Much more fun than trying to take any longer than necessary with the sad sack in the last entry. They are out there and like a black hole. They will suck all the joy and mystery out of the universe if you let them.
That is a map of the tectonic plates. And that little guy up north is the Juan De Fuca plate. It's subducting, slowly moving under the Pacific Northwest and northern California. At the blinding speed of up to two inches or so a year. The whole surface of the earth is moing in one direction or another. It's too bad this map doesn't show the deep ocean trenches where basaltic magma flows up to the surface pushing everything next to them away.
And while those plates are creeping along the earth is rotating on its axis. Spinning at about one thousand miles per hour. So much for the sun standing still over Jericho. Just my personal opinion. The earth revolves around the sun at about sixty seven thousand miles per hour. The solar system revolves through the Milky Way Galaxy at just over half a million miles per hour. It takes us about a quarter of a million years to make just one revolution. The whole galaxy is rotating around the galactic center at about four hundred senventy miles per hour.
I've been trying, with some success, to work my way through a geology text. But when I got to the point where I was contemplating all that spinning, all going on at the same time, I got just a little dizzy. And then I stepped back a little and just thought about the wonder of it all. And at all the hard work it takes to make the measuments, double check, do it again and maybe give up a cherished belief or two that the evidence won't support anymore.
There are two ways of looking at the world. You have evidence and come up with an explanation that fits the evidence. Or you have an explanation and you go looking for the evidence to back it up. Even if you have to twist the evidence like a pretzel to back it up. Treating scripture as a science textbook is one glaring example. And I believe I will stop there.
No comments:
Post a Comment