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Noah's Ark could float! (theoretically)

Redtail said:
Actually, it needed to carry seven of each clean beast and two of the unclean... Not sure which is which but I'm guessing that ups the numbers quite a bit...
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That depends on which part of the bible you are reading. It says two of each species in Genesis Ch 6 v 19 and in Ch 7 vs 2-3 it says 2 or 7. But then in Ch 7 v 8 and 15 only two of each species actually boarded the ark. As for food they carried none. It is not mentioned in the bible. Nor did they carry any plants or fish. Very embarrassing. The animals must have gone into stasis. So there would have been no need to feed them or to remove the animal waste products. I will tie myself into knots trying to explain the practical issues with the story.
 
Iamme said:
The Lord made a bumblebee which should not be able to fly, fly. He formed Adam of dust, and Eve from a rib. Jesus could walk on water and raise the dead.
So what`s the problem here? Even if the ark looked like it shouldnt be able to float, the Lord would allow it to float anyhow.
And if you dont believe in the Lord, then why would you even think there ever was an ark?
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The problem is: If the Ark could only fuction by magical intervention, why bother in the first place? God could easily have made one mountain top remain dry and kept Noah and the animals there.

Hans

ETA: Oh, and the bumble-bee is perfectly able to fly. That myth originates from the days of early flight when our understanding of aerodynamics was somewhat flawed.
 
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Mojo said:
Originally Posted by Iamme View Post
Why do you think the cliche`d expression `The Lord works in mysterious ways`, came into being?
To answer stuff like you brought up.
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Yes, it's a classic example of special pleading.
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Exactly; my impression is that "god works in mysterious ways" came into being to avoid answering stuff like Brainache's question. A response is not always an answer.
 
rjh01 said:
As for food they carried none. It is not mentioned in the bible. Nor did they carry any plants or fish. Very embarrassing
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Little known fact: When Noah realized the lack of food, he decided the only thing to do was slaughter the dinosaurs and feed them to the other animals.
 
Iamme said:
The Lord made a bumblebee which should not be able to fly, fly. He formed Adam of dust, and Eve from a rib. Jesus could walk on water and raise the dead.
So what`s the problem here? Even if the ark looked like it shouldnt be able to float, the Lord would allow it to float anyhow.
And if you dont believe in the Lord, then why would you even think there ever was an ark?
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Sorta makes you wonder why even bother with an ark at all, or hell why even bother with a flood, Couldn't god just poof all the evil away?

God sure has a lengthy track of doing things ass backwards.

ETA: Iamme answered, A bad answer, But one none the less.
 
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Iamme said:
(Scratching my head, thinking)
Yeah!
Why do you think the cliche`d expression `The Lord works in mysterious ways`, came into being?
To answer stuff like you brought up.
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Or rather not to answer and hand wave away all those pesky questions.

Can't figure out why God is a bumbling idiot? Mysterious Ways!
 
Brainache said:
I'll bet they didn't calculate the stresses the thing would be under the first time it hit a wave either...
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Indeed. The two-page paper only goes into the buoyancy issue, and not the stresses exerted on the beams the ark would be made of. The Smithsonian article does discuss the latter, essentially stating that the beams would be too fragile for the vessel to be seaworthy.
 
Iamme said:
The Lord made a bumblebee which should not be able to fly, fly. He formed Adam of dust, and Eve from a rib. Jesus could walk on water and raise the dead.
So what`s the problem here? Even if the ark looked like it shouldnt be able to float, the Lord would allow it to float anyhow.
And if you dont believe in the Lord, then why would you even think there ever was an ark?
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Yep. If you're going to believe in magic, then in for a penny, in for a dollar. You might as well go whole hog and believe anything a book of fables suggests.
 
Iamme said:
(Scratching my head, thinking)
Yeah!
Why do you think the cliche`d expression `The Lord works in mysterious ways`, came into being?
To answer stuff like you brought up.
Click to expand...

But as others have pointed out, it's not really an answer at all. It's a brick wall that says I don't know an answer but don't need one. God is a short circuit to all unwelcome questions. Pray, and if god turns your toast into an image of Jesus or your kid dies of leukemia, or nothing at all happens, it's all the same.

Of course this does not prevent theists from knowing exactly what God wants us to do with our genitals and everyone else's.

God is so mysterious he can be easy to understand and impossible to understand at the same time. Neat tricks like that are his specialty.

That said, and back to the original issue, I do seem to recall, though today I'm too lazy to look it up, that the ark story includes a specification of some kind of pitch, which I have heard turns out to be a primitive polymer that actually might have worked pretty well. Of course all this means is that whoever wrote the Bible knew a tiny bit about boat building, but it's mildly interesting.
 
rwguinn said:
It's raining like a cow on a flat rock..............................
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Well........there's an image I didn't need this morning (having witnessed this sort of thing on a farm).

I never heard that expression before. See, you learn something new everyday. :D
 
pakeha said:
Sloppy, indeed.
"...the study made no estimates regarding the weight of the food or freshwater needed to sustain the ark population..."
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When it is raining so hard that there literally is more water above your boat than under it, I think getting drinking water is the least of your problems. Food is a more serious issue, and the animals and people on board would probably be near starving, but it might have been survivable; some of the bodies of all those wicked people would have floated up eventually.
 
Earthborn said:
When it is raining so hard that there literally is more water above your boat than under it, I think getting drinking water is the least of your problems. Food is a more serious issue, and the animals and people on board would probably be near starving, but it might have been survivable; some of the bodies of all those wicked people would have floated up eventually.
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Since the Ark was the only thing above water giant sea turtles tried to lay their eggs on it so Noah et. al. lived on turtle eggs and flesh.
 
Can we have a sub-forum for Noah's Ark threads?

Nothing new is ever said and yet every aspect of the story must be brought up in each one.
 
Lukraak_Sisser said:
As for the ark, the discussion's been had a few years ago. The stresses on the wood of a ship of those dimensions would have been so great that an empty ark, on a calm sea, would be reduced to splinters in a manner of minutes. Assuming it didn't collapse under it's own weight during construction.
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Here's a teeny tiny bit of evidence that might require you to revise that claim a bit.
 
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