Does anyone actually believe the story of Noah's Ark?

[Topaz27]

I know a bunch of Christians, and so many of them believe that Noah's Ark is a myth. Basically just a story to teach morals and lessons. I personally see a lot of things wrong with the story of the flood. So I was wondering, if anyone believes the story of Noah's Ark, and the world flood, to be the truth?

[Tcg]

How do you explain the near universality of a flood myth if not that It was a real event?

This is similar asking why most cultures have stories about war. It's not evidence of a global war. It's due to the fact that most have experienced wars, local wars.


Tcg

[OnceConvinced]

... my point about Nu'u is quite interesting in my opinion.

How do you explain the near universality of a flood myth if not that It was a real event?

All of which contain different gods and different heroes. Some even from countries who weren't even populated in bible times.

The bible tale seems to be just another one of them.

The fact that there are myths in many cultures is evidence that it wasn't a unversal flood if we go by the bible.

https://cms.e.jimdo.com/app/cms/preview ... ide-flood/

The bible tells us quite clearly that Noah and his family were the only ones who survived it. So how could there be survivors elsewhere in the world? Unless the bible is lying, there can't be.

Genesis 7:13-14 In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark; They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.

Gen. 9:18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth.


1 Peter 3:20 …in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.


There are two possiblities here:
1) These tales were about local floods.
2) There was a world wide flood where others survived (which makes the bible wrong)
3) The bible is correct that Noah and his family were the only survivers. These stories were handed down generation to generation and then changed and altered as they spread across the globe and adopted new gods and heroes.

If it's 1, then all we have with these myths is evidence of local floods.
If it's 2, then the bible is wrong about how the flood went down, so why believe any of the tale at all?
If it's 3, then we still don't have evidence of a world wide flood. It could still be a local one, which was twisted and altered as it spread across the globe.

At most, all we have is evidence that cool stories spread across the globe and everyone likes to add their own spin on it.

If God has power do you think he has the power to have mankind's true history recorded and preserved for us? Or is that just too difficult for him?

Which he hasn't. All we have is whacky tales by different cultures all with different gods and different heroes. All written by human beings, none any more convincing than the other. God has either failed miserably to have his true history recorded and preserved or there is no god doing any recording or perserving.

[Topaz27]

Brunumb and Onceconvinced I don't think I could've said it better myself.

And while this is obviously a different argument. Many stories from the Bible have similarities to ones from around the world. Take Adam and Eve, almost, if not all, cultures/religions have an original human story. Because why wouldn't they? Their stories, just like Christianity's, is just an attempt to explain the unknown.

Jehovah's Witness:
I think with:
The amount of water needed for a world flood
The change of salinity of the water and the influences on marine life
How Noah would deal with deep see animals that would've needed to be kept in salt water but still with immense pressure
How Noah even got two of every animal
How those animals didn't kill eachother
How literally no animals could've died, or their entire species would've died out
The plants needing to also be stored on the ark to survive
How he got those plants
The breathability of the ark
How Noah would've fed the animals
How much food he would've need to store (especially for animals like pandas and koalas)
How we have no fossil records of say kangaroos anywhere in between the middle east and Australia
How the island animals would somehow needed to get to Noah, take Galapagos tortoises for example
And that's just a few problems
You have to do some impressive mental gymnastics to conclude that the story of the Ark is true.

There's a philosophical principal called Occam's Razor. It basically says that whatever needs the least assumtions is most likely true. In this case, it's obviously not the story of Noah's Ark.

[brianbbs67]

In the past, people didn't go to far from home. I am speaking of biblical times. The world was everything they knew was there. That leaves a lot of earth unknown. So, separate flood stories and the few survivors don't bother me a bit as they didn't know each other existed. To these individual cultures, the whole world died. Evidence of this is actually reference in the bible in the OT. According to the Tanakh/OT, the Nephillim and evils of man were the reason for the flood. Yet, later in the same bible were are told the Nephillim will return in the end times. How can this be if all life but Noah's family(humans) is wiped out? Nephillim are also mentioned later, after Noah in the OT. (David and Goliath, giant Canaaites)

So, obviously, a lot of humanity was wiped out but not all outside of Noah's family.

[Topaz27]

brianbbs67:
What about Genesis 6:17? Where God specifically states, he wants to kill everything but Noah, his family, and two of every animal. He specifically states he is going to destroy man. Are you trying to say that God failed?

