Noah's Ark

[SonOfLaertes]

This is an issue that I have pondered a bit. In general, skeptics have a religious style belief that truth always matters. In fact, it often doesn't and vast numbers of people live happy successful lives that put a lower priority on the value of truth than most people who self identify as skeptics.

The difficulty here is that truth is very important sometimes and people who have low evidential requirements for opinion formation can struggle significantly because of the flawed decision making that results from that.

So does encouraging the application of critical thinking to things like Noah's ark assists people with the application of critical thinking on issues that are important to their lives or does it just provide an avenue for chest pounding by skeptics? I don't know the answer or have much of a well formed opinion about that. I see arguments for both sides.

What is the case, is that people, including skeptics, often form opinions based on what makes them happy (they allow their various biases to strongly affect the formation of an opinion). For a great number of people this is a process that apply somewhat selectively. For the part of their life where choosing the correct course of action is critical they can fight hard to make a decision based on the best facts that are available to them and reduce the influence of confounding biases. For the rest of their lives they allow various biases to play a more important role in their decision making process and still achieve a reasonably happy successful life.

So who deserves ridicule in all this? The skeptics for acting like it's important to establish the truth about Noah's ark or the believers for making a reasonable decision to place a low priority on truth about Noah's ark when believing in it makes the happy and that belief does not cause a practical problem with the rest of their lives?

Being a skeptic, I think I can guess many of the arguments that my fellow skeptics might make about the importance for truth with regard to Noah's ark but I'm just not sure that those arguments arise to sufficient justification for the ridicule of people who just don't think the truth about Noah's ark is a significant enough issue in their own lives to spend effort to overcome biases that might allow for the formation of a more truth based opinion.

The only people facing ridicule are the people actively pushing the Flood agenda. The people you describe as disinterested in the veracity of the Global Flood are likely not debating the topic, for the most part, and so are not facing any ridicule. But -

If you throw your hat into the ring, expect to join a fight. For those people, who may be more representative of the whole than you think -

Their belief does cause a practical problem with all our lives, even with the specific example of Noah's Ark. An uninformed congregation can easily be swayed into supporting the agenda of a radical leadership. Should we excuse ignorance which feeds a targeted attack on our education system? I have friends who are just as you described above - but they belong to and contribute money toward a congregation which seeks to deny Old-Earth geology, Evolution, genetics, ....

In the end, it's not truth that is at stake here. Truth is just a tool being twisted so that the "disinterested" will stay disinterested, and let those with an agenda, advance that agenda. Their leaders discourage them from seeking truth - it suits their goals to do so. Should we simply accept that reality, or push back against it?

 

[Dinwar]

I only asked about ark-related deaths, which you brought up.

I never brought up ark-related deaths. I said that people die because of people LIKE the ones building arks. Again, there is a difference.

Can you give me an example of an engineering error perpetrated by an ark builder that has killed people?

Sure: not accounting for the conditions the ship will encounter. The Spanish Armada was essentially destroyed by failure to apply this principle--the Armada was not designed for the rough North Sea, and many boats were lost to weather. I'm sure there are other maritime disasters that I can't think of off-hand. The Edmond Fitzgerald wasn't an error, they simply encountered conditions they weren't expecting and couldn't handle (no such justification for the Armada, which intentionally sailed into an area with known rough seas in boats which weren't built to handle it).

There's also the inappropriate use of materials. Wood cannot take the stresses involved in hogging and other things boats do. In China, a similar failure to recognize the limits of building materials caused a huge (and unknown) number of deaths when people carved shelters into alluvium, and then experienced an earthquake. There are others as well--stories about buildings and bridges collapsing abound.

 

[caniswalensis]

I never brought up ark-related deaths. I said that people die because of people LIKE the ones building arks. Again, there is a difference.

Sure: not accounting for the conditions the ship will encounter. The Spanish Armada was essentially destroyed by failure to apply this principle--the Armada was not designed for the rough North Sea, and many boats were lost to weather. I'm sure there are other maritime disasters that I can't think of off-hand. The Edmond Fitzgerald wasn't an error, they simply encountered conditions they weren't expecting and couldn't handle (no such justification for the Armada, which intentionally sailed into an area with known rough seas in boats which weren't built to handle it).

