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Noachian Flood discussion - Bible skeptics vs Lion IRC and friends :)

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Mr Laurier

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NEXT Genesis 6:15
"...the length of the ark three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits."

Any rational, scientifically demonstrable objections to this?
Any irrefutable coercive logic against the dimensions given?
Any manuscript copying errors? Three million cubits long x half a cubits wide x eighteen miles high - that might give me pause for thought. But it doesn't say that. It gives boat dimensions which scale out reasonably.

160624_ntl_noahs_ark_1253_16x9_992.jpg
So you are placing the ark firmly in the industrial era. No further back than the mid 18th century. So no such seagoing vessel of that size was possible without the industrial advances of that era. Now we have a problem. A smooth transition from Louis xiv, to Louis xv, and then Louis xvi, followed by revolution, and Napoleon.
Then the restoration. And the 2nd republic. And the 2rd empire. And Bismark.
 
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Mr Laurier

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The number of theists who have ever lived is in the Hundreds of Billions.
And of those, the vast majority had never heard of the gods of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic complex.
They had their own gods.
 
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Mr Laurier

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I dont say bible skeptics "have to accept" the existence of a supernatural entity.
I start out with the assumption that they don't/won't.

If your principal objection to the Noachian Flood is that..."there's no God, (premiss) therefore no Flood (conclusion)" just say so.

I would agree with you that IF God didn't do the supernatural heavy lifting, then the Noachian Flood is a non-starter. But that's precisely why I say Flood debates end in tears for bible skeptics.

You literally can win your argument because it depends on you showing either that God doesn't exist. Or that God isn't able.

Do you assert either of those propositions?
Hey, Thats where I saw you first.
Alas, no tears for bible skeptics.
 
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trophy33

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If it’s not literal (not accurate history) or has discrepancies then it’s not actual, and then of course, it’s not true in any form, message or otherwise.
Which is, of course, a false dichotomy.
 
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Speedwell

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So you are placing the ark firmly in the industrial era. No further back than the mid 18th century. So no such seagoing vessel of that size was possible without the industrial advances of that era. Now we have a problem. A smooth transition from Louis xiv, to Louis xv, and then Louis xvi, followed by revolution, and Napoleon.
Then the restoration. And the 2nd republic. And the 2rd empire. And Bismark.
Even that is dubious. The largest wooden vessel ever built was the schooner Wyoming at 450 ft long, (60 ft shorter than the presumed length of the Ark) launched in 1909 with modern iron fastenings and internal bracing. Despite that, it flexed and buckled severely, required constant pumping and finally broke up and sank.
 
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Mr Laurier

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Even that is dubious. The largest wooden vessel ever built was the schooner Wyoming at 450 ft long, (60 ft shorter than the presumed length of the Ark) launched in 1909 with modern iron fastenings and internal bracing. Despite that, it flexed and buckled severely, required constant pumping and finally broke up and sank.
Indeed.
Wooden vessels have limitations
 
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Speedwell

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I dont say bible skeptics "have to accept" the existence of a supernatural entity.
I start out with the assumption that they don't/won't.
Which is a false assumption. If you define "Bible skeptic" as someone who doesn't accept the literal inerrancy of Genesis, then a substantial number of "Bible skeptics" are in fact Christians.
 
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tas8831

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I read the following on another forum a while back and archived it. Apologies, I did not record the name of the author or the URL, but suffice it to say this is not my own work. I have, however, verified some of the numbers:



A creationist wrote the following:
If mammoths were similar to elephants in their eating habits, they were very remarkable beasts. Consider the following facts about modern elephants:

* Spend 16 to 18 hours a day either feeding or moving toward a source of food or water.
* Consume between 130 to 660 pounds of food each day
* Drink between 16 to 40 gallons of water per day.
* Produce between 310 to 400 pounds of dung per day.

I replied:

Since most mammoths were larger than modern elephants, these numbers must have been higher for mammoths!
And yet they were at least 2 of them on the ark.

