The Rocks Don't Lie - Noah and other floods

This week's episode of the popular and increasingly informative podcast Skepticality featured an interesting interview with a geomorphologist, David Montgomery, (Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington), about how his work led him to write his latest book The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood.

You can listen to Episode #203 at read the show notes here. Montgomery talked about flood myths worldwide, and how Christians use the existence of these myths in so many cultures as evidence that a global flood really happened.  However, he notes that some of them pre-date the time of the Old Testament significantly (as I have mentioned before in my series of blog posts about the flood, starting here.

He added some facts that I hadn't come across before.  Apparently flood myths tend to be tailored to the environment of the cultures which propagate them.  It is not too surprising to find that those who live on the Pacific coast of the Americas describe floods that sound very much like tsunamis, whereas others sound more like overflowing rivers.

I was also interested to hear that the resurgence of biblical creationism that we witness today is a comparatively modern phenomenon.  Even in the early 1800s geologists had completely established that a global flood has never happened and by a century ago, very few people were concerned about the apparent contradictions between science and the bible.  The story of a regional flood that just seemed to the local people to have destroyed the whole world was mainstream Christian teaching.  It is only in the last 50 or 60 years that this topic has become so hotly debated, particularly (but not exclusively) in North America.  The resurgence of Young Earth Creationism can be traced back to a 1961 book by a theologian and an hydraulic engineer, called The Genesis Flood. I might come back to that topic another day soon.

One thing that I did find surprising was that Montgomery described two well-established flood events that could have been the factual origin of the Noah myth.  One was the breach of an ice barrier leading to a devastating flood in the Mesopotamia region, and the other was the filling of the Black Sea through the Bosphorus.  The former seems quite plausible, but the latter less so for one simple reason.  Noah's flood receded after a hundred days or so.  As far as I'm aware, the Black Sea is still there.  However, that is my only criticism of an otherwise excellent interview.

Have a listen to it.  While you are there, listen to the rest of the podcast.  It has a number of regular features contributed by fascinating people and I never miss an episode.  Also check out David's research group online.  Now I'll add another book to my wish list.  I just need to make time to read some of them!

Related posts:
Was the flood the only way?
2 by 2 - but not only 2 of each
Where is all Noah's water now?
Was the Ark big enough?Evidence in the geology - cliffs and varves
Noah's aquaria?
Noah in Islam
Rafts of Baramins
Before Noah came Gilgamesh
Kangaroos - the final evidence against Noah?

Stephen Law on The Malcontent's Gambit

One of my favourite philosophers was interviewed recently on one of my favourite podcasts.  I don't know how Alan Litchfield pulls it off to get such good guests on his podcast, 'The Malcontent's Gambit', but he seems consistent in that ability.

This podcast features Stephen Law, who is author of a number of books including 'Believing Bullshit' and a former speaker at Oxford Skeptics in the Pub.  Stephen will also be noticeable in the annual Oxford event called Think Week, where he will be in discussion with Richard Dawkins.  Tickets sold out quickly, as is common for these Dawkins events in Oxford!  (Yes - I have got one, thank you.)

Given his track record, being acknowledged as one of the few people who have significantly defeated William Lane Craig in a debate, I think the discussion with Dawkins will be interesting.

Without having to speculate about future events, I highly recommend The Malcontent's Gambit podcast.   In this interview, Law dismissed the Euthyphro Dilemna before going on to talk about the 'evil god hypothesis', which turns out to be difficult to contest.

Featured on Skepticule podcast

I was innocently listening to the Skepticule podcast this afternoon, episode 34, and they were talking about three events in London this September, that I also attended and wrote about. (See below.) I was pleasantly surprised to be mentioned by name in the interesting account of the Secular Europe March.

So here is a quick shout out for the Three Pauls who run the Skepticule podcast.  I'll look forward to meeting one or more of them again.

(I'm mentioned from 34:40!)

Related links:
Thoughts about the Secular Europe March
The Pod Delusion's birthday party
Secularist stars at the NSS conference

The Pod Delusion's birthday party

Welcome to Conway Hall, in London, home of the South Place Ethical Society.  From the outside the building looks like a small non-conformist church.  'Tardis-like', it seems to be much bigger inside than out.  Over the stage is the slogan "To Thine Own Self be True".

Conway Hall - for the Pod Delusion's birthday party.

After the march for a secular Europe, it was quite a short walk to Red Lion Square to reach the venue for a 'birthday party'.  The Pod Delusion has gathered a good audience these days, and a couple of hundred of us were in London to attend the live event.  I joked to one of the organisers of the march that he should have extended it to reach Conway Hall, because so many of the people had ended up here after finding suitable 'refreshments' along the way.

