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Debunking Noah, and I need some help

On a typical 9" kid's globe of the Earth, a man's thumb will cover all of the world as known to the Sumerians. Press moderately hard and you will leave an indentation maybe 1 millimetre deep.

Now spit on it.

Global flood.

Yes, there really were large floods following the younger Dryas glaciation. Yes, humans must have witnessed some of them. Yes, they probably told stories around campfires about how tough it were back in their day and how young people of today don't believe it.

Your mother is daft. That's her choice. Leave her alone.
 
JudeBrando said:
Some theorize that the pre-flood environment may have been greatly different than ours is today. What if the earth was essentially surrounded by an atmosphere of greater water vapor and greater atmospheric pressure, essentially amounting to something like a hyperbaric chamber and which greatly shielded the earth from uv rays?
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Utter and complete rubbish. Try and learn some real science, starting with physics and geology, rather than making up nonsense to support your beliefs.
Oh wait, that's the usual behaviour of god botherers.

JudeBrando said:
Longer, healthier lifespans, larger creatures and a more uniform global climate with lush vegetation at the poles (like we've found) could be possible.
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Maybe in god botherer fairyland not in the real world.

JudeBrando said:
I don't know. They don't know. And despite what you think, you most certainly do not know either.
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You and other xianity sufferers may not know but those with knowledge of science do know this "theory" of yours is simply nonsense.

JudeBrando said:
"Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them."
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Now go and calculate how much food would be needed. Or are you going to resort to magic again?

JudeBrando said:
"Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth."
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Still insufficient.

JudeBrando said:
Funny how certain people are about what they know.
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Not as funny as people making up nonsense to try and support their beliefs.
 
Mick Houlahan said:
Brian dunning did a Skeptoid episode on the engineering problems associated with building an impossibly huge boat. http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4279
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Nice article.....I loved the last paragraph because it says in a more eloquent way what I tried to say here:


Leumas said:
Of course why would god even bother to tell Noah to do all that if he was going to help in the first place is beyond their comprehension too. Why would god not just click his fingers and kill who needs to be killed and leave out all that devastation of animals and plants? Why not just THINK about it and it is all done and over with without having to depend on Noah.
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There's another elephant in the room, too, that is necessary to address. Many of the problems with the Noah story are often answered, by those who regard it as a literal true account, with a special pleading. A special pleading is when any question is answered with "It was done by a higher power that you and I are not qualified to understand or question." Obviously, every point that science might raise regarding the Noah story can be fully answered with a special pleading. Superman, Underdog, and The Jetsons can shown to be literal true accounts if we allow special pleadings to be admissable. If the special pleading of divine intervention did indeed come into play during the Great Flood, then it was the most flagrant Rube Goldberg solution I've ever heard of. If divine intervention was needed to give Noah knowledge of how to build the Ark, or to provide the wood for its construction; then why not just provide an already-completed ark? Why bring the animals on board to be fed for a year or more, when divine intervention could have provided them an island? For that matter, why have the entire flood at all, when divine intervention could have simply struck down the evil humans with a plague? Why construct this most elaborate of all disaster and survival scenarios, some part of which was dependent on divine intervention; when divine intervention could have easily made the entire ordeal unnecessary? Special pleadings dismiss the true sciences that have allowed us to build real ships and conquer the world. Looking at the reality of what's possible and how things are done is always more interesting than imagining what's possible when anything is possible.
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Lukraak_Sisser said:
Hmmm, how old was the Doctor again? And how old did the bible say Noah would be??
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If I recall right, the doc is 900 years old. That says something when even if you had an advanced time machine like the TARDIS that the entire story could still not happen.:cool:
 
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I'm a bit late to this thread, but if you want to make progress on altering your mother's belief systems I heartily recommend you download The Debunking Handbook here [PDF]. It's very brief (only 6 pages) but contains a wealth of useful information distilled from the last couple of decades of research on cognitive processes. It's written in the context of debunking myths propagated by global warming deniers, but the application is universal to myths of all sorts.

Bottom line: changing someone's dearly held beliefs is tough.

The Debunking Handbook said:
Debunking myths is problematic. Unless great care is taken, any effort to debunk misinformation can inadvertently reinforce the very myths one seeks to correct. To avoid these “backfire effects”, an effective debunking requires three major elements. First, the refutation must focus on core facts rather than the myth to avoid the misinformation becoming more familiar. Second, any mention of a myth should be preceded by explicit warnings to notify the reader that the upcoming information is false. Finally, the refutation should include an alternative explanation that accounts for important qualities in the original misinformation.
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The handbook goes on to discuss problems inherent in trying to debunk myths:
  • The Familiarity Backfire Effect - Repeating the myth,even in the context of debunking it, reinforces the myth
  • The Overkill Backfire Effect - There is such a thing as Too Much Information
  • The Worldview Backfire Effect - People just don't like hearing things that are at odds with their worldview

The handbook goes on to give some additional pointers on how to construct an effective debunking.

