I see that this Evan Almighty movie is coming out and it got me thinking about Noah's Story. Alot of people in this country believe in the Noah story. I don't know if it is blind ignorance to it (they are just saying yeah, whatever) or if they really believe a glbal flood covered the Earth.

I wrote a long message on email and I'm going to paste it here. The bold text is a literal Bible interpreter and the regular text is me arguing his point. I'd like to hear what people here actually believe, and why they believe it...
Even more funny are the explanations by literal Noah followers on how this could have happened. I seriously think they make this stuff up. The bold is from an actual website and the normal type is me.


There are many cultures all over the world which have tales of a flood that completely covered the earth and destroyed all but a few people. I argue that the reason that there is so much similarity between the myths and the Genesis account is that this was a real event.
Or more likely it is a ancient "fish story" in which the original event gets re-told and re-told over generations until the actual details are exaggerated out of proportion. There are plenty of stories in the ancient world (creation myths, wizards, mythical creatures, Atlantis even) that may be based more on fiction than fact. The flood story may have been based on an actual flood, but it no doubt was a small-scale event that was so traumatic on the local people that their story endured for hundreds of years. The Bible writers felt it fit to add a flood story into the Bible to demonstrate the power of God and the obedience of His followers.

I estimate that 12 to 15 generations had been born on the earth by the time of the flood. (Genesis chapter 5 tells us that Noah was the ninth generation from Adam.) Easily, there could have been a billion people alive on the earth by the 600th birthday of Noah.
This one tried to explain how there were enough people on Earth to require a global Flood. He doesn't provide any reproduction rates but this appears to be very rapid reproduction. He does not even try and explain the most improbable event of the two of each animal and the eight members of Noah's family re-populating the Earth. Not only does this assume NO predation of animal on animal but also must mean that Noah's family must practice incest to make children to re-populate the Earth. Not to mention that NO POPULATION of any species (endangered species are a great example) can recover if reduced to two individuals. The two could mate and breed but the babies would be sick and vulnerable to disease. The cheetah these days has thousands of individuals but scientists are worried that the population is sick to to inbreeding. So what do you suppose saves Noah's animals from extinction?

I see two major problems with the local flood theories. You cannot cover the highest mountains with water for several months if the flood was only regional. (Gen. 7:20). Secondly, and even more significant is the covenant which God made after the Flood. God promised, "Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." (Gen. 9:11). If the flood of Noah was merely a local flood, then God would have broken that promise hundreds of times since then. Other problems include that a population as large as one billion would not likely be contained within a single valley that would be amenable to local flooding. Besides, some people and animals could have simply gone to higher ground as happens during local flooding today. Even if the world's human population was not widely spread, nothing would have kept the birds and all the animals confined within that local flood area. Genesis 7:21-23 says that all creatures outside the Ark who lived on the land were destroyed. I also object to the possibility of a local flood because God could have merely instructed Noah and his family, along with the animals to be saved, to migrate out of the area that would be flooded.
This addresses the global nature of the Flood. The whole paragraph can be reasonably explained by saying, "this is just a story". It wasn't really the whole Earth! Did a Middle-Eastern resident know of the existence of Australia, of the whole Americas, even Europe! They only knew of Palestine, of Mesopotamia. A major catastrophe in just one river valley (where they all concentrated for farming), like a FLOOD, could have been catastophic. Since this was their "world", the word "world" was carried with the story until today when "world" is interpreted literally as "global".
The author is right about the second part: that is EXACTLY how the world continued to carry on easily after this local flood. Most of the animals got out of the way! Noah only had to carry a few farm animals and the local fauna of the region he was from. Alot more manageable than millions of species!
In conclusion a local flood can explain both the story and the way the world carried on afterward with no mass extinction...

There is nothing to convince us that the oceans were as deep or that the mountains were as high prior to the flood. Consider Psalm 104:5-9. "You who laid the foundations of the earth, so that it should not be moved forever, You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled; at the voice of Your thunder they hastened away. The mountains rose; the valleys sank down to the place which You did establish for them. You have set a boundary that they may not pass over, that they may not return to cover the earth." From these verses we might reasonably conclude that God made the mountains higher and the valleys deeper to make adjustments for the greater quantity of water on the earth after the Flood.
This explains how you didn't need "as much" water to cover the Earth since it all supposedly was lower before the Flood. Not only is this ridiculous but there is NOT ONE BIT of evidence to support this. Plate Tectonics alone rebukes this argument. Mountain building and seafloor spreading occurs over thousands to billions of years. The rate of movement is at maximum 2-5cm per year. This movement has been going on for the entire history of the Earth. Surely a post-Flood movement like explained above would leave evidence? Yet there is none out there, just movement at the slow speeds I've explained. In addition, movement of the mountains up and the sea down like explained above would have been a catastrophe greater than the flood! This movement is associated with volcanism, earthquakes, and outgassing of volatile gases. And although the drainage (to where?) of all that water could erode canyons and ocean basins, a sudden drainage of water over a couple of days would only erode a microscopic layer of rock. It would move sediment but where are these giant sediment deposits? Plus if you assume erosion somehow got "faster" in this event, how do you suppose mountains were able to rise if the water was eroding them at a fantastic rate. Accepted scientific data today has shown that the amount of creation (mountains and new crust) is matched by destruction (plate subduction and erosion). This is why we still have mountains despite billions of years of erosion. The Earth is not dead, it is dynamic!

