No atheist can argue against the reality of non-material things without using non-material things. It's like someone arguing that there's no such thing as oxygen, while breathing the whole time. It's almost like arguing that there's no such thing as arguing! For when a materialist argues that only the material realm is real, that only material things exist, he cannot do that without using ideas, which Einstein pointed out are not physical. Yes, like numbers, ideas themselves are not physical. It turns out to be so simple to disprove the claim that only the physical realm exists, for numbers are real, and ideas exist. So Bob Enyart and Fred Williams have fun presenting Real Science Radio's List of Things, Real Things, that are Not Physical, aka RSR's Materialists vs. Everything List! 

* RSR's List of Things that are Not Physical:
- Numbers are not physical. They're not made of matter and they're not made of energy. Regardless of how much we use them or how often, they never run out and they never run down. Numbers are without limit and do not have temperature, density, color, mass, volume, shape, a melting point, hardness, odor, length, etc. They lack the properties of matter and energy, and even of space and time.
- Math is not physical.
- Information is not physical.
- Grammar is not physical.
- Logic is not physical.
- Reason is not physical.
- Ideas are not physical.
- Language is not physical.
- Science is not physical.
- Morality is not physical.
- Truth is not physical.
- Probability is not physical.
- Souls are not physical.
- Spirits are not physical.
- Concepts are not physical.
- Codes are not physical.
- Loyalty is not physical.
- Rage is not physical.
- Love is not physical.
- A Googol is not physical.
- A Googolplex is not physical. Knowing where the truth leads, some atheists are afraid to acknowledge that numbers are not physical. In their fear, they throw a temper tantrum and insist that numbers, such as the number 3, are made of matter. So then, how about a googol? That is a 1 followed by a hundred zeroes, a quantity greater than the number of particles in the known universe. And a googolplex, 10 to the googol power, also cannot be made of matter because with that number also, that much matter doesn't exist. But even more emphatic than with a googol, with a googolplex, that number has far more digits than there are particles in the universe! (Illustrating the materialist's problem, let's say there weren't 1000 particles available for the number 1000 to exist. Perhaps then if there are four particles, the four digits of 1000 could exist?) So the number googolplex could not, of course, be physical because even its digits could not be physically comprised for there are nowhere near that number of particles in existence.
- The square root of negative one is not physical. The atheist, who is irrational, could be asked, "Are imaginary numbers, such as the square root of negative one, physical?" An imaginary number is a concept and as such, obviously, and like all concepts and all numbers, it is not made of matter. Yet scientists use imaginary numbers to better understand electric circuits and quantum mechanics. A strictly materialist big-bang universe though would be incapable of using an imaginary number, because imaginary numbers are not physical. Therefore, the square root of negative one reveals the intellect of the Creator because it was clearly used as a design element in the creation! When God designed the function of quantum mechanics, like our own designers, He conceived of optimal designs using immaterial concepts. He then implemented that design, in quantum mechanics, even though it utilized an imaginary number which has no parallel in the physical realm. See more including what Wigner and Einstein thought about such things, at rsr.org/math#sq-rt-neg-one.

Sponsor a Popular RSR List! See rsr.org/support...

- Money is not physical. See kgov.com/money and the web's best definition of money!

- Infinity is not physical. Yet it is real. Don't believe us? Then believe Vsauce...

* Zealandia vs. Plate Tectonics: Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart and Fred Williams give an update on the Workin' for Walt Brown (WWB) discovery of the mostly submerged 1.9 million square-mile continent of Zealandia. All Scientists Work for Walt Brown. Yet his opponents have claimed that no continental crust is sunk beneath the Pacific ocean. If that were true it would disprove Dr. Brown's theory. However, with Zealandia being larger than the subcontinent of India at nearly two million square miles and 94% submerged (except mostly for New Zealand), and with so many other large swaths of sunken continental crust being discovered beneath the Pacific, Dr. Brown's theory is being corroborated, again and again. Regarding the theory of Plate Tectonics (see rsr.org/pt), a couple million miles of continental crust not subducting, but sinking, does not support the theory.

* Zealandia vs. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The primary author of the creationist CPT flood model should issue a retraction of his "missing submerged crust" objection to Dr. Brown's model. See more on that just below in the eight-minute segment of RSR's flood video that's already queued up for you, beginning when you click, at 83 minutes in...

