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?

[JehovahsWitness]

How exactly can we determine what a kind is?

We can't.

Logically it was to do with a representative of a "family" group (the genesis account has the animals reproducing {quote } "according to thie kind", so a "kind" is possibly (but not necessarily) determined by whether they can interbreed. In short it may well have been broader than a species as we determine today. In any case, it's clear that Noah didn't need to take many thousands of different animals onto the ark. Even using the modern day gruoping of species, estimates are he would have had a couple of hundred* large animals (animals larger than a sheep) which could easily have been cared for by the family.



* Most major zoos need a small army of personnel because they have thousands of animals (London Zoo for example has about 17,000 animals)

There are currently about 6000 species of MAMMALS
https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/articl ... 00%20years.

[onewithhim]

No matter what Jesus said or how, would you believe him?

What I would or would not believe is irrelevant. All that matters is what can be shown from the text.

In your view, how should he have said it to be taken as a real event?

You are the one who has asserted it should be taken as a real event.

Or how many times should Scripture talk about the matter to make it seem like a real event TO YOU?

Are you suggesting that the number of times something is talked about determines whether or not it should be taken literally? Remember, what it seems like TO ME is irrelevant. What can be demonstrated as true is the issue.


Tcg

Can you demonstrate that the existence of, say, Julius Caesar is true?

[Tcg]

How exactly can we determine what a kind is?

We can't.

Logically it was to do with a representative of a "family" group, possibly but not necessarily determined by whether they can interbreed. In short it may well have been broader than a species as we determine today. In any case, it's clear that Noah didn't end to take thousands of different animals onto the ark.

Given this admission: "We can't."

You can't possibly support this conclusion: "In any case, it's clear that Noah didn't end to take thousands of different animals onto the ark."


Tcg

[EarthScienceguy]

The Bible mentions the reality of the flood many times.

Matthew 24:38
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

Matthew 24:39
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Luke 6:48
He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.

Luke 17:27
They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

Peter-2 2:5
And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth [person], a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

The flood is a fact that the Bible says happen in history of the Earth around 4000 years ago. Here is an entire book on the mechanisms of the flood and evidences of them.

https://www.creationscience.com/onlineb ... ngTOC.html

The nuts and bolts of this theory are as follows.

The layers of the Earth today are not as they were before the flood. Before the flood there as a water layer in the Earth that was a mile or 2 in thickness about 50 miles under the surface. And this water was under enormous pressure. This water was under so much heat and pressure that it was in a supercritical state.

Heat began to build up in this water layer to a point which caused the crust failed and the waters from the great deep burst forth. Blasting super chilled water into the upper atmosphere and throughout the solar system. This is the source of the comets that we see in our solar system.

The super chilled water condensed the water vapor in the air causing it to rain. The oceans and the earth were much warmer before the flood so there was a lot of water vapor in the air and evaporating off of the oceans along with water

As the water from the underground chamber began to be depleted the crustal plates began to move. The plates moving quickly eventually collide with the mantle and runaway subduction occurred.

The oceans were shallower on the pre flood earth. And the mountains were not as tall as they are today because there was no tectonic activity before the flood, there was only one crustal plate.

Eventually the waters receded because the crustal rock of the oceans sank back into the mantle because of isostatic rebound.

That is a quick over of a very comprehensive theory.

[OnceConvinced]

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?

Because just about all places of the world have floods. So there will be tales of floods all over the world. And as Brainbbs said in post 74, back then people believed their small neck of the woods was "the entire world". They had no knowledge of places far from them. So of course they're going to say the flood covered the whole world.

When you get people like Noah thinking that the water covered all the mountains, he most likely had no knowledge of mountains like Everest. As far as he was concerned his area was the whole world. The same thing as Paul who believed he had preached the gospel to every living creature under the sun. (Col 1:23)

But like I said in my earlier post, a story being handed down generation by generation and spreading across the globe is not proof of a global flood. At most its proof of a local flood and that good stories travel and people like to put their own spin on them.

[OnceConvinced]

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?