The Bible says, "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened," in Genesis 7:11. This is consistent with saying that volcanoes erupted and that previously stored water high in the atmosphere was released. A great quantity of water is released with a volcanic eruption. If hundreds of volcanoes erupted both above and below the surface of the oceans, then the amount of water spewing forth on the earth is unimaginable to me. Genesis 1:7 tells us that the earth originally had water above the sky. With the greater surface area at a very high altitude in the earth's atmosphere, the thickness of water, probably in a gaseous state, would not have to be very great to store an incredible quantity of water which God could release upon the earth. This water would have been thin enough to allow adequate sunlight through. Also, the weight of this water would have caused there to be a greater barometric pressure prior to the Flood. Worldwide atmospheric barometric pressure drops and increased sunlight penetration would have created a world that was very different after the Flood. These changes provide reasonable theories about the decreasing life spans and the extinction of numerous species after the Flood.
This is all pure fantasy. The geysers and hot springs, even if they erupted thousands of times stronger, could not flood the Earth in the time allotted. Volcanoes have water vapor but they have even more sulfur and carbon dioxide, as well as ash. Noah would have to deal with water AND a nuclear winter if this happened with volcanoes. Plus they wouldn't deposit water directly into the water, it would be water vapor which would enter the atmosphere. Creationists also think there was a thick water layer above the normal atmosphere (like a water blanket). Not only does this go against physics and reality (no evidence of this in ice cores), but the atmospheric pressure created by this extra atmosphere (air has mass too!) would crush life forms and make it impossible for man to breathe. It would be like us living on Venus! This "blanket" as described (dense gaseous or liquid) could not stay up in the air. It would drop to the surface by its mass alone! Then comes the question of where did it go? The only way to remove water from the Earth is evaporation or soaking into the Earth. The Earth's soil at full saturation could not hold all that water. And if the atmosphere was thinner after the flood it sure did not evaporate. If someone has found a drainplug, please let me know. There is also no evidence of a mass extinction 6000 years ago unless it is the one caused by MAN. The last great extinction was after the Ice Age, in which none of these creatures co-existed with the creatures of Noah's World. The idea of 600 yr. old people is also fanciful. Although God could have kept this guy alive for 600 years, there is no human bones in existence of a human living beyond 80 in the ancient world! In the contrary, all the evidence points to lifespans barely 40 years.

Fortunately for Noah, he did not have to search the world and capture them. God caused these animals and birds to come to Noah.
Oh, the first "God did it" argument. We need something more concrete than that. It's like accepting David Copperfield making the Luxor Hotel in Vegas disppear and believing it was really gone! Magic is not real evidence and will not get you acceptance into a scientific publication.
How God got all of those millions of species from their respective islands and continents is beyond me. What two creatures did he favor? What happens if one of them got eaten or drowned on the way? How did he tell the "brainless" creatures to go to a place in the Mid-East when at their rate of travel it would take hundreds of years to get to the Ark? Or did he just teleport it? hahahaha.

We cannot be sure what the earth's geography was like prior to the Flood. Five or six generations after Noah, we can read in Genesis 10:25 that in the days of Peleg (which means "division") that "the earth was divided." Many believe that this means that God divided the earth into the continents we now see (though, I have to admit, it might instead mean that God divided people by language). If the land prior to the Flood was one big continent, this would indeed have facilitated the migration of animals to Noah's location. After the Flood it would have provided a way for the animals unique to Australia to get there.
How could the earth divide into seven continents in 5-6 generations? Plate movment is so slow that it would take millions of years for a Pangaea supercontinent to divide into 7. Again see above how there is no geologic evidence showing an instantaneous placment of continents. Read a little on plate tectonics and you'll see how it really happened. There are bands, "tracks", mountain ranges, and spreading centers in which you can trace the movement of plates and the collision of plates. Plus the unique faunas of each continent are explained by their ancestry and when the continents were touching (Antarctica has fossils). Plus God would also have to get the animals back home (where there would be no plant life) and keep them alive and inbred until they re-populated the Earth. I'm sorry but the scientific explanation is so much more viable...

A very real possibility was that the animals Noah put in the Ark were not full grown. It would not take as much food for young samples of each species. According to calculations in The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, page 69, the Ark could hold the equivalent of 522 standard two-decked railroad stock cars. To carry the no more than 35,000 estimated individual vertebrate animals, the average size being that of a sheep, would require no more than 146 such railroad cars.
Like baby animals are no less hungry? They would eat plenty of food... so they would have to gather 10 tons as opposed to 30. That deserves a lunch break! As for the second part, yes you could cram 35,000 species (two of each) into 146 cars but they wouldn't be happy. That means around 300 species the size of a sheep into a car! What!!?? What about space, what about animals attacking each other, what about space to roam and stretch? What about space for Noah and friends to get in a feed and remove crap? This estimate also ignores the millions of OTHER species on the planet, many with ridiculous demands and picky eating habits. If he didn't carry plants and fish, what about the birds, mammals, and insects that require plants food? Only a few species are able to hibernate, most others could barely survive 10 days, forget 40 days.
The most unbleievable aspect is that many Creationists believe that Noah carried not only 35,000 modern vertebrates but somehow the millions of other species that have existed on the planet, including dinosaurs! Forget how all of these species could co-exist for the few thousand years that Creationists believe they existed together before the Flood, but how did these millions of additional species fit on the ark? A baby T-rex or Brontosaurus was bigger than two railroad cars! Even owrse is the fact that they believe only a "kind" was taken on the ark. I don't know what a kind is, maybe a genus?, but this would assume that one "cat" off the ark would magically "evolve" (that must be the word) into the dozens of cat species and subspecies. And creationists are SOOOO against the word evolution yet they say that these "kinds" of clean animal diverged into thousands. There is also the question on how the dinosaurs and mammoths went extinct and yet large mammals adapted for the exact same environment managed to survive?

