Debunking Noah, and I need some help

[Delvo]

How could animals from Antarctica, Australia, and every continent just walk to Noah?

Maybe they were transported to Noah safely in the bellies of whales.

The fact that most of us watch and read fiction and do not spend all our lives watching documentaries, it makes more sense for god to have lots of fiction in the Bible since he knows that is what entertains us and enlightens us more.

It's too bad he couldn't just invent high-definition digital video and surround-sound.

Not to mention the logistics of only six people and one window available for the disposal of the vast quantities of manure produced.

Hell, with only one window heat dissipation is the least of your worries. What about fresh air? There couldn't have been that much oxygen available in the depths of the ship after the first day.

There was some other oddness about that window, too. When he wanted to check on the conditions outside, he could release birds through it but couldn't just look through it. And God ended up telling him when it was OK to come out, so he didn't even need to check it himself anyway, although God only got around to saying it after Noah had already checked it himself. (This is also after the water seems to have receded and left the land dry several times, since there were verses talking about that happening even after other verses saying it had already happened.)

 

[Mudcat]

Someone (who buys the Noah myth lock stock and barrel) at work suggested to me that the ice caps may have flash melted, which is where all the flood waters came from.

I told them that they were out of their mind. That even if that somehow that happened it would most likely have killed all life on Earth in an instant, even if it didn't a lot of the caps are comprised of dry ice, and even if they weren't there's simply wouldn't be enough water in the caps to account for all that water and there wouldn't be enough time in the intervening years for new ice caps to form.

Gotta love fundies.

 

[wardenclyffe]

Dry ice? I think you are thinking of Mars, not Earth.

Ward

 

[Mudcat]

Dry ice? I think you are thinking of Mars, not Earth.

Ward

Probably got it confused yes. Still, the point remains.

 

[slingblade]

So, Rabbi, oh Rabbi!

I has a question.

I heard a very long time ago that the expression "40 days and 40 nights" wasn't literal, but essentially meant "a very long time." I was told it meant this to the "Hebrew people."

I know a lot of Fundies who take it literally. The flood lasted 40 actual days and 40 actual nights.

What's the story, Rabbi? Can you help a poor gal understand?

 

[Leumas]

Probably got it confused yes. Still, the point remains.

Dry Ice is CO₂ in the form of Ice.


All the water on earth now whether as ice on mountains or vapor in the air or clouds or rivers or as artesian wells or underground rivers or normal rivers or oceans or springs or or or ....would have been 1/3 the required amount needed to cover the earth to a height of 25000 feet.


And of course by that time the Ark would have floated at the surface...i.e. 25000 feet above current sea level.

Have you noticed the sparseness of Oxygen at those heights? Or the -40 temperatures?

So the ice from 25000 feet melted to make water that would freeze anyway when it reaches 25000 feet later…..

A few epistemological problems there!

 

[Leumas]

So, Rabbi, oh Rabbi!

I has a question.

I heard a very long time ago that the expression "40 days and 40 nights" wasn't literal, but essentially meant "a very long time." I was told it meant this to the "Hebrew people."

I know a lot of Fundies who take it literally. The flood lasted 40 actual days and 40 actual nights.

What's the story, Rabbi? Can you help a poor gal understand?

A table is a chair if you just think about it the “right” way and a turd is an apple pie if you just accept to redefine your terms to suit.

It is all a metaphor and the metaphor is what some Rabbi defines it despite a thousand other Rabbis defining it in a thousand orthogonal and contrary ways.

It is a dream unless you want it to be true and it is not true unless you prefer it to be so and who knows unless you do and it is all fine unless you oppose me and then it is not.

 

[slingblade]

A table is a chair if you just think about it the “right” way and a turd is an apple pie if you just accept to redefine your terms to suit.

It is all a metaphor and the metaphor is what some Rabbi defines it despite a thousand other Rabbis defining it in a thousand orthogonal and contrary ways.

It is a dream unless you want it to be true and it is not true unless you prefer it to be so and who knows unless you do and it is all fine unless you oppose me and then it is not.

Um, Leumas?


I am asking about language, and translation, and figures of speech. I simply want to know if what I was told long ago (40 days and nights is just a figure of speech, not literal time) is true from the POV of the "Hebrews," as I was once told.

I'm not questioning if the Noah story is true.

You remember me, right? And how I'd never even suggest such a thing?

 

[Mudcat]

Have you noticed the sparseness of Oxygen at those heights? Or the -40 temperatures?

