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Noah Ark and Math

J. Arthur Hastur said:
What? African swallow, or european?
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That question is only relevant to an unladen swallow. If the swallow is carrying orchids, it is clearly laden, and thus its air-speed velocity must be measured accordingly.

May I cross the bridge now?
 
J. Arthur Hastur said:
33! I was being a smart ass. I know when I visited my brother there it was always raining. That's a lot of water, I wonder why we weren't all drowned?
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A very good sewage system?


Anyway, I remember that history channel documentary (mockumentary) being discussed on the JREF forum, but I seem unable to find any trace of a thread even mentioning it, apart from this one.

If anyone has any idea where it could be found?
 
I read that there was actual worldwide flooding somewhat short of the entire earth being flooded. The flood came at the end of an iceage when the water levels were rising. Most societies live near a large source of water and the sudden unexpected rise of water along the coasts accounts for the worldwide flood stories. However even if the north and south poles melted entirely the water would not completely cover the earth. The survivors of these floods merely evacuated to higher ground. The memory of the loss of their homes, farms, loved ones going underwater caused these tales. Over time the tale grew with the telling.
 
Davidjayjordan said:
Noah was amazing in his faith and construction abilities.

http://www.geocities.com/davidjayjordan/NoahsArkandtheWorldwideFlood.html

Took him seventy years though.... if I recall
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From that link:
And it is because of this, that over 200 different cultures have recorded the Flood in their histories, to document in similar but different ways this worldwide geological event.
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How could 200 different cultures record a flood? I thought everyone but Noah and his family was killed.

ETA: I just read the rest of the paragraph and see his explanation. wow...
 
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It was seeming paradise before the Flood, as the whole world was enveloped in a water shield above that produced a true greenhouse effect below producing not only the Garden of Eden but a lush grassslands and tropical gardens from pole to pole. Temperatures were moderate only varying about two or three degrees and the Earth was not watered by rain previous to the Flood but only by a gentle mist. Conditions were perfect right from the start of the Lord's Creative Process. NO creatures evolved and no laws evolved into being, but all cycles and all animals and plants and all conditions for growth and multiplication were in place right from the beginning or 'Genesis'

Wow! indeed. This must be pretty whacky even in Creationist circles surely?
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Well then. You would have to dehydrate them (freeze drying maybe?). After all there was lots of water around still to rehydrate them after the flood. I'll leave the calculations as to the time it would take to dehydrate and rehydrate, as an exercise for the reader. ;)
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At that point, why not just shrink them so they could fit in a bottle, kind of like the Kryptonian city of Kandor that Superman keeps in the Fortress of Solitude?

I love the creationist reasoning regarding rainbows, too.

1. Rainbows created after Noah's journey, as a sign God won't slaughter the world again.

2. Therefore they didn't exist before.

3. But they are a natural result of rain falling and sun angles.

4. Therefore there was never any rain before.


In science, this is reduction ad adsurdum, and demonstrates one of the premises must be wrong since obviously there wasn't "no rain" before the flood.
 
CapelDodger said:
Noah's Ark is a weak-point in literalist defences, but math isn't the tool to use against it. The story actually describes the tiny horizons of the people that made it up, who could name a few dozen animals and birds and picture them all on a tremendous boat that was, like, two blocks long, dude! A practical story, where the only magic was in a god's message. No need to account for microbes or invertebrates

Who wants to be associated with tiny horizons these days? The idea that we're smarter than those old-time guys is easy to sell, especially to the young. Math, not so much.
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Isaac Asimov pointed out the god of the Bible couldn't possibly have created this uinverse because he was far too small.

The Bible's cosmology has the Earth in a hollow pocket of the waters of chaos, with the land below and the solid "vault" above holding them back. I speak not of the poorly-redacted story it inherits from (where God kills Leviathan and splits his body in two to form these halves, said Leviathan still mentioned in Psalms, oops!) but rather the actual cosmology still described in the actual Bible actual people actually use today.

We live in a pocket in some 3-dimensional space filled with water, and that's why it rains, because God opens up little windows. That's also why there is water underground you can get at by drilling a well.

