Noah's Flood (response to "Noah's Ark")

J

J.C.

Registered Member
I'm starting a new thread here because a question which was
asked about Noah's flood interested me, but the discussion
changed topic before the question could be answered (no
offense to those who participated in the discussion)

Here's the question, as asked by croper (12-20-02):

" So what's the deal with Noah's Ark?

Is it supposed to be taken literally or has it just to illustrate some
kind of moral point?

Just because, if it's supposed to be real, there's absolutely no
way that a couple of guys could round up 2 of each creature to
be found on the planet. No way at all.

So what's the deal?"
____________________________________________________

I believe the Genesis account of Noah's ark is a literal account of
an historical event.

There are several questions raised by opponents of Noah's
flood. I'll attempt an answer to one at a time.

The question above, in part, seems to address weather such a structure as Noah's Ark could
contain enough animals -- and the number of animals that would
be required:

Lets take into perspective of the size of Noah's ark. The
dimensions of the Arc were about the same as a modern ocean
liner. 45 ft. high (about 3 stories) x 75 ft. wide x 450 ft long.
Spread over 3 decks, that's about 1.5 million cubic feet. More
than enough room.

Also keep in mind the vast majority of land animals are
quite small. But even larger animals could have been gathered
while they were younger and smaller -- though they wouldn't
necessarily need to be, the structure could have sustained tens
of thousands of animals for the year in which they were in the ark.

As for the number of animals collected, we're not
dealing with the numbers we would be if we were to distinguish
each different species within a particular kind (family) of animal.
The distinction of "kind" and "species" is a modern concept,
brought on -- I believe -- by the idea of Evolution.

This leaves the question of how the animals were
gathered. My response is this: First, during Noah's time, the earth
was not covered in as much water as it is today. Most animals
would have been able to access the same land.

Second, animals are very attuned to natural disasters.
When a disaster occurs, animals flee their environment. When a
flood occurs, their instinct leads them to the hills, above the
water. All that would have been required is to wait for them to come.

And remember, something of equal importance is God's
limitless capabilities. When considering questions about God, one
must take into account God's powers of influence and direct
intervention over the natural world. If there is no God, then the
entire premise of the Bible is ridiculous. However, if God exists,
He certainly has the capacity to exert His will on Earth.
 
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Originally posted by J.C.
I believe the Genesis account of Noah's ark is a literal account of
an historical event.
Click to expand...

You are correct in the statement that a historical event may have led to the development of the Flood story. Many have suspected as much, since it seems many religions and myths seem to have a commonality in some type of catastrophic event. There have also been archeological discoveries leading to the belief that the Mediterranean's creation through flooding could have sparked this mythological memory.

However, there are too many problems with the ark story. Way too many. We could go into them if you must, but common sense will help you before details are debated. Yes, it's likely there was a great flood localized in the Mediterranean area, or maybe it was more widespread than that through another catastrophes. But you cannot use that as proof of any ark. It is only a survivors' tale, passed down and retold many times, and eventually used to justify a god's wrath.
 
My friend, there are more proofs then the one I have listed. If
you have more oppositions feel free to list them. I'll try to explain
as much as I can, and I appreciate every challenge anyone can
present. It helps me to know what questions need answering.

I respect your opinion, but cannot accept it on face-valeu. You'll
have to back it up. Just try to keep it one topic at a time so I can
digest it.

Pretty soon I'll post a few more of the proofs I mentioned.

Thanks for the reply.

By the way, I know I'm not exactly a genious, but I do posess some common sense ;)
 
I assume you're arguing the ark part still, but I'll start with two easy global flood arguments. Like I said, I believe myself that there were possibly flooding events in that part of the world. But I believe they were of natural causes, and simply left a huge scar upon the survivors.

The Gilgamesh epic is much older than the Bible, Testaments New or Old. It contains a flood legend that is very similar to the Great Flood of Noah. Or visa versa...which do you think is the originater of the story and why?

A worldwide flood would have mixed fresh and salt water. Most aquatic species cannot easily adapt to such quick changes, so how did they survive? Noah didn't take them. Miracle I suppose...
 
There's a myth about a flood in Native American culture, too. Not sure which tribe off the top of my head, though.
 
I recall something along those lines too, Balder1. There's a lake I think in Canada that gets dammed up naturally by I think iceflows. Occassionally (eon speaking) the ice melts enough to allow the water to flood out, and explains a lot of otherwise odd geological features in the midwest. In short, there was evidence of major flooding, but no source, until someone made the connection with this lake that routinely empties.

