Noahs Ark (How can anyone possibly believe the story)

[Independent Mind]

I used to be a Christian but after many years left the faith. A number of things were bugging me that could not be answered. I repeatedly questioned the whole Noah's ark story & never got sensible / satisfactory answers. Can someone on here that is religious & a believer in The Ark, please try to explain how:
1)How could all creatures from land & freshwater be contained on a boat . (currently 1.7000000 creatures on earth we know of & more discovered everyday)
2)How could there possibly be enough food of all types needed on board for at least 6months
3)How would you keep animals from hot climates & cold climates alive without any form of heating or cooling equipment
4)When released how did the animals get to their appropriate climates from there
5)If all creatures on board & Noahs family repopulated the earth apart from the incest which would have occured, fact is children / animals produced from there on would have extremely high risk of birth defects / mutations.
Thanks in advance.....

 

[Oneatatime]

The trend now is towards claiming that such stories were not meant to be taken literally because such literal belief is hard to maintain in a more educated and rational society, especially when you can no longer kill and torture those pesky doubters as a lesson to others about what happens to smarty pants who question the plausability of religious tales.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

All things are possible in the human imagination.

 

[Caladan]

All things are possible in the human imagination.

I dont understand what the problem is.
you take a boat. 2 giraffes, 2 elephants, and a shepherd, you make the wife load a keg of the finest Sumerian beer. and youre home free all the way to Ararat Turkey. its the perfect vacation when you think about it.

 

[fallingblood]

I used to be a Christian but after many years left the faith. A number of things were bugging me that could not be answered. I repeatedly questioned the whole Noah's ark story & never got sensible / satisfactory answers. Can someone on here that is religious & a believer in The Ark, please try to explain how:
1)How could all creatures from land & freshwater be contained on a boat . (currently 1.7000000 creatures on earth we know of & more discovered everyday)
2)How could there possibly be enough food of all types needed on board for at least 6months
3)How would you keep animals from hot climates & cold climates alive without any form of heating or cooling equipment
4)When released how did the animals get to their appropriate climates from there

One word: God.

5)If all creatures on board & Noahs family repopulated the earth apart from the incest which would have occured, fact is children / animals produced from there on would have extremely high risk of birth defects / mutations.
Thanks in advance.....

Not necessarily. The inbreeding would just be for the first couple of generations. After that, you begin to getting a little more spread out. More so, one could argue that these mutations would thus push evolution further. At the same time, that would reduce the amount of animals that were on the ark.



Seriously though, the literal interpretation of the event is greatly declining. The predominant view is that the story is not literal, and was not meant to be literal. It was probably based on earlier stories (the Epic of Gilgamesh is often pointed to), or an actual localized flood, that through retellings was exaggerated to the point in which it was mythical.

One major problem with explaining this to those who think that the story is literal is that instead of a mature, and respectable conversation, both sides end up making it into something more. It ends up with those thinking the story is literal being called unintelligent, and those who don't believe the story being called unbelievers.

 

[Sultan Of Swing]

I'll answer from a Creationist viewpoint, because I feel like it.

1)How could all creatures from land & freshwater be contained on a boat . (currently 1.7000000 creatures on earth we know of & more discovered everyday)

Today's species originate from different "kinds". A vague classification indeed, but it could mean that only a few hundred to a few thousand had to fit on the Ark.

2)How could there possibly be enough food of all types needed on board for at least 6months

MAGIC

3)How would you keep animals from hot climates & cold climates alive without any form of heating or cooling equipment

MAGIC

4)When released how did the animals get to their appropriate climates from there

MAGIC

5)If all creatures on board & Noahs family repopulated the earth apart from the incest which would have occured, fact is children / animals produced from there on would have extremely high risk of birth defects / mutations.
Thanks in advance.....

