Question about Noah's ark

[metis]

If we are all predestined, then we have no free will, therefore God must have intended us to sin and programmed us to do so. Logical? Not to me.

 

[JoshuaTree]

If we are all predestined, then we have no free will, therefore God must have intended us to sin and programmed us to do so. Logical? Not to me.

Doing God's will isn't sin, sin is the perception that we arent doing God's will. The moment we realize God is in control we've overcome sin death and the power of the devil.

 

[metis]

Doing God's will isn't sin, sin is the perception that we arent doing God's will. The moment we realize God is in control we've overcome sin death and the power of the devil.

Please reread what I wrote.

When you say above "that we aren't doing God's will", that is the argument for "free will", not "predestination". If God controls everything, then God logically must also make us sin. Makes no sense to me.

 

[JoshuaTree]

Please reread what I wrote.

When you say above "that we aren't doing God's will", that is the argument for "free will", not "predestination". If God controls everything, then God logically must also make us sin. Makes no sense to me.

Make no sense to most people lol.

Our faith is God's choice not ours, it's a gift. The absence of faith is the ages old mystery of original Sin, God's choice not ours and part of God's plan. Nicodemus asked Jesus what he must do to enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said he must be born again. Nicodemus couldn't accept (yet) that just as he had no control over the time and place of his first birth so it is with his second birth... it comes at a time and place of God's choosing not man's choosing.

 

[metis]

Our faith is God's choice not ours, it's a gift.

So, God programs some people to go to hell, right? Well, if that's the case, then why would anyone try to convert anyone else to believe if God already has done 100% of the work? IOW, conversion is just a sham? If I rob a bank, God had me do that because He wanted me to? If I kill someone in the process it's because God wanted me to murder an innocent person. What kind of "god" would do that? And what difference does it make if one believes in Jesus or God anyway if this is as you say?

 

[Aldrnari]

Since I believe the Bible to be God's word, Yes. I expect that word to correspond to our reality and take into account that translations must be compared and verified. Thus we have some unfortunate translations in the KJV and other translations that other translations make up for and correct.

As there are many holy texts making the same claims, why should anyone who isn't a christian choose the bible's?

Take Noah's story, for example; It isn't the only flood myth in that area. There were three earlier myths: the myth of Ziosudra, the epic of Altra-Hasis, and the epic of Gilgamesh. The evidence suggests each story copied from the previous one, and altered them to be relevant with the times and the god(s) of that time. How is it that the last myth, Noah's, is the most accurate? I don't know if you've ever played the telephone game as a child, but that's usually not how it ends...

The Nephilim. Yes. Not much I can say to you about that. There have been reports substantiated by newspapers and people about e.g. red haired giants in the US found and with the Smithsonian institute being involved. The evidence has vanished though there seems to be clear reasons for accepting the story.

Wait, what is the Smithsonian "involved" with? I... What?

What I am trying to say is this: the ruler of this world is satan. What would happen to the theory of evolution if the Bible were to be shown accurate on such points as this?! It is then a certainty that even if enough evidence existed worldwide for these Nephilim, as many claim, there would be a powerful effort to hide any and all such evidence.

Just how powerful is a god if he were so easily and repeatedly hindered?... Is Satan so powerful that he is able to shape reality to his whim?

So, the best I can do is say, I go by the Bible, and if it says Nephilim, then I accept this.
Let me ask you this: How were 1000 to 1600 ton building blocks moved by stone-age people?! There is plenty of evidence for things not being what we are told.

It would depend on what they were trying to accomplish, exactly. There have been many ancient peoples with many methods that have existed in the past. If there are some things in the past that we don't understand, we keep searching until we understand the answers.

I'll try. I will put a bookmark on your profile so that if I have something for you, I can get back to you. How does that sound?

Sure, sounds good to me!

Well, this is a very good question. First though, God is not a magician, he does things with power and science. But, you are right, he could have used his angels to kill all the ungodly.
There were several reasons for him using the flood to do so.

The high tech and wicked things, the angels who came down to earth had made needed to go so that little trace could be found for us to learn from.​

Uhhhh... Where is advanced technology and your reasoning for it's destruction found in the bible? You seem to have a penchant for conspiracy theories...