Even the oldest societies of man have only been around for a very short part of Earth's history. Stuff that happens regularly on a large time scale seems to us to be odd catastrophic events. We just happen to fall in a fortunately quiet period...so far.
 
Lets take into perspective of the size of Noah's ark. The
dimensions of the Arc were about the same as a modern ocean
liner. 45 ft. high (about 3 stories) x 75 ft. wide x 450 ft long.
Spread over 3 decks, that's about 1.5 million cubic feet. More
than enough room.
Click to expand...

Maybe. Now prove that it is possible to construct and put to water a boat that size without modern materials and boat building methods.

In that regard, the largest wooden ship ever built, the six-masted schooner U.S.S. Wyoming, measured 329 feet in overall length. It required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked so badly that it had to be pumped constantly. It was declared unseaworthy and too long for wood construction. Yet the ark was deemed to be over 100 feet longer.
Click to expand...

http://home.inu.net/skeptic/flood.html

Also keep in mind the vast majority of land animals are
quite small. But even larger animals could have been gathered
while they were younger and smaller
Click to expand...

Oh yes, 8 people could easily get the smaller Sauropods on to the ark. That would be <i>no</i> problem. So they loaded up 16000ish(assuming a kind is like a genus) really juvenile animals(forgetting that some are dependent on their parents). And you'll need food: some animals only eat bamboo, eucalyptus, meat, termites etc. And these only exist in certain regions. Then Noah gets to shovel 8000 different types of animal shit whilst finding time to feed the 16000 animals. Penguins? Now did Noah go to Antarctica to get the penguins or did the penguins come to him as the bible says(Apparently the penguins went to the medditerian to escape the water?!)?. But hang on, the penguin is a type of bird, so perhaps they weren't needed. Instead, one species of bird took 4000 years to evolve into the thousands of species of bird today: your finches, Aegean Condor, Moa(4m tall) etc. Forget that 2(or 7) of any creature can not sustain a viable population(due to genetics).

As for the number of animals collected, we're not
dealing with the numbers we would be if we were to distinguish
each different species within a particular kind (family) of animal.
The distinction of "kind" and "species" is a modern concept,
brought on -- I believe -- by the idea of Evolution.
Click to expand...

see http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14345

Basically, you require an impossible rate of evolution to account for today's biodiversity.

This leaves the question of how the animals were
gathered. My response is this: First, during Noah's time, the earth
was not covered in as much water as it is today. Most animals
would have been able to access the same land.
Click to expand...

Please provide evidence that Kiwis were able to walk from New Zealand to the middle east 4000 years ago. Modern geology is against you. But you only needed kinds, right? Not any specific species? True, but the bird has to walk <i>back</i> to NZ. Interesting how the kiwi made it to NZ but not a single mammal ('cept bats), did. Ditto, the Weka, the Tuatara, the Kea, the Kaka, the Kakapo....


Second, animals are very attuned to natural disasters.
When a disaster occurs, animals flee their environment. When a
flood occurs, their instinct leads them to the hills, above the
water. All that would have been required is to wait for them to come.
Click to expand...

Assuming that they can run/fly/crawl that fast. Apparently the three-toed sloth ran from South America to Noah. Also you assume they know to run into the middle east, which for some reason was the last place to be flooded. Lastly, these wild animals showed up and were then convinced by Noah to get on a boat and let humans care for them. Hmmmm.

And remember, something of equal importance is God's
limitless capabilities. When considering questions about God, one
must take into account God's powers of influence and direct
intervention over the natural world. If there is no God, then the
entire premise of the Bible is ridiculous. However, if God exists,
He certainly has the capacity to exert His will on Earth.
Click to expand...

It was magic. Can't argue with that.
 
I figured I'd add one more. Inbreeding. Even giving the benefit of more than two of a kind, and allowing super evolution to create what exists now, the genetic damage due to lack of diversity would be quite large.
 
The fact that more than one completely different source speaks of
a global flood doesn't indicate that one source plagiarized
another. It simply indicates that more than one people took note
of the same event.

As a matter of fact, records of the flood are accounted for all
around the world. The Hindus, the Algonquins, the Greek, the
Mexicans, the Chinese, the Hawaiians , etc.

It doesn't mater who wrote it first, but whose account is more
reliable; whose account is not mythological. Many cultures have
put their own spin on the same event other times in history. The
fact that many sources give different accounts of an event
doesn't mean that event didn't occur, or that there doesn't exist
a plausible account for it.

A worldwide flood would have mixed fresh and salt water.
Most aquatic species cannot easily adapt to such quick changes,
so how did they survive?...

That's a good question. Perhaps the water would not have been
mixed long enough to cause too much devastation. After all the
flood subsided after about a year. I'll look into it.

