Tag: religion

Sodom Air Burst

people may have passed down accounts of the spectacular disaster as oral history over generations, providing the basis for the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah—which, like Tall el-Hammam, were supposedly located near the Dead Sea.

The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300–600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard.

2022-02-01: while the Sodom Air burst has been debunked, there’s other interesting meteorites in history:

The oil Bible of Dalton

more oil appeared almost every time Jerry picked up the Bible, a leather-bound copy of the New King James translation. The oil moved to the back of the book, saturated the endpapers—a heart-shaped splotch appeared over a map of Israel—and then started at the beginning, in Genesis 1. Eventually Jerry had to put the book in a Ziploc bag, and then in a large plastic bin. Jerry Pearce was a regular customer at a nearby Tractor Supply store. And he’d been seen purchasing large containers of clear oil.

Post-Christian culture wars

Republicans control the White House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. They have 27 governorships and governing trifectas in 21 states. But many conservatives — particularly Christian conservatives — believe they’re being routed in the war that matters most: the post-Christian culture war. They see a diverse, secular left winning the future and preparing to eviscerate both Christian practice and traditional mores. And they see themselves as woefully unprepared to respond with the ruthlessness that the moment requires.

Pope vs Pope

this stole some plot lines from the young pope

When he retired, the ultra-conservative Pope Benedict XVI was expected to disappear from view, clearing the way for his liberal successor, Francis, to clean house in the notoriously corrupt Vatican. Instead, he stayed, setting the stage for a de-stabilizing brawl over morality, theology, and the Church’s horrific legacy of sexual abuse.

Pagans against Genesis

The final great pagan opponent of Christianity was the emperor-philosopher Julian the Apostate (331-363 CE), so called because of his conversion from Christianity to Neoplatonism. He ruled the Roman Empire for only the final 2 years of his life, and during his short reign he did his utmost to restore and promote pagan Hellenism at the expense of Christianity. His major literary attack on the Church, Against the Galileans, underwent the same fate as the anti-Christian writings of Celsus and Porphyry: we have only fragments quoted by his later opponents (especially, in Julian’s case, the bishop Cyril of Alexandria in his Against Julian). In his polemics, Julian pays attention to the book of Genesis, particularly its early chapters. He admired Judaism because it adhered to its ancestral traditions and he castigated Christianity for its having abandoned these traditions, especially Judaism’s sacrificial worship. His attempt to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem was part of his program to restore ancient religious practices. Yet that did not prevent him from regarding many Old Testament passages as absurd.