JWs and Earthquakes (page 2)

“Facts, facts... Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true.”

Homer Simpson

Just a call to common sense. If someone says earthquakes are going to be a sign of something, then logic dictates that they must mean an increase or sudden onset of earthquakes and not the status quo of earth quakes.

mP

Wow jesus was soo smart, hes using the internet, and television to tell everyone about earthquakes. He was talking about the increase in public knowledge of earthquakes because of improved communications. Only 100 years ago, when there was telegraphs not all news of earthquakes got commnicated to all news papers. But that was the start ofhte pangs of distress. The hidden space between the 3rd and 4th sentence is the pulse of the telegraph spacer.

Comatose

Thanks. Marked.

okage

Taking a cue from @jwfacts, I took it upon myself to write to the USGS. They are authorities in the subject and were used by Bob Thiel to argue that there were MORE earthquakes today. My sister in law shouldn't have used that article without checking the facts because this is what I sent them:

Thank you for reading this. My wife and I are in debate with her sister, who believes the "increase in the frequency of seismic activity" is evidence of the Biblical end times prophecy.

She used the recent quake in China to launch a platform that it is proof there are more and more earthquakes, and that it shows that Armageddon is about to begin.

We are not debating her faith. We are debating her facts. Using the statistics provided by USGS for the range 1990 - 2012, we illustrated to her the sporadic nature of the planet, not to be confused with the idea that earthquakes are occurring more frequently.

However, it is published numerous times by her church over the decades that there were considerably fewer instances of seismic activity prior to 1914 than after 1914. One official statement is that apparently today there are 20 times more earthquakes than before 1914.

I was hoping that someone at the USGS could send a statement putting this matter to an official rest. We did refer her to your article "Are Earthquakes on the Rise?" but it makes no regard to the 1914 timeframe in question.

So if at all possible, could someone with the USGS email or snail mail a statement regarding this issue?

Any response would be deeply appreciated.

Here's their reply that I received this morning:

From: ESIC, GS-AK <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: Official Statement Re: Seismic Activity Prior to 1914
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], GS-AK ESIC <[email protected]>

Hello- The same logic could be used to argue that tornadoes were far fewer in North America until settlers started moving westward. I think that anyone can see that it was just a matter of having more "detectors" available, yet people have difficulty understanding that in terms of seismicity, we didn't have many detectors before the early 20th Century. Also, until the advent of 24/7 news and social media, many large earthquakes and eruptions occurred entirely unknown to the population as a whole. It might be noted that in terms of recording earthquakes, we do indeed pick up more of the smaller ones every year - but it is because we continue to "densify" our seismic network. The larger occurrences remain pretty steady. We can examine the recurrence intervals of large earthquakes along known faults and tsunami run-up zones. These are regular occurrences, and did not just begin! There is a USGS FAQ that provides additional information. Good luck with your efforts to enlighten, but it's been my rather lengthy experience that your chance of success is slim. Since seismic occurrences are not a linear distribution, any clustering of events can be pointed at to "prove" some perceived point of view! Regards, Greg Durocher USGS Office of Communications & Publishing Science Information Services - Anchorage, Alaska -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Science & Alaska Questions: [email protected] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Twitter: @USGS YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/USGS FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/USGeologicalSurvey Other Social Media: http://www.usgs.gov/socialmedia/

Crazyguy

a couple of weeks ago the public talk the speaker basically admitted that there may not be anymore quakes then before, not sure if any one caught that but me. But he did talk as though today terroists are so bad and shows an increasing in lawlessness. Except all death by war and terroism is down. lol

outsmartthesystem

Sir82 is exactly right. I once brought up the society's claims on earthquakes to my wife. Her fallback response? "How do YOU know that the statistics you have aren't fabricated by some big cover up?". Yep. That's the reply. The assumption is that there is a world wide conspiracy between seismologists and governments to tamper with earthquake stats. A true believing JW will resort to whatever tactic is necessary to maintain the belief that makes them happy

excitesinceredetermination

I was going to make a post about these interesting numbers on tornadoes to refute the societies panic button for the end of the system, but this fits in with the lower statistics we see on earthquakes as well. Just wanted to share!

JWs and Earthquakes

Vanderhoven7