* Hollywood Star Ashley Johnson in ID Film post-show note: Super successful actress Ashley Johnson (The Help, The Avengers, lead voice actor in the top video games), also appeared in Alleged about about the Scopes Monkey Trial produced and written by long-time RSR friend Fred Foote. Just click to watch Alleged for free on Prime Video or to get the DVD!

CRS Ph.D. in Microbiology Kevin Anderson in Studio: Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart interviews Creation Research Society board member and microbiologist Dr. Kevin Anderson about the astounding developments in genetic research, creation science, and the amazing new field of epigenetics. (Question: In the city metaphor for a living cell, if the downtown area is the nucleus, and the central library is the DNA molecule, what would you call the train schedule printed on the wall at the station?)

* Show Note: $500 RSR Prize Offer below. Also, the RSR studio update is being completed just now, with a new mixing board, new microphones, and other updates! So today's program comes to us from the often stunning RSR Archives!

* Epigenetics: Our DNA, for all it's wonder, complexity, and sophistication,  tells only part of the story. Watch the two-minute video embedded here which just begins to give examples of additional layers of information that control how our genes are used. Then consider Dr. Anderson's challenge by which he defies any evolutionist to even attempt to give a rational explanation for the origin of the epigenetic mechanisms by any Darwinian means.

* Metagenomics and a 2020 Update: Using RSR's time-saving, Google-based Multiple Creation Site Search we assess that the creation community is slow in recognizing that this technology alone has the potential to falsify the Darwinian timeframe. We expect this scientific tool will become a major asset in the creationist's arsenal. Metagenomics is "the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental samples" also known as environmental genomics, ecogenomics, and community genomics. See also RSR's 2017 metagenomics prediction.

* UPDATE: Illustration of Epigenetics: Bob Enyart shared on air with Stephen Meyers and separately, with Paul Nelson, a way of illustrating one category of epigenetic information, namely, the information inherent in all the molecular machines embedded in the cell membrane. "Imagine that Manhattan Island represents a cell, and that the main public library on 42nd Stree represents the DNA in the nucleus, and that the entire city is just completing the process of reproducing itself. There are now two cities, and two libraries filled with DNA, but also, the process of mitosis has duplicated the bridges and tunnels which connected the city to the rest of the world. Such membrane structures inherently comprise great quantities of information, which in our analogy is one category, among many, of epigenetic, non-DNA, information." We probably shouldn't describe epigenetic information as non-nuclear, or extra-nuclear, because there is probably plenty of epigenetic information with a cell's nucleus. "Non-DNA biological information", may be the best term, except that psychological (i.e., soulical) information likely transcends the biological information, and probably fills an essential role in animal instinct.

* LOOK WHAT THE LORD HATH WROUGHT! Post-show update. See this stunning animation from the anti-Darwinist intelligent design folks over at the Discovery Institute...

* RSR's Display Program: Can auto-generate every page of every book ever written! No joke! Read on...  

* A Software Program to Inform Philosophical Discussion: The Real Science Radio hosts have fun describing Bob Enyart's software invention. Its stunning features make it a "software invention" rather than a typical example of "software development." Bob promises to resign his radio program of 25 years if he is not being truthful about what his program can do. For example, it displays the pages of books. All books. Software engineer Fred Williams discusses the source code published below with this RSR show summary, and the truncated version of Display.exe, below, which runs in your browser. Of course the program is not actually omniscient; but rather, as the guys list its many features, it merely appears to be omniscient, virtually. :)

Previously Posted on TheologyOnline: Publicly disclosed on television June 2, 1998 and before. (We don't know if anyone else has ever invented this, so this post may help to answer that question.)

Software Feature #1: I've written a software program that displays the code of OTHER software programs. You don't have to have the other program available, neither the source (obviously), nor even the executable code. You just run Display and it will show the source code of any other program.

Software Feature #2: 12-6-09 My program also displays the pages of published books. Every book. And you don't have to have any such book available. The program itself displays the pages of any book.

Software Feature #3: 12-7-09 My program also displays published texts, translated into other languages.

Software Feature #4: 12-8-09 Display.exe presents a universal mathematical proof demonstrating that human creativity is not infinite but finite.