There's also the inappropriate use of materials. Wood cannot take the stresses involved in hogging and other things boats do. In China, a similar failure to recognize the limits of building materials caused a huge (and unknown) number of deaths when people carved shelters into alluvium, and then experienced an earthquake. There are others as well--stories about buildings and bridges collapsing abound.

Ok, I think I get you now, we had some kind of fundamental disconnect going there.

But non of these examples are actual ark replica examples, so I fail to see how they matter in this discussion.

You wrote:

PEOPLE DIE because of morons like the people building these "arks". Well, in fact people die from much, much smaller errors than are being committed by these fanatics. Actual human beings are killed. This deserves ridicule at minimum. I'd say it deserves a criminal trial.

So if there are no actual examples of engineering mistakes made on replica ark structures, how can we say that the replica ark builders are deserving of ridicule or a criminal trial? Am I misunderstanding you again? I took your post to be a statement about builders of replica arks.

Regards, Canis

 

[Dinwar]

So if there are no actual examples of engineering mistakes made on replica ark structures, how can we say that the replica ark builders are deserving of ridicule or a criminal trial?

Because they are using unsound engineering principles (as has been amply illustrated throughout this thread). The use of unsound engineering principles leads to death; therefore, people who use them are guilty of killing people.

If you can prove that the ark builders are using sound engineering, I'll retract my posts. Until then, I think a discussion of the known effects of screwing up engineering, in a thread about building things, is a fair topic, particularly in response to accusations of negativity and such.

 

[caniswalensis]

Because they are using unsound engineering principles (as has been amply illustrated throughout this thread). The use of unsound engineering principles leads to death; therefore, people who use them are guilty of killing people.

If you can prove that the ark builders are using sound engineering, I'll retract my posts. Until then, I think a discussion of the known effects of screwing up engineering, in a thread about building things, is a fair topic, particularly in response to accusations of negativity and such.

Hey, I am not trying to be contentious. I just like to talk about things and what you said interested me. I just want to understand it. I am sorry if it seems I am pressing you. There are no retractions required as far as I am concerned.

Reading through the thread, I am not sure that it demonstrates that any of the replica arks have been built using unsound principles. I see mostly a dicussion about if the concept of a wooden ship as decribed in the bible is feasable. I am not aware of any replica arks that are actually built using period materials & techinques, or that meet the biblical specifications in that regard.

I know of about five or six serious replica arks in total.

Two are the floating ones made by the dutch guy. These are not built like the real ark. They are modern, unpowered barges with a steel-framed wood-sided building on top. One is something like quarter scale and the other is full scale. He is planning on taking the 1:1 job to the London olympics. It is apparently sea worthy enough for the trip. Since he has built these things as tourist attractions and has been opperating them as such, I think it is safe to assume he has been checked out by the dutch attorities and been found to be up to snuff.

There is a smallish one being built on mount Ararat by Green Peace volounteers to raise awareness of ecological problems. This one is essentially a small wooden pole-barn shaped like a boat. it is set into the ground and not capable of moving or floating.

The other three are just modern buildings with fancy facades. Two are in america, at creationist amusment parks, the third houses a luxury hotel in Hong Kong. it is actually quite beautiful. I do not see any reason to believe these are more unsafe than any building of equivilent size.

If I am missing any, someone please corect my ommisions.

I guess what I am getting at is that there are vast numbers of stories about engineering errors, but that does not mean everyone who engineers a ship or a building is equally guilty of those errors. I think the fair thing to do is to actually look at these structures and judge them on their own merits. If there is a replica ark that has an engineering error in it, than by all means the builders need to be called on that. I do not think it is fair to say that because a building or vessal takes inspiration from the biblical story of noah, that it is inherently flawed or that the builders of these structures are doing anything criminal or worthy of scorn.

I hope that makes sense.

