As a part-time scientist - I can’t rule out the idea that there is a creator of the universe.
Just as I can’t rule out that the Earth sits on the back of a turtle and that sits on a larger turtle - and it’s larger and larger turtles all the way down.
You are quite mistaken. RedKittie is right in this case.
Dr. Graham was speaking of what the Bible teaches about the subject. No foundation in fact? You also are quite mistaken. And there is no better factual proof regarding the “sin” subject. You are placing your knowledge quite a bit above the largest selling and most trusted book of all time (the Bible). That’s an interesting position.
Yeh I read the bible back in the day. Fascinating stuff.
Nothing about USOs or Aliens in it though.
On the contrary, I am not claiming any “knowledge”. That’s rather the point. The Bible was written and curated by humans for humans in the context of our Earthly existence relative to Our Common Father. I acknowledge its immeasurable value, but presumed trust by, and sales among humans are not material factors as to its credibility, let alone the credibility of the many iterations and interpretations to which its been subjected by these same we humans.
Sin, in a context we can know and understand, may indeed be unique to Earth, but I’d need you to point out exactly where The Bible expresses unequivocally the eternal sanctity of all Creation, with only this one exception. I’d want to bear in mind that all there is to be learned from the Bible is given specifically for our purposes, and may or may not apply universally.
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And with all that said … let’s get back to the topic at hand.
Unidentified Submerged Object (USO)?
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“Sin” is simply a made up construct and there is very little in the form of fact in the bible. Just because something sells a lot or is “trusted” doesn’t mean it’s good. Just look at the Kardashians or Kanye West.
The bible teaches about how to treat your slaves, too.
But, yes as @RedKittieKat said, maybe we get back to the whole thing about USO?
I’m with RedKittie and Dave—back to the subject at hand.
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I watched that ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ that’s on Netflix - it’s live a revival of that show from the 80’s.
It’s not 100% USOs but it was an account from an incident in 1994 in Michigan, apparently with a lot of witnesses, including officers of the law.
Here’s the excerpt I found on the web:
In 1994, hundreds of people saw strange lights off Lake Michigan. Was it a craft from another world?
On the evening of March 8, 1994, more than 300 calls flooded into 911 dispatch to report strange lights in the night sky along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. The hovering objects appeared to be either round or cylindrical, with different colored lights; eventually, callers said, they headed out over the lake. A radar operator from the National Weather Service watched the movements of these UFOs for hours and confirmed the reports. In the decades since the sightings, witnesses and investigators are no closer to solving the mystery than they were in 1994. What were the eerie lights that hovered over the lake? A natural phenomenon? Military aircraft? Or were they aliens from another world?
Authorities still cannot explain the origin of the mysterious lights in the sky that were seen by hundreds of witnesses. Hear from witnesses and read the first-hand accounts. What do you think was flying over Lake Michigan on that night? In the video above, witness Holly Graves reflects on the emotional blowback of her 1994 UFO sighting.
Witnesses from all over Michigan observed the unexplained lights in the sky and gave strikingly similar descriptions of what they saw.
Soon after radar operator Jack Bushong’s taped conversation with the Ottawa County dispatcher was released, he met with ufologist Michael Swords. The pair spent hours trying to make sense of what Jack saw on his radar. These are the drawings they produced during that meeting.
‘Unsolved Mysteries’ Volume 3: ‘Something In the Sky’ - Netflix Tudum
What I don’t get though is how nobody got a photo or video of it.
So many witnesses - including law enforcement. And it was in 1994. In my opinion and vague knowledge, police officers would have a camera in their car in case they were called to the scene of an accident so they could photograph the scene etc. Maybe not, but I thought that was a thing before mobile phone cameras?
But others in their houses who say balls of light in formation in the sky for 15 minutes - why didn’t any of them have a home camera/camcorder?
It’s very hard to believe nobody could capture it on film.
But it’s also hard to believe a conspiracy of this scale to make up a UFO sighting.
The reason I feel it fits in the USO category is the activity of the lake in Michigan where they seeing to submerge and/or suck up vortex’s of water.
It was a fascinating watch though - and makes you wonder what the heck was happening that night.
Even to the point where police officers saw something in the sky and didn’t call in air support?
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That’s always the case with these kinds of things. There are thousands of reports of mysterious flying objects, but even when there are photos, they’re, grainy, blurry, and provide no evidence of much of anything.
The producers of these shows look for these kinds of nonsensical stories to foist upon their viewers, then exaggerate them to make a nothing story seem like there’s really something going on.
Two jobs ago, we had a state wildlife agency as a client. One of the fisheries biologists found a deformed lake trout that someone had thrown away in the parking lot. It had been run over a couple of times and looked really weird.
Coincidentally, the biologist was being interviewed by the local news media for some unrelated thing at the time. As a joke, he mentioned this weird, squashed fish over on the other side of the parking lot. They walked over, looked at it and the reporter asked him what kind of fish it was. He said it was a deformed and desiccated lake trout, but then made the mistake of saying, something along the lines of, “When I first saw it, I said to myself, 'What the crap is that? It looks like some alien thing from who knows where.”
