Noah’s Ark seems like a myth

[dbasra99]

Hello. I am new here. Trying to find a place to openly discuss my faith issues without being attacked.

I had a total faith deconstruction that led me to severe depression. My faith has been somewhat been rebuilt but I still struggle with many issues.

For example, for many years I have not been able to believe the story of Noah. This is both from science and theology standpoints.

I have listened to many models by numerous apologists but no one brings me closure on this.

I see nothing more than a story of a great natural catastrophe that is blamed on God and is expressed in various ancient religions. However the references in the New Testament trouble me.

I am interested in what others think.

Thanks.

[1213]

Tectonic plate moment is itself the force that pushes up mountains.

Moment? You don't seem to know what moment means.

and many people survived. That means it was not done by God to wipe everyone out...
...and the divine intent set out in the Bible didn't happen...

Bible tells 8 survived and everyone on top of dry land died. Those 8 and their offspring could have told the story and in time it could have been distorted into all different stories. Because the other stories lack details that would show great understanding of earth, I think they are less accurate than Bible.

...It is more sophisticated than the old myth but that only shows it was written a lot later, when shipbuilding was better, the world was better known and a lot more species were known. It only makes it harder to cram it all into a wooden box.

I think it is wrong to think the ark was like relatively modern wooden ship.

It is amazing how you can ignore and dismiss evidence. How else do you explain the in situ fossil sea floors up in mountain strata?

Marine fossils on high mountains would obviously be, because the area was covered with water and those animals swam at those places, before the water level begun to drop, which caused some of the animals be trapped in those areas.

[brunumb]

The problem with the official tectonic plate theory is, it can’t show any logical force that could lift mountains. The whole idea seems to be based on magical thinking.

The forces are easily explained and just as easily demonstrated.

Then, please explain what is the force and how it is formed?

I have done that for you before and all you have done is responded with more denial. The fact is that those forces exist as a result of tectonic shift and mountains continue to rise as a result. You could easily learn about it if you wanted, but I'm guessing that any challenges to your beliefs would be undesirable.

[brunumb]

Bible tells 8 survived and everyone on top of dry land died. Those 8 and their offspring could have told the story and in time it could have been distorted into all different stories.

Would that not also apply to their accounts/memories of everything that happened on the earth before the flood occurred? How can we rely on anything the Bible has to say about events pre-flood?

[TRANSPONDER]

Tectonic plate moment is itself the force that pushes up mountains.

Moment? You don't seem to know what moment means.

Sorry, I misstyped. It should have been 'movement'.

and many people survived. That means it was not done by God to wipe everyone out...
...and the divine intent set out in the Bible didn't happen...

Bible tells 8 survived and everyone on top of dry land died. Those 8 and their offspring could have told the story and in time it could have been distorted into all different stories. Because the other stories lack details that would show great understanding of earth, I think they are less accurate than Bible.

Well, there's the problem. In all those other cultures, we don't see an interruption by a flood and a different culture somewhat Noachian let alone Babelian. It looks like the local culture, S American, Chinese, Harappan or later european stone age, carried on with no break where the flood is supposed to have been. The evidence is against a global flood that wiped everyone out.

...It is more sophisticated than the old myth but that only shows it was written a lot later, when shipbuilding was better, the world was better known and a lot more species were known. It only makes it harder to cram it all into a wooden box.

I think it is wrong to think the ark was like relatively modern wooden ship.

Then that makes it problematic that it could have done the job the Bible says it did. And it only shows how dependent the story is on the Babyl;onian myth, even to the element fo releasing birds to see whether the water had gone down.

It is amazing how you can ignore and dismiss evidence. How else do you explain the in situ fossil sea floors up in mountain strata?

Marine fossils on high mountains would obviously be, because the area was covered with water and those animals swam at those places, before the water level begun to drop, which caused some of the animals be trapped in those areas.

I already explained these are not mountains with animal fossils dumped on them by flood water, but fossil sea floors. Whether as part of a deep time geology or mountains raised after the Flood, scenario, they had to be raised up.

Claim CC364:
Seashells and other marine fossils have been found on mountaintops, even very tall ones. These indicate that the sea once covered the mountains, which is evidence for a global flood.
Source:
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1985. Life--How Did It Get Here? Brooklyn, NY, p. 203.
Response:
Shells on mountains are easily explained by uplift of the land. Although this process is slow, it is observed happening today, and it accounts not only for the seashells on mountains but also for the other geological and paleontological features of those mountains. The sea once did cover the areas where the fossils are found, but they were not mountains at the time; they were shallow seas.

