Why do we still not know what's inside the pyramids?
bbc.com
bbc.com
> We can say with confidence that no chambers with volumes similar to the four known chambers in Cheops's and Sneferu's pyramids exist in the mass of limestone investigated by cosmic-ray absorption. The volume of the pyramid probed in this manner is defined by a vertically oriented cone, of half-angle 35 degrees, with its point resting in the Belzoni Chamber. The explored volume is 19 percent of the pyramid's volume. We hope that with minor modifications to the apparatus the complete mass of limestone can be searched for chambers. - http://www2.lns.mit.edu/fisherp/AlvarezPyramids.pdf
That's one of the reasons we know for certainty there is no large, unknown grain storage chamber in those pyramids.
Do you know if they ever succeeded in searching the whole pyramid?
The BBC article only mentioned infrared, but http://www.popsci.com/archaeologists-will-scan-egypts-pyrami... says the researchers are "[a]rmed with thermal imaging, muon detectors, and drone-mounted laser scanners."
On another note, if they open it up and find out it's been filled with grain this whole time I might have to consider voting for Ben Carson.
“Archaeologists have in fact found grain
silos in Egypt, they’re well known to us
and they look nothing like pyramids,” she
says. Egyptian officials have also chimed
in recently to refute Carson’s ideas.Nobody has ever found any evidence of Exodus and it isn't like people aren't trying.
In Poland there is a guy, Janusz Palikot, who in 2005 owned a "Christian", anti-(many things including LGBT) newspaper but later sold it and founded a pro-LGBT, anti-religion political party.
http://www.adventist.org/en/beliefs/humanity/creation/
"God has revealed in Scripture the authentic and historical account of His creative activity. He created the universe, and in a recent six-day creation the Lord made “the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” and rested on the seventh day."
your exact phrase was:
"Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist, and hence a young-earth creationist."
Ben Carson self-identifies as Seventh-Day Adventist (7DA). Hence, if he follows the doctrine of the church he professes to believe in, he is a YEC.
Now, it is possible for someone to self-identify as a 7DA and not be a YEC, just as it is possible for someone to self-identify as a Catholic and deny the authority of the pope, at least on some matters (e.g. all the self-identified Catholics who deny that the use of birth control is a mortal sin). But Ben Carson is clearly a creationist. He's said so on numerous occasions. Arguing over whether he is a YEC or some other flavor of creationist is really whittling at the margins. He's specifically proclaimed ignorance of the age of the earth. He uses YEC code words like "evolutionist" and "micro-evolution".
Finally, it would be exceedingly peculiar for a 7DA to not be a YEC. The name of the sect derives from their belief in Biblical literalism, and specifically from their belief in creation as described in Genesis. A 7DA who is not a creationist would be like a Mormon who thinks Joseph Smith was a con man. Again, not impossible. People can self-identify as anything they want, and once you've abandoned science and reason anything is possible. But it would be really, really weird.
He's just ignorant. Jews would not vote for someone who knows so little about their history. Christians may not be as familiar with the history.
According to Jewish history Josef stored grain in the year 1532BCE, but the pyramids were mostly finished by 1759BCE, more than 200 years earlier.
The pyramids having anything whatsoever to do with the Exodus is a myth created by Hollywood, it is not a Jewish belief at all.
I meant the idea that Jewish slaves built the pyramids. That idea comes from Hollywood, it is not a Jewish belief.
Any source? Google only returns articles about Carson, so it looks like it may be his idea.
edit: It seems to be an old story, easily predating both Carson and Hollywood.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/secret-chambers-grain-s...
Ben Carson is a Seventh-day Adventist and he does believe that the Pyramids of Giza were built by the Biblical Joseph to store grain. I'm sure he's also interested in gaining the support of Christian and Jewish voters but this is ultimately an example of one of his personal beliefs.
If anything that will loose him Jewish votes.
According to Jewish history Josef stored grain in the year 1532BCE, but the pyramids were mostly finished by 1759BCE, more than 200 years earlier.
If you are going to base a belief in the Bible, maybe actually know what it says first?
Well, if you're going to base a belief in the Bible, why take an outside estimation (the 1759BCE number) into account at all?
Carson's position is simply illogical. Either he doesn't know the bible well, or he disagrees with the estimated dates for the construction of the pyramids.
I suspect it's the former, not the latter. He definitely doesn't get my vote.
The 1759 BCE chronology is based on when archeology says the pyramids were finished. Which is very much an outside estimation -- someone who believes in the Bible can just sidestep it as an inaccurate estimation by archeologists.