We must remember that God did not abandon Noah in the Ark. The Lord did not say get into the Ark at the beginning of the trip, nor come out of the Ark at the end. God told Noah to join Him in the Ark. (Note "Come into the Ark" in Genesis 7:1 and "Go out of the Ark" in chapter 8:16.) There is no doubt in my mind that God could have calmed the animals during the storm, as easily as Christ calmed the Sea of Galilee. (Mark 4:37-41). It is entirely possible that God even caused many of the animals to hibernate throughout much of the trip.
Yup <rolls eyes>, God did it all. Every impossible thing that they can't explain gets the convenient argument. He could have calmed the animals, but how calm would you be if you were packed rib-to-rib with a macaw and a hyena? Plus you'd be sitting in your piss and crap and eating off your neighbor's pelt.

This is clearly not true when we consider that the Ark's cargo space was equivalent to 522 railroad cars, as mentioned above. Also, the Ark was surrounded by drinkable water. If we assume that the ocean's salt content was the same as today, then the excess Flood water likely diluted it sufficiently for drinking.
Yes, so for drinking water, they would have to use up precious space for millions of species to carry water tanks. So much for the stability of the vessel. And they would force the animals to drink brackish water!!?? How dumb is this statment "it was dilute enough for drinking" If you diluted seawater (35ppt) with fresh (0ppt) at equal amounts, you'd get brackish water with around 15ppt. This is like drinking water from a salt marsh or the Chesapeake Bay! No thank you...

Freshwater fish certainly cannot survive in saltwater. But, there are numerous examples of saltwater fish being able to survive for extended periods in fresh water. Keep in mind that the whole Flood period was a miracle of God, and I see no reason not to believe that He could keep saltwater fish alive during the event.
<1% of saltwater fish are euryhaline (live in both salt and fresh water). The rest would die, no doubt about it. Take your tetra out of your freshwater tank and see how long he lives (a few hours at best) and try to put your damselfish in freshwater (dead within the hour). Fish must live in strict salinities... any more than a few ppt salinity difference will KILL them. It is physiologically impossible unless God modified the tens of thousands of fishes excretory systmes and then put them back. He must have also modified all of the mollusks, echinoderms, crustaceans, cnidarians (each and every polyp), and worms too in both salt and freshwater. YES, at the same time he was telling Polistes carolinus how to get to Saudi Arabia.

The Ark needed no means of propulsion or steering. There was no particular place that it needed to go. After exposing the land to the incredible Flood waters, it is unlikely that Noah's family could have recognized any landmarks after the Flood. The Ark came to rest where God wanted it to come to rest.
Yes, and this massice bulky vessel stayed seaworthy and watertight through 40 days and 40 nights of rain and waves... I guess a couple of crewmembers worked the pumps while not shovelling @!#$ or feed, eh? Plus if you flooed the landscape, most mountains would still be there when the waters drained.

This might be true if they were out of control or if they were all fully grown or if they were always awake or if they had no assistance from their Creator. The God who was powerful enough to destroy the earth with a massive Flood, was unquestionably able to care for those in the Ark for a year.
Sure, I believe it <sarcasm>. Cuz it couldn't be just a story... I do not doubt the power of God but you can use that excuse to explain anything! When you use it to explain something stupid like this you are belittling God.

I am told that prior to the theories of Charles Darwin, most educated men explained the vast quantities of fossils as evidence of the global Flood from the days of Noah. In spite of what you may have heard elsewhere, animals and plants decay rapidly under normal circumstances, rarely leaving any trace for very long that they ever even existed on the planet. The mechanism for creating fossils requires unusual circumstances where an organism is buried before it can be eaten by other animals and bacteria. It is my opinion that the fossil record and sedimentary layers are best explained by a worldwide Flood.
Prior to Darwin (and other scientists too), Man didn't know any better. They thought the Earth was Flat, tried to make gold from coal, and thought we were the center of the Universe. You believed what the majority believed. Once we began to unlock the mysteries of the planet, theories changed. It's called progress. Creationists are clinging to a 2000 years old belief just because it was included in the Bible. If it was in the Iliad or Odyssy would it be any less believable? Keep in mind that evolution, even if considered a "religion" is universal, from Christians to Muslims to Hindus to Buddhists. You can't say the same for Christianity, which has more sects than imaginable. Before you attack a thoery that is backed by evidence, you should at least find out which version of Christianity is right...
The stuff about fossils is correct.. they do decay rapidly. That is why fossils are so rare. There were millions of T-rex on the planet yet only a few dozen skeletons preserved. Local flood events that bury animals explain this (notice alot of fossils are in old river beds). A global flood would bury millions of individuals at once and thus provide millions of fossil examples. Not the case! We would also see a stratigraphic arrangement of fossils with the heaviest animals sinking first and the smallest last. Plus all animals from all eras would be mised together with no order to the layers. This is not the case, and th ordering and sequence of the fossils fits with the Old Earth idea. There would also be a uniform layer of sediment( and rather thick too) all over the Earth like the K-T boundary at the end of the Cretaceous. There is no universal Flood layer with all fossils in it.