A flood cannot explain the presence of marine shells on mountains for the following reasons:
Floods erode mountains and deposit their sediments in valleys.
In many cases, the fossils are in the same positions as they grow in life, not scattered as if they were redeposited by a flood. This was noted as early as the sixteenth century by Leonardo da Vinci (Gould 1998).
Other evidence, such as fossilized tracks and burrows of marine organisms, show that the region was once under the sea. Seashells are not found in sediments that were not formerly covered by sea. (Talk origins).

[Diogenes]

Thank you for your opinions. The problem with the official tectonic plate theory is, it can’t show any logical force that could lift mountains. The whole idea seems to be based on magical thinking.
....
I don’t think it is reasonable claim to say it was formed by millions of years, sorry.

"Sorry" indeed, for laughing out loud. It is the ultimate irony that folk who say "God did it" in an instant, just by thinking it are the ones who call geologic processes that are meticulously explained, accompanied by literally 'mountains' of evidence, that these proved explanations are 'magical thinking.' And the basis for the 'magical thinking' appellation? Just personal opinion based on ZERO evidence, just ancient myths written by anonymous people thousands of years ago, yet somehow enshrined as 'truth' thru centuries of indoctrination. What a HOOT!

There are hundreds of resources one could avail oneself of IF actual knowledge and understanding were the goal.

Mountains form where two continental plates collide. Since both plates have a similar thickness and weight, neither one will sink under the other. Instead, they crumple and fold until the rocks are forced up to form a mountain range. As the plates continue to collide, mountains will get taller and taller.

https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/eart ... /mountains


And we know these explanations are valid because of evidence, including the rate of continental drift today, not to mention earthquakes and volcanoes. But when you are 'forced' by false beliefs to claim it all happened in 6000 years, then nothing fits the eviidence.

[TRANSPONDER]

Thank you for your opinions. The problem with the official tectonic plate theory is, it can’t show any logical force that could lift mountains. The whole idea seems to be based on magical thinking.
....
I don’t think it is reasonable claim to say it was formed by millions of years, sorry.

"Sorry" indeed, for laughing out loud. It is the ultimate irony that folk who say "God did it" in an instant, just by thinking it are the ones who call geologic processes that are meticulously explained, accompanied by literally 'mountains' of evidence, that these proved explanations are 'magical thinking.' And the basis for the 'magical thinking' appellation? Just personal opinion based on ZERO evidence, just ancient myths written by anonymous people thousands of years ago, yet somehow enshrined as 'truth' thru centuries of indoctrination. What a HOOT!

There are hundreds of resources one could avail oneself of IF actual knowledge and understanding were the goal.

Mountains form where two continental plates collide. Since both plates have a similar thickness and weight, neither one will sink under the other. Instead, they crumple and fold until the rocks are forced up to form a mountain range. As the plates continue to collide, mountains will get taller and taller.

https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/eart ... /mountains


And we know these explanations are valid because of evidence, including the rate of continental drift today, not to mention earthquakes and volcanoes. But when you are 'forced' by false beliefs to claim it all happened in 6000 years, then nothing fits the eviidence.

Thank you. The thing is, we are not in legitimate question of scientific evidence, which may be ok, nor even rejection of forensic evidence (what happened in the past even if it isn't happening now) but denial of current day evidence of continental drift going on now, what it does (rifts and faults, volcanoes and mountains). Even before we get from the controversy (teach iit in the creationism class) whether the flood washed the sea fossils over the tops of the mountains, requiring a 8,000 meter (1) deep flood, or it washed over flooded lands which then got raised up to make the water appear to go down. Or they might have a 500 m. deep flood and the mountains raised up after that. Which might avert some heretic - burnings even if it doesn't solve the problem.

(1) Everest 29,029 feet [8,848 meters].

[dbasra99]

Tectonic plate moment is itself the force that pushes up mountains.

Moment? You don't seem to know what moment means.

and many people survived. That means it was not done by God to wipe everyone out...
...and the divine intent set out in the Bible didn't happen...

Bible tells 8 survived and everyone on top of dry land died. Those 8 and their offspring could have told the story and in time it could have been distorted into all different stories. Because the other stories lack details that would show great understanding of earth, I think they are less accurate than Bible.

