1) The story of Noah in the bible is based on an earlier legend. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written by the Sumerians long before Genesis was written down. We have tablets dating as far back as 2000 BCE which contain portions of the Gilgamesh story, with the earliest surviving record of the flood dating to 1900 BCE. The Old Testament of the Bible was not pulled together until about 600 BCE from primarily oral tradition, and the oldest surviving versions of the old testament are even more recent than that.
There is little question that the Hebrew story is based on the Sumerian/Babylonian story, as the Hebrews, even according to the bible, came from this region and their language is descended from Akadian, spoken by the ancient Babylonians and in which the most complete existing version of the Gilgamesh legend is written.
Instead of Noah, we have Utnapishtim. Instead of a single god, we have *many* gods. But the basic story of building a boat, taking the animals on, letting birds out to find land, and even the rainbow are all elements captured in this earlier book.
The point being, the Hebrews probably took this story into their oral tradition, over many years it was changed, and it wound up in Genesis. We see no reason to believe that the story in the bible is any more true than any other story in any other of the countless religious and mythological texts.
2) There is no evidence of a worldwide flood of the proportions described in any of the stories. If such a flood were to have taken place in the past 6,000 years, there would be a vast amount of geological evidence of such a flood. So far, there is no verifiable evidence in support of such a flood. The geologic evidence simply does not exist.
3) The story in the bible is impossible.
3a) For Noah and his sons to build such a boat, even given several hundred years, without modern manufacturing equipment would be impossible.
3b) Collecting two of each animal would be an equally impossible task (did Noah travel to Australia to pick up some kangaroos, or to Antarctica to grab some penguins?)
3c) The combined weight of the animals and the food to keep them all alive for over 100 days would cause such a wooden ship to collapse under its own weight.
3d) There wouldn’t even be enough time for Noah and his family to feed and shovel all the dung out of all the stalls of these tens of thousands of animals.
3e) There is the problem of the fresh-water fish surviving in the salt water (or the salt-water fish surviving in the fresh water, depending upon your definition of the flood)
3d) When the flood receded, how did the kangaroos get all the way back to Australia?
4) If you claim two of each species around today, the boat isn’t big enough. If you claim that there were certain “types” of animals, then there isn’t enough time for these “types” to speciate into the vast variety of species we see today.
5) A single pair of any animals is not enough to develop a significant population due to the inbreeding problem. Take a couple of hamsters and try this. After a couple dozen generations, the offspring will be sick and malformed due to this interbreeding.
I think you are all full of —-t! There is geological evidence all over this planet… as for the dating of the sediments and the like… you cannot date rocks by fossils and fossils by rocks….! Evolution is THEORY NOT FACT! IT IS NOT SCIENCE!
If you haven’t already, check out Mark Twain’s treatment of the flood myth in his book “Letters from the Earth”, a wonderful send-up of western religion. Twain addresses some of the more interesting aspects of this story that our bible-thumping friends usually overlook, including how dinosaurs got left off the ark, and how Noah managed to get all the disease-causing microbes and parasites on board (“Shem was full of hookworm…”). It’s a must read for anyone longing for the triumph of reason over superstition.
PS – This is a great site. Keep up the good work.
Kristie, someone here is indeed full of it, but it’s you, not him. Evolution is BOTH a THEORY and a FACT; Creationism is neither. You need to get your definitions straight and understand what THEORY is in science. It doesn’t mean “guess”; it doesn’t mean “I think”; a scientific theory is basically what we would call a fact in day-to-day use. An idea in science doesn’t become a theory unless it explains the observed facts remarkably well–AND until it passes dozens of tests/experiments (and it has to pass them consistently, or it has to be revised).
The truth of a legend is not defined by whether or not it actually happened. I did not read “Moby Dick” in school to study things that actually happened. I read it to learn the truth it had to teach, that in no way was made false because the events did not happen. The first 12 books of the Bible were written after or during the Babylonian captivity of Judah. To learn the truth of “Moby Dick” I was told that I had to suspend disbelief, i.e. I had to just assume that it was true, before I could learn the truth of it. The Hebrew legends are not intended as history. I don’t even know if the ancient Hebrews ever considered them as history. The truth value of the Flood story as a legend is in no way affected by the fact it did not take place, any more than “Moby Dick” would be considered false because Captain Ahab did not ever exist. A legend is fiction, but more than fiction. It is a story so important that it is empbraced by a whole people. It is not important that George Washington never cut down an apple tree or threw a silver dollar across a river, but what is important is that these stories are important to the American people. What does the importance of the Flood story to the Hebrews tell us about them and their God? This might be a better question to ask.
