Kosh

Maybe the whole story was just borrowed from the Babylonians and modified by a Ignorant Bronze Age Goat Herders (tm). ?

Buffman

amie

My post of September 15, 2002 10:46 PM
should have helped to forewarn and forearm you.

Now my sincere hope is that you will discover all kinds of exciting new knowledge in this discussion and understand the depth of research to which many of the folks have already gone in order to resolve all the issues surfaced by Holy Bible inerrant faith believers.

The more accurate the knowledge, the greater becomes the ability to truly free the mind from the shackles of childhood conditioning. It isn't the individual faith belief that is so much at risk as it is the practice of that faith belief when based on inaccurate data/knowledge. That's why many of the world's greatest scientists have been both scientist and faith believer. They allowed the verifiable evidence to speak for itself rather than attempt to force the words to verify the evidence.

Unfortunately, one group of current theists (and too many of our elected, power hungry, politicians) have became quite frightened by the sound and meaning of those "revelations." The fear of the theists is real. That is why your teaching position and responsibilities are so very important to the future of America and our Constitutional freedoms...and why I have been posting the remarks I have. I firmly believe that only an accurately informed citizenry can elect the kind of men and women who will protect and defend our federal republic, pluralistic, form of democracy.

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Buffman ]</p>

Dark Jedi

I just wanted to say thanks folks.

This thread could easily have wandered in to incivility, but has not.

Great example of reasoned and civil debate!

Radorth

Info from your cite in " "

"A ship floating quietly in still water is subjected to external forces. These are the weight of the vessel on its cargo (downwards) and the buoyancy force (upwards). Archimedes showed us that for a floating vessel, these two forces must be equal in magnitude. For a floating rectangular piece of wood, they are also equal in distribution. For most normally shaped ships, the distribution is not equal."

(Rad)OK, so for a ship rectangular in plan view, the forces are equal, and all the sketches I've seen of Noah's ark, it is not tapered on the end. Interesting!


"For example, when an empty ship has more weight (relatively heavy structure, engines and equipment) in the ends, and more buoyancy in the middle. This "excess" of buoyancy in the middle cause the middle to rise up and the ends to bend down -- a hog in profile."

(Rad) So if you have tapered ends to streamline the ship, you lose even more buoyancy at the ends. Therefore the limit for a streamlined ship is about 300 feet, but NOT because of stress in the wood- read on.

"Engineers have often attempted to analyze the structures of wooden ships as if they were homogeneous box girders. This is a common misapplication of beam theory. Actually, a wooden ship, especially as it ages, more closely resembles a rather weakly bound bundle of reeds. These reeds are free to slide past each other. If traditionally built wooden ships were box girders, then one would expect to see many tensile failures amidships in the upper deck of a severely hogged vessel; however, this is not the case. Failures in longitudinal structure are infrequent and tend to be scattered almost uniformly throughout the vessel. The idea of "strength decks" or "extreme fiber" is largely irrelevant to the meaningful analysis of old wooden ships. Microscopic investigation reveal a generally low level of stress in "hogged" structural members. There often is evidence of plastic behavior, creep, around fastenings."

(Rad)So the biggest problem with wood ships is not their length per se. It is true that they will hog more if they are longer because they have more fasteners and more wood to creep. But this is clearly a problem of creep over long periods of time- not applicable here. And since there is no need to streamline the ark, the buoyancy problem goes away as well. Not only that, the cite states they do not often break because of bending stress. (Although that is still how steel ships are designed because steel does not creep).

Radorth

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Radorth ]</p>

Kosh

Once again, I think any discussions about logistics are futile in the face of "godidit" invokations. How about we turn toward geologic evidence for a "Great Flood". Anybody?

Amie, do you have any?

Kosh

BTW , tonight on National Geographic is "The Quest for Noahs Flood", where they explore the Black Sea theory.

Kosh

Oh man, "In search of Eden" on at the same time. They're going into the Babylonian myths now...

Mad Kally

Amie,
You seem to believe that the biblical account of Noah's ark is true. I have one more question for you.

My mother is a California public school teacher and she does not believe in evolution. She also thinks the Noah's ark story is the truth. However, if you asked her her opinion on whether she is opposed to teaching creationism in school she would say yes because she knows it's against the law. The same reason she doesn't sit and read bible stories to her students, or pray with them.

My question to you is, do you believe the biblical account of creation of life by God as described in Genesis is correct?

atrahasis

I think its a shame this Amie character cant tackle the questions here.

Helen, why dont you agree with her and start a formal discission?

Her drops of responses and feeble excuses (pleading human fallibility) in the sea of questions is really pathetic. This is a farce.

Infinity Lover

The factor most responsible for the level of your disapointment, is probably your expectation.