Software Feature #5: 12-11-09 Display.exe will display the text on scrolls.

Software Feature #6: 12-15-09 Yes, Display.exe will display sheet music. (A TOL'er called the radio studio, and I agreed to answer this here. I apologize that we've been too busy to keep up with this thread. On Jan. 1, 2010, we'll post to TOL either a typical output page from Display, or the program's own source code, depending upon interest.)

Software Feature #7: 1-3-10 Photos & Captions: In response to Stripe who wrote, "looks like it'll produce just about anything you want it to... in text only form... " Thanks Stripe for weighing in on this. It will display not only the text of books, but also their photos (with captions), graphs, and charts.

The startling implications of Display.exe are far beyond anything the Supreme Court may rule in their current intellectual property case.

-Bob Enyart

* Display.exe Source Code

Public Class Form1
....Dim n As Integer
....Dim HistoryWritten As Boolean
....Dim upperbound As Integer = 10000001
....' Set binary array to needed length + 1
....Dim MBit(upperbound) As Boolean

....Sub ZeroOutArray()
........For n = 0 To upperbound - 1
............MBit(n) = 0
........Next
....End Sub

....Sub Count()
........n = 0
........Do
............If MBit(0) = False Then
................MBit(0) = True
................For n = 0 To 100000
................Next
................DisplayArray()
............Else : HistoryWritten = True
................For n = 0 To upperbound - 1
....................If MBit(n) = False Then
........................HistoryWritten = False
....................End If
................Next
................If HistoryWritten = False Then
....................n = 0
....................MBit(n) = False
....................Label1.Visible = False
....................Do While MBit(n + 1) = True
........................n = n + 1
........................MBit(n) = False
....................Loop
....................MBit(n + 1) = True
....................n = n + 1
....................DisplayArray()
................End If
............End If
........Loop Until n = upperbound
....End Sub
....' History dump... world, that is.
End Class

Here's an example output page from Display.exe. By the way, the program doesn't have to start from the beginning, but it could start from any point, for example, the user could begin with this image and have the program run forward to the see the next images. Or, it could run backward. Either way.

Replies To Comments: made over at the Display.exe thread at TheologyOnline.com...

Granite: If I am not being honest, I will quit my daily radio show of 18 years running on the most powerful U.S. Christian station.
csuguy: The source code is displayed in the program's native code, whether Lucid, C++, BASIC, Turbo Pascal, Java, PHP, Assembly, etc.
AMR: Over the years we've used Patton Boggs (Clinton's lawyers) for patent work. Your cost estimates of course are for after the USPTO rejects your original application.
noguru: my software displays the source code for ANY program, written in any language, whether no longer available, proprietary, etc. I doubt there's another such program.
fool: fool, where could TOLers look to authenticate your challenge?
AMR: There's no cat in 'the bag' AMR, but Display can show you the cat in the hat
kmoney: "I don't think it's possible. This is some joke..." No joke. I've written the program, and yes, it makes a point.
MR & aa: To assuranceagent (see also entire post)...

Originally Posted by Bob Enyart

Regarding MR's comment about Display.exe being perhaps a metaphor for open theism, the program is not a metaphor but a mathematical proof. But to the extent that philosophers or theologians could use it as an argument, assuranceagent has a point... An open theist... asked: "If by appearances, Display.exe will be more readily used as an argument for those who promote a settled future (as opposed to an open future), then why promote it?" I answered, because it is true. And acknowledging truth, regardless of how it cuts, brings us closer to the one who is Truth. -Bob

* Functioning Truncated Display Program: Here is a functioning Display.exe program, although with its output truncated. With this version, you can see the program actually running, but you're only able to see it on a tiny screen with the size of the pixels greatly enlarged for demonstration purposes.

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution dramatically increased the arguments for racism according to Harvard's famed evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, as The Origin of Species book is subtitled, "Preservation of Favoured Races". Darwin also wrote that "the negro" is closer to "the gorilla" than is the evolutionist's own "civilized" race.

* Racist Darwin's Racist Writings:

* Darwin Claimed Blacks Are Closer to Apes:

Later editions of Darwin's Origin of Species dropped the phrase "Favored Races" from the book's title. But then in his second book, after asking whether man has given rise to races that "must be classed as doubtful species", Darwin ominously wrote:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break [between humans and animals] will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro... and the gorilla.

-Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, p. 156.

* Darwin's Racism Spreads Fast and Furious: A famed 20th-century evolutionist, Harvard's Stephen Jay Gould, admitted:

Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.

* True White Privilege Given to Whites by Liberals: RSR hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams discuss the true white privilege, that our own white children are warned not to be racist while cruelly, black children are told by liberals that they are not able to be racist. That dehumanizing absurdity is a primary reason for the seething and unchecked systemic racism within the black community. Further, the epidemic of black violence is the main reason for tension between overwhelmingly non-racist police departments and the broadly racist black community. Black Lives Matter to the cops but not to Black Lives Matter. So the guys air audio from scholars Heather Mac Donald and Voddie Bacham but not before quoting God's Word, that God "has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth..."

Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart and Fred Williams continue their discussion of the Bible's mention of giants, the practical limits to their actual size (see Robert Wadlow next to an RSR listener's grandmother at the 1934 Chicago World's Fair), and their relationship to the infamous biblical nephilim. See also rsr.org/giants and rsr.org/giants-2. Post-show update: Consider also when considering a spirit being's ability to manifest himself physically, that God describes manna from heaven as "angels food."

* On Michael Heiser's Unseen Realm: See kgov.com/michael-heiser for a correction of Michael Heiser's tragic misinterpretation of Genesis 1:26 and for other comments on the author.

* Try Our Custom Google Multiple Site Searches: These three services provide time-saving customized multi-site Google search! Let's say you want to learn why abortion for incest is cruel, or about the creationist explanation for the origin of the grand canyon, or about the fraudulent hockey stick global warming graph. By using BEL's Multiple Site Search, RSR's Top Creation Sites Search, and Top Anti Climate Crisis Sites Search, all powered by Google, you'll be more effective and save time by simultaneously searching mutiple select websites for the information you're looking for.

For origins, creation, and evolution you'll be simultaneously searching Real Science Radio along with the Web's four largest and most popular creation sites! This tool bypasses the confusion and noise of the Internet and let's you search simultaneously the thousands of science articles written by friends of RSR from the websites of Creation Ministries International, Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, Dr. Walt Brown's Center for Scientific Creation, and of course from our own RSR resources (at rsr.org, 360dayyear.com and youngearth.com). For politics, morality, theology, etc., you'll be simultaneously searching KGOV along with the our most closely affiliated websites! This custom resource let's you search simultaneously the BEL's website along with AmericanRTL.org, shadow.gov, prolifeprofiles.com, etc. Enjoy!

And save time also with this powerful, Google-based Simultaneous Search of the Top Anti-Global Warming Sites! Go ahead! Try it! :)

And to follow Bob on ResearchGate, click on over to RG...

* Rantes Disease & Leronlimab: What does does a cytokine storm and Rantes disease have to do with COVID-19? Medical Express reports on an Albert Einstein College of Medicine clinical study of leronlimab for treating severe lung inflammation caused, apparently, from an excess immune response to SARS-CoV-2.

* Dr. Patterson & IncellDX: Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart interviews the study's lead author, Dr. Bruce Patterson with IncellDX. For more of our reporting on the coronavirus, please see rsr.org/covid.

Today's Resource: Have you seen the Government Department at our KGOV Store? We are featuring our classic God's Criminal Justice System seminar and our important videos God and the Death Penalty, Live from Las Vegas, and Bob on Drugs DVDs, and our powerhouse Focus on the Strategy resources!

* Giants and the Bible: Real Science Radio's Bob Enyart and Fred Williams continue their discussion of the Bible's mention of giants. (See Part 1 at rsr.org/giants and Part 3 at rsr.org/giants-3.)

* SpaceX Launch: First though the guys discuss tomorrow's planned NASA/SpaceX launch of two astronauts and introduce the audience to a creationist NASA astronaut. The pilot of the space shuttle's 2010 STS-131 mission supports Dr. Walt Brown's fountains-of-the-great-deep model of the global flood called the Hydroplate Theory. (See below a brief excerpt of NASA's interview video of this astronaut.)

* Creationist Fathers of the Physical Sciences: And the guys take a satirical report from the Babylon Bee, that New York City is dumping in the river all medical treatments based on discoveries made by Christians, and use that to compare the essential role of creationist fathers of the physical sciences as compared to the diversionary role of Charles Darwin. See rsr.org/fathers.

