I posted this the page about fundamentalism and evolution. Want to show it here, as it is interesting:

Speaking of things in Holy Books, I found this on Cracked. Apparently, there is now some idea what happened (scientifically) to Sodom and Gomorrah

Scientists now think that “something” might have been a half-mile wide asteroid. Before it could land, it apparently morphed into a three-mile-wide fire ball before clipping a mountain range and exploding in a rain of fiery debris. But don’t beat yourself up for not getting that from the Biblical account.

About 150 years ago, two seemingly unrelated discoveries were made in different parts of the world. First, a Cuneiform tablet known as “The Planisphere,” which was a copy of a sky chart from June 29, 3123 BC. Among the stars it seems to depict a moving object, one so large that it could be seen from the ground.

Meanwhile, over in Austria, geologists discovered evidence of what they think was an asteroid impact site. They found signs of explosions and rock-melting, typically caused when an asteroid breaks apart before impact, raining hell down on everything below.
You can see where this is going. But the impact was in Austria, right? What does this have to do with Sodom and Gomorrah?
Well, According to the scientists, the mushroom cloud of the explosion would have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Mediterranean Sea, and would have flashed across the Middle East, leaving a trail of debris and superheated air in its wake. To quote the article, the heat “would be enough to ignite any flammable material — including human hair and clothes. It is probable more people died under the plume than in the Alps due to the impact blast.”

Via wheelerroad.org
So imagine you’re a guy living in a city in the Middle East, thousands of years ago. Maybe you herd sheep. You know absolutely nothing of asteroids or meteors or comets. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the air fills with smoke, ash and debris. And then the air gets hot — not hot like a summer day, but hot like the oven you use to fire clay pots.
Then, all around you, screams. Everything that is flammable spontaneously combusts. You are now on fire.

It would be to your eyes nothing less than the fiery, vengeful judgment of God. Believers will say that’s just what it was. Nonbelievers will say the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah is just the handed-down account of whatever refugees were lucky enough to escape the now-forgotten burning city — and from witnesses who stood, horrified, and watched it happen from afar (and “saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace”).
You can be damned well sure that no ancient Middle Eastern nomad would forget the time they saw an entire city on the horizon spontaneously burst into flame. That’s the kind of story that gets told and retold for a few thousand years.