All we have are amazing constructions we cannot understand how was made.

But we DO understand how the vast majority of them were made. Only a few examples here and there give scientists a pause. Why haven't we found any technological remains for all of the machinery needed to easily move giant stone objects? Secondly, why waste resources on constructing with materials that are so impractical to use? There's a reason we no longer build with giant stone blocks in this day and age with the technology we have... Not even for our mega structures.

God also wanted to create the races, the languages, etc.This meant that he wanted seas and mountains separating us until that job was accomplished. For this he needed the mountain ranges, the seas that kept us apart during our low tech times. Thus the flood was needed.
This permitted the 'march of nations' that he wanted to see happening.

OK, then. Question: when would you date the flood? When did it happen?​

I see that now.

You mean that most do not believe in a Big Bang? What did go bang? A singularity right?! Singularity = black hole. So, do these explode - is that the common claim for black holes?!

When then the matter antimatter annihilated, it left us with Zero, no universe, back to square one. Oops, we still somehow got a universe. And now the primordial soup of chaotic particles congealed into Hydrogen which later fused into stars, who made heavier elements, and sooner or later, we were born out of chaos. The Chaos god reigns.

I don't want to speak for them, as honestly doing so would make me a middle man on something I haven't even researched much myself. That said, there are plenty of atheists here who I'm sure would be willing to discuss what they think might have happened with you.

Please give me your version.

I'm not trying to be rude, but honestly, I don't really care. Some people look to religion for truth on the reality we live in, some look for meaning, while others do it because they want a community. My chief concern is in the pursuit of making myself the best person I can be so I can then help others around me to the best of my abilities: I want practical and useful ideas. Big bangs and creation myths don't really help me in those endeavors.

I am now going to bookmark you for the rest.

Alrighty!

 

[sandy whitelinger]

I remember as a kid asking how kangaroos got to the ark, never got an answer to that one.

They hopped on.

 

[JoshuaTree]

So, God programs some people to go to hell, right? Well, if that's the case, then why would anyone try to convert anyone else to believe if God already has done 100% of the work? IOW, conversion is just a sham? If I rob a bank, God had me do that because He wanted me to? If I kill someone in the process it's because God wanted me to murder an innocent person. What kind of "god" would do that? And what difference does it make if one believes in Jesus or God anyway if this is as you say?

Seems to me that both you and Nicodemus express many of the same commonsense concerns.

 

[Skwim]

Or faith comes into play and God intervened and sustained the animals Himself, so that not that much food would be needed.

This is one of those apologetics wherein god, instead of doing the most reasonable thing, takes a god-powered patchwork approach. Instead of simply using his powers to kill off humans by some method that wouldn't impact anything else, he goes to the trouble of having eight humans construct a boat large enough to contain all living organisms, which, by the way, would also have to include all plant life, then through his godly powers assembles all these organisms onto the boat, and then again using his godly powers, floods the earth for a year, and also again using his godly powers, changes the character of each organism so they wouldn't require normal life sustaining nutrients.

Talk about incompetency. Occam's Razor be damned.

.

 

[Skwim]

Note that loose hay would have taken up a lot more space on the Ark.

Absolutely, which it would necessarily have to be. Unless that is, as Enoch07 would likely conjecture, god, through his powers, simply bailed it all beforehand.

.

 

[Enoch07]

Or are filled in by believers looking for anything to believe in, even if it makes no sense.

Nah, sometimes a little common sense is all that is needed.

If he was on the mountain range, he would have been able to see the mountain, you can even in a downpour which was long over. It would have taken up more than half of the view.

Not with lake effect fog. Which you can't seem to grasp.

As are the birds who would just go over fog as they do when crossing bodies of water.

Not all birds fly over fog. As I said before I have had many kill themselves by flying into my home on top of a mountain on foggy mornings.

 

[Enoch07]

This is one of those apologetics wherein god, instead of doing the most reasonable thing, takes a god-powered patchwork approach. Instead of simply using his powers to kill off humans by some method that wouldn't impact anything else, he goes to the trouble of having eight humans construct a boat large enough to contain all living organisms, which, by the way, would also have to include all plant life, then through his godly powers assembles all these organisms onto the boat, and then again using his godly powers, floods the earth for a year, and also again using his godly powers, changes the character of each organism so they wouldn't require normal life sustaining nutrients.

