noah's ark and the great flood

[adler5]

This post was a literal transcription of a site by Alan Feuerbacher (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/6040/flood17.htm). Please try to at least acknowledge your sources!

[Vicar Philip]

Good questions, adler5.

However, some theists simply wave their hand and say "Goddidit."

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

You ought to try posting this on apologetics.com or christianforums.com.

[Wizardry]

As this thread pertains specifically to a subject area covered by one of the other II Philosophical Forums, I'm going to send it over there.

This thread has been moved from General Religious Discussions to Evolution/Creation.

[Valentine Pontifex]

Originally posted by adler5
If the oceans were always shallow, why does there exist life specifically designed to live at extreme depths?


The oceans are shallow???????????????????????????????

And there is life in the extreme depths.

[Azathoth]

Originally posted by Valentine Pontifex
The oceans are shallow???????????????????????????????

And there is life in the extreme depths.

It's a creationist apologetic.The shallow oceans were to accomidate less rain,or something,because they kept running into huge problems in explaining a flood that inundated the globe,with just rainfall.It's a long,convoluted,and silly argument,as adler just poined out.

The Society's claims are nonsense.

[Amergin]

Good points in your post.

The fact is that certain animals are found only in certain isolated locations. For example, Kangaroos have never been found outside of Australia and New Guinea. Certain species of fresh water fish have been found nowhere outside of the Amazon Basin. Lemurs are only on the Island of Madascar in the last 20 million years. Emus, Koalas, Marsupial wolves, wombats, and marsupial lions are found only in Australia. Many other animals while on the Eurasian mainland are found only at great distances from Palestine, Mt. Ararat, and Mesopotamia. These include: polar bears, tapirs, aardvarks, Meercats, Irish Elk, Reindeer/Caribou, Moose, the Ice loving Macaques of Northern Japan. There are a few thousand other animals found far from Mesopotamia.

These represent animals never found in Mesopotamia/Ararat. How did Noah and his sons gather all of these animals from the far reaches of the left and right hemispheres and polar areas? How did they fit in the approximately 3.8 million species into the Ark if it was the wee little boat described in Genesis? How could they store enough food for the entire long journey aboard the tiny boat? When it landed on Mt. Ararat how did they return all of these animals back to their places of origin?

How did they transport some 3000 species of delicate fresh water tropical fish back to the Amazon Basin across thousands of miles of salt sea? How did they transport the Koalas, Wallabies, Kangaroos, Wombats, Marsupial wolves, Emus, and Marsupial lions back to the island continent of Australia? How did they get South American Tapirs back to South America along with Jaguars, sloths, prehensile tailed New World Monkeys, Armadillos, Alpacas, Llamas, as well as a million species of South American insects? (A fourth of all species live in the Amazon Basin.) How did they get the 9 types of Lemur back to Madagascar?

The amount of water needed to flood the Earths highest mountains would have to be enough to cover Mt. Everest at 29,000 plus feet or over 5 miles higher than present sea level. Can we even begin to imagine the immense quantity of water that would require? If Earth had been covered over 5 miles deep it would require 980 million cubic miles of water or 2.55 billion cubic kilometres of water. That water would have to be obtained and then carted away somehow. There are no empty spaces within the Earth for all of that water.

So, you see, it is a scientific, or really a physical impossibility that Noah’s Legend could be true. The size of the boat is far too small for the number of animals and their food supply. The gathering of the animals from all over the world and delivering them back to their places of origin would have taken many years and hundreds of ocean going vessels to accomplish that task. The obtaining and disposing of many hundred thousand or millions of cubic miles of water is impossible without divine magic, which I don’t accept.

If you postulate miracle, i.e. magic, you must show me proof that magic exists. You must prove that magic ever occurred in any time or place. Other than magic, the Noah’s Fable was not physically possible.

Amergin

[Amergin]

There is no evidence that the oceans were ever shallow except perhaps when it was still molten hot and the crust had not yet formed.

