Does Anyone Take the Story of Noah's Ark Literally?

[rocala]

I think that there are various possibilities concerning kangaroos and platypuses. I believe before the flood the land was one continent which then broke up and spread apart (rapid continental drift)- either during the Flood-or as some believe during the days of Peleg, perhaps 100-600 years later. So it would not have been difficult for kangaroos or platypuses to get onto the ark or to Australia afterwards. Other possibilities are land bridges, floating masses of vegetation, or humans transporting them.

So there would be fossil evidence of these species in the middle east?

 

[Parsimony]

I used to, but not any more. At least, I no longer believe the flood mentioned could have been global in scope.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Incorrect. One's world view defines how people view the evidence and arrive at their conclusions.

And that is exactly why the scientific method is the best method we have developed for evaluating evidence. It's faceless concept that doesn't know of or care about personal beliefs. All that maters is if others can replicate studies and evidence, and evaluating findings against current evidence. The flood does not hold up to other findings, the evidence we have, and we just are not finding what we would expect to find had a global flood occured.

God is omnipotent. And see post # 47

That is a cop out. And it make no sense, at all, as to why this god would have left an account in an ancient book, but just so happened to have erased all physical remains of it ever happening.

You think that because you don't think God exists. Argument from Assumption. Invalid.

Actually, plenty of Christians see the flood story as nothing more than a story. It doesn't matter what your personal views in regards to god are, there is no such plain "catch all" that applies to everyone who denies the Bible as a literal record of history.

I think that there are various possibilities concerning kangaroos and platypuses. I believe before the flood the land was one continent which then broke up and spread apart (rapid continental drift)- either during the Flood-or as some believe during the days of Peleg, perhaps 100-600 years later.

We have evidence of Pangea, and plate tectonics, but we would see evidence of this happening, and within such a recent occurrence of this, we would have had some documentation of it, especially in Africa, Western Asia, and Europe, where people were settled and would have seen this happening. We have records that may be accounts of the volcanic ash being spewed into the atmosphere from the Minoan Eruption, but not these continents drifting apart. And this eruption happened about 3,600 years ago, which has it happening either before the flood or only about 800 years after, depending on the source. But, even with the 800 years after the flood estimate, we know that cannot be because human societies existed even before the 800 years before, and again we see no other references to this flood, save for places probably did experience catastrophic, albeit localized, flooding.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Does Anyone Take the Story of Noah's Ark Literally?

Seems more plausible than all the people pushing this idea that it was meant to be taken metaphorically all along.

 

[Altfish]

Peer review papers are biased against creation. That's why you don't see them. And that is a poor excuse for not considering the evidence presented by ICR.

You do talk some rubbish. Science is neutral.
If someone could prove that god exists there would be Nobel Prizes, world wide fame, you'd make Einstein seem like a B-lister.

 

[InChrist]

So there would be fossil evidence of these species in the middle east?

Not necessarily. Fossilization requires special conditions. Lions are known to have lived in the Middle East, yet there have been no lion fossils found there.

"There is a widespread, but mistaken, belief that marsupials are found only in Australia, thus supporting the idea that they must have evolved there. However, living marsupials, opossums, are found also in North and South America, and fossil marsupials have been found on every continent. Likewise, monotremes were once thought to be unique to Australia, but the discovery in 1991 of a fossil platypus tooth in South America stunned the scientific community.[3] Therefore, since evolutionists believe all organisms came from a common ancestor, migration between Australia and other areas must be conceded as possible by all scientists, whether evolutionist or creationist."
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c006.html

 

[InChrist]

I think you need to take a geology class.

Why specifically do you say that?

 

[Maponos]

No, there is no possible way that a global flood of Biblical proportions could have ever happened. Even if it did, there would have been severe inbreeding due to 'two of everything'. Also, deluge tales are found in almost all mythologies, especially ones that are older than Christianity. So, in my view, the Christian deluge is based on older myths but re-purposed for Christianity.

 

[psychoslice]

I did belive in the story when I as a child, but when I grew up I no longer belived it, I see it as a metaphor now.

 

[PackJason]

Why specifically do you say that?