We were told that there would be an opportunity for questions after each segment, and threatened with James O'Malley's holiday photos if we were not able to fill the time available.  A lively participative audience ensured that there was little risk of that happening, but he wasn't able to resist the temptation to tell us a 'programmer's joke'  

A Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) consultant walked into a bar . . .pub . . tavern . . . inn . . .

Ha ha! The first half of the event got off to a good start.  Liz Lutgendorf gave us an entertaining history of Conway Hall.  Then Guardian Blogger Martin Robbins explained "Why The Daily Mail Is Evil!".  This really was the low point of the event.  Much as I love to ridicule 'The Daily Fail,' any attempt to rouse to audience to chant anything about the miserable rag was embarrassingly pathetic.  Bad form Robbins!  And to be honest, all your ranting about Suri Cruz might have been a good point but it was just boring.

Then Drew Rae offered us a "Risk Assessment for the Apocalypse!" (in which he committed the classic risk assessor's faux pas of confusing a hazard and a risk) and fire scientist Claire Benson (@pyroclaire) managed not to burn down Conway Hall with an interesting demonstration of spectroscopy! (I'm not completely convinced that a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher is the appropriate one for a methylated spirits fire.  Fortunately Liz didn't have to use it.)


After the interval things got even better.  Deborah Hyde (aka Jourdemayne, author of Jourdemayne's blog and Editor of the Skeptic Magazine) got us off to a really good start with "Psychology of the Supernatural!", including an explanation of the origin of the meme of driving a stake through the heart of a vampire.  Deborah was THE star of the show. 

@KateRussell then gave us some interesting insights about the growth of the internet, with a warning to bloggers to avoid making unnecessary links to unindexable, data-hungry, subterfuge-laden and often unreliable infographics.  (Or at least, remember to use the no-follow tag if you must make a link, ensuring that the subterfuge of the SEO-savvy authors is defeated).

Alom Shaha's 'magic show' kept us entertained for a while too.  It isn't completely obvious that he would make it as a professional magician, but he could get away with doing kids parties . . . and birthday parties for us 'adult-kids'.  (I would warn him that the eight year old grandson of my friend in the audience possesses his eight-of-clubs trick!  As if he doesn't already know that.)  The main point was that he is a great speaker and has an enviable sense of humour and he entertained the audience, using technology as well as 'conventional' magical props.  The greatest shame was that he had a bottle of white wine for one of the tricks.  Why?  Because there was no white wine left at the bar in the interval and I would have enjoyed a glass of it!

Helen Arney, whose 'Voice of an Angle' joke was hardly noticed by the majority, then completed the evening very nicely.

After the March for a Secular Europe in the afternoon, this was the conclusion of a great day out.  I'm looking forward to the fourth birthday party, and hoping to help The Pod Delusion out with a feature about Fusion in the next year.  More on that another day.

 

Visit London - this Saturday

Every Saturday there are 'events' in London, capital city of the UK, but this Saturday, 15th September 2012, there are two that I plan to attend.

First there is the March for a Secular Europe.  I went last year and this year we are hoping that even more people will attend.  If you have never been on a protest march then I can only recommend the experience.  London is accustomed to them and there is little fuss.  This one in particular will be good natured, and may be attended by religious and non-religious people alike.  At the end of the march there will be a rally, with a number of great speakers, including:

• Robin Ince, Comedian and BHA Distinguished Supporter
• Chris French, Skeptic and Professor of Psychology, Goldsmiths University
• Warren Ellis, Writer and BHA Distinguished Supporter
• Peter Tatchell, Human Rights Campaigner
• Joan Smith, Journalist
• Mejindarpal Kaur, Legal Director, United Sikhs 
• Richard Norman, Philosopher
• Pavan Dhaliwal, Head of Public Affairs, British Humanist Association
• Terry Sanderson, President, National Secular Society
• Antony Lempert, Secular Medical Forum Chair
• Adam Knowles, Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association
• Nahla Mahmood, Council of ex-Muslims of Britain and One law for All
• Sue Cox, Survivors Voice Europe
• Maurizio Turco MP, Italian Radicals

See more details here.  No tickets needed - just turn up in your thousands.

Then in the evening, there is the Big 3rd Birthday Do, in Conway Hall.  This has been organised by The Pod Delusion, which is surely one of the best secular and skeptical podcasts around.  Speakers include:

• Kate Russell from BBC Click
• Young Atheist Handbook Author Alom Shaha – not talking about his book, but performing some MAGIC.
• Guardian Blogger Martin Robbins on Why The Daily Mail Is Evil!
• Pod Delusion regular Drew Rae offering us some Risk Assessment for the Apocalypse!
• ‘Skeptic’ Magazine editor Deborah Hyde on the Psychology of the Supernatural!
• and fire scientist Claire Benson – who hopefully won’t be burning down Conway Hall!
• …with MORE to be announced! 

