Noah's Ark - Literal or what?

[yeshua4me2]

NT says it was true as well


Heb 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

1Pe 3:20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

2Pe 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;


all these verses seem pointless if noah never existed.

and didn't the name Noah (or a close varient there of) survive in at least a dozen different and widspread cultures, along with a flood.


my favorite flood tale is one where only a man and a wolf survived on a boat..to repopulate the earth......and just how did that happen....hehehehe

thankyou and God Bless

 

[BobRyan]

In fact I think the older character-symbol for "flood" in ancient Chinese is a diagram with 8 people and a boat.

The human race remembers - at least in some form.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[UTEOTW]

"In fact I think the older character-symbol for "flood" in ancient Chinese is a diagram with 8 people and a boat."

You really ought to not repeat such silly claims.

http://www.coastalfog.net/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html
http://www.coastalfog.net/languages/chinchar/chflood.html

It is a bad sign when Christians bear false witness trying to support their claims and then others repeat it because they think it sounds good. This is about the normal level of YE scholoarship, however. Sad.

 

[Petrel]

Originally posted by yeshua4me2:
all these verses seem pointless if noah never existed.

I don't think the idea is that he didn't exist, just that the flood was local and didn't require cramming every single animal species in the world on board, just those in the area.

 

[tamborine lady]

I'm quite sure that the account of the flood in the Bible is correct. It covered the earth and there was a real Noah, just like it says.

All of the "smart" people who say different for one reason or another, have to remember this;God doesn't work in the same realm that we do.

It may seem impossible to our little finite minds, but "with God, all things are possible!!"

Peace,

Tam

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Petrel:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by yeshua4me2:
all these verses seem pointless if noah never existed.

I don't think the idea is that he didn't exist, just that the flood was local and didn't require cramming every single animal species in the world on board, just those in the area. </font>[/QUOTE]This is the perfect atheist alternative to what the Bible describes and it is great because it makes the Bible look silly.

We have lots of local floods and seldom have the need to gather up all the local animals or EVEN to gather 7 of each clean and 2 of each unclean among the local animals so there will still be "animals" in the local area after the flood!

Lets contrast this non-event idea of a local flood with the world-wide "tops of the mountains covered and all life on land with breath killed" idea of God.

Gen 7
19 The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.
20 The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered.
21 All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind;
22 of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died.
23 Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark.

Calvinists present God as "over marketing" Himself when HE CLAIMS to "So love THE WORLD".

Atheists will claim that the "Details" in the list above are another huge example of "over marketing" --

This same "can't believe what GOD says" idea keeps coming up.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
[QB] "In fact I think the older character-symbol for "flood" in ancient Chinese is a diagram with 8 people and a boat."

You really ought to not repeat such silly claims.

http://www.coastalfog.net/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html

Many thanks for that hillarious atheist alternative published in France UTEOTW!! You are the best!

But my source is the Chinese themselves. Not just in documented form but people I actually know that were not Christians and in fact spoke very little english. (Atheist primarily).

The fact is that it is not so much the NUMBER 8 as the PICTURE of 8 people (8 mouths) on a boat the forms the pictograph for boat.

But your article that concludes with the "my hunch is..." was evolutionism's logic "at its best"!!

We would not have expeted anything more from you on this one UTEOTW.

If nothing else - you are consistent!

Try some light with that ---

http://www.yutopian.com/religion/words/


In Christ,

Bob

 

[Bob]

Get saved first. Then the desire to find fault with God's Word will go away!

 

[Bob]

Originally posted by chadman:
I would personally love nothing more than someone to find and validate Noah's Ark with real proof.

However, having grown up reading Chick publications (tracts and magazines) like encyclopedias, my world was rocked when I started checking facts out. I found, people can and will write anything they please for their own purposes. And many more will believe whatever they read.

Get saved! Then sweat the small stuff!

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by mud:
Is anyone here familiar with Dr. John Baumgardner’s flood mechanism theory?

The main problem with Baumgardner’s theory is that it's not supportable.

