and I assert that because it proves God must exist, we would be better served figuring out how to apply science to contact God and communicate with him, rather than seeking for what we know is a unicorn that can't exist (extraterrestrial life).

It's a really offensive viewpoint that I have.

I think this is worth your reading, and you'll see at least a couple of reasons you can't use "I am taking the silence of the skies as the proof that there is no abiogenesis at all" (e.g. like the detectability issue as I quote an example of at the end of this post), but there are yet more reasons to think we are in a profound way singular (more so than so many wish to imagine).

I'd not be surprised in the afterlife to learn we were the only planet in our galaxy (and even our Universe) with an advanced intelligent life forms (like us at least in some ways, with language and technology), but that's my own speculation.

To those who believe -- Only advanced life forms could even imaginably host a 'soul' as we experience one.
Microbes do not so far as I understand. Worms don't. Fish don't, I believe. No God-given soul means life matter that is soulless, like bacteria.... Just Biomass. Soulless. Not much different than grass.

But some people will want to consider the fun notion of life on other worlds, and that's our subject. Please know I won't waste you time below, and have something useful to offer, including a bit at the end.

Based on what I've learned in astrophysics articles, I'd be delighted for us to find even 1 single twin Earth that has both land and standing water bodies and rain and temperate regions and has remained so for billions of years, and isn't bombarded often, and isn't sterilized by UV radiation from a nearby red dwarf, and isn't in transition of migrating closer and closer or further and further away from it's star.

Any numbers are speculative, but "60 sextillion" seems like another of those wild speculation based on not just 2 or 3, but more like 10 to 15 assumptions that are speculations themselves, and unlikely to be turn out to be situations you would actually like if you were on such a planet....

For example, one way to get a number is to merely speculate on the number of planets in a galaxy or in the Universe that might have liquid water.

Well, that by itself is only one of at least 15 crucial factors for being life-friendly for advanced intelligent lifeforms (and other areas of knowledge I am less familiar with than astrophysics could add more factors perhaps).

For instance, a planetary surface heavily irradiated by ultraviolet radiation because it's near a red dwarf star -- which are like 3/4ths of all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, our galaxy -- you know UV is a very good way to sterilize something having bacteria, and make the microbes nice and dead.... Not a nice place for people like us, with hands which we think evolved (some of us think this was God's plan; perhaps convergent evolution to an intended vessel to house a soul).

To have liquid water a planet orbiting a little red dwarf star must be close.

But these little stars, which are most stars that exist, radiate a lot of UV!

Where is the life supposed to get started on such a planet? Well perhaps far down in the water? That might work for a while, until that planet gets slammed by an asteroid and it's all over. But if protected by a gas giant, that's better, less impacts, and then the planet will migrate (because of that same gas giant!) too close or too far from its star, unless it's stabilized by the very lucky right combination of other planets in the system, or the life might get a little ways until it gets sterilized by yet another 6 or 10 or 12 mile wide asteroid collision....etc.

So what is "Earth like" precisely?

I'd say it has to be a planet on which favorable conditions continue for not merely tens of thousands or a merely a million years or 50 million. No. Billions of years are needed for much evolution to progress, according to our own view of what happened on Earth in mainstream science.


But....let's do some wild speculation and imagine there was indeed an actual Earth like planet of the kind you could actually survive on yourself (let's say you are immune to the flora there), and it was a mere 5,000 light years away....

Fun!

Well.....

Here's something that may it may help to know which I just searched up wondering about the magnitudes of detectability of something like radio waves in practical terms -- could we detect them if they were broadcasting like we do....:

"The SETI Phoenix project was the most advanced search for radio signals from other intelligent life. Quoting from Cullers et al. (2000): "Typical signals, as opposed to our strongest signals fall below the detection threshold of most surveys, even if the signal were to originate from the nearest star". Quoting from Tarter (2001): "At current levels of sensitivity, targeted microwave searches could detect the equivalent power of strong TV transmitters at a distance of 1 light year (within which there are no other stars)...".
From how far away could Earth's telescopes detect Earth like radio signals?

People don't really realize usually how far apart stars are, how big the Milky way is, etc., and they can imagine it's merely like picking up a signal (what is actually a beamed and focused signal btw!) from a probe like we sent past Pluto. Nope....


