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Archaeologist finds Jerusalem wall matching biblical story

Posted in Biblical History, Biblical Science, Biblical Teaching, Christian Living on February 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »

from HAARETZ:

A team of Israeli archaeologists has announced the discovery of a massive wall they say dates to the 10th century BCE in Jerusalem’s Ophel Park on the slope between the Temple Mount and the village of Silwan. The dig director, Dr. Eilat Mazar, dates the wall according to potsherds found nearby to the period of King Solomon and the major period of construction in Jerusalem in the First Temple period, as described in the Bible.

The dig is a joint project by the Hebrew University, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

Along with the wall, which is 10 meters high and 70 meters long, other structures were found, including a monumental gatehouse and a tower. According to Mazar, the wall is additional proof of the accuracy of the Bible’s description of the grandeur of the period of David and Solomon.

According to 1 Kings 3:1, Solomon brought his royal Egyptian wife “into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem round about.”

“If we take the type of building and the finds and examine them in the light of what we know from the Bible, it certainly goes together well,” Mazar says. “It suits the biblical story and upgrades our ability to propose an association to the wall of Jerusalem that King Solomon built. It’s not wise to relate to archaeology without the biblical text. It is very possible that the Bible, like stories of dynasties, preserves a kernel of truth,” she says.

The artifacts found near the wall are seen as further proof of its construction during the Israelite period. An inscription found on a fragment of a jug reads “of the overseer of the ba…”, which Mazar believes refers to the “overseer of the bakers.” Other fragments bear the words “of the king.” Clay seals were also found bearing dozens of names.

According to Mazar, the wall, which has been uncovered over the past few months, was built on a very high level in terms of construction and engineering, and was perched on the natural rock scarp in a way that protected the Temple Mount from the east.

“This is the first time a structure has been found that could conform to descriptions of King Solomon’s construction in Jerusalem,” Mazar says.

The discovery highlights an ongoing scholarly controversy about the nature of the period of David and Solomon. Mazar belongs to a school of thought that finds archaeological underpinnings to the biblical stories and accepts the stories as historical. Other scholars, many from Tel Aviv University, say the Bible represents myths and the political interests of its writers, arguing that the monarchy of David and Solomon was not the regional power the Bible describes. Critics of Mazar, who asked not to be named, said yesterday they very much doubted the accuracy of her connections between the archaeological finds and the Bible. “She often fires an arrow and then marks the target. What she’s telling is a myth,” a skeptic said.

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Giant “Sea Monster” Fossil Discovered in Arctic

Posted in Biblical History, Biblical Science, Christian Living, Encouragement on October 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Job 41:1

“Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord [which] thou lettest down?”

from National Geographic:

A massive prehistoric sea reptile that was longer than a humpback whale and had teeth the size of cucumbers has been found by fossil hunters on a remote Arctic island.

Measuring some 50 feet (15 meters) in length, the bone-crunching predator represents one of the largest marine reptiles ever known, according to a team led by Jørn Hurum of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway.

The 150-million-year-old creature was first discovered in 2006 on Spitsbergen, part of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, in a polar wasteland littered with fossilized sea reptiles.

“We knew immediately this was something special,” Hurum said. “The large pieces of bone and the structure of the fragments told us that this was big.”

Hurum’s team returned last summer to the Arctic island to excavate the fossil.

Removing a hundred tons of rock by hand while watching out for polar bears, the team recovered a large chunk of the skeleton, including portions of its estimated ten-foot-long (three-meter) skull, an almost complete forelimb, and sections of its dinner-plate-size vertebrae.

Dubbed “the Monster,” it’s thought to be a previously unknown species of plesiosaur.

“It’s as big or bigger than the largest plesiosaur ever found,” Hurum said. “This absolutely looks like a new species,” he added. . . . . .

 

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DARWIN DEBUNKED BY SHOCKING DISCOVERY

Posted in Atheism, Biblical Science, creationism, Evolution, Humanism, Intelligent Design, Post-Modernism, prophetic on July 14, 2009| 1 Comment »

from The Last Crusade:

Last January, Scientific American declared 2009 as “the year of Darwin” in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of the revolutionary evolutionist who turned man into a monkey.

The celebration is understandable.

No thinker has accomplished more to create a cleft between science and religion.

No writer has done more to undermine the claim of scripture that man was made in the image and likeness of God.

