Noah Built a Boat?

[Pekka]

Makes sense. I woudln't have saved hippie dinos either. Big buggers eating leafs and flowers and being all vegetarian and all that. Who cares about hippie dinos.

so.. you say they say the flood took care of the hippie dinos. What about the ice age, since bible fails to be accurate and mention that, what do these folks say about ice age? Do they recognize it as a fact?

[chequita guevara]

AFAIK, they do not believe in the ice ages.

[Pekka]

How convinient. Well.. OK. But I guess there are many schools to these things, everyone has their own variation to them.

[chequita guevara]

Question, Peckkera, if you believe the Bible to be the work of man, and the Bible is the only source for any knowedge of God, how can you believe in God?

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
I think according to the Bible God sent the animals that he had chosen to survive to the boat, so the boat could theoretically contain all animals.

then again, we only know about the ones that got off the boat in one piece.

I think Pekka is right. You mean to tell me with all those carniverous beasts, that those animals(!!!) never thought for a moment to rip into one of those herbivores? C'mon...... That's like asking a fat, hungry guy in a pizza joint to not touch the freshly cooked pizza pie with all his favorite toppings sitting right in front of him.

[Vesayen]

Re: Noah Built a Boat?

It was because there was bunch of cousin sex that was going on (south, be very careful reading it ), and gene pool was getting a bit nasty, so God got angry and wanted to reboot it all.

Plenty of other reasons

Now, how did Noah built a boat, an ark, that was big enough, and according to standards of boat building, that he could put all the animals in there, two of each?

Two of the non kosher and seven of the kosher ones. He had a decades to work on it and a large labor force that said....

*MOST* Jews will tell you that the begining of Brasheet(the book of Genisis) is in fact, not true(though it still is important).

Don't look for logic, it is obviously impossible by any empirical analysis.

So a) you have to agree, that some of them are stories and that's OK because it IS written by men, so every word might not necessarily be Gods word. Some of it might, most of it might. Or at least the ... teachings and basic concepts would be, but not everything. or b) you have to deny science and that dinosauruses every existed, or that the bible was inaccurate and forgot to mention the fishes did survive and also ducks.

I will readily admit that men wrote the Torah(divinley inspired), it does nothing to detract from my religion. Only a zealot sees a books authorship as more important then its message.


G-D gave us our minds to use them, they are the greatest gift he gave to us. If we did not use our minds and simply took what the impossible story of Norah at face value, we would do diservice to him by being willfully ignorant. If G-D wanted us to be stupid animals who do not question his work, he would make us stupid-we have our great intelligence for a reason.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Pekka
And who the hell is King James. The bible we read today is King James's version. Is he God? Ich don't think zo..

Hebrew is not a dead language, despite what centuries of some ignorant christians might think... the hebrew has been continuously spoken for thousands of years. We have the most accurate version of the Torah.


This is one nerve that really gets to me sometimes, how people attack the integrity of the Torah by saying its been translated so many times.... THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION HAS NEVER LEFT HUMAN KNOWLEDGE!

The king james "bible" is a horrific translation of the Torah, making intentional changes all over the place and an even WORSE translation of the christian bible, with large passages being changed for a different meaning.

*goes to go make a thread about how stupid christians have pronounced yud-hey-vuv-hey as "jehova" for millenia incorectly, never asking a Jew how to pronounce it*

[Pekka]

"THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION HAS NEVER LEFT HUMAN KNOWLEDGE!"

SUre but the message changes. Little nuances changes.

The 7 animals, kosher and non-kosher is Jewish version of the story. Not Christian . So... bible vs torah! Since Koran is also (qu'ran) having this same story, damn, we're going to have a rumble!

Besides, as far as I know, Jews had at least one way of interpreting, that Noah was not righteouss man because he would have taken others with him to the boat, not leaving his brothers and sisters to die. Where as Christian version has no teachings at all, except 'don't scerw your sister, big boat, badabuum, elephants', and koran is mostly more poems type of stuff 'what you gonna do when they come for you! Noah Noah.. '.

che, "Question, Pekka, if you believe the Bible to be the work of man, and the Bible is the only source for any knowedge of God, how can you believe in God?"

according to Christanity, Jesus came in and it proves it all, because he says he's the son of God, and that in fact this stuff is true, And since he is the son of God, it's true what he says (Jesus). I know it's the ultimate Godwinazion, but then again, we all knew that.

