Sunspots 863

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

The Arts: Relevant says that Denzel Washington, as a movie director, starts each work day with prayer. Good for him!

Christianity: Relevant reports on various city ordinances prohibiting feeding the homeless, or making it difficult to do so.

Christianity Today reports on a study that found that (surprise!) people stay away from church when it rains, and also commit more crimes when it rains, and they aren't in church.

Environment: Gizmodo reports that some bacteria seem to be breaking down plastics in the ocean, for food.

Finances: NPR reports that people living in mobile home parks are having their homes taken away, and that US government agencies are facilitating this process.

Politics: The Coal miners' union thinks Joe Manchin should have supported the Build Back Better bill, according to Gizmodo.

Pornography (There are no photos of pornography in the article(s)) linked here): Relevant writes about Billie Eilish, who was addicted to pornography as a child, and discusses women being addicted to pornography.

Science: Gizmodo reports that scientists have had some success in transplanting a pig's organ into a human.

NPR reports that a large eagle from Asia has been flying around North America for nearly a year.

Sports: FiveThirtyEight reports on new ways of tracking all sorts of data during basketball games.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, it is free to use like this.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 730

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Relevant reports that a church has a standing offer to pay (at about $8000) for weddings of couples, in the church, who are living together without being married. About 60 couples have done this.

A pastor of a white congregation explains why ministering to African-Americans and whites at the same time is hard.

Computing: Gizmodo discusses some reasons for checking our smart phones a lot.

Education: Grammarphobia tells us that the meanings of  "emerge" and "emergency" are related.

Health: If you're a woman, you probably won't be surprised. NPR reports on a study indicating that women do better at clerical tasks when the room temperature is not so cold.

Humor: (or something) A Gizmodo article explains how some magic tricks are done.

(or something) Relevant reports that the Ark Encounter is suing because of rain damage.


Politics: Catherine Rampell on how the Trump Administration has tinkered with government statistics in various ways.

NPR reports that a lot of so-called American soil is actually owned by foreign entities.

FiveThirtyEight discusses the laws that state governments are seeking to have adopted, in states where the legislature and the governor are both from the same party.

Michael Gerson is not happy with the Trump Administration's decision to slow down the replacement of Andrew Jackson's picture, on $20 bills, by that of Harriet Tubman, and says that Tubman, even after death, makes her enemies look foolish.

Science: There's a lot of water on Mars, according to Gizmodo.

A Christianity Today writer discusses the question of whether non-human animals appreciate beauty.

Gizmodo discusses attempts to control monkey populations in India, where the animals have been responsible for several human deaths.

Listverse describes 10 organisms that don't seem to have any limits on their lifespan.

The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, I believe, it is public domain. 

Thanks for looking!

Sunspots 688

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: A female Christianity Today writer, who had a homosexual relationship in the past, discusses how to deal with other women in a homosexual relationship, with compassion.


Computing: Gizmodo on what Chromebook computers can and can't do, as compared to the more expensive Apple and Windows devices.

Gizmodo also warns about letting our information appliances get too hot.

And Gizmodo reports that face recognition software from Amazon wrongly indicated that 28 member of the US Congress (out of 535) were criminals. Furthermore, errors were more likely for non-white members.

Health: Gizmodo, and other sources, say we don't apply sunscreen correctly.

National Public Radio tells us that, in most cases, tap water is just as good for us as filtered or bottled water, or better, and it's better for the environment.

Humor: The Wikipedia reported that US Senator Orrin Hatch has died. He hasn't.

Science: The BBC says that because of a recent heatwave, some amazing archaeological features have been discovered in the UK.

The BBC also reports on that after-the-rain smell. (Thanks to one of my brothers for these two links!)

Thanks for looking!

Image source (public domain)

Sunspots 369

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Science:  National Public Radio reports on why raindrops don't kill mosquitoes when the mosquito gets hit.

NPR also reports on why horseshoe crabs have blue blood, and other things you almost certainly didn't know about these animals.