So, while I'm guessing no such civilizations are likely to be anywhere close, like anywhere closer than thousands of light years, still even if one was a mere shockingly close 20 or 50 light years away (like our immediate neighborhood -- like right next door compared to the size of the Milky Way....!), we would be unlikely to even be able to detect broadcasting they would do.

heh heh, while they are unlikely to be close if they exist, we still couldn't detect them. SETI people are wishing on a star.

But we will no doubt detect lots of "Earth like" (sic) planets I'm quite sure. Oh yeah. Oodles of them. You bet! It's almost a new religion already.

 

[Dig4truth]

Have you ever been on a ship at sea? Where there is water, meaning that the surface of the earth is fluid and follows the shape of the earth, you can see ships go over the horizon and come up over the horizon. You can see the curvature of the earth in play.

When a ship goes out of sight on the sea just pick up a pair of binoculars and presto - it's back in view. When it goes out of sight with the binoculars just pick up a telescope and presto - it's back in view.

Eventually the atmosphere will degrade the ability to see and it will disappear but not necessarily because it went over the horizon but because it is impossible to see through the atmosphere.

On land, the land itself does not particularly follow the curvature of the earth, because it's not fluid. GENERALLY, over the course of great distances, there is curvature, but locally, land is below sea level, land is above sea level, land curves upward, land curves downward. And, of course, light flowing parallel to the surface is bent by the atmosphere.

When does water follow a curve? Water always finds a level.
But let's say for a moment that it did curve around a ball. Now spin the ball at 1,000+ mph at the equator and what would you expect? And now spin the ball around another object at 66,000 mph. What happens to the water then? I think we all could figure that out from basic physics.

Pull out into a far orbit, and you see the shape of the earth, and you see the continents on one side of the world and you don't see them on the other side.

Are you actually arguing that the earth is flat? Or are you just pointing out odd inconsistencies with what we would expect from a simple cue-ball planet model? Sure, the real shape of the earth is not a cue ball, and there are things that complicate local measurements and make for interesting phenomena, but obviously the world is a sphere. Right?

What I am trying to do is relate some actual observations that seem to contradict what we have been taught.

There are many tangents in the FE material but I like to examine what has been observed and repeated. Science used to rely on this kind of research, now it seems it's all theoretical.

Take our atmosphere for example, it ends into a vacuum.
With the lightest or less dense particles in the very top (less "gravitational" hold) next to the vacuum.

Anytime a compressed gas, which is what our atmosphere is, is exposed to a vacuum it will seek equilibrium. But apparently, along with curving water, this no longer applies to our world.

It makes one think.

 

[Vicomte13]

I think this is worth your reading, and you'll see at least a couple of reasons you can't use "I am taking the silence of the skies as the proof that there is no abiogenesis at all" (e.g. like the detectability issue as I quote an example of at the end of this post), but don't worry, there are yet more reasons to think we are in a profound way singular (more so than so many wish to imagine).

I'd not be surprised in the afterlife to learn we were the only planet in our galaxy (and even our Universe) with an advanced intelligent life forms (like us at least in some ways, with language and technology), but that's my own speculation.

To those who believe -- Only advanced life forms could even imaginably host a 'soul' as we experience one.
Microbes do not so far as I understand. Worms don't. Fish don't, I believe. No God-given soul means life matter that is soulless, like bacteria.... Just Biomass. Soulless. Not much different than grass.

But some people will want to consider the fun notion of life on other worlds, and that's our subject. Please know I won't waste you time below, and have something useful to offer, including a bit at the end.

Based on what I've learned in astrophysics articles, I'd be delighted for us to find even 1 single twin Earth that has both land and standing water bodies and rain and temperate regions and has remained so for billions of years, and isn't bombarded often, and isn't sterilized by UV radiation from a nearby red dwarf, and isn't in transition of migrating closer and closer or further and further away from it's star.

Any numbers are speculative, but "60 sextillion" seems like another of those wild speculation based on not just 2 or 3, but more like 10 to 15 assumptions that are speculations themselves, and unlikely to be turn out to be situations you would actually like if you were on such a planet....

For example, one way to get a number is to merely speculate on the number of planets in a galaxy or in the Universe that might have liquid water.

Well, that by itself is only one of at least 15 crucial factors for being life-friendly for advanced intelligent lifeforms (and other areas of knowledge I am less familiar with than astrophysics could add more factors perhaps).

