Noah

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Just to clarify, she PM'ed me before this happened. So she's not "calling me out", I think, if she is, I'm fine with it.

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*I'll contest the Noah's ark story:*

*1. He couldn't have gotten 2 of each species into the ark. Because to do so would require that he travel to many different climates. Islands especially have animals and plants that cannot be found elsewhere, for example, kangaroos and koalas in Australia. Madagascar also has a lot of species unique to that island. So if Noah were to actually do this, he'd have to travel all around and even pick up the penguins and polar bears at the poles. That would have taken him forever with the technology of the time, and he clearly didn't do that.*

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Actually, Noah didn’t travel anywhere. The animals came to him. (Remember the supernatural thing I was talking about? Genesis 6:20) Noah spends about 100 years before the flood came in building the ark and during this duration the animals came to him. I say 100 years because when Noah was first mentioned in Genesis 5:32, he was 500 years old and when he got into the ark he was 600 years old. Also some people even secular geologists believe that at the time the continents were together. To be honest, I am not too sure what to think about that. Plus God did not command that Noah to bring every known animal. The ark only carried air-breathing, land-dwelling, crawlers, and winged animals. Only the “couples” of each species, at the time the tremendous variation of species did not exist during the time of Noah.

If you want to resort to "supernatural" explanations, there's no point in this exercise because we can call it all "supernatural". But I remember you said that if the bible doesn't fit with known facts and history, you'll stop believing (it was you, right?), which is why I started this.

No the continents weren't together 6000 years ago (which is how old you believe the earth to be, correct?).

Some people think that evolution happened like a branched tree. The further back we go the less branches there are. That is not quite true, after there was enough time for a certain amount of species to appear, these species evolved, some died out to be replaced by others, so the variety would be more or less similar during the recent periods. Kind of like this:

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Anyway, we're talking 6000 years, that's nothing in evolutionary terms, plus the rate of extinction was lower than it is now, so if anything, there were more variety of animals during Noah's time.

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*2. Supposing he did do 1., for the sake of the argument, he would require high tech air conditioning to keep all the animals healthy and alive during the flood. And these animals don't just eat anything, you feed them the wrong things and they'll get sick. What about the carnivores? Do they eat other animals? Are we suggesting that there's enough food to allow for such rapid reproduction?*

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It is suggested that Noah brought juveniles and wouldn’t have brought adults inside the ark. This means that there was more space in the ark, enough food and a lot less waste.

If so, you're still faced with the problem of not having the right food for the animals. Especially if the animals came to him and he didn't travel there to gather their diets as well.

What about the carnivores? What do they eat if they're all juveniles and can't reproduce yet?

You're not taking into account the lifespan of animals. A dog goes from newborn to adult in 1 year. Smaller animals mature in a very short time because they're preys in natural environment and their survival strategy is to reproduce as often and as soon as possible. I think a rabbit in the wild only lives up to 4 years. And if they don't reproduce in your scenario, what were the carnivores eating?

You did not address my point about air conditioning for the animals. This is a crucial point, we're talking about 1 year, not 2 days.

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*3. Even supposing all the animals had things to eat, who's going to have time to feed them?*

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Noah and his family probably fed them, they did provide the food.

Perhaps you'll understand how incredible this is after reading what I said about the number of species at Noah's time.

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*4. According to http://beyondflannelgraph.wordpress.com/...ood-last/, the flood lasted for 1 year. This is madness, we're talking about a lot of water with only 1 place to go: evaporation. If this much evaporation took place, it'd form clouds and rain. (Actually, correct me if I'm wrong, the water couldn't have come from anywhere to begin with. We're talking about worldwide rain for 40 days and nights)*

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Sorry but the link says it doesn’t exist? The flood came from two places, from the sky and underground. Which suggested that huge volcanic eruption, earthquakes, and a “fountain” of water were released.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/are...waters.asp he probably explains it better than I do.

I went to the first link that calculates the length of the flood. Cos I was too lazy to look it up in the bible, it's fine if it doesn't exist, that's the only thing I took from it.

I think boru explained why an ark couldn't have survived all those things.

And earthquakes usually floods one area, it's the displacement of water, not really having more water.

And where does the water go?

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1207/features/noah.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/...flood1.htm
^ states a worldwide flood could have been possible. Also I think the second links holds a creationist view and a secular view, just to be fair 
http://www.free-online.org/free-thinking...liable.htm
http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2012/the-old...-verified/ (there’s things he says that you might disagree on, nonetheless he does provide the sources )

Uhm, quite unwilling to do homework at this point of the discussion, lol. I looked at howstuffworks, and it mentioned that a few myths have a great flood story. That's not surprising. Obviously a worldwide flood isn't something we can determine based on eyewitness accounts since at that time no one could've known they travelled all around the world.

If there's evidence that a worldwide flood occured, you can provide the link to that and I'll read up. But keep in mind that that doesn't prove Noah happened, only that a flood happened. It's the Noah part that is the most incredulous in this entire thing.

I have a question that I may elaborate more on later but first I will like to know your opinion on. Most secular scholars agree that many books of the OT were written after the fact, yeah? Since, Daniel and Ezekiel and other prophetic books were too “accurately demonstrated” that it must have been written afterwards. Here is my question, the authors who wrote the prophetic book, why state accurate descriptions of war and then we find in Ezekiel that he fails to “prophesy correctly” what had happen to Tyre? If the books were written after the events, then why make a mistake? They obviously knew what happen in the events but failed to do with this one? (I don’t know if this makes a whole lot of sense but I’m trying to put it into words)

I don't study the bible. Or any religious text. I can't take them seriously enough to do that. And my memory of the bible has faded to almost nothing after 4 years of not reading it, so I don't really have an opinion on this. It's just another mistake, that's not surprising given the bible's track record.