I believe in the flood :) Mostly because many many scientists believ in ” some type of flood”
and many many scientist also know that there is more science supporting creation than there is evolution..and many have been found lying in court and such just to protect their ” faith” in their own understanding……
Also, Kristie Gangwer, God loves you for your strong belief in him…but anger and yelling does good for no one…Instead of accusing..why not show them….may God bless you immensly for caring.
“The earth’s surface and sedimentary crust also bear strong witness to the historicity of a worldwide Flood, and the early geologists (Steno, Woodward, etc.) taught this. Most modern geologists have argued, on the other hand, that the earth’s crust was formed slowly over billions of years. Yes, but consider the following significant facts.
All the mountains of the world have been under water at some time or times in the past, as indicated by sedimentary rocks and marine fossils near their summits. Even most volcanic mountains with their pillow lavas seem largely to have been formed when under water.
Most of the earth’s crust consists of sedimentary rocks (sandstones, shales, limestones, etc.). These were originally formed in almost all cases under water, usually by deposition after transportation by water from various sources.
The assigned “ages” of the sedimentary beds (which comprise the bulk of the “geologic column”) have been deduced from their assemblages of fossils. Fossils, however, normally require very rapid burial and compaction to be preserved at all. Thus every sedimentary formation appears to have been formed rapidly—even catastrophically—and more and more present-day geologists are returning to this point of view.
Since there is known to be a global continuity of sedimentary formations in the geologic column (that is, there is no worldwide “unconformity,” or time gap, between successive “ages”), and since each unit was formed rapidly, the entire geologic column seems to be the product of continuous rapid deposition of sediments, comprising in effect the geological record of a time when “the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.”
It is also significant that the types of rocks, the vast extent of specific sedimentary rock formations, the minerals and metals, coal and oil found in rocks, the various types of structures (i.e., faults, folds, thrusts, etc.), sedimentary rocks grossly deformed while still soft from recent deposition, and numerous other features seem to occur indiscriminately throughout the various “ages” supposedly represented in the column. To all outward appearances, therefore, they were all formed in essentially the same brief time period.
The fossil sequences in the sedimentary rocks do not constitute a legitimate exception to this rule, for there is a flagrant circular reasoning process involved in using them to identify their supposed geologic age. That is, the fossils have been dated by the rocks where they are found, which in turn had been dated by their imbedded fossils with the sequences based on their relative assumed stages of evolution, which had ultimately been based on the ancient philosophy of the “great chain of being.” Instead of representing the evolution of life over many ages, the fossils really speak of the destruction of life (remember that fossils are dead things, catastrophically buried for preservation) in one age, with their actual local “sequences” having been determined by the ecological communities in which they were living at the time of burial.
The fact that there are traditions of the great Flood found in hundreds of tribes in all parts of the world (all similar in one way or another to that in the Genesis record) is firm evidence that those tribes all originated from the one family preserved through the cataclysm. “
I think that flood myths, such as the one in the Bible, are symbolic for birth. Probably the reason why there are so many different versions of them in cultures all over the world.
In the first of the two creation myths in the Bible, creation is associated with water. The water is at first chaos and later Elohym speaks and the land comes out of the water.
Later the world is wiped out in the Noah flood myth to start over again (rebirth). The children of Israel are led through the water (parted Red Sea) to symbolize the birth of a nation, etc…
Of course in the New Testament, baptism symbolizes (re)birth. I think all of these symbolic births have their roots in the earliest religious experiences, long before Judaism, that were centered around the birth experience (fertility worship).
Just a couple of questions for those believing the “Great Flood” actually occurred.
* Why is there no record of a flood in tree ring dating? (It would be OBVIOUS if it had actually occurred!)
* And how did all of the land animals now in existence make and survive the journey from Mt. Ararat to their present locations? (And what on Earth did they eat, since the entire ecosystem would have been destroyed!)
* And how did the Greenland ice cap regrow in the last 10,000 years? (This is an IMPOSSIBILITY, by the way)
* And how did all of the fish survive when some needed salt water and others needed fresh water?
