Category: Modern Science
Interesting Exercise with Artificial Intelligence Writing
For example, I asked ChatGPT to write an explanation of Newton’s Second Law, with an example problem, in the style of Dr. Jay L. Wile (that’s me). Here is what I got. First, I was gratified to see what ChatGPT wrote before giving me the essay:
Dr. Jay L. Wile, known for his clear and accessible explanations in science, would likely present Newton’s Second Law in a straightforward and educational manner.
It also ended with a nice statement:
Dr. Jay L. Wile’s explanations often include practical examples and clear step-by-step problem-solving methods to help students grasp complex concepts effectively.
However, if I look at the essay, I don’t see a lot of my style in it. It does have a less-than-formal tone, which is typical of me, but that’s about it. Interestingly enough, when I put this essay (minus the parts quoted above) into two programs designed to detect whether or not the essay was written by AI, Grammarly’s tool said only 12% of it was AI-generated, while Phrasly said it was 50% AI-generated. Both were wrong, because it was 100% AI-generated.
Since I was struck by the fact that ChatGPT added notes about how I write, I wondered if it would recognize other scientific authors. So I asked ChatGPT to write the same essay, but in the style of other authors. Some were authors of homeschool science material, while others were authors of well-known university physics texts. Of the six authors I tried, it added statements about only one, Dr. Raymond A. Serway. It mentioned his organized, methodical style, which I agree with (I used his text in my calculus-based physics courses when I taught it at the university level).
Even though ChatGPT didn’t add statements about the other 5 authors, the style of each essay was slightly different. I don’t know if ChatGPT didn’t recognize those authors and just used different writing styles or recognized them but didn’t add statements about their writing. On a whim, I decided to ask it to write the same essay in the style of an author who doesn’t write about science, Andrew Pudewa. I got his permission to share what it came up with. I am familiar with Andrew’s work, and once again, I don’t see a lot of his style in this essay. Nevertheless, note that it did add a comment about his writing style:
Andrew Pudewa, the founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing, is known for his clear, engaging explanations that make complex ideas accessible…This style of explanation emphasizes clarity and relatability, making complex concepts more understandable and engaging.
I would agree with that assessment.
Now, of course, ChatGPT is free, so I am sure there are better AI tools out there. Nevertheless, based on this little test, I am not very impressed with AI writing. At the same time, however, I would say that AI seems to be accurate when it comes to evaluating an author’s style when it decides to add an evaluation.
The High Priests of Science Are Counting on the Public’s Short Memory
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Will Rogers once said, “The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.” The High Priests of Science are well aware of the public’s short memory. In fact, they count on it. Consider, for example, the picture above. It was a common sight 10-15 years ago. The credulous costumed characters in the picture were terribly worried about the plight of polar bears, which they believed were being driven to extinction because climate change (aka global warming) was melting all the ice in the Arctic. Without that ice, the polar bears would have no habitat, and they would all die.
Why don’t we see lots of protests featuring polar bears anymore? Because even the High Priests of Science can no longer deny the fact that polar bears are thriving. Studies show that polar bear populations have more than doubled since 1960. It turns out that polar bears were on the decline because of hunting, not climate change. Now that the hunting of polar bears has been heavily regulated, the animals are once again healthy and plentiful. The High Priests of Science are counting on you to forget their false statements regarding polar bears and climate change/global warming so that they can continue to promote their propaganda.
Now remember, the polar bears were supposedly threatened by the loss of sea ice in the Arctic. The High Priests of Science have continually predicted that the Arctic would eventually be ice free in the summer. In 2008, for example, Dr. James Hansen told the U.S. Congress that in 5-10 years, the Arctic would be ice-free in the summer. Well, it has been 16 years since his testimony, and there is still a lot of ice in the Arctic, even in the summer. Other scientists have predicted ice-free Arctic summers by 2015, 2013, and 2012. The High Priests hope you have forgotten those predictions now that they claim it will happen by 2030, or perhaps 2067.
Of course, those aren’t the only things the High Priests are hoping you’ve forgotten. The Great Barrier Reef is another. In 2012, a study predicted that if we did not reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the central and southern regions of the Great Barrier Reef would see such a decline that only 5-10% would be covered with coral. Two years later, The Guardian published an obituary for the reef. Ten years later, however, the amount of coral in the northern and central regions of the Great Barrier Reef is at an all-time high, and the southern region is very close to an all-time high. Once again, the High Priests of Science hope you will forget about those predictions.