For instance, a planetary surface heavily irradiated by ultraviolet radiation because it's near a red dwarf star -- which are like 3/4ths of all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, our galaxy -- you know UV is a very good way to sterilize something having bacteria, and make the microbes nice and dead.... Not a nice place for people like us, with hands which we think evolved (some of us think this was God's plan; perhaps convergent evolution to an intended vessel to house a soul).

To have liquid water a planet orbiting a little red dwarf star must be close.

But these little stars, which are most stars that exist, radiate a lot of UV!

Where is the life supposed to get started on such a planet? Well perhaps far down in the water? That might work for a while, until that planet gets slammed by an asteroid and it's all over. But if protected by a gas giant, that's better, less impacts, and then the planet will migrate (because of that same gas giant!) too close or too far from its star, unless it's stabilized by the very lucky right combination of other planets in the system, or the life might get a little ways until it gets sterilized by yet another 6 or 10 or 12 mile wide asteroid collision....etc.

So what is "Earth like" precisely?

I'd say it has to be a planet on which favorable conditions continue for not merely tens of thousands or a merely a million years or 50 million. No. Billions of years are needed for much evolution to progress, according to our own view of what happened on Earth in mainstream science.


But....let's do some wild speculation and imagine there was indeed an actual Earth like planet of the kind you could actually survive on yourself (let's say you are immune to the flora there), and it was a mere 5,000 light years away....

Fun!

Well.....

Here's something that may it may help to know which I just searched up wondering about the magnitudes of detectability of something like radio waves in practical terms -- could we detect them if they were broadcasting like we do....:

"The SETI Phoenix project was the most advanced search for radio signals from other intelligent life. Quoting from Cullers et al. (2000): "Typical signals, as opposed to our strongest signals fall below the detection threshold of most surveys, even if the signal were to originate from the nearest star". Quoting from Tarter (2001): "At current levels of sensitivity, targeted microwave searches could detect the equivalent power of strong TV transmitters at a distance of 1 light year (within which there are no other stars)...".
From how far away could Earth's telescopes detect Earth like radio signals?

People don't really realize usually how far apart stars are, how big the Milky way is, etc., and they can imagine it's merely like picking up a signal (what is actually a beamed and focused signal btw!) from a probe like we sent past Pluto. Nope....


So, while I'm guessing no such civilizations are likely to be anywhere close, like anywhere closer than thousands of light years, still even if one was a mere shockingly close 10 or 50 light years away (like our immediate neighborhood -- like right next door compared to the size of the Milky Way....!), we could not detect broadcasting they would do like our own style of broadcasting at this time.....

heh heh

Two things. If our scientists knew we could detect nothing, then the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent on these arrays through NASA and universities, knowing they were useless, were a fraud of massive size on the taxpayers of many countries, and discredit the scientific community in general - and are a very good argument for cutting off funding to NASA.

I think that the arguments for the weakness of signals is an ex post facto argument to try to shore up the fact that we have in fact heard nothing. I think those men of NASA and science who set up SETI and got the funding and built the arrays were confident in what they were doing, and understood radio attenuation well. I think that they were genuinely surprised by the silence of the skies.

The second thing, regarding this business of a "soul", now we are turning into theology. The written word on this in Hebrew anway is crystal clear: that which breathes IS a soul. Nothing "has" a soul. The word we translate as "soul" is the word "nephesh", and what it literally means is a "breather". The word "spirit" the word "breath" and the word "wind" in Hebrew are all just one word, one concept. God breathes things to life - to "live" in the Hebrew is to be a breather. To die is to have the spirit, which is the same thing as breath, taken back by God. Animals, including fish, are breathers - nephesh - souls. They die. Plants are not breathers. They do not breathe (in the sense of having spirit/breath in their nostrils), and no plants die in Scripture. They wither or fade, which is different.

For my part, I stand on the evidence: the skies are silent. They have been silent for 50 years. Every additional day, they remain silent. I expect, based on that evidence, that they will remain silent forever, and that there does not exist any other life anywhere in the universe.