* And how did the Great Barrier Reef survive, since it is still alive and has been for the past millions of years? (It would have been destroyed in a “Great Flood” like your story talks about)
* And why is inbreeding depression not a problem in most all of the species now present on earth, since they are ALL, according to your great story, descendents of only two representatives that were on the ark? (You studied genetics in school, right? I guess the Hebrews didn’t!)
* And why don’t the records of other civilizations that were around (and somehow miraculously continued to survive during the time of your great flood) record any such flood (we have records contemporaneous to this time)?
Those silly Hebrews! I guess their god just wiped away all of the evidence of this flood in order to keep us all guessing here in the 21st century. Kind of like Joseph Smith and his “golden book that was taken up into the sky”! It’s a MIRACLE!
Also, explain this- The Great Flood occurred somewhere between 2600 B.C. and 2350 B.C. if your Bible is correct in its own confused geneologies. The following site lists the Egyptian Pharaohs/ Rulers from 3100 B.C. through 30 B.C. when Egypt was conquered by Rome, thus ending their self-autonomy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pharaohs
There are several other societies for which we have records dating back to this time and even farther. There is AMPLE evidence today showing that what is now modern-day Egypt started out at around 8,000 BC and has been an intact culture ever since. This is not debated by “reputable” and “impartial” scholars. Sure, you can find people on both sides with an agenda either pro or against biblical teachings, but people who study the history, the documents, the archaeology, etc. and don’t give a DAMN about the flood story with no agenda are in agreement about such things. The facts are the facts! The facts show that to take the flood story literally and historically is ABSURD!
Face it- the flood never happened. It’s a story. Call such nonsense a miracle if you like, but it’s kind of hard to reconcile your story with intact civilizations during the time of the supposed flood! Play whatever silly games you want, but facts are facts, and stories are stories!
Hope this has been helpful to those incapable of thinking in a rational manner!
Jim
Jim Sams for President! The thought I always think about of the supposed flood is imagine doing the same task today using modern technology. We still can’t figured out how the Pyramids in Giza were constructed even with the Pyramids still being here to study. Also, because of extinction, the amount of animals that exist today is far less than what existed back when the Ark was supposedly built. Can you imagine gathering the far fewer animals today, which is an impossible, monumental task, compared with what had to be collected thousands of years ago?
There is a great amount of evidence of the Flood. The Grand Canyon, The Three Sisters in Australia, etc. They all show great amounts watery deposition over a short peroid of time.
Where’s the evidence that it’s impossible to build an ark? Ever heard of the Panama Canal? The Egyption Pyramids? Who would believe, before the 1900′s, that people would soon stand on the moon. People can do amazing things when they’re they put their mind to it.
I know you guys are gonna hate me when I say this but, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WITH GOD! Of course, this story is gonna sound silly if you say man and nature alone did it. God’s hand was on this, though. He did this and he made it work. Even if all those things are impossible for a human or nature, it doesn’t proove/disproove anything. Arguing about whether or not God could do something is rediculous.
I’m probably not going to convince any determined athiests, since they don’t believe in God (I’m not going to argue about the existance of God on this forum). I hope only to give the Christian/Jewish point of view and strenghnen any believers that are shaken by this article, which doesn’t do anything to the Christian/Jewish faith. I admit you cannot prove the Flood with scientific evidence, but only with the fact the God is Almighty and limitless in power over the universe.
The Grand Canyon is not evidence of a flood. It was carved out over eons of time by the Colorado river.
Neither the Panama Canal nor any of the Egyptian Pyramids could have been built by Noah and his sons.
We don’t hate you, we just disagree with you. I do however get annoyed when Christians want to teach our children in public schools that an invisible being spoke the universe into existence and made man from dirt and woman from a rib bone.
I also get a little miffed when Christians want to force their ideas of morality on others through legislation.
Above all I get a little upset when Christians support war mongering politicians.
However as far as I’m concerned you are free to believe in an invisible omnipotent being if you want.
If the Grand Canyon doesn’t convince you, how about the Three Sisters?
My point wasn’t that Noah could build the Panama Canal or the Pyramids. My point was that people can do amazing things. People built pyramids 450 feet tall, using over 2 million blocks that weighed 2.5 tons each. If you read that in the Bible and had no other proof, would you critisize it like the Ark?
You say that you’re miffed when Christians try and force their beliefs on you, yet this entire website is about forcing your atheistic ideas on people and to crush Christianity.
By the way, I find those Christian steriotypes rather unnecessary.
