Debunking Noah's Flood

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Ok, I need to know ALL the problems with The Flood story. I'd post in R.P. but it might be derailed quickly. I've thought of a few;
carring for polar bears(they overheat in conditions that would kill us), how would all the land species that have ever lived fit on the ark(remember YEC have everything living together), all the food and water for the animals. Much thanks:)

[DangerousBeliefs]

I have a few more to add to their list...

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

For instance, how did fish survive the flood?

There are fresh water fish, salt water fish, brackish water fish, surface fish, deep sea fish, etc. How did the flood waters allow all these kinds of fish to survive?

[corplinx]

You don't need to debunk the arc story itself. Debunking the idea of the "firmament" is quite enough since the story hinges on it.

Last I checked, Xians stopped believing the world was flat quite a few years ago. Problem is, they keep updating their bibles to work around this problem.

[MRC_Hans]

The total amount of water present on the surface of Earth can raise the level of the oceans with less that 300 meters. Most of the area Noah is supposed to have been sailing over is above 500 meters, the Mount Ararat area is much higher.

Ice cores from Antarktis and Greenland reach back over 100.000 years with no signs of a disruption that would have bee ncaused by a global flood.

Even the most reduced estimates of the animal stock on the ark still stand at thousands of animals, many of them quite large. It would be totally impossible for the few persons onboard to feed and muck out around so many animals.

The present distribution of animals on the planet contradicts the idea of them having spread from a single source only a few thousand years back.

These are the arguments I find most pertinent, since they are impossible to refute even if you want to denounce any or all archeological evidence.

Hans

[Abdul Alhazred]

Originally posted by bewareofdogmas
Ok, I need to know ALL the problems with The Flood story. I'd post in R.P. but it might be derailed quickly. I've thought of a few;
carring for polar bears(they overheat in conditions that would kill us), how would all the land species that have ever lived fit on the ark(remember YEC have everything living together), all the food and water for the animals. Much thanks:)

Part of the problem is that not all believers in the flood believe the same thing.

If we're talking about "creation science", others here will doubtless answer you better than I could.

But there are certain Orthodox Jews who take the line that creation and the flood were simply miracles.

They will selectively reject parts of science ("where it doesn't apply"), and know that is what they are doing. And are often knowledgeable about science. And are not trying to convince you.

So it can't be scientifically refuted, though I think it can be refuted philosophically.

[Theodore Kurita]

Then again...

There is evidence that there was a massive flood in the middle east at about 6000 BCE in the Black Sea.

More and more people are believing that this flood in of itself is where the Noah myth developed in the first place.

Remember, the Sumarians were the first to put it down, the Jews just copied it and put it in the Torah.

Here is a link for more info:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html

[Zep]

A very thorough and scientific debunking of the Biblical story of Noah's Flood in the literal sense can be found in Prof. Ian Plimer's book Telling Lies For God.

[Martin]

Everything you'll ever need (http://christianforums.com/t95378)

[Ladewig]

A wooden ship with the dimensions described in the Bible is structurally unsound and would not survive storm-tossed seas. cite (http://www.lookandlive.com/history/qhistory2.html)


On the other hand, it really doesn't matter because once you add "God did it" to the equation, it is not necessary to make the story conform to the laws of physics or biology. I don't understand why some fundamentalists insist that a wooden boat of that size could hold that many animals for that amount of time while that amount of rain fell. A miracle doesn't have to to fit with our understanding of the world. Once one accepts a story in which the sun stood still, a flood story is not hard to swallow.

[Deetee]

Another point often overlooked is that the ark contained the animals for about 13 months, and not just the 40 days the rain fell.

[davefoc]

Ah, another Noah's ark thread. I smile a little at each one. Rarely in the course of human history has anybody concocted a story that is less likely to be true. But plausibility doesn't seem to be a necessary criteria to get a religious myth to catch on, as the Noah's Ark story proves categorically.

I kind of like the image of old Noah figuring out ways to determine the sex of various organisms so he can get one male and one female unless of course the animals are unclean and then maybe Noah could forget the sex thing and just hope that with seven animals the chances were that at least he got at least one of each sex. Crocodiles would have been fun, apparently you have to stick your arm in them and feel their sex organs to figure out what's what. Unless they are small then you can use a speculum:
http://www.dght.de/krokodil/sexing.htm

But maybe Noah just used one of those home pregnancy tests like Matthew Brroderick in Godzilla to look for pregnant crocodiles?

