Tellurian

Have you forgotten? The Noah's ark story is just a mistelling of the story of Utnapishtim's boat from the Sumarian legend called the Tales of Gilgamesh.

If you really want to discuss measurements from the ficticious Noah story, then look in the King James version and compare the measurement of the height of the ark to the height of the "flood" and you will notice that the waters of the flood only rose less than 20 feet.

Doctor X

THAT is one for the record books . . . where is Winacre?

Riogan:

Welcome to the forums! I was a big fan of the "Biomass Theory" which not only considered how much feed the wee beasties consum'd, but how much waste they produced per day. One then considers the man-hours involved in feeding and removing and this all starts to sound like though e-mails you get around Christmas on how Santa must break the speed of light to deliver prezzies.

However, someone here mentioned the "Water Hammer Theory" which considered how much rain it would be to satisfy the conditions--such as cover mountains. This, in and of itself, would turn the Ark into pulp, level mountains, and all of that.

However, some cannot let go of a myth because to accept it as myth introduces doubt.

Tellurian:

I always prefered the Itsnabishnarubawhatever version, particularly how he demonstrates to Gilgamesh that he can never be immortal.

--J.D.

--J.D.

Biff the unclean

This is a supernatural event by definition.
No. it's a mythological event by definition

No amount of deciding how much food animals eat now under entirely different conditions means anything.
Because the conditions were that these were fictional animals on a fictional boat floating on a fictional flood.
These critters didn't have to eat anything, they weren't real animals

God could put the animals in a state of hibernation whenever he wanted too, whether it was natural or not. No one is arguing that the flood could happen without God.
What people are arguing is that the flood not only did not happen, it could not happen. Just like every other story about magic that you have ever read

Sometimes i think too much reasoning can be unhealthy...
Because reason clearly shows that your story is a work of fiction. A poorly written work of magical fiction at that.
To believe it you must stop using your reason. You must will yourself to become ignorant of simple facts, like animals eat and shit, gopher wood is brittle, all the water that's on the Earth now is the same water that has always been on the Earth.

If you purposely ignore facts that contradict your conclusions then on some level you must already know that your conclusions are incorrect.

cjack

Indeed.

This came up in a conversation I was having with a Jewish co-worker last week.

We were discussing my falling out with a Biblical literalist friend, which included the insistence that the Flood was real.

I'm paraphrasing, but my co-worker said something like "that's what's different about Judaism. We don't argue about whether or not its a myth, but we argue about what it means..."

You'll never, ever provide enough evidence to disprove the Flood in the eyes of a literalist.

That said, if literalists would spend more time trying to understand the message of the story, rather than trying to prove the story is true...

Doctor X

cjack:

Exactly! Indubitably!

In some ways, Judiasm is a much older religion and has passed through that literalist stage--an over-simplification. I recall seeig a wonderful film on the history of Judiasm--particularly the formation of the Talmud--in which one of the Rabbis noted that it is a history of "arguing." "They argued then, we argue now" about what it all means.

The problem with "argument" is it is hard to found a crussade on it. If you can doubt one thing, then you can doubt others. Worse, YOU might have it wrong and HE does not! That ruins a heretic burning rather quickly!

More important questions than those that try to salvage the myth is "why" did the writers--at least two--the J and P--and the "redactor" who stitched them together--take the myth and feel the need to preserve it.

--J.D.

Marduk

Noah was a serious Biochemist, he took DNA samples from all the animals, lots of room and not much weight, then he cloned them all back into existence after the flood.
In one of those alternative Biblical versions it says Noah took the SEED of every animal.

God: “I’ll wait over here while my assistant Noah jerks off a tiger”

Magus55

Huh, that makes no sense. The bible says the waters rose 20 feet above the highest mountains, not 20 feet total.

rlogan

With the data provided by Madmez, (9,000 cu. ft. of food storage space for horses) we are now down to storage space for 184 pairs of animals. That was a pretty drastic reduction. In my original calculation I believe it was 2% of body weight per day for the horses. Maybe my horses were too small, too. But, I don't know a thing about this. So I adopt the Madmez data.

Granting our "fudge factor" of size ten for itty bittyness, hibernation, and other clever excuses - the ark at this point can hold food for about 1,840 pairs of animals for a year.

To Biff - I'm just having fun. This is pretty high on the "giggle meter" for me. Like - one eighteen inch window. Moses puts the window in for the dove to fly out. But nothing for ventilation. So when moses is giving his lecture on this - I'm in the back asking these questions and getting my ass paddled after school.

As Dr. X points out, shoveling the waste out the one door or the window requires some slick engineering. But since there's no room for any animals on the ark to begin with, I'm assuming that problem away. Right now I'm just trying to figure out how to store all the food.

For a hundred thousand species we are going to need an ark for the amphibian food, seven arks for ungulates, and so forth. There are an infinite number of issues, like what do the lions, tigers, bears, and wolves eat. One ark of housecats, I hope.

Tellurian points out something I was going to ask, and Magus 55 has answered that. King James version seemed to say 15 cubits deep for the flood. But Magus55 allows for 15 over the mountain tops. Shouldn't take much more water for that. Probably half the volume of earth should do it.

Now, Marduk has put a real wrench in the works with the assertion of "seed" of animals on the ark. That's just no fun at all, Marduk - for you to pull an end run around me like that. Phooey! I need a citation on a breakthrough like that.

Dean Anderson

Then why does he bother with the ark at all?

If he's going to put the animals in a magical hibernation then he may as well just do it and let them wait out the flood unbothered by the miles of water covering them. If the animals are protected by his magic anyway, what's the point of having Noah build a boat to put them in? It's completely unnecessary. Come to think of it, why doesn't he just put Noah and his family in hibernation for the duration too? Noah was a drunk - he would have no problems waking up with the mother of all hangovers looking at the devastation around him and wondering what had happened the previous night...

To take it a stage further, why does he even bother doing that. Why doesn't he just send the Angel of Death down to kill the humans like he does to the Egyptian firstborn? (Actually, I can see a problem here - the Egyptian firstborn only numbered a few thousand. There will have been far more people in the world than that - maybe he didn't want to pay the Angel of Death overtime...)

Secular Pinoy

Pure gold! This has to be the best cop-out I've ever seen.And another one! Seriously, this has to be the unofficial BC&H post-of-the-month! I've got to blog this post!