No scholar has forged greater support for moral relativity and modern materialism.

His theories are treated as laws; his notions as knowledge; his speculation as science.

But a recent finding in Kenya has sent evolutionists into a tail-spin.

And freshly unearthed discoveries of Darwin’s life have caused the academic community to reconsider his greatness and his contribution to advancement of modern science.

The first debunking of Darwin came with the discovery this year of a 1.5 million-year-old footprint in northern Kenya – – the oldest relic of primitive man since Mary Leaky discovered 3.75 million-year-old tracks in the volcanic ash of northern Tanzania.

Darwinist scientists who discovered the footprint in Kenya reluctantly came to the conclusion that it was made by Homo Erectus who had no business appearing in the lower Paleolithic period of world history.

By scanning the footprints with lasers and measuring sediment compression, the scientists determined that the individual who left this print had a modern foot and stride: a mid-foot arch, straight big toe and heel-to-toe weight transfer. 

footprintsml

David Braun, a professor at the South Africa Cape Town University and one of the scientists who came upon the fossil, states the following in Science magazine:

    “It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden something that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site. These could quite easily have been made on the beach today.”

“The prints match a men’s shoe size of about 9, which gives you a height of about 5 feet 9 inches,” says Brian Richmond of George Washington University, who was part of the excavation team. “Here, we have really compelling evidence that they were walking with a long stride, they had an arch in the foot the way we have, and the arch puts a spring in our step, which makes walking more efficient,” he says.

Compounding the problem was the discovery in the same area of a second set of human footprints that had been left about 1,000 years after the first set.

“It’s incredible. I’ve never excavated anything like this before,” says team director John Harris of Rutgers University.

The discoveries are not only incredible but devastating for Darwinists who have held that Homo Erectus did not appear on the scene until 200,000 years ago. This assumption is contained in almost every world history and social studies text in the United States.

Since Christians are compelled by the U.S. Department of Education to present Creationism as a fanciful theory, the same ruling should now be applied to the questionable theories of Darwin and his contemporaries.

To be sure, previous problems with the theory of evolution have been found. To support natural selection, Darwin argued that giraffes gradually grew long necks in order to reach into high trees for the leaves, which the Great Scientist believed, were their sole source of sustenance. He remained blissfully unaware that giraffes eat grass and bushes, and he failed to account for the fact that female giraffes are two or three feet shorter than the males.

In their efforts to materialize empirical proof for evolution, Darwin’s followers turned to scientific hoaxes, such as “Nebraska Man” — an anthropoid ape ancestor to man, whose tooth turned out to belong to a wild pig, and Piltdown Man, who was reported to represent the missing link between monkey and man.

Discovered in England in 1912, Piltdown Man created a sensation until the artifact was exposed in the 1950s as the skull of a Medieval Englishman which had been attached by jaded scientists to the jaw of an Asian ape, whose teeth had been filed down to look human and whose bones had been stained by shellac to look old.

Yet three English scientists were knighted for Piltdown Man.

Other Darwinian claims have been uncovered as asinine assertions. Bird feathers, for example, do not come from the scales of reptiles, human embryos contain no gills.

Thus far, not one fossil has been found to validate Darwin.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontologists,” admitted Stephen J. Gould in 1977. But that fossil record now contains even more species that appear fully developed, with no traceable ancestors.

In addition to the discoveries in Kenya, newly uncovered data about Darwin the man present him as an opportunist and charlatan.

Darwin, noted scientist Eugene Winchy demonstrates in his book The End of Darwinism, stole his theory from Alfred Wallace, who had sent him a “completed formal paper on evolution by natural selection.”

“All my originality … will be smashed,” a distraught Darwin cried when he got Wallace’s manuscript.

Darwin also lied in “The Origin of Species” about believing in a Creator. By 1859, he was a confirmed agnostic and so admitted in his posthumous autobiography, which was censored by his family.

In his book, Windchy devotes a chapter to the Scopes trial which formed the basis for Inherit the Wind, a Bible-mocking movie with Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow and Frederick March as William Jennings Bryan.

The trial, as it turns out, was a carefully orchestrated scam to garner publicity for Dayton, Tennessee.

Scopes never taught evolution and never took the stand. His students were tutored to commit perjury.