The thermal diffusivity of the earth, for example, would have to increase 10,000 fold to get the subduction rates proposed. There's no geological evidence to support that this has ever happenned, especially in the last few thousand years.

Also, there's no evidence to support Baumgardner’s idea that the new ocean floor cooled quickly, or that sedimentary mountains were raised in months.

Baumgardner estimates a release of 1028 joules from the subduction process, which is more than adequate to boil off all the oceans. In addition, Baumgardner postulates that the mantle was much hotter before the Flood (giving it greater viscosity); that heat would have to go somewhere, too.

Subduction on the scale Baumgardner proposes would have produced very much more vulcanism around plate boundaries than we see.

According to Baumgardner, Cenozoic sediments are post-Flood. Yet fossils from Cenozoic sediments alone show a different lifeforms over long periods of time.

Baumgardner's own modeling shows that, during the Flood, currents would be faster over continents than over ocean basins, so sediments should, on the whole, be removed from continents and deposited in ocean basins. Yet sediments on the ocean basin average 0.6 km thick, while on continents (including continental shelves), they average 2.6 km thick.

Now just because Baumgardner’s ideas are refutable doesn't negate the Noah account. It only only negates Baumgardner’s theories. I don't need Baumgardner or anyone else to believe in scripture. Then again, I don't need science to prove or even support a young earth to believe in scripture, any more that I need the Shroud of Turin to be authentic to believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

 

[Petrel]

Originally posted by BobRyan:
We have lots of local floods and seldom have the need to gather up all the local animals or EVEN to gather 7 of each clean and 2 of each unclean among the local animals so there will still be "animals" in the local area after the flood!

Lets contrast this non-event idea of a local flood with the world-wide "tops of the mountains covered and all life on land with breath killed" idea of God.

One hypothesis is that the Flood occurred in the Mediterranean basin, which was at one time a desert. If this is the location that Noah was living when he built the Ark, he would indeed need to bring the animals on board because the flood would cover tens of thousands of miles of land. Even if he disembarked at higher altitudes near the periphery of the area they'd still have to walk for days or weeks before reaching an area that hadn't been destroyed.

 

[mud]

BobRyan wrote:
Mud --

What do you think of this?

Evidence of Plate movement at the flood but not much beyond that.

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=78


Recent mountain Uplift argues for the flood
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=98

Bob R

The articles are interesting reading which highlight some of the real difficulties theories of slow and gradual plate movements have in explaining many geological features and phenomena. You know, some in this thread seem to think that just because there are a few problems with Baumgardner’s model we should readily cast it onto the heap of failed ideas and just ignore its significant strengths. Do you think they also believe problems with uniformitarian geology should nix that whole idea as well? Me neither.

The first article you sited is quite dated based on the references cited, but I think that more up to date observational data only strengthens the case for theories of catastrophic plate motion.

The second article is quite interesting as it discusses geophysical features which are inexplicable in terms of slow and gradual processes and seem to require rapid catastrophic processes for their origins. The following excerpt discusses the conflict between what is observed in nature by uniformitarian field geologists, the uniformitarian theories proposed to explain them, and how a biblically informed framework of catastrophism is more satisfactory.

This disconnect between the uniformitarian theorists and uniformitarian observationalists on the issue of mountains is nicely documented in a recent book by Cliff Ollier and Colin Pain entitled, The Origin of Mountains.1 The authors are geo-morphologists who focus on field data relating to the processes such as faulting, uplift, volcanism, and erosion that sculpt mountains. In their book they repeatedly relate how geological features they and other fellow geomorphologists observe in the field fail to match the explanations of their theorist colleagues. Yet in the end they offer no suggestion as to how the disparity between the existing uniformitarian theories and their observational data can be resolved, or where the errors in the theoretical framework might lie.