Politics:  (Sort of) The Brookings Institution has published an on-line interactive guide to the location of manufacturing jobs in the US.

Image source (public domain)

Did it rain before the Flood?

These passages are the first mention of rain in the Bible:
Genesis 2:5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (All Bible quotation from the ESV, unless otherwise noted. ESV copyright and usage information, see here.)

Genesis 7:4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

Is, then, Genesis 7:12 the first rainfall in the history of the earth? The passage doesn't say that. However, it may imply that. And, of course, Genesis 2:5 says that it hadn't rained yet, at the time Genesis 2 is describing. But I don't think that the rain that fell in Noah's time was the first rain ever, and, as you'll see if you read on, I'm in good company.

First, a little bit on the words used. The word for rain, in Hebrew, in Genesis 2:5 (see here) is a verb. It is used at least as often when God sends something besides water from the sky, as it is for what we commonly think of as rain. The same word is used in Genesis 7:4. Genesis 7:12 uses a different word, a noun. (See here.)

Now, to public domain commentaries, written by renowned Bible scholars. John Calvin does not consider the question of whether the rain that fell in Genesis 7 was the first rain that ever fell. Neither does John Wesley, not Matthew Henry, nor the commentary of Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown.

Matthew Henry does not consider the question of whether there had been a rainbow before the flood. (Genesis 9) Wesley believes that there had been: "The rainbow, 'tis likely was seen in the clouds before, but was never a seal of the covenant 'till now." The Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown commentary seems to agree with Wesley: "This common and familiar phenomenon being made the pledge of peace, its appearance when showers began to fall would be welcomed with the liveliest feelings of joy." Calvin not only agrees, but ridicules those who have claimed that there were no rainbows before the Flood: "From these words certain eminent theologians have been induced to deny, that there was any rainbow before the deluge: which is frivolous. For the words of Moses do not signify, that a bow was then formed which did not previously exist; but that a mark was engraven upon it, which should give a sign of the divine favor towards men."

Thus, even though these four commentaries are silent on the direct question of whether the rain that came in the time of Noah was the first rain, three of them answer it indirectly -- the rainbow mentioned as the pledge of God's promise not to destroy the earth by a flood was not the first rainbow, in their opinion. And, since a rainbow requires rain, a belief that it had rained before the time of Noah is at least respectable.

See here for a previous post on the title question, dealing with different evidence from the Bible, which also suggests that it rained before the Flood. See here for consideration of other questions related to the flood.

Thanks for reading!

Noah's flood? Was there rain before it?

I have recently been pointed to a fairly old article on the Canopy Theory, entitled "Does the Canopy Theory Hold Water?" from Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, December, 1985. The purpose of the article is to examine the theory that most, or all, of the water that appeared at the time of Noah's Flood was because of a canopy of water vapor that was over the earth before the flood. The author, Thomas Key, argues pretty convincingly that this could not have worked.

I was struck by this statement in his article:

What about the assertion that there was no rain or snow prior to the Flood, and that the only way that plants were watered was by mist (Gen. 2:6) and rivers (Gen. 2: 10)? The references in Genesis do not limit the watering of plants only to a single mist or even to a series of mists and by a river or rivers. Genesis 2:10-14 describes four large rivers in existence before the numerous and complex events of the Sixth Day. These huge rivers obviously could not have come from a mere mist that occurred once or even many times. Rivers come from rains and melted snows. They also come from underground streams. However, underground streams also come from rains and melted snows. The four large rivers in Eden, which went over "The whole land of Ethiopa" [sic] (Gen. 2:13) to Assyria (Gen, 2:14) and included the Euphrates (Gen. 2:14) would have required rains, rains, and more rains over an extended period of time. No mere mist will ever do as an adequate explanation for these vast rivers, and certainly not a mere mist that occurred only a few hours or literal days before.

In other words, it must have rained before the flood. I checked, and found no statement in the early part of Genesis that says that Noah and his contemporaries had never experienced rain, although I have heard people say that they didn't.

Thanks for reading.