GilgameshEnkidu

Have you seen this site?

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Lots of problems with that story

Sven

I looked again and found this:
Genesis 9:20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded [a] to plant a vineyard.
But this was after the flood. It doesn't say that he's always been a vinter. Everyone can plant a vineyard, especially if none are left and you want a good drink.

Yes, I agree. I just wanted to point you to the common apologist excuses. I think one should be aware of those when debating the story with literalists.

Well, yes. See above.
What is even more interesting: fishes (salt and fresh water) and plants. Both don't get even mentioned, but certainly would not have survived a world wide flood. Despite this, the dove in Genesis 8:11 somehow manages to find a fresh olive leaf...

Doug Shaver

Is that a rhetorical question, or do you actually not know the answer?

Helo

What I find funny is that mathematically, the flood is impossible. Theres not enough water on the planet to cover every landmass.

I remember seeing a program about it about six months ago and it said that if it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, there would be so much water vapor in the atmosphere that you would have drowned just by breathing.

gstafleu

Space warps. Has anyone considered space warps? I think they provide a good explanation.

First of all, they make it easy to store all the animals: just create a warp to an extra-dimensional pocket, much like in Rufus' backback in Heinlein's glory road. You can store lots of animals without taking up any space.

Space warps also solve the crap problem. You just connect a warp to a black hole and bingo, no more crap.

And then there is the South American Sloth problem, also easily solved by a space warp. You just warp the Sloths over, they don't even need to wake up.

I also see construction possibilities in the warp idea. You can warp your wooden beams into place (up the beam, Scotty!) and you can probably also use warps to keep the ship from collapsing in onto itself.

So, all in all, space warps seem the way to go.

BTW, somebody mentioned the need to store things like the HIV virus. What exactly does the Bible specify as being on board? If it was just animals you can forget about viruses (a category onto themselves), bacteria (protista, not animals) and a whole bunch of others. Not to mention plants, who have to fence for themselves.

Sven

Genesis 7:
14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.
15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark.
16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah.

Male and female of every living thing seems to exclude asexual species. And only animals are mentioned.

Helo

That would seem to eliminate the "kind" theory

gstafleu

Let's take this point by point:
This seems to correspond best to the intuitive conception of animal: something that moves. It seems to exclude water animals, presumably because they wouldn't have a problem with the flood . (Not that that is valid, sweet water animals would have a problem with a salt water flood and vice versa.)

This seems to be a further elaboration on the previous point. Animals had to be able to move, and they had to breathe, which again excludes water animals (at least in the simple intuitive conception we are talking about).
Yup, only animals. We then have a problem with other biota, like (intuitive) plants. What happend to the buttercups? Maybe the idea was that they were more flood-resistant than animals and didn't need help.

Having said all this, the resultant biomass would still be too large for a boat without space warps, so I would suggest my space warp theory still stands.

fromdownunder

God created a heap of spacewarps in Australia, South America, New Zealand, South Pacific Islands etc?, It seems to me that this is a bit over the top.

Using Occam's Razer, the simplest explanation is usually the best.

Given that God is all powerful and could do anything, the easiest method for getting the animals to the Ark is simply zapping them there.

So, I will go with Zap Theory as the preferred scientific explanation.

The size of the Ark does not matter, as the animals could have been minaturised to fit in a specimen jar on Noah's desk. A combination of Zap/Mini-me Theory explains everything

Norm

credoconsolans

:funny: Which of course, then begs the question, if god could just zap all the animals into an ark, shrink them down to Land of the Giants animals, why can't he just zap all the bad people away and spare the world a flood in the first place?