The Biblical record concerning the Flood that destroyed the earth and its inhabitants in Noah's day just a few millennia ago, however, provides a straightforward and credible way of resolving this uniformitarian impasse. In a nutshell, the catastrophic processes unleashed in the Flood not only deposited thousands of feet of fossil-bearing sediments on all the continents and moved North and South America some 3000 miles westward relative to Europe and Africa, but also increased the thickness of the buoyant crustal rock in the belts where high mountains now exist. When the catastrophic driving processes shut down, the zones with the thickened crust promptly moved toward a state of what is called isostatic equilibrium, resulting in many thousands of feet of vertical uplift of the surface.

Recent Rapid Uplift of Today's Mountains by John Baumgardner, Ph.D. ( ICR Impact article #381)

I really think Baumgardner is onto something with his catastrophic plate tectonics model. It does not compromise God’s word, it does not deal lightly with numerical data or geological observations, and it is able to explain so many features of the earth by appealing to fairly simple yet profoundly influential process of catastrophism. Where is Occam’s Razor now?

 

[BobRyan]

Thanks - I appreciate your input.

As I read the first article it seems like it is arguing for continental separation during the flood as part of that catestrophic event but not after the flood.

To believe, however, that the continents moved thousands of miles during the Tower of Babel incident without causing another global flood requires a miracle.

The argument it makes about subduction data not supporting the uniform continental drift idea also seems to argue for separation during the flood based on flood mechanisms not uniform dynamics seen today.

Does this seem reasonable to you?

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by BobRyan:
We have lots of local floods and seldom have the need to gather up all the local animals or EVEN to gather 7 of each clean and 2 of each unclean among the local animals so there will still be "animals" in the local area after the flood!

Lets contrast this non-event idea of a local flood with the world-wide "tops of the mountains covered and all life on land with breath killed" idea of God.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Petrel said --

One hypothesis is that the Flood occurred in the Mediterranean basin, which was at one time a desert. If this is the location that Noah was living when he built the Ark, he would indeed need to bring the animals on board because the flood would cover tens of thousands of miles of land. Even if he disembarked at higher altitudes near the periphery of the area they'd still have to walk for days or weeks before reaching an area that hadn't been destroyed.

Again this is a conflicted and contradictory position since it ignores "details" in the account about all land life with breath in it and the highest mountains - but then wants to "keep the detail" about 7 clean and 2 unclean animals of each species.

Secondly - the explanation you give does not say "why" they need to save animals of every species given that those animals could simply walk into that area AFTER the flood from neighboring regions. So what if it take 50 years to repopulate??

Or do you also change "that detail" to "7 of every clean animal that was unique to the local region and 2 of the unclean unique to that region"??

How much editing on behalf of ??? (Actually I am not even sure what higher goal is being served by your editing).

In Christ,

Bob

 

[mud]

Bob,
I cannot be dogmatic about rapid plate movement since the Bible does not explicitly teach it, but I do think it is easily the best mechanism proposed that accounts for the flood and the left over geological features. I don’t see a problem with continental separation to their current positions within the time frame of the flood as long as the forces moving them were sufficient to get the job done. I think Baumgardner is right to suggest that a catastrophe of equivalent magnitude to the flood would have occurred if the continents separated rapidly after the flood. But what do I know? I must defer to trusted authorities in this regard. The authorities I trust accept a plain reading of the biblical texts and build their science around that framework.

 

[Petrel]

Originally posted by BobRyan:
Again this is a conflicted and contradictory position since it ignores "details" in the account about all land life with breath in it and the highest mountains - but then wants to "keep the detail" about 7 clean and 2 unclean animals of each species.

Secondly - the explanation you give does not say "why" they need to save animals of every species given that those animals could simply walk into that area AFTER the flood from neighboring regions. So what if it take 50 years to repopulate??

Or do you also change "that detail" to "7 of every clean animal that was unique to the local region and 2 of the unclean unique to that region"??

How much editing on behalf of ??? (Actually I am not even sure what higher goal is being served by your editing).

Don't ask me! I don't have a dog in this fight. I haven't made up my mind in any particular way about the universe past, so I'm free to entertain all sorts of wild speculations, from a literal 6-day Creation and literal global flood, to a ~13 billion year old universe that due to relativity was created in 6 days from God's point of view, to a plain vanilla Big Bang followed by directed evolution and the recent (~50,000 years) creation of mankind, to a Big Bang and directed evolution and the creation of man millions of years ago.