Now I'll present an argument of my own: Fossils. How in the
world do we have so many fossils?

Here's one explanation: A flood. Let me quickly clarify. 40 days of
rain would have caused a global flood through the
accumulation of many local floods, thereby localizing the effect
to some degree. There would have been plenty of rushing water,
shifting of large masses of earth and glaciers, etc. all within local
environments, but still on a global scale. This may help to explain
the second question you posed (I still intend to look into it).

Back to fossils. It takes several elements in order to make a fossil
(especially of soft bodies and plants).

1) Immense pressure
2) protection from oxygen and other corrosive elements
3) (and this is key) these things must occur before the body
has time to decay

How is a fossil to form, other than by catastrophe? Something
just laying around would completely decay long before it could be
buried by forces of wind, rain, etc. under enough sediment to
allow it to fossilize.

The fact that there are so many billions fossils strengthens
the requirement for catastrophe.

An enormous flood would have presented the perfect
environment for the formation of fossils. Large masses of land
and objects would have battered, shattered, and buried many
creatures. The water soaking back into the earth would create a
vacuum effect, sealing the bodies under great pressure, all within
a relatively short period of time.

Let me know what you think.
 
Myths have their sources, that vary in accuracy. My point was not to say that one was more correct than another, but that a much older one, obviously from a story telling, rings very close to a younger one, which by some is taken as factual. Why didn't the Egyptians record in their records this global flood?

As to your fossil argument, the vast majority of fossils found are of shallow water aquatic types, due to their death and rapid covering by sediment helping in the ways you mentioned, not an even amount of various types of organisms.

Your third point is exactly why we don't have as many large animal fossils as you must think we do. Rarely do we get complete fossils at all, but have to use analysis to match different remains of similar animals.

Why aren't the fossils sorted by settling sizes? Each era had creatures of various sizes, and yet, they only appear in that era, not below or above. Selected settling?

Why are certain creatures fossilized more than others? Because it takes a long time for complete fossilization to occur. And for the most part, the older the creature, the more fossilized it is. The only exceptions are those scenarios where the organics were somehow protected from both decay and mineralization.

And of course, dating methods disagree with a same event burial.
 
I]Maybe. Now prove that it is possible to construct and put to
water a boat that size without modern materials and boat
building methods.[/I]
____________________________________________________

First, The Bible does not mention how long it took Noah and
his family to construct the ark.

Second, What kind of building materials would have existed in
Noah's time? What methods were used? How were any large
vessels created? Surely they existed? People are hard put to
explain how stone henge, or plenty of other structures were
created in their time. Yet, somehow they exist.

And Noah didn't have to put the ark to water.
____________________________________________________

In that regard, the largest wooden ship ever built, the six
masted schooner U.S.S. Wyoming, measured 329 feet in overall
length. It required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked
so badly that it had to be pumped constantly. It was declared
unseaworthy and too long for wood construction. Yet the ark was
deemed to be over 100 feet longer.
____________________________________________________

The material used for the ark was gopher wood, as I'm sure you
know. Gopher wood is very stable and very flexible, so it can take
a punch without breaking.

According to Norman L. Geisler Baker Encyclopedia of Christian
Apologetics
QUOTE: "Modern stability tests have shown that (a structure
such as Noah's ark) could take up to 200-foot-high waves and
could tip as much as 90 degrees and still right itself".

(note that the flood storms did not span the entire year. For
about the first 6 months it rained and flooded, the rest of the
time was spent with the ark resting upon Mount Ararat.)
____________________________________________________

Oh yes, 8 people could easily get the smaller Sauropods on to
the ark. That would be no problem. So they loaded up 16000is
(assuming a kind is like a genus) really juvenile animals(forgetting
that some are dependent on their parents)...
____________________________________________________

I mentioned that they could have gathered younger (not "really
juvinile") creatures, not that they necessarily did, certainly
not for every kind of large animal.
____________________________________________________

And you'll need food: some animals only eat bamboo,
eucalyptus, meat, termites etc. And these only exist in certain
regions...
____________________________________________________

Perhaps it's possible that animals will adapt to whatever food
their environment provides. They might eat only certain foods out
of preference, but not necessity.

And given the size of the ark there would have been ample room
for food storage.
___________________________________________________

Penguins? Now did Noah go to Antarctica to get the penguins
or did the penguins come to him as the bible says(Apparently the
penguins went to the medditerian to escape the water? But
hang on, the penguin is a type of bird, so perhaps they weren't
needed...
____________________________________________________

The Bible doesn't mention Penguins. They can stay alive adrift on
icebergs. They would have a tough time, but Penguins living on
large icebergs could survive.
____________________________________________________

That's as many questions I have time fore today, but keep 'em
commin'. Thanks for the many replys.