However we know that since the Cambrian 500 million years ago there have been tectonic plate movements and continental drift. Geologists know this quite well. One of the consequences of tectonic plate movement is that while at rifts there are new plate material forming, and pushing the plates apart, at other places plates muct collide. Those places often make oceanic trenches that are extremely deep, over 5 miles. These trenches are all over the world not just near continental margins like the US west coast. They are in oceanic regions of the Pacific ocean far from land. They occur because one plate subducts as it collides with the other one and it is pushed down and under the advancing plate. We know that after the breakup of Pangaea about 240 million years ago, the present continents soon separated. And life evolved in divergent directions on them. This is incompatible with the superstition of Noah's Flood.

Amergin

[dangin]

Originally posted by Vicar Philip
Good questions, adler5.

However, some theists simply wave their hand and say "Goddidit."



There is a comeback to this. If goddidit, then why didn't he wave his magic harry potter wand, and just do it. If Noah had a chance of failure, and god interceded on Noah's behalf to save him and the ark, then the entire exercise was masturbation. Or another example of god's cruelty.

The whole ark thing had to be a gamble and an example of man achieving great things for god. If god helped in the least little bit, then god should have just made all the wicked disappear and left only the eight human's he sent on the ark to start things over again.

OH, and let's not forget that the entire ark had one 3 foot by 3 foot window for ventilation, and nothing else. How can we describe the air on the lower decks after 40 days and nights?

Yummy and asphixalicious.

[Ganymede]

Originally posted by Amergin
How did they transport some 3000 species of delicate fresh water tropical fish back to the Amazon Basin across thousands of miles of salt sea? How did they transport the Koalas, Wallabies, Kangaroos, Wombats, Marsupial wolves, Emus, and Marsupial lions back to the island continent of Australia? How did they get South American Tapirs back to South America along with Jaguars, sloths, prehensile tailed New World Monkeys, Armadillos, Alpacas, Llamas, as well as a million species of South American insects? (A fourth of all species live in the Amazon Basin.) How did they get the 9 types of Lemur back to Madagascar?


Don't forget the humble Kiwi - a small flightless bird that can't swim, found only in New Zealand, which is some 10 000 miles from Mt Ararat.

G

[Doubting Didymus]

Originally posted by Ganymede
Don't forget the humble Kiwi - a small flightless bird that can't swim, found only in New Zealand, which is some 10 000 miles from Mt Ararat.
G

Explainations I have heard: they floated there, and nowhere else, on huge mats of floating dead vegetation. Alternatively: there was a global ice age, the ocans froze over, and they walked.

(I'm not joking)

[adler5]

Please cite your sources! This post was a literal copy of an article in Robert Carroll's Skeptic's Dictionary. (http://skepdic.com/noahsark.html)

[Doubting Didymus]

You're right, alder! Noah could never have done it alone!

It MUST be a miracle!

Praise the lord!

(and feel free to introduce yourself here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=52) , if you like.)

[Oolon Colluphid]

Originally posted by Doubting Didymus
Explainations I have heard: they floated there, and nowhere else, on huge mats of floating dead vegetation.

If you accept the lunatic premise in the first place, that might work if the only kiwi that survived to get anywhere on a vegetation mat was a single pregnant... erm, egg-bound... female. Anyone know how long kiwis can go without food and fresh water, and what the ‘gestation’ period for a kiwi egg is? That might tell us how fast the mat had to travel (the eggs might have hatched on the mat, but then the chicks would need food too; even creationists wouldn’t suggest the veg mats could support a breeding population... would they...?

And you’re forgetting one: the supersonic continental drift hypothesis ;). Was that an Ed-ism?

DT

[adler5]

i always do acknowledge my sources i may have missed this time but did you learn some thing, i hoppe you did thand you .:boohoo:

[pz]

Originally posted by adler5
i always do acknowledge my sourcesNo, you do not. You've made a total of 7 posts here, and the 3 most substantial (two here, and one in BC&A) consisted entirely of large chunks of text directly lifted from other sites, given without attribution, as if they were your own contribution.i may have missed this time but did you learn some thing, i hoppe you did thand you .:boohoo: I see that when you do use your own words, they tend to be ungrammatical and poorly spelled.

[adler5]

My apologies IM new at this stuff, so I will make sure to remember to add my sources in the future,
and please, one spelling error come on don't be so hard on me for that, IM new at this, and I have notice spelling errors in a more then one post, did any one jump down there throats for it,
I wonder how it was wen you firsts got here. And if did they gave you a chance wen you started.

thank you
adler5

[Oolon Colluphid]

Originally posted by adler5
My apologies IM [I’m] new at this stuff, so I will make sure to remember to add my sources in the future,
and please, one spelling error[,] come on don't be so hard on me for that, IM [I’m] new at this, and I have notice[d] spelling errors in a more then [than] one post, did any one jump down there [their] throats for it,
I wonder how it was w[h]en you firsts [first] got here. And if did they gave you a chance w[h]en you started.

