The Science Behind The 10 Plagues Of Egypt

reply to post by GamerGal

It's true that disturbing ecosystem may lead to undesirable effects and given the insufficient hygiene, some of the plagues directly affecting the people were very likely the consequence of the chain reaction triggered by Plague #1.

But science should be as exact as possible to elevate a rational speculation to a theory -- and that's the point where the mainstream science failed to deliver the unchallengeable explanation to the causes of the Plagues of Egypt.

We must seek an alternative explanation to the phenomenon which employs an exact scientific methods, where the exactness is supplied by the usage of mathematics. Exactness is a synonym to equality, and so we must employ something similar to the famous E = mc^2 to arrive at the true theoretical explanation to the question what caused the Plagues of Egypt.

Firstly, we must establish the quantities and the time of the occurrence: There were 10 plagues that took place in the Biblical times, because Exodus, the second book of The Old Testament, describes them all.

Secondly, we need to formulate the question regarding the cause of the plagues mathematically, where the cause is an unknown variable x:

10 = x

To solve this equation, we need to restrict our solution with respect to the source, which is Exodus. In other words, we are looking for significant event strongly related to number 10 in this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Here it is: the 10 commandments -- the list of "religious and moral imperatives" that God gave to Moses to go by. Now we can solve the unknown variable:

10 plauges = 10 commandments.

The interpretation of the above equality is simple: The people of Egypt utterly disregarded God's moral codex and God punished them for that. He counted, so the punished folks would know what those plagues were meant for.

Of course, mathematic equations are the most exact instruments, but they cannot be completely detached from physical aspects that they define. The confirmation of God causing the plagues must therefore assume an observable or detectable form. And so here is the final brick to the theory:

You know, the theory has a weak spot.

No, it has not -- it's perfect.

Yes, it has. There is a glitch: You handed the 10 Commandments to Moses after he and his people left Egypt. You punished the wrong guys.

No, I didn't. They are all the same; Homo sapiens = Homo sapiens -- the same bunch of disrespectful creatures.

But if the Egyptians knew that you had issued those 10 instructions, they would have behaved.

That's what you think? What are you up to, dude? Are you gonna teach me what my own creation would do or not? I know those chipmunks better than anyone else, and I truly say onto you that you know sh-t about them.

Too bad I lost the tape with the above conversation on it, otherwise I would turn the theory into the fact and forwarded my academic standing further than anyone else would ever hope for.





[edit on 11/19/2008 by stander]

reply to post by stander


Lol, about to say the 10 Commandments came after the Plagues. As for exact, science isn't always exact. Remember, science doesn't know what Gravity is. They know it's there but they argue on if it's a particle or wave energy or some thing else. You'd think after a few hundred years they'd get that down. As for the Plagues the volcano eruption explains every thing. And with the same thing happening in other times... After WWII thousands of Russians died from eating moldy grain, much like the first born. Krakatoa blacked out the sky for days for hundreds of kilometers. Locusts still happen today, they aren't a magical thing just nature, same with the insects. And of course the Red Tide happens today. Some times the algae is deadly, other times it isn't. When it is... Well, you see lots of dead fish. And for fire in the sky, like I said this amazing picture in Nat. Geo. had red lightning forming around an eruption. It was absolutely beautiful and if I was some one who thought lightning was God's wrath I might think it was fire in the sky too.

Originally posted by GamerGal
I posted this in the science section hoping to avoid the "Nuh uh God did it!" crowd. I just thought that it was interesting that every thing can be explained by one incident, a volcano exploding. .

Because people who believe in god don't read science forums? Anyway i think thats pretty ignorant way to dismiss people. I accepted the possibility that it was all coinencidence why can't you accept the possibility that it wasn't? Instead you write people off as uneducated bible thumping morons.

[edit on 20-11-2008 by WisdomInChains]

reply to post by WisdomInChains


No, I think the idea of posting it here is to remove the religious reaction to just say "god did it". If this was in the religion board, that's all we'd be hearing.

Interesting theory GamerGal,

but I think you need to go back to the drawing board...

Where it fails, is that you have a volcano spewing 100's of tonnes of ash, causing the algal blooms etc, but it's only with the last of the plagues that the sky turns black.

This makes no sense - if the volcano was the trigger for all of these events, you'd expect the first thing to happen would be that "day turned into night" followed by ash falling, and then possibly the effects you describe, not the other way around.

Nice try though. Allot of what you said makes good sense, but it needs more work, and I agree that all of these events can be explained by natural (rather than super-natural) phenomena.