There are at least 6 recognized species of mammoth - so 12 mammoths.

3 species of Asian elephants - 6 of them.

1 species of African elephant. 2 of them.

There are three genera of mastodon, for the YEC's sake we will say that there were only 1 species of each - so 6 of them.

So, at least 26 elephant-sized or larger mammoth-like creatures on your ark.

Lets take averages from your source -

395 pounds of food for each - 10,270 pounds of food a day. They were on the ark for what - about 370* days? So 3.8 million pounds of food.

28 gallons of water - 269,000 gallons of water. Sure, there are claims that they could have used the rain water, but it still needed to be stored at some point. So lets be generous and say 130,000 gallons of water.

355 pounds of dung each, that is 3.4 million pounds of dung.

A typical bail of hay weighs between 75 and 100 pounds - so at least 38,000 bails of hay. A typical hay bail is 2'x2'x4', so they would take up about 608,000 cubic feet of space. A typical tractor trailer can haul about 4,050 cubic feet of material. So, just for food, just for the identified elephant-like mammals on the ark, 600 year old Noah would have needed the equivalent of 150 tractor trailers worth of food.

Then there is the water. A gallon of water takes up about 0.14 cubic feet of space. 18,200 cubit feet for water - another 4.5 trailers worth.

So... JUST for food and water for the low-end estimates of the total number of mammoth/elephant-like mammals that had to have been on the ark, we need 626,200 cubic feet of space.

YECs claim that the ark's internal volume would have been about 1.5 million cubic feet (this ignores floor decking, internal supports, etc.).


So nearly 41% of the entire internal volume of the ark was used up just for food just for the mammoths and their kine!!!

We still have hippos, horses, camels, bison, titanotheres, dinosaurs, etc...

And I did not even mention the dung problem!


This was in response to the claim at that site that Kind=Species. Not that it matters - if we include extant and extinct genera, the problem is actually just as bad if not worse for the literalists, as there are a dozen or more distinct genera of Proboscids.
The only ways the creationist can waffle and wiggle their way out of this jam is to 1. allow for 'Kind' to equal multiple taxonomic ranks as needed; 2. hiding behind God magic.
Neither one helps their cause, if their cause is that there is actual evidence for creation and that the creation tall tales are plausible.
CONCLUSION: The Noah's ark story posits an impossibility and is thus false.

Thanks Aman77 and Heissonear for demonstrating the house of cards in a windstorm that creationism is!
I am predicting no relevant or on-topic responses, if any responses at all, from creationists.
*creation.com claims it was 364 days...
 
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Hans Blaster

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How can you claim that?
Have you even read Genesis?

"...And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you"
"...And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations."

I am personally and directly being referred to by these (bolded) texts.
Do yourself a favor and do some reading about canonical exegesis.

The book weren't written for me or my ancestors. It was written for Israelites/Hebrews/Jews. I am none those and neither were my ancestors. At the time the text was finalized into the form we have to day (approx 600 BCE) my ancestors were the tribes of northern Europe, mostly in areas outside what was yet to become the Roman Empire.

I am not of the seed of the people of the Book.
 
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tas8831

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You have not shown that the flood story in the Bible is an accurate account of a historical event.
It seems that the claim that the bible is an "historical document" is intended to mean that what it contains is historical fact. A rather naïve and shallow position to hold, much less to present as evidence of some sort. There are many documents that one can consider historical that are themselves works of fiction. And I will not even mention the conundrum this "argument" produces for itself when one has to consider such historical documents as the Bhagavad Gita or a Viking saga.
 
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tas8831

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I want you to believe that God destroyed a world full of corrupted flesh, whose imaginations were only evil continually.
Like we saw at CPAC?
It must have been a horrible sight too.
Like CPAC...
Giants everywhere, people laden with STDs, and genetically-altered bodies.
Yeah, really - STDs that Yahweh created...
I'd say someone who went back in time then, would think they were on the wrong planet.
Right - and Yahweh just watched while all this happened....

I now remember why I put you on ignore...
 