And then, of course, there is sea level. Sea levels have been rising steadily since the mid 1800s, because that is when the earth started recovering from The Little Ice Age, a time when the earth was unusually cold. Despite the fact that at least a large portion of the rise in sea levels seems to be a result of natural fluctuations in the earth’s temperature, the High Priests of Science have predicted that climate change will accelerate it, leading to all sorts of catastrophes. The East Coast’s beaches were supposed to be gone by 2020, the Maldives were supposed to be underwater by 2018, and New York and Washington were supposed to be covered by the ocean in the year 2000. Of course, none of that happened, but the High Priests are counting on you to forget those predictions so they can make new ones.
The next time you hear a dire prediction about what will happen because of climate change/global warming, remember that those High Priests of Science have been making such predictions for a very long time, and they are constantly being proven wrong.
More Evidence Against Iron as a Preservative for Biomolecules in Fossils
Those who want to believe that dinosaur fossils are millions of years old are faced with two very difficult challenges. First, carbon-14 has been detected in significant quantities in all dinosaur bones that were tested for it. This is a problem, as carbon-14 should decay to unmeasurable levels in about 60,000 years. Second, soft tissue and biomolecules have been found in many dinosaur fossils (see here, here, here, and here, for example), and at least according to some paleontologists, it is a common feature of the fossils. Of course, there is no known way that soft tissue and biomolecules can withstand decay over millions of years, so fervent old-earth scientists have been trying to find one.
Dr. Mary Schweitzer, who was the first to find soft tissue in a dinosaur fossil, proposed a possible explanation more than 10 years ago. Based on an experiment that lasted two years, she and her colleagues proposed that iron from the dinosaur’s blood could have acted as a preservative for the soft tissue and the biomolecules that comprise it. As you can read in the post I linked, I was initially very skeptical of such an explanation. Two years later, two chemists who are much more knowledgeable than I am gave what I consider to be definitive arguments as to why iron cannot do what Schweitzer and her colleagues want it to do.
One of my readers (Victor Ferreira da Silva) recently sent me a study that can be considered the death knell of Schweitzer and her colleagues’ proposal. In addition, it strengthens the case that the fossils are not millions of years old. In the study, the authors soaked four chicken femurs in sand to mimic the conditions under which most scientists think fossils form. They then passed a different solution through the sand for each bone: pure water, water + calcium carbonate, water + iron, and water + phosphate. After 90 days, they examined the bones with three different techniques to see how much decay had occurred. They measured the amount of the most abundant form of collagen (a biomolecule) that remained. They found that iron was the worst preservative, and calcium carbonate was the best. Specifically, they estimate that the chicken bones retained 90% of their collagen when exposed to water + calcium carbonate, but only 35% when exposed to water + iron. The ones exposed to water + phosphate retained 60%, while the ones exposed to pure water retained 80%. Under realistic conditions, then, iron is a horrible preservative for biomolecules.
But what about calcium carbonate? When mixed with water, it preserved more collagen. That’s true, and the authors suggest that it’s because the calcium carbonate mineralizes the outer parts of the bone, protecting the inner parts from microbial activity that tends to break down biomolecules. While that seems reasonable, notice that in a mere 90 days, even the “best” preservative had already allowed 10% of the collagen to decay. That doesn’t provide much confidence for its ability to act as a preservative for millions of years!
Interestingly enough, even though I think this study is the death knell for Dr. Schweitzer’s proposal that iron can preserve soft tissue and biomolecules over millions of years, she was indirectly involved in the study. As the authors note:
This project would not have been possible without the support of Mary Schweitzer, who graciously opened her “Modern lab” at North Carolina State University to two of us (PVU and KKV) to conduct the ELISA and immunofluorescence assays for this project.
I applaud Dr. Schweitzer and the authors of this study for trying to figure out an explanation for soft tissue and biomolecules in dinosaur fossils. Of course, I think there is a much simpler explanation: the fossils are thousands of years old, not millions of years old. But I look forward to any more studies done on this issue. If I am right, more studies will simply strengthen the young-earth case. If I am wrong, we will discover some new, exciting chemistry.