It was recently suggested that "The parting of the Red Sea", and subsequent drowning of the pursuers could well have been caused by a tsunami - the sea bed becomes exposed just before the impact of a tsunami, making it possible for people to cross in safety before the tsunami arrived.

reply to post by GamerGal

A rational speculation that ends with a "logical outcome" doesn't make an alleged phenomenon an event that actually took place. If it wasn't for Exodus, we wouldn't be even remotely aware of those ten plagues that Egypt went through, because the material evidence left is next to none. Scientists have their own very peculiar criteria to decide what is just "a bible talk" and what is not.

The account may not have been even included in Exodus, but since the children of Israel were somewhat protected from the effect of the plagues, as the book says, the evidence of God loving his children and not caring for those who evolved from monkeys had to be accented and preserved for the next generations.

Science shouldn't be plagued (no pun intended . . . maybe just a bit) by double standard. If you make certain assumptions based on a story, you should accept the whole enchilada. And so, what do you think would be the scientific explanation for the Jews suffering less hardship under the alleged conditions that Exodus describes?

I would personally attack this question once again with mathematics: I would assign number 1 to a person that survives a pandemic, and number 0 to a person that succumbs. (Mutually exclusive outcomes are numerically expressed that way by a convention.)

Since #1 subject and #0 live apart, I would enslave either of them an bring them to one location. Now they are both together:

10

Then I would test the new state-of-art immune system and overall resiliency:

10 Plagues of Egypt


Hey, Moses!

What?

Ah, if you don't like to bathe your butt in the Nile no more, you can go someplace else. I'm pretty much done here.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


Ash was not just in the air. The blast of the volcano was massive, equal if not greater than Krakatoa. Dust was in the water just from that. Then as it travelled east in the air... There you go.

Originally posted by GamerGal
reply to post by C.H.U.D.

 

Ash was not just in the air. The blast of the volcano was massive, equal if not greater than Krakatoa. Dust was in the water just from that. Then as it travelled east in the air... There you go.

Are you saying that the Jews had some kind of filtering device that would separate the dust from water?

So it wasn't God who protected them, as Exodus says; it was their scientific know-how that did the job. Water can be pasteurized the same way as milk. The scientific conlusion is that the Jewish people residing in Egypt were much more sophisticated than anyone could suspect so.

Jews weren't protected because as I learned the Egyptians never had slaves... www.touregypt.net... But I am trying to avoid the God aspect of the Plagues and aiming for a rational explanation. Also, where did I say anything about the water killing humans or whatever? Why would the Jews need water filters when the Egyptians didn't? The water killed fish due to the type of algae bloom. Just like today the Red Tide can be completely harmless, just lots of algae, and other times it can kill every thing including humans. Also some times it is green or purple, depends on the type of algae. Its complicated but we are complicated people. We don't go "Earthquake? God did it." We know about tetonic plates. "Tornado? God did it." We know about the weather. We still can't predict it all too well but we know about it.

Ancient Egyptians most definitely had slaves. Weather or not they built the pyramids is debatable. All ancient civilizations had slaves spoiles of war. They may not have been kept like slaves on a plantation, but they were slaves non the less.

WOW good job thank you for the down low. its amazing take a bow

reply to post by GamerGal


If the air was full of ash, where did the algae get the light to "bloom"? The sequence of events you are proposing just doesn't add up...

you talk about the death of the first born as a plague?
The pharaoh ordered this to happen, it was not a plague, but was passed off as one at the time due to the pharaohs godly nature

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


The ash in the sky came after the algae bloom. The Red Tide came when the ash in the water changed the PH level. Then with the air current and so forth the ash in the air made it to Egypt blocking out the sun.

Originally posted by GamerGal
The ash in the sky came after the algae bloom. The Red Tide came when the ash in the water changed the PH level. Then with the air current and so forth the ash in the air made it to Egypt blocking out the sun.

It still doesn't add up...

Even if the wind direction kept the bulk of the ash away (but rivers carried the ash into an unaffected area), which seems like a stretch, but I concede it may be possible...

Also, it takes around two months for frog eggs to become frogs if I recall correctly... so are you suggesting that for at least 2 months this volcano continued to erupt, and in all that time the wind never once changed direction?

If you take the 7th plague (Fire and hail), with all that ash in the air, it would already be dark, but you have that as the "10th plague".

Is there even any evidence for a volcanic eruption of this scale in the area at the time?

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


10th plague isn't the fire and hail... 10th plague is the first born eating moldy wheat during a famine and so only they were affected. And yes, the ash from Santorini have been found in Egypt.