So it doesn't matter that bible was written by men, or if some stories made up.

[Boris Godunov]

Pekka,

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

[Vesayen]

[quote]
The 7 animals, kosher and non-kosher is Jewish version of the story. Not Christian . So... bible vs torah! Since Koran is also (qu'ran) having this same story, damn, we're going to have a rumble!
[quote]

The Christians derive the story from the Jews and it is an indesputable fact that our version predates your religion and never changed. It is also a fact that Judaism was seen as "gods" religion from a christian perspective before christianity, thus the noah story from a Jewish perspective is the right one, from a christian perspective.

Besides, as far as I know, Jews had at least one way of interpreting, that Noah was not righteouss man because he would have taken others with him to the boat, not leaving his brothers and sisters to die.

I have never, ever heard that interpretation........ or even thought of it.

[LDiCesare]

The 7 animals, kosher and non-kosher is Jewish version of the story. Not Christian . So... bible vs torah! Since Koran is also (qu'ran) having this same story, damn, we're going to have a rumble!

Well, maybe you want to check the epic of Gilgamesh, where the flood is mentionned too, except, depending on whether you read Akkadian or Sumerian sources, Noah is called Ut/Ut(a)napishtim, Atrahasis or Ziusoudra.
This version predates the Jewish version, by the way. Of course, there are more gods inside, but if you want to believe in that story, you can just say that it was written by heathens who worshipped one true god among other, false, gods.
An English translation can be read here:

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab11.htm

But the easiest explanation is that God put the animals in stasis so they didn't have to eat. And he probably lyophilised the bigger ones, so they wouldn't take too much room. Noah would then throw the lyophilised elephant into the water, and the beast would then grow back to its size...

[Robert]

The bible is not the word of God.
The Word of God is Jesus (John 1)

The bible is being inspired by God's Spirit.
But it's written by men, so it's fallable. There are translation / copy mistakes. There are false ideas by writers. (ie. Kings says that God made David do something while Chronicals says satan made David do the same thing)

Now about the big flood.
This story comes with much problems, as you have listed. I've read a book once that gave much solutions to these problems. I don't know the proper solutions by heart, so I'll give a brief overview of them.

1. In those days there were fewer animals, micro-evolution has made the total animal population in this world as it is. There was no need for God to save any kind of animal. One animal per family would do the thing.

2. dinosaurs are mentioned in the bible. Though most translators in the middle ages didn't knew what to think about these strange creatures they didn't know. They mostly translated it with 'snake' or 'dragon'. Search for 'dinosaurs' and 'bible' in google and you'll find a list.

3. sea animals didn't need to get into the arc.

4. much animals can get into some kind of a winter-sleep so they don't need food or care for a long time.

5. it's not needed to take large mature animals into the arc. Small children are enough. Take dinosaurs in examle, they are very small when they're young.

6. The reason for the big flood was sin that had spread all over the earth, and perhaps because of the demons that had bred children with women (genesis 6 1-4)

7. the author of the book (who's 3 times prof overhere in Holland, prof. dr. dr. Ouweneel, do a google search if you want to know more) explained how it all would be possible to build such an arc.

Of course that it's possible doesn't mean that it actually happened, but there are no problems for the flood story. What's even more interesting is that there are flood stories all over the world. Most of them contain people (8) who escape it in a boat.

8. About the survivors of the flood, noah, his wife, his 3 doughters and their husbands, of course the wives and their husbands are from different gene pouls.
I don't think the bible forbids mariage between 4th grade family members. (as in marrying your uncles doughter)
Besides that, since the flood was much shorter after creation, the gene poul was much more perfect then right now, after ages of degeneration. So marrying a close relative gives much less harm.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by CyberShy
This story comes with much problems, as you have listed. I've read a book once that gave much solutions to these problems. I don't know the proper solutions by heart, so I'll give a brief overview of them.

I wonder if it's the Woodamorpe (sp?) book. At any rate, the feasibility of a global flood is nil. See the link I posted.

1. In those days there were fewer animals, micro-evolution has made the total animal population in this world as it is. There was no need for God to save any kind of animal. One animal per family would do the thing.

So what's with the fossil record that shows that 99% of the world's animals are extinct?

You are aware that there are upwards of 30,000 species of animals, yes? Since Creationists whine that "microevolution" won't allow speciation, this claim is self-contradictory. Besides, the rate it would take for such evolution to occur in the time since the flood to now is ridiculously high. Much faster than evolutionary theory posits.