The 60 sextillion earths is a NASA number. It sounds cartoonish to me, but I didn't make it up, and I have no basis on which to attack it. I can use it just exactly as it was presented to the public and make the conclusions I made from it. There are vast numbers of planets on which life could develop, according to NASA, but the skies are silent. This tells me that life does not, in fact, ever spontaneously develop, and that both abiogenesis and evolution are false doctrines. In fact, we are created beings. Life did not evolve here, and it never emerges from non-life. Life is intentionally created by God, so it cannot simply "arise" anywhere.

The silence of the skies strongly supports this belief of mine.

Now, of course, I could be wrong. But as of today, 2017, the truth is that the skies ARE silent, and remain so, and that my position is more evidence based than the speculation that the life really is out there but we just can't hear it. THAT is pure speculative fantasy.

I think that the rest of my life will pass, and the skies will remain silent. and that a trillion quadrillion generations will pass, and the skies will always be science, because no form of life, right down to the bacteria ever spontaneously generated anyplace - not on earth, and not in space. Because life was created, it only exists where it was created. The skies are silent because the only place it was created was here.

We will never find so much as a bacteria anywhere in the universe, other than here, or where we take it.

I sense the fear and frustration of those who so desperately want to be right about there being life out there, because I think everybody realizes that if there is no life out there, then there is no evolution and God created us - and I think that many people would rather die than admit that.

 

[Vicomte13]

When a ship goes out of sight on the sea just pick up a pair of binoculars and presto - it's back in view.

I spent eight years of my life at sea on ships as an officer of the deck. That is not true. When a ship goes over the horizon, the binoculars will bring into sharper view the part of the ship that is still visible line of sight. It will not show you the hull that is obscured by the curvature of the earth. When the mast first appears, it will show you the mast and the waves, but the curvature obscures the rest. You can very clearly see the ship rise out of the water as it gets closer and more and more of it becomes visible. This is the curvature of the earth right before ones very eyes.

 

[Vicomte13]

Eventually the atmosphere will degrade the ability to see and it will disappear but not necessarily because it went over the horizon but because it is impossible to see through the atmosphere.

That is complete nonsense. You see the ship very very clearly, can read its letters when they come above the surface of the waves. You can see the waves rippling in front of the hull-down ship as it comes into view, on a clear day. First the top of the mast, then the mast, then the superstructure, then the hull. And the same as it goes over the horizon. That is what happens. Same thing with lighthouses. You can see the curvature of the earth quite plainly at sea, and the atmosphere, when the sky is clear, never disperses the light so that you cannot see things clearly as far as the eyes can see, as long as you have good binoculars. If you have a line of sight and the air is clear, you can see it clearly as it disappears over the edge of the earth into the waves. You can see the waves out there on the horizon, very distinctly.

 

[Vicomte13]

When does water follow a curve? Water always finds a level.
But let's say for a moment that it did curve around a ball. Now spin the ball at 1,000+ mph at the equator and what would you expect? And now spin the ball around another object at 66,000 mph. What happens to the water then? I think we all could figure that out from basic physics.

The water is held in place by gravity and doesn't fly off. If the earth were spinning much faster water might be flung off, but it isn't spinning nearly fast enough to overcome gravity, obviously.

 

[Vicomte13]

What I am trying to do is relate some actual observations that seem to contradict what we have been taught.

There are many tangents in the FE material but I like to examine what has been observed and repeated. Science used to rely on this kind of research, now it seems it's all theoretical.

Well, I myself have repeated the experiment of seeing ships rise over the horizon and sink down over the horizon over a thousand times. And I can tell you that the world is curved, because I have seen the proof of it over and over again. There is literally nothing that anybody can say that can dispute that, because I've done the experiment myself at least 1000 times. It's simply a fact.

If you want to play with something speculative, postulate that there is no gravity and that things are held to the surface of things by their expansion in space.

This is a much more fun and annoying subject, because if you cast it right and describe it correctly, you've taken the reciprocal of gravity and described exactly what is seen with gravity. Then you can drive people mental trying to prove you wrong.

They won't be able to do it in the end, and you'll be left with two models. Either mass has gravity that draws things of mass towards each other, OR all things are expanding at one one-millionth of their size every second (which means that the earth expands at 9.8 meters per second per second), and gravity is the surface effect of expanding objects.

That's fun, because it does describe everything, including orbits (when you remember that the sun is not stationary but is itself corkscrewing forward in space), and it causes hurricanes and galaxies, which look similar, to be driven by the same force, that isn't gravity (which, in the expansion model, does not exist other than as an effect).