In fact it's even worse: there are no dates given in the Bible regarding that story. The 1532BCE number is ALSO an external estimation, based on when historians think who the Pharaohs mentioned was and when he lived. Again, someone who believes in the Bible can just sidestep it as an inaccurate estimation by those historians.
>You don't get to believe in the bible and claim a significantly different date for this event.
You could very much do that too.
Even if there was a specific date mentioned in the Bible about the event and you wanted to reconcile that with a different date that archeology gives, you could just as well believe in the Bible as a collection of first person accounts written by various persons (from kings like Solomon and prophets like Isaiah to wealthy merchants and peasants) that naturally have small inaccuracies here and there.
Not everybody who believes in the Bible thinks it's the perfect account as written down by God himself accurate to any single word (the Eastern Orthodox church, for one, doesn't believe that at all).
>Carson's position is simply illogical. Either he doesn't know the bible well, or he disagrees with the estimated dates for the construction of the pyramids.
Actually there's nothing illogical about disagreeing with the estimated dates for the construction of the pyramids. Heck, archeologists themselves disagree all the time in this or that chronology.
If you think you have a better source of information (the bible in this case) it's perfectly rational to believe that over measly human estimations.
This is not a belief of the church. We have enough FUD spread about various religions.
http://www.adventist.org/en/beliefs/humanity/creation/
"God has revealed in Scripture the authentic and historical account of His creative activity. He created the universe, and in a recent six-day creation the Lord made “the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” and rested on the seventh day."
But whether or not Ben Carson is a young-earth creationist he is without question a creationist, specifically a six-day creationist:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/ben-carson-creat...
Personally, I don't much care about the particular flavor of Ben Carson's wing-nuttery. The fact that he's the leading contender for the Republican nomination is deeply disturbing. And the Republican leadership agrees with me, BTW:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/time-for-gop-panic-e...
BTW, another defining characteristic of 7D-adventism is their belief that Jesus is coming back Real Soon Now. In this, they have common cause with Daesh, who believe they are doing the work of God by helping to bring about the last days. Again, I think it is perfectly reasonable to harbor fear, uncertainty, and doubt over someone like that having their finger on the nuclear button.
Nope. At least not according to the 7DA web site.
http://www.adventist.org/fileadmin/adventist.org/files/artic...
The word "Catholic" does not appear in that document. But this does:
God has revealed in Scripture the authentic and historical account of His creative activity. He created the universe, and in a recent six-day creation the Lord made “the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” and rested on the seventh day. Thus He established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of the work He performed and completed during six literal days that together with the Sabbath constituted the same unit of time that we call a week today. The first man and woman were made in the image of God as the crowning work of Creation, given dominion over the world, and charged with responsibility to care for it. When the world was finished it was “very good,” declaring the glory of God. (Gen. 1-2; 5; 11; Exod. 20:8-11; Ps. 19:1-6; 33:6, 9; 104; Isa. 45:12, 18; Acts 17:24; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2; 11:3; Rev. 10:6; 14:7.)
So does this:
The second coming of Christ is the blessed hope of the church, the grand climax of the gospel. The Saviour’s coming will be literal, personal, visible, and worldwide. When He returns, the righteous dead will be resurrected, and together with the righteous living will be glorified and taken to heaven, but the unrighteous will die. The almost complete fulfillment of most lines of prophecy, together with the present condition of the world, indicates that Christ’s coming is near.
If quoting from the church's official web site is spreading FUD, well, so be it.
“Seventh-day Adventists, who profess to be looking for and loving the appearing of Christ, should not follow the course of worldlings. These are no criterion for commandment keepers. Neither should they pattern after first-day Adventists, who refuse to acknowledge the claims of the law of God and trample it under their feet.”—2 Testimonies, 450.
Adventist is the part of the name you are quoting. Seventh Day by the words of the person who named the church distinguished from 1st Day who took Sunday.
Plus, anyone who does not know the reason that Catholics and most of the other Christian churches switched to Sunday won't get the whole seventh day part of the name.
Once again, FUD. All Christian churches expect the imminent return of the Jesus. Its part of the base Christian belief.
I don't see how that quote in any way contradicts what I said: the "seventh day" part of "seventh day adventism" derives from a belief in Biblical inerrancy, specifically the literal truth of the story of Creation in Genesis 1, and the "fact" that God rested on the seventh day.
> All Christian churches expect the imminent return of the Jesus.
Not true. All Christian churches expect the eventual return of Jesus, not His imminent return. There's a big, big difference.
> the reason that Catholics and most of the other Christian churches switched to Sunday
Well, the early Christians did it ostensibly because Jesus was crucified on a Sunday. But the real reason was to distinguish themselves from Judaism. And by the time there were "other" Christian churches the tradition had already been established for 1500 years or so.
