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Frogman
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quote:
Originally posted by obiwan18
You have to look at the context of any statement before you can see where it is coming from. Should we trust the scouts looking at Canaan, when their actions cause Israel to wander in the desert for forty years? |
The scouts didn't write this, Moses did. So, he was wrong?
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Now, cite a source please that has a different interpretation than mine. This is no different than what my church teaches on this point. |
The Oxford Bible Companion, by Bruce Metzger, "it is not clear why or how the nephilim survived the flood to become the original Canaanites."
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Yeah, God is so pathetic that he created mankind with all their flaws. Would you prefer sinless automatons? Noah doesn't have to be sinless to find favour in the eyes of God. |
Its not a question of being sinless, its about God accepting his creation as he made it without getting so pissed off. If he found Noah to be OK, surely there would have been others. Forget the science of the flood, just look at what your making God out to be.
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But not as sinful, sin has lessened since the flood. God made a covenant with Noah, and later with Abraham, all encouraging the growth of those who do follow his ways. I'm amazed that God still loves people despite our sinfulness. |
Sin lessened since the flood? Its amazing how you can speak with such certainty about things you can't prove.
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That's a different point from before. Before you said that the bible taught vegetarianism is the root of all evil.
The passage in question:
Genesis 1:29
Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
Why is this interpretation ridiculous? Can't people survive on a vegetarian diet? |
People can, but lions and tigers and alligators probably not. Again, you may not believe this, but many literalists do. The problem with creationists is that many of them take a much more extreme view than people would imagine.
I don't think evolution explains it all. I don't mind teaching the possibility that God's hand guided the creation of species, but I don't want kids being told dinosaurs were on the ark and T-Rex was a vegetarian.
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:27
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So God destroys an entire planet-worth of wildlife and fauna, as well as innocents (the babies and children), to test a family? How nice.
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No. The test is not in the flood, the test is in the building of the ark. Noah could have chosen to ignore God, and not build the ark, but instead, he trusted God, and his family was saved.
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And why is God constantly testing people through subjecting them to misery? Is he horribly insecure, sadistic, or both?
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Is it sadistic for Noah to build an ark? No.
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You'll notice I was referring to large localized floods as not being miraculous (i.e. the Black Sea flood). You do tend to take a lot of things out of context in these arguments...
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Should have been clearer. Which interpretation do you feel fits the biblical quotes better, a localised flood or a worldwide flood?
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:27
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quote:
The scouts didn't write this, Moses did. So, he was wrong?
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Moses got the quote right, in that the scouts really did testify that they saw what they believed to be the Nephilim. Whether the scouts were correct in their assessment is another question entirely.
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Its not a question of being sinless, its about God accepting his creation as he made it without getting so pissed off. If he found Noah to be OK, surely there would have been others.
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Could there have been? One family out of the entire world who obeys God? I don't think you understand the enormity of the problem God faced before the flood with humanity's sin.
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Sin lessened since the flood? Its amazing how you can speak with such certainty about things you can't prove.
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Again, people do not think only evil thoughts, as testified before the flood. Therefore, I conclude that sin is less today than before the flood.
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I don't think evolution explains it all. I don't mind teaching the possibility that God's hand guided the creation of species, but I don't want kids being told dinosaurs were on the ark and T-Rex was a vegetarian.
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Okay. I'm fine with that. I think that the passage is restricted to human beings eating the plants instead of animals.
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The Oxford Bible Companion, by Bruce Metzger, "it is not clear why or how the nephilim survived the flood to become the original Canaanites."
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Good point. Now lets see what some others say about this difficult passage.
"And so that word “Nephilim” is describing them. Later on, when the spies went into the land and they came back to report what they had seen, they simply said, “There are Nephilim there.” They didn’t mean that they were the children of Nephilim, as if they were a race. “Nephilim,” because of its usage here, was sort of a word that they all knew was in the scripture and they knew that it referred to giants. And so when they came back and wanted to report that essentially the Canaanites were unconquerable, they simply said, “They’re Nephilim.” They just took that word in its generic sense-in its general meaning-rather than having it refer to some race."
http://www.biblebb.com/files/macqa/70-20-3.htm
No difference from what I said earlier.