For what it's worth, I think most secular biblical historians think that pretty much all of the old testament that takes place before Saul is pure fantasy. That's not to say that the part that goes from Saul forward is all that reliable, but at least there is occasional archeological corroboration for it, especially for the stories that take place in the time that the bible was actually written.

Nobody, seems to have brought up the fact that the Noah story appears to have been strongly influenced by the Babylonian Gilgamesh story that probably dates back to at least 2000BC as per this web site:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/noah_com.htm

[corplinx]

I am sorry, but all you need to know is that there is no firmament. Even mainstream christian fundmentalism knows the ancient hebrew model of the world is not correct. The sky is not a hard shell. The earth is not flat. The flood itself in the biblical account hinges on that myth.

Now, there was a flood caused by glacier runoff that is thought to be the "inspiration" of the story. However, the biblical account is obviously only true in that A. there was a flood and the world as they knew it was flooded badly (they believed the world was only as large a ways past the eye could see) and that B. some people survived.

[davefoc]

I didn't know what Corplinx was talking about with this firmanent stuff but I figured somebody better respond to him before he brought it up again.;)

Here's the relevant passage from the New King James Version of the Bible:

Then God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." 7 Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.


Apparently, exactly what the firmanent was is debated and the word "firmanent" doesn't appear in some modern versions of the Bible.

From the New International Version

6 And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning-the second day.
9 And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.


Apparently all this stuff was lifted from a Babylonian source as described by this quote from a skeptical web site

Why was the firmament formed in the "midst" of earth's "waters"(1:6)? Clearly, this is an image of a dome-like firmament over flat waters of a flat earth. Had earth commonly been known to be round then, the writers wouldn't need to have God set the domes in the sea, a notion likely conceived to keep seas from draining off over the "edges" or "ends" of the earth.
The Bible's scribes exactly copied the ignorant inventions of Babylonian firmament astronomy of that time, including its words and concepts of windows and doors in the firmament for rain!


Source for above:
http://www.webster.sk.ca/greenwich/bible-a.htm

So I guess Corplinx is hypothesizing that a firmanent doesn't exist (now there's a stretch) to hold the water above the earth that is used for the flood and therefore the flood story is bogus.

[pupdog]

One might start by asking what is the evidence for a global flood. I suppose if you take all the rocks of subaqueous origin and make believe they were all laid down at about the same time...No, that won't work because their environments of deposition are too inconsistent. I guess "debunking" Noah's flood is like debunking alien abductions.

[corplinx]

Originally posted by davefoc
So I guess Corplinx is hypothesizing that a firmanent doesn't exist (now there's a stretch) to hold the water above the earth that is used for the flood and therefore the flood story is bogus.

More than that, when the Bible says that floodgates in the sky literally opened, this refers to the firmament.

[Robin]

I am a little sceptical that the firmament is a good counter to Noah's Ark - too abstract and subject to interpretation.

My favourite is the idea of a small family gathering up the millions of species on the earth, classifying them, identifying diet and transporting them back to the middle east, somehow keeping them alive, given that with modern technology are thousands of people working in the field we still have not identified all of them today. Even if they gathered one each day it would still have taken longer than the 6,000 years old the earth is supposed to be.

The entries here have covered the scientific problems with the Ark story. There is of course the matter of morality. God changes his mind twice during the story, but not before violently murdering every man, woman and child on the planet.

[Rocky]

How deep was the "Flood"?
Shall we say 20,000 feet? that would cover almost all of the earth.

How long did it rain?
40 days & nights

A little math:
20,000 feet / 40 days & nights = 500 ft per 24 hours
500 feet per day / 24 hours = 20.83 feet per hour
or 250 inches of rain per hour for 960 straight hours.
That's a lot of rain. I've seen a calculation of how much heat that much falling mass would generate, but I guess that god kept the waters from boiling.



That would be a good segment for a Penn & Teller BS show.