And Nephillim showing up later after he is supposed to killed, is probably one of the many inconsistencies of the Bible

[Tcg]

brianbbs67:
What about Genesis 6:17? Where God specifically states, he wants to kill everything but Noah, his family, and two of every animal. He specifically states he is going to destroy man. Are you trying to say that God failed?

Even more so in Genesis 8:21 where God said this:

• The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done."

God not only states that he is going to destroy all living things, here he stated that he did so. If we are to accept that the authors were limited in their understanding of the extent of the earth, we must agree that God suffered the same limitation.


Tcg

[Tcg]

Brunumb and Onceconvinced I don't think I could've said it better myself.

And while this is obviously a different argument. Many stories from the Bible have similarities to ones from around the world. Take Adam and Eve, almost, if not all, cultures/religions have an original human story. Because why wouldn't they? Their stories, just like Christianity's, is just an attempt to explain the unknown.

Jehovah's Witness:
I think with:
The amount of water needed for a world flood
The change of salinity of the water and the influences on marine life
How Noah would deal with deep see animals that would've needed to be kept in salt water but still with immense pressure
How Noah even got two of every animal
How those animals didn't kill eachother
How literally no animals could've died, or their entire species would've died out
The plants needing to also be stored on the ark to survive
How he got those plants
The breathability of the ark
How Noah would've fed the animals
How much food he would've need to store (especially for animals like pandas and koalas)
How we have no fossil records of say kangaroos anywhere in between the middle east and Australia
How the island animals would somehow needed to get to Noah, take Galapagos tortoises for example
And that's just a few problems
You have to do some impressive mental gymnastics to conclude that the story of the Ark is true.

There's a philosophical principal called Occam's Razor. It basically says that whatever needs the least assumtions is most likely true. In this case, it's obviously not the story of Noah's Ark.

Don't forget that it wasn't simply two of each animal:

• Genesis 7:2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

Having seven pairs of clean animals and seven pairs or every kind of bird helps in the case of an unexpected death of one of these, but it greatly increases the amount of food needed to store in the ark.

The amount of room needed to house the animals would pale in comparison to the amount of room needed to store the food that many animals would need. This of course also causes one to consider the amount a manure that would be generated. Noah and company couldn't possibly deal with the task of feeding this menagerie much less the clean up of waste.


Tcg

[brianbbs67]

brianbbs67:
What about Genesis 6:17? Where God specifically states, he wants to kill everything but Noah, his family, and two of every animal. He specifically states he is going to destroy man. Are you trying to say that God failed?

And Nephillim showing up later after he is supposed to killed, is probably one of the many inconsistencies of the Bible

If God was trying to destroy all mankind, Noah would have never been told to build an Arc..

"everything with the breath of life was to be destroyed" So, although the circumstances were grave, obviously all life on land was not killed. I believe because of Noah's example, mercy was shown to good people all over the Earth. Otherwise, we wouldn't be here to argue this.

Here's the JPS Tanakh on verse 17. " For my part, I am about to bring the flood--waters upon the Earth--to destroy all flesh under the sky "in which there is breath of life"; everything on Earth shall perish."

Interesting choice of words. Was everything that had the breath of life to die and now we have the breath of death? It would seem so as we expire eventually.

[JehovahsWitness]

Many stories from the Bible have similarities to ones from around the world.

Sticking to the flood for now my question is, why in your opinion is a destruction by water with a few survivors a casi-universal myth?

While all civilizations need water to survive, flood is not a universal threat, certainly not flood that would wipe out entire communities. why do mountain community, desert and nomadic tribes and many others have a collective memory of a disastrous flood when fire, volcanos, earthquake, famine, and disease represented greater threats for them? Why is the ancient Chinese symbol for ship: 8+people +boat?

Naturally the details would vary as the accounts passed from one generation to another, but what can explain so many divers and disconnected peoples having a common belief in a "global" flood with a handful of survivors?




JW

[JehovahsWitness]

ANSWERS ALREADY PROVIDED

The amount of water needed for a world flood
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 07#p983807

The change of salinity of the water and the influences on marine life
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 22#p983822

The plants needing to also be stored on the ark to survive; How he got those plants
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 71#p984071

Thread INDEX
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 67#p984067