The video clip soon hit Twitter. “GOVERNMENT BIOLOGISTS DISCOVER ALIEN CREATURE.” Of course, there was little mention of it simply being a deformed lake trout that someone had thrown away in the parking lot. Without hours they had hundreds of calls from around the world from television programs, such as the Netflix mystery shows wanting more information and trying to pry more information out of a non-story.
When the agency said it was just a deformed lake trout, the headlines became, “GOVERNMENT BIOLOGISTS INVOLVED IN A COVERUP OF ALIEN CREATURE DISCOVERY.” The biologist had thrown the squashed fish into the parking lot trash can after the interview, so there was no way to retrieve it. Anyway, the story went on for days. Months later, I was told, they were still occasionally getting calls.
Follow-up: With a little Googling, I found a photo of the fish online, so I suspect the story is still going around. It was something like 15 years ago.
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I couldn’t help but read that in Robert Stack’s voice.
But there are zombies in Matthew 27. Sadly, it’s only 2 sentences. I love a good zombie story. This is a bible story that really would have benefited from additional details.
Two or three thousand years ago, people had no idea the world was round and billions of years old, that the stars were anything more than lights on a rotating dome of some kind, that anything other than animals with wings could fly, or that there were other worlds from which aliens could come.
When science found otherwise, and people began to see airplanes and think about outer space and other planets, Aliens in UFOs suddenly appeared. Quite a coincidence, isn’t it?
Oh I know, shows are shows and they’re dressed up. My mother-in-law likes ‘Mountain Men’ and 'Fishing ’ - I haven’t the heart to tell her it’s mostly fake and rehearsed and dressed up for TV. But she’s 80 and loves it.
And it’s incredulous to think that nobody has caught one on camera properly in all the years we’ve had the technology. I don’t know how many supposed sightings there are - but it’s crazy to think nobody has really caught one on camera.
People don’t give the ancestors of this planet enough credit, we’re incredibly smart beings. It was 3rd Century BC that they discovered the Earth was indeed round, and even caluclated the circumference. Ask the general public how you do that - they wouldn’t have an idea.
It was actually a fascinating read when I read about this fact years ago, and thanks to the internet I can copy and paste it here:
It has actually been known that the Earth was round since the time of the ancient Greeks. I believe that it was Pythagoras who first proposed that the Earth was round sometime around 500 B.C. As I recall, he based his idea on the fact that he showed the Moon must be round by observing the shape of the terminator (the line between the part of the Moon in light and the part of the Moon in the dark) as it moved through its orbital cycle. Pythagoras reasoned that if the Moon was round, then the Earth must be round as well. After that, sometime between 500 B.C. and 430 B.C., a fellow called Anaxagoras determined the true cause of solar and lunar eclipses - and then the shape of the Earth’s shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse was also used as evidence that the Earth was round.
Around 350 BC, the great Aristotle declared that the Earth was a sphere (based on observations he made about which constellations you could see in the sky as you travelled further and further away from the equator) and during the next hundred years or so, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes actually measured the size of the Earth!
Eratosthenes had heard from travelers about a well in Syene (now Aswan, Egypt) with an interesting property: at noon on the summer solstice, which occurs about June 21 every year, the sun illuminated the entire bottom of this well, without casting any shadows, indicating that the sun was directly overhead. Eratosthenes then measured the angle of a shadow cast by a stick at noon on the summer solstice in Alexandria, and found it made an angle of about 7.2 degrees, or about 1/50 of a complete circle.
He realized that if he knew the distance from Alexandria to Syene, he could easily calculate the circumference of Earth. But in those days it was extremely difficult to determine distance with any accuracy. Some distances between cities were measured by the time it took a camel caravan to travel from one city to the other. But camels have a tendency to wander and to walk at varying speeds. So Eratosthenes hired bematists, professional surveyors trained to walk with equal length steps. They found that Syene lies about 5000 stadia from Alexandria.
Eratosthenes then used this to calculate the circumference of the Earth to be about 250,000 stadia. Modern scholars disagree about the length of the stadium used by Eratosthenes. Values between 500 and about 600 feet have been suggested, putting Eratosthenes’ calculated circumference between about 24,000 miles and about 29,000 miles. The Earth is now known to measure about 24,900 miles around the equator, slightly less around the poles.
Not bad for 300 BC
I often watch that show Ancient Aliens. Just for kicks and giggles.
But they do go into some fascinating societies of humans who lived through different parts of the world, their beliefs and what they accomplished.
Like lugging stones that are TONNES in weight from 1 location to another - many miles away. And building things with them.
The Ancient Alien theorist proposes that they must have had help or technology given to them by Aliens!!!