One then can pick between gravity emerging from mass, or everything blowing up like a balloon achieving the identical effect. Two models, both based on the same data. If you like to drive people nuts, then atomic expansion theory is for you.

Flat earth doesn't work, because eventually you have to rely on lies to try to counter what every old sea dog has seen with his own eyes.

 

[Vicomte13]

Anytime a compressed gas, which is what our atmosphere is, is exposed to a vacuum it will seek equilibrium. But apparently, along with curving water, this no longer applies to our world.

Sure it does. Gravity draws down the gas, and it is much more dense at the surface than at the top. At the top it is much more attenuated by space, but most of it doesn't drift off into space, because the force of gravity is sufficient to hold everything heavier than Helium in earth's gravity well. Helium is so light that it outgasses, which is why you can't get sufficient amounts of it by fractional distillation and generally we get it from natural gas wells, where it is trapped underground by rock. Release helium into the atmosphere, and it rises up and floats off into space. Nitrogen and oxygen have more mass, and while the vaccuum of space attentuates them, the gravity of earth is still sufficient to hold them with the earth.

 

[prodromos]

But now consider this: 60 sextillion earths. Not exoplanets - Earths - 60 sextillion planets with earth-like conditions currently exist in the universe, according to NASA.

Sorry, but without any indication as to how they arrived at this number, assuming they did actually make this claim, it isn't a value I can remotely take seriously. Given the challenges of actually detecting an earth like planet, and considering the error factors involved, I suspect that their estimate is actually a very broad estimate, with the low end being one earth like planet.

 

[Waggles]

In the end is any of this a salvation issue?
Whether the earth is spherical or not let us all get on with the job
of preaching the gospel of salvation.

I guess we'll find out the truth when we rise up to meet the Lord in
the air at the marriage feast. We can look down and see for ourselves.

 

[Halbhh]

Two things. If our scientists knew we could detect nothing, then the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent on these arrays through NASA and universities, knowing they were useless, were a fraud of massive size on the taxpayers of many countries, and discredit the scientific community in general - and are a very good argument for cutting off funding to NASA.

I think that the arguments for the weakness of signals is an ex post facto argument to try to shore up the fact that we have in fact heard nothing. I think those men of NASA and science who set up SETI and got the funding and built the arrays were confident in what they were doing, and understood radio attenuation well. I think that they were genuinely surprised by the silence of the skies.

The second thing, regarding this business of a "soul", now we are turning into theology. The written word on this in Hebrew anway is crystal clear: that which breathes IS a soul. Nothing "has" a soul. The word we translate as "soul" is the word "nephesh", and what it literally means is a "breather". The word "spirit" the word "breath" and the word "wind" in Hebrew are all just one word, one concept. God breathes things to life - to "live" in the Hebrew is to be a breather. To die is to have the spirit, which is the same thing as breath, taken back by God. Animals, including fish, are breathers - nephesh - souls. They die. Plants are not breathers. They do not breathe (in the sense of having spirit/breath in their nostrils), and no plants die in Scripture. They wither or fade, which is different.

For my part, I stand on the evidence: the skies are silent. They have been silent for 50 years. Every additional day, they remain silent. I expect, based on that evidence, that they will remain silent forever, and that there does not exist any other life anywhere in the universe.

The 60 sextillion earths is a NASA number. It sounds cartoonish to me, but I didn't make it up, and I have no basis on which to attack it. I can use it just exactly as it was presented to the public and make the conclusions I made from it. There are vast numbers of planets on which life could develop, according to NASA, but the skies are silent. This tells me that life does not, in fact, ever spontaneously develop, and that both abiogenesis and evolution are false doctrines. In fact, we are created beings. Life did not evolve here, and it never emerges from non-life. Life is intentionally created by God, so it cannot simply "arise" anywhere.

The silence of the skies strongly supports this belief of mine.

Now, of course, I could be wrong. But as of today, 2017, the truth is that the skies ARE silent, and remain so, and that my position is more evidence based than the speculation that the life really is out there but we just can't hear it. THAT is pure speculative fantasy.

I think that the rest of my life will pass, and the skies will remain silent. and that a trillion quadrillion generations will pass, and the skies will always be science, because no form of life, right down to the bacteria ever spontaneously generated anyplace - not on earth, and not in space. Because life was created, it only exists where it was created. The skies are silent because the only place it was created was here.