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:27
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quote:
Originally posted by Kontiki
Please share some of this "ample evidence" with us. |
He's likely referring to Austin's work, which has already been shown to be false by the experts. He follows the typical Creationist line of finding a few minor things "unreasonable" (in his opinion) with the prevailing scientific theory, posits a new theory that is wildly unreasonable and full of outright mistakes/misinformation, and then concludes that since his theory is "possible," for some reason we should accept it over the prevailing scientific theory, which is actually, to any rational person, far superior.
Obiwan:
You're hairsplitting. If the test was just so Noah would build a big boat and follow God's commands, and for that God created the impossible worldwide flood and slaughtered millions, how does that make any more sense? Couldn't God have tested Noah sans requiring such feats of miraculousness?
As for my opinion of the flood (which should be pretty obvious), I gave it that post: flood myths in many cultures in the ME could be based on the large Black Sea flood of about 10,000 years ago, or another such event coming off the end of an ice age. But there was certainly no world-wide flood that covered everything as the Bible describes (if taken literally).
Speaking of the Ark...just how did Noah build a vessel that big? Since a wooden ship that big wouldn't even be possible, and since during the length of time required to build it, the wood would rot into crap faster than he could build it, there are some big logical holes there as well. Not to mention cramming 2 (or 7?) of "everything that creepeth" into it.
Oh wait, God just worked more miracles...right...
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:27
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quote:
You're hairsplitting. If the test was just so Noah would build a big boat and follow God's commands, and for that God created the impossible worldwide flood and slaughtered millions, how does that make any more sense? Couldn't God have tested Noah sans requiring such feats of miraculousness?
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Not if he wants to do both, to test Noah before the Flood.
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But there was certainly no world-wide flood that covered everything as the Bible describes (if taken literally).
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Just making sure that I have your position correct. Do you believe that these passages are to be interpreted literally?
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Speaking of the Ark...just how did Noah build a vessel that big? Since a wooden ship that big wouldn't even be possible, and since during the length of time required to build it, the wood would rot into crap faster than he could build it, there are some big logical holes there as well. Not to mention cramming 2 (or 7?) of "everything that creepeth" into it.
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Here's the exact quote you are striving to recall.
Genesis 7:2-3
Take with you seven [1] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.
Secondly, would the wood rot unless exposed to water?
I don't think the wood would rot over the course of building the ark.
Third, How large was the ark?
Genesis 6:14-15
So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.
How is this impossible to build? Difficult, but not impossible.
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Frogman
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"the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim"
Thats not a description of size, its a statement of geneology. I looked at the site Obiwan posted and its the best attempt to twist an differing interpretation I've seen so far. Not entirely convincing to me, but I don't believe the flood was worldwide anyway.
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:27
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quote:
Originally posted by obiwan18
Not if he wants to do both, to test Noah before the Flood. |
Which still does not explain why God, Mr. Omnipotence, would choose such a ridiculously convoluted method of wiping out evil people/testing Noah. Surely he could have devised a way to test Noah that didn't require God to violate every law he himself supposedly created, and didn't require him (for whatever inexplicable reason) to cover up this event. How about a plague that kills everyone, except Noah, to whom God has clued in on an medical cure/preventative? Any number of things that don't require God to go through the hoops he does for a worldwide flood.
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Just making sure that I have your position correct. Do you believe that these passages are to be interpreted literally? |
For pete's sake, I've been holding the position that you can't take the Bible literally all along!
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Here's the exact quote you are striving to recall.
Genesis 7:2-3
Take with you seven [1] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. |
Don't forget Genesis 7:8, which says "everything that creepeth on the ground." That includes insects. Indeed, insects would have to have been aboard the Ark as well to survive a global flood. On top of that, He had to take every species that was alive at the time, which would be more than today, due to extinctions. Young-earth creationists would also have to account for the Dinosaurs.