The first man that climbed Everest needed an oxygen tank, and if I recall right, he almost didn't make it alive.

 

[The Shrike]

Those who choose to interpret bible stories literally must cowboy-up and defend them against rationalist objection. If you're going to interpret the story allegorically, then you're free to have Noah and his family and a bunch of their livestock living in a boat for a while to wait out some nasty weather. If you're going to interpret the story literally, then you've got to explain things like . . .

*how the combined weight of just the beetles didn't sink the ark, let alone all the other species

*how carnivores survived 80 days (?) (120 days?) with no refrigeration for the fresh meat they needed to survive.

*what did the carnivores eat while waiting for their prey to be all fruitful after the flood? For example, impala gestation is 194–200 days. The two leopards on the ark need to eat something once they leave the ark, and they can't eat either of the adults. So leopards starved for 6 months waiting for impalas to have babies, and away and away we go.

*Who fed the vampire bats?

*How did representatives of all fauna in North and South America, as well as all those islands, cross enormous ocean barriers to get to the ark? If they could swim across oceans, why did they need to get in the ark?

The list goes on and on . . . Noah is truly about as silly a story as Santa Claus.

 

[Leumas]

Those who choose to interpret bible stories literally must cowboy-up and defend them against rationalist objection. If you're going to interpret the story allegorically, then you're free to have Noah and his family and a bunch of their livestock living in a boat for a while to wait out some nasty weather. If you're going to interpret the story literally, then you've got to explain things like . . .

*how the combined weight of just the beetles didn't sink the ark, let alone all the other species

*how carnivores survived 80 days (?) (120 days?) with no refrigeration for the fresh meat they needed to survive.

*what did the carnivores eat while waiting for their prey to be all fruitful after the flood? For example, impala gestation is 194–200 days. The two leopards on the ark need to eat something once they leave the ark, and they can't eat either of the adults. So leopards starved for 6 months waiting for impalas to have babies, and away and away we go.

*Who fed the vampire bats?

*How did representatives of all fauna in North and South America, as well as all those islands, cross enormous ocean barriers to get to the ark? If they could swim across oceans, why did they need to get in the ark?

The list goes on and on . . . Noah is truly about as silly a story as Santa Claus.

Consider the Bee..... the queen bee needs a cadre of male bees to inseminate her.

But once that is done they DIE.

Then the Queen bee becomes to all intents and purposes an Egg factory and cannot do anything by herself.

She needs a whole army of female bees to feed her and clean her and remove the eggs she spews and take care of them etc. etc.

So by taking two bees on the ark you are guaranteed their extinction. Also since there were no flowers for them to feed on that pretty much annuls any other consideration.

Same applies for the ants and termites.

 

[wardenclyffe]

Dry Ice is CO₂ in the form of Ice.


All the water on earth now whether as ice on mountains or vapor in the air or clouds or rivers or as artesian wells or underground rivers or normal rivers or oceans or springs or or or ....would have been 1/3 the required amount needed to cover the earth to a height of 25000 feet.


And of course by that time the Ark would have floated at the surface...i.e. 25000 feet above current sea level.

Have you noticed the sparseness of Oxygen at those heights? Or the -40 temperatures?

So the ice from 25000 feet melted to make water that would freeze anyway when it reaches 25000 feet later…..

A few epistemological problems there!

I assume that the rising waters would push the atmosphere up as they rose. I have absolutely no idea how that would affect atmospheric pressure or temperature or any other aspect of the atmosphere.

Ward

 

[Leumas]

Um, Leumas?


I am asking about language, and translation, and figures of speech. I simply want to know if what I was told long ago (40 days and nights is just a figure of speech, not literal time) is true from the POV of the "Hebrews," as I was once told.

I'm not questioning if the Noah story is true.

You remember me, right? And how I'd never even suggest such a thing?

No.. I know... but I see now.... you want to know the CULTURAL aspect of the expression....rather than its relationship to the Noah story.

I was trying to say that it is all meaningless and they can interpret it any which way but loose.


In the bible the number 40 has a relationship to tribulation, e.g. 40 years in the desert. It is usually meant to be taken literally. So it is supposed to be a concrete number not just long time.


But these days with all this "evolved", ethereal, esoteric, intangible and less childish god...who knows.... as I said before... it all is what they want it to be depending on what Cognitive Dissonance they are trying to alleviate.

 

[Leumas]

I assume that the rising waters would push the atmosphere up as they rose. I have absolutely no idea how that would affect atmospheric pressure or temperature or any other aspect of the atmosphere.