MAGIC

Seriously, though, I'm not trying to be facetious (well maybe a little), but if Christians believe in an omnipotent God, then why can't these things be possible? Who says that God did not provide for the animals? God could have made sure that mutations did not happen, or as fallingblood said the mutations could have pushed evolution further and the increased amount of mutations could then be used to support a young-earth argument. All of the things which seem impossible could have been taken care of by God, and thus scientific arguments aren't going to work when you're up against a God that can do anything.

 

[Vansdad]

The story is about faith, not reproduction.

 

[Jose Fly]

I used to be a Christian but after many years left the faith. A number of things were bugging me that could not be answered. I repeatedly questioned the whole Noah's ark story & never got sensible / satisfactory answers. Can someone on here that is religious & a believer in The Ark, please try to explain how:
1)How could all creatures from land & freshwater be contained on a boat . (currently 1.7000000 creatures on earth we know of & more discovered everyday)
2)How could there possibly be enough food of all types needed on board for at least 6months
3)How would you keep animals from hot climates & cold climates alive without any form of heating or cooling equipment
4)When released how did the animals get to their appropriate climates from there
5)If all creatures on board & Noahs family repopulated the earth apart from the incest which would have occured, fact is children / animals produced from there on would have extremely high risk of birth defects / mutations.
Thanks in advance.....

To a fundamentalist Christian, those are secondary questions. The primary issue for them (and really, the only one that matters) is whether the Bible is indeed "The Word of God". Fundamentalists tend toward very black/white, absolutist thinking, which when applied to the Bible means either the entire thing is the literal Word of God or none of it is.

So, while the above questions seem logical and sensible to us, to a fundamentalist they mean nothing. To them, if you're a Christian you must accept the Bible as 100% true and that means believing the flood story exactly as written. Anything less and you may as well be an atheist.

 

[Father Heathen]

Seriously, though, I'm not trying to be facetious (well maybe a little), but if Christians believe in an omnipotent God, then why can't these things be possible? Who says that God did not provide for the animals? God could have made sure that mutations did not happen, or as fallingblood said the mutations could have pushed evolution further and the increased amount of mutations could then be used to support a young-earth argument. All of the things which seem impossible could have been taken care of by God, and thus scientific arguments aren't going to work when you're up against a God that can do anything.

But why would god use his powers in such a convoluted, inefficient way like a Rube Goldberg machine? Why not simply put Noah, his family and the collection of animal specimens in stasis outside of space and time for the duration of the flood and then teleport them to a safe location once it subsided?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I used to be a Christian but after many years left the faith. A number of things were bugging me that could not be answered. I repeatedly questioned the whole Noah's ark story & never got sensible / satisfactory answers. Can someone on here that is religious & a believer in The Ark, please try to explain how:
1)How could all creatures from land & freshwater be contained on a boat . (currently 1.7000000 creatures on earth we know of & more discovered everyday)
2)How could there possibly be enough food of all types needed on board for at least 6months
3)How would you keep animals from hot climates & cold climates alive without any form of heating or cooling equipment
4)When released how did the animals get to their appropriate climates from there
5)If all creatures on board & Noahs family repopulated the earth apart from the incest which would have occured, fact is children / animals produced from there on would have extremely high risk of birth defects / mutations.
Thanks in advance.....

I'm not sure why those questions in particular would be your sticking points. By the time you get to them, you've already conceded the existence of an all-powerful, miracle-wielding God going around and doing things like talking to people and creating water from nothing.

But why would god use his powers in such a convoluted, inefficient way like a Rube Goldberg machine? Why not simply put Noah, his family and the collection of animal specimens in stasis outside of space and time for the duration of the flood and then teleport them to a safe location once it subsided?

If the authors of Genesis had been Star Trek fans, then God probably would have done something like this.

 

[Sultan Of Swing]

But why would god use his powers in such a convoluted, inefficient way like a Rube Goldberg machine? Why not simply put Noah, his family and the collection of animal specimens in stasis outside of space and time for the duration of the flood and then teleport them to a safe location once it subsided?

Testing Noah's faith, perhaps?

 

[Father Heathen]

Testing Noah's faith, perhaps?

Why would it be necessary for a being who already knows all to test anything?

