dlawbailey

The question is not whether it was possible to build a 450-foot wooden boat. That is trivially true, although it would have been one hell of an undertaking unless there were a lot more trees there than are now. But it's entirely possible there may have been enough trees. Human deforestation has been incredible. Trees ain't the problem - it's the structural qualities of wood.

Building a Pyramid is not only doable in the modern day, it's trivial. We build things higher and mightier and more complex than pyramids every day.

How the Egyptians built the pyramids is a really interesting question, but it is totally inapplicable to my point. There is no logical comparison. With cranes you can build a pyramid - any idiot engineering student can tell you how.

My point is this: you CAN'T build a 450-foot wooden vessel of any kind - barge or boat - that will float on even moderate seas for a year. You can't build it with the most modern woods and glues, not no how, not no way. Loaded with tens of thousands of tons of animals? Not a chance in the world it would do anything but sink.

I don't care how Noah was meant to built the ark or with what wood. I'll give you all the straight-grained oak, cedar and cypress you want, the most precise cutting tools, the most modern glues, and the best forming presses Weyerhauser lumber can provide and your 450-foot wooden "ark" loaded at to at least fifteen foot draught with animals will break apart and sink like a stone.

The Dutch "ark" that idiot built was nothing. First of all, we don't even know whether his "model" was seaworthy loaded. Mostly, it's HALF the length. Building a 225-foot "ark" demonstrates that you can build a 225-foot wooden boat and we all knew that. All it proves is that there are Dutchmen with too much time and money on their hands.

The Bible is very clear - a 450-foot wooden boat or barge that can be loaded with tens of thousands of animals and remain seaworthy for a year with a small crew.

No Christians try it because they know they can't do it.

xrayzed

But the literalists can always play there trump card: "it's a miracle!"

I came across that one in another forum where a literalist Baptist pastor didn't even bother trying to debate the science because he said it wasn't a natural event.

In a strange way it's less stupid than trying to reconcile science with biblical mythologies, but only just.

NZSkep

yeah, at some point the creationsit has to introduce a miracle - there are so many things that are simply physically not possible otherwise.

Of course, if god was simply going to use 'miracle', why bother with a flood at all? why not simply zap all the nasty people out of existence with a miracle?

Clouseau

Only a few, Americans, mostly, who, being isolated from the centre of culture, are very poorly educated in the Bible and its background, in history and in the sciences. Most people believe that the Biblical Ark is a symbol of Christ, faith in whom saves from destruction.

DBT

Hah, according to the Turkish Government... :devil:

Wayne Delia

Technically, there was no question at all. It was in the form of a challenge. From the opening post:
Due to an unfortunate wording, the description morphed from "seaworthy Ark should be recreatable" to a final challenge to "Make it [a wood boat 450 feet long or whatever] or shut up." Somehow, the "seaworthy" requirement got dropped in the final two sentences.

Not to mention the stated number of participants, and the age of the "ark-itecht". (Ba-doom ching.)

The doable and trivial part comes when modern technology methods are put to use. The techniques available to the original architects make the task remarkable, but certainly not miraculous or impossible.

That's how something CAN be done. But the same idiot engineering student can also probably tell you why a 450-foot seaworthy boat cannot be built, in terms of material science of the type of wood involved.

The "will float" requirement seemed to be missing from the material following "Simple challenge:" above. Such a boat, which can obviously be built, could not possibly float on even still water and would capsize under its own weight within a week, even if empty.

[snip much of the remainder - we are violently in agreement at this point]

The number of animals, including birds and insects, would at least have to be in the order of magnitude of several hundreds of thousands in order to support current-day speciation as we observe it today, if I remember correctly. The human population itself would not have genetically survived after a few generations of hopelessly inbred idiots. And a boat must be considerably more than "seaworthy" to withstand the ocean turbulence and heat generated by the amount of rainfall recorded over the five-plus weeks. People who understand the thermodynamics of the situation better than I do (admittedly, that includes about 95% of the population, including many elementary school children) can show that any ship of any size or construction components would have been vaporized if the rainfall fell at the required rate to establish worldwide coverage at a certain height over the highest known mountains.

