Indonesia - Sumatra Earthquake - Evacuations Under way (Update - 8.5 quake )

Dow Jones News | 3/28/05

[Helmholtz]

Dow Jones News Reports at 11:39 "DJ Singapore Official: 7.5 Quake Hits Sumatra - Kyodo"

No other reports yet.

[cmsgop]

Maybe Shep will have something,Thanks

[Eurotwit]

Reuters: up to 2000 dead.

[null and void]

you mean Tsumatra

You're a bad man...

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Well, if everyone who believes the Bible shared the belief that earthquakes are God's way of sending messages, then you'd have a point, but they don't.

What everyone believes isn't as relevent as what the Bible actually says. And, like I said, I'm no scholar on the subject, but I'm pretty sure the Bible covers the notion of God's wrath coming in the form of natural disasters. Anybody who believes God would be willing to flood the entire planet as a means of communicating his displeasure with mankind shouldn't have any problem believing that the Big Guy might change it up and throw down an earthquake or two.

And most Christians do believe the bit about the flooding. So why is it unreasonable that they believe this could be something along those lines?

[Dog Gone]

Sigh. You're succeeding in baiting me into turning this thread into a discussion of religion instead of what happened today.

Look, even if you want to use the biblical account of the flood as a comparison, God gave the world decades of warning. It didn't come as a bolt out of the blue after some antediluvian court decision made Him mad over the weekend.

[BenLurkin]

Well, if it goes in that time frame I certainly won't be surprised. A 180 day window around July 16 could make a lot of sense in light of the increased activity elsewhere around the 'ring of fire'.

[JonDavid]

Check out the number of your post. Scary.



Counting the number of post of someone. Scary.

[countess]

If we don't, the fruitcakes will happily make it for the rest of us, not once, but dozens of times on the same thread.

I love it when I see a religious fruitcake post on a thread and all of the normal posters skip over it and continue with their sane & rational discussion of the topic. Unfortunately there are so many whacko posts lately no one can ignore them.

[mabelkitty]

Don't fall into the trap of painting with a broad brush. Every group has their nuts, as this forum demonstrates day after day, but not all of us are running and looking for messages in disasters.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Sigh. You're succeeding in baiting me into turning this thread into a discussion of religion instead of what happened today.

I'm not baiting anyone. And we're not turning the thread into a discussion about religion. Take out our posts to each other, and there are still 700 or so people taking about todays event. We're just having a sub-discussion within the thread... it happens all the time.

Look, even if you want to use the biblical account of the flood as a comparison, God gave the world decades of warning.

Some Christians might see Revelations as a 2000 year-old warning, no?

It didn't come as a bolt out of the blue after some antediluvian court decision made Him mad over the weekend.

I don't think anyone suggested Terri's (pending) murder was the only sin God might be punishing humanity for. I mean, somebody might have, but I haven't seen it. More likely, He's keeping a scorecard and every nation has something awful to answer for. There are no innocent nations, whether they're Christian, Buddhist, Islamist or Marxist. If you believe in the Christian Bible and its God, you believe in God's wrath and its inevitability. How and when it will come, even the most devout Christian will tell you, is anyone's guess.

But that wasn't your initial objection anyway. You said, in so many words, that people who believed God would use earthquakes to punish man (for whatever reason) were kooks and fruitcakes... even though their faith teaches them that God flooded the earth to do just that. That smacked of a smear against Christianity as a whole.... at least to me it did.

[Truth666]

"Or, perhaps people want to make some sense of the disaster".

The discussion about earthquakes and God can be expressed as: do you have the will to connect the dots or not?

The target date of the satanists was 1998. God made possible that their their target was fulfilled. We are now in year 7.
We can divide the world today basically in three categories of people.
Believers,  who believe in God, perfect creator of all forms of life, have that will. But those prisioners by the doctrines of false prophets will not be able to connect the dots correctly. 

Satanists, as they have to face the truth, hang on desperately to the connections they hoped for, while refusing to see the true connections. 

The third category... let's call them poor devils, the people that the satanists brainwashed into believing into evolution theory. They can't even think about trying to connect the dots. And the satanists make sure that they stay like that.

Well, here is a connection for a start

When the compass suddenly points south (Magnetic Pole Flip, latest SHOCKING news, 2005)

[Siegfried]

I'm counting ten aftershocks since the big 8.7 quake. All along the Sunda Trench, most recent couple are at 5.7, still a pretty big shaker in my book.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Maps/10/100_5_eqs.html

[TexKat]

Indonesian VP: Quake May Kill Up to 2,000

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - A powerful earthquake struck off Indonesia's west coast late Monday, killing hundreds of people whose homes collapsed on them and spreading panic across the Indian Ocean that another killer tsunami was on the way. Indonesia's vice president predicted up to 2,000 deaths.

