Noah's Ark found?
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temporalillusion
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The question they are asking isn't "what's before the big bang", it's more like "how did the universe get into the state it was in at t=0", or "how can we describe the state of the universe at t=0" or "is there such a thing as t<0, or is there an analogue", or even "what is the right question to ask".
Complexity
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You're forgetting - there were only two kinds of animals...
Male and female.
(silly rabbits)
Tricky
Briefly immortal
Tell that to the bees. (And how did the bees survive anyway?)
wollery
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Don't mistake the simplified explanations you read in the popular press for the actual questions being asked, which are incredibly complicated.
Scientists are often quoted as talking about "before the Big Bang", because explaining the concept of the Big Bang being the "start" of time is quite difficult, and to do it properly involves the use of relativity and the concept of space-time with time as a dimension like length or height.
If you go into a proper explanation the average non-astronomer's eyes glaze over and you've lost them before you even really start. So we tend to use simpler terms, and simple analogies.
This is one of the biggest problems many people have in understanding science of any stripe, and in particular it's a huge problem when a layman starts to ask more complicated question, because they don't have the detailed knowledge to understand the full answers.
Belz...
Fiend God
I'm simply amazed that some people, with the knowledge available to them today, take this myth litterally. It's a cute legend, but I can't fathom how someone can believe it really happened.
Unless, of course, they are desperate to believe, which would mean that their belief isn't very strong to start with. Wouldn't that be a hoot ? The staunchest believers are the least convinced.
Unless, of course, they are desperate to believe, which would mean that their belief isn't very strong to start with. Wouldn't that be a hoot ? The staunchest believers are the least convinced.
Marduk
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Its been said before, those who are most desperate to support their faith with evidence, don't have any real faith.
Your accusations of ignorance and intellectuial inabilty to comprehend are baseless.
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No my friend. Current speculations and efforts are attemting to form theiries which will explain what caused the Big Bang. And if something CAUSED the BIG BAng, then there was obviously somnething BEFORE the BIg Bang. Look it up in Google and see for yourself. Look under "branes" twelve dimensions. Or Big Bang and branes.
Furthermore to GET somewhere you have be to be elsewhere. Ad infinitum. I'm trying to avoid having to post sources. But if you wish I will.
Branes and the Big Bang
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/bigbang_alternative_010413-1.html
Before the Big Bang
Cosmologists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have a radical idea that could wipe away these mysteries. They theorize that the cosmos was never compacted into a single point and did not spring forth in a violent instant. Instead, the universe as we know it is a small cross section of a much grander universe whose true magnitude is hidden in dimensions we cannot perceive. What we think of as the Big Bang, they contend, was the result of a collision between our three-dimensional world and another three-dimensional world less than the width of a proton away from ours—right next to us, and yet displaced in a way that renders it invisible. Moreover, they say the Big Bang is just the latest in a cycle of cosmic collisions stretching infinitely into the past and into the future. Each collision creates the universe anew. The 13.7-billion-year history of our cosmos is just a moment in this endless expanse of time.
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/feb/cover
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Hoyle was taking the piss.
It wasn't a big bang. It was a literally undetectably small quantum pop, seen from any POV except one inside the universe it created.
There may be thousands- millions- happening around us every moment- but by definition, the spacetime wherein they happen is another universe, so we don't notice.
Yes, seen from here it looks like a helluva lot of energy was released, but we only have local standards to measure by. Maybe the universe that just popped into existence in a spacetime point in my nostril looks pretty big from the POV of the critters therein. But to me it's undetectable.
Question is, how many levels does one have to ascend through the multiversal quantum foam before seeing the Cosmic Bathtub wherein the foam doth float?
Not to mention the Holy Taps and the Sacred Plughole?
It wasn't a big bang. It was a literally undetectably small quantum pop, seen from any POV except one inside the universe it created.
There may be thousands- millions- happening around us every moment- but by definition, the spacetime wherein they happen is another universe, so we don't notice.