This is all I'm going to say on this... it is just so beyond possibility that it is just silly. Anyone with an open mind and common sense can see this I hope!

I used to think the Kool-Aid man was real.

Oh ya.

Holy hell man you have way to much @!#$ time on your hands and/or no life if you were upset enough over people believing a story about Noah's Ark that you took the time to do that..

No one knows if the earth was covered in water back then, none of really know if theres a heaven or hell of if god exsits...Its called having Faith....Some of us have it some of us dont...

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Holy hell man you have way to much @!#$ time on your hands and/or no life if you were upset enough over people believing a story about Noah's Ark that you took the time to do that..

it's called the war forum, and like I said this was an email from a while back when I was debating this @#$#. This is what this forum is for. And yes, I have too much time on my hands

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No one knows if the earth was covered in water back then, none of really know if theres a heaven or hell of if god exsits...Its called having Faith....Some of us have it some of us dont...

this has nothing to do with faith in God, believe in God, or the existence of God. I believe in God, in Jesus, and in Heaven. I am just asking why people believe in this ridiculous story literally. If you don't have anything constructive to add about the topic, don't bother posting...

SPITfire wrote:

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Holy hell man you have way to much @!#$ time on your hands and/or no life if you were upset enough over people believing a story about Noah's Ark that you took the time to do that..

it's called the war forum, and like I said this was an email from a while back when I was debating this @#$#. This is what this forum is for. And yes, I have too much time on my hands

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No one knows if the earth was covered in water back then, none of really know if theres a heaven or hell of if god exsits...Its called having Faith....Some of us have it some of us dont...

this has nothing to do with faith in God, believe in God, or the existence of God. I believe in God, in Jesus, and in Heaven. I am just asking why people believe in this ridiculous story literally. If you don't have anything constructive to add about the topic, don't bother posting...

WOW, so if this story in the novel known as the bible is ridiculous, what do the faithful feel about the rest of it then?

I would not be considered christian by a longshot, so at what point do they decide what is "true" and what isn't?

You believe in God, but you don't believe he could get animals (which he created) to get along? What exactly do you believe about God? I don't understand how you could believe in an omnipotent being, but still believe there is something he can't do.

Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? Isn't that just as improbable?


I guess you pick and choose what parts of the bible you want to believe.

can god make a rock so big he can't lift it?

SPITfire wrote:This is all I'm going to say on this... it is just so beyond possibility that it is just silly.

I'm a Christian but I don't know if the Noah's Ark thing happened or not. BUT... I fully believe it is possible - only if God where quite directly involved in all of it. The story is quite impossible by standard physics, but consider how standard physics operates... everything that happens does so as a direct result of other forces(also being restricted by the laws of physics) acting upon them - yes that is a majorly oversimplified and non-all-inclusive explanation of it but still. Under those rules - this story could not have randomly happened. But as ToBoGgAn said - "can god make a rock so big he can't lift it?"

I'd say no. I believe that God can act upon any matter that he pleases in any manor - and bypass the laws of physics at will - He wrote those laws governing the behavior of matter and energy - did he not? So being the creator who wrote said laws, would he not know a way or have direct access to a way around them? Most likely could he not manipulate them at will? A computer programmer can do this with his own "creations," so why couldn't God? There are any number of ways he could accomplish all the "impossible" things we see in this story - or any biblical story for that matter. For example - feeding the animals - God could simply create food in their stomachs - a simple task for one who once created a universe. That by far isn't the only method available to handle this.

Some people mention how to fit all of Earths species aboard a vessel - but your forgetting about evolution - and that there are more species today than their where in life's earlier years. What year that would have been however - I don't know but the point holds. There are species alive now that once did not exist, species that once existed that no longer do, and there are species which do not currently exist that eventually will. Of course some of those species probably "didn't need no stinkin' ark" to survive anyways.

As far as the fish go - so if fish cannot ever exist in a environment that is slightly different in salinity - then how did fresh water fish evolve? Consider that the evolution only holds if that change is beneficial to survival. Now if a fish - who was originally living in salt water - evolved to be a fresh water fish, from hatching it would instantly find itself in an environment in which it is unable to survive. But... only after that evolution could it survive in fresh water - its parents surely weren't spawning in an environment they couldn't survive in - so it would have to be hatched into a salt water environment. It would have to be REALLY quick about getting into and up a fresh water river basin - as if it would know where one would be even if it could make it there alive. Then... it still has the problem of finding mates - in order to carry on its genes... but no other fish could survive in that fresh water - so no mates and the species is still screwed. There is really only one answer to this - a fish that can thrive in either environment.

Again I'm not saying that I necessarily believe in this story(especially the E-mailed version of what happened lol) - personally I think it is likely that the Bible has been altered, either intentionally and/or accidentally, so I take it more as a guide than a literal interpretation - but I still believe that this story IS possible only if God where directly involved. But there is a difference between possibility and reality.