This promises to be an entertaining day.  Anyone else coming?  You could still get tickets when I last checked.

Incidentally, Saturday 22nd should be just as good. The National Secular Society's conference keynote speaker is Richard Dawkins.

A bubble of helium for the SGU

You might not know that the moon has an atmosphere, and you could be forgiven for that because we are nearly always told that that is the case.

However, it has a very thin atmosphere which is detectable with very sensitive instruments.  This week's episode #370 of the podcast The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe reported a story about a new observation from one of the satellites that is currently orbiting the moon.  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's LAMP spectrometer detects helium in Moon's atmosphere is an article describing the findings.

The surprising thing about this was not the finding of helium, but that the panel was not able to understand where this helium would come from.  The podcast is generally excellent and I learn a lot from it.  If you are not a regular listener then I would recommend it to you very strongly.  (I know a few people have abandoned it recently because of the unholy row started by Rebecca Watson, but I still listen to it.  I must admit that this week's episode was more to my liking because I found none of the panel members annoying!) 

However, like many great science podcasts, SGU lacks adequate input from anyone who understands the physical sciences adequately, and time after time they miss something really obvious.

Someone else, Brad the Barbarian, beat me to the answer on the SGU forum but that's not unusual since I usually don't get the podcast download until the Saturday or Sunday after the Wednesday release.  He explained that helium is the result of alpha decay of radioactive isotopes.  I'll add a little more detail.

This process happens on the earth too, and it keeps the concentration of helium in the air fairly constant at a few parts per million.  Yes, as they said on the show, helium escapes relatively easily from the atmosphere because it is so light that it can reach escape velocity, but it is constantly being topped up from below, albeit rather slowly.

Helium - light enough to escape

One of the best illustrations of this is the observation that helium is a major inconvenience to the industries that drill for natural gas.  In some fields the natural gas contains more than 20% helium.  Helium is inert and does not burn, and if the helium is not removed it has a very detrimental effect on the calorific value, and therefore the economic value of the gas that they wish to sell. 

Fortunately this is where we get most of our industrial helium from.  The unwanted contaminant has value in itself.   At the moment there is a world shortage which is causing some inconvenience. 

The helium collects in natural gas reservoirs for the same reason that the natural gas collects.  Above the oil field there is a rock layer that is impervious to gases, so they collect as a kind of bubble.  By drilling through the top of the bubble the gas is allowed out.

The helium comes from a specific type of radioactive decay of elements in the rocks below - namely alpha decay.  Some elements decay into others releasing an alpha particle.  An alpha particle only needs to collect two electrons from the environment to become a helium atom, and electrons are very easy to find if you have a positive attitude - or should I say a positive charge.

Incidentally, for the SGU panel there was a clue.  The instrument that measured this property of the moon's atmosphere is known by the acronym LAMP.  The A in that acronym is 'Alpha'.


See also:
A Skeptic's Guide to Helium
Helium-3. The precious little sister of helium-4.

Sunday Selection 4

Continuing a new series where there is little additional content from me, but I simply share a few items, new and old, that have pleased me this week.  As almost every week, I see items on the web that I find interesting, amazing or  or amusing.  This disjointed ramble might be on any of my normal topics - or on other topics entirely.  My thanks go to the friends who helped me to find them.

First:  'Hotwheels double loop dare' - although one son tells me that 'everyone has seen this, the other one hadn't.

Next: I just love the tango used in Arnie's humorous movie, True Lies.  The Movie version is here, and another version of the whole of Carlos Gardel's beautiful, passionate Por Una Cabeza can be found here.  Just seeing that makes me want to watch the movie again - worth a good smile!

Podcast of the week:  Radiolabs Podcast 'Talking to Machines'
Maybe some of us find ourselves talking to machines without realising it.  This podcast from June 2011 had some interesting surprises.

Atheist blog post of the week:  “Dear Atheists, We Ex-Muslims Are Waiting For You”, from The Friendly Atheist.  I think you can follow my 'Creeping Islam' tag to see that I'm supporting his campaign to some extent, at least.

Physics of the week: This has to be the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson.  You can't have missed that.  Here's Lawrence Krauss's take on it.  The question is - what does it mean?  I feel that this is too difficult a concept to explain in terms that we can all understand and since I don't get it myself, I'm not going to try.

Parody of the week:  Homeopath to start offering ‘assisted-suicide’ remedy.
" . . . as proof of its effectiveness, last week a man came in having a heart attack. The remedy was so good that he died before we could administer it.’  Read on and laugh out loud

Controversial atheism site of the week: Somehow, the most religious people in Israel seem to think they are too pious for the army, and yet they expect the more secular Israelis to risk their lives on their behalf. 

And finally . . .