Yes, I do. If a person believes in Jesus, and believes the Bible is an inspired work of God, that person will believe the account of Noah---Jesus spoke of it as a fact. (See Matthew 24: 37-39.)

The fact that Jesus believed it is damning evidence he was a fallible human being like all the rest and not divine.

I would stake my life on what Jesus is recorded as saying.

And those Muslim extremists who rammed planes into the Twin Towers were staking their lives on their beliefs too. Does that make what they believe to be any more true?

It remains to be seen if every small detail of the account is literal. But the basic story is surely true, as evidenced in other civilizations' accounts of a great flood.

Did you read my post I made to JW earlier? You guys are stabbing yourself in the foot when you bring up other civilisations accounts of the great flood. If there were other survivors then that means the bible was blatantly wrong when it says that Noah and his family were the only humans who were saved. So why would you take any part of the Noah story seriously?

You want to point out that Jesus believed this story, so it MUST be true because Jesus believed it. However do you wish to deny the scriptures I quoted that specifically say Noah and his family were the only human survivors?

I'm not even going to get into the hundreds of problems with the Noah's Ark story because I can see you guys are giving the same apologetic arguments that have been debunked many times already including the threads that JW links to in her posts. It all comes down to magic in the end anyway. So why try to explain it away with natural reasons?

[JehovahsWitness]

Without proper ventilation some would die for sure. God specifically tells Noah how to create to Ark, but never mentions ventilation. Why do you just assume he creates some form of ventilation.

DID THE ARK HAVE ADEQUATE VENTELATION?

GENESIS 6:16 - NIV

Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening [Hebrew tsoʹhar "A WINDOW" NASV, NWT] one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

It could be, therefore, that the tsoʹhar provided for adequate light and ventilation, not just a single cubit-square “peephole,� but an opening a cubit in height near the roof and extending around the four sides to give an opening of nearly 140 sq m (1,500 sq ft). - Insight on the scriptures Vol I p. 164

[Tcg]

No matter what Jesus said or how, would you believe him?

What I would or would not believe is irrelevant. All that matters is what can be shown from the text.

In your view, how should he have said it to be taken as a real event?

You are the one who has asserted it should be taken as a real event.

Or how many times should Scripture talk about the matter to make it seem like a real event TO YOU?

Are you suggesting that the number of times something is talked about determines whether or not it should be taken literally? Remember, what it seems like TO ME is irrelevant. What can be demonstrated as true is the issue.


Tcg

Can you demonstrate that the existence of, say, Julius Caesar is true?

Julius Caesar? We are discussing the flood story found in Genesis. In this particular section of the discussion, we are discussing whether or not the story was meant to be taken as a literal event. How does Julius Caesar impact this issue?


Tcg

[JehovahsWitness]

According to you Noah was at sea for 150 days. That's at least 30,000 pounds of food for just one of the elephants.

I don't know to what extent they could have grown food on-board but I'm sure they could have grown some, as for storage, ...



taking hay as an example....

How much storage area is required for hay?

Baled hay requires approximately 250 cubic feet of storage space per ton of hay. An 1,100-pound horse eating 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent of its body weight per day in hay would eat 16.5 to 22.0 pounds per day, or in one year about 3 to 4 tons (100-120 bales of hay). Four tons of hay require 1,000 cubic feet of space or a storage area roughly 9 feet high and 11 feet x 11 feet (9′ x 11′ x 11′). In other words, a horse fed hay all year would require roughly an area the size of a box stall to store one year’s supply of hay.
Source: https://horses.extension.org/how-much-s ... d-for-hay/

I hate maths can you (or somebody) correct my maths if it's worng.

22 Ibs/day = 1000 sq ft storage for a year > 500 sq ft = 6 months

Elephant eats 10 times that amount a day, so 500 x 10 = 5, 000 sq ft for 6 months feed (minimum)
X2 elephants 10, 000 sq feet. of storage space.





JW

[Tcg]

[Replying to post 99 by JehovahsWitness]

I can. As I've already pointed out, the occupants stayed on the ark for over a year. That's more than twice the 6 months you used in your calculation.


Tcg