Bill O’Reilly: Only Religion Can Explain The Ocean Tides
As is his wont, last night Bill O’Reilly decided to opine on the combined topics of religion and science:
O’REILLY: I’ll tell you why [religion’s] not a scam, in my opinion: tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.
SILVERMAN: Tide goes in, tide goes out?
O’REILLY: See, the water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always comes in, and always goes out. You can’t explain that.
Umm, Bill:
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth.
Most places in the ocean usually experience two high tides and two low tides each day (semidiurnal tide), but some locations experience only one high and one low tide each day (diurnal tide). The times and amplitude of the tides at the coast are influenced by the alignment of the Sun and Moon, by the pattern of tides in the deep ocean (see figure 4) and by the shape of the coastline and near-shore bathymetry.
I know, you don’t go to Fox News for a serious theological or scientific debate, but still you’d think that even O’Reilly is smart enough not to pretend to be this stupid.
H/T: HuffPo
Frankly, nothing surprises me about him or the network anymore. Pandering to the no-nothings.
Gravitation is only a theory, you know.
Mantis,
Why don’t they teach the controversy of gravity? Why aren’t more textbooks teaching the alternative theory of Intelligent Pushing?
Thank God for Fox News teaching us how the world really works!
Why couldn’t David Silverman explain it to him?
Honestly, I’m not sure we are understanding O’Reilly’s point. Surely he knows the cause of tides. I think he was making some other point that wasn’t elaborated on. Perhaps he was waiting for Silverman to provide the scientific reason at which point he was going to say something more meaningful?
Also, shouldn’t the little play on words be spelled ‘crucifiction’ instead of adding a superfluous e?
Perhaps Bill meant to flesh out his religico-scientific explanation by reference to one of these:
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/polytheisticreligions/tp/MoonGods.htm
Is it any surprise that these same people think that general public education is a waste of money?
http://www.gallup.com/poll/145463/Democratic-Party-Drops-2010-Tying-Year-Low.aspx
Democratic Party ID Drops in 2010, Tying 22-Year Low, but still higher than the Republican Party! Thanks for the tip, atheist hater.
Fox news stinks!
Graphic: Fox News Still Crushing All Its Competitors, and making its viewers dumber by the minute! Thanks, atheist hater! Way to celebrate your own stupidity!
What does that say about you “smart” people???
It says we read instead of watching idiotic blowhards spout lies and stupidity on television.
Keep aborting yourselves – you’re numbers are dwindling!
I get that you don’t understand the difference between people stating that they are independent rather than associating with a party and actually disappearing from the Earth altogether, but you are probably better off not showcasing your stupidity so much. Also, how does one abort oneself, exactly?
athiest (sic) hater: are you defending the suggestion that the tides have no scientific explanation?
As the last election proved, Rasmussen only exists to make Republicans feel good about themselves. Their polls are worthless.
Got any data to back that up? Yeah, didn’t think so.
Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Strongly
I’m defending that this place is KOS (Jr.) and full of hatred towards religious people
You’re defending hatred towards religious people? Umm, ok?
If i dont, then Doug will ban me.
Actually, he bans you for off-topic thread spamming. And yet you keep coming back under another name to do the same thing.
Actually, I provided you with a link to a great deal of info on Rasmussen’s bias and accuracy. You responded Ed Morrissey whining about single CNN poll. You’ve already proven yourself quite stupid, so I don’t expect you to understand why that’s so pathetic.
Since polling is clearly a subject far beyond your grasp, why don’t you veer on-topic and tell us what you think about gravity and the tides?
Why am I bothering to respond to what is clearly a rather dim child? Well, I no longer am.
Someone should show Bill O’Reilly some magnets. He’ll have an ICP level epiphany.
Jeeezus Christ, has there ever been a better example of why you should not feed the trolls. What a complete waste this thread has become….
Yeah, sorry about that.
This whole post was a waste of time. And perhaps if you understood what this planet does, did and is gonna do, and how it is so perfect in relation to the sun and moon, you might have a clue about what O’Rielly thinks he is getting across.
But for all I know the dude believes in creation and evolution like most of the people I have seen on fox.
lol, Palin must be on vacation……….
Have you ever seen gravity? Can Sarah Palin shoot it with a rifle? It sounds like made up liberal BS to me. Newton was a socialist anyway…
“And perhaps if you understood what this planet does, did and is gonna do, and how it is so perfect in relation to the sun and moon”
Sir Gassac Phillips is available for public speaking gigs discussing his seminal work on astronomy, The Sideways Messenger, or Why Darwin Was all Wet in His Theory of the Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies.
Perhaps Mr. O’Reilly was talking about what I’ve heard discussed as the “miraculous” nature of the Moon.
The moon’s size and orbit are perfect for it to present us with regular total solar eclipses — not too big/close, not too small/far. It’s just the right relative size and distance to blot the sun perfectly.
The moon’s rotational period and revolutionary periods are in such perfect synch that it always presents the same face to the earth.
Thanks to its size and proximity, it has protected us from many asteroids and meteorites.
Its tidal influence has greatly fostered the development of life, especially by constantly and regularly changing the land/sea barrier.
There are a whole host of other coincidences about the nature of the Moon that end up being tremendously beneficial to Earth, life, and Man, but that should be enough. It’s made a lot of people wonder if all that is just wild coincidence, or evidence of a plan… which means a planner.
I’m an agnostic, myself, but it’s things like that that keep me from going full-blown atheist…
J.
Well, Jay, when the sun goes full-blown red giant, the perfection of all this won’t mean much, eh?
The moon’s size and orbit are perfect for it to present us with regular total solar eclipses — not too big/close, not too small/far. It’s just the right relative size and distance to blot the sun perfectly.
Its size affected it’s orbital distance from the Earth. If the Moon had less mass, it would have fallen into orbit closer to the Earth, likely still resulting in total or near-total eclipses. Also, there are two types of solar eclipse, total and annular. Annular eclipses do not blot out the sun entirely, leaving the shining ring around the Moon. Sometimes the same eclipse will appear annular from some parts of the Earth, and total from others.
The moon’s rotational period and revolutionary periods are in such perfect synch that it always presents the same face to the earth.
Not exactly. Due to libration and parallax, we actually observe an oscillating ~59% of the Moon’s surface.
Thanks to its size and proximity, it has protected us from many asteroids and meteorites.
A common conclusion, due to all the craters, but in reality, not so much. The vast majority of objects that can make it to Earth are so small that our atmosphere takes care of them before they can reach the surface. The Moon doesn’t have that protection. Our biggest protection from collision is actually Jupiter.
Also, consider this scale representation of the sizes of the Earth, Moon, and the distance between them when thinking about the protection it offers (considering, of course, that any possible impact would occur within the ecliptic plane).
Also, most of the Moon’s collision impacts likely happened very early in the existence of the solar system, around 4 billion years ago.
What seems perfect and miraculous can often, upon closer examination, prove to be flawed and coincidental.
It’s made a lot of people wonder if all that is just wild coincidence, or evidence of a plan
The coincidences are not so wild; they are simply a matter of probability. The Universe is a very big place.
yeah, mantis, but for it all to happen here… hell, toss in that by some definitions, we don’t have a moon, but are a binary planet system, and it ends up being one huge stack of coincidences.
No, not impossible. But extremely improbable, to all happen on this one ol’ lump of mud we call home.
J.