Have a Fundi stand in a tank for an hour while while they fill it up with rain at a rate of 250 inches an hour. We would have to be sure that they got the velocity correct by using fire hoses.

[scotth]

Originally posted by MRC_Hans
The total amount of water present on the surface of Earth can raise the level of the oceans with less that 300 meters. Most of the area Noah is supposed to have been sailing over is above 500 meters, the Mount Ararat area is much higher.

Ice cores from Antarktis and Greenland reach back over 100.000 years with no signs of a disruption that would have bee ncaused by a global flood.

Even the most reduced estimates of the animal stock on the ark still stand at thousands of animals, many of them quite large. It would be totally impossible for the few persons onboard to feed and muck out around so many animals.

The present distribution of animals on the planet contradicts the idea of them having spread from a single source only a few thousand years back.

These are the arguments I find most pertinent, since they are impossible to refute even if you want to denounce any or all archeological evidence.

Hans

Dang it, you didn't leave me anything to post. This was pretty much exactly my list.

The geological evidence is quite clear as well, no global flood in the last few thousand year. But, that also is "ignorable" by someone who is determined enough.

[JesFine]

The Noah's Flood story is so obviously false on the face of it, I am shocked that so much time and effort is spent debunking it. I understand it is necessary, but it is still shocking. The fact that anyone over the age of 12 actually believes that
God was so "mad" at sinners that he destroyed everything in the entire world, regardless of whether it sinned or not
Used his magical powers to keep the fish and plants on the earth's surface alive during the flood
Used his other magical powers to make sure the animals on board did not fight/eat each other
Used his other other magical powers to see to it that all the animals in the world made it to Noah's house just before the rain started and were able to fit on a single boat.
Didn't realize he could have saved time by just using his magical powers to give all the animals he wanted to keep the ability to breathe underwater temporarily
Or even better, just zap the offending parties with lightning or preferably some much cooler destructo-ray.

Then -- my favorite part -- at the end, he realizes he may have overreacted slightly, and since there are no such thing as anger management classes, he instead creates a rainbow as his promise to humanity that he will never be mean again. That's right folks... God is Ike Turner!

Just telling the story should be enough to debunk it. Shocking that it isn't.

[corplinx]

Originally posted by Rocky
How long did it rain?
40 days & nights


It didnt just rain. In the biblical account holes in the sky opened up and water came out. this is why i go back to the firmament as the root of debunking the ark myth.

[Khalid01]

Peter Weinhoff is a Ph.D. of Phylogeny and has faith in the Biblical flood, debunk THAT, evilutionist!

[/Riddick]

[pupdog]

What's there to debunk?
It's certainly true that a number of educated, degreed people hold silly notions. Who doubts that?

Doesn't make those notions correct.

[iain]

According to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3664093.stm) a US/Turkish expedition is heading off to Turkey to climb Mount Arrarat and investigate an Ark-sized something that has been spotted by satelites.

Incontrovertable evidence of the Truth of the Bible will be revealed to mankind in July. Then you'll all be eating your words. Oh yes. Hahahahahahahahaha.

(wonder how well it will be reported if it turns out to be just another lump of rock, or they find nothing at all).

[Bottle or the Gun]

Thousands and thousands of different species of animals, or just 12?

As far as people knew a few thousand years ago there weren't that many animals. Goats, sheep, snake, rat, turtle, vulture, dog. They could all fit in an RV.

And has anyone posited that the flood was localized? God created a huge mass of water, maybe a few hundred thousand cubits wide, with the ark floating safely on the top, that travelled the country-side, drowning the sinners but giving animals (except stupid slow-moving dinosaurs) enough time to get out of the way?

[exarch]

Originally posted by Theodore Kurita
Then again...

There is evidence that there was a massive flood in the middle east at about 6000 BCE in the Black Sea.

More and more people are believing that this flood in of itself is where the Noah myth developed in the first place.

Remember, the Sumarians were the first to put it down, the Jews just copied it and put it in the Torah.

Here is a link for more info:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.htmlI think that one, though an interesting candidate for the origin of the biblical flood, is no longer considered to be so. There is a better match. A river flood in what is currently Iraq, with floodwaters, probably from Mt Ararat, flooding the river's flood plain unexpectedly during a freak rain storm. (unexpected for that time of year).
Poor Noah and his family were carried off into the Gulf without any means to steer or move, and most likely ended up somewhere on the coast of Saudi Arabia or some other place along the coastline of the Gulf.