Fascinating thought! I’d love to ask them why would sophisticated Aliens travel the Solar Systems looking for primitive races TO MOVE STONE a few miles. Surely a space travelling being(s) would have far better things to do than show how to build with stone.
Maybe they did - it’s an interesting theory.
If we put humans on Mars would they quarry stones and build stone temples? I don’t know seems like we’d bring 3D printers and build synthetic buildings and structures.
Maybe the Aliens were desperate and had to build equipment from stone to send signals for help, building Obelisks and aligning pyramids with Orion and/or along the fault lines to harness the power of the Earth to make a beacon for help.
I doubt it though. If they knew life exists here why not come back? Maybe it’s just a bad luck situation landed on a planet and couldn’t get off and we were so primitive it wasn’t worth their time to come back - maybe they are used to finding intelligent life and assumed that we’d be doing the same and we are not much interest to them with far more specimens to draw on.
One thing about Ancient Aliens that bothers me is when they say that our Ancestors drew flying carriages and flying horses, and dragons because they didn’t know what the Alien ships were and could only liken them to what they had on Earth as they couldn’t explain it.
I find it fascinating to think that the Ancestors of this planet drew detailed incredible drawings of fictional animals (like a Dragon) with no frame of reference, fantastic artistic quality, or they can draw a detailed image of a carriage flying through the sky.
But they couldn’t draw the actual spaceship itself???
Like they can do this - but can’t draw a flying saucer? A circle?
Or a flying building - rather than a spaceship
Flying horses instead of a spaceship
This was in a tomb created circa 220 AD
Drew flying deer pulling a carriage… why not draw the actual spacecraft?
They drew them like this because they had no other frame of reference - they knew birds flew, so they imagined deitys/false gods/emperors/rulers being able to have animals that could fly like birds - made up stories and great artistic impressoins based on their frame of references. If it was a bird pulling the carriage it wouldn’t be fantastic.
Of course as a race we are addicted to stories and storytelling - it was a form of entertainment and basis to create society based on religious texts, fables, right/wrong etc.
I don’t buy a lot of the ancient aliens theories but some are very hard to explain - and I do read the actual explanation of things - but somethings make me wonder a bit.
It’s fascinating because when these things were found we had no frame of reference to them - aeroplanes - rocketships etc.
Now we do have a frame of reference to these objects I find it hard to understand how someone wants to retrofit the object to a frame of reference from todays world - rather than understanding why they created something the way they did in their time based on their frame of reference.
I do think that if there were aliens and they came here - it’s basically like if you taught a Lion to speak English you wouldn’t be able to understand them anyway - their frame of reference would be so far removed from what you understand.
Imagine an Alien on Earth, frames of reference between us would be so far removed.
In saying all that - there’s some weird things in paintings from the Ancient past.
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Blimey, we’re on a roll this morning! How many coffees have you had already?! 
All very interesting stuff. I remember reading about the stick in the well story some years back. Fascinating stuff. You’re right, as a species we’re pretty smart – but we are also very dumb in equal measure.
I was reading the other day about a medical trial, where they are taking people unresponsive to traditional cancer treatment, removing some of their t-cells, boosting the markers that target cancer cells and replacing them. It is having some notable successes. I was left flabbergasted about how incredibly smart we are (I do not include myself in that), and yet how gullible, dim-witted and easily manipulated we can be, en-masse.
Anyway, I digress. Need a coffee!
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QFT!!!
I was up at 5 am - technically, I’m on my 6th cup of coffee 
Nah … this was that time the ancient Chinese spotted Father Christmas on his way to deliver some toys to some nice children. 
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Of course!
Yes, mathematicians and astronomers, such as Archimedes and Eratosthenes realized the Earth seemed spherical centuries ago, but these were exceptional and well-educated people of limited influence beyond their immediate peers. They were not the collective masses who invented tales of parting seas, worldwide floods, prophets ascending to heaven on winged horses, or gods living on Mount Olympus.
Of course, the people 3,000 years ago were as smart as the people today. They were essentially us — just born in an earlier time. However, the vast majority were illiterate (had no access to written materials anyway) and uneducated beyond what they needed to know to get by in whatever circumstances they were born into.
They didn’t know the world was round. They likely never pondered the subject and deferred to whatever religious beliefs their communities adhered to.
In many ways, it’s not that different today. People still have irrational beliefs and are focused on getting by. However, most people have access to basic education and know the stars are not lights on a giant rotating dome and that the Earth orbits the sun, even though they don’t understand the physics behind it.
In other words, people predisposed to believe in the supernatural today tend to mix a bit of their 21st Century knowledge into their irrational beliefs. Today, these people succumb to irrational and unsubstantiated beliefs about flying saucers from outer space, alien bases under the sea, and other pseudo-scientific nonsense. A thousand years ago, in a less educated and more scientifically ignorant world, they were more inclined to supernatural beliefs about witches, demons, ghosts, and other nonsense more in line with their personal experiences of the time.