See? All nice and tidy and sufficient, like Newtonian mechanics, until science looked a little more closely at the situation.
 
triadboy said:
The Noah story is taken directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Once one realizes that - then it is a moot point to talk about the size of the boat and the food needed. It's just a fartin'-around-the-campfire story. Of course it never happened. Anyone who believes it did is an idiot.
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You don't think a catastrophic localized floods ever happen?
 
It's pointless to argue with someone who believes an omnipotent God created the universe that an event depicted in the Bible is not physically possible. The creator of the universe obviously isn't bound by the rules. It is likewise foolish of the believer to try to explain how it could have been done within the limits of natural laws. You either believe God it, or you don't.

That said it really isn't a very important story, except for this:

mylfmyhnr said:
People are broken, I'm not going to fix them, so I'm going to kill them all. Oh, except you 10 there.
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It is the portrait of a God who decides he has made a mistake, and murders virtually human alive to undo it. It is the story of the most unjust, brutal act ever committed.
 
Here's a question that's been bugging me, and is exemplified by this thread:

How widespread is Creationism and rigid Biblical literalism, anyway? I think that posting here at JREF is giving me a distorted view, because I don't tend to run into too many Creationists in my day-to-day life. Occasionally you'll hear about a Creationist on the radio here in Canada, but most people seem to disregard those items in the same way as UFO sightings... :confused:

ETA: In fact, in Canada, I've run into ID as a sort-of trendy "philosophical" position. It seems to be considered the logical marriage of science and religion, both being extremes which must be wrong... :boggled:
 
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Jimbo07 said:
ETA: In fact, in Canada, I've run into ID as a sort-of trendy "philosophical" position. It seems to be considered the logical marriage of science and religion, both being extremes which must be wrong... :boggled:
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That would be the fallacy of the deluded middle.
 
This whole conversation reminds me of a bit from the series "Firefly"

Book: "What are we up to, sweetheart?"

River: "Fixing your Bible."

Book: "I, um...(alarmed)...what?"

River: "Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense." (she's marked up the bible, crossed out passages)

Book: "No, no. You - you can't...

River: "So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem."

Book: "Really?"

River: "We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat."
 
CapelDodger said:
Noah's Ark is a weak-point in literalist defences, but math isn't the tool to use against it. The story actually describes the tiny horizons of the people that made it up, who could name a few dozen animals and birds and picture them all on a tremendous boat that was, like, two blocks long, dude! A practical story, where the only magic was in a god's message. No need to account for microbes or invertebrates

Who wants to be associated with tiny horizons these days? The idea that we're smarter than those old-time guys is easy to sell, especially to the young. Math, not so much.
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The tiny horizons are what strikes me when reading myths to my kids. "Wow, a boat that can travel as fast as the wind..."


I have just finished reading (a 1950's) pelican book about the hittites, and their gods were fairly unimpressive, you could pray to them, but if they were asleap, or eating, or incompetent, they mightn't hear to answer your prayer. So he prayer needed magic to help it get though to the gods, or in case the gods didn't notice.
 
The Atheist
Originally Posted by jesus_freak
Really...people who's argument is I am right and everyone else is stupid is in fact stupid themselves in my book...making you one of the stupidest people that I have ever had the misfortune of conversating with.
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Or, to translate into human:

Originally Posted by A Religious Fanatic
I am right because the bible says so. I am a weak excuse for a human who cannot live without the crutch of a sky-daddy who looks after me when the going gets tough. I am a self-deluded feeb.
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Go away, you pathetic little boy.
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:bigclap
 
jimbob said:
The tiny horizons are what strikes me when reading myths to my kids. "Wow, a boat that can travel as fast as the wind..."
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It is. Especially since science shows us how it's possible to sail faster than the wind. Although I think that only works on ice because water has too much drag.

Anyway, many myths in the bible are clear example's of a limited point of view on the world. And the solutions the biblical folk employed to overcome the disaster(s) are usually rather ... simpleminded/childish and unlikely to work.
 
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