 

[Man of Faith]

I believe it. These are questions from ignorance. Let me help the OP out. And you are in luck because, Lord willing, there is a full scale replica going to be built in KY so one day you will be able to see how big it really is. I actually bought a wooden pin that will have my name on it which hopefully tells you how much I accept the narrative.

All creatures weren't put on the Ark, just a representative of each kind.
The Ark was big enough for food and the animals didn't need as much food when they were sedentary.
With all the animals I wouldn’t think heating would be an issue, but animals do survive in cold weather. The Ark had a cooling system, across the top it had windows.
After release the animals spread throughout the earth through land bridges. It’s a popular idea that all the land on the earth was connected at some time in the past. Also, some think the ice age came about soon after the flood and that caused climatic changes that caused animal migrations.
Incestual relations didn’t become a problem with birth defects until after many moons later, when changes in allele frequencies cause anomalies that were more pronounced during incest.

Oh and let's not forget, the God that created everything in 6 days had a interest in what happened to that boat and the life forms in it.

Artists depictions.
http://www.genesisfiles.com/NoahsArk.htm

Flood evidence.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5D46F924083E77EA

 

[Jose Fly]

And here we go......

 

[PolyHedral]

But why would god use his powers in such a convoluted, inefficient way like a Rube Goldberg machine? Why not simply put Noah, his family and the collection of animal specimens in stasis outside of space and time for the duration of the flood and then teleport them to a safe location once it subsided?

Why not just nuke the site from orbit?

The Ark had a cooling system, across the top it had windows.

You have obviously never administered a server farm.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

I used to be a Christian but after many years left the faith. A number of things were bugging me that could not be answered. I repeatedly questioned the whole Noah's ark story & never got sensible / satisfactory answers. Can someone on here that is religious & a believer in The Ark, please try to explain how:
1)How could all creatures from land & freshwater be contained on a boat . (currently 1.7000000 creatures on earth we know of & more discovered everyday)
2)How could there possibly be enough food of all types needed on board for at least 6months
3)How would you keep animals from hot climates & cold climates alive without any form of heating or cooling equipment
4)When released how did the animals get to their appropriate climates from there
5)If all creatures on board & Noahs family repopulated the earth apart from the incest which would have occured, fact is children / animals produced from there on would have extremely high risk of birth defects / mutations.
Thanks in advance.....

NONE of that creation myth is possible considering what we know about the natural world that bronze age man didn't know.

Both the story of the "created" man and the flood narrative were taken from an earlier culture.

 

[ninerbuff]

I believe it. These are questions from ignorance. Let me help the OP out. And you are in luck because, Lord willing, there is a full scale replica going to be built in KY so one day you will be able to see how big it really is. I actually bought a wooden pin that will have my name on it which hopefully tells you how much I accept the narrative.

All creatures weren't put on the Ark, just a representative of each kind.

Which would mean evolution would have had to occurred if explanation of all the current creatures alive today came from these ancestors. And even it's just a "representative" of each, you're still speaking well over 100,000 base species at the very very least. So times that by 2 and you're at 200,000. 1 area for 200,000 species at the very minimum? Yeah right.

The Ark was big enough for food and the animals didn't need as much food when they were sedentary.

Provide source for this. Even a sedentary elephant would eat 150lbs of food a day. That's 300lbs food a day times 40 days for a grand total of 12,000 lbs. And that's just for elephants.

With all the animals I wouldn’t think heating would be an issue, but animals do survive in cold weather.

Why do you think most reptiles live near the equator?

The Ark had a cooling system, across the top it had windows.

Lol, yeah they have that in the south too. But it still gets hot.

After release the animals spread throughout the earth through land bridges. It’s a popular idea that all the land on the earth was connected at some time in the past. Also, some think the ice age came about soon after the flood and that caused climatic changes that caused animal migrations.
Incestual relations didn’t become a problem with birth defects until after many moons later, when changes in allele frequencies cause anomalies that were more pronounced during incest.