We will never find so much as a bacteria anywhere in the universe, other than here, or where we take it.

I sense the fear and frustration of those who so desperately want to be right about there being life out there, because I think everybody realizes that if there is no life out there, then there is no evolution and God created us - and I think that many people would rather die than admit that.

Well I for one am untroubled by the idea there could be zero life on other planets, not even algae like life. Not a problem for me. Abiogensis is a huge unknown, only speculative stuff, like we notice there are moderately complex organic molecules made in nature, observable by spectra, and then it's suggestive if one wants to believe it means abiogenesis is more likely.

I'm very neutral about that.

I'm content to say -- "yes, it's totally speculative, unproven, so long as it cannot be done in an experiment starting with non living organic compounds we know nature does produce".

My guess is that since God surely did create the laws of nature, physics, that He made a Universe in which life can indeed get started naturally. Just a guess. Not important to many people, but possibly for a few here and there it could help them get past a barrier to seeking God.

My guess is that nature as He made it, chemistry, physics, is amenable to life, and life doesn't necessarily require entire wholesale intervention then as would be required for instance to make a horse out of a log.

Less intervention than that, subsequently then. Still intervention though. I think it's very likely He directly intervened into nature to make our modern human DNA just-so, as it is. But all of this is merely my viewpoint, and not of any importance in itself, and I don't even rely on it. I know God exists because I ended up doing just what Christ said to do in Matthew 7 to find Him, and that's how I tell others to find out about God. It's the way Christ said. It requires some faith, to seek Him, and that's a key thing, an act of seeking the Good, a good will act.

It is important for 100% of believers though to realize the only secure basis for their faith is never some version of small details about creation -- never that -- but only and solely the basis Christ said, also in Matthew 7, about that which is rock instead of sand. That alone gives real assurance we can endure. Nothing about small details of creation will give that assurance.

So, please know I'm totally content with others thinking zero abiogenesis happens. It's not a bad thing to think that. It's merely an optional thing to think that. It's a guess about unknowns, and that's fine. We are allowed to guess about unknowns all day long. My guesses are that life happens often out there on other worlds, and ends just as often, every time, too soon, mere thousands or mere millions of years, and the simple organism is extinct, and that we are the exception, and possibly the only one anywhere, though this last is highly speculative.

 

[Dig4truth]

I spent eight years of my life at sea on ships as an officer of the deck. That is not true. When a ship goes over the horizon, the binoculars will bring into sharper view the part of the ship that is still visible line of sight. It will not show you the hull that is obscured by the curvature of the earth. When the mast first appears, it will show you the mast and the waves, but the curvature obscures the rest. You can very clearly see the ship rise out of the water as it gets closer and more and more of it becomes visible. This is the curvature of the earth right before ones very eyes.

That's wonderful. Now would you like to know what was going on when you thought the ships were going or coming over the horizon?


Here you go, and it's only the last 6 min., from 20 - 26 min. of video.

Remember testable and repeatable.

 

[Dig4truth]

Sure it does. Gravity draws down the gas, and it is much more dense at the surface than at the top. At the top it is much more attenuated by space, but most of it doesn't drift off into space, because the force of gravity is sufficient to hold everything heavier than Helium in earth's gravity well. Helium is so light that it outgasses, which is why you can't get sufficient amounts of it by fractional distillation and generally we get it from natural gas wells, where it is trapped underground by rock. Release helium into the atmosphere, and it rises up and floats off into space. Nitrogen and oxygen have more mass, and while the vaccuum of space attentuates them, the gravity of earth is still sufficient to hold them with the earth.

It's a compressed gas and we know what happens when it is exposed to a vacuum. I don't need any theories about gravity (I say "theory" because no one has really identified it, kind of like dark matter) it may be true but what can we observe and repeat? That is what science is about!

 

[Dig4truth]

In the end is any of this a salvation issue?
Whether the earth is spherical or not let us all get on with the job
of preaching the gospel of salvation.

I guess we'll find out the truth when we rise up to meet the Lord in
the air at the marriage feast. We can look down and see for ourselves.

Well, Waggles, it's not a salvation issue but it is sure fun to discuss with people about.

And yes, at the resurrection we will see it for ourselves!