If it’s dated to 230 million years ago, that pretty much kills the idea that it happened suddenly 5000 years ago.
Fine. People can do what appears to be amazing things when they have thousands of people working at it over 10-20 years, but the Panama Canal and the Pyramids weren’t built by one man and his sons. They weren’t built by a hundred men and their sons and neither could an ark meant to carry 2-7 of every species on earth. That was my point.
Also, while we are on the subject, as Jim Sams points out, there is an uninterrupted record of pharoahs from 500 years before the flood was supposed to happen to a couple of thousand years after it was supposed to have happened. The Egyptians were never wiped out by a flood.
Dealing instead with what I actually said, I’m not trying to get politicians to force my ideas onto people so your strawman fails.
Also I doubt I will crush Christianity with my website.
They are not stereotypes. They are unfortunately facts of life that we in the US have to deal with.
I find it staggering reading what is written above. Statements are written as fact when you have no proof that they are fact. For example: “There is no evidence of a worldwide flood of the proportions described in any of the stories. If such a flood were to have taken place in the past 6,000 years, there would be a vast amount of geological evidence of such a flood. So far, there is no verifiable evidence in support of such a flood. The geologic evidence simply does not exist.” There is plenty of evidence: fossils buried suddenly during a great catastrophe like a flood(fossils that evolutionists claim to have been formed over millions and millions of years) are good evidence that a flood COULD have happened. And what about your poo-pooing of the idea that Noah had to go to Australia and the Antarctic to find animals for the ark? It is commonly recognised that the world did not divide up into continents until after the flood when there was a “moving of the great deep”. This is why for example, the coastlines of South America and Western Africa look like they could fit together – because they did before the flood. I could go on, but i know there is not much point, as to belief in God is to have faith and “Faith is the evidence of things not seen”.
These particular “evolutionists” that you speak of are geologists. Since evolution is accepted by all peer reviewed scientific disciplines, all peer reviewed scientist are “evolutionists.”
There is no evidence of a global wide flood 5,000 years ago. Any competent geologist will tell you that fossils are buried in various layers of strata or rock, each dating to different geologic time periods often separated by hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Not the same time period as they would be if they had all been deposited at the same time during a flood 5000 years ago.
As far as continental drift, what is actually commonly accepted in science is that the continents started drifting apart 200 million years ago and were essentially where they are today by 5,000 years ago.
Who says the flood happened 5,000 years ago?
Those who adhere a literal translation of the Bible claim the Noah flood happened about 5,000 years ago by counting it’s listed genealogies.
Some young earth creationists stretch this to up to 10,000 years ago.
Do you have any information about how the geneologies are traced?
How do you answer people who say the earth is not that young? Like old earth creationists?
The 5000 year generation tracing appears to have been suggested by Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland in the 1600s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher
Old earth creationists ironically have more problems with the Bible’s depiction of the flood than with science. They claim that the flood was local and not global. If so why does the Bible clearly say that the tops of mountains were covered by the flood? Why does it clearly say for Noah to bring two and seven of every living thing into the ark? Why must the Koala bears come from Australia, Panda Bears from China, and Polar Bears from the artic to be saved from a local flood in the middle east? Why not have the birds migrate for awhile rather than take up valuable room and food in the ark?
Thanks for the link. I see what you mean actually, about old earth scientists having more trouble, but I spose not having known the age of the earth until around 100 years ago or so they haven’t had much time to figure everything out. In fact I doubt anyone ever will! There have been so many discoveries over the last 300 years, it’s exciting!
“I also get a little miffed when Christians want to force their ideas of morality on others through legislation”
But you would be the first to push your morality on the homo desiring to rape you!!!
This is off topic and I want to limit it to this one response.
If a homosexual or a heterosexual rapes someone then I agree they should go to jail. There are already laws in the US concerning this.
I am not a homosexual, but I’ve met or come to know a few homosexuals and lesbians in my life and these particular people were/are among the most intelligent, nicest and kindest in my experience.
If someone has the impression that just because a person has a different sexual orientation that they somehow lack morality then they obviously are only acquainted with the biggotry spread by by homophobes and some religious people and obviously don’t actually know very many gay people.
It’d be nice if someday people were only judged on their own individual merits rather than slopped into and judged as groups. Unfortunately that day seems to still be far in the future.
One thing is for sure. People today who go by the writings of those who lived 2000-3000 years ago who kept slaves and often considered women as little more than property are never going to get there.
