Noahs 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.

[LittleNipper]

Don't ever accept a belief that the Bible stores [sic] are a myth. Calling the historical documentation found in the Bible "myths," are for lazy people who are unwilling to do any background check and are fully comfortable with what they were told by nonbelievers generally while in a public institution, usually, school or college. The Bible is clearly designed to get individuals to ponder, investigate, study, and pray about --- defiantly interactive. Pagan beliefs are founded on myth. The Bible is founded on the MESSIAH/CHRIST.

So many easily disproved false assumptions in this post suggests the author may be the one who has failed to do diligent research as well as making false assumptions about both believers and non believers whose scholarship proves the mythic nature of stories like Noah's Ark." There are many resources you could study to fill in gaps in one's knowledge base, including The Biblical Archaeology Society.

Many scholars believe that the ancient Israelites had creation stories that were told and retold; these stories eventually reached the Biblical authors, who wrote them down in Genesis and other books of the Bible. Creation stories in Genesis were etiological, Shawna Dolansky and other Biblical scholars argue. That is, the creation stories in Genesis served to provide answers to why the world was the way it was, such as why people wear clothes and why women experience pain during childbirth.

Creation stories in Genesis were among the many myths that were told in the ancient Near East. Today we may think of myths as beliefs that are not true, but as a literary genre, myths "are stories that convey and reinforce aspects of a cultures worldview: many truths," writes Dolansky. So to call something a mythin this sensedoes not necessarily imply that it is not true.

Scholars argue that Biblical myths arose within the context of other ancient Near Eastern myths that sought to explain the creation of the world. Alongside Biblical myths were Mesopotamian myths in which, depending on the account, the creator was Enlil, Mami or Marduk. In ancient Egyptian mythology, the creator of the world was Atum in one creation story and Ptah in another.

"Like other ancient peoples, the Israelites told multiple creation stories," writes Shawna Dolansky in her Biblical Views column. "The Bible gives us three (and who knows how many others were recounted but not preserved?). Genesis 1 differs from Genesis 23, and both diverge from a third version alluded to elsewhere in the Bible, a myth of the primordial battle between God and the forces of chaos known as Leviathan (e.g., Psalm 74), Rahab (Psalm 89) or the dragon (Isaiah 27; 51). This battle that preceded creation has the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish as its closest analogue.

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dai ... n-genesis/

You assume that non believers "were told by [other] nonbelievers generally while in a public institution, usually, school or college." Many nonbelievers on this forum and elsewhere are like me:
I was raised in a Christian evangelical home and went to church three times a week from infancy thru college and beyond. I graduated from a Christian college, Seattle Pacific, now a University. I studied the Bible carefully for 30 years and was a Christian missionary in Japan.

You might, Little Nipper, consider the advice given in the guidelines of this very forum:

6. Realize that most participants here are strong debaters and have a vast knowledge of Christianity and the Bible (including non-theists).

Saying it and being it are two entirely different things. And please do present your synopsis as to why the Bible stories are all myths, I 'd love to read your epic.

[Miles]

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

If you still believe in God what do you find problematic of explanation that the flood was a miracle?

I see nothing more than a story of a great natural catastrophe ...

There is no "natural catastrophe" that could account for the entire planet covered meters deep with water.

"Meters"!!! How about miles. Like 5 1/2 of them

In reply to DrNoGods last Sun Aug 06, 2023 in a discussion about the flood I wrote:

"Some years ago I calculated the amount of water the Biblical flood would require so as to cover Earth to the summit of Mt. Everest, altitude = 29,029 feet, or appx. 5 1/2 miles. I didn't take the extra 15 cubits into account, but did assume a flat, sea-level landscape; however, as it turns out the mean height of land above sea level is 840 meters, so the figure of 197 million cubic miles of water should be adjusted down slightly. "

................


And what Bible fable was this based on? Check out Genesis 7:17-20 in the New World Translation (2013 Revision)

17 The flooding continued* for 40 days on the earth, and the waters kept increasing and began carrying the ark, and it was floating high above the earth. 18 The waters became overwhelming and kept increasing greatly upon the earth, but the ark floated on the surface of the waters. 19 The waters overwhelmed the earth so greatly that all the tall mountains under the whole heavens were covered.+ 20 The waters rose up to 15 cubits* above the mountains.

.

[brunumb]

I was raised in a Christian evangelical home and went to church three times a week from infancy thru college and beyond. I graduated from a Christian college, Seattle Pacific, now a University. I studied the Bible carefully for 30 years and was a Christian missionary in Japan.

Saying it and being it are two entirely different things.

I find your dismissive response offensive. Are you suggesting that Diogenes is being insincere or even dishonest? Please explain.

[brunumb]

^^^^

[dbasra99]

[Replying to Diogenes in post #4]

Hello and thanks for your response.

Do you still view yourself as a believer or possibly agnostic?

Thanks.

[1213]

...
I am interested in what others think.

I believe the flood happened as told in the Bible. But, I also understand that people think it is a myth. It can look like a myth, if person doesn't understand how it happened, and believes blindly everything "scientists" say.