The Motivation for Modern Science was Theological
On April 24, 1973, about three years before his death, he gave a lecture entitled “Tradition in Science.” It draws on the knowledge he gained through nearly an entire lifetime of scientific experiences. The talk has been reprinted many times in publications such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Early on, he draws a distinction between descriptive science (which was championed by great thinkers like Aristotle) and mathematically-based science, which he calls the “new method.” He then writes:
Therefore two features are essential for the new method: the attempt to design new and very accurate experiments which idealize and isolate experience, and thereby actually create new phenomena, and the comparison of these phenomena with mathematical constructs, called natural laws. Before we discuss the validity of this method even in our present science, we should perhaps briefly ask for the basis of confidence, which led Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler on this new way. Following a paper of von Weizsäcker, I think we have to state that this basis was mainly theological. Galileo argued that nature, God’s second book (the first one being the Bible) is written in mathematical letters, and that we have to learn this alphabet if we want to read it. Kepler is even more explicit in his work on world harmony; he says: God created the world in accordance with his ideas of creation. These ideas are the pure archetypal forms which Plato termed Ideas, and they can be understood by Man as mathematical constructs. They can be understood by Man, because Man was created as the spiritual image of God. Physics is a reflection on the divine Ideas of Creation, therefore physics is a divine service.
Now, of course, what he calls the “new method” is essentially the way we do modern science. In other words, science in its current form was motivated by theology, specifically the Judeo-Christian idea that man is made in God’s image.
I have written previously about the fact that science is a product of Christianity (here, here, here, and here, for example) but Dr. Heisenberg’s lecture emphasizes that fact. Anyone who tells you that “religion” (or Christianity in particular) is incompatible with science shows not only a shocking ignorance of the history of science, but also an ignorance of what science is to begin with.
Do Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Cause Warming or Vice-Versa?
Unfortunately, science often does not follow common sense. I use quantum mechanics in my field of research all the time, and it violates common sense at every turn. Nevertheless, I am forced to use the theory because the data strongly support it. Thus, even though “it makes sense” that rising carbon dioxide levels will increase the earth’s temperature, we don’t know that for a fact. Indeed, the majority of the data have consistently shown that this is not the case. Several analyses of ice-core data show that on long time scales, the average temperature of the earth rises, and then carbon dioxide levels rise (see here, here, here, and here).
Now, of course, all these studies use proxies to estimate global temperature, and that can be tricky. In addition, producing the time scale involves making several unverifiable assumptions. Thus, I have never put much stock in such studies. However, others who are interested in climate change (aka Global Warming) take these data seriously. They generally say that these long-term trends are showing the effects of changes in earth’s orbital cycle, which changes the energy it gets from the sun. Thus, they aren’t relevant to what is happening right now. Also, there are at least some ice-core analyses that show carbon dioxide rising before temperature does. In other words, it’s complicated.
However, a recent study (which actually builds on two previous studies) looked at the modern data that has been collected for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and global temperature. In other words, it analyzed what is happening right now. Of course, there are several sets of data for global temperatures, and they don’t really agree with one another, but the authors used a well-accepted one. What they found is that even on this relatively short time scale, carbon dioxide levels rise after temperatures rise. In fact, here are three graphs from the abstract:
From the graph on the left, it is clear that temperature (red line) rises first, then carbon dioxide level (green line) rises. The other two graphs show this even more convincingly. On those two graphs, changes in carbon dioxide and temperature are only correlated with one another if you consider the change in carbon dioxide level after the change in temperature, not before.
But wait a minute. How can temperature affect carbon dioxide level? Well, one of the major places the earth stores carbon dioxide is in the ocean (and, to a lesser degree, in fresh water). When temperatures go up, carbon dioxide becomes less soluble, so the oceans release carbon dioxide. From that point of view, it “makes sense” that rising temperatures will cause rising carbon dioxide levels. But once again, science doesn’t always make sense. Thus, it’s probably very complicated. Most likely, rising temperatures cause rising carbon dioxide levels, and those rising carbon dioxide levels cause more rising temperatures.