Regards, Canis

 

[Akhenaten]

Mount Ararat, Turkey​

 

[davefoc]

The only people facing ridicule are the people actively pushing the Flood agenda. The people you describe as disinterested in the veracity of the Global Flood are likely not debating the topic, for the most part, and so are not facing any ridicule. But -

If you throw your hat into the ring, expect to join a fight. For those people, who may be more representative of the whole than you think -

Their belief does cause a practical problem with all our lives, even with the specific example of Noah's Ark. An uninformed congregation can easily be swayed into supporting the agenda of a radical leadership. Should we excuse ignorance which feeds a targeted attack on our education system? I have friends who are just as you described above - but they belong to and contribute money toward a congregation which seeks to deny Old-Earth geology, Evolution, genetics, ....

In the end, it's not truth that is at stake here. Truth is just a tool being twisted so that the "disinterested" will stay disinterested, and let those with an agenda, advance that agenda. Their leaders discourage them from seeking truth - it suits their goals to do so. Should we simply accept that reality, or push back against it?

Those seem like valid points to me. I think I confounded the issue of when is it appropriate to confront mythological beliefs with the issue of how is it appropriate to confront mythological beliefs.

On the issue of when, I agree roughly with the ideas in your post. There are a lot of gray areas on this though. Do the people knocking on your door trying to save your soul get a lecture on the nature of early Christianity and the sketchy nature of the NT documentation that underpinned the rise of Christianity or do you just thank them for trying to save your soul and go on with your day?

On the issue of how to confront mythological beliefs I suspect that ridicule is often counterproductive if the goal is to modify a person's views.

I would say that ridicule is fun and I suppose it is the humor/ridicule that draws me to an occasional Noah's Ark thread. In a tiny defense of my failings with regard to this, I don't think these Noah's ark threads are exactly sober searches for truth. For most of the people participating they provide a moment or two to smile about one of the most appealing and funniest myths to have ever gained widespread awareness.

If somebody is really interested in a serious discussion of the Noah's ark biblical stories I think it would be nice and appropriate given the general purpose of this forum to treat them with respect. I think the people that provided research and analysis about the feasibility of a Noah sized ark earlier in the thread did that. Although, I think they should have been a little more respectful of the guy who suggested that Madagascar's unique animals got there on a few of Noah's min-boats that floated away from the main group.

 

[pakeha]

... I won't go to see a movie unless it has lazers, swords or monsters in it.

And wires.

...It's as much of a replica as Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland is a replica of Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria.

Too true, O Pharaoh.
It's supposedly a replica of
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQwtafqaJIpKcOKIFVxbg3ygXuTovvZ6KQ_Tx6k3y13tRR7J4B5

The Alcazar of Segovia, where Isabel la Católica was crowned Queen of Castile.
She's well known for her interest in the New World and the Santa, or Holy Inquisition.

Anyway, back to the Ark.
The real one. Built 6,000 years ago to save tuataras, moas and kiwis from the Fludd.

 

[ddt]

This is an issue that I have pondered a bit. In general, skeptics have a religious style belief that truth always matters. In fact, it often doesn't and vast numbers of people live happy successful lives that put a lower priority on the value of truth than most people who self identify as skeptics.

The difficulty here is that truth is very important sometimes and people who have low evidential requirements for opinion formation can struggle significantly because of the flawed decision making that results from that.

So does encouraging the application of critical thinking to things like Noah's ark assists people with the application of critical thinking on issues that are important to their lives or does it just provide an avenue for chest pounding by skeptics? I don't know the answer or have much of a well formed opinion about that. I see arguments for both sides.

What is the case, is that people, including skeptics, often form opinions based on what makes them happy (they allow their various biases to strongly affect the formation of an opinion). For a great number of people this is a process that they apply somewhat selectively. For the part of their life where choosing the correct course of action is critical they can fight hard to make a decision based on the best facts that are available to them and reduce the influence of confounding biases. For the rest of their lives they allow various biases to play a more important role in their decision making process and still achieve a reasonably happy successful life.

So who deserves ridicule in all this? The skeptics for acting like it's important to establish the truth about Noah's ark or the believers for making a reasonable decision to place a low priority on truth about Noah's ark when believing in it makes the happy and that belief does not cause a practical problem with the rest of their lives?