So just a note for all the critics here who seem to deny scientific proof………..
So if anyone of them can prove to me that the following geologic/archeologic methods are “wrong” then I will accept that the flood has happened all over the world 5000 years ago…….
although then i still have some kinds of problems how on earth there can be archebacteria ….and by the way a geologic stratum is not necessarily dated by it’s fossil……..study geology before you try to prove anything…
1. Radio-carbon method
2. Racemat-Method
3. Potassiom-argon method
4. Thorium-uranium method
5. Thermoluminescence
6. Dendrochronology
7. Correspondence-analysis
and why do they come to the same result?
Excellent point Mariah.
This is in part why creationists/ID “experts” only argue their cases to laypeople and in court, almost never in scientific peer review.
Just found this site and am enjoying browsing it. This topic reminded me of a show on the History channel that i watched just last week. A quick bit of research reveals it was an episode of Mega Disasters: (http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Episodes&content_type_id=1435&display_order=3&mini_id=1401)
Episode: Comet Catastrophe
It actually goes through scientific research about a comet striking the indian ocean circa 2800 BC and causing a flood in the surrounding land masses. This is definately not a defense of the biblical version (i would have changed the channel), but actually looked at it from the standpoint that many different oral histories tell of a flood around that time (judeo, egyptian and some settlements in india). Using core samples from the deep indian ocean they found deposits of rare earth elements where they propose the comet struck.
Makes me think that there was likely a natural disaster that caused a great flood to the known world (probably didn’t effect the already-existent and unknown grand canyon). They also propose that with the impact such a large amount of water would be thrown into the atmosphere that it would have rained all over the planet for the next several weeks. This kind of event would of course be passed down and embellished in the oral tradition of any of the cultures around at that time. When the theory of monotheism came about some smart “scholar” decided to make the event a warning about the fury that a vengeful god would impose. No doubt the whole noah’s ark was later added to show that those of faith would be saved.
Anyway, there is a link on the Mega Disasters web page to the itunes episode mentioned above.
This sounds interesting, but I think the idea suffers from least one of the same problems of Old earth creationism. The myth says that the mountains were deeply submerged in water which would eliminate a local flood if an accurate description was assumed.
However, since there are so many parts of the Bible’s flood myth that are so obviously exaggerated then I guess one could suggest the mountain topping as another gross exaggeration of something that actually happened that was distorted through oral retellings over many generations.
I personally think that these flood stories never happened in any sense, but like most creation myths are metaphors for death/birth. Water is heavily used as a birth metaphor, likely because of the fascination of the earliest people with the birth of children (fertility worship).
Through various geological processes over millions of years that push rock upwards, these mountains were once under water. Seas and oceans have come and gone throughout time. Fish and other aquatic life died and fell to the sea floor. Overtime, the sea dried up and the organisims became fossilized. Also overtime, the earth thrust up rock under the ancient sea bed and it eventually becomes a mountain. Thus, fish fossils being found on top of a mountain.
If you think a global flood deposited marine fossils on the tops of mountians, then explain this. There is a whole coral reef preserved in rock in Montana’s Glacier National Park, it’s located on the famous Going To The Sun road. Explain how a perfect coral reef, frozen in time was deposit on top of a mountain by a chaotic, turbulent worldwide flood? Such a catastrophe would never be able to deposit coral that far inland, let alone an entire, entact reef. Furthermore, other reefs and whole habitats are preserved all over the world. Another few examples would be Maiasaur and Protoceratops nest mounds and egg shells perfectly preserved. If a flood killed the dinosaurs as creationists believe, then, wouldn’t a flood have washed away these nest mounds and obliterated the egg shells? Plus, these sites are not in any layer creationists attribute to the flood, but pretty much right on top of the ground. There was another fossil site in the Gobi desert of Mongolia of a Velociraptor and Protoceratops locked in combat. Now don’t you think these two would have stopped their bickering as the flood waters started to rise and rise around them?
See what i said above.
Who are these geologists?
Where do you get it all had to have happened quickly?
Look, how do you account for dinosaur fossils not being found in layers no younger than 65 million years? Or human fossils dating back no further than 3-4 million years? How is it mammal fossils start to be more common after the dinosaurs? Seems to me that a global flood would’nt have laid them down in any order, yet they are.
Your assertion that folds, thrusts and faults are the result of the flood means you have absolutely no idea what plate tectonics are.