Which is more important? If you trust this study, it’s the former. In their appendix, the authors estimate that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels caused by increasing temperature is three times greater than the increase in carbon dioxide levels caused by human emissions. Now, of course, that still means human emissions increase temperature. However, it also means that (not surprisingly) the global climate models aren’t properly taking this into account. As a result, global climate models are exaggerating humanity’s contribution to global warming. While I think that has already been well-established, this study gives at least one of the explanations for it.
More Evidence That the Early Church Believed in the Divinity of Christ
For some reason, I missed the discovery of this amazing mosaic when it was announced. However, a pastor friend of mine recently shared this article, which indicates that the mosaic might be coming to the Museum of the Bible here in the U.S., so I looked into it and decided some of my readers might be interested.
The story begins in 2004 when a prison in northern Israel was planning some new construction. Archaeologists came to ensure that the construction wouldn’t destroy any historically-valuable material, and it’s a good thing they did, because they found that the prison had been built over an ancient Christian house of prayer. It is now thought to be the earliest known Christian prayer hall, dated to be from approximately AD 230!1
More importantly, a portion of the mosaic (shown above) says, “The God-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.”2 The table isn’t there, but it probably functioned as an altar. However, the message of the mosaic is clear: Jesus Christ is God. This is important, because some popularizers of Christian scholarship claim that the early church didn’t believe in the Divinity of Christ. For example, in her book, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Karen Armstrong claims:3
After his death, his followers decided that Jesus had been Divine. This did not happen immediately; as we shall see, the doctrine that Jesus had been God in human form was not finalized until the fourth century. The development of Christian belief in the Incarnation was a gradual, complex process.
If that sounds familiar to you, you might recognize it from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. No serious scholar of early Christianity believes such nonsense, because there is ample evidence that says otherwise. Nevertheless, since it was in the popular book-turned-movie, I encounter a lot of people who believe it. Well, here is a mosaic that predates the fourth century by about one hundred years, and it says that at least those who came into this prayer hall knew that Jesus is God.
Of course, we don’t need this mosaic to tell us that the early church believed in the Divinity of Christ, since lots of early church fathers are on record about it. Here is a sampling:
Ignatius of Antioch (c. AD 50 – c. AD 110):
I Glorify God, even Jesus Christ, who has given you such wisdom. For I have observed that you are perfected in an immoveable faith, as if you were nailed to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…
[Epistle to the Smyrnaeans]Hence every kind of magic was destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappeared; ignorance was removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life.
[Epistle to the Ephesians]
Justin Martyr (AD 100 – AD 165):
And that Christ being Lord, and God the Son of God, and appearing formerly in power as Man, and Angel, and in the glory of fire as at the bush, so also was manifested at the judgment executed on Sodom, has been demonstrated fully by what has been said.
[Dialogue with Trypho]…but now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts…
[Dialogue with Trypho]…the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now in the times of your reign, having, as we before said, become Man by a virgin, according to the counsel of the Father, for the salvation of those who believe on Him…
[First Apology]
Irenaeus of Lyons (c. AD 130 – c. AD 200):
For I have shown from the Scriptures, that no one of the sons of Adam is as to everything, and absolutely, called God, or named Lord. But that He is Himself in His own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth. Now, the Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like others, He had been a mere man…. He is the holy Lord, the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Beautiful in appearance, and the Mighty God, coming on the clouds as the Judge of all men;—all these things did the Scriptures prophesy of Him.
[Against Heresies]
Like many things we learn from our culture, then, the idea that the early church didn’t believe in the Divinity of Christ is demonstrably false. This Mosaic simply adds more evidence to the huge pile.
REFERENCES
1. Yotam Tepper and Leah Di Segni, A Christian Prayer Hall of the Third Century CE at Kfar ‘Othnay (Legio), Publication of the Israel Antiquities Authority, p. 50, 2006.
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2. Ibid, p. 36.
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3. Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, (Ballatine Books, 1993), p. 81
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A Really Good Flat Earth Documentary
I have written a lot about the idea of a flat earth. While you might think that most ancient people believed it, that’s just not true. (see here, here, and here). I have also compiled a list of resources that have observations you can make today which clearly show the earth is not flat. Well, a reader of those posts made me aware of a documentary called Behind the Curve, which you can watch for free. I don’t watch a lot of documentaries, but the premise of this one sounded intriguing, so I decided to give it a try. I am glad that I did!
