An Atheist's View of the Alpha Course

Santorini is north of Egypt the bulk of the island vanished because of the eruption. You imagine an island exploding and sinking. The impact of that on the sea would be enormous. And would definitely cause a tsunami, which is said to have happened 3600 years ago. The scientists doing the documentary made no mention of The scriptures and no doubt were researching to prove Moses hadn't parted the waves.:) it seems posters are assuming that in a tsunami the sea goes out in a straight line and returns in a straight line but maybe the sea swirling round the devastated Santorini came back from two sides.
I can't recall the exact year or place but it was about 1983 when a huge volcano erupted in America. In the UK we had volcanic ash on our cars and in fact everywhere. I was on holiday in the channel isles at the time and we couldn't see the sea all week because of the ash/dust. So it is well believable when the scriptures describes cloud
 
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A quick google tells me that scholars tend to date the exodus at somewhere around 1200-1400BC. The big Santorini eruption occurred earlier, at around 1600 BC.
 
mstricky said:
Correa I can't answer all your questions and it is about two years since I watched the documentary on the tsunami facts. They were scientists that had studied it and filmed and explained the Reed Sea. Santorini is near Greece and they said it was the biggest vocanic eruption ever. Devastating the island so that is left now with only access up the cliffs by cable car. I went there a few years back on a visit from cruise ship. Because of the curve of the earth, only the clouds/fire could be seen from the Reed Sea. They pointed out that this sea is at the edge of the Med on the curve from Egypt to Israel. The Suez Canal starts were the Reed sea was, so the building and surrounds of the canal have covered up the reed part. They also found lots of lava which would have been washed to shore by the sea from the volcano
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I probably saw the same documentary (THC? DC?) as well as another one at NG. The questions I made were not answered. Actually they never even asked. They never looked for evidence of the tsunami in situ and there are planty of geologists who would be able to find them, recognize them and estimate their ages.

Eruptions columns are not ablaze from bottom to top - Santorini eruption has not created a lava fountain, Hawaiian-style but a dark gray column of hot gas and ashes. Only their lowermost parts can be described as "ablaze at night" (sure, they may trigger lightining), so, the claim that Hebrews would see its upper part illuminated at night as a pillar of fire will not stand.

People standing at the shoreline of Egypt would probably have been able to see a blanket-like dark cloud (volcanic ashes redistributed by winds in the upper atmosphere), experience darker days and perhaps some ashfall. In my SWAG, no pillar, no collumn.

These are a few reasons why I think its bogus.

What could be washed ashore would pumice, not lava. And it would take some time before sea currents managed to redistribuite pumice from Santorini to Egypt -assuming they have a pattern which allows this to happen. Finding pumice is not evidence of a tsunami. It merely shows sea currents redistributed it. Tsunami waves can not carry things in open sea, the can do so only after they break at the shoreline (or in the shallows near it).

Oh, and it was not the biggest explosion ever. It was the biggest in historic times.
 
Scientists/scholars....... estimating :) but its pretty close to me if they both estimated 200 years out, that would about fit
 
Correa, i also have watched a ship load of progs on volcanos and seen many volcanos erupt in flames not just clouds of ash. If one can't see the volcano because of the earth's curve one would obviously see the flames going upwards to the sky, hence their description of a pillar of fire
 
mstricky said:
Scientists/scholars....... estimating :) but its pretty close to me if they both estimated 200 years out, that would about fit
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You've got your bias backward; if it didn't "about fit" they would have just made the documentary about something else which "about fit."
 
mstricky said:
Correa, i also have watched a ship load of progs on volcanos and seen many volcanos erupt in flames not just clouds of ash. If one can't see the volcano because of the earth's curve one would obviously see the flames going upwards to the sky, hence their description of a pillar of fire
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A better idea would be to suppose that the setting sun picked up the column of ash and illuminated it. That is to the west, and it could be dark where Moses is while still light where the ash is.

But, the problem remains, how far can you see?

I get a distance between Santorini and Suez off the net of about 600 miles.
 
Tambora wasn't necessarily the largest explosion it just emitted more dust :) but whatever, Santorini was the cause of a tsunami
 
mstricky said:
Correa, i also have watched a ship load of progs on volcanos and seen many volcanos erupt in flames not just clouds of ash. If one can't see the volcano because of the earth's curve one would obviously see the flames going upwards to the sky, hence their description of a pillar of fire
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No, one would not.