* Jaw-dropping, head-banging, socks blown off, eye-popping, baffled, shocked & stunned: Really. :) Real Science Radio hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams have fun providing so many examples of evolutionists (chemical, stellar, biological) being jaw-dropping surprised, shocked, even stunned and horrified, when their huge discoveries contradict some of the most fundamental predictions of their materialist theories.

* Head-banging: As reported by LiveScience, cutting-edge researchers running a major National Science Foundation evolution experiment admitted that, "If Darwin was right", they would have documented the evidence for his claimed insight on competition and the (supposed) tree of life. Instead, their results falsified Darwin's claim. Of the 60 species of algae being studied for a five year period, Charles Darwin predicted how well and how poorly such organisms would compete for resources, based on their respective distances from each other on the (supposed) tree of life. But of the outcome, "It was completely unexpected. We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin's hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right? ... We should be able to look at the [supposed] Tree of Life, and evolution should make it clear who will win in competition and who will lose. But the traits that regulate competition can't be predicted from the Tree of Life." For more, see LiveScience and rsr.org/darwin-was-wrong-about-the-tree-of-life.

* 2015 Update: One of many discoveries that could be added to this list of shocked evolutionists is the black hole, at 12.8 billion light-years away, the mass of 12 billion Suns that "simply can't exist" by the big bang theory, but it does.

* 2019 Update: Moon may be tectonically active, geologists shaken, is the headline in National Geographic. "A new look at Apollo-era seismic data revealed that the moon's insides might be warmer than scientists thought possible." See this also at rsr.org/tess#moon in our classic List of the Transient Events of the Solar System!

* Stunned without the Foggiest Notion: So "astounding" are the "similarities" of Hox developmental regulatory genes across the animal kingdom that prominent evolutionist Sean Carroll wrote that, “no biologist had even the foggiest notion that such similarities could exist between genes of such different animals.” Because little in biology makes sense in the light of evolution, a world full of neo-Darwinist scientists never predicted this astounding consistency because, by their belief system, "The evolutionary lines that led to flies and mice diverged more than 500 million years ago..." So, this world famous biologist admits that, "Such sequence similarity was just stunning." Of course this falsified one of the most fundamental predictions of neo-Darwinism. [This item is a post-show update.]

* Horrendous: Dr. David Page of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., said in the journal Nature that the human and chimp Y chromosomes are "horrendously different from each other." Horrendously? Is that a scientific term? Why not just, "different?" Is Saturn horrendously different from Mars? Why horrendously so? Because for modern Darwinism to not lose face, chimps have to be shown to be our closest relatives. Yet 15% of the gorilla genome is closer to us, and the chimp's Y chromosome (that which makes us males... well, males...) is so massively different that we have yet more evidence on its face that the human genome is not 98.5% identical to the chimp. For more, see rsr.rog/list-of-genomes-that-just-dont-fit.

* Jaw-dropping: National Geographic quotes NASA's Messenger team member David Blewett saying, as RSR documents evolutionary scientists saying all the time regarding major observations that contradict predictions based on their most fundamental claims, "this jaw-dropping thing that nobody ever predicted," that Mercury has actively forming surface features, something judged impossible for a tiny, four-billion year old inert rock. :)

* Socks Blown Off: Close-up photos showed the youthful appearance of Pluto as did the images of its largest moon: "We originally thought Charon would be an ancient terrain covered in craters," said New Horizons team member Cathy Olkin. "So when we saw the pictures this morning, it just blew our socks off." And panning upward from their feet, Discover Magazine reports on NASA's Pluto team including principal investigator Alan Stern's eyes popping out of his head.

* Baffled by Asteroids that Look Like Comets: See phys.org, NASA, EarthSky, and AmazingSpace.

* And the Beat Goes On: For more fun examples, just listen to today's program! And as an honorable mention, consider the response of the scientists who found the presence of modern bacteria, etc., in these allegedly 220 Mya microbes. (Nat'l Geographic removed that page from the web but we put it back up!) And likewise when others described 42 "oddball" blue stars in the Milky Way!

* More Baffling Still: After 150 years of searching, evolutionists have found the best evidence ever discovered for Darwinism, caught on tape no less...