Teehee!

Actually adler, I thought it was a bit harsh too. Personally, I only usually pick up on this sort of thing to tease anti-evolutionists, since their grammar and spelling are generally on a par with their science. ;)

Welcome to the wonderful world of E/C, btw!

Cheers, DT

[Asha'man]

adler5,

Some quick advice for a new user: compose your message in a word processor, such as Microsoft Word. Let the word processor check your text for spelling errors and grammar mistakes.

Then, cut and paste your reply into the browser window. :)

[Celsus]

Originally posted by adler5
i always do acknowledge my sources i may have missed this time but did you learn some thing, i hoppe you did thand you

Note that the subject title in the second post you made was "im adding to what i said". Dishonesty doesn't help your case, ok?

Joel

[adler5]

Hey joel I made a mistake ,get off my back now OK.

[Scotty]

Since I just thought of an Ark question.
If the wood (what, some rodent wood, gopherwood?) was strong enough to hold the ark together, what would that strength be? Iron-like? (since I seem to remember that no wood is now strong enough to stay together in a ship that size).

If it was as strong as iron, doesn't that mean it would take tools stronger than iron to form into the correct pattern? Nails? Screws? 50-ton press?

goddidit.

-Scott

[adler5]

The old testament t mentions that god told Noah to build the ark out of a resinous tree, now I’ve researched the trees in the middle east and so far I can’t find any trees that could possibly be strong enough for a ship of that size, and by that size I mean the size it would have had to be in real life, not the accounts of the fairy tales size in genesis{3oo cubit’s length 50 cubit’s width 30 cubits high} Aldo there are many kinds of trees mentioned in genesis this particular one stands out {Pistacia are found in Genesis 35:4, Judges 6:11, I Chronicles 10:12, Isaiah 6:13 and 44:14. Because of its large size and great age, pistacia trees were well-known landmarks and were used as memorials for the dead, a practice followed until recently in some Arab villages. But the pistacia trees also became the object of idolatry (Hosea 4:13). Did Jacob bury the idols under the"oak" of Shechem because the tree was an object of veneration in itself?


As often in Scripture, great trees are associated with great men. Gideon was by a large pistacia when he was called by God (Judges 6:11). David faced Goliath in the Valley of the Pistacias (I Samuel 17:2) (elah in Hebrew). Absalom, great in his own eyes, was trapped in a large pistacia.

i still don’t know what kind was used by Noah and i find it strange that its not mentioned
here is a link to the trees in that part of the world in that period of time

LINK:
resinous tree of the middle east
Source;
web.odu.edu/webroot/instr/sci/plant.nsf/pages/pistacia
so in conclusion if any one has an idea of what kind of wood was used please respond.

adler5

[lpetrich]

Kiwi birds live only in New Zealand. A female kiwi lays eggs that are about 18-25% of her body weight, and her male partner does the sitting on them.

Kiwis are most closely related to the now-extinct moas, and they are more distantly related to other "ratites", a group of birds that includes ostriches (Africa), the now-extinct Aepyornis (Madagascar), cassowaries (Australia, New Guinea), and rheas (South America). This all fits with their common ancestor having lived on Gondwana, with its descendants evolving in different directions on that former continent's fragments.

As to dispersion, here is a reason that some oceanic islands have giant turtles, but none ever have any giant rats -- rats would starve on a long, aimless drift, while turtles could simply slow down. So the ancestors of kiwis could not have drifted to New Zealand.

Instead, their homeland did all the drifting, taking them with it.

[adler5]

in my haste, trying to correct my grammar and spelling it seems that this time i did not syntax my post, i swear this French guy will get better hehehe
sorry and thank you for your patience

adler5

[Dr.GH]

By reading some of the earlier texts (those that the Biblical story is based on) I have formed the opinion the the Genesis author/editor didn't know what kind of tree was used.