I also want to state that I'm no genius (surprise). Never claimed
to be one.Because I myself don't have all the answers doesn't
mean they don't exist. I'm not trying to be hostile, just backing up
my beliefs and participating in good well-rounded debate;)
 
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If fossils were created in the flood, they would all be mixed randomly. In fact, they exist in different strata. How do you explain that?
 
J.C.

You need to realize that you have offered not one single proof for a World Flood. You weave together mostly silly speculation to fabricate one of the dumbest of all myths.

Of course flood myths are ubiquitous. The life of primitive man was tied to the rythms of a fresh water source. It's not by accident that we see nascent civilization rise up along the Tigres, Euphates, Niles and Yangtze. Every one of these people were subject to periodic flood catastrophes. Even now, so-called 100-Year Floods can wreak disaster of almost mythical proportions. It's almost inconceivable that the flood would not seep its way into the folklore of Neolithic man.

So early Semites have a flood myth. How typical of them, and how entirely underwhelming. If you wish to take on the fools errand of "proving" Noah, give us a date along with the Geology, Hydrology, Zoology, Icthyology and Paleontology to support it.

Start with the date.
 
A lot of early civilizations have flood stories. Not only do they have flood stories, they also have stories very simular to each other to account for the "birth" of the world. Doesn't mean it is so. Just odd that so many would have such.

You could speculate that each group had communications in order to come up with a simular tales but that would not take into account the same simular stories appearing on different contintents. Maybe the flood story came across the Bearing Straight with the first supposed travelers to inhabit the North American contintent. That would mean the story goes very far back into the racial history. Or that many peoples had a love for the same type of stories.

For whatever reason, many peoples have the same stories. Could it possibly be that it was simply true?
 
Originally posted by wet1
For whatever reason, many peoples have the same stories. Could it possibly be that it was simply true?
Click to expand...
If by "same" you mean 'same but different', and if by "it" you are referring to a world-wide flood of biblical proportions, "it" is roughly as "possible" as that the flood lore was inspired by flash floods caused by unicorn tears.
 
From another post

The Discovery Channel has remarkable programs that are informative. One particular hour show entitled “Super volcanoes” had scientists researching calderas within known hot spots, like Yellowstone National Park and Iceland. The program explains what a caldera is, its devastating effect on the world’s weather when it erupts, and the last time the eruption occurred, which was about 6,000 years ago. What was interesting to note was they spoke to a genetic scientist who measured the mitochondrial DNA in humans, which is passed on only from the mother, and mutates at a known rate. The bio-diversity of the human gene pool was calculated. The scientist explained the origin of present human genes began with a small group of people 6,000 years ago. He explained that there was a large population but then was wiped out except for a small group. Of course, this corresponded to the calderas eruptions timeline, and there was no mention of Noah’s Ark, yet it certainly raises the question of its possibility from a separate scientific study.
Click to expand...

Scientists are certain these calderas erupted 6,000 years ago, and are calculating their possible eruption cycle. Could it be possible that devastating eruptions from these calderas created flood conditions that wiped out earth's life forms, except for the small group of people (maybe Noah's family)?
 
Originally posted by SVRP

From another post
... What was interesting to note was they spoke to a genetic scientist who measured the mitochondrial DNA in humans, which is passed on only from the mother, and mutates at a known rate. The bio-diversity of the human gene pool was calculated. The scientist explained the origin of present human genes began with a small group of people 6,000 years ago. He explained that there was a large population but then was wiped out except for a small group. Of course, this corresponded to the calderas eruptions timeline, and there was no mention of Noah’s Ark, yet it certainly raises the question of its possibility from a separate scientific study.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Absolute garbage. See, for example:
The mitochondrial Eve was one woman among thousands living over 150,000 years ago. [Discovery Channel Feature - The Real Eve]
Click to expand...
In fact, there exists zero peer-reviewed genetic science to support this 6000 year date.
Originally posted by SVRP

Scientists are certain these calderas erupted 6,000 years ago, and are calculating their possible eruption cycle.
Click to expand...
Really? Which "scientists" are those?
 
Originally posted by James R
If fossils were created in the flood, they would all be mixed randomly. In fact, they exist in different strata. How do you explain that?
Click to expand...

[Devil's Advocate]The animals were all in certain areas when they were killed by the flood. So the money fossils follow a certain pattern because they were all in those areas at the time of the flood. The waters pressed down harder in some areas than others.[/Devil's Advocate]
 
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