How long do you think it took these land masses part? If San Diego moves towards San Francisco at about 6 inches a year, it would take millions of years for the land masses to separate. And of course the Earth is only 10,000 years old. Oh wait the dinosaurs would be alive too and of course they were on the ark.

Oh and let's not forget, the God that created everything in 6 days had a interest in what happened to that boat and the life forms in it.

Artists depictions.
http://www.genesisfiles.com/NoahsArk.htm

Flood evidence.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5D46F924083E77EA[/quote]

 

[Dirty Penguin]

The story is about faith, not reproduction.

The story is nonsense and illogical. It is truly about reproduction because if that story and the Adam and Eve story are not literal then it would appear to call in to question of validity surrounding the (literal) genealogy connections...where the NT writers and the OT writers point to.

 

[Agnostic75]

Flood evidence.

[URL]http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=5D46F924083E77EA[/URL]

The first video at that link is by Dr. Walt Brown, who has been widely discredited on many occasions, including by many Christian experts. Consider the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Brown_(creationist)

TalkOrigins reports that Walt Brown has had contentious relations with other creationist organizations.Answers in Genesis has a standing offer to Brown to publish some of his material in their journals but Brown has declined. The old earth creationist organization Answers in Creation has published material rebutting Brown's hydroplate theory. The Christian American Scientific Affiliation website features a debunking of Brown's video "God's Power and Scriptures Authority" by Steven H. Schimmrich of Kutztown University.

Brown also has repeatedly claimed that no "evolutionist" will engage in a written debate with him,but has been accused of discouraging or avoiding such debates.An abortive attempt at such a debate was held in 1989 and 1990 in the pages of Creation/Evolution, the National Center for Science Education journal, before Brown refused to continue.Joe Meert of Gondwana Research, a journal promoting research related to the origin and evolution of continents, had a supposed signed contract for such a debate with Walter Brown in 2000. It has been said Brown disputed the terms of the signed contract and it did not take place.[20] Brown has mentioned on his website that the actual reason for the debate not taking place was that the debater wanted to add religion and since Dr. Brown is not a theologian, he wanted the debate to be strictly science. According to Georgia State University biology professor Fred K. Parrish, who was "tricked" into an April 1985 public debate with Brown, Brown debates around the U.S. and has a set of preconditions (such as Brown speaks first, the debate moderator sits on his side, etc.).

I doubt that you know enough about geology and physics to have informed opinions about evolution, the global flood, and the age of the earth. I know that I don't. Whatever the issue, I generally go with a sizeable consensus if there is one, except when I believe that I know enough about a topic to reasonably disagree with a sizeable consensus.

Inerrancy is the primary issue here, not science. No inerrantist ever pays any attention to scientific evidence that disagrees with the Bible. Inerrantists merely use science as a convenience when they believe that it agrees with the Bible. That is intellectually dishonest, and it makes a mockery out of science.

When a Christian becomes an inerrantist before he conducts scientific research, he assumes his conclusions before he conducts the research.

What specific evidence convinced you that the Bible is inerrant except for obvious copyist and scribal errors?

 

[Dirty Penguin]

I'll answer from a Creationist viewpoint, because I feel like it.

Today's species originate from different "kinds". A vague classification indeed, but it could mean that only a few hundred to a few thousand had to fit on the Ark.
MAGIC
MAGIC
MAGIC
MAGIC

Seriously, though, I'm not trying to be facetious (well maybe a little), but if Christians believe in an omnipotent God, then why can't these things be possible? Who says that God did not provide for the animals? God could have made sure that mutations did not happen, or as fallingblood said the mutations could have pushed evolution further and the increased amount of mutations could then be used to support a young-earth argument. All of the things which seem impossible could have been taken care of by God, and thus scientific arguments aren't going to work when you're up against a God that can do anything.

You're correct....it was "Magic"......


[youtube]I225Vcs3X0g[/youtube]
YouTube - ‪Atheist Comedy - The Great Flood‬‏

This explains it all......