...It is more sophisticated than the old myth but that only shows it was written a lot later, when shipbuilding was better, the world was better known and a lot more species were known. It only makes it harder to cram it all into a wooden box.

I think it is wrong to think the ark was like relatively modern wooden ship.

It is amazing how you can ignore and dismiss evidence. How else do you explain the in situ fossil sea floors up in mountain strata?

Marine fossils on high mountains would obviously be, because the area was covered with water and those animals swam at those places, before the water level begun to drop, which caused some of the animals be trapped in those areas.

Sorry if this is a duplicate reply but I assume you know what would happen if the tectonic plates moved so quickly?

[TRANSPONDER]

Yes. Good point. Past discussion about the logistics of the Ark (a wooden boat bigger than the Wyoming and without steel bracing) required a Flood calm as a millpond rising like a state of art elevator, with hardly any movement. But the amount of apocalyptic weather has to go down in a month or so not to mention ocean sized hydroplates falling in or asteroids bashing a hole in a continent, would founder Noah and his floating larder in a couple of hours, never mind mountains supposedly rearing up and the tectonic plate activity needed to do that in something again like a month.

I'm sorta amazed and amused at the tiny mentality of this 'table top model' of the scene which is ludicrous when imagined on a continental scale on a curved earth. Even in a small local area, like just North America or the Atlantic, a local flood leaving a lot of people alive elsewhere (which would refute the Biblical point of the Flood anyway) would be tough for any boat to survive, let alone one made of gopher wood and tar, and stuffed to squeaking with panicked animals.

Oh don't fret about 'duplicate reply' - we get the same arguments and have to do the same rebuttals over and over.

[Miles]

Yes. Good point. Past discussion about the logistics of the Ark (a wooden boat bigger than the Wyoming and without steel bracing) required a Flood calm as a millpond rising like a state of art elevator, with hardly any movement. But the amount of apocalyptic weather has to go down in a month or so not to mention ocean sized hydroplates falling in or asteroids bashing a hole in a continent, would founder Noah and his floating larder in a couple of hours, never mind mountains supposedly rearing up and the tectonic plate activity needed to do that in something again like a month.

I'm sorta amazed and amused at the tiny mentality of this 'table top model' of the scene which is ludicrous when imagined on a continental scale on a curved earth. Even in a small local area, like just North America or the Atlantic, a local flood leaving a lot of people alive elsewhere (which would refute the Biblical point of the Flood anyway) would be tough for any boat to survive, let alone one made of gopher wood and tar, and stuffed to squeaking with panicked animals.

Oh don't fret about 'duplicate reply' - we get the same arguments and have to do the same rebuttals over and over.

Gopher wood you say. Hmmmm. . . . . . Possibly.

What gets me is that Christians can't decide what the ark was to be made of. Sound like a myth-in-the-making to you? It sure does to me.

Genesis 6:14

"wood"
CEB
so make a wooden ark. Make the ark with nesting places and cover it inside and out with tar.


"good timber"
GNT
Build a boat for yourself out of good timber; make rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out.


"timber planks"
DRA
Make thee an ark of timber planks: thou shalt make little rooms in the ark, and thou shalt pitch it within and without.


"gopherwood"
KJ21
Make thee an ark of gopherwood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt cover it within and without with pitch.


"cypress wood"
ERV
Use cypress wood and build a boat for yourself. Make rooms in the boat and cover it with tar inside and out.


"good lumber"
CEV
Get some good lumber and build a boat. Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out.


"pine trees"
GNV
Make thee an Ark of pine trees: thou shalt make cabins in the Ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.


"resinous wood"
TLB
Make a boat from resinous wood, sealing it with tar; and construct decks and stalls throughout the ship.


"teakwood"
MSG
“Build yourself a ship from teakwood. Make rooms in it.


"cedar trees"
JUB
Make thee an ark of cedar trees; rooms shalt thou make in the ark and shalt reconcile it within and without covering it over with pitch. {Heb. ransom or atonement}

And, of course, none of the named woods are from the same species, much less the same genus.

Gopher wood: Torreya taxifolia

Cypress: Taxodium distichum

Pine: Pinus spp

Teak: Tectona grandis

Cedar: Cedrus spp.



And this from scripture that was given by god in which every word proves true.


.

[TRANSPONDER]

It's true that which kind of wood the writer had in mind is not sure, but frankly what kind of wood the Ark was supposed to have been made of is one of the lesser of the problems about the Ark - story.