And the devout Christian Bryan more than held his own against the atheist Darrow as evidenced by the actual transcript of the trial.

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The world of archeology is rocked by evidence of King David’s palace unearthed in Jerusalem

Posted in Biblical History, Biblical Science, Biblical Teaching, Current Events, Jacobs Trouble, prophetic on July 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

from aish.com:

How Jewish is Jerusalem?

You might think that’s a silly question, but in the world of academia, revisionist history and even biblical archaeology, scholars have cast the shadow of doubt over Judaism’s intrinsic connection to Jerusalem. The Moslem Waqf, the religious authority that administers the Temple Mount — the site of Judaism’s First and Second Temples — has been claiming for years that there was never a temple there. But the idea that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and Jerusalem its holy capital has been under attack from far more reputable sources in recent decades as well.

For a growing number of academics and intellectuals, King David and his united kingdom of Judah and Israel, which has served for 3,000 years as an integral symbol of the Jewish nation, is simply a piece of fiction. The biblical account of history has been dismissed as unreliable by a cadre of scholars, some of whom have an overtly political agenda, arguing that the traditional account was resurrected by the Zionists to justify dispossessing Palestinian Arabs. The most outspoken of these is Keith Whitelam of the Copenhagen School which promotes an agenda of “biblical minimalism,” whose best-known work is The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History. . . . . .

But the debunkers of Jewish biblical history got some bad news recently, when a spunky, dedicated archaeologist began her latest dig. Dr. Eilat Mazar, world authority on Jerusalem’s past, has taken King David out of the pages of the Bible and put him back into living history. Mazar’s latest excavation in the City of David, in the southern shadow of the Temple Mount, has shaken up the archaeological world. For lying undisturbed for over 3,000 years is a massive building which Mazar believes is King David’s palace.

For Mazar, 48, one of the world’s leading authorities on the archaeology of ancient Jerusalem and head archaeologist of the Shalem Center Institute of Archaeology, the discovery was the culmination of years of effort and solid speculation. From the time she was a teenager, she had her nose in archaeology literature, and worked closely with her grandfather, renowned archaeologist Benjamin Mazar, who conducted the southern wall excavations next to the Western Wall. She holds a doctorate in archaeology from Hebrew University, is author of The Complete Guide to the Temple Mount Excavations, and in the 1970s and ’80s worked on the digs supervised by Yigal Shilo in the City of David. The significant discoveries made then, including a huge wall called the “stepped-stone structure” — which Shilo believed was a retaining wall for David’s royal palace or part of the Jebusite fortress he conquered — ignited Mazar to continue to look for the prize: David’s palace itself. . . . . . .

read the full article here.

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OUR QUANTUM REALITY

Posted in Biblical Science, Biblical Teaching, Christian Living, Encouragement, Intelligent Design on May 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »

from Herescope:

THE MATHEMATICS OF THE MECHANICS

By Ben Laake

A Useful Tool

Traditionally, mathematics has been called the language of science. Scientists and engineers use the language of mathematics to describe the world and to understand and predict the behavior of physical systems. For several centuries, mankind has been learning to use ever more complicated systems of equations to increase the accuracy and fidelity existing between the mathematical description of reality and reality itself. This improved and developed understanding has been used to harness the energy of nature for the benefit of man. The scientific and technological wonders we enjoy and depend on today were made possible by the advanced understanding of our world developed by mathematics.

Every human endeavor is part of the integrated whole of life. Scientific understanding of the universe is integral with the overall life of man, not an independent endeavor. As compiled by Charles Spurgeon, The Puritan Catechism asks the question, “What is the chief end of man?” and then answers, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31), and to enjoy him for ever (Ps. 73:25-26).”[2] This description of man’s end is not limited to one’s religion, or one’s personal life, or even to one’s family life. It also encompasses how we study and understand nature through mathematics, science, and engineering, and then utilize the universe for our well-being.

Mathematics emerged into scientific prominence during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through men such as Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who employed mathematics to better understand and give description to God’s majestic universe. They believed that God had supernaturally created the universe and continued to providentially preserve it, and through mathematics they were able to describe how through natural laws God governed the universe. The acknowledged progression was natural laws derived from supernatural acts. This understanding that God created and maintains the universe by His sovereign working through supernatural power and natural laws is fundamental to the Christian faith.