Yes, seen from here it looks like a helluva lot of energy was released, but we only have local standards to measure by. Maybe the universe that just popped into existence in a spacetime point in my nostril looks pretty big from the POV of the critters therein. But to me it's undetectable.
Question is, how many levels does one have to ascend through the multiversal quantum foam before seeing the Cosmic Bathtub wherein the foam doth float?
Not to mention the Holy Taps and the Sacred Plughole?
And the divine bathing beauty? Don't forget her.
How do bees survive winters?
Sledge
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Are you suggesting that the entire planet floods to a depth that covers mountains every winter?
In short, we don't know squat!
Actually, the question is, what does the age of the universe have to do with the noah myth?
Meadmaker
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Well, none of our local floodbelievers have chosen to take up the simple question of whether or not all the animals in the ark could be cared for by an eight person crew without miraculous assistance. That's not surprising, really, but I do think it says something about the mindset, and I think it's worth tyring to explain why.
Pwengthold offered this explanation:
I think there is truth in that, but it isn't quite correct. They want it taught in schools because they really think it is a real, valid, theory of the history of the world. Pwengthold's explanation is that they try to avoid the miraculous explanation because they know that only a scientific explanation can be taught, but I think their problem is a little bit deeper than that. If it were a simple legal conundrum, they would address it differently.
I think the bigger problem they have with the question is that it invalidates the whole story. The "Bible Stories for Children" version of events (which is what everyone knows) is that God decided to destroy the world, but he kept Noah, his family, and enough animals to repopulate the world safe by putting them on a boat.
This may have seemed pretty plausible to the Babylonian author of the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Hebrew author who adapted it into Genesis. They probably had no clue about the diversity of life that really exists on this planet, and no clue about the special diet, climate control, and health needs of all of those many animals. They probably had also never tried to manage animals in an enclosed environment with no ventilation for extended periods of time. If you took every animal that the author knew about, they could all fit on a boat, and all be fed, so it would appear to the primitive authors perfectly plausible that a boat would save them all, even if he went so far as to think that the "provisions" would have to include live rats for the four kinds of snakes he knew about, and maybe even some blooming flowers for the six butterflies.
Fast forward to today, and we have a lot more knowledge and experience. We know that there are tens of thousands of vertebrate species and many times that number of invertebrates. We know about the special needs for diet, moisture, and temperature control that are different for so many of those tens of thousands of species.
Because of that knowledge, we know that the ark would be a death trap for most of those animals, not a means to escape the doom that was inflicted upon the rest of their kind. In other words, it makes the story completely implausible, even given the miraculous nature of the events. They can wish away the problems with the law of conservation of matter and the sudden appearance and disappearance of huge amounts of water. After all, the story says that it happened, therefore, it happened. However, the story also says that the boat kept the animals safe. That, we know, and even they know, could not have happened. The boat, by itself, not even with 300 years to prepare and gather provisions, could not have kept the animals safe, but the story says they were safe because of the boat.
That's why they simply can't address the question. It demonstrates that the whole story is fictitious. Even within the framework of belief, it can't be reconciled within itself. The rain is part of the story, so it makes sense within the framework of belief for the water to come and go. However, if you use miracles to keep the animals alive, you are contradicting the story. The boat was supposed to be the miracle, and it was supposed to be all that was required to keep them safe during the flood. That's what the story says. To acknowledge that it was inadequate is to say that the story is really not completely accurate.
Pwengthold offered this explanation:
I think there is truth in that, but it isn't quite correct. They want it taught in schools because they really think it is a real, valid, theory of the history of the world. Pwengthold's explanation is that they try to avoid the miraculous explanation because they know that only a scientific explanation can be taught, but I think their problem is a little bit deeper than that. If it were a simple legal conundrum, they would address it differently.
I think the bigger problem they have with the question is that it invalidates the whole story. The "Bible Stories for Children" version of events (which is what everyone knows) is that God decided to destroy the world, but he kept Noah, his family, and enough animals to repopulate the world safe by putting them on a boat.