I am inclined to believe that God would not make things appear to have been one way when it was in fact not so, but there may be a way to reconcile a 6-day creation and global flood with the evidence, who knows?

Right now it seems to me that any event capable of covering the globe with water would be so catastrophic that all water-living animals, plant life, and insects would be destroyed.

 

[BobRyan]

Does He "make it appear one way" in the Gen 1-2 "Account"??

When Adam was one day old did Adam "appear" to be an adult or a zygote??

Is the reason for that - the idea of read-for-use? Did Adam need to act like an adult for day 1 in God's plan? If so - does it make sense that Adam would be an adult even though only 1 day old? If someone born after the flood looked at Noah and his family would they think Adam 'was an Adult" when one day old - or would they think that all humans start from the union of cells from a man and woman which at one day do not appear to be an adult human?

But back to the flood - the question is - why edit it to be other than the "details" listed in Genesis 6-8?

What higher purpose is served in doing that? You claim that you imagine that any event that covers the earth with water would also destroy all plant life and all marine life. Is that the "higher purpose" that would be served in editing the account given in Gen 6-8??

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Petrel]

Originally posted by BobRyan:
Does He "make it appear one way" in the Gen 1-2 "Account"??

When Adam was one day old did Adam "appear" to be an adult or a zygote??

Is the reason for that - the idea of read-for-use? Did Adam need to act like an adult for day 1 in God's plan? If so - does it make sense that Adam would be an adult even though only 1 day old? If someone born after the flood looked at Noah and his family would they think Adam 'was an Adult" when one day old - or would they think that all humans start from the union of cells from a man and woman which at one day do not appear to be an adult human?

Ehh, what?

But back to the flood - the question is - why edit it to be other than the "details" listed in Genesis 6-8?

What higher purpose is served in doing that? You claim that you imagine that any event that covers the earth with water would also destroy all plant life and all marine life. Is that the "higher purpose" that would be served in editing the account given in Gen 6-8??

There is no "higher purpose." I don't think it looks like a global flood because the geological evidence doesn't make sense that way and the explanations for the source of that much water so fast would result in the extinction of most, if not all, life. Doesn't mean that it didn't happen, just that the model hasn't been presented yet.

 

[BobRyan]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by BobRyan:
Does He "make it appear one way" in the Gen 1-2 "Account"??

When Adam was one day old did Adam "appear" to be an adult or a zygote??

Is the reason for that - the idea of read-for-use? Did Adam need to act like an adult for day 1 in God's plan? If so - does it make sense that Adam would be an adult even though only 1 day old? If someone born after the flood looked at Noah and his family would they think Adam 'was an Adult" when one day old - or would they think that all humans start from the union of cells from a man and woman which at one day do not appear to be an adult human?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Petrel said Ehh, what?

Bob responds --

Man - adult

infant - not adult.

Day one - ready for use - as in independant and able to go pick up food and eat.

 

[BobRyan]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But back to the flood - the question is - why edit it to be other than the "details" listed in Genesis 6-8?

What higher purpose is served in doing that? You claim that you imagine that any event that covers the earth with water would also destroy all plant life and all marine life. Is that the "higher purpose" that would be served in editing the account given in Gen 6-8??
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Petrel said --
There is no "higher purpose." I don't think it looks like a global flood because the geological evidence doesn't make sense that way and the explanations for the source of that much water so fast would result in the extinction of most, if not all, life. Doesn't mean that it didn't happen, just that the model hasn't been presented yet.

Are you saying the world wide flood was already tried and didn't work?

Are you saying they did this in the lab and it just can't be done without causing more damage than they imagine?

Are you saying they "imagined this" and could not figure out how God did it?

Did they find a video?

What are you saying?

Are you saying that the model God gives in Gen 6-8 with the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven -- (Water from below and above that then cover the highest moutains) can not work because --- (what?? it has been tried already?)