But fears of a second tsunami catastrophe in just over three months eased within hours, as officials in countries at risk reported their coasts clear of the type of quake-spawned waves that ravaged a dozen countries in Asia and Africa on Dec. 26.

Almost all the deaths reported in the hours immediately after Monday's quake were on Indonesia's Nias island, off Sumatra's west coast, which was close to the epicenter.

"It is predicted — and it's still a rough estimate — that the number the victim of dead may be between 1,000 and 2,000, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told the el-Shinta radio station. He said the estimate was based on an assessment of damage to buildings, not bodies counted.

An aerial view of the island of Nias, off the west coast of Sumatra, is seen in this August 2, 2001 file photo after it was damaged by heavy floods. A massive earthquake has badly damaged up to three quarters of the main town on Indonesia's Nias island, a police official told Reuters. Police official Raja Gukguk said authorities were trying to determine the extent of casualties following the 8.7 magnitude earthquake on Gunungsitoli town on March 28, 2005. REUTERS/Darren Whiteside/Files

[expatguy]

Thank You Very Much

[Sender]

I think you would know if it was in the room.

[JonDavid]

Understand or do you want me to spoon feed you?

Feel free to continue to entertain me; I'm getting quite a laugh out of your posts.


Well it looks like after I spoon feed you, I am going have to burp you. I hope you have your bib on so I can wipe your face off before I put in your crib. If you need your diapers change you can have your one of your post “buddies" do that. I bet you both would like that. Now you or one of your "buddies" go report me to the administrator like good old boys that you are.

[Dog Gone]

Well, I went to 16 years of undergraduate protestant schools where Bible courses, eschatology, and even biblical greek were taught. So, I'm not likely to smear Christianity as a whole.

Of course, my graduate degree at a secular institution might have erased all that early training.

I do think that people who think earthquakes are God's punishment are kooks and fruitcakes. As someone who is familiar with the pictures we can see seismically far under the surface, there have been countless of earthquakes over geological time. Billions. I can see the evidence of them.

I don't know of any evidence in the bible that indicates that God causes them. Maybe I was asleep in class that day.

Look at the post directly after yours. If you support that, we don't have much more to discuss.

[BagCamAddict]

As Strategerist says, those "averages" oversimplify things. It's the same as the "100-year Flood Plain" analogy...

If there is a so-called "100-year Flood" along a river in Iowa in 1996, then a bunch of people will assume it's safe to build a house next to the river in 1997 "because there won't be another flood like that for 99 more years."

The terms "100-year Flood" and "interval of 120 years" are both approximations and colloquial measurements of magnitude. In other words, you could have THREE "100-year floods" in the same season, or three in a row, or three in a 10-year period, etc... You could also have an earthquake greater than 6.5 at 66 years, 67 years, or 167 years.

If we knew how to predict these things with complete accuracy, they wouldn't be called natural disasters, they would be called "scheduled evacuation dates." :-)

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

I do think that people who think earthquakes are God's punishment are kooks and fruitcakes.

But people who think floods are God's punishment are just fine?

As someone who is familiar with the pictures we can see seismically far under the surface, there have been countless of earthquakes over geological time. Billions. I can see the evidence of them.

How does your being able to see evidence or past earthquakes mean it's not possible God might use one to punish humanity? Did rain fall from the sky at all in the years prior to the Great Flood (if it's called that)? Or did he just invent rain spontaneously in a fit of rage?

I don't know of any evidence in the bible that indicates that God causes them. Maybe I was asleep in class that day.

I believe what I said was that the Bible has accounts of God using natural disasters to punish man. For you to cherry pick which disasters God might or might use today is as presumptuous as those who claim to know what God thinks.

Look at the post directly after yours. If you support that, we don't have much more to discuss.

How about you hold me accountable for what I say. If you have an issue with somebody else's post, take it up with them.

[JonDavid]

Well, I went to 16 years of undergraduate protestant schools where Bible courses, eschatology, and even biblical greek were taught. So, I'm not likely to smear Christianity as a whole.
Of course, my graduate degree at a secular institution might have erased all that early training.

I do think that people who think earthquakes are God's punishment are kooks and fruitcakes. As someone who is familiar with the pictures we can see seismically far under the surface, there have been countless of earthquakes over geological time. Billions. I can see the evidence of them.

I don't know of any evidence in the bible that indicates that God causes them. Maybe I was asleep in class that day.

Look at the post directly after yours. If you support that, we don't have much more to discuss.



What about Noah & the Great Flood Chastisement. What do you think caused the Walls of Jericho to fall? Lets hope your not asleep if the Great Chastisement happens in your lifetime.