I bet from their point of view, they really didn't see any land for a while, although probably no longer than a couple of weeks.

[Anders]

Originally posted by iain
According to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3664093.stm) a US/Turkish expedition is heading off to Turkey to climb Mount Arrarat and investigate an Ark-sized something that has been spotted by satelites.

Can we spell Cydonia?

[Segnosaur]

My favorite debating point:

Who on Noah's ark had AIDS?

Many diseases require a living host to survive. If you believe the biblical account (and you discount evolution), then somone on the ark must have carried things like HIV, Ebola, Herpes, etc.

There must have been some very sick people on that ark.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Originally posted by Segnosaur
My favorite debating point:

Who on Noah's ark had AIDS?

Many diseases require a living host to survive. If you believe the biblical account (and you discount evolution), then somone on the ark must have carried things like HIV, Ebola, Herpes, etc.

There must have been some very sick people on that ark.


Isn't AIDS a thought to be new to humans? Started in the 40's or 50's? the others look right though. Oh and the animals would have to be the host to the parasites and diseases unique to them.

[Segnosaur]

Originally posted by bewareofdogmas



Isn't AIDS a thought to be new to humans? Started in the 40's or 50's? the others look right though. Oh and the animals would have to be the host to the parasites and diseases unique to them.

Yes, I have heard that the disease may have originated in other members of the Ape family. (From what I understand, the HIV virus is similar to one that affects Simians.) Of course that doesn't really change the overall idea behind my argument; it just means that there would have to be some monkey who had the virus rather than some human.

(I picked AIDS because, well, its a very well know virus, doesn't survive outside the body, is lethal and has a little bit of shock value. Probably wouldn't have had the same effect if I said "Who on Noah's ark had the flu?")

[SGT]

About the morality of the flood. God found that the only rightful person on Earth was Noah. This model of righteousness gets drunk, dances naked in the fields and curses his son for seeing his nakedness.
If this is a virtuous person, how wicked was the rest of the Earth's population?

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by SGT
About the morality of the flood. God found that the only rightful person on Earth was Noah. This model of righteousness gets drunk, dances naked in the fields and curses his son for seeing his nakedness.
If this is a virtuous person, how wicked was the rest of the Earth's population?

At least we can assume they were having even more fun than Noah..

[Patricio Elicer]

How did Noah manage to save the kangaroos from the global flood?

[pupdog]

As far as people knew a few thousand years ago... No, no no, you're not playing fair! If you excuse those people for not knowing then what we know now, then you'll decide that almost everything in the Bible is based on ignorance and isn't true. No, the way we play is to assume that everything in the Bible is true because it was written by God and his divinely-inspired co-authors, and what we think we know now is just an illusion.

[Anders]

Originally posted by exarch
I think that one, though an interesting candidate for the origin of the biblical flood, is no longer considered to be so. There is a better match. A river flood in what is currently Iraq, with floodwaters, probably from Mt Ararat, flooding the river's flood plain unexpectedly during a freak rain storm. (unexpected for that time of year).
Poor Noah and his family were carried off into the Gulf without any means to steer or move, and most likely ended up somewhere on the coast of Saudi Arabia or some other place along the coastline of the Gulf.

I bet from their point of view, they really didn't see any land for a while, although probably no longer than a couple of weeks.
Hmm, do you really consider the myth of Noah to be true? There is nothing that says that there has ever been any Noah people. It's probably like it almost always is, a myth, maybe a myth supposed to teach people something or to scare them. Floods happens all the time and any one of them might be the origin of the myth.

[CFLarsen]

Originally posted by bewareofdogmas
Ok, I need to know ALL the problems with The Flood story.

The Whole Silly Flood Story (http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/sillyflood.htm)
by Bob Riggins

[exarch]

Originally posted by Anders
Hmm, do you really consider the myth of Noah to be true? There is nothing that says that there has ever been any Noah people. It's probably like it almost always is, a myth, maybe a myth supposed to teach people something or to scare them. Floods happens all the time and any one of them might be the origin of the myth.I think it *IS* based on a true story, although heavily exagerrated, as most of the stuff in the bible is.