Now as for mentioning the incest necessary after such an event... Incest - the game the whole family can play!! (j/k) Seriously though - yes it would be necessary. This is also true of the Adam and Eve creation story - if you believe that. But it is also necessary in at least one other belief system - Atheistic Evolutionism. Consider that once a creature randomly receives a (hopefully beneficial) mutation, that creature will still need to breed to spread that newly improved DNA. If you want to make sure that new genetic code isn't simply bred out of existence - you'd better expect ALOT of inbreeding.

Continual breeding between creatures that share this genetic code. Those creatures all originate from one common mutated creature - so yes most all creatures alive are the result of massive inbreeding no matter what you believe - unless you actually believe that entire species evolved simultaneously aka the very complex DNA of an entire species all randomly happened to mutate in exactly the same manor at the exact same time. Something like that happening randomly would take more "faith" to believe in that all other belief systems combined. It would basically take direct intervention from some all-powerful deity(rather than random occurrence) etc - to pull that one off.

WannaBzee (aka BadAceDesign) wrote:I used to think the Kool-Aid man was real.

Oh ya.

WHAT?! USED TO THINK!! How DARE YOU now deny the existence of the Kool-Aid man!!! Blasphemer!! Heathen!! Filthy retch!!




I've never heard of this "part throttle" before. Does it just bolt on?

The logisitics and the sheer size of the Ark needed would be nigh-impossible to construct with ther technology at hand. But basically, the need for space of 2 of everyy specie that can't fly or swim? (in one telling i heard it was 6 of every clean specie and 2 of all the unclean species), the size of the arc would have been ginormous. Really, unless Noah had some serious slave labor (which puts a taint on the whole story), I find it unlikely that it would have been built in his lifetime, and less likely that people would build it for him with no chance of getting on board.

But that being said, i seriosuly doubt that the entire world was flooded, but the story has some plausibility to it.

Likley, what happened is this: The age of Judaism and the old testament makes it plausible that the whole Noah's Ark story originated in the fall of the last great ice age. Many humans, especially primitive ones in a agrian or community style society (as opposed to a hunter/gatherer nomadic society), would congregate on shores and riverbanks. It's likely that the story has its origins in a culture that was along a river, that got flooded when a glacial dam broke and drained a glacial lake (see also: the Megaflood caused by the failure of the prehistoric Lake Missoula). As such, what likely happened was someone took a bunch of his animals aboard his very large ship to escape the flood, and thus, after telling and retelling for generations some parts of the story become more grandiose.




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WOW, so if this story in the novel known as the bible is ridiculous, what do the faithful feel about the rest of it then?

there is a clear distinction from the believable Bible and the unbelievable Bible. Most of the Bible is meant to be read as a history book where it describes the early history of Christianity (the prophets, saints, followers, Kings, Apostles, etc.) There is an occasional "miraculous" event interspersed but most of the Bible is completely believable, and has been proven to be true. The stories in Genesis are simply beyond belief, and while it is fully understandable to believe in miracles involving Jesus (He is the Son of God), the stories of creation and Noah are based on no factual evidence at all.

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can god make a rock so big he can't lift it?

I don't believe in the Biblical story of creation, so yes AND no. I beleive God created the Big Bang and all of the laws of the Universe then let it happen as science tells us. The Universe is billions of years old, the Earth is billions of years old. God did not lay a finger on the Earth until Man showed up. So the rocks of the Earth were not created by God... they may have been created in an abstract sense but the rocks are artifacts of the accretion of the proto-Earth and geologic forces. BUT, if God wanted to make a rock for S & G's, I'm sure He could lift it

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You believe in God, but you don't believe he could get animals (which he created) to get along? What exactly do you believe about God? I don't understand how you could believe in an omnipotent being, but still believe there is something he can't do.

See above for why we can pick what we want to believe. The two stories in Genesis (creation and Noah) are steps and bounds less believable than other events in the Bible. Most of the other miracles in the Bible occur to a single person. You can say God acted on that person and gave them power. This is a whole lot less complicated than the global events of creation and Noah. Read the thing I wrote regarding creation. Man is the only creature on Earth that believes in the existence of a God. Why should God have to involve Himself in the lives of animals and with the dead Earth and Universe? I believe that God only directly involves Himself in the lives of Man. That is why the whole Bible deals with God, Jesus, and Man. I fully believe in His power to do whatever he wants but he really had no need to until Man came around.
The biggest reason why I can deny these two stories is that they go AGAINST all the evidence around us. If something on this grand of a scale happened, where is the footprint? You can't proves or disprove the stories of Jesus making tons of fish and bread out of a little. That is faith and also something that could happen with the Son of God. But when you believe literally that Noah happened as said in the Bible, then it turns from blind faith to stupidity.
To go back to my original post, this is questioning the LITERAL interpretation of the story. I believe that there was a flood at some point and the Noah story was added as a nice "filler" parable to the book. It was a good read, especially to the people of that time.

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I'd say no. I believe that God can act upon any matter that he pleases in any manor - and bypass the laws of physics at will - He wrote those laws governing the behavior of matter and energy - did he not? So being the creator who wrote said laws, would he not know a way or have direct access to a way around them? Most likely could he not manipulate them at will? A computer programmer can do this with his own "creations," so why couldn't God? There are any number of ways he could accomplish all the "impossible" things we see in this story - or any biblical story for that matter. For example - feeding the animals - God could simply create food in their stomachs - a simple task for one who once created a universe. That by far isn't the only method available to handle this.

