Noah

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Here are some insurmountable problems with the ark myth. None of what follows is original work, but the points raised (by people more knowledgable than myself) do seem fatal to the story. This list is by no means exhaustive. Apos in advance if these points have been covered by other posters here.

1. The Animals Travel: Sure, they had a year to get to the ark site, but a lot of animals don't travel that fast (I'm fairly sure it would take a koala more than a year to waddle from Australia to the Middle East) and a significant number of animals have life spans of less han a year.

2. The Number Of Animals: Being as generous as possible, let's assume 10 000 species (there were considerably more). That's 20 000 animals. The ark as described could have held that many - barely. But the trouble is that there is a second passage in Genesis which instructs Noah to bring seven of each kind. That's 70 000 animals. The boat would not have held them all. And, even if we go with the lower figure, the ark would have been so crowded that the animals would have died during the year the boat was afloat.

3. Juvenile or Adult: Noah is told to take 'the male and his mate' aboard the ark. Juveniles, by defintion, do not 'mate', so he would have taken adult animals (if you accept the ark tale as literal, I don't see how you can get round this one).

4. Caring For The Animals: Eight people feeding 20 000 animals (being generous again) even one meal a day is 2500 meals served per person per day. But let's cut that in half (assuming the 'male and his mate) so that Noah, his missus, their kids and in-laws would only need to serve 1250 meals/day. If they worked at it round the clock, that gives us a little over 1 minute per meal. Which leaves - effectively - zero time to feed themselves, wash themselves, attend to sanitary needs, clean cages, and so forth.

5. The Ark: Without getting into the various definitions of 'cubit', a wooden boat, even a barge, that big is going to leak and leak badly. Given the problems in #4, Noah's clan would have had no time to bail and the boat would have sunk on Day 1.

6. The Ark Redux: Forty days and nights of rain, coupled with the specious 'fountains of the deep' is going to 1) smash that boat to flinders (that's a LOT of water pressure) and 2) steam-cook every living thing on that ark. Water gushing up from any significant depth is going to be hot. Really hot. And given the amount of water Arkologists need to posit to make this work, it's a safe bet that the water is going to carry the latent heat of fusion of rock with it.

7. The Landing: When the the cruise ended, there must have been gobs and gobs of dead animals lying around - there would haven't been enough fish to finish off all that carrion is so short a time. So, why weren't Noah et al carried off by the myriad diseases known to acompany dead, rotting flesh?

8. The Animals Leave: Ok, all their food is gone. I suppose the carnivorous scavengers could have made it home eating carrion, but what about pandas (who live almost exclusively on bamboo) or koalas with their all-eucalyptus diet? Why didn't they starve on the way?

9. The Logical Problem: All of the above can be explained away by simply saying God miracled these issues out of existence (the boat wouldn't leak, the animals were hibernating, and so on). But if you're going to be able to claim that, they why did God have Noah build the boat to begin with? If God has to tinker with everything along the way to make it happen, why not just spare the people and animals he wanted to save without gooing through all the kerfuffle of having the ark in the first place? The whole thing smacks of myth.

Boru

[Nine]

Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!

The old testament is fucking hilarious. The people who believe it are even more so.

[Cyberman]

This article detailing many of the issues with The Whole Silly Flood Story might be useful.

[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.

[gall]

So, by pasting this here you mean to...

*shruggs

get abused by everyone that doesn't believe this bullshit.

Probably because they have not gotten enough abuse from their own religion recently. They seek it like this to try and justify something that they never really believe in but desperately want to.

IF you are reading this and you are the above rethink what you are thinking and join the rest of us in freedom and logic. You don't need to fear your death, hell, heaven, or anything else because only death is certain and you can speculate all you want but the most important thing in life is life. Choose to live or wait to die it is all on you.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

@AnaMejiaP, I actually haven't even started to nitpick yet. There are way more problems than what I've mentioned. And I think you've noticed that I haven't demanded for evidence yet. But let's see if we can even move pass these very simple problems the Noah's story has.

[Bad Wolf]

AnaMejiaP
So apparently noah waited 100 years for the animals to come to him. Putting lifespans of animals aside, a slow animal, like a sloth could not travel this great distance in that time. What do you suggest? That he hitched a ride on a faster animal?

Although the logistics and practicality of this myth has been done to death, I would like to ask why all the predators on the boat didn't simply eat all the prey animals?
BTW just saying something is supernatural and using that as an explanation, is not an answer. Its an argument from ignorance.

I usually wouldn't get involved in talking about something this stupid but I honestly can't stand the idea of you actually believing this stuff. Please stop rationalising to try and fit your beliefs and instead open your eyes.

[Cyberman]

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

It always makes me laugh that some people try to claim that the Universe was created about the same time that humans discovered beer; not so much the claim itself, but that they seem not to understand why they're not taken seriously for it.

In that vein, this now classic Onion article is as perennial as ever:

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World

[Fruity]

Ana, I feel kind of weird coming back on this note, since we have been best friends for so long. You know, we walked around the thread holding hands, shit chatting, talking about life (well, thread life, anyway), but I have to jump back to reality. Please, don't stop liking me.

The Ark.
1. Why would God need an ark? Think about it.
2. Why kill everybody by means of a flood? Why not just snap his fingers? Think about it.
3. Why would God need two animals of each kind to continue their species, instead of just starting over like the first time? Think about it.
4. If God would take his time to do something so huge, so miraculous (in an evil way) like performing this giant flood that kills everybody (almost), why not make it more splendid and perfect, more kind and wonderful, like say... something I would do if I were God and my people did me wrong. I'd just fix them. I wouldn't kill them. I'd fix them. Think about it.
5. Think about the women, men, and children who supposedly drowned. Think about them drowning. Think of babies gagging in the water. A loving God did this? Oh... old testament. So he changed? Think about it.

I'm sorry, but this is so silly that it's hard not to be silly about it. I think I'm doing good, though.

If I came to tell you about a giant squid that created the world say, 1000 years ago, and you proved to me the world was older than that, and I still jumped through hoops to defend my belief, what would you think of me? Why is your fairytale more legitimate?

[Simon Moon]

Your honesty is greatly appreciated. But in my disclaimer "Before I begin" I did state that my views will indeed contradict your world-view. It may seem stupid for you, but it's indeed true to me.

It's not that your views contradict our worldview, they contradict reality.

You are entitled to your own beliefs, but you are not entitled to your own reality, or your own truth.

There is nothing in observable reality that provides any evidence for a global flood. ZERO.

Geology - nothing
Biology - nothing
Hydrology - nothing

Not to mention the death of fresh water fish in salt water, death of corals for the same reason, death of every land plant on the planet, etc, etc.

The list goes on and on...

So, either you are forced to ignore reality in order to retain your literal global flood belief, or you are forced to believe in a god that after causing a global flood (to fix his own mistake), has purposely hid ALL the evidence for said flood.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.