2. dinosaurs are mentioned in the bible. Though most translators in the middle ages didn't knew what to think about these strange creatures they didn't know. They mostly translated it with 'snake' or 'dragon'. Search for 'dinosaurs' and 'bible' in google and you'll find a list.

The "dinosaurs" mentioned in the Bible are also described having multiple heads and breathing fire. No such beast, as far as we know, ever existed. I'm afraid it's a stretch to give the Biblical descriptions credit as being dinosaurs.

3. sea animals didn't need to get into the arc.

Really? So all the salt-water fish had no problem with a deluge of fresh rain water? You'd fail basic biology.

4. much animals can get into some kind of a winter-sleep so they don't need food or care for a long time.

Very few animals as a percentage of all animals do this. Bears may, but wolves do not. Where did all the meat come from to feed the carnivores?

5. it's not needed to take large mature animals into the arc. Small children are enough. Take dinosaurs in examle, they are very small when they're young.

Even taking animal young, the space would be too small. Besides, taking young would require a LOT more care on the part of the people on board than taking adults. And then you have the problem that those animals wouldn't be able to breed for sometime after the ark and would then have to contend in nature on the slightest of numbers. Extinctions would be rampant.

Hey, by the way, how did all the animals get to their respective continents and in their current distributions so fast after the flood?

7. the author of the book (who's 3 times prof overhere in Holland, prof. dr. dr. Ouweneel, do a google search if you want to know more) explained how it all would be possible to build such an arc.

I'll wager his "possibilities" are so ludicrously contorted as to defy any dense, as the examples you've given show.

Of course that it's possible doesn't mean that it actually happened, but there are no problems for the flood story.

Yes, there are problems a plenty. The entire physics of a global flood are impossible, as is the silly story of a boat big enough to house all the world's animals.

http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/

Scroll down and you will see tons of articles on why the Flood is scientific lunacy.

Besides that, since the flood was much shorter after creation, the gene poul was much more perfect then right now, after ages of degeneration. So marrying a close relative gives much less harm.

So, with such a "perfect" gene pool, how did we get the massive variation in racial characteristics across the globe in such a short period of time? Superduper microevolution?

[Boris Godunov]

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/6flood.htm

Six Flood Arguments Creationists Can't Answer
© 1982 by Robert J. Schadewald
Reprinted from Creation/Evolution IX (1982)

Some years ago, NASA released the first deep-space photographs of the beautiful cloud-swirled blue-green agate we call Earth. A reporter showed one of them to the late Samuel Shenton, then president of International Flat Earth Research Society. Shenton studied it for a moment and said, “It's easy to see how such a picture could fool the untrained eye.”

Well-trained eyes (and minds) are characteristic of pseudoscientists. Shenton rejected the spherical earth as conflicting with a literal interpretation of the Bible, and he trained his eyes and his mind to reject evidence which contradicted his view. Scientific creationists must similarly train their minds to reject the overwhelming evidence from geology, biology, physics and astronomy which contradicts their interpretation of the Bible. In a public forum, the best way to demonstrate that creationism is pseudoscience is to show just how well-trained creationist minds are.

Pseudoscience differs from science in several fundamental ways, but most notably in its attitude toward hypothesis testing. In science, hypotheses are ideas proposed to explain the facts, and they're not considered much good unless they can survive rigorous tests. In pseudoscience, hypotheses are erected as defenses against the facts. Pseudoscientists frequently offer hypotheses flatly contradicted by well-known facts which can be ignored only by well-trained minds. Therefore, to demonstrate that creationists are pseudoscientists, one need only carry some creationist hypotheses to their logical conclusions.

Fossils and Animals

Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth's rocks as the remains of animals which perished in the Noachian Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in “fossil graveyards” as evidence for the Flood. In particular, creationists seem enamored of the Karroo Formation in Africa, which is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As pseudoscientists, creationists dare not test this major hypothesis that all of the fossilized animals died in the Flood.

Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota, has studied the Karroo Formation. He told me that the animals fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karroo Formation could be resurrected, there would be 21 of them for every acre of land on earth. Suppose we assume (conservatively, I think) that the Karroo Formation contains 1% of the vertebrate fossils on earth. Then when the Flood began there must have been at least 2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense dinosaurs. To a noncreationist mind, that seems a bit crowded.