Being a skeptic, I think I can guess many of the arguments that my fellow skeptics might make about the importance for truth with regard to Noah's ark but I'm just not sure that those arguments arise to sufficient justification for the ridicule of people who just don't think the truth about Noah's ark is a significant enough issue in their own lives to spend effort to overcome biases that might allow for the formation of a more truth based opinion.

I think you have to distinguish in this the public and the private sphere. When a friend would tell me s/he believes in Noah's ark, or any of the other Bible stories, I'd shrug my shoulders or at most tell them it's not possible and point them to this thread for the scientific details of that.

However, those who go public with their belief in the truth of the story should be countered with vehemence and should be ridiculed as nutters, or denounced as hypocrites. And with "public", I also mean those who write about it on blogs or internet fora. For these people go public with their opinion to influence public opinion and thus politics - for instance, the teaching of evolution and/or creationism in schools. We've had in our country also a short attempt at promoting ID, which fortunately failed, but still, the energy spent on such a senseless debate can better be spent otherwise.
(and I'm aware that strictly speaking, belief in the truth of Noah's ark is not the same as belief in creationism; but the overlap between the two groups is very very big).

Here's the hypocrisy of Johan Huibers, the Dutch ark builder, in action, in a recent (uncritical) interview for Radio Netherlands Worldwide:


(Dutch spoken, but with English captions)
Turn in at the 0:55 mark, and see how he claims it was built according to biblical specs, and conveniently forgets to mention that he used 24 steel pontoons to make it seaworthy. View the whole video and spot some more marks of hypocrisy.

Labeling this as hypocrisy is may too friendly. It's in fact lying, and it should be made clear that this is no proof that the Bible story is true, not even that it could be true.

 

[ddt]

On the issue of when, I agree roughly with the ideas in your post. There are a lot of gray areas on this though. Do the people knocking on your door trying to save your soul get a lecture on the nature of early Christianity and the sketchy nature of the NT documentation that underpinned the rise of Christianity or do you just thank them for trying to save your soul and go on with your day?

Those people actively seek my door, so they might expect anything within the law. What distinguishes them from telemarketeers? I must confess that I personally have no recent experience with them, having lived in the same apartment building for the last 15 years probably saved me from them. But my impression is that they start their talk that they come to bring Jesus, without specifying which of the approx. 30,000 Christian denominations they actually come to promote. That's the kind of disingenuousness that makes me put down the phone on telemarketeers without saying so much as goodbye. I could imagine myself "playing" with such proselytizers in the form you described, or by rebuking their claims with other Bible quotes - thanks to the discussions I've been following here with the local proselytizers. But a Jehova Witness - proselytizers around here mostly are JW - who'd ring at my door on Sunday 9AM may probably just find the door slammed shut in their face. They better look out they retract their foot in time.

Obl. Joke: How do you recognize a Belgian Jehova Witness?

They put their hand between the door.

(Dutch make jokes about Belgians being stupid)

 

[Garrette]

I think you have to distinguish in this the public and the private sphere. When a friend would tell me s/he believes in Noah's ark, or any of the other Bible stories, I'd shrug my shoulders or at most tell them it's not possible and point them to this thread for the scientific details of that.

However, those who go public with their belief in the truth of the story should be countered with vehemence and should be ridiculed as nutters, or denounced as hypocrites. And with "public", I also mean those who write about it on blogs or internet fora. For these people go public with their opinion to influence public opinion and thus politics - for instance, the teaching of evolution and/or creationism in schools. We've had in our country also a short attempt at promoting ID, which fortunately failed, but still, the energy spent on such a senseless debate can better be spent otherwise.
(and I'm aware that strictly speaking, belief in the truth of Noah's ark is not the same as belief in creationism; but the overlap between the two groups is very very big).

Here's the hypocrisy of Johan Huibers, the Dutch ark builder, in action, in a recent (uncritical) interview for Radio Netherlands Worldwide:


(Dutch spoken, but with English captions)
Turn in at the 0:55 mark, and see how he claims it was built according to biblical specs, and conveniently forgets to mention that he used 24 steel pontoons to make it seaworthy. View the whole video and spot some more marks of hypocrisy.

Labeling this as hypocrisy is may too friendly. It's in fact lying, and it should be made clear that this is no proof that the Bible story is true, not even that it could be true.