I thought that the Bible said that creation occurred at the beginning and not since... and one of the main laws of thermodynamics is that matter cannot be created or destroyed. If God created everything (whether it be by the story or by other means) then he no doubt created the laws at the same time. So your argument is flawed simply by the fact that you "assume" that God created the Universe. You base your point on something that is unproveable. I believe in some sort of creation but you'd call it "created evolution" because I believe in the Old Earth/evolution but I accept that matter cannot come from nowhere.
As for the animals, yes you can take the easy way out by saying "God can do anything", but it accomplishes nothing to defend your point because if somebody replicated the Ark today, you'd have a sunken boat full of dead animals!

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Some people mention how to fit all of Earths species aboard a vessel - but your forgetting about evolution - and that there are more species today than their where in life's earlier years. What year that would have been however - I don't know but the point holds. There are species alive now that once did not exist, species that once existed that no longer do, and there are species which do not currently exist that eventually will. Of course some of those species probably "didn't need no stinkin' ark" to survive anyways.

Well, let me begin by asking when you believe this boat floated? If it was several thousand years ago like the Bible says it take evolution out of the question. Say you took all the "kinds" of deer or mouse and consolidated them into one. Then you put them on the ark. Evolution is such a slow process that you'd need alot more than 6000 years to evolve all of your deer and mice again. Add in the fact that creationists are ardently against evolution. If you say evolution did it, then why not believe in the scientific way of explaining things?
Yes, diversity is greater today but not much greater. We had very much the same land area and so similar amount of niches back in the Cretaceous Era. We may have a greater diversity of families (cuz evolution forms a "tree") but the numbers of individuals was probably the same. Again, the patterns of diversity fit the scientific model accepted today, NOT the Ark theory of mass extinction and a 10000 years old Earth. Plus the fossil record shows several, quite separate, mass extinctions, not ONE. And they happen to distinct groups of animals (Permian-sea creatures, Cretaceous- dinos) that are living at separate times.

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As far as the fish go - so if fish cannot ever exist in a environment that is slightly different in salinity - then how did fresh water fish evolve? Consider that the evolution only holds if that change is beneficial to survival. Now if a fish - who was originally living in salt water - evolved to be a fresh water fish, from hatching it would instantly find itself in an environment in which it is unable to survive.

It is not a big jump to go from fresh to salt, evolutionarily speaking. The fish just needs to adapt it's excretory system to the salt content of the water it's in. Saltwater fish lose water out of their cells to the saltwater. They need to "drink" water to replenish the water in their cells and also have a excretory system that secretes salts. Freshwater fish, on the other hand, GAIN water from the outside since their body salt content is greater than the water. They do not have to excrete salts and usually just piss lots of excess water into the water body. They both have the same cells and it would not be a challenging "evolution". Now I'm not saying that they could change in the course of a few days (like Noah's would have to), but over time they could gradually make the change over generations. But more simply, most fish families( and inverts too) are restricted to EITHER fresh or saltwater. There are very few families that have representatives in both types of water. So most likely that evolved INDEPENDENTLY to each set of water masses and there was no need for one to have to evolve to live in the other.

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Now as for mentioning the incest necessary after such an event... Incest - the game the whole family can play!! (j/k) Seriously though - yes it would be necessary. This is also true of the Adam and Eve creation story - if you believe that. But it is also necessary in at least one other belief system - Atheistic Evolutionism. Consider that once a creature randomly receives a (hopefully beneficial) mutation, that creature will still need to breed to spread that newly improved DNA. If you want to make sure that new genetic code isn't simply bred out of existence - you'd better expect ALOT of inbreeding.

It is a much bigger problem in the Bible story. In nature, populations reduced to two individuals (or even 100) are likely to go extinct because of inbreeding. I real life, inbreeding is a death sentence to a species. In the evolution of a new species there is no inbreeding. For example: Say a finch is born that has a bigger beak to a normally beaked mother. This "beak size gene" was mutated and gave the baby this feature. The baby grows up and is more adapted to his environment (thicker seeds, say). He carries the genes for a "big beak" his whole life. Say he reproduces more since he is more fit than other males. He doesn't have to mate with a "big beak" female because one doesn't exist yet. He mates with "normal" females and has a clutch of eggs. According to genetics, his genes mix with the mother's genes. But random arrangment of genes, some of the babies have his beak and some have the mothers beak. Now you have a perfectly un-inbred population because the male and his babies can still mate with their "normal" brethren. After untold generations say the thick seeds dominate and the normal billed birds all die off. You are left with all thick-beaked birds on that island. The population is now large enough that they are past any threat for inbreeding. This species is not genetically isolated and will eventually become a new species. To no inbreeding and a new species. The Noah story cannot progress like this since it assumes there are only two of each animal!

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Likley, what happened is this: The age of Judaism and the old testament makes it plausible that the whole Noah's Ark story originated in the fall of the last great ice age. Many humans, especially primitive ones in a agrian or community style society (as opposed to a hunter/gatherer nomadic society), would congregate on shores and riverbanks. It's likely that the story has its origins in a culture that was along a river, that got flooded when a glacial dam broke and drained a glacial lake (see also: the Megaflood caused by the failure of the prehistoric Lake Missoula). As such, what likely happened was someone took a bunch of his animals aboard his very large ship to escape the flood, and thus, after telling and retelling for generations some parts of the story become more grandiose.