Wisdom in Application of Mathematics

As revealed in His Word, belief in the one true God is required in order to give direction to the true study of reality, whether philosophical, mathematical, or scientific. There is no true separation in the human realm; any worldview grows from either the foundation of man’s understanding of and relationship to God, or from the absence of such. A lost (or natural) man’s focus on human achievements puts man at the center of and in charge of his life. Without God, lost man in his sinful nature uses mathematics to develop science that places himself on the intellectual throne.

The non-Christian approach to reality always leads to man-centered conclusions in which ultimate force and authority derive from the physical realm where man has apparent control. Instead of acknowledging the flow of supernatural to natural, non-Christians assume something else. Some assume God supernaturally created the universe and now allows it to run on its own through natural laws—the deist worldview. Others assume that everything derives from natural causes—the atheist or humanistic worldview. Still others assume reality involves more than natural cause-and-effect, but, rejecting the God of the Bible, conclude that the natural gives rise to the supernatural—the New Age worldview. Not only do these various belief systems exist within Christendom, but they are also prevalent among scientists and mathematicians.

The foundation of today’s mathematical understanding was laid by many men who held to a worldview that God created the universe. Galileo, Newton, and other early pioneers of modern mathematics believed that the world around them was made by the Lord God, the Creator of heaven and earth. They worshiped Him and believed that their mathematics described His universe. To these men, mathematics was a language that described God’s handiwork.

Limitations of Mathematical Results

Although many early scientists, seeing the hand of God in their mathematics, were led to honor and worship Him, others imagined that by their calculations a model of the universe could be developed that did not require God. Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827), a great mathematician, astronomer, and friend of Napoleon, published such a treatise on the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter. On hearing of the publication, Napoleon asked “You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe?” Laplace answered, “No, Sire, I had no need of that hypothesis.”[3] Upon hearing of Laplace’s rejection of the “God hypothesis”, another mathematician and astronomer, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, took exception. “Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains so many things,” he reportedly said.[4]

A forerunner to modern evolutionists, Laplace believed he had no need for the supernatural to describe the world, stating, “All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.”[5] The body of mathematical work that he originated is extraordinary. It is foundational for every engineer and scientist to study and understand the system of equations and mathematical formulations derived by and named after Laplace. There is nothing inherently evil in the mathematics.[6] Yet the conclusions that Laplace drew from those equations should serve as a warning to everyone. The chief end of man is to think God’s thoughts after Him and to give Him the glory, not to enthrone the human wisdom of science. But the sinful disposition of heart within man will not allow God to be glorified.

Mathematics today has advanced well beyond what was imagined by eighteenth century mathematicians. Building on their understanding, today’s mathematicians have been able to explore and describe God’s creation in amazing detail. Quantum mechanics, set theory, probabilities, and chaos theory are just some of the theories of mathematics that have led to advances in energy, transportation, agriculture, and communications that define our modern world. Mathematics is still the language of science, and scientists and engineers still use it to describe the universe and help mankind. Chaos theory and high speed computers can now model weather and violent storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes with greater accuracy than ever before. Both Christian and non-Christian alike can gain insight, important data, and new understanding from these analyses. The Christian, however, knows that the sovereign God, not random chaotic chance, controls the universe.

Just as in the eighteenth century, men today who reject God and the Bible use the tools at their disposal to describe their own reality—a reality that excludes God from the formula. Failing to disprove the need for supernatural intervention, they start with observations from the natural world and create a model of reality of their own choosing. High speed computers enable scientists to take the “small number of immutable laws,” as described by Laplace, and construct entire universes inside the electronic memory. By using chaos theory, scientists create fractal images that exhibit infinite complexity; no matter how closely you examine the structure there is always another layer of detail. The colorful images that generate and regenerate themselves appear to come to life with a mind of their own. In technical terminology, the fractal images appear to defy the second law of thermodynamics and bring order out of chaos, thus leading many to conclude that there is no need for what they label the “God hypothesis”. The worlds generated by and in their computers become their reality and god.

Just as Napoleon took interest in the work of Laplace, today’s leaders follow the work of the celebrated scientists of our day. “I find the ideas in the fractals, both as a body of knowledge and as a metaphor, an incredibly important way of looking at the world,” stated Vice President Al Gore.[7] However, the metaphor is flawed in that the results are not giving glory to God; rather, the fractal calculations and computations are being used to explain God away. Unlike Napoleon and his contemporaries, many of today’s leaders, taking their cue from the secular scientists, do not accept that the inclusion of the sovereign God in the equation of reality “explains so many things.”