* RSR Answers Ham's, "Is God in Control?" (Photo, right: RSR listener's grandmother in 1934 with Robert Wadlow, Chicago World's Fair.) Bob Enyart and Fred Williams open the Real Science Radio mailbag and reply to 1) a personally addressed question from a listener, Andrew, about the giants in the Bible and any possible evidence for them today; and 2) a newsletter from Answers in Genesis presenting Ken Ham asking, "Is God in Control?" The guys answer, "No", not in the way that Ken implies. AiG and other large creation groups occasionally weigh into territory that by policy they typically avoid when now and then they obliquely promote a particular denominational or otherwise specific theological perspective. So Bob and Fred ask listeners for patience and grace as the guys directly respond to the theological implications brought up, whether intentionally or not, by the beloved founder of AiG.

* RSR on Ancient Giants: As with the claim that a Photoshopped image actually depicts a civil-war era pterosaur photograph, Photoshoppers, intentionally or not, have deceived many who hope to find archaeological evidence of ancient giants, also known as the nephilim, etc. Ironically, well-intentioned Christians who offer erroneous evidence for the Bible end up hurting the cause of the Gospel. The giants described in the Bible are real, and therefore they are physiologically possible. Those who promote as real the Photoshopped images of oversized giants can learn a lesson from the paleontologists. (See also rsr.org/giants-2 and rsr.org/giants-3.)

First, they realized they had overcounted the number of dinosaur species by double (so 500 dino species went poof) and then the paleontologists realized that the ones that remained lost weight, big time! For example, instead of Brachiosaurus weighing 80 tons, it is now carefully calculated to have weighed about 23 tons. (Not only did this make allomotrists happier, but reducing the numbers and weight of dinosaur kinds also reduces the demand on Noah's family and ark, even though of course they brought juvenile creatures onto the ark!) As to overweight dinosaurs and oversized giants, God's design of actual creatures is not only brilliant but omnicompetent. It's not, however, science fiction. It's not cartoonish. There's also strong evidence for quantum biology, that God designed organisms to utilize the currently incomprehensible features of quantum mechanics. What God's designs do not do however, is violate the laws of physics. He designed reptiles, which grew no where near the size the larger dinosaurs, with their legs extending outward from their bodies, before they descend downward to the ground. That design, perfect for reptiles, would greatly limit the size and mass of dinosaurs, since horizontally-inclined legs would quickly fail as the animal's weight exceeded the carrying load. So God designed dinosaur legs to extend directly downward from beneath their bodies. This enables the larger kinds, such as the biblical behemoth, discovered only in 2014 and named dreadnoughtus, to gain weight till it's 65 tons, much heavier than a Boeing 737 airliner.

The giants in man's ancient past described in the Bible were living, breathing, biological organisms. Therefore, they did not defy the laws of physics. Because they stood on two feet they could not be arbitrarily large. For example, cedar trees will grow to 200 feet tall (five telephone poles) and even to 230 feet! So that's quite the wild range for the imagination to run with to propose super-tall giants who could even lift average pyramid stones weighing 5,000 pounds.

Hearing a Bible verse like Amos 2:9 read about "the Amorite... whose height was like the height of the cedars", one notices an abrupt cut off before reaching the end of the verse which makes clear that this is an analogy and not a literal comparison. For God says of the Amorites, "I destroyed... his roots beneath." Tolkein derived his word Ents, for the tall and strong Middle-earth tree beings, from the Anglo-Saxon word for giant. But for all that could be said about mankind's actual ancient giants, Ents notwithstanding, they did not have roots. So we can see that passages such as Amos 2:9 are not giving a literal but a metaphorical description. Other Bible passages that some of those obsessed with giants insist are literal are those that describe the Israelites as "grasshoppers" before the giants of Canaan. "There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight" (Ex. 13:33). However God uses the same metaphor in Isaiah 40:22 saying of the earth that "its inhabitants are like grasshoppers." A simile is a comparison using like or as and these verses, as overtly obvious except to those with an extreme bias, are figures of speech. Regardless though, modern "giants" who have amazed and sometimes entertained the masses top out at nearly nine feet tall and compared to these tallest modern humans, people have often described the comparison in terms not unlike the biblical figures of speech.