Because you apparently think Pangaea was only 4000 years ago.

That is insane.

 

[InChrist]

Because you apparently think Pangaea was only 4000 years ago.

That is insane.

LOL. Apparently you think it was 180 million years ago which I find no less insane. Different perspectives for sure.

 

[InChrist]

No, there is no possible way that a global flood of Biblical proportions could have ever happened. Even if it did, there would have been severe inbreeding due to 'two of everything'. Also, deluge tales are found in almost all mythologies, especially ones that are older than Christianity. So, in my view, the Christian deluge is based on older myths but re-purposed for Christianity.

The flood account did not come from "Christianity". The scriptures which contain the flood account were written by prophets chosen by God to reveal the history of the earth to humanity well before the advent of Christ or Christianity. I think the fact that many cultures have similar stories or myths with such common aspects strongly supports the idea that their ancestors must have either experienced the same event or they both descended from a common ancestral source that itself experienced such an event.

 

[Maponos]

The flood account did not come from "Christianity". The scriptures which contain the flood account were written by prophets chosen by God to reveal the history of the earth to humanity well before the advent of Christ or Christianity. I think the fact that many cultures have similar stories or myths with such common aspects strongly supports the idea that their ancestors must have either experienced the same event or they both descended from a common ancestral source that itself experienced such an event.

The event likely happened long before any Abrahamic or Jehovah religion existed.

 

[Skwim]

That is quite incorrect. See ICR.org for a theistic scientific opinion.

Ah yes, ICR's pseudoscience.

"Few doctrines in Scripture are as clearly taught as the global nature of the Great Flood in Noah's day. Genesis clearly teaches that "the waters . . . increased greatly . . . and the mountains were covered" (Genesis 7:18-20).

Through the centuries, few Christians questioned this doctrine. The Bible said it, and that was enough—until the late 1700s that is. For the first time the globe was being explored—the extremely lofty Himalayan Mountains were surveyed, capped by Mt. Everest at 29,035 feet in elevation. Did the waters cover them? Is there enough water on the planet to do so? The questions seemed so far-fetched that many European churchmen dismissed the idea that the Flood was global, adopting the local flood concept which still dominates Christian colleges and seminaries today. Like dominos, other doctrines soon began to fall—the young age for the earth, the special creation of plants and animals, and the inerrancy of Scripture.

We now know, of course, that the earth has plenty of water to launch a global flood. It has been calculated that if the earth's surface were completely flat, with no high mountains and no deep ocean basins, that water would cover the earth to a depth of about 8,000 feet. But is there enough water to cover a 29,035 foot mountain?

The key is to remember that the Flood didn't have to cover the present Earth, but it did have to cover the pre-Flood Earth, and the Bible teaches that the Flood fully restructured the earth. "The world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished" (II Peter 3:6). It is gone forever. The earth of today was radically altered by that global event.

That Flood accomplished abundant geologic work. Eroding sediments here, redepositing them there, pushing up continents, elevating plateaus, denuding terrains, etc., so that the earth today is quite different from before. Today even mountain ranges rise high above the sea.

Mt. Everest and the Himalayan range, along with the Alps, the Rockies, the Appalachians, the Andes, and most of the world's other mountains are composed of ocean-bottom sediments, full of marine fossils laid down by the Flood. Mt. Everest itself has clam fossils at its summit. These rock layers cover an extensive area, including much of Asia. They give every indication of resulting from cataclysmic water processes. These are the kinds of deposits we would expect to result from the worldwide, world-destroying Flood of Noah's day.

At the end of the Flood, after thick sequences of sediments had accumulated, the Indian subcontinent evidently collided with Asia, crumpling the sediments into mountains. Today they stand as giants—folded and fractured layers of ocean-bottom sediments at high elevations. No, Noah's Flood didn't cover the Himalayas, it formed them!"
source

The lay of the land 4,320 years ago​

.​

 

[InChrist]

The event likely happened long before any Abrahamic or Jehovah religion existed.

I presume you are referring to the flood event. If so, then I agree it occurred earlier before God called Abraham, therefore the account was first passed down through Noah's descendants who spread throughout the earth and then later revealed by God to be written and recorded in the Torah.