I wish you all the best. I've been there myself, and it's not a time of my life that I like to think about today.
 
The whole Noah's ark story is self-debunking:

It is simply impossible to build a wooden boat big enough to hold that many animals, as well as food for all of those animals, nor is there any way for a group as small as Noah's family (7 or 8 people, IIRC) to feed, dispose of the waste, and otherwise care for that many animals.

The story raises many other questions, even if we try to hand-wave away (or invoke miracles to explain) the basic logistical problems.

How did Noah get animals native to North America, South America, Australia, and assorted islands onto the ark? How did they get back there after the flood?

That's just for starters. The story might have been believable to people who knew only the species of animals in their immediate neighborhood, but to anybody who knows how big the world is, and how diverse the life is on it, and isn't blinded by the need to believe that everything in the bible is true, the Noah's ark story doesn't pass the laugh test.
 
I love it how every person on the planet was evil except for Noah and his lot. I ask believers if they really think that some monk in Tibet was evil. They reply that the ones that weren't were taken into Heaven by God. I then remind them that you can't get into Heaven unless you believe in God in advance. They then get grumpy.
 
Mudcat, tell your Mom this Orthodox Rabbi gives her permission not to understand the flood narrative as history.
 
You guys are all going about this the wrong way. You've got to fight fire with fire. Mudcat needs to act as crazy as his mother; pretend another work of fiction is the absolute truth. Maybe she'll see the error of her ways. If not, it's sure to be more entertaining.

MudMom: "Isn't it wonderful how Noah saved all the animals on his boat an rode out the flood to preserve life on this planet?"

Mudcat: "Isn't it wonderful how Harry Potter, with the help of Ron and Hermione and with the guidance of Dumbledore, was able to destroy all of Voldemort's horcruxes before taking on and defeating the Dark Lord himself to prevent the spread of evil on this planet?"
 
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Gawdzilla said:
I love it how every person on the planet was evil except for Noah and his lot. I ask believers if they really think that some monk in Tibet was evil. They reply that the ones that weren't were taken into Heaven by God. I then remind them that you can't get into Heaven unless you believe in God in advance. They then get grumpy.
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I always slap my forehead when they say stuff like this and ask them
Would it not have been a lot easier for god to have taken into heaven all the bad ones and be done instead of having to go through all that drama of killing innocent children and suckling infants and unborn babies as well as animals that had nothing to do with anything.?​
 
Mudcat said:
If I recall right, the doc is 900 years old. That says something when even if you had an advanced time machine like the TARDIS that the entire story could still not happen.:cool:
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A mere beginner. Doctor Who is much older.
 
Mudcat said:
My mom is getting deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole with religion and has become positively obsessed with the book of Genesis, believing every word of it to be true. Normally I wouldn't be concerned with it except that she keeps on trying to force that crap on me.

'Why me?' is a huge mystery here. I'm not her only child, I am the oldest of three. None of my siblings are any more religious I am, in fact she about made herself unwelcome at my sister's house for trying to press this crap onto my niece and nephew. My brother made it clear he didn't want anything more to do with religion either.

I've done warned her if she didn't curb her enthusiasm I would take the wind out of her sails. Needless to say she didn't listen. Oh well, I did warn her... she has no one to blame but herself.

Right now she is obsessed with the story of Noah. Here is what I have so far in my dismantling of the story:
Which is about as far as I got, but I need more. So [damsel in distress mode]Help me JREFF, your my only hope![/damsel in distress mode]
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"Dismantling" or debunking the story is pointless. You're mother obviously feels the need to have faith in something and this is what she's chosen. I doubt it was chosen based on it's historical or scientific accuracy in the first place so challenging those won't change anything. You could point out that the basic story is a common myth/allegory used around the world but I wouldn't go any further than that.

Some people need faith, if your mother feels that way her decision should be respected that but you can make it abundantly clear that proselytizing to you and yours will not be tolerated.
 
You say "why me" well probably because you get into it with her. If someone tried to tell you that the Ouija board really and truly worked would you spend any energy arguing or just walk away?

Debating a believer always validates the idea in their mind. I try not to.
 
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