Or maybe the bible is just a collection of ancient urban legends?

[Anders]

Originally posted by exarch
I think it *IS* based on a true story, although heavily exagerrated, as most of the stuff in the bible is.

Or maybe the bible is just a collection of ancient urban legends?
Well, the bible is based on Babylonian, Assyrian, Egyptian legends and myths, which doesn't necessary has to be true. For example, the legend about Jesus and Mary can very well be based on the legend about the Egyptian god Horus and his mother Isis, but as it is a myth about a god it has nothing to do with reality.

[Bottle or the Gun]

Originally posted by CFLarsen


The Whole Silly Flood Story (http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/sillyflood.htm)
by Bob Riggins

That and the links are one of the best collections I've ever read. A disturbing entry was how some legistlatures have tried to enact a law to change Pi back to the holy trinity of '3'.

[Deetee]

Originally posted by Segnosaur
My favorite debating point:

Who on Noah's ark had AIDS?

Many diseases require a living host to survive. If you believe the biblical account (and you discount evolution), then somone on the ark must have carried things like HIV, Ebola, Herpes, etc.

There must have been some very sick people on that ark.

Even if you assume HIV was merely a variation of SIV carried by one of the apes (subsequent variation of species being allowable by creationist science), they still need to explain how all the diseases with no animal host were carried by Noah et al. This will indeed include nasty STDs like syphilis, which has no animal reservoir/host. (and he would have harboured malaria, bilharzia and other parasites as well, so would have been too sick to slop out the ark)

Seems Noah didn't just dance naked in the fields, but got up to some naughty nookie without his good wife's knowlege (or vice versa).

(At least I am reassured I will be seen by God as a virtuous man when my time comes)

[SGT]

Originally posted by Patricio Elicer
How did Noah manage to save the kangaroos from the global flood?

That one is easy! Clearly they went jumping from Australia to Asia using the intermediate islands and carrying in their bags the koalas, platypuses and other critters. The hard and pointy hairs of equidnas could have hurt a little, but God obviously hardened the kangaroos' skins as he made later with the heart of the Pharaoh.
For you unbelievers that doubt that a kangaroo could make jumps of hundreds of kilometers, remember that people in those times lived hundreds of years. Surely kangaroos could jump higher and farther.

[pupdog]

"Noah was a mariner who sailed around the sea,
With half a dozen wives and a big menagerie.
He failed the first season when it rained for forty days,
For in that sort of weather, no circus ever pays."

(Old Bible Story)

[davefoc]

It seems that Noah's are believers might be divided into three groups:

1. Literalists
2. Secularists
3. Reconcilers

Literalists
Most of the posts in a Noah's ark thread deal with this group. And for good reason, this group is what makes Noah's ark threads fun. Images of great firmanents with windows opening up to let the rain fall through (my little homage to Corplinx there) or thoughts of Noah stomping around Australia gathering up Kangaroo species are always fun.

Secularists
This group wants to find some particular event that could have served as the inspiration for the myth. The problem is that there have been lots of floods. Unless one could find some corroborating detail tieing Noah's flood to an historical event one there's little reason to see one flood as more likely to be Noah's flood as any other. And it seems very unlikely that any such corroboration will be made.

Reconcilers
Reconcilers are aware of the apparent contradictions between the flood myth and anything resembling reality. But they also start from the position that the Bible is a divinely inspired reliable source. So they work to reconcile the two views. They do this by substantially modifying the flood myth that the bible apparently describes to one that fits better with a modern scientific view of the world. The big modification to the flood myth that reconcilers make is to reduce the scope of the flood to a localized event. This solves all sorts of problems for the myth. Plants can easily survive because the continue to live in the area not covered by the flood and Noah doesn't need to gather up all the animals to continue their propagation since most of them live on land not covered by the flood.

The justifications for the modifications to the flood myth are based on a variety of ideas. Amongst them is that the original divinely inspired Hebrew bible has been misinterpreted by translaters that weren't divinely inspired.