> Once again, FUD.
No, these are salient issues for a presidential candidate. Someone who believes in the imminent return of Jesus is going to have a very different approach to long-term problems like climate change than someone who thinks Jesus may not be coming back for a long, long time (or at all). And someone who believes in the inerrancy of the Bible over science is going to have a very different approach to, well, just about everything.
7DA is a fundamentalist, apocalyptic religion. It's fundamentalist because they believe in Biblical inerrancy (that's what fundamentalist means) and it's apocalyptic because they believe Jesus is coming Real Soon Now. That's not FUD, those are simply facts. And they are facts that the American people ought to know if they are going to vote for a 7DA.
That's not even close to the truth. Look it up, even the Catholics admit it was to increase members by attracting the Romans of the time.
> don't see how that quote in any way contradicts what I said: the "seventh day" part of "seventh day adventism"
Its does contradict what was meant and is a quote from the person who named the religion.
I'm done, you are spreading untruths about a religion to discredit people.
I did. Reliable information about this is hard to find. But among other sources, I found this:
http://www.bible.ca/7-pope-changed.htm
> even the Catholics admit it was to increase members by attracting the Romans of the time
Again, I don't see how this contradicts what I said. Basically, it was a marketing ploy.
> Its does contradict what was meant
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.
> I'm done
Let's hope.
"literalism" and "inerrantism" are two different things (well, more than that, since there are two different doctrines called "inerrancy", one Protestant and one Catholic, and they have substantially different substance), and what you refer to here appears to be more "literalism" than "inerrancy", since "inerrancy" (in the Protestant form; the Catholic form addresses moral truths but not factual accuracy) only holds that what the Bible says is accurate when read properly, but is compatible with metaphorical readings, while literalism layers on the additional requirement that the truth is in a strictly literal reading.
"[God] created the universe, and in a recent six-day creation the Lord made “the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them” and rested on the seventh day. Thus He established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of the work He performed and completed during six literal days that together with the Sabbath constituted the same unit of time that we call a week today."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seismic_tomography
Other possibilities are ground radar. With big bunch of different problems. Mainly there is anything conductive in the surface layers, ground radar can't get past that. Typically it's only used to few meters depth, the deeper you go, the less you get data out of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-penetrating_radar
And radiographic means. These typically give best image. Dalke explained that some form of these was used elsewhere in this thread. These are possible as you can have receiver at the opposing side.
http://earthzine.org/2008/09/26/a-brief-history-of-radio-ech...
But they had huge advantage of no surrounding civilization. Power line above you can easily "echo" in the picture that should come below you. I've used one myself to see some plumbing.
But the resolution gets poor quickly as you go deeper. Most common applications seem to be inspecting rebars from reinforced concrete and inspecting roads for subsurface problems. Both in range of just few meters.
> But Stevenson also says that counter-theories about the pyramids actually being huge grain stores are not helpful. “Archaeologists have in fact found grain silos in Egypt, they’re well known to us and they look nothing like pyramids,” she says.
There is a "ski Indiana" photoshop showing a skier on one of these grain hills.
Here is a nice little pdf with a lot of ways we store product http://calculators.agstar.com/uploads/GrainStorageMethods070...
[edit: I agree they would have been a bad shape of an old style grain store, plus wrong era]
Peripherally related, this pyramid talk finally made me look up "critical angle of repose" of various materials: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose#Angle_of_repos....
The Great Pyramids are around the 50° mark, where modern wheat's angle of repose is roughly half that (27°). That's not to say a pyramid-like structure couldn't be used to store wheat—just that the shape of these particular pyramids don't directly mimic the free-standing angle that a wheat mound would form.
Edit: I just couldn't wrap my head around why a candidate would be talking about Egyptian pyramids and alternate theories. Apparently it's a little more complicated. He mentioned his own "personal theory" about pyramids during a speech 10 years ago[0], it got brought up recently by the 24h news cycle and now he's defending his theory.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/fact-check-be...
Well, that and the amazing medical imaging they could be used for.
In other news: http://news.mit.edu/2013/inexpensive-nano-camera-1126
I am a big history nerd. I will literally say, I love this history shit. You can see how passionate I am about learning history.
But I am concerned about this statement. Does a historical figure deserve to have his or her tomb to be further explored, displayed, and made for profit?
Is there a balance between learning about ancient culture and respecting the dead?
They were not even carved out of limestone blocks, they were casted by an early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water. Similar to how they would have been built nowadays. http://www.livescience.com/1554-surprising-truth-great-pyram...
What's your point? Neither the article nor anybody here mentioned chisels...
How does one cut and move granite blocks with a calculator?