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inquiring mind

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Even that is dubious. The largest wooden vessel ever built was the schooner Wyoming at 450 ft long, (60 ft shorter than the presumed length of the Ark) launched in 1909 with modern iron fastenings and internal bracing. Despite that, it flexed and buckled severely, required constant pumping and finally broke up and sank.
There's a solid one in Kentucky.
 
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Hans Blaster

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When we look at things like the k-t boundary, it becomes blatant that mass killing occurred. But when we look at Holocene strata in which the flood is said to have occurred, fossils demonstrate that life lived just fine in the times of Noah.

Even if we disregard the absolute timing issues, it is clear that while the K-T boundary exhibits lots and lots and lots of killing, it is *not* the flood of Noah. In Noah's flood there are many people before the flood and only a few survivors.

There are no people (or apes, or primates) in the layers just below K-T, nor even in the ones immediately above it. K-T is clearly much earlier than Noah, if there even was such a flood.
 
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tas8831

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You claim this biblical account isn't true. Why? Which verse? Where's your counter-evidence?
Is it your position that if it is in Genesis, then it is true?

What is your evidence? And please say the bible....
 
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Astrophile

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Please note that (in this thread) I'm only offering a defense of what the bible actually says about Noah and The Flood. It's not necessary for me refute claims based on what the bible doesn't say - arguments from silence. (Eg. The bible doesn't assert that all mountain tops were all simultaneously completely covered with water. Neither does it assert that the height of Mt Everest and the depth of the Marianas Trench were the same back then as they are today.)

If you mean what you say, it is hardly necessary for me to contribute to the thread since I can say a great many things about the Flood that are not in the Bible, and therefore you do not have to refute my claim that these statements are not true.

For example, the Bible does not say that Switzerland and Austria, Nepal and Tibet, Alaska, California, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru and Chile, or even Bangladesh, the Netherlands and the Gulf States of the USA, were covered by Noah's Flood, therefore you do not have to refute my claim that these countries were not flooded.

The Bible does not say that the freshwater fish of the Great Lakes, Lake Victoria, Lake Baikal and the Sea of Galilee were killed by the influx of salt water from the oceans during the Flood, therefore you do not have to refute my claims that there was no influx of salt water and that these freshwater fish were not killed.

The Bible does not say that the sedimentary rocks, with their fossils, were deposited during the Flood, therefore you do not have to refute my claim that these rocks and fossils were not deposited during the Flood.

The Bible does not say that kangaroos, emus, kiwis, moas, dodos, penguins, tuataras and capybaras, or even elephants, rhinoceroses and giraffes, were on the Ark, therefore you do not have to refute my claim that these animals were not on the Ark.

The Bible does not say that tsunami contributed to the Flood, therefore you do not have to refute my claim that tsunami did not contribute to the Flood.

If we confine ourselves to what the Bible actually says, it seems to me that it is describing a devastating local flood, perhaps due to a combination of heavy rain and a rise in the water table due to snowmelt in the mountains of Iran and Turkey, in which a man saved his family and his domestic animals by putting them onto a boat and riding out the flood in that way. Nothing that the Bible actually says contradicts this hypothesis.
 
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tas8831

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Now ^THIS^ is a rational skeptic.
That's why I said to @Kylie ...you don't really wanna debate the Flood with me. You literally cannot win that argument.
I suppose it IS hard to win an argument against a disingenuous opponent that will hide behind just-so stories and magic from ancient texts.

End in tears? No. End with all sensible people laughing at the boastful person that had to hide behind God claims to weasel out of admitting his failure.
 
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AV1611VET

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I am predicting no relevant or on-topic responses, if any responses at all, from creationists.
I already failed your predictions here ... several times ... by explaining more than once how the problem with food, water, and room to house all those animals was nicely handled by God.

But since you have me on IGNORE, I'm not going to explain it again.

This is what happens when you make a goofy prediction, while at the same time have someone on IGNORE that can, and has, answered your enigmas.

You make yourself look bad.
 
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