ReasonedFaith put together a list of links and a little description of this approach that I have copied here since it seemed like a fair representation of how what I call a reconciler sees the flood.

As to the flood.

Again, many Christians, particularly those with a scientific background, believe that the flood evidence, (both Biblical and empirical), indicates that the flood of Noah was a 'Universal' flood, not a worldwide one. That is, a flood within the Mesopotamian Valley which was the "known world" to Noah at the time, and thus accurately characterized from Noah's perspective as 'worldwide'.

Good summary descriptions of why this view holds sway among scientific minded Christians can be reviewed at the following sites.

http://www.evidence.info/apologetics/localflood.html

http://www.kiva.net/~kls/index.html

http://www.reasons.org/resources/ap...lood.shtml?main

http://www.answersincreation.org/

http://lordibelieve.org/page15.html


Fuller treatments of the issues surrounding sound interpretation of Genesis can be found in books like;

The Genesis Question / Dr. Hugh Ross

[Johnny Pneumatic]

[quote]Again, many Christians, particularly those with a scientific background, believe that the flood evidence, (both Biblical and empirical), indicates that the flood of Noah was a 'Universal' flood, not a worldwide one. That is, a flood within the Mesopotamian Valley which was the "known world" to Noah at the time, and thus accurately characterized from Noah's perspective as 'worldwide'.[quote]


The problem with a local flood is why would the ark have to be built and the animals? They could have just walked out of the valley to escape instead of wasting a century building a floating zoo. They are also calling god a lier because....

Genesis 6:19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.

2Ti 3:16 All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

[Segnosaur]

Originally posted by davefoc
It seems that Noah's are believers might be divided into three groups:

1. Literalists
2. Secularists
3. Reconcilers



I wouldn't necessarily consider all these as "Noah's believers".

Yes, a Literalist really is a 'believer', and is willing to discount evidence that conflicts with his beliefs. However, the Secularist likely doesn't believe in a biblical Noah; they are looking at the current situation (a story that exists) and are asking "how did this myth come about?", with the assumption that the answer is not supernatural. They are actually searching for answers, and I think its a valid line of inquiry.

[davefoc]

I agree about the word, believer. I was searching for a different word when I wrote that. Perhaps persons interested in the Noah's Ark story would have been better.

I have read a few of the links associated with what I called the reconcilers. I hope somebody feels like commenting on them, but frankly for me pouring through arguments about the original meaning of hebrew words and difficult interpretations of what seems straightforward text is more effort than I feel like committing to this thread.

I take part in Noah's Ark threads to think about Noah sexing crocodiles, gathering up Kangaroos in Australia, dancing around naked, etc. and esoteric discussion of biblical minutia is just not that fun for me. If I feel like putting in this kind of effort I'll check out a relativity thread and try to make sense of that.

edited to add:
I shouldn't have ignored BewareOfOldDogmas contributions to the reconciler discussion. Thank you.

[Skeptical Greg]

What irritates me about ' Noah's Ark ', is that it is the favorite, little cutesey Sunday School story that it is..

It is actually a horror story, and along with the bearded old man and funny little boat with giraffe heads sticking out the top, they should include a ' scratch and sniff ' of the rotting corpses that must have greeted them atop of Mt. Arrarat..

The true story ( if it were true ) would be more like this..

Hurricane that wrecked Galveston was deadliest in U.S. history (http://www.cnn.com/2000/WEATHER/09/07/galveston.backgrounder/)
"He could hear children calling for their mothers, women screaming for help and men begging for mercy from God," said MacDonald, a Galveston native and an amateur expert on the storm.

"He said he could hear sounds that were very faint, then they grew louder and louder, then the sound abruptly cut off, and he knew someone's life had ended."



Just multiply it by a factor of a few thousand..

But of course the rainbow at the end made everything O.K...

[Taeolas]

Originally posted by exarch

Or maybe the bible is just a collection of ancient urban legends?

That's it! The Bible is an early version of snopes.com! Just through the years the links to the explanations of the original stories got lost in some ancient Babylonian server's harddrive, so all we have left is the initial stories.

[exarch]

Originally posted by Segnosaur
I wouldn't necessarily consider all these as "Noah's believers".