Favourite places: Fingal's Cave

Fingal's surprising cave on the island of Staffa.

Sunday Selection 2

Continuing a new series where there is little additional content from me, but I simply share a few items, new and old, that have pleased me this week.  As almost every week, I see items on the web that I find interesting, amazing or  or amusing.  This disjointed ramble might be on any of my normal topics - or on other topics entirely.  My thanks go to the friends who helped me to find them.

First: Some of the excellent ironic humour from the Jesus and Mo cartoons.

Next: News of the discovery of cave art that is older than any found so far.

Podcast of the week: I have become a big fan of WNYC's Radiolab podcast.  It is clearly very professionally produced but I forgive it for that.  It relies on a narrative style to tell a story in each episode.  As they say

On Radiolab, science meets culture and information sounds like music. Each episode of Radiolab® is an investigation -- a patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences centered around One Big Idea. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, Radiolab

This week's was called Unravelling Bolero - and even in that title you can see a little clever humour if you know who wrote that music.

Another great podcast: Richard Dawkins' acceptance speech at the British Humanist Association's conference in Cardiff last month, courtesy of the excellent Pod Delusion.

Tweets of the week:

Apathy in the face of religion's schemes and power-grabbing is akin to surrender. @ProfessorIrony

Vatican announced in this era of equal opportunity God will now be ignoring prayers from Atheists as well as Christians.  @GodlessAtheist

Atheist blog post of the week:  The Lady Atheist, in Links of Shame: Religion in the News, provided a few links to news items suggesting that the law is finally catching up with religious criminals, and to other incredible religious news.


Life science of the week:  Ants flowing as a fluid

Controversial theism of the week:  A letter from a Jehovah's Witness mother to her son.  I can't decide whether it is moving or disgusting.

Favorite places: I have seen a few reports from Japan that the water in Osaka Bay has turned pale yellow, supporting fears of an imminent huge earthquake.  This site says:

A similar occurrence took place in 1995, shortly before the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995, which was responsible for the deaths of more than 7000 people in Kobe and the surrounding vicinity. The area also suffered a large scale fish kill only last week, when several tons of dead sardines inexplicably washed up on the beaches . . .

Osaka Bay changing colour - from Fukushima Diary

Japan - one of my favourite places to visit - doesn't need another disaster.
Small note: My only skepticism about this is that there only seems to be one photo so far.

I hope you enjoyed this random walk through the week.  Your comments and preferences will help me to decide whether this is a good idea or not.

Sunday Selection 1 - a new series

This is the first post in a new series where there is little additional content from me, but I simply share a selection of items that have delighted or surprised me this week.  As almost every week, I see items on the web that I find interesting, amazing or amusing.  My thanks go to the friends who helped me to find them.  The selection might be on any of my normal topics - or on other topics entirely.

You will probably find that there is too much here for one visit, so bookmark this page and come back to read a bit more another day.

First: the long awaited video of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on stage together during the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, 13-15th April, in the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre.  Well worth watching the whole hour!

Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and a guest 'horseman', Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
Melbourne 2012, from here.

Next: a candidate horseman himself, Peter Boghossian speaking forthrightly about Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other Delusions earlier this year.  (34:50 long.)

The inspirational Peter Boghossian, from here

Podcast of the week: Yhe UK based Pod Delusion.  This week's episode, #140, (64 minutes) includes Daniel Dennett giving his take on Alan Turing, former government chief science adviser Sir David King teasing about what really went on behind the scenes of the Iraq war, and Ben Hammersley explaining why technology makes politics difficult. They also tackle Gove’s proposed new curriculum, archiving film for the future and finding out if evangelical christian women really want to go out with Jesus.  As always - a good lively programme.

New podcast of the week: goes to one that I discovered recently.  Considering that it only appears to be on its third episode, it is going amazingly well.  Alan Litchfield's  The Macontent's Gambit claims (and appears to succeed) in  Extolling the Finest in Secular Thought.  Try an episode or two and subscribe to it you like them.  Already he has had some notable and interesting guests including Peter Boghossian, Guy Harris and Victor Stenger.


Physics of the week: the solution to the problem of speeding neutrinos, as I blogged on Monday in Enforcing the cosmic speed limit.

Controversial atheism site of the week: Jesus Never Existed, which you might or might not agree with.

Satire of the week: This article from The Onion:   Capricious God Violently Shakes Ant Farm Day After Bestowing Orange Slices Upon Colony which is highly amusing.

And finally . . . 

Favorite places: a link to a fantastic HD video of Yosemite National Park (only 4 minutes) which brings back memories for me, of visiting one of the most beautiful places in the world in 2008.

Yosemite - one of my favorite places - source here.

As I said, this is the first in a series.  Your comments, visits and preferences will help me to decide whether this experiment is a good idea or not.