 

[Maponos]

I presume you are referring to the flood event. If so, then I agree it occurred earlier before God called Abraham, therefore the account was first passed down through Noah's descendants who spread throughout the earth and then later revealed by God to be written and recorded in the Torah.

If Noah's descendants are the only ones who survived the deluge, then they would have become severely deformed due to incest.

 

[Skwim]

If Noah's descendants are the only ones who survived the deluge, then they would have become severely deformed due to incest.

Nah, god intervened and made sure such things didn't happen for the next 666 generations. It's in Jacob 9:11.

 

[InChrist]

If Noah's descendants are the only ones who survived the deluge, then they would have become severely deformed due to incest.

Not according to the scriptures since the laws against incest were not given until later at the time of Moses. So it must have been that God built provision for this into human DNA for reproductive protection against birth defects until the laws against incest were instituted.

 

[Maponos]

Nah, god intervened and made sure such things didn't happen for the next 666 generations. It's in Jacob 9:11.

Perfect timing

Not according to the scriptures since the laws against incest were not given until later at the time of Moses. So it must have been that God built provision for this into human DNA for reproductive protection against birth defects until the laws against incest were instituted.

That's terribly convenient, don't you think?

 

[InChrist]

Perfect timing

That's terribly convenient, don't you think?

I suppose convenient is an adequate word, although wise may be better. If you think the biblical account has problems due to intermarriage between relatives how to you handle the inter-relations and incest which would also have had to take place with the evolution of the human race.?

"As to incest, it was not considered a sin and was not prohibited for Adam and early man. If the race was to populate and fulfill the command of Gen. 1:28, there is little doubt that Adam’s sons and daughters had to have married their own sisters and brothers if the race was to populate the earth, but due to the purity of the race as evidenced also by the long length of life, there were no adverse effects as we see happening today. Gradually, as the effects of sin took its toll on the human race, marrying one’s own sister, etc., began to create hereditary problems.


Here is Ryrie’s comment on this issue from his book Basic Theology (1986 ed) which I would highly recommend.


Though by many inerrantists the question of where Cain got his wife would not be considered a problem at all, this question is often used by those who try to demonstrate that the Bible is unreliable in what it claims. How could it claim that Adam and Eve were the first human beings who had two sons, one of whom murdered the other, and yet who produced a large race of people? Clearly, the Bible does teach that Adam and Eve were the first created human beings. The Lord affirmed this in Matthew 19:3-9. The genealogy of Christ is traced back to Adam (Luke 3:38). Jude 14 identifies Enoch as the seventh from Adam. This could hardly mean the seventh from “mankind,” an interpretation that would be necessary if Adam were not an individual as some claim. Clearly, Cain murdered Abel and yet many people were born. Where did Cain get his wife?


We know that Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters in addition to Abel, Cain, and Seth (Gen. 5:4), and if there was only one original family, then the first marriages had to be between brothers and sisters. Such marriages in the beginning were not harmful. Incest is dangerous because inherited mutant genes that produce deformed, sickly, or moronic children are more likely to find expression in children if those genes are carried by both parents. Certainly, Adam and Eve, coming from the creative hand of God, had no such mutant genes. Therefore, marriages between brothers and sisters, or nieces and nephews in the first and second generations following Adam and Eve would not have been dangerous.


Many, many generations later, by the time of Moses, incest was then prohibited in the Mosaic laws undoubtedly for two reasons: first, such mutations that caused deformity had accumulated to the point where such unions were genetically dangerous, and second, it was forbidden because of the licentious practices of the Egyptians and Canaanites and as a general protection against such in society. It should also be noted that in addition to the Bible most other legal codes refuse to sanction marriages of close relatives.


But here is another issue to consider. If one accepts the evolutionary hypothesis as to the origin of the human race, has that really relieved the issue of incest? Not unless you also propound the idea of the evolution of many pairs of beings, pre-human or whatever, at the same time. No matter what theory of the origin of the human race one may take, are we not driven to the conclusion that in the early history of the race, there was the need for intermarriage of the children of the same pair?"
https://bible.org/gsearch?search=incest+in+the+bible