Right...now I ask you, how many animals are there in the world, and how many could fit in a ship that is, as you say, 450 X 75 X 45? Now, we are also talking thousands of species of insects, too. A very generous low-end figure would probably be around 30,000 animals. Now, on a boat 450 feet long?
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Secondly, would the wood rot unless exposed to water?
I don't think the wood would rot over the course of building the ark. |
Absolutely it would. The wood would be exposed to water just by being in the open air, and it took Noah 90-120 years to build the Ark. You try and build a ship in that time and see how well the wood holds up over contruction without modern treatment methods.
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Third, How large was the ark?
Genesis 6:14-15
So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.
How is this impossible to build? Difficult, but not impossible. |
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq...k.html#building
"Wood is not the best material for shipbuilding. It is not enough that a ship be built to hold together; it must also be sturdy enough that the changing stresses don't open gaps in its hull. Wood is simply not strong enough to prevent separation between the joints, especially in the heavy seas that the Ark would have encountered. The longest wooden ships in modern seas are about 300 feet, and these require reinforcing with iron straps and leak so badly they must be constantly pumped. The ark was 450 feet long [ Gen. 6:15]. Could an ark that size be made seaworthy?"
Considering they didn't have modern shipbuilding methods, I'd say building the Ark was pretty near impossible. On top of that, the sheer force required of the deluge to add that much water in 40 days would have easily annhilated the Ark and everything else. It would have crumbled mountains.
None this even touches, of course, on the geological problems of the flood (i.e., how come there are varying ages of mountains? Why aren't the Sierra Nevadas as eroded as the Appalachians?)
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Lincoln
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Someone (I forgot who) asked about some of the evidence in the Grand Canyon. Here is some of it:
The Grand Canyon limestones contain grains of quartz sand, which can't be dissolved from calm water, and sand-size or larger shell fragments. These larger grains imply the influence of moving water, not the placid shallow seas envisioned by uniformitarians. The Redwall Limestone of Nautiloid Canyon, a side tributary of Grand Canyon, contains many fossils of nautiloids, large marine mollusks having straight cigar-shaped shells up to two feet long. These were not deposited randomly, but are oriented in alignment with each other... this alignment shows they were deposited within water that was moving rapidly -- another argument against the placid epeiric seas proposed by uniformitarians.
... Dr. Leonard Brand performed detailed experiments to verify how the Coconino Sandstone's quadruped footprint trackways may have been produced. Brand's conclusion was that, almost certainly, these were made by newt-like animals walking under water and being pushed sideways by a current. The most common belief of uniformitarian geologists, that of the sand having been lithified from desert sand dunes, was ruled out completely. Geology Professor Glen Visher (not a creationist) showed that these sands must have been from underwater "sand waves." Both of these conclusions fit the Great Flood model better than the uniformitarian model.
...argument against the evolutionist's Geologic Column explanation for Grand Canyon is the sequence of strata that are easily visible. The entire Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras are completely missing. The top several formations are classified as of Permian age (about 250 million years). The usual expectation of geologists would call for Pennsylvanian to be below that, but this too is completely missing. Next down is the Redstone Limestone, which is classed as Mississippian age (345-325 million years old). Below that should come Devonian, then Silurian, then Ordovician (totalling over 150 million years), but they are completely missing except for a few small lenses of Devonian resembling Karst topography. Instead, the Redwall is resting directly on the Muav Limestone, which has many trilobites and other Cambrian fossils. And, what is worse, on the north side of the Canyon there are several alternating layers of Cambrian Muav interspersed between layers of Mississippian Redstone. This interbedding of two periods widely separated in supposed age cannot be explained by the uniformitarian geologist...
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Unfortunately I do not have time to thoroughly debate this now.
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:27
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quote:
Surely he could have devised a way to test Noah that didn't require God to violate every law he himself supposedly created,
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Violate every law?
Hardly.
Violate one or two?
Perhaps.