Interesting thing is, it is not only Bible that speaks of the great flood. Similar stories are all around the world, in many different cultures. It is funny how people believe many things without less testimonies. But, obviously stories can be made up. I think there is lot of evidence for the stories to be true, traces of that there actually was the great flood:

1. Orogenic mountains, result of the collapse of the original continent and flood water carrying sediments.
2. Marine fossils on high mountains.
3. Vast oil and gas fields, result of vast amount of sunken organic material.
4. Modern continents. Bible tells there was in the beginning only one continent. Under it there was vast cavity filled with water, called the great deep. When the flood happened, it was because something, maybe comet on Yucatan peninsula broke the original continent. When the continent was broken, its parts started to sunk and the water escaped below earth (=dry land). It caused the heavy rain and flooding.
5. Formations like the Grand Canyon, result of great flood and its side effects carrying material.
6. Great glaciers and ice age. The flood cooled planet and caused ice age.

[JehovahsWitness]

There is no "natural catastrophe" that could account for the entire planet covered meters deep with water.

"Meters"!!! How about miles. ...

Can meters not convert to miles? Should we not be inclusive of those that use metric ?

Check out Genesis 7:17-20 in the New World Translation (2013 Revision)[/size]

17 The flooding continued* for 40 days on the earth, and the waters kept increasing and began carrying the ark, and it was floating high above the earth. 18 The waters became overwhelming and kept increasing greatly upon the earth, but the ark floated on the surface of the waters. 19 The waters overwhelmed the earth so greatly that all the tall mountains under the whole heavens were covered.+ 20 The waters rose up to 15 cubits* above the mountains.

https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/b/r1/lp-e/nwt ... y=discover

NOTE If you are encouraging reference to the New World Translation it might be an idea to actually use the notes indicated by the asterix [*] which lead to the publishers outline of biblical measurements which differenciate between a long cubit and a cubit as per Gen 7v20 : https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1001070235

[The Nice Centurion]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness in post #17]
OK, but why do you not outline the possibility that Noah from the bible and King Noah of the Nephites could very well have been ONE AND THE SAME PERSON.

It is too unprobable that both should have the same name BY SHEER CHANCE !

So people should be heard who fight for the theory that Noah from the bible lived long enough to sail as a blind passenger with Nephi to the New World and later times to become King !

[TRANSPONDER]

...
I am interested in what others think.

I believe the flood happened as told in the Bible. But, I also understand that people think it is a myth. It can look like a myth, if person doesn't understand how it happened, and believes blindly everything "scientists" say.

Interesting thing is, it is not only Bible that speaks of the great flood. Similar stories are all around the world, in many different cultures. It is funny how people believe many things without less testimonies. But, obviously stories can be made up. I think there is lot of evidence for the stories to be true, traces of that there actually was the great flood:

1. Orogenic mountains, result of the collapse of the original continent and flood water carrying sediments.
2. Marine fossils on high mountains.
3. Vast oil and gas fields, result of vast amount of sunken organic material.
4. Modern continents. Bible tells there was in the beginning only one continent. Under it there was vast cavity filled with water, called the great deep. When the flood happened, it was because something, maybe comet on Yucatan peninsula broke the original continent. When the continent was broken, its parts started to sunk and the water escaped below earth (=dry land). It caused the heavy rain and flooding.
5. Formations like the Grand Canyon, result of great flood and its side effects carrying material.
6. Great glaciers and ice age. The flood cooled planet and caused ice age.

Orogenic mountains are evidence of tectonic ship and mountain -buildin over geological ages, not of a global flood.

First quote off the Internet. "Orogenesis, the process of mountain building, occurs when two tectonic plates collide either forcing material upwards to form mountain belts such as the Alps or Himalayas or causing one plate to be subducted below the other, resulting in volcanic mountain chains such as the Andes."

There are various flood legends, but they are not the same. Notably Egypt doesn't have one and they were developing their civilisation when the flood was supposed to have happened. So either people tell stories about destruction (it is rather atavistic) or there was an actual global flood of some kind but it was not total, and many people survived. That means it was not done by God to wipe everyone out (with everything else as collateral damage) but was a natural event; so even if the Bible does mention an actual event, the Biblical version is no more believable than all those others.I am sure we've done marine fossils before. They are not marine debris washed up on mountains, but fossil sea floors, even with fossil worm burrows in. They show ancient sea floors raised up and validate deep time geology, not a flood.

The geology says that continents have some together as on and split up several times. Africa and America fit together. That shows separation by tectonic movement, not a hole bashed in the by a comet or anything else.

The grand canyon has meanders. That is formed by millions of years of erosion, not a sudden flood. That is also the reason for organic deposits in such amounts, it takes millions of years.
The fossil record does not support the 'Ice age' theory. After the supposed flood levels (a problem in themselves) we get the evolution of all the mammals whether evolutionary as in science or super - is no ice age until later, whether evolutionary as in the Creationist model. There is no Ice age until later when many mammals were extinct and the later ones like Mammoth and Rhino had evolved to be found in Ice. Your model does not fit the evidence.

I haven't even got onto how the Biblical flood looks uncannily like the Mesopotamian flood - myth that went through several iterations, with a different tribal God being involved. So you don't even need a large flood (like Black Sea) let alone a global one, but a memory of bad river floods is enough to provide the story.

[otseng]

[Replying to dbasra99 in post #1]

Welcome to the forum. I believe in a global flood and debated this many times. When one actually studies this and compares all the models, the global flood model makes the most sense. Here is my most recent debate on this:
viewtopic.php?p=1055177#p1055177