By Yak ~
This past week a volcanologist with LiveScience leaked a small story of what started as monitoring a relatively normal, dormant volcano in Bolivia, but turned out to be a 40-mile wide area of ground uplift due to the extraordinarily rapid filling of the magma chamber beneath it. A forty-mile diameter area of the Andes is rising at nearly an inch a year due to magma pushing its way toward the surface.
Image by einalem via Flickr
The area of ground that is rising is a little smaller than Yellowstone caldera, but larger than Long Valley caldera, both colloquially referred to as "Supervolcanos." The magma chamber is filling at the rate of 1 cubic meter per second. There is bona fide concern that a new large caldera, or "supervolcano" is in the process of forming. A full-on eruption of that 40 mile diameter magma chamber will create an existential challenge to all life on the planet. In today's vernacular, if it erupts, it could easily create an Extinction Level Event (for brevity sake, this is all the detail I want to fill-in. If you want to read up on the problem further either Google or Bing "Uturuncu," the name of the current volcano in Bolivia, or see the links below.)
OK, so it is possible that nature may be gearing up for a really big series of events that will not sort out whom to kill or to protect. It will not make a difference if one is a christian or muslim or buddhist or atheist. The series of events around a supervolcano eruption will non-preferentially destroy life. Period.
The questions:
What kind of tall tale are christians going to spin in order to square their rabid beliefs about who will or won't be "saved" if this world-ending event takes place?
Image by einalem via Flickr
Will they act out with denial and say that their god won't let it happen?
Will they somehow re-engineer their beliefs and begin conflating a supervolcano eruption with their end-times Space Opera from the bible's book called "Revelation?"
Or, will they take their latest contrivance that, "god is teaching us a lesson"(echoing Pat Robertson and dead Jerry Falwell) and that their god is pissed and will destroy everything (except for christians, of course)?
An inquiring mind asks...
http://news.yahoo.com/rapidly-inflating-volcano-creates-growing-mystery-142805969.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/25/uturuncu-volcano-bolivia-inflating-_n_1031332.html
A general list of existential threats to life (all of which are fodder for christians as they do the Funky Chicken trying to tie them all back to some biblical reference.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans_and_planet_Earth
This past week a volcanologist with LiveScience leaked a small story of what started as monitoring a relatively normal, dormant volcano in Bolivia, but turned out to be a 40-mile wide area of ground uplift due to the extraordinarily rapid filling of the magma chamber beneath it. A forty-mile diameter area of the Andes is rising at nearly an inch a year due to magma pushing its way toward the surface.
Image by einalem via FlickrOK, so it is possible that nature may be gearing up for a really big series of events that will not sort out whom to kill or to protect. It will not make a difference if one is a christian or muslim or buddhist or atheist. The series of events around a supervolcano eruption will non-preferentially destroy life. Period.
The questions:
What kind of tall tale are christians going to spin in order to square their rabid beliefs about who will or won't be "saved" if this world-ending event takes place?
Image by einalem via FlickrWill they somehow re-engineer their beliefs and begin conflating a supervolcano eruption with their end-times Space Opera from the bible's book called "Revelation?"
Or, will they take their latest contrivance that, "god is teaching us a lesson"(echoing Pat Robertson and dead Jerry Falwell) and that their god is pissed and will destroy everything (except for christians, of course)?
An inquiring mind asks...
http://news.yahoo.com/rapidly-inflating-volcano-creates-growing-mystery-142805969.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/25/uturuncu-volcano-bolivia-inflating-_n_1031332.html
A general list of existential threats to life (all of which are fodder for christians as they do the Funky Chicken trying to tie them all back to some biblical reference.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risks_to_civilization,_humans_and_planet_Earth
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