I would like to see you try coming up with an alternative scenario, that accomplishes the same things.
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For pete's sake, I've been holding the position that you can't take the Bible literally all along!
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So it's a local flood then. Why do you hold this portion of the bible to a literal interpretation?
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Right...now I ask you, how many animals are there in the world, and how many could fit in a ship that is, as you say, 450 X 75 X 45? Now, we are also talking thousands of species of insects, too. A very generous low-end figure would probably be around 30,000 animals. Now, on a boat 450 feet long?
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What is the average size of these animals?
Doing the math of 30,000 animals, I'd bet the average size would be less than 1 cubic foot.
The total volume of the ark would be 1,518,750 cubic feet.
This would give 50.625 cubic feet on average for each animal. Plenty of room.
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Absolutely it would. The wood would be exposed to water just by being in the open air, and it took Noah 90-120 years to build the Ark. You try and build a ship in that time and see how well the wood holds up over contruction without modern treatment methods.
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There are a few problems Boris, with the Biblical account. First off, not much information is provided about the type of wood used for the boat. This plays a huge factor as to whether or not the wood will rot and how fast this will occur.
Secondly, we don't know the contents of the word translated as 'pitch' to treat the wood. It is entirely reasonable for the people of these times to coat the wood with a substance that will withstand rot.
Thirdly, we do not know whether Iron reinforced the hull or not. There is nothing in the biblical account that confirms or denies this addition.
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On top of that, the sheer force required of the deluge to add that much water in 40 days would have easily annhilated the Ark and everything else. It would have crumbled mountains.
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Dispersed over the entire surface area of the earth? You have to take this into account.
Sure wish we had the purported 'Book of Noah,' now lost. I'll bet that we would have better answers to some of your questions.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:27
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quote:
Originally posted by obiwan18
What is the average size of these animals?
Doing the math of 30,000 animals, I'd bet the average size would be less than 1 cubic foot.
The total volume of the ark would be 1,518,750 cubic feet.
This would give 50.625 cubic feet on average for each animal. Plenty of room.
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What did the animals eat? Air?
Elephants consume quite a lot. Cows, buffaloes, giant pandas, shrews have to eat voraciously (even though small), anteaters, yada yada yada. I'm sorry, obiwan, but the flood story as literal truth is just plain silly.
As a folk memory of the Black Sea, or the Mediterranean basin filling up, possibly. But a worldwide flood? Also- if god could test Job without resorting to slaying the rest of humanity, why not do the same with Noah?
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Lincoln
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I guess you didn't read my previous posts UR. Why don't you read them and get back to me? Clue: The God of the Bible claims to operate in the supernatural. Now give me your supernatural (or even natural) evidence that he doesn't?
And the geologists (both creationists and atheists) know that there was a river there. But some do not believe that it wore through several thousand feet of earth like some fanatics suppose it did (unlike similar ancient rivers in the area that have only worn through less than a hundred feet). The canyon is a monument to upset geology. A river does not turn things upside down to that degree unless there is other factors such as earthquakes and volcanic activity. I have been to the Grand Canyon and seen some of the evidence first hand, have you?
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:27
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EVERYTHING is at LEAST 45 years old.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:27
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I farted 10 secs ago and still smell it.
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Boris Godunov
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Portland, OR
Aug 2001
time: 00:27
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quote:
Originally posted by obiwan18
Violate every law?
Hardly.
Violate one or two?
Perhaps. |
One or two?!
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How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?
Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. [Johnsen et al, 1992,; Alley et al, 1993] A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?
How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.
Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]
How does a global flood explain angular unconformities? These are where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top. They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.
How were mountains and valleys formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were formed during the Flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.
When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]
How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed layering? One formation in New Jersey is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400 days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the Flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling per day. And yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly layered, with great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occurring within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, etc.? [Zimmer, 1992]
How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves, identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes. The sediments are so fine that each layer would have required over a month to settle.
