If you are referring to the Genesis 1:28 debacle regarding the word, "replenish" there are two differing opinions. One is literal as in God is telling Adam and Eve to go out and replenish something that used to be there, and the other is simply a mistranslation and should be "fill". The former is mere conjecture that God destroyed a civilization prior to Adam and Eve the same as He did during the Noahic experience and is indeed a noble thought and worthy of some conversation. The later is just what a retranslation from replenish to fill would indicate.
In order to get a better idea of what the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki meant, here are some facts. WWII lasted a little over 7 years and in those seven years nearly 4% or some 50 MILLION of the entire globe’s population was wasted either in military conflict or starvation and disease related to the war. That’s over 7,000,000 (7 MILLION) people per year or over 19,572 people per day who died because of the war and that doesn’t include natural causes, heart attacks etc...... Nagasaki and Hiroshima lost nearly 220,000 due to the nuclear bombings and for all intensive purposes, the war was ended. Now let’s see. 220,000 versus how many more deaths if the war with Japan lasted another year, or two or three? Dropping the bomb was horrific and brutal but the piece mill, brick by brick method of destruction before the bomb was dropped was Even more terrible because of the tens of thousands of miles of wide spread devastation and loss of life. @Martin Alonzo wrote that there was no excuse for dropping the bomb and I do agree, that is, if one can come up with a real excuse for WWII to begin with.
The huge Firestorm caused by the thousands of Incendiary bombs dropped on Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945 by massed formations of American B-29's caused a hurricane which sucked in oxygen from outside Tokyo's city limits, causing many to die from asphyxiation in the fields outside the city. More Japanese died in that raid than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The firebombing of Dresden, Germany on the night of Valentines Day, Feb. 14, 1945, was the worst case of firebombing during the entire war. The winds caused by the firestorm caused extensive damage in addition to the blast and firebombing by hundreds of US B-17's and British Lancasters. The first flights dropped High Explosive bombs to "open up" the buildings of the city from the top, followed by Incendiaries to start fires within the buildings, thus destroying the city from the outside and the inside. Hamburg also suffered a massive firebomb raid. Hal
@Hal Pollner The events you mention were tragic. I couldn't help thinking that we ( the United States ) needed something so horrifying to stop the invasion of the Japanese mainland already planned. The Bomb. As the mayor in the Jaws Movies states, " You yell, "Barracuda," everybody say "huh, what?" You yell "Shark", we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July..." Enough of any kind of bombs can do the job, but the fear of the 'BOMB', keeps our fingers off the button. I watched this first hand, for many of my 21 years in the Air Force. Was the dropping of the bomb justified? In my opinion, YES. It ended the war. Was there another answer to ending it? That's for scholars to debate...
Japan was in the processes of surrendering to Russia because Russia was already on Japanese soil. America would have lost the ability to take South Korea if they had surrender to Russia first. Japan was finished the bombing of the cites destroyed the country. The bomb was to force them to surrender to the US first.
I understand that this sounds bad, but have any of you considered that maybe the United States wanted to see - and to demonstrate - what their new bomb would do to an actual city?
@Ken Anderson The Hiroshima bomb was an untested design using Uranium instead of Plutonium, the latter having "proved out" in New Mexico. But, the two were vastly different in design. The Uranium design used a cannon barrel plugged at one end, with a chunk of Uranium attached there, while at the other end, another chunk was fired like a projectile to mash up against the plugged end, creating the fission explosion. Some called for a demonstration near the Japanese homeland. If such a demo fizzled, it would have been laughable; had the bomb over Hiroshima fizzled, no real consequences. IMO, of course many wished to see the result on a city, rather than on a patch of desert. Frank
The US Government, after spending $2 Billion (A huge sum for the 1943-45 development of the Bomb), wanted to see what they got for their money, which was one of the reasons for using it besides ending the war without the costly human sacrifice in the invasion of Japan. Hal (I was 9 years old at the time)
@Hal Pollner Do you know the story of Ernest Lawrence's Calutrons? They needed tons of copper wire to wind the magnets, but war efforts had curtailed availability. So powerful was the Los Alamos effort, something like 15 TONS of pure Silver bars were removed from Fort Knox, drawn into wire, and used for the Calutrons, which separated Uranium 235, the fissionable type, from the far commoner "inert" Uranium 238. After the war, the silver was returned to the Treasury Department. Interestingly, U235 was only used to make a bomb one time, the Hiroshima bomb, and was never used again to make bombs. Frank
For the first time, no USS Arizona survivor to attend ceremonies at the Memorial. There are only 5 sailors to survive the USS Arizona who are still alive. 1,177 on the Arizona and 2,403 total, lost their lives. They are in my thoughts today. Joining his Shipmates...
I put the flag out this morning....its colors brilliant, against the white snow! After all these years, it still remains an emotional day! 2012
'Welcome home, William': Remains of Tennessee sailor killed in Pearl Harbor identified after 77 years U.S. Navy Seaman 2nd Class William Campbell, of Elizabethton, Tenn. was aboard USS Oklahoma when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. (Photo: Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency) FILE - In this May 24, 1943 file photo, the capsized battleship USS Oklahoma is lifted out of the water at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. More than 75 years after nearly 2,400 members of the U.S. military were killed in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, some who died on Dec. 7, 1941, are finally being laid to rest in cemeteries across the United States. After DNA allowed the men to be identified and returned home, their remains are being buried in places such as Traer, Iowa and Ontonagon, Michigan. (AP Photo, File) (Photo: AP)