reperiendi

The Word of God

Posted in Astronomy, Chemistry, Evolution, General physics, History, Poetry, Theocosmology by Mike Stay on 2010 November 3

From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline…
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.

There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still.
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.

By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,
How the living things that are descend from things that were.
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,
These tiny, humble, wordless things–how shall they tell us lies?
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life.

And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.

-Catherine Faber, The Word of God

Uto-Aztecan links with Hebrew

Posted in Fun links, History, Theocosmology by Mike Stay on 2008 March 8

http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=112

Some excerpts:

“Also worth noting is the relative strength of comparative linguistic evidence. The nature of comparative linguistic evidence provides large bodies of data—several thousand words per language—that is nonforgeable. Ruins and buildings yield some facts, though who built them is not always one of the facts revealed. Words of a translation can be debated endlessly, and written records can feasibly be forged, but no one can fabricate a language family of several Native American tribes speaking a variety of related languages…

“In addition to numerous lexical similarities, some features of Northwest Semitic morphology are still productive in UA, i.e., are still functionally active, such as the masculine plural suffix and niqtal prefix, while much more is fossilized, i.e., nonfunctional “frozen” patterns are detectable such as the feminine plural, qittel forms, hiqtîl and huqtal forms, etc. With that in mind, consider a few of some 1,000 identified similarities between Hebrew and Uto-Aztecan…

“Among Latter-day Saint scholars are a few Semitists, to whom queries regarding the validity of the Semitic data can be directed. As for Latter-day Saint Uto-Aztecanists, I know of no others besides myself. Therefore, because it may be difficult for nonspecialists to assess the merit of proposed linguistic connections, it may be well to mention that I have privately shared this material with five Uto-Aztecanists (linguists who have studied and published in UA linguistics) and four of the five were quite overwhelmed at the quantity and quality of the evidence—two spoke very highly of it; two, in surprise, could hardly speak at all after seeing it; and the fifth did not like the proposal generally, but offered no substantive refutations.”

Week 241

Posted in History, Math, Quantum by Mike Stay on 2006 December 1

LIGO, the Fool’s Golden Ratio and Stonehenge’s Platonic solids 1600 years before Plato.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week241.html

Killer Asteroids

Posted in Astronomy, History by Mike Stay on 2006 December 1

Large asteroid impacts may be WAY more common than we think.

Dinosaur blood

Posted in Evolution, Fun links, History by Mike Stay on 2006 October 3