Take a look at these sources:

Look at tablet 2
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/o/x/oxf3/atrahasis.html

and tablet 11 from Gilgamesh

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/index.html

Cedar is one possibility. The massive use of tar in the story, and direct textual references locate the region of the flood to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

[adler5]

this is what your implying {continental drift}

Author: Robert Mahoney
Home Page: [/url]

how long do you think it took for the drift to take place? Scripture says that history is only 7000 years old so far. If scripture says the earth is only this old, and your theory requires millions of years...what does that do with the historical claim of the bible and God's revealed truth?

Robert +


:D

[faded_Glory]

Originally posted by adler5
this is what your implying {continental drift}

Author: Robert Mahoney
Home Page: [/url]

how long do you think it took for the drift to take place? Scripture says that history is only 7000 years old so far. If scripture says the earth is only this old, and your theory requires millions of years...what does that do with the historical claim of the bible and God's revealed truth?

Robert +


:D

Ummm... it disappears in a puff of logic?

fG

[Paul2]

I didn't feel like starting a new thread so i'll post this here.

Quck question. I'm assuming there were people alive at the time of the flood that were fishermen. that is, they lived by rivers or the ocean and fished for their livelyhood. I'd also assume that said fishermen had boats. Would these boats not float too? That is, wouldn't these fishermen be able to survive the flood?

[Dr.GH]

People, people ...

The textual place to start understanding the flood narrative in the Torah is in Sumer.

check Tablet 2
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/o/x/oxf3/atrahasis.html

then read the first 1/2 of Tablet 11
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/index.html

then re-read Genesis 5-9.
http://unbound.biola.edu/

Also remember that Abraham came from Ur, and that the Torah was writen in about 700 BCE, 2 or 3 thousand years after the tale of Atrahasis. Also note that Ugarit was a late Babylonian city which had great influence over the northern kingdom, Israael.

[adler5]

That’s all fine and dandy, but one thing at a time, you see im trying to destroy the credibility of one book of myths’ fables and simplistic answers to complicated questions, {, i.e., the so-called bible}THE WORD OF GAWWWWWD so im not going to use an even more incredible source like the torah to prove any of my points thank you any way, but I will get around to that particular book of fiction soon so stay tuned

adler5;)

[adler5]

No Paul, apparently the population of the earth and the fisherman included, during that time period were to occupied { { i GUESS THEY WERE DOING BAD THINGS AGAINST THEIR GOD AGAIN} to notice that it was raining A LOT.

ADLER5:D

[Lunawalk]

Originally posted by Amergin
Good points in your post.

The fact is that certain animals are found only in certain isolated locations. For example, Kangaroos have never been found outside of Australia and New Guinea. Certain species of fresh water fish have been found nowhere outside of the Amazon Basin. Lemurs are only on the Island of Madascar in the last 20 million years. Emus, Koalas, Marsupial wolves, wombats, and marsupial lions are found only in Australia. Many other animals while on the Eurasian mainland are found only at great distances from Palestine, Mt. Ararat, and Mesopotamia. These include: polar bears, tapirs, aardvarks, Meercats, Irish Elk, Reindeer/Caribou, Moose, the Ice loving Macaques of Northern Japan. There are a few thousand other animals found far from Mesopotamia.

These represent animals never found in Mesopotamia/Ararat. How did Noah and his sons gather all of these animals from the far reaches of the left and right hemispheres and polar areas? How did they fit in the approximately 3.8 million species into the Ark if it was the wee little boat described in Genesis? How could they store enough food for the entire long journey aboard the tiny boat? When it landed on Mt. Ararat how did they return all of these animals back to their places of origin?

How did they transport some 3000 species of delicate fresh water tropical fish back to the Amazon Basin across thousands of miles of salt sea? How did they transport the Koalas, Wallabies, Kangaroos, Wombats, Marsupial wolves, Emus, and Marsupial lions back to the island continent of Australia? How did they get South American Tapirs back to South America along with Jaguars, sloths, prehensile tailed New World Monkeys, Armadillos, Alpacas, Llamas, as well as a million species of South American insects? (A fourth of all species live in the Amazon Basin.) How did they get the 9 types of Lemur back to Madagascar?