Maintaining Integrity

For those who trust the Word of God, the anchor still holds. While much of the academic world is adrift in the seemingly infinite sea of the modern body of knowledge, Christian laymen, scientists, and engineers must with integrity hold that the real reality is accounted for through the spoken Word of God. As the Spirit hovered over the waters, “God said . . . and there was” (Genesis 1:3 ff.). By the Lord Jesus Christ “all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16-17).

When the theologian says that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever,” this is an all-inclusive statement. Mathematics is but a tool that man can employ to help him understand and describe the physical world. When divorced from God, man becomes divorced from the source of reality; he becomes lost amidst the universe, with his ultimate demise being assured. All men, mathematicians included, who reject God will see their worlds crumble and come at last to nothing. Thus Laplace on his deathbed was forced to admit that in the end, “Man follows only phantoms.”[8] While mathematics aids in describing the universe in which we live, mathematics cannot account for the existence of it. After all, why is there something and not nothing? But those who choose to follow the God of the Bible will find that beyond human calculations there is a solid foundation that will stand for all eternity, the Lord Jesus Christ. Through the study and application of mathematics, the natural revelation of the wonders of God’s creative and sovereign power ought to humble us before His majesty.

I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty,
And on Your wondrous works.
Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts,
And I will declare Your greatness.
(Psalm 145:5-6)

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‘Ida’ an extinct primate – and that’s all

Posted in Biblical History, Biblical Science, Biblical Teaching, creationism, Intelligent Design on May 20, 2009| 1 Comment »

from OneNewsNow:

Ida_skeletonThe president of Answers in Genesis says an alleged new “missing link” found by scientists is nothing more than an extinct primate. 

 On Tuesday, scientists in New York unveiled what they described as the missing link in human evolution, a fossilized skeleton reportedly 47 million years old. They said the creature — nicknamed “Ida” — had four legs and a long tail, was about the size of a small cat, and had human-like nails instead of claws, along with a bone in her foot that is similar to humans.
 
According to Associated Press, scientists said while the creature is not a direct ancestor of monkeys and humans, it provides a good indication of what that ancestor may have looked like.

Ken Ham, president of the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, finds it ironic that the same scientists, in a research paper detailing their findings, toned down their pronouncements after pressure from colleagues in the scientific community.
 
“One of those reviewers said that…whether nor not it’s going to be a transitional form, or missing link, is a judgment for the scientific community,” Ham states. “And he’s quoted as saying that [issue] will be sorted out, or at least debated extensively in the community for years, once the paper is published.”
 
Ham says the fossil is similar to a modern lemur, and in no way resembles a human skeleton. 
 
The ministry has stated: “Because the fossil is similar to a modern lemur (a small, tailed, tree-climbing primate), it’s unlikely that creationists need any interpretation of the ‘missing link’ other than that it was a small, tailed, probably tree-climbing, and now extinct primate — from a kind created on Day 6 of Creation Week.”

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Stunning archeological and scientific findings at what is left of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah

Posted in Biblical History, Biblical Science, Biblical Teaching, Christian Living, Encouragement on January 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

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MIT scientists baffled by global warming theory, contradicts scientific data

Posted in Biblical Science, Current Events on October 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »

from tg daily:

Boston (MA) – Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature – and not the direct result of man’s contributions. . . . . .

read the full article here.

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Scientists confirm shark’s ‘virgin birth’

Posted in Biblical Science, Christian Living, creationism on October 10, 2008| Leave a Comment »

So it would seem that science confirms that if God wanted to he could cause a woman to have a virgin birth. I mean if a shark can have a virgin birth, then it confirms that virgin births are in the realm of scientific possibility.  I have read other confirmed stories of virgin births in nature.

from msnbc:

Scientists have confirmed the second case of a “virgin birth” in a shark.

In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo.

This first case was no fluke,” Demian Chapman, a shark scientist and lead author of the second study, said in a statement. “It is quite possible that this is something female sharks of many species can do on occasion.”

The aquarium sharks that reproduced without mates each carried only one pup, while some shark species can produce litters numbering in the dozen or more. The scientists cautioned that the rare asexual births should not be viewed as a possible solution to declining global shark populations.

