Drifting away

@LadyGrace Agree

@Learninglife9 Curious - your post raised a notification on my normal e-post list. I don't normally have that so must have mis-keyed something.

I know how science works, and I took an adult-education course in Geology some years ago.

I agree that the Bible - or any other holy book - does not try to explain anything, only express a basic belief that God (or any other creative deity) did it. Fair enough. Not my belief but I accept others do believe it.

The ancient Middle Eastern scribes were intelligent people but they could not forecast anything happening in the natural world beyond saying, simply but perfectly logically, that it will happen again.


The expansion of knowledge in the last two millennia BCE (the era in which most of the original Hebrew books were written) would have been far slower than it is now, but was probably enough to be noticeable. It was during the Late Bronze Age in that part of the world, with a lot of trading around the Mediterranean and further afield, so ideas and knowledge would have spread with it.

Indeed, although we can't say where and when copper and tin, and their alloys, were discovered, it must have greatly encouraged trade between many different regions and cultures, due to the ores being found only in definite, very widely spread, places. Looking at beautifully made Bronze Age items in museums, it was clear the metal must have been something of a wonder material to people who previously knew only stone, bone and wood.


I don't know what Daniel really meant by "people running to and fro", but he was right there! Human nature seems no different now from a few thousand years ago, as there is certainly a lot of running to and fro. Also, knowledge is increasing at a rate Daniel and his contemporaries could never have imagined; but again, his prediction there is really only a logical surmise from ordinary experience. He and the other prophets were just the intellectuals of their society and day, but at least they seem to have observed human behaviour a bit more rationally than some other cultures did.

We have to be careful of course. We cannot think for them, so remotely in time and place from their lives. So it is too easy to misinterpret their words and intended messages - or what have come down to us as said to be theirs.

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That is hardly a scientific approach, but I do credit them for thinking a lot more logically than the inventors of most of their contemporary religions around the region, such as the bizarre polytheisms of the Greeks and Romans. The main background religion for the Hebrews seems to have been Zoroastrian, which has two gods - of good and bad - but I don't know how much the early Judaism adopted from it.

@ArishMell

enjoy your life

@Learninglife9 I do, thank you. And you, yours.

@LadyGrace you are welcome.

@JoyfulSilence when moon goes, we'll probably have to say bye bye to a no of things.. predictable seasons would vanish

@Babaloo6

Hopefully by then we will have spread to nearby habitable planets.

Or have the tech to deal with it. Huge greenhouses, etc.

@JoyfulSilence probably yes,

@ArishMelland distance of moon from earth is 384,000 km

@Babaloo6 Thank you!

That's a more rapid retreat than I'd thought, I must admit. 38mm/yr... I was thinking more likely something like 0.3mm/yr or even less.

One effect I imagine it will have, eventually, is lower tidal ranges.

@ArishMell you are welcome..