I sprang this argument on Duane Gish during a joint appearance on WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa, on October 21st, 1980. Gish did the only thing he could: he stonewalled by challenging my figures, in essence calling me a liar. I didn't have a calculator with me, but I duplicated the calculation with pencil and paper and hit him with it again. His reply? Creationists can't answer everything. It's been estimated that there are 100 billion billion herring in the sea. How did I account for that?! Later, I tried this number on a calculator and discovered that it amounts to about 27,000 herring per square foot of ocean surface. I concluded (a) that all of the herring are red, and (b) that they were created ex nihilo by Duane Gish on the evening of October 21st, 1980.

Marine Fossils

The continents are, on average, covered with sedimentary rock to a depth of about one mile. Some of the rock (chalk, for instance) is essentially 100% fossils and many limestones also contain high percentages of marine fossils. On the other hand, some rock is barren. Suppose that, on average, marine fossils comprise .1% of the volume of the rock. If all of the fossilized marine animals could be resurrected, they would cover the entire planet to a depth of at least 1.5 feet. What did they eat?

Creationists can't appeal to the tropical paradise they imagine existed below the pre- Flood canopy because the laws of thermodynamics prohibit the earth from supporting that much animal biomass. The first law says that energy can't be created, so the animals would have to get their energy from the sun. The second law limits the efficiency with which solar energy can be converted to food. The amount of solar energy available is not nearly sufficient.

Varves

The famous Green River formation covers tens of thousands of square miles. In places, it contains about 20 million varves, each varve consisting of a thin layer of fine light sediment and an even thinner layer of finer dark sediment. According to the conventional geologic interpretation, the layers are sediments laid down in a complex of ancient freshwater lakes. The coarser light sediments were laid down during the summer, when streams poured run-off water into the lake. The fine dark sediments were laid down in the winter, when there was less run-off. (The process can be observed in modern freshwater lakes.) If this interpretation is correct, the varves of the Green River formation must have formed over a period of 20 million years.

Creationists insist that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old, and that the geologic strata were laid down by the Flood. Whitcomb and Morris (p. 427) therefore attempt to attribute the Green River varves to “a complex of shallow turbidity currents ...” Turbidity currents, flows of mud-laden water, generally occur in the ocean, resulting from underwater landslides. If the Green River shales were laid down during the Flood, there must have been 40 million turbidity currents, alternately light and dark, over about 300 days. A simple calculation (which creationists have avoided for 20 years) shows that the layers must have formed at the rate of about three layers every two seconds. A sequence of 40 million turbidity currents covering tens of thousands of square miles every two-thirds of a second seems a bit unlikely.

Henry Morris apparently can't deal with these simple numbers. Biologist Kenneth Miller of Brown University dropped this bombshell on him during a debate in Tampa, Florida, on September 19th, 1981, and Morris didn't attempt a reply. Fred Edwords used essentially the same argument against Duane Gish in a debate on February 2, 1982. In rebuttal, Gish claimed that some of the fossilized fishes project through several layers of sediment, and therefore the layers can't be semiannual. As usual, Gish's argument ignores the main issue, which is the alleged formation of millions of distinct layers of sediment in less than a year. Furthermore, Gish's argument is false, according to American Museum of Natural History paleontologist R. Lance Grande, an authority on the Green River Formation. Grande says that while bones or fins of an individual fish may cut several layers, in general each fish is blanketed by a single layer of sediment.

Disease Germs

For numerous communicable diseases, the only known “reservoir” is man. That is, the germs or viruses which cause these diseases can survive only in living human bodies or well-equipped laboratories. Well-known examples include measles, pneumococcal pneumonia, leprosy, typhus, typhoid fever, small pox, poliomyelitis, syphilis and gonorrhea. Was it Adam or Eve who was created with gonorrhea? How about syphilis? The scientific creationists insist on a completed creation, where the creator worked but six days and has been resting ever since. Thus, between them, Adam and Eve had to have been created with every one of these diseases. Later, somebody must have carried them onto Noah's Ark.

Note that the argument covers every disease germ or virus which can survive only in a specific host. But even if the Ark was a floating pesthouse, few of these diseases could have survived. In most cases, only two animals of each “kind” are supposed to have been on the Ark. Suppose the male of such a pair came down with such a disease shortly after the Ark embarked. He recovered, but passed the disease to his mate. She recovered, too, but had no other animal to pass the disease to, for the male was now immune. Every disease for which this cycle lasts less than a year should therefore have become extinct!