This may have seemed pretty plausible to the Babylonian author of the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Hebrew author who adapted it into Genesis. They probably had no clue about the diversity of life that really exists on this planet, and no clue about the special diet, climate control, and health needs of all of those many animals. They probably had also never tried to manage animals in an enclosed environment with no ventilation for extended periods of time. If you took every animal that the author knew about, they could all fit on a boat, and all be fed, so it would appear to the primitive authors perfectly plausible that a boat would save them all, even if he went so far as to think that the "provisions" would have to include live rats for the four kinds of snakes he knew about, and maybe even some blooming flowers for the six butterflies.
Fast forward to today, and we have a lot more knowledge and experience. We know that there are tens of thousands of vertebrate species and many times that number of invertebrates. We know about the special needs for diet, moisture, and temperature control that are different for so many of those tens of thousands of species.
Because of that knowledge, we know that the ark would be a death trap for most of those animals, not a means to escape the doom that was inflicted upon the rest of their kind. In other words, it makes the story completely implausible, even given the miraculous nature of the events. They can wish away the problems with the law of conservation of matter and the sudden appearance and disappearance of huge amounts of water. After all, the story says that it happened, therefore, it happened. However, the story also says that the boat kept the animals safe. That, we know, and even they know, could not have happened. The boat, by itself, not even with 300 years to prepare and gather provisions, could not have kept the animals safe, but the story says they were safe because of the boat.
That's why they simply can't address the question. It demonstrates that the whole story is fictitious. Even within the framework of belief, it can't be reconciled within itself. The rain is part of the story, so it makes sense within the framework of belief for the water to come and go. However, if you use miracles to keep the animals alive, you are contradicting the story. The boat was supposed to be the miracle, and it was supposed to be all that was required to keep them safe during the flood. That's what the story says. To acknowledge that it was inadequate is to say that the story is really not completely accurate.
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Tricky
Briefly immortal
They mostly stay in their hives in which they control the temperature by various means. But the wouldn't survive being flooded for several days or years, nor could they stay aloft that long without food.
Just add this to the list of many thousands of reasons why there could not be a flood that covered the entire earth. You want more?
Marduk
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Not quite
this is what Gilgamesh says about animals on the boat
Thats all, and considering that the word used in this instance is "alal" which refers to a unit of cultivated field, those animals would have been very few in number, a couple of Oxen maybe a few donkeys, some sheep, rabbits, mainly just those needed to assist in cultivation. Shamash (sun god) helps with the future planting by making it rain wheat on the boat every morning.
The only mesopotamian flood story that mentions numerous animals is the neo babylonian flood story which dates to around 700bce iirc (but is based on older accounts dating back to around (1000bce), which states at the end
So the idea that the earth needed to be repopulated by a man rather than a short sighted God is very late in the day and even in this version the word used for Earth is "Ki" which means "Mesopotamia", not "Kisar" which means planet.
This flood of course sent by Enlil in Gilgamesh was written when Enlil was the most important deity of the pantheon, by the time the last flood story was written he was regarded as a bit of an idiot and an unfeeling monster (for that very act) and no longer worthy of worship (in fact his brother Enki had been promoted in his stead and in time his brothers son Bel Marduk took over), so it became neccessary to show that the flood hero himself was the one who had the brains to save the animals rather than the God who in the original story had already taken care of it.....
The Hebrews were if anything not creating a new belief system but reenacting an old one which had been rejected over a 1000 years earlier by the very people who the Hebrews heard it from. The main reason for the rejection of the Flood story from Mesopotamian belief was the rise of a new God (above mentioned), who only did good things like killing evil dragons and monsters and never sent a flood...
Those were the days eh
Its all a bit moot anyway, the flood story in Gilgamesh is well known to be an extract copied from Atrahasis, which although practically line for line the same doesn't have a global flood, but a riverine flood, only affecting land along the Tigris and Euphrates, so the further you go back into Mesopotamian flood narratives the less need there is for anyone to worry about global fauna
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