The documentary follows several flat-earthers as they try to make a case for their position. It allows the flat-earthers to talk and never attempts to refute any of their arguments. Between these scenes, however, there are scientists who discuss the flat-earth movement. Those scientists don’t offer any criticisms of the flat-earth arguments, either. They just discuss their impressions of flat-earthers. Refreshingly, the scientists don’t insult the flat-earthers. Instead, the scientists just discuss their impressions of how flat-earthers think as well as why they believe in such an easily-refutable idea. It’s a very interesting juxtaposition.
What I loved most about the documentary, however, is how it shows flat-earthers doing experiments that attempt to “prove” that the earth is flat. In one of the experiments, for example, a person bought a $20,000 ring laser gyroscope. Once it is set to point in a specific direction, it unerringly points that way, no matter how it is moved. Well, if the earth is flat and not rotating, the gyroscope would never change its orientation once it is set and left stationary. However, if the earth is mostly spherical and rotating, the gyroscope would have to change orientation to continue pointing in the same direction. Since the earth goes through a 360-degree rotation every 24 hours, the gyroscope would have to drift 15 degrees every hour.
The flat-earther discussing this experiment (Bob Knodel, an engineer) says that when they set it up, they did, indeed, see it drift at a rate of 15 degrees every hour. They didn’t like that result, of course, so they decided that there must be something else going on. Thus, they repeated the experiment, this time putting the gyroscope in a container that excludes magnetic fields. They thought that the dome of stars above the flat earth was influencing the gyroscope in some way, and the container should remove that influence. Unfortunately for them, they got the same result. Now they are trying to find a chamber made out of bismuth into which they can put the gyroscope. I am not sure why they think that might stop the dome of stars from influencing the gyroscope, but Knodel says it is the next step of the experiment.
The other experiment is much more direct. Jeran Campanella wanted to shine a laser down a nearly 4-mile stretch of canal. He wanted to put three posts along the way and measure where the laser hit the posts relative to the canal’s water level. On a flat earth, the laser would hit each post at the same height. On a curved earth, the laser would hit the middle post at a lower point. Of course, a normal laser pointer wouldn’t be visible over such a distance, so he bought a 3-Watt laser, which is very powerful. Unfortunately, when he and others did the experiment, there was just too much dispersion. As a result, the “spot” on the laser was so large that it was impossible to find where the center hit the post.
In the end, they did an ingenious variation of the experiment. They made two blinds with holes that were 17 feet above the the surface of the water. They put a camera on one end of the roughly 4-mile stretch of canal and a person holding a light on the other end. The camera was positioned level at 17 feet above the water, pointed at the hole in the nearest blind. With that setup and a flat earth, the person should hold the light at 17 feet above the water for the camera to see it, as shown in this diagram that is in the documentary:
On a curved earth, the person would have to hold the light higher for it to hit the camera, as shown in this diagram, which is also in the documentary.
The documentary shows them trying to see the light on the camera’s screen when it is held at 17 feet, and they don’t see it. However, when the person with the light holds it high above his head, they see it on the camera’s screen. Campanella’s comment upon seeing this demonstration of earth’s curvature was, “Interesting.” Another experimenter suggested that the light was hitting leaves, which is why it was blocked until it was raised higher.
If you are interested in trying to understand why people today believe an idea that was thoroughly refuted more than 2,300 years ago, this documentary might provide you with some insights.
Blood Clots Cast Even More Doubt on the Current Ancient-Earth Explanation for Soft Tissue in Dinosaur Fossils
Mark Armitage is doing some of today’s most exciting research on fossils (see here, here, here, here, and here). He recently presented some of his research at the 2023 Microscopy and Microanalysis annual meeting, which published its proceedings.
To my mind, there are three important takeaways from the presentation. First, he finds blood clots in fossils that are much older that what has been commonly reported. Most of these reports are about fossils that are supposed to be 65-70 million years old. Some of the fossils he reports on here are supposed to be 270-300 million years old! That’s what the illustration at the top of this article shows. On the left is a standard microscope image of an early Permian amphibian fossil. The yellow material is bone, and the image is centered on a canal that runs through the bone. When the specimen was alive, the canal held blood vessels and nerves. The white area is empty, and the dark material between the empty space and the bone tissue is clotted blood. On the right, you see what happens when that same sample is hit with ultraviolet light. The dark splotches you see come from iron in the blood clot. When hit with ultraviolet light, iron emits light of a specific wavelength, and that’s the wavelength emitted here. Thus, we know this is iron, and since it is in the clot, it is iron from the animal’s blood. If you want to believe the old-earth timescale, then, you have to believe that a blood clot is able to exist for 270-300 million years without rotting away!