Creationists can't pin the blame for germs on Satan. If they do, the immediate question is: How do we know Satan didn't create the rest of the universe? That has frequently been proposed, and if Satan can create one thing, he can create another. If a creationist tries to claim germs are mutations of otherwise benign organisms (degenerate forms, of course), he will actually be arguing for evolution. Such hypothetical mutations could only be considered favorable, since only the mutated forms survived.

Fossil Sequence

At all costs, creationists avoid discussing how fossils came to be stratified as they are. Out of perhaps thousands of pages Henry Morris has written on creationism, only a dozen or so are devoted to this critical subject, and he achieves that page count only by recycling three simple apologetics in several books. The mechanisms he offers might be called victim habitat, victim mobility, and hydraulic sorting. In practise, the victim habitat and mobility apologetics are generally combined. Creationists argue that the Flood would first engulf marine animals, then slow lowland creatures like reptiles, etc., while wily and speedy man escaped to the hilltops. To a creationist, this adequately explains the order in which fossils occur in the geologic column. A scientist might test these hypotheses by examining how well they explain the fact that flowering plants don't occur in the fossil record until early in the Cretaceous era. A scenario with magnolias (a primitive plant) heading for the hills, only to be overwhelmed along with early mammals, is unconvincing.

If explanations based on victim habitat and mobility are absurd, the hydraulic sorting apologetic is flatly contradicted by the fossil record. An object's hydrodynamic drag is directly proportional to its cross sectional area and its drag coefficient. Therefore when objects with the same density and the same drag coefficient move through a fluid, they are sorted according to size. (Mining engineers exploit this phenomena in some ore separation processes.) This means that all small trilobites should be found higher in the fossil record than large ones. That is not what we find, however, so the hydraulic sorting argument is immediately falsified. Indeed, one wonders how Henry Morris, a hydraulic engineer, could ever have offered it with a straight face.

Overturned Strata

Ever since George McCready Price, many creationists have pointed to overturned strata as evidence against conventional geology. Actually, geologists have a good explanation for overturned strata, where the normal order of fossils is precisely reversed. The evidence for folding is usually obvious, and where it's not, it can be inferred from the reversed fossil order. But creationists have no explanation for such strata. Could the Flood suddenly reverse the laws of hydrodynamics (or whatever)? All of the phenomena which characterize overturned strata are impossible for creationists to explain. Well-preserved trilobites, for instance, are usually found belly down in the rock. If rock strata containing trilobites are overturned, we would expect to find most of the trilobites belly up. Indeed, that is what we do find in overturned strata. Other things which show a geologist or paleontologist which way is up include worm and brachiopod burrows, footprints, fossilized mud cracks, raindrop craters, graded bedding, etc. Actually, it's not surprising that creationists can't explain these features when they're upside down; they can't explain them when they're right side up, either.

Each of the six preceding arguments subjects a well-known creationist hypothesis to an elementary and obvious test. In each case, the hypothesis fails miserably. In each case, the failure is obvious to anyone not protected from reality by a special kind of blindness.

Studying science doesn't make one a scientist any more than studying ethics makes one honest. The studies must be applied. Forming and testing hypotheses is the foundation of science, and those who refuse to test their hypotheses cannot be called scientists, no matter what their credentials. Most people who call themselves creationists have no scientific training, and they cannot be expected to know and apply the scientific method. But the professional creationists who flog the public with their doctorates (earned, honorary, or bogus) have no excuse. Because they fail to submit their hypotheses to the most elementary tests, they fully deserve the appellation of pseudoscientist.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by LDiCesare

Well, maybe you want to check the epic of Gilgamesh, where the flood is mentionned too, except, depending on whether you read Akkadian or Sumerian sources, Noah is called Ut/Ut(a)napishtim, Atrahasis or Ziusoudra.
This version predates the Jewish version, by the way. Of course, there are more gods inside, but if you want to believe in that story, you can just say that it was written by heathens who worshipped one true god among other, false, gods.
An English translation can be read here:

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab11.htm

But the easiest explanation is that God put the animals in stasis so they didn't have to eat. And he probably lyophilised the bigger ones, so they wouldn't take too much room. Noah would then throw the lyophilised elephant into the water, and the beast would then grow back to its size...

I'm not denying most of the planet has a flood myth(the mediteranean(sp?) areas people likley from when the caspian sea BROKE...).