I didn't see any subtitles so I couldn't get anything out of it except to think "man, that's really little for all those animals."

 

[ddt]

I didn't see any subtitles so I couldn't get anything out of it except to think "man, that's really little for all those animals."

Sorry, should have said so. Press the "CC" (Closed Caption) button just below the movie to activate the subtitles.

 

[Akhenaten]

Labeling this as hypocrisy is may too friendly. It's in fact lying, and it should be made clear that this is no proof that the Bible story is true, not even that it could be true.

Too friendly indeed. He was lying through his teeth from start to finish.

The story in the Bible, the yarn he was spinning and what we were actually looking at were three completely different things.

 

[davefoc]

...What distinguishes them from telemarketeers?

I think that is a tough issue. One view is that they are engaging in self sacrifice with the hope of providing a benefit to me. So their motivation might be less self interested than telemarketers.

Another view is that they hope to score some points with God to boost their shot at heaven happiness so their motivation might be even more self interested than telemarketers.

Either way, on average, I think they are less annoying than secular telmarketers especially the ones telling me that I've won something or that I've been specially selected to receive the particular thing that they are pitching.

I must confess that I personally have no recent experience with them, having lived in the same apartment building for the last 15 years probably saved me from them. ...

Good grief, such places exist in the western world? Who knew?

 

[davefoc]

Sorry, should have said so. Press the "CC" (Closed Caption) button just below the movie to activate the subtitles.

I didn't figure out the CC thing either until you mentioned it. Thank you.

As an aside vertrek is just about the only Dutch word that I know. When I was traveling in the Netherlands years ago I was trying to figure out what train to get on and was quite confused when it seemed like every train went to vertrek. I did eventually figure out that vertrek meant departure.

As to the video, the builder seems like a rather pleasant fellow and on just a purely personal level I have benefited from the fact that his views, which seem weird to me, led him to do something interesting. I thought the scene with the power saw was great. I was hoping they were going to follow it up with a scene of the guy putting up the wall planks with a nail gun. Overall there was a nice opportunity there that they missed. They could have shown the giant machines used to harvest the wood, the giant machines used to mill the wood, and the giant trucks used to haul the wood to the building site. I think I did see a crane in one of the images of the construction of this ark. That was fun, but I would have liked more.

I've been watching the Tour de France and one of highlights of it is the grand old churches along the way. So again, on a strictly personal level I am gaining some benefit from people whose views seem wildly unlikely to be correct. I'm not sure how the church builders made out in this though. Perhaps it was a lot of sacrifice for a futile cause or perhaps they got a lot of good feelings from having contributed to making something nifty or from participating in the community of that church.

On the other hand, the church may have promoted and/or participated in the mistreatment of atheists. I take a particularly dim view of that kind of thing and if that's the tradeoff I might be a little less enthused about looking at grand old churches.

 

[ddt]

I think that is a tough issue. One view is that they are engaging in self sacrifice with the hope of providing a benefit to me. So their motivation might be less self interested than telemarketers.

Another view is that they hope to score some points with God to boost their shot at heaven happiness so their motivation might be even more self interested than telemarketers.

Good points. An obvious difference is, of course, that a typical proselytizers don't do it for money.

Either way, on average, I think they are less annoying than secular telmarketers especially the ones telling me that I've won something or that I've been specially selected to receive the particular thing that they are pitching.

I loathe especially the ones who are vague about for which company they're calling, even when explicitly asked. Or the ones pretending to be another company: since the privatization of the telecom market, there have been a couple of companies whose telemarketeers suggested actually calling on behalf of the former state company. And then people find out they've suddenly switched operator without realizing it. But yes, I should have some more experience with proselytizers to have actual comparison.

Good grief, such places exist in the western world? Who knew?

Yeah! Spreading the message of Jesus through an intercom is not a very successful business. Neither do I get many people at the door collecting money for charities.

 

[Garrette]

Sorry, should have said so. Press the "CC" (Closed Caption) button just below the movie to activate the subtitles.

Thanks. I didn't know that. Finally watched it. He does seem quite pleasant, but he is definitely deceptive, whether intentionally or not.