That brings me to the second important takeaway. In a desperate attempt to explain how soft tissue can be in fossils that are supposed to be millions of years old, Schweitzer and her colleagues published a paper suggesting that iron is the key to this remarkable preservation. In that paper, they show how iron from blood can reduce the degradation of blood vessels over a period of two years. However, the experiment required that the blood be treated with an anticoagulant. That way, iron could diffuse throughout the tissue that was being preserved. Armitage’s results show that’s not realistic. Instead, the blood clots trap the iron so that it is not available to the rest of the tissue. This adds to the other arguments which indicate that Schweitzer’s iron-preservation hypothesis is not valid.
The last very important takeaway is how these results affect research that has already been done. As Armitage’s paper says:
We also note that many histological dinosaur bone studies reveal unreported clots, thus we encourage workers to examine their sections for iron auto-fluorescence response under UVFL.
In other words, because of Armitage’s work, we can look at past images that have already been published and see that there are blood clots in previously-described fossils that were not recognized by the researchers who published the studies. Thus, paleontologists have the opportunity to learn more from the fossils that they have already examined. I truly hope that at least some of those scientists are curious enough to take Armitage’s suggestion!
Archaeological Confirmation of Joshua’s Altar at Ebal?
NOTE: Here is a good analysis of this find. It looks like the claims are not very well-founded.
Last year, a team of archaeologists led by Dr. Scott Stripling of the Bible Seminary in Texas announced that they had found the oldest example of Hebrew writing, and it contained the word “Yahweh,” the divine name for God that was used by the Israelites. If true, this would show that the Israelites were literate long before many historians think they were. In addition, it would provide strong evidence for the historical accuracy of an event reported in Joshua 8:30-35. Unfortunately, the team revealed their discovery through social media instead of in a scientific peer-reviewed journal. As a result, I was hesitant to discuss the discovery when I first learned about it, despite how exciting it is. Well, the team has now published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, and I have to say that while I find the discovery intriguing, I am not nearly as excited about it as I was initially.
The discovery was made when the archaeologists were searching through material that had been discarded more than thirty years ago during the excavation of ancient altars on Mount Ebal. In sifting through that rubble, they found an object that was about the size of a postage stamp. When cleaned, the object was recognized as a small lead tablet. Since lead is soft, it was often used as a surface upon which to scratch words. The material found around the tablet was consistent with the older of the two altars that had been excavated, and that altar is thought to be from a time consistent with the book of Joshua. Thus, it could be the one that Joshua built on Mount Ebal as described in Joshua 8:30-35.
The tablet is folded and could not be opened without damaging it. However, the authors used X-ray computed tomography to look inside. At a certain depth within the tablet, they got the image shown on the left at the top of this article. Since the tablet had been deformed, they used a computer to virtually “flatten” the tablet. That produced the image on the right.
What do you see in those two images? I see a lot of dimples, but there are clearly some scratches that seem to form shapes, one of which looks like a stick figure of a person. The authors indicate that this is what they see:
I don’t see much of that, but then again, I haven’t been studying the raw X-ray images in detail. It’s possible that if I spent enough time with all the images they have, I might see everything they see. However, their own note towards the end of the scientific paper indicates that one author sees more letters than the other authors.
So…assuming the things drawn above really are on the tablet, what does it say? According to the authors, it says:
You are cursed by the god yhw, cursed.
You will die, cursed—cursed, you will surely die.
Cursed you are by yhw—cursed.
This, of course, would be consistent with the account in Joshua 8:30-35, since verse 34 says:
Then afterward he read all the words of the Law, the blessing and the curse, according to everything that is written in the Book of the Law.
While this is a potentially very exciting discovery, the scientific paper leaves me skeptical. Apparently, I am not the only one.
Whether or not this tablet ends up being what the authors think it is, I have no doubt that the events in the book of Joshua happened in just the way they are reported. However, it is always nice when archaeology confirms the Biblical record.