That's mostly false. I'm not a Christian, although I was one for about a dozen years, abandoning my faith about a quarter century ago. I would speculate the biggest reason no Christians try it is because they can't personally afford it, or are unable to get corporate sponsorship for it. Even Home Depot, which would stand to reap huge revenue from such a project, wouldn't touch it, on the basis of "Just because something CAN be built (the boat itself, that is, not necessarily a seaworthy one) doesn't mean it SHOULD be built." I would further speculate the second biggest reason is that there is no need to do so, based simply on Genesis 8:21 - God said He wouldn't flood the earth again. Further, any attempt to verify God's word with factual experiments would indicate a lack of faith on the Christian's part; according to the apologetic alibi, God wants people to believe through faith, not through expermental verification. Again, this is not my argument, but rather apologetic arguments which might be put forth by typical Christians. Your speculation is that all Christians are necessarily hypocritical, which tars with an unfairly wide brush. To a small extent, it's true, in light of the supposed supernatural abilities Christians should believe they have if they believe Jesus in the Bible (i.e. Mark 11:22-24, Mark 16:17-18) but not to the extent that it's a two-billion-person conspiracy of proclaiming a truth which all who proclaim it know that it's false.

WMD

Wayne Delia

To which the rationalists can always respond: "If a miracle is allowed to come into play, then there was no reason whatsoever for building an ark. Noah and family could have loaded themselves into a canoe with two dogs, two cats, two lizards, and two butterflies, and God could have protected them from all harm by a 'miracle', while repopulating the world through another 'miracle'." Actually, there would be a reason for building an ark: God was a drama queen, and wanted the Bible story to have some sense of epic proportion.

Again, if the "natural event" requirement is suspended, then why couldn't God simply and painlessly vaporize all evildoers out of existence? The answer is, again, God is a drama queen.

"Stupid is as stupid does..." (Forrest Gump)

WMD

Wayne Delia

D'OH! I knew I should have read ahead. You beat me to the punch line.

WMD

Wayne Delia

Never underestimate the stupidity of Americans, even those deep in the Bible Belt.
I've read the Bible cover to cover five times, was a born-again Christian for about twelve years, and I can honestly say that not only do I not know any Christians who believe this, but also this is the first time I've ever come across even a suggestion of this particular theory. There are many things wrong with this analogy. Off the top of my head, here are a couple:

1) The salvation from "destruction" (analogous to Christian concept of hell) is based on faith in a savior who was killed, then resurrected. The Ark, as an analogous savior, would have had to become literally shipwrecked and damaged beyond repair, with the passengers at risk of drowning, before miraculously reappearing fully restored a short time later, to save the lives only of those who believed the Ark would reappear.

2) The salvation from "destruction" is based on faith in the miracle-working feats of Jesus. While a miracle (several, actually) would be required to keep the Ark afloat, those miracles would have come from God, not from the Ark itself. So the Ark as a symbol of a miracle-working Jesus falls apart.

3) The salvation from "destruction" in the Christian Gospels involves avoiding hell, and being admitted to heaven for eternity. After the Ark saved Noah's family and menagerie from destruction, the first actions of Noah were to plant a vineyard, grow grapes, make wine, get drunk, party naked, and pass out. (Sounds like a typical Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity mixer.) When one of his sons saw Noah naked, he covered Noah with a blanket. Noah woke up with a huge hangover (again, similar to Phi Kappa Sigma), realized what happened, and cursed his son's descendants into slavery for all generations. That doesn't sound much like eternal heaven at all.

Quite a few more problems can be listed, but I just wanted to point out that this is really the first time I've even heard that connection suggested.

WMD

Clouseau

It goes back to the fourth century, at least.

There are always problems with analogies, when taken too far.