Vinnie

Did you reason to that conclusion all by yourself?

Vinnie

aikido7

If both skeptics and believers end up discussing the Bible below deck in a large wooden boat for 40 days and nights, there are two things we can be sure of:

1. Both will see things from a fundamentalist, literalist perspective and

2. Neither will notice the arrival of the dove.

Just trying to be reasonable here....

rmadison

Hold on a second...

Before you draw any conclusions about what we can, and cannot be sure of, I want to agree on that "40 days" thing...

Are you sure you want to go on record with 40 days and nights?

How long was Noah's Flood?

40 Days? (Gen 7:4, 7:12, 7:17)

47 Days? (Gen 8:6-11)

150 Days? (Gen 7:24, 8:3, Gen 7:11 plus Gen 8:4)

225 Days? (Gen 7:11 plus Gen 8:5)

318 Days? (Gen 7:11 plus Gen 8:13)

375 Days? (Gen 7:11 plus Gen 8:13 plus Gen 8:14)

Also, after we agree on how long Noah's flood really was, we then need to figure out whether building a seaworthy, 450ft long, wooden boat is even possible. No known technology - even today - can pull it off.

the largest wooden ship ever built, the six-masted schooner U.S.S. Wyoming, measured 329 feet in overall length. It required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked so badly that it had to be pumped constantly. It was declared unseaworthy and too long for wood construction.

http://home.inu.net/skeptic/flood.html

And then after that, we need to figure out where all the water came from, and where it went. I did some calculations on this a while back, and to flood the entire Earth to a depth of 5 miles, would require the oceans of three other Earth's, dumped onto our little globe, over the time period which we still need to agree on.

I really like Noah's flood!

rmadison

Right. The only safe thing to do is not to think at all, because who knows how much reasoning is healthy? I mean, the slightest little bit of reason could be unhealthy as hell for all we know, right?

Don't think that too much reasoning is unhealthy Magus...just accept it. See, if you think about it, then you are probably reasoning, and like you said...that could be unhealthy.

Again...just accept it...don't think.

In fact, don't even think about what I've said...just accept it.

Oh, shoot...Now I'm thinking!

Damn you Magus! You've tricked me into thinking!

HerodionRomulus

¿Who?

Brian_iiiii

I'm impressed that Noah finished this big boat at the ripe old age of 600! Or maybe his sons did most of the work, and he just supervised.

Vinnie

Dove + olive branch which does not grow at high elevations = local flood?

Calzaer

Exactly. I mean, that's precisely what he did with the olive tree. No olive tree could withstand 20 cubits of water pressure for more than a year; no sunlight, no oxygen, no CO2, etc. He obviously just sort of magicked it into existence at the proper time, or else magicked it into being able to survive the flood. Why didn't he just do that for Noah and the animals and save everyone a lot of grief?And Noah wouldn't have had to provide a taxi service to get, say, buffalo to North America, koalas to Australia, giraffes to Africa, etc.

I came up with list of something like 49 seperate miracles that had to be performed in order for the ark story to be even remotely feasible. Stuff like changing the molecular qualities of water so that the "fountains of the deep" didn't become a supercritical fluid and eat their way through the rock long before flood time, and so that water droplets DIDN'T break white light into a prisim (and thus, never produce a rainbow) until after the flood. That's a shitload of a lot of work for a guy who could theoretically just snap his fingers and go "BAM! YER ALL DEAD! HAHAH!"

Magus55

Maybe before bringing up this argument, you should read a little bit more. It rained non-stop for 40 days and 40 nights. Noah sent out a dove to see if the waters had subsided, 7 days after the rain stopped. The waters remained on the Earth for 150 days. At 150 days, they began to receed. The waters kept receeding ( inclusive of your 225, 318, and 375 numbers) until a bit over a year after the rain started, the Earth began to show. Where is the problem? The Bible never says it rained for 47, 150, 225 etc. days. It said 40 days and 40 nights, and then it took over a year for the waters to completely receed.

You know, I think this is another reason I never take atheist alleged contradictions very seriously. 90% of the time, its an extremely poor case of reading comprehension.

God told Noah how to build the ship, and Noah had 120 years to build it. Building that big of a ship in 120 years under the guidance of God isn't that difficult. How long did it take to build the U.S.S. Wyoming? A heck of a lot less than 120 years, and without God telling them what to do. Lets say the USS Wyoming took 5 years to build. That leaves 115 more years to increase the ship length by 121 feet. Not a very good argument, sorry.

Typical atheist response. You're assuming the Ocean floor was as deep as it currently is, and the mountains as high, when the Bible says God changed the land to accomodate and hold the water.

I'm not in the least bit impressed with your rebuttal of the flood, and I doubt any Christian would be. Care to try again?

cjack

This is really pointless. Any logical, scientific argument that refutes the possibility of the flood and the ark will be automatically shot down by some variation of "God can do anything."

I mean come on...God personally instructed Noah to build a ship, then violated IPU only knows how many physical laws of his own creation to fit all the animals on the ship, then flooded the whole world, raised the level of the sea-beds to hide his handiwork, raised Mount Everest up higher than Mt. Arrarat after the fact, hid any and all evidence of a worldwide flood, rapidly evolved the human race so that we could have incredible diversity from just ONE family in a few thousand years, etc, etc, etc.

As has been pointed out before, God sure did go to a lot of effort to commit a genocide which he could have done with a mere wave of his Holy Hand.


No amount of reasoning is good enough for a literalist because their position is not based upon reason.

BTW, there are perfectly legitimate Christians who accept the Flood story as just that...a story.

Of course, they're not TRUE Scotsmen...