How could a flood deposit layered fossil forests? Stratigraphic sections showing a dozen or more mature forests layered atop each other--all with upright trunks, in-place roots, and well-developed soil--appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section along the Bay of Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a 48-km sea cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of feet of strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires. [Ferguson, 1988. For other examples, see Dawson, 1868; Cristie & McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo, 1990; Yuretich, 1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below Mt. St. Helens as an example of how a flood can deposit vertical trunks, but deposition by flood fails to explain the roots, the soil, the layering, and other features found in such places.
Where did all the heat go? If the geologic record was deposited in a year, then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat.
Magma. The geologic record includes roughly 8 x 1024 grams of lava flows and igneous intrusions. Assuming (conservatively) a specific heat of 0.15, this magma would release 5.4 x 1027 joules while cooling 1100 degrees C. In addition, the heat of crystallization as the magma solidifies would release a great deal more heat.
Limestone formation. There are roughly 5 x 1023 grams of limestone in the earth's sediments [Poldervaart, 1955], and the formation of calcite releases about 11,290 joules/gram [Weast, 1974, p. D63]. If only 10% of the limestone were formed during the Flood, the 5.6 x 1026 joules of heat released would be enough to boil the flood waters.
Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah's Flood. The heat from just one of the largest lunar impacts released an estimated 3 x 1026 joules; the same sized object falling to earth would release even more energy. [Fezer, pp. 45-46]
Other. Other possibly significant heat sources are radioactive decay (some Creationists claim that radioactive decay rates were much higher during the Flood to account for consistently old radiometric dates); biological decay (think of the heat released in compost piles); and compression of sediments.
5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.
Aside from losing its atmosphere, Earth can only get rid of heat by radiating it to space, and it can't radiate significantly more heat than it gets from the sun unless it is a great deal hotter than it is now. (It is very nearly at thermal equilibrium now.) If there weren't many millions of years to radiate the heat from the above processes, the earth would still be unlivably hot.
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Those are just a small fractions of the problems with the Flood that God would have to use supernatural miracles to overcome.
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I would like to see you try coming up with an alternative scenario, that accomplishes the same things. |
Uh, I did, you seem to ignore. God doesn't like wicked people? Just smite those that are wicked. What was accomplished by the massive flood that destroyed everything except the Ark?
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So it's a local flood then. Why do you hold this portion of the bible to a literal interpretation? |
BECAUSE THIS IS A DEBATE OVER WHY THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION IS DUMB. That's the whole point--can we take it literally? And my position is NO, because the global flood simply defies everything we know about science and nature.
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What is the average size of these animals?
Doing the math of 30,000 animals, I'd bet the average size would be less than 1 cubic foot.
The total volume of the ark would be 1,518,750 cubic feet.
This would give 50.625 cubic feet on average for each animal. Plenty of room. |
 Okay, so did they stack these animals? How did they keep the insects, which would have to be in some sort of container? Remember the Ark was divided into rooms, so all those partitions take up space. How many decks did it have? Decks and their supports will take up that space. The hull is going to have to be very thick if it's wooden, and there will have to be huge lateral trusses to support the ship. This eats up a lot of that cubic feet.
Then you have to account for storage of food. What did these animals eat for the months they were aboard? You have to store the plants to feed the herbivores--and somehow keep them fresh--and then you have to account for the animals, like reptiles, that only eat freshly-killed meat. Then you have to account for the animal waste. That many animals would be generating massive amounts of feces constantly. The Bible specifies there was only one small hole for ventilation in the ENTIRE Ark! How did the animals below even breathe, being packed in like that? I am reminded of the boxcars to Auschwitz.
Now, considering Noah and his family loaded the Ark in ONE DAY (Gen. 7:13-14), that meant loading at least 40 animals per second continuously. And not just loading them, but making sure they go exactly where they are supposed to go (can't have carnivores mixing with herbivores, can we?). How was this possible?
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There are a few problems Boris, with the Biblical account. |
Understatement of the year!