“It is very unlikely that a small number of female survivors could build their numbers up very quickly by undergoing virgin birth,” Chapman said.

The medical mystery began 16 months ago after the death of the Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit at the Virginia Beach aquarium. No male blacktip sharks were present during her eight years at the aquarium.

In May 2007, the 5-foot, 94-pound shark died of stress-related complications related to her unknown pregnancy after undergoing a yearly checkup. The 10-inch shark pup was found during a necropsy of Tidbit, surprising aquarium officials. They initially thought the embryonic pup was either a product of a virgin birth or a cross between the blacktip and a male of another shark species — which has never been documented, Chapman said.

Tidbit’s pup was nearly full term, and likely would have been quickly eaten by “really big sand tiger sharks” that were in the tank, Chapman said in a telephone interview from Florida.

That is what happened to the tiny hammerhead pup in the Omaha case.

“By the time they could realize what they were looking at, something munched the baby,” he said of aquarium workers. The remains of the pup were used for the DNA testing.

Virgin birth has been proven in some bony fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds, and has been suspected among sharks in the wild. The scientists who studied the Virginia and Nebraska sharks said the newly formed pups acquired one set of chromosomes when the mother’s chromosomes split during egg development, then united anew.

Absent the chromosomes present in the male sperm, the offspring of an asexual conception have reduced genetic diversity and, the scientists said, may be at a disadvantage for surviving in the wild. A pup, for instance, can be more susceptible to congenital disorders and diseases.

The scientists said their findings offer “intriguing questions” about how frequently automictic parthenogenesis occurs in the wild.

“It is possible that parthenogenesis could become more common in these sharks if population densities become so low that females have trouble finding mates,” said Mahmood Shivji, one of the scientists and director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

those used in human paternity testing.

Chapman, who is with the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook, was assisted in the study by Beth Firchau of the Virginia Aquarium.

Chapman and Shivji were on the team that made the first discovery of virgin birth involving the Nebraska shark.

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Researchers: Asteroid Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah

Posted in Biblical History, Biblical Science on April 5, 2008| 1 Comment »

Someone asked that since I posted this article does it mean that I agree that an asteroid destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

My answer is no I do not, but as many past articles on this website attest, I post them to show what is going on in the wider world and what people are saying that relates to the Church and the Bible.

I leave it to the reader many times to use their discernment and Biblical Knowledge to decide on the validity of the articles contents.

God Bless,

John

from FOXNews:

A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.

The tablet, found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the royal place at Nineveh in the mid-19th century, is thought to be a 700 B.C. copy of notes made by a Sumerian astronomer watching the night sky.

He referred to the asteroid as a “white stone bowl approaching” and recorded it as it “vigorously swept along.”

Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C.

About half the symbols on the tablet have survived and half of those refer to the asteroid. The other symbols record the positions of clouds and constellations. In the past 150 years scientists have made five unsuccessful attempts to translate the tablet.

Mark Hempsell, one of the researchers from Bristol University who cracked the tablet’s code, said: “It’s a wonderful piece of observation, an absolutely perfect piece of science.”

He said the size and route of the asteroid meant that it was likely to have crashed into the Austrian Alps at Köfels. As it traveled close to the ground it would have left a trail of destruction from supersonic shock waves and then slammed into the Earth with a cataclysmic impact.

Debris consisting of up to two-thirds of the asteroid would have been hurled back along its route and a flash reaching temperatures of 400 Centigrade (752 Fahrenheit) would have been created, killing anyone in its path.

About one million sq kilometers (386,000 sq miles) would have been devastated and the impact would have been equivalent to more than 1,000 tons of TNT exploding.

Dr Hempsall said that at least 20 ancient myths record devastation of the type and on the scale of the asteroid’s impact, including the Old Testament tale of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the ancient Greek myth of how Phaeton, son of Helios, fell into the River Eridanus after losing control of his father’s sun chariot.

The findings of Dr. Hempsall and Alan Bond, of Reaction Engines Ltd., are published in a book, “A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels Impact Event.”

The researchers say that the asteroid’s impact would explain why at Köfels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 3 miles wide and a quarter of a mile thick.

Tale of devastation

“Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and he overthrew those cities and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities … [Abraham] looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.”

Source: Genesis 19:24-28

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