Another thing, you and other creationists like to say that oil is a result from when the flood killed and buried all the trees and plants. Then, why isn’t oil uniform all over the world? Didn’t the flood kill all the plants?
Actually the account in the Epic of Gilgamesh is much older than the Biblical account, as explained at the top of this page.
Think about it. If you are one with no knowledge of science, and there is a great flood in the area in which you live, it is easy to imagine a flood that flooded the entire world. You would probably think it was possible. Also, as humans often do, create a wonderful story out of it and pass it down through generation to generation.
Just last week on the History Channel i watched a show about the oceanographer Bob Ballard and his crew going to the Black Sea to look for evidence of the Biblical account of a worldwide flood. Needless to say, nothing was found. However, some scientists were interviewed on the show and they were talking about the glacial melt water from the ice caps about 10,000 years ago making the sea level rise in the Mediterranean. It rose to a point where the Bosporus Straight in Turkey was breached and water poured into the Black Sea. The scientists said that this event was undoutably witnessed by many thousands of people who probably thought the world was being flooded, and the tales about it were passed around throughout the middle east and beyond.
I have heard about the theory of the flood of the Bosphorus. It is plainly obvious to me that the people thought this was the “whole world” and thus postulated the world flood myth. Same way that, in Genesis 2 10-14,
2:10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
2:11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
2:12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
2:13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
2:14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
Small in scope – this was all they knew about. Why doesn’t it mention the many rivers of Europe, Americas and the poles? Because the Middle East was, to the Old Testament writers, the “whole world”.
I would also like to see them explain coral reefs with insitu fossilised trees on top of them – and a variety of other fossil environments
Surely the whole idea of god getting someone to build an ark, collect two of everything and then gradually flood the planet is pointless. Why not just snap his fingers, destroy everything at once and start again, that’s how he did it in the first place isn’t it?
Proof by contradiction:
Assume the Flood story, as portrayed in the Bible, happened.
This implies that at some point there was water enough to cover all the mountains on the Earth. Some apologists say that the mountains were not as high as they are today, so we’ll give them that and pretend Mt Ararat was only 610m high (what Encyclopedia Britannica defines as a mountain).
610m of water would create a pressure at sea level of over 6 billion Newtons per square metre (6MPa). This is roughly 59 times the pressure at sea level currently. Needless to say, this would have utterly annihilated all fixed-position organisms, including (as someone mentioned) corals. There is no possible way for such organisms to have survived this pressure, and their offspring would have likewise died. Even assuming that their offspring survived, the animals would have had nothing to eat for months after they disembarked.
Rainforests, where life survives in a fragile system of interdependence, would never have resurfaced. Many species of plants in such environments can only germinate when sheltered from most of the sun (such as by a huge leaf canopy). Bacteria that rely on living hosts that weren’t brought on the ark would have died off irrevocably. Organisms that recycle decaying organic matter would have starved to death.
In short, if the Flood story had actually happened, there would be no life on the Earth at all, even if there was an ark with all the animals on it.
It’s funny, the car people drive, the oil they use etc. found by us geologists who use fossils throughout sequences of sedimentary strata to date and identify the depositional environment. I’m sure if we where wrong about the evolution thing then we would have figured it out in one of the 40,000 oil fields currently producing.
Also, only in one time in the geological history has the earth been covered in water, and that was of the frozen form during the Cryogenian 790-630 million years ago in a period known as “snowball earth” whether this really covered every inch is still debated by many geologists.
Biblical texts also state the size of the ark, which works out translated into modern units 135m long, 22.5 wide and 13.5 high (http://www.creationtips.com/arksize.html), it also states 3 decks, I see no way in which you could even fit 1% of the animals on, let alone stop the spider from eating the fly. Also did Noah travel to Australia to pick up the dingo?
Now another geological problem, one of vast open sea. shallow marine deposits offshore Gondwanaland (under water dunes) have showed with two thirds of the circumference earth for waves to travel without interference, you get waves from the wind close to 100 meters high very regularly. With no land at all this would go up dramatically, you would have waves far higher then the ark was long, which would have destroyed it the moment water level began to fall again and the waves began to break.
I am also a geologist, and I would like to say, I agree with one of the points, the grand canyon was created by a flood or really floods, yet a different type, and a different time, there are two disputed theories, one is during a ice ages a ice dams held the water back of an immense lake, the other is a lava dams, there is geological evidence for both of these, and the size of the lake would have been hundreds of times bigger then any lakes today. Yet this again happened 750-100 million years ago, even wikipedia states parts of this quite clearly.