Talk about incompetency. Occam's Razor be damned.

.

It's not apologetics. It's faith. Deal with it.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Nah, sometimes a little common sense is all that is needed.



Not with lake effect fog. Which you can't seem to grasp.



Not all birds fly over fog. As I said before I have had many kill themselves by flying into my home on top of a mountain on foggy mornings.

Going around in circles. Would have been unreasonable to expect a fog to last weeks after, birds don't fly low over water, both would be able to see the mountain easily long before setting down, there's not enough water to cover any peak there.
This isn't common sense, it's grasping at straws.

 

[Skwim]

It's not apologetics.

Sure it is. And we both know it.

.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Nah, sometimes a little common sense is all that is needed.



Not with lake effect fog. Which you can't seem to grasp.



Not all birds fly over fog. As I said before I have had many kill themselves by flying into my home on top of a mountain on foggy mornings.

Should also point out that the fog excuse holds up even less when you consider that God sent a wind after the rain stopped, which would have cleared any fog.

Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
This was before the ark rested and before the birds.

 

[Enoch07]

Going around in circles. Would have been unreasonable to expect a fog to last weeks after, birds don't fly low over water, both would be able to see the mountain easily long before setting down, there's not enough water to cover any peak there.
This isn't common sense, it's grasping at straws.

It didn't have to cover the peaks. Your hung up on that. Lake effect fog lasting a few weeks is reasonable. A lot of water fell, fog is to be expected. Birds have elevation limits. Smaller birds are not able to fly as high as bigger birds. So it's hard to say for sure Noah's birds would have been able to fly above the fog.

 

[Enoch07]

Sure it is. And we both know it.

.

Nah it's faith. You just can't accept it.

 

[Enoch07]

Should also point out that the fog excuse holds up even less when you consider that God sent a wind after the rain stopped, which would have cleared any fog.

Genesis 8:1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
This was before the ark rested and before the birds.

Yeah the winds did start moving the fog out. A few verses down you see the ark landed on the mountain range. A verse after that was the mountain tops was finally seen.

How can you land on the mountain range yet the tops still under water? You can't. The mountains we're obscured by fog/clouds. They never was under water, even if Noah thought they was mistakenly.

Genesis 8:4-5

4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

This tells me the fog/clouds did not full dissapate for a until 3 months after the ark landed on the mountain range.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

It didn't have to cover the peaks. Your hung up on that. Lake effect fog lasting a few weeks is reasonable. A lot of water fell, fog is to be expected. Birds have elevation limits. Smaller birds are not able to fly as high as bigger birds. So it's hard to say for sure Noah's birds would have been able to fly above the fog.

Story says the peaks were covered. There is no place on earth no matter how humid where fog lasts for weeks without breaking, consistent in mornings sure but not all day and especially not during winds. That's not how fog works
Fog is low laying, hence fog. Neither corvids nor doves would have trouble flying over it. Especially since lack of thermals makes small migratory birds fly higher over water anyway.

But it's moot, the story doesn't hold water (n.a. dum tiss) on its face.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Yeah the winds did start moving the fog out. A few verses down you see the ark landed on the mountain range. A verse after that was the mountain tops was finally seen.

How can you land on the mountain range yet the tops still under water? You can't. The mountains we're obscured by fog/clouds. They never was under water, even if Noah thought they was mistakenly.

Genesis 8:4-5

4 And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

This tells me the fog/clouds did not full dissapate for a until 3 months after the ark landed on the mountain range.

The story is obviously describing the ark being moored on the peak which is still submerged, not that the ground around it was free of water. And the winds happened just after the rain and lasted for weeks, mountain would be immediately visible in a local flood. But the bible isn' describing a local flood, it' describing a myth whereby it's possible for the Ararat mountains to be completely covered. An implausible myth whose function to Jews (And everyone but a minority of American christians) is not a historical event but a moral tale.

And that's all there's left to say.