YES, YES. That is what it was... I have an explanation like that in my essay... lol

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Again I'm not saying that I necessarily believe in this story(especially the E-mailed version of what happened lol) - personally I think it is likely that the Bible has been altered, either intentionally and/or accidentally, so I take it more as a guide than a literal interpretation - but I still believe that this story IS possible only if God where directly involved. But there is a difference between possibility and reality.

It is understandable and respectable to believe in some sort of Flood (God created or not), but the version pushed by the literal Biblers is beyond reason. The sotry was probably added by the original writers as a moral guide to show us the power of God and a warning if we stray from Him. Believing Noah is a fable doesn't make you any less of a Christian.

first, every major religion has a great flood story. any particular reason to single out this w/o mention of the others?

second, participants in each faith have just that---faith. if you have never had it, then you cant understand it.

but if you take the postulate that God (any version of the entity--Jehovah, Allah, Vishnu, etc) is omnipotent and can do anything, then it should follow that it would only take a very small part of His power to take care of all the animals, etc. on an ark or through any of the other stories. how? i dont know....but thats the part of religion thats called faith.

Not all of them. Many of them, yes, but not all.

Anyhow, it's not a slam on religion, per se, but of the way that word-of-mouth histories can become corrupted, and why it's dangerous to take it as 100% fact.


Goodbye Callisto & Skaði, Hello Ishara:
2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD
The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
they have in common is that their country is run by a bunch of fargin iceholes.

Again, I am not against belief in a flood story... just the belief in the literal version as told in the Bible.

There could easily had been a river flood, dam collapse, or some other catastrophic event in the early history of man that caused the flood told in all of these stories. God could have warned a man and his family and told him to take on animals. He would have taken on a few dozen types of animal (farm animals mostly) and also some for eating and sacrifice. The "ark" was more likely a smaller craft of some sort. This rode out the storm and came to rest elsewhere.

In primitve cultures like 6000 years ago, this story could have been elaborated and glorified over dozens of generations to become the story we see in Noah. And since all of the evidence points to a localized event, that is most likely what is was. How can we be the judge to say that the story was the Word of God or just an old story blow out of proportion (as all word of mouth stories tend to be). The Bible was written before anyone knew of science anyway!

Why does everyone assume that Biblical authors knew nothing of science? Do any of you recognise the names of Aristotle, Pythagoras, etc? Did you know there were communities of scolarly work and that they actively debated problems? Without Pythagoras there would be far fewer ancient ruins still standing and for that matter most geometry lessons would be different in today's schools.

Please, just because something is old does not mean it lacks knowledge. If you remove nuclear tech, electricity (likely) and modern physics, there is nothing new in science scince the 17th century. I guess then the big deal would be steam tech, but even that idea was ancient, just the material developement wasn't there. When it comes to subjects like math, ancient Greece and Egypt contributed 99% of what we know now.

Think about it.

PAX


PS: This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated
- Mitch Hedberg (RIP)

Actually, hahaha, the question would not be assuming that they knew nothing of science, but what sorts of sciences. In biblical times, how many people situated in the modern-day middle east even knew of the existance of North America, South America, or Antarctica? Or, more specific, about glacial dams and the like.

In fact, come to think of it, how many biblical authors would have even known what a glacier is?

Not saying they're dumb or ill-informed, but to me it was written within a certain context. Basically, "Behold the Power of God" kind-of-way. Not a bad thing, per se, but there was likely far less ado about proving that something was the force of God vs. proving something was the force of something scientific.

Really, the question is not whether or not the were dumb or not, but how they took the context of what they were hearing. IMHO, lijkely they looked at the story of Noah's Aek and thought it was a testament to the power of God. Because they likely didn't have knowledge of glacial dams, ice ages, and the like, it was most likely the plausible explaination given at the time. Again, no real fault, but part of the process of knowlege in general is realizing that what is herladed as fact now can be disproven on the future.

But, taking a Monotheistic side of this, it could be said that it doesn't matter whether it was a torrential rain that caused a global flood or a glacial dam failing, since it was God that set the flood in motion.

But then, if that was the case, wouldn't we have to call it a "God Dam?" <rimshot>


Goodbye Callisto & Skaði, Hello Ishara:
2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD
The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
they have in common is that their country is run by a bunch of fargin iceholes.

hahaha: People like Aristotle, Archimedes, Pythagoras, etc. were the exception rather than the norm. I highly doubt you could count these "Renaissance" men on both hands. The vast majority of ancient peoples were polytheistic, illiterate, and proably blind to just about anything we take for granted today. Hell, they probably thought their nation was the "world". Even the most brilliant minds of the day had visions of alot of the technology we have today, but they didn't have the means to make them. I am not belittling their accomplishments, because they were the pioneers of the day, but they were not associated with the Bible. There is no science to be seen in the Bible and none is necessary because the "commoner" ouldn't get it.

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But, taking a Monotheistic side of this, it could be said that it doesn't matter whether it was a torrential rain that caused a global flood or a glacial dam failing, since it was God that set the flood in motion.

By "global" I assume you mean local because I don't know what type of dam could hold back a world-wide amount of water

Nope.

