A question about Noah's ark.
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Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
Zack. You cannot be helped. You refuse to put in the necessary effort on your end. (Let me give you a hint anyways: I AM THE AUTHORITATIVE SOURCE on what my posts mean. Stop trying to pretend you know what I said or did not say better than I do.)
Already starting on the wrong foot, hardy har har.
Plausible.
i) Where did they come from? Good question.
ii) Humans are easily deluded, so yeah.
iii) In the light of the above, it's not so hard for people to forget things. Throw in some death and destruction for good measure.
PeteAtoms
FormulaRandom
I'm told that a lot of Jewish people used to believe this (or still do). The question of whether or not the stories were literal facts and scientifically true doesn't matter as much as the question "what does this story say about life and what can I learn from it?"
Well, if the Great Flood covered every point on Earth, with sufficient depth for the Ark to float upon, that is a LOT of water in just 40 days. Let me see - Mt Everest is 8,848 metres high, which means there had to be 221.2 metres of rainfall every day, just to reach the height of Mt Everest.
After all, the Bible is literal, scientific fact, and if it says that 40 days of rainfall covered the earth, that means the entire Earth, not just the Middle East, and it means 40 days, not "an unspecified period of time".
After all, the Bible is literal, scientific fact, and if it says that 40 days of rainfall covered the earth, that means the entire Earth, not just the Middle East, and it means 40 days, not "an unspecified period of time".
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
Most of the province of BC where I live used to be on the bottom of the ocean, all of our fossils here are from marine species. What makes it even more interesting is that my province is also extremely mountainous, and way the hell up in the rockies there are some really cool sites where they dig out 1000s of fossils of marine animals. A people with no knowledge of tectonic plates and how mountains are created would easily become confused about that (though I don't know if the native americans ever found or had stories about fossils high up in the mountains). Here on the coast, the major island of Vancouver Island (FYI: the city of Vancouver which is on the mainland, they are just named after the same guy) also contains many fossils of marine life, but the island actually migrated up here from the south pacific so it has entirely different species in the fossil record
As for Noah's ark, yeah the way it is described in the bible is impossible. My favourite reading of it though is by Ricky Gervais when he read the (rather badly done) children's book of the story of noah's ark he got as a kid from attending sunday school.
Cheetah
Deity
Well, on that point - the only sensible point worth discussion IMO - what can we learn from this story?? What is the moral? "Don't be bad, or God may kill you"?
I'll agree that the story of Noah can at most be taken as a parable, but for what purpose?
Years of education into biology and I'd never realized these problems. Nor have the millions of other people who's job it is to think about these things. It's as if we were all standing there, wondering, "how did the genome increase in complexity?" and answered, "magic!" because answering "god" would have been unacceptable to us atheists. Now you've come along with these insights that are sure to rock molecular biology to it's core. You might just win a Nobel for this, CH.
... or not. It takes quite a bit of gumption to assume scientists are this stupid. Here's one answer for how a genome can increase in complexity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_duplication
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Is your criticism my story is not as plausible as a global flood story? Yeah, that's a riot. There have been plenty of floods where a farmer has put all his lifestock on a boat? Please do share with me the historical records of which you based this claim on. Or please read a post before feeling the need to start a post with: "the problem with the above".
PeteAtoms
FormulaRandom
As an atheist, I can't speak for religious people. But it seems to be a story about the omnipotence of god, humans were evil enough to justify their genocide, and the promise god made not to destroy the world again with a flood.
It could be a story just to explain the existence of rainbows...
Didn't Noah also get heckled by people while he built his ark? Maybe it's something to do with following god's word despite public humiliation. Or people get what they have coming to them.
Just spitballin' here.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
Its not easy to just pick everything up and move, while the river's floods were what fertilized the soil and were an annual event a bad flood could wipe out everything, including any food stores. You also must remember that people back then had absolutely no idea how large the world actually was, so a huge flood one year that was bad enough to be retold (along with the influence of the river flooding every year anyway) could easily take on a larger than life image in the story. Oral traditions are only reliable for about 300 years before they become more myth than fact.
It wasn't just genocide of people (who's bad behaviour caused the flood) but the genocide of EVERY LIVING SPECIES just because some humans were misbehaving. Really it just makes yahweh look like a genocidal maniac mad with power.
PeteAtoms
FormulaRandom
It's odd how the omnipotent god couldn't just "poof" the bad people away...
Cheetah
Deity
Right. It's been a while since Sunday school, but I believe that was the message that was emphasized.
Cheetah
Deity
Omnipotent??
Iron chariots > God
Judges 1:19 (King James Version) said:
If you ever wondered what you need to defend yourself during the apocalypse.
PeteAtoms
FormulaRandom
If you ever wondered what you need to defend yourself during the apocalypse.
Typical response might be that "he" refers to Judah and not god. So it was Judah that couldn't handle the iron chariots, not god. But still, if god is on your side than it must have been God's intent to not let Judah win.
timtofly
One Day
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For all of you "scientist" arguing out there, I am surprised you are arguing using known folklore. I thought this was a scientific question? It seems that only Vancouver has even come close. How much salt are we talking about? Why is the salt sea so salty? Why do islands form over night? Why is there a pangea history? Did the flood cause the first division? Were there two divisions? Is 14,000 years related to the moon calender or sun? Will we all die if the oceans continue to get saltier? What is the topic of this thread?
warpus
In pork I trust
Because of salty seamen?
GhostWriter16
Deity
If you would like answers, don't make statements like these. The story is true.
I don't think it matters. The fish never died, since they can live underwater...
@Cheetah- I think that's a reference to the Jews. The Jews were fearful and afraid, so God "Couldn't" free them since they had no faith...
warpus
In pork I trust
This deity needed help from a mere mortal to save all the animals in the world while he killed all the humans, so it's not really a far stretch to question what he was capable of and what he wasn't.