Yes, a Literalist really is a 'believer', and is willing to discount evidence that conflicts with his beliefs. However, the Secularist likely doesn't believe in a biblical Noah; they are looking at the current situation (a story that exists) and are asking "how did this myth come about?", with the assumption that the answer is not supernatural. They are actually searching for answers, and I think its a valid line of inquiry.Would this be a good time to bring up the Mediterranean Island Santorini as another example of such a search for the root of a myth?

And with recent movie-releases in mind, what about Troy? That was assumed to be a myth until the city was actually discovered.

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by exarch
And with recent movie-releases in mind, what about Troy? That was assumed to be a myth until the city was actually discovered. But they didn't find the remains of the Trojan Horse in the real Troy. I think that is a more appropriate comparison.

[davefoc]

exarch asked:
Would this be a good time to bring up the Mediterranean Island Santorini as another example of such a search for the root of a myth?



I think the search for Atlantis is a reasonable comparison with the search for evidence of the Noah flood myth. Atlantis is likely to be enitirely made up and even if there was a particular destroyed city that served as the inspiration for the myth there is not enough information in the myth to pin down the myth to a particular destroyed city. I know Santorini has been put forward but so have lots of places.

Troy is different, in the same way that biblical stories about David are. The myth has certain details in it that archeology may eventually confirm or refute. In the case of Troy, The area in Turkey identified with Troy today has not been definitively confirmed as Troy, but there has been enough corroborating information discovered to suggest that it is.

Noah's flood is different. Many of the predictions that the myth makes have a supernatural nature and I don't believe them for that reason. I don't see very much in the rest of the myth that has the potential to be archeologically verified. IMHO, the parts of the myth that might be geologically verified are too vague when the implausible elements are eliminated to be correlated with any real world event.

[Skeptical Greg]

Originally posted by davefoc




Troy is different, in the same way that biblical stories about David are. The myth has certain details in it that archeology may eventually confirm or refute. In the case of Troy, The area in Turkey identified with Troy today has not been definitively confirmed as Troy, but there has been enough corroborating information discovered to suggest that it is.
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I found this excellent site about Troy
http://devlab.dartmouth.edu/history/bronze_age/lessons/27.html

It suggests that no historical city of Troy existed anywhere ... ( a' la' Nazareth ? )
More recently, Meyer (1975) has gone well beyond Carpenter in dissociating a historical Troy from the mound at Hisarlik. In Meyer's view, no historical city of Troy existed anywhere. First of all, there never was a city called Troy: the Homeric Troie is an adjectival formation derived from the name of a people, the Troes. The conjunction of Troie and Ilion to refer to one and the same place, a city, is a late development. Both the Troes and the settlement of Ilion are to be located in Greece, not in northwestern Asia Minor. The names were transferred to Hisarlik in the process of the Aeolic occupation of Asia Minor in the 8th century B.C. The original homeland of the Troes, the antagonists of the Achaeans who themselves can only be located in Achaia-Phthiotis near Mt. Othrys, is in fact the upper Spercheios River valley, the southern border between central Greece and Thessaly.

There is a lot more... Interesting stuff...

[davefoc]

Diogenes,
I read through your link. Thank you.

I think to some degree it makes my point, which was not that Hirsalik was actually the site of Troy, but rather that the myth was rich enough in plausible details that there was a chance that archeological research could prove it or disprove it someday.

As I stated, I don't think there are sufficient plausible details in the Noah flood myth to make any kind of archeological contradiction or validation likely at all. As one small example, take the boat. Without external supernatural/extraterrestial intervention 3000 years ago nobody was building 450 foot boats. If one hypothesizes a more likely size then one is just left with finding a boat that might have been constructed in the likely time frame without any hope of attributing it to Noah.

For the reconcilers the lack of archeological corroboration is hardly a problem at all. For them the reliability of the bible is a given, they just need to expend a lot of effort to massage the story into something consistent with modern views of reality, There seems to be a lot of flexibilty to accomplish something like this by tweaking the original hebrew translations, by taking advantage of ambiguities in the text and by focusing on passages that support the view of a plausible flood myth.

[TillEulenspiegel]

That's the problem with legends , people confuse the objective reality with the Myths.

Try here :
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html