Ward

The density of the atmosphere at any height depends on gravity.

Gravity is in relationship to the center of the earth.

The further the distance from the center the less the gravity and thus the sparser the density of the gases there.


Of course gravity also depends on the mass of the earth and if it has 3 times the water it has now then the mass is more and thus the atmosphere will become thicker at higher altitudes.

I'll have to do the math and physics some day.

But it is all just SILLY beyond belief....where did all that extra water come from.

The bible of course has the answer.....from ABOVE the FIRMAMENT.

The Firmament is the SOLID DOME that surrounded the earth and separated the water above from the waters below….


Also where did all this water go afterwards? The Bible says it went back up above the firmament and into the ground where some of it came from too... … so where is it today?


All stupid beyond belief to any person who lives in the age where we have dismantled the firmament and all the retarded cosmology of the past.

So in the past all the objections DID NOT EXIST because they did not know all the impossibilities and thus it was no issue.

But now, that we know the insanity of it all....they HAVE TO start contorting and writhing out of the hole they find themselves in by using any casuistry that they can muster.

 

[The Shrike]

Consider the Bee . . .
So by taking two bees on the ark you are guaranteed their extinction. Also since there were no flowers for them to feed on that pretty much annuls any other consideration.

Ooh great example - eusociality!

Presumably, Noah and the boys could've collected enough honey ahead of time to feed their two bees until flowers started blooming again, but you're right that it'd be moot. Workers in a hive have specific jobs. The worker who tends the queen does not also tend her new offspring. There's really no combination that provides for a next generation. Queen + drone = no food and no nursing care. Pre-inseminated queen + worker = care for queen or offspring, but not both simultaneously, and no one out gathering food.

So much for the fabled land flowing with milk and honey . . .

 

[Leumas]

Ooh great example - eusociality!

Presumably, Noah and the boys could've collected enough honey ahead of time to feed their two bees until flowers started blooming again, but you're right that it'd be moot. Workers in a hive have specific jobs. The worker who tends the queen does not also tend her new offspring. There's really no combination that provides for a next generation. Queen + drone = no food and no nursing care. Pre-inseminated queen + worker = care for queen or offspring, but not both simultaneously, and no one out gathering food.

So much for the fabled land flowing with milk and honey . . .

 

[Leumas]

Dry Ice is CO₂ in the form of Ice.

Bad wording.....

Dry Ice is FROZEN CO₂

Ice is Frozen H₂O.

Frozen means at a temperature where it becomes solid.​

 

[Kingfisher2926]

Mudcat,
Ok, here is a powerful counter. The Bible your mother is reading is probably an English translation, right? Most Bible-punchers conveniently forget that most of the Old Testament was originally in an archaic form of Hebrew, just as most of the New Testament was written in 1st Century Greek.
If your mother's Bible is in English, she needs to understand that any translation from the original language cannot fail to convey rigid assumptions or choices, where the original was much more open to poetic nuance. Unless she can get to grips with this problem, your mother will be at the mercy of the ebb and flow of various translators' dogmatic pre-conceptions.

 

[Delvo]

And of course by that time the Ark would have floated at the surface...i.e. 25000 feet above current sea level.

Anything floating on the sea is at exactly sea level. The air immediately above the water, also, would be sea-level air.

Have you noticed the sparseness of Oxygen at those heights? Or the -40 temperatures?

That's because most of the atmosphere is below and very little of it is above. But if the space below were full of water, then most of the atmosphere wouldn't be below. It would be just the way it is now at our current sea level: all of the atmosphere is above.

*Who fed the vampire bats?

Nevermind the bats; who carried the loa-loas?

 

[Mudcat]

Mudcat,
Ok, here is a powerful counter. The Bible your mother is reading is probably an English translation, right? Most Bible-punchers conveniently forget that most of the Old Testament was originally in an archaic form of Hebrew, just as most of the New Testament was written in 1st Century Greek.
If your mother's Bible is in English, she needs to understand that any translation from the original language cannot fail to convey rigid assumptions or choices, where the original was much more open to poetic nuance. Unless she can get to grips with this problem, your mother will be at the mercy of the ebb and flow of various translators' dogmatic pre-conceptions.

Actual tried that already.

"Do you think G-d wouldn't protect the inspired word of the Torah from being changed to the point where it loses all meaning?" was her response to that and the fact that it was all an oral tradition before being written down for an abnormally long time.