From the movie The Reaping:

In 1400 B.C., a group of nervous Egyptians saw the Nile turn red. But what they thought was blood was actually an algae bloom which killed the fish, which prior to that had been living off the eggs of frogs. Those uneaten eggs turned into record numbers of baby frogs who subsequently fled to the land and died. Their little rotting frog bodies attracted lice and flies. The lice carried the bluetongue virus, which killed 70% of Egypt's livestock. The flies carried glanders, a bacterial infection which in humans causes boils. Soon afterwards, the Nile River Valley was hit with a three-day sandstorm otherwise known as the plague of darkness. During the sandstorm, intense heat can combine with an approaching cold front to create not only hail, but also electrical storms which would have looked to the ancient Egyptians like fire from the sky. The subsequent wind would have blown the Ethiopian locust population off course and right into downtown Cairo. Hail is wet, locusts leave droppings spread both on grain, and you have got mycotoxins. Dinnertime in ancient Egypt meant the first-born child got the biggest portion which in this case meant he ate the most toxins, so he died. Ten plagues. Ten scientific explanations.

Most people don't seemed to have like that movie. . . I thought it was good. *shrug*


...anywho,


Is the documentary that you watched this one from YouTube? Part1 & Part2 If not, could you tell us what documentary you watched, I'd like to see it too. Also, not to be too much of an arse, if you are just relaying/paraphrasing someone else's work you really should cite your source(s). Unless these ideas are yours, in which case I apologize for the insinuation/accusation of plagiarism.


Also...

Simple right? Back then they never would have known. Back then lightning was His wrath. Back then a disease was His punishment. Back then nature was unknown. But when you look at it with science... not that big a deal.

Could you point me towards the Bible verse(s), or interpretations there-of, which dictate that there can not be a (natural) explanation or mechanism behind the 10 plagues? Surely you're aware of the many Biblical scholars whom have studied this and gave their own (perfectly "natural") explanations for it. It does nothing to debunk the plagues as described in the Bible... really it is just an attempt to explain or speculate on the mechanisms behind them... regardless of how the people of the time would have explained it. You're really just adding support to the idea that they did indeed happen as reported. No?


Also, for what it's worth you're not doing Science (per se) here, this - as you've constructed it - is what's known as Cargo Cult Science.


Some other attempts to explain the Plagues:

Doctor John S Marr's


Here's a fairly detailed explanation (including Marr's work) which is in line with what I said above. It concludes:

The Ten Plagues therefore — if the scientific explanation moves us to accept the story — imply a behind-the-scenes-intelligence informed enough to direct Moses to act in perfect synchronicity with nature to achieve political and religious goals.

The timesonline has this report on biologist, Professor Wotton's (University College London) explanation:

Professor Wotton says the plagues probably did happen, but argues they have been “embellished, ordered and described through the lens of religious mythology”.

You can interpret these things any number of ways. The interesting thing is how most of these (from believers and non) tend to reinforce the historicity (more-or-less) of the Biblical account. Like I said, it's all in the interpretation. Nice thread idea though.

PS,

Your sig says that is you in your avatar... you look like a blond Janeane Garofalo. For what it's worth, coming from me, that's a compliment... I'm a fan.



Regards.

There once was a mountain that blew it's lid, that was about 2,600 years ago and it hasn't stopped erupting since, giving it the nickname of 'Lighthouse of the Mediterranean'.

Source

Volcanoes have been known to sustain their eruptions for far longer than 3 months. And the Med is home to some of the more active volcanoes in the world. Wouldn't a sustained underwater eruption solve the problem about the chronology of the events (i.e. which plague came first? ash vs. fire in the sky, etc.) Nice thread by the way.

reply to post by GamerGal


Sorry, my bad, I, meant to say 9th Plague...

There is still the problem of why the sky goes dark long after the 7th Plague. How do you account for this and the wind direction being constant for so long?

Forgot to add these in my post. For anyone else interested there's some additional info [on ATS] re: The Plagues:


The Bible: Can it be scientifically proven? This thread is the same as this one (i.e., an attempt at a natural explanation of the Plagues)



Jewish Beliefs Derived from Egyptians? Not like this thread, but may be useful as a resource wrt to whether the plagues ever even happened in the first place.



Did Moses cross the Red Sea ? Some info along the lines of the last link (i.e., did it ever even really happen)



Rhakotis Found This one has some info wrt whether the Santorini eruption could have been responsible for the plagues.


Santorini (Thera) Like the last link; a brief mention of Santorini.


'the exodus decoded'... From the OP's external link to the documentary:

In the Exodus Decoded we analyze the latest archaeological findings and scientific papers; we explore the dusty back rooms of out-of-the-way libraries and museums around the world; and we track down dozens of forgotten relics and ancient documents. Individually, these findings are historical curiosities. Together they tell the true story of the Exodus.

In an explosive 2-hour documentary special, Exodus Decoded solves the mystery of the events of the Biblical Exodus for the first time ever.

Have Canadian archaeologists unearthed one of the Exodus mysteries? Regarding Veliskovsky's ideas... for what that's worth


Okay, I'm sure there's more around here but that should do... ATS search, love it. Live it.