You are correct of course Alex, the more thought you put into an Ark and a flood, the more ridiculous it becomes. The crackpots though would have you believe Australasia was connected to a bigger land mass at that time, therefore easy to collect their native animals. Mind you they believe the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, so it must have separated from this “bigger” land mass at a fair old rate.
When you realise Africa and South America were also part of this land mass, and they are still drifting apart at the same rate your finger nails grow, you get some idea of how old this planet really is.
Q – Why do adults have an imaginary friend named “god”?
A- Because they haven’t grown up yet!
But they don’t always agree; in fact, your claim is somewhat disingenious. Surely you know these results sometimes differ wildly?
Great site! Great article. But you seem to have missed one very simple bit of math. 40 days = 57,600 minutes. Mt Everest = 360,000 inches. It had to rain between five and six inches of rain a minute to cover the earth! No boat ever built would not sink. Animals and people would drown standing up, and they would smother inside a close-packed vessel containing all 20 million species — including all the birds and insects — that would drown, all the freshwater fish that would die in salt. And imagine Noah collecting all of those animals from all over the earth, and returning every species to its own little eco-niche island!
It’s ab-so-lute-ly ridiculous and absurd, and yet it is one of the most aggressively defended pieces of tripe in the Bible by BICCs — Biblically Inerrant Conservative Christians.
Your entire website, like the skeptics annotated bible site, is a gem. But you’ll never convince a BICC. God knows, I’ve tried…;-)
rgb
I am not an expert on the Bible. However, I question the statement of the great flood. I do agree that there was a great flood during Noah’s time. There must have been tremendous flooding to the region. This is where my answer is based, during Noah’s age, the general god given knowledge to them was the world was flat. They had a finite view of the earth. So, indeed, the world flooded to them. Honestly, the flood is just symbolic in my opinion…
YEC’s can’t say all the prehistoric creatures died in the flood. The Bible says God commanded Noah to take two (or seven) of every living land animal, and every animal got off the ark. Where is there any sign of Noah having failed. (We all know how forgiving God is, and never less so when promising to be.) The flood can only explain aquatic animal extinctions. Don’t read into it what’s not there!
Robert G Brown.
Lovely point, I’m going to make a special note of it. Hope you don’t mind if I spread it about a bit (with suitable acknowlegment, of course).
A poster said
“”The fact that there are traditions of the great Flood found in hundreds of tribes in all parts of the world (all similar in one way or another to that in the Genesis record) is firm evidence that those tribes all originated from the one family preserved through the cataclysm. “”"
Or a more rational answer would suffice, such as humans populate near water basis and deltas. These areas flood, these people write about them. Many flood myths do not equal ONE specific myth
Another poster asked
“Do you have any information about how the genealogies are traced?”
Yes the bible gives you the time frame from the flood to the time of Jesus.
First you are given the generations from Noah to Abram. The NT author of Mat then states there a 42 generations from Abram and Jesus. 14 generations from Abram to David, 14 Generations to the Captivity and 14 generations to Jesus.
Another poster made the comment about the ark story refuting itself
I agree and here is another example
Ark refutes itself by the statement of one small window.
Methane was a serious issue, and the only lights were torches
AS well this period was the end of the Neolithic and beginning of Early bronze, no ability to build such a barge.
Come to think of it, we cannot build such a barge and expect it to be seaworthy, let alone survive a sea like the Flood today using the specs from the bible. Even if we had the magical Gopher-wood.
very nice site,
Ted
Check the flood story out… There were more than 2 of each animal……
You know, its genuinely not every day that I take the time to reply on anyone’s weblog. Actually, I do not actually follow that many weblogs simply because I genuinely just don’t have the time. But I thought you should realize that this post was exceptional.
What about the dove bit? The Dove flew off for 7 days and returned empty handed. 7 days later he sends out the dove and it returns with, of all things, an olive branch. Did an olive tree survive the flood? Impossible. It is also equally impossible for a seed to have survived the flood, then germinated and grown leaved branches in 7 days.
Another thing I don’t know if anyone post this but Noah had to carry Extra Animals in order to feed the Lions,Tigers, Panthers and any other meat eating animals. in other words he had to carry addtional animals and food for those animals too.
