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.

[The Nice Centurion]

Be not an unbeliever- be a believer!

Interesting without end is the historical fact that while the biblical Noah mastered water, King Noah in the Book of Mormon was burned to Death.

Also you would dare to call the Ark account mythological, but you know very well that there are even sceptics out there (hopefully very far out there) who dare doubting the giant wooden submarines that were used by Nephi and his people to reach america with all their property, like elephant herds and women.

See, since I cant begin to believe that you question said sumarines, you should also hold strong your fath into the account of the biblical Ark adventure.

Joseph Smith ,who restored the bible , would have cut out of it Noahs flood account if it were false.

After all: we know that Joseph Smith was the greatest Prophet of all time. It is written in the Joseph Smith bible by his very own hand.

And what wrote the greatest prophet of all time cant be possibly untrue, or what else do you think?

[Miles]

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

This is a debate forum where attacks are quite common and calm discussions are not. I suggest you ask a moderator to re-post this thread to a more appropriate forum.

Good Luck

As for what you've posted here.

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.

This is fairly common when people find faith to be an inadequate tool to deal with the vagaries of life, especially when biblical issues come up against the findings of science.

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

An ABC News poll released Sunday (February 15, 2004 ) found that 61 percent of Americans believe the account of creation in the Bible’s book of Genesis is “literally true” rather than a story meant as a “lesson.” The poll found that 75 percent of Protestants believed in the story of creation, 79 percent in the Red Sea account and 73 percent [of protestants and 44% of Catholics believe] in Noah and the ark.
source

So you're not alone

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

My suggestions is to start listening more to what science has to say. Apologists have a horse in the race to protect whereas science does not.

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.

What references are those?

I am interested in what others think.

Thanks.

Nice start, just in the wrong place.

.

[Diogenes]

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.

Congratulations! There is a reason the stories of Noah, creation, the 'Tower of Babel' and others seem like myths. They are myths.

There are three basic responses people have when they realize many of the Bible Stories they learned as children do not seem reasonable or plausible; that they seem like the myths all religions tell.

1) Double down, employ poor logic, poor scholarship and argue supporting those myths, arguing for their reality, hoping that if you convince others you might also convince yourself.

2) Recognize, like most Biblical scholars, that the stories ARE myths; myths that should not be taken literally tho' they contain some 'moral truth' but were never intended to be depictions of actual events. Many Christians do just that, but retain their basic faith in the 'God of Abraham' as the creator of life and the ultimate source of truth.

3) Accept the sad fact you have been lied to, fed a load of rubbish and that your whole foundation of belief about the universe is simply not true. Then congratulate yourself for being that rare person who realizes they have been wrong to believe in the junk they were indoctrinated with and strike out on the scary path of true honesty and discovery... being open to truth regardless of preexisting misconceptions and false teachings from people who are generally sincere, but wrong.

The choice is yours.
Change is difficult.
Intellectual honesty is rare.

Only you can decide to have the courage to seek truth even when the truth seems uncomfortable.

Good luck!

[JehovahsWitness]

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.



JEHOVAH'S WITNESS

[JehovahsWitness]

...the references in the New Testament trouble me.

What do you find "troubling" about them? If you are more specific maybe you will get more helpful responses?

[LittleNipper]

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.

Congratulations! There is a reason the stories of Noah, creation, the 'Tower of Babel' and others seem like myths. They are myths.

There are three basic responses people have when they realize many of the Bible Stories they learned as children do not seem reasonable or plausible; that they seem like the myths all religions tell.

1) Double down, employ poor logic, poor scholarship and argue supporting those myths, arguing for their reality, hoping that if you convince others you might also convince yourself.

2) Recognize, like most Biblical scholars, that the stories ARE myths; myths that should not be taken literally tho' they contain some 'moral truth' but were never intended to be depictions of actual events. Many Christians do just that, but retain their basic faith in the 'God of Abraham' as the creator of life and the ultimate source of truth.

3) Accept the sad fact you have been lied to, fed a load of rubbish and that your whole foundation of belief about the universe is simply not true. Then congratulate yourself for being that rare person who realizes they have been wrong to believe in the junk they were indoctrinated with and strike out on the scary path of true honesty and discovery... being open to truth regardless of preexisting misconceptions and false teachings from people who are generally sincere, but wrong.