I mean that, in taking a monotheistic (being the Monotheism "Big 3") standpoint, it shouldn't matter whether rains cause a global flood or if an ice dam failed causing a catastropic flood with local effects but would have been perceived as "worldwide" by the people involved. Either way, it could be usded as justification of God because God set the events in motion...be it "global warming" after the ice age or a massive deluge.

Reaffirming that my "slam" is not against christianity or religion, per se, but taking an ancient and probably outdated synopsis of an event and taking it as verbatim when new, more correct knowledge is unearthed.

'cause if that was the case, then I can say that Loowit (Mt. St. Helens) is still pissed off at Wy'east (Mt Hood) and Kilicitat (Mt. Adams) and is invokinkng the "No Nookie" Clause by smoldering menacingly, and expect to be taken seriously in the scientific community.


Goodbye Callisto & Skaði, Hello Ishara:
2022 Kia Stinger GT2 AWD
The only thing every single person from every single walk of life on earth can truly say
they have in common is that their country is run by a bunch of fargin iceholes.

Brilliant scientific minda are always the exception not the rule, that point is moot. I did not intend to give any opinion on the flood story but rather to remind people that we stand on the shoulders of giants and we should not ever forget that.

The ancient greeks knew the world was round also.. Like I said, ancient peoples were not ignorant to science. In fact they studied natural sciences more than you might imagine. When it comes to botany, astronomy etc, many cultures were way more advanced than they get credit for.

As far as the Noah story goes, it leaves many questions, but inbreeding isn't one of them. If you know genetics, the problem is not as big as some make it out to be. If a brother and sister mate their offspring have a chance at being somewhat handicapped in some way, higher than if two non-relatives reproduce but did you know it's about a 20% chance? DId you know that they also have an increased chance of having an exceptionally high functioning child as well? The pendulum swings both ways. They have about a 60% chance of having a normal child as well. The odds are in their favour, not at all what some would have you believe. In the Bible, reproduction within family lines was only "ruled out" after Leviticus. Before then, line breeding (or inbreeding) was quite normal. It is still employed heavily in livestock and show animal areas.

Is the noah story the same event described in the story of Gilgamesh? Maybe.

PAX




PS: This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated
- Mitch Hedberg (RIP)

The inbreeding problem may not be as problematic for humans, but it is a big problem for other animals. The problem is, not the individual baby, which might be perfectly able to survive, but the population as a whole. I f a population is reduced to two and they breed, the gene pool is very small and any recessive genes in that population are more likely to be expressed. More importantly if some disease strikes the population and they all have the same genes, the population will go extinct rapidly. The problem is obvious in endangered species preservation... a species reduced to a few cannot survive in the wild.

Just like in natural history, packs will split and become diverse to the point where the family line is lost. True in everything but the Cheetah and it is still around. Yes, it is at risk in a big way as the you mention they will all have the same disease resistance or lack thereof but, it hasn't killed them yet.

Now look at domesticated animals regarding inbreeding or line breeding. Horses, cattle, dogs, cats, tropical fish, you name it, often line bred, in fact more often than not. Introducing a new individual is considered a risk in aquaculture...


PAX




PS: This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated
- Mitch Hedberg (RIP)

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Just like in natural history, packs will split and become diverse to the point where the family line is lost. True in everything but the Cheetah and it is still around. Yes, it is at risk in a big way as the you mention they will all have the same disease resistance or lack thereof but, it hasn't killed them yet.

yeah, but there is still no "freshening" of the gene pool. You split up an inbred population and it's gonna still be inbred and they will still have the same limited gene pool. The only way to improve the gene pool is through emigration/immigration of new individuals or mutation. And since mutations are random and sometimes harmful, and there are no other populations to mix with, the inbred population will remain so for it's entire existence. Not something I'd want to trust to every species on Earth!

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Now look at domesticated animals regarding inbreeding or line breeding. Horses, cattle, dogs, cats, tropical fish, you name it, often line bred, in fact more often than not. Introducing a new individual is considered a risk in aquaculture...

But this is artificial selection by humans. They are indeed bred through lines and are often inbred, but they are also maintained by man, fed by man, and live with man. You release any of these fancy breeds in nature and they will revert back to their ancestral form in a few generations! See instances of feral hogs, dogs, goats. etc

Fiction. Would you really believe that a man put all of the creatures we know of today on a huge boat and survived the worst flood the earth has ever seen if it wasn't for tradition and a "holy" book? What about the claims of other holy books?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Thursday, June 21, 2007 6:08 PM

________________________
Ron Paul in 2008!
Constitution > Politics

Welcome to Christianity, the biggest contradiction of all time



1989 Turbo Trans Am #82, 2007 Cobalt SS G85

Rodimus Prime wrote:Welcome to Christianity, the biggest contradiction of all time

Back that crap up. You can't just drop a bomb like that and leave. Let us know why you said that. First, it's not true, second, it has diddly to do with the subject at hand. If you don't like Christianity so be it but to spead half-truths and lies is just wrong.

It goes like this.. You either get it, or you don't. It is obvious that you don't get it. Maybe someday you will, maybe never, or maybe you'll be like the millions before you that realize far too late and end up pretty darn religious on their death-bed. Let's hope not.

PAX




PS: This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated
- Mitch Hedberg (RIP)

lol... I'm surprised no one has left a one liner

"Fact, God did it"