The story of the flood is like the story of Daniel Boone.. Daniel killed a bear that was only 4 ft tall, 100 years later that bear was 10 ft tall.
@ CAM
That is the biggest load of tosh I’ve read in a long time!
1. Floods do happen – but there is no evidence for a global flood.
2. There is no ‘evidence’ for creation. If you believe there is evidence please point us in its direction. Please note – bashing evolution is not proof of creation.
3. Pasting in crap from ICR.org, without linking, is dumb (plagerism) . Can I ask you how you think mountains are formed!? Here is a link that might help you http://www.platetectonics.com/book/page_11.asp
Bah!
I am admittedly not the most intelligent person in the world (though I’m pretty well-read, I can’t remember hardly anything I read. unexplained memory problems. it gets to be quite annoying after awhile.) I don’t know much in the area of geology, archaeology, or various other sciences, but all I can do is take a more common-sense approach to the whole bit. It just seems obvious to me that Christianity is a collection of stories written by people who had a very limited knowledge of how the world and nature works. It is also shining proof of the limitations of moral reasoning of the time (“slavery is okay”, sexism, anti-ecological attitudes, murders of innocents over nonesense, etcetera, etcetera), and proof that this is not a doctrine constructed or inspired by an all-knowing, all-encompassing, loving, just God. For crying out loud, the xstian god is given a gender, and the male one. Big surprise. God created light before the sun, the moon creates light, people living to be 900 years old-seriously? Why is it that people who are obviously more intelligent than I, literlly geniuses–beleive this drivel? Is my feeble mind mising something?
On a side note, I think the one thing that made me stop pretending to believe is the concept of prayer. Made sense with polytheism, for I’m assuming that these gods each had a limited scope of the world and were closer to humanity with their limitations of character and such. No matter how theists cut it, an omnipotent god should render prayer useless. Period. Great site, by the way.
Excellent points Dasha. I think you’ve got an excellent head on your shoulders. You are a critical thinker.
I think the reason why some very intellectual people can believe such silly things as Bible stories is that people are able to compartmentalize their critical thinking when it comes to their pyschological needs. In other words people rationalize or explain away obvious things that would otherwise bum them out. We all do it. It’s a psychological defense mechanism. Believers just look the other way when it comes to their warm fuzzy feelings they get from believing that an invisible father figure is watching over their lives which makes them feel safer, more important and as if they have some kind of control over the universe.
Also some people appear to prefer a universe with some kind of invisible mysterious power permeating it as it makes it more interesting for them (although I myself find the universe a fascinating place even without supernatural things floating around in it).
I agree completely about prayer also. I was going to give a huge comment on the subject but I think I’ll write about it in an upcoming article instead.
Thanks for your well thought out comment!
As a young creationist many, many years ago I had a problem with several aspects of the Noah story, and it was one of the several readings in the bible which caused the initial erosion of my faith.
1) Noah was over 600 years old when he built the ark. His sons were all over 100. Eight men and women, all of advanced age built the ark and collected the animals? Really?
2) I learned that there are a lot of insects in the world. I mean A LOT! There are 900,000 insect species known, and the estimates of all known and unknown range from 2,000,000 to 30,000,000. Most of these are beetles, comprising over 400,000 species. Now think, two of each…
3) One part of Genesis says two of each, and another says seven of each. Seven of each just makes the numbers even worse than two of each.
4)Eight people really took care of all of these animals for that long? And how long was that? Either seven or ten months, depending on what you want to believe.
These questions, as well as the usual skeptical questions regarding the ark, are what caused me to start to doubt the literalness of the bible. Once I was honest with myself that these stories were just that, stories, it was a gradual move into doubting all of the bible and christianity.
Lets not forget that Bible itself isnt sure if the flood lasted 40d or 150d in Gen 6 and Gen 7. In some parts it says Noah sends out a Raven and other parts its a Dove. Either way collecting all the animals on earth for the Ark is an impossible task, that a single family could never achieve. After the flood all land woul dhave been destroyed with salt poisoning. With that in mind , everything would be dead excecpt for the fish…
Comeon Christians so why isnt the earth a salt desert ?
Dasha, i agree with Capella that you very intelligent.In fact more intelligent that all the priests,bishops and popes that believe the Noah and the Ark story.
My question is why was there a flood in the first place? OH! That’s right god slaughtered all who would not kiss it’s ass…How can you not love this entity………