sentinel00

Did water refract light before Noah's famous voyage?

In the bible, Yahweh seems to use the rainbow as his sign that he will never destroy the earth with water again... but didn't the rainbow exist before that story? Didn't water refract the light into it's consituent visible color spectrum already? Are we to believe that rainbows were created just for Noah?

Did god circumvent the laws of physics of that time period to introduce light refraction?

I need a little help getting the bible and reality straight here...

Mageth

Some fundies will claim that it didn't rain before the flood. Voila, no rainbows!

DMB

Magethlaro: How would they know?

Muad'Dib

Why not? Many creationist models have God drastically altering the laws of physics to make the universe look billions of years old when it hasn't really been around for more than a few thousand. Such a small thing as this isn't going to faze them.

Mageth

Magethlaro: How would they know?

No mention in the bible of Adam or Noah owning an umbrella?

Marduk

1) there are legends that before the flood you could not see the sun or moon, there was a canopy of clouds covering the Earth 24/7.
2) laying down a bow as a sign of peace pops up in other Mesopotamian legends, The Babylonian God Marduk layed down his bow as a sign of peace, his war with the other gods was over, they agreed to make him the big cheese. The Jews are one of the few (perhaps the only ones) who incorpoarated ordinary people in their legends, in other cultures you had to be either a god or demigod to get into the story at all.

excreationist

The canopy is meant to be an invisible water vapour. It would have just dimmed the stars. It is also called the firmanent. In the Bible it talks about separating the waters below and the waters above (the firmanent). And in the flood it talks about the "windows of heaven" being opened. (This would be the canopy collapsing) I used to be a creationist - that's how I know about this stuff.

Besides explaining where the flood waters came from, and why there were no rainbows before the flood (no rain), the canopy is also used to explain why the lifespans were so long (due to a filtering of UV rays and different air pressure). Creationists say that the canopy would have spread the climate around the world fairly evenly like a "thermal blanket" so that there would be ideallic weather across the whole world. Which explains why there is coal (even tropical coal/oil?) at the poles. The filtering of UV rays would have minimized genetic mutation so that animals faithfully reproduce after their own kind. But after the collapse of the canopy mutations eventually built up to a degree that in the time of Moses, incest was no longer allowed. (The reason incest can result in deformities is that closely related people have similar genetic defects and usually genetic defects are masked by the parent who doesn't carry that defect in their DNA)

[ December 04, 2001: Message edited by: JohnClay ]</p>

Muad'Dib

JohnClay,

OOC, would it bother a creationist if (s)he found out that the ancient Hebrews meant an entirely different thing when they referred to the "canopy" than what you described?

Sauron

They trace the belief to thess verses:

Glenn Morton writes how impossible this would be, and attributes a misunderstanding to the creationists. However, the text above seems to be pretty clear: up to that point, no rain had fell. The plants were watered via a different process, mist from the earth.

excreationist

Well when I was in high-school my non-creationist pastor told me that, but I just thought that the Hebrews forgot about the real meaning of the words when the Bible doesn't really say that the sky is solid. Another creationist interpretation of the firmanent is the "atmosphere".
So I don't think the creationist would believe that that's what the authors of the Bible intended the verses to mean. At the time I believed that God inspired the words of the Bible. I went on what the words said - I didn't care what the Hebrews thought.