The amount of water needed to flood the Earths highest mountains would have to be enough to cover Mt. Everest at 29,000 plus feet or over 5 miles higher than present sea level. Can we even begin to imagine the immense quantity of water that would require? If Earth had been covered over 5 miles deep it would require 980 million cubic miles of water or 2.55 billion cubic kilometres of water. That water would have to be obtained and then carted away somehow. There are no empty spaces within the Earth for all of that water.

So, you see, it is a scientific, or really a physical impossibility that Noah’s Legend could be true. The size of the boat is far too small for the number of animals and their food supply. The gathering of the animals from all over the world and delivering them back to their places of origin would have taken many years and hundreds of ocean going vessels to accomplish that task. The obtaining and disposing of many hundred thousand or millions of cubic miles of water is impossible without divine magic, which I don’t accept.

If you postulate miracle, i.e. magic, you must show me proof that magic exists. You must prove that magic ever occurred in any time or place. Other than magic, the Noah’s Fable was not physically possible.

Amergin According to today's view of science the flood story makes no sense. but the ancient Hebrews had an total diffrent or wrong view of the earth.They thought the earth was flat, and was an body of water above the air or in space above the earth and below under they earth They believed the sky was a solid dome with windows to let the rain on earth.
They did not know about the kinds of animal life from around the world. They only knew of the aninals in their area So in view of the ancient Hebrews view of the earth the flood story makes sense. Today we know that view of earth is wrong.

[godmustbecrazy]

i have a question.
if Noah's ark had every species in single pair(male and female) then what did the non vegetarian animals eat in the ark? they couldn't have eaten anything which would disturb the balance of male and female or would cause the extinction of some species.

[nessa20x]

lol maybe thats where unicorns went...into the bellies of the lions????:) The flood myth is just that, unsubatntiated myth. We would certainly have polar records of such a flood and none exist. Also unless evolution happens extremely fast there is no way to explain the diversity and amount of life on earth today. Of course this would mean that flood believers would have to believe in a superevolution taking place.:)

If localized flooding did occur and lasted for a long time in the region, that is a different story and could have happened. However it still is not the biblical flood account and the ark thing is inconceivable.

[gregor]

And the kiwi has such a darned large egg because it is a shrunken (read island-sized) version of its largers relatively. As the kiwi species shrunk in size, it's egg stayed the same size.

As for a cite, I think SJGould included this in an essay, but I'm away from my library right now.

And Adler5, perhaps you can come back to this site when you're adler7 or 8.

[Fr8monkey]

Originally posted by gregor
And the kiwi has such a darned large egg because it is a shrunken (read island-sized) version of its largers relatively. As the kiwi species shrunk in size, it's egg stayed the same size.


If this is true, Why haven't scientists found and giant Kiwis? We must have used them in shoe polish:p

[Dr.GH]

Originally posted by Fr8monkey
If this is true, Why haven't scientists found and giant Kiwis? We must have used them in shoe polish:p

Close. They got e't by the Maori. Called Moa, they were close to 4 meters tall.

[rmadison]

Originally posted by Scotty
Since I just thought of an Ark question.
If the wood (what, some rodent wood, gopherwood?) was strong enough to hold the ark together, what would that strength be? Iron-like? (since I seem to remember that no wood is now strong enough to stay together in a ship that size).

If it was as strong as iron, doesn't that mean it would take tools stronger than iron to form into the correct pattern? Nails? Screws? 50-ton press?

goddidit.

-Scott

Ever read "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage", by Alfred Lansing?

Great book. Awesome book. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, on page 19 we are given a little description of the specifications of the ship. Here's a little segment:

"Her keel members were four pieces of solid oak, ove above the other, adding up to a total thickness of 7 feet, 1 inch. Her sides were made from oak, and Norwegian mountain fir, and they varied in thickness from about 18 inches, to more than 2.5 feet. Outside this planking, to keep her from being chafed by the ice, there was a sheathing from stem to stern of greenheart, a wood so heavy it weighs more than solid iron and so tough that it cannot be worked by ordinary tools."

Anyway, your question/comment above made me think of this, and I thought you might appreciate the factoid.

BTW, a little info. I dug up about greenheart.

http://www.durablewoods.com/greenheart.htm

http://www.durablewoods.com/products/pilings.php

http://www.glen-l.com/wood-plywood/bb-chap5e.html

http://www.slco.com/Greenheat%20Folder/greenheartpics.htm