The choice is yours.
Change is difficult.
Intellectual honesty is rare.

Only you can decide to have the courage to seek truth even when the truth seems uncomfortable.

Good luck!

Don't ever accept a belief that the Bible stores 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.

[TRANSPONDER]

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.

Welcome. I am pleased to have the increased numbers of browsers joining in the discussion.

There are (of course ( three approaches to problematical Bible stories:

(a) they are true, and reliable, miracles and all.
(b)They are true events, but somewhat misunderstood or given spin. Take for instance the sun standing still in a battle. Some may credit the battle but dismiss the sun sanding still as unbelievable. Or for spin I accept the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem, no question, but I do believe the Assyrian claim that Hezekiah submitted and paid tribute and I do not believe the biblical version that the Jews were saved by the Assyrian army being smit, whether in a miracle, disease, or rats eating their tents.
(c) If the don't look likely to be true, they are likely not. Of course, there's personal evaluation here. objective or not While we cannot choose to unbelieve if we believe, we can choose whether to follow the evidence or dismiss it and go on Faith.

As to to Noah, even without peripherals (such as Genesis as a book looking non - credible) there are logical and evidential problems with the Ark. We have had, as you can imagine, many debates, and (as I recall) they have ended up with the evidence and logic being dismissed and/or ignored. We may get further discussion of the points, but aside from the geological evidence against a global flood of that kind, and dismissing 'Local Floods' as a category B debate where a thing may have happened but the Biblical spin on it is not credible, we get the sheer logical problem of the claim to save all the animals. And even if you could, and leaving the breeding bottleneck problem aside, there would be nothing whatsoever to eat after the Flood, and the carnivores would ignore any possible year old scavenge and devour all the other species, including Noah and family and then die of starvation even before there was decent grassland if there were sheep left to eat it.

That to me is the killer, eve aside from the problem with where the water came from and where it went. And the unwritten Rule is, it has to work in a practical way. Bible apologists cannot just make it all happen with a miracle, because (I suspect) that means none of it was necessary at all.

[TRANSPONDER]

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.

Congratulations! There is a reason the stories of Noah, creation, the 'Tower of Babel' and others seem like myths. They are myths.

There are three basic responses people have when they realize many of the Bible Stories they learned as children do not seem reasonable or plausible; that they seem like the myths all religions tell.

1) Double down, employ poor logic, poor scholarship and argue supporting those myths, arguing for their reality, hoping that if you convince others you might also convince yourself.

2) Recognize, like most Biblical scholars, that the stories ARE myths; myths that should not be taken literally tho' they contain some 'moral truth' but were never intended to be depictions of actual events. Many Christians do just that, but retain their basic faith in the 'God of Abraham' as the creator of life and the ultimate source of truth.

3) Accept the sad fact you have been lied to, fed a load of rubbish and that your whole foundation of belief about the universe is simply not true. Then congratulate yourself for being that rare person who realizes they have been wrong to believe in the junk they were indoctrinated with and strike out on the scary path of true honesty and discovery... being open to truth regardless of preexisting misconceptions and false teachings from people who are generally sincere, but wrong.

The choice is yours.
Change is difficult.
Intellectual honesty is rare.

Only you can decide to have the courage to seek truth even when the truth seems uncomfortable.

Good luck!

Don't ever accept a belief that the Bible stores are a myth. 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.

Welcome from a resident hellbent unbeliever . I fully endorse the suggestion of checking, investigating and pondering. Praying, you can please yourself - I have never yet seen it come up with anything that stands up to scrutiny. You are invited to do your very best to refute here the atheist apologetics that were taught in schools and colleges. I reckon they taught what was the 'best theoretical model of reality' or Science, as it is called, and science denial and reverting to Biblefaith is a loser in the end, but that is usually where we end up.

But we relish the debate, so again, welcome.

[Diogenes]

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 culture’s worldview: many truths,” writes Dolansky. So to call something a myth—in this sense—does 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 2–3, 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).