The "flames" are restricted to the lower portions. Too far from the volcano and you'll see just a pillar of smoke, perhaps with a discontinuous blaze at the bottom and some lightining. Depending on wind speed and direction, you would see it broadening towards the top, assuming a blanket-like shape due to wind action. A large volume of the collumn of pyroclastic material generated by Santorini eruption collapsed under its own weight, creating a pyroclastic surge which contributed for the tsunami by displacing water. Note also that island configuration is a key factor for the propagation of tsunamis created by volcanic eruptions. The documentaries have not touched this key issue.

I'm sorry, but as I wrote before, those documentaries were built over the "Here's the truth! Lets seek things that match with it." philosophy.
 
mstricky said:
Squeegee
The cloud would be the cloud made by the volcano it also says in another verse that God made a pillar of fire, more from the volcano. Moses stretched out his hand and the sea withdrew. He later stretched out his hand and the sea flowed back. How else could people of that time describe a tsunami more accurately. But that doesn't mean to say there was a Moses at the time and he could well be fictional as Garrette pointed out
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That's not what I asked you. I posted the text. Can you please refer to the text and point out exactly which bits of it you think are "detailed" and "spot on", as well as pointing out which parts you're choosing to ignore, and what your reasoning is for both.
 
Santorini is amazing and I definitely recommend a visit if you get the chance. It's both strikingly beautiful and humbling to see the results of a cataclysmic force of nature. The steep cliff walls at the edge of the caldera give a wonderful view, and it's very hard to take in that you are looking into a crater several miles across which obliterated an island where real people lived.

I recall seeing a program claiming evidence of a tsunami wave on the North coast of nearby Crete, but Egypt is about 10 times further away.

The Wikipedia page quotes various evidence for the eruption happening some time around the 1620s BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption#Minoan_civilization

So far as I'm aware, the biblical account is the only source claiming the exodus ever happened at all and I don't know what other events would provide context from which it could (if real) be dated.
 
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marplots said:
A better idea would be to suppose that the setting sun picked up the column of ash and illuminated it. That is to the west, and it could be dark where Moses is while still light where the ash is.

But, the problem remains, how far can you see?

I get a distance between Santorini and Suez off the net of about 600 miles.
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Not to mention that after some time no sunlight would be available to illuminate the top of the ash cloud.

And there are more problems:

Assuming it could be visible (something I doubt), how wide and how tall would it appear for someone in Egypt standing by the Mediterranean shoreline? Because you know, a small static thin collumn of clouds low in the horizon is not exactly the impressive pillar of fire moving with the army of Israel described in the Bible...
 
mstricky said:
Sorry, i may have mislead you all. The tsunami/Moses was not mentioned at Alpha. I saw all the details on a documentary on TV. I am Christian but lost my faith some 30 years ago. I live in the UK and am British.
A further detail on that documentary was that the pillar of fire seen in the sky which the people thought was God, was in fact the flames from the volcano but because of the curve of the earth, only the flames could be seen and not the volcano. Santorini is an island near Greece.
I still remain an atheist even though I was having doubts the other night.
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That doesn't change my point much. I have very strong doubts that Alpha presents sensible accounts of history regarding their theology's lineage.

As to the migration; there's an inherent problem in trusting the accuracy of their personnel and geographic accounts.

We know that the Hebrews were of DNA and linguistic relation to the Phoenicians, and arise as Canaan highlanders in 1200 BCE range when the Sea Peoples were invading the Levant region.
We also know that the Hebrew peoples were late to start written form of their storis, as they were firstly an oral tradition culture, even after the written forms in around the 8th c BCE.

There is no guarantee that 8th to 5th c BCE accounts of these cultural legends were as how they first appeared; it would be greatly unlikely in any culture.

There's, then, no certainty that these stories are accurate about the right people leaving the right people.
This could have originally been about proto-Phoenicians leaving Africa as part of the slow human migrations, and had nothing to do with dynasties of Egypt at all.
 
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mstricky said:
Santorini is north of Egypt the bulk of the island vanished because of the eruption. You imagine an island exploding and sinking. The impact of that on the sea would be enormous. And would definitely cause a tsunami, which is said to have happened 3600 years ago. The scientists doing the documentary made no mention of The scriptures and no doubt were researching to prove Moses hadn't parted the waves.:) it seems posters are assuming that in a tsunami the sea goes out in a straight line and returns in a straight line but maybe the sea swirling round the devastated Santorini came back from two sides.
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Are you suggesting that the sea the Israelites crossed was the Mediterranean?
 
I believe the idea he's referring to is the tidal theory, which holds that the Sea of Reeds was something like this area on the coastline (or possibly a bit further to the East, just above the Gulf of Aqaba:
 

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