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First off, not much information is provided about the type of wood used for the boat. This plays a huge factor as to whether or not the wood will rot and how fast this will occur. |
I thought someplace specifically referred to cypress wood? People like that because it is a relatively resilient wood. But given 100 years exposure to the elements, cypress would still rot enough to make the Ark unseaworthy. The wood would warp, especially on a wooden ship so big. Again, the longest wooden vessels ever made, WITH iron reinforcement, were only 350 feet and had horrible leaking problems. Wood isn't that strong a material.
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Secondly, we don't know the contents of the word translated as 'pitch' to treat the wood. It is entirely reasonable for the people of these times to coat the wood with a substance that will withstand rot. |
Such treatment processes were not known back then. Remember, the wood doesn't have to rot completely, just enough to make the vessel unseaworthy. 100 years of exposure to the elements is amble time to make even the sturdiest woods weaken to this point.
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Thirdly, we do not know whether Iron reinforced the hull or not. There is nothing in the biblical account that confirms or denies this addition.
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Iron was not used in shipbuilding until very recently. We have archeological remains of ships going back many thousands of years, and they don't use iron to reinforce the hulls.
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Dispersed over the entire surface area of the earth? You have to take this into account. |
Enough water, falling in 40 days, to cover the entire earth up to 15 cubits over the top of Mt. Everest! That's an ENORMOUS amount of water to fall in so short a time period. This amount is enough to completely destroy the atmosphere of the earth. It had to have come down as heavy as a waterfall. And WHERE did it come from?
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Sure wish we had the purported 'Book of Noah,' now lost. I'll bet that we would have better answers to some of your questions. |
Since the Noah story is fiction, I doubt any such book (and who purports it to exist? Wishful creationists?) would shed any light on how the laws of nature were turned on their head non-stop for such a long period of time for what seems to me to be a pretty irrational thing. The worldwide flood myth is a ludicrous as the tooth fairy.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Lincoln
I guess you didn't read my previous posts UR. Why don't you read them and get back to me? Clue: The God of the Bible claims to operate in the supernatural. Now give me your supernatural (or even natural) evidence that he doesn't? |
You are saying that your god, who can suspend a staggering amount of water in air while simultaneously change all the laws of physics to keep lifeforms underneath from being crushed, cannot defeat iron chariots.
That is amusing, to say the very least.
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Originally posted by Lincoln
And the geologists (both creationists and atheists) know that there was a river there. But some do not believe that it wore through several thousand feet of earth like some fanatics suppose it did (unlike similar ancient rivers in the area that have only worn through less than a hundred feet). The canyon is a monument to upset geology. |
"Hey look, something science can't explain. Look, God!"
The thing that really puzzling about this whole thing is instead of admitting we don't know everything, but we will try to find out, Creationists instantly jump to the conclusion that science has failed and it's Yahweh at work.
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Originally posted by Lincoln
A river does not turn things upside down to that degree unless there is other factors such as earthquakes and volcanic activity. I have been to the Grand Canyon and seen some of the evidence first hand, have you? |
This comes from a source that says a canyon has/had tributaries. That's not a mistake even somebody who has a basic knowledge of geography will make.
Last edited by Urban Ranger on 14-04-2003 at 09:46
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:27
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Molly Bloom:
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What did the animals eat? Air?
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Darn. I hoped Boris would not think of this point. Should still be room for grain for the animals, considering the average size of the animals, and the size of the ark.
Some animals will eat voraciously, most will not.
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Also- if god could test Job without resorting to slaying the rest of humanity, why not do the same with Noah?
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False analogy. In Job's case the test involved the relationship between God and Job. If Job failed, Satan could claim that all men only loved God for the blessings. The flood was quite different. It seems here that God wanted to punish all the wicked people on Earth at once, while preserving Noah's family, and some of the animals.
The secondary problem, is that God seemed to want to test Noah before allowing his family to survive. Both of these desires need to be recognised. The Flood was God's solution, so the burden still rests on you and Boris to come up with an alternative solution, that will still allow God to punish the wicked, and to test and preserve Noah.
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12-04-2003 09:00
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