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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on May 13, 2018 20:39:49 GMT -5
I'm trying to keep these topics more specific just because we tend to get derailed and go on for more pages than people are willing to read, lol. So if you wanna bring up another topic, feel free to make another topic.
So, Noah's flood. Could it have actually happened as written?
I'd like to start the conversation by pointing out that there's two major geological approaches to the earth.
There's Uniformitarianism (forgive my potentially bad spelling) which argues that everything is basically the same and has been since the dawn of time. The changes of the earth have been gradual, as evidenced by the rock layers and whatnot. This group is the one that'd argue that the grand canyon was carved over millions of years by river running through it. It is also what is generally taught in schools.
The other is called "disaster theory" or something, I can't remember. But that camp points out that at least some of the changes that have happened are due to major disasters like floods and meteors and whatnot.
The reason why I bring it up is because more and more scientists are starting to marry the ideas simply because we know that disasters make changes. I've seen in a few non-Christian sources talk of major floods shaping parts of the earth now. Now to me, it seems like an easy logical step to go from "Oh well many major geological formations are the cause of flooding" to "Hey, what if all these happened at the same time?" Oh, the Bible already says that.
But not everyone feels that way, lol. An interesting note though is that the guy who formulated uniformitarianism in the first place said in a letter that one of his main goals was to "get geology away from Moses." That is to say he actively wanted to make a theory that went against the Bible.
Anyway, the Flood is a big pill to swallow for a lot of folks, so what are you thoughts on it?
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2018 20:45:59 GMT -5
Well, the flood has been proven, if I read correctly the Arc that Noah was on was found high up in the mountains I believe in Switzerland or somewhere. now if the world did not flood how would it have gotten where it is? The position and everything it wasn't just built there and it wasn't just flooded in that area.
Also Mongo I will ask you to make a post specifically on Armageddon according to the bible if you would please.
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on May 13, 2018 20:52:07 GMT -5
Well, the flood has been proven, if I read correctly the Arc that Noah was on was found high up in the mountains I believe in Switzerland or somewhere. now if the world did not flood how would it have gotten where it is? The position and everything it wasn't just built there and it wasn't just flooded in that area. Also Mongo I will ask you to make a post specifically on Armageddon according to the bible if you would please. 1. Whoa stop there Duke, lol. The ark has not been found. You're thinking of the discovery in Jordan (I think) of rock outcroppings that look like a massive boat from a certain angle. That has been disproven; it's just rocks in an oddly convenient position. 2.I absolutely can!
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2018 20:54:23 GMT -5
Are you sure I will double check but could swear it was the arc but I am probably mistaken then? And Thanks
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on May 13, 2018 21:00:59 GMT -5
Are you sure I will double check but could swear it was the arc but I am probably mistaken then? And Thanks Some sites still claim that it is; but it's an outdated argument that we shouldn't use, lol.
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2018 21:03:54 GMT -5
Thanks, Mongo, I must of read it wrong or something because I thought it said it was the real Ark.
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Kira Izumi
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Post by Kira Izumi on May 14, 2018 14:58:39 GMT -5
Personally i don't believe that literally the entire planet flooded at the same exact time. that's damn near impossible and doesn't make any logical sense to me. What i do believe actually happened was that the entire world to those people (remember this was millennia ago before people knew anything of lands not that further then their own.) their world, which is likely a gulf coast or small area near a river or the ocean was flooded and they in turn interpreted it as the entire world. Not to mention how many resources it would take to build the mythical arc. The sheer amount of wood would probebly take all the wood in at least one continent if not most of the world its self to hold two of every animal on planet earth. Not to mention the sheer amount of animals not known yet that it would also have to take (based on the story saying two of EVERY animal). It's just not something i can fathom as being literal fact, but just contextual fact.
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on May 14, 2018 23:32:51 GMT -5
So, I get the idea that most folk assume Christians blindly accept the really insane part of the Bible. Some do. I don't; nor do many other Christians who actually do research into the plausibility of things like a giant flood and a boat full of animals.
Alright, let's look at the flood itself first. The most common denile is what you said Kira, that the flood was probably local but since that was considered "the world" at the time we just say it was the whole world. Although I can see where you'd get that, parts of that don't really work. Like a local flood probably wouldn't need a boat the size of a stadium, nor would there be a need to save animals since there'd be animals elsewhere. There's a few things that back up the idea of a global flood. One of them is that pretty much every culture around the globe has a flood story. From the Americas to Europe to Asia and elsewhere everyone's got a flood in their history and the stories are relatively similar. From a Christian perspective this would suggested a worldwide flood being remembered by different people groups after being split up at the tower of Babel. From an atheistic perspective, this would mean a lot of people have had floods, lol. But there are similarities between the narratives, the flood of Gilgamesh is almost exactly the same with just a few key logical differences. Another key to note is in Genesis 7:11,
This suggests that it wasn't just rain but also some sort of water coming from under the ground. This was not some sort of gentle rain. This would explain how the flood could be so massive. But wait, where's all that water now? Well, interestingly enough, Jacques Cousteau theorized (based on his study of the ocean) that if the deepest parts of the oceans were raised up, the water would flood the earth up to quite a few mountain tops. Similarly, if all the mountains were lowered and everything was essentially the same level we'd find that earth would be under a whole heck of a ton of water. The topography that we have today might not be the same as it was many years ago and it would stand to reason that a massive, long-lasting flood (it only rained 40 days and 40 nights but it took longer for the flood to dissipate [Genesis 7:24-5]) would make massive changes to what the earth looked like.
So from a creationist viewpoint, the various rock layers we find were put down as the flood was receding. This actually works better than the uniformitarian view because it explains fossils/trees that extend through multiple layers of rock. Since we're talking about fossils, people don't use a lot of logic when approaching them. If any of you live out in the country, what happens when an animal dies and isn't buried quickly? It decomposes and gets torn about by scavengers. And yet there's TONS of fossils everywhere. It's unlikely that a pile of bones is gonna sit out in the open for a million years waiting to get covered over naturally. That's not how that works at all; and yet we have dinosaur fossils that extend up through multiple rock layers. How does science explain that with millions of years? What's more likely is that fossils are the remains of animals killed during the flood which quickly had millions of pounds of silt laid on their corpses. A lot of scientists are waking up to this these days and instead are promoting disaster theory, which says that a disaster or disasters caused these things. Again, the Bible did it first and yet is regarded as a fairy tale.
Now lets talk the ark. The ark was big, bros. According to the Bible it was around 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. That's 1.5 professional football fields long. So we're talking something the size of a stadium. Surely it did take a lot of resources, Kira, lol. It also probably took a long time to build. Genesis 7:6 tells us "Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth." So he had time to build it, is what I'm saying.
Now the animals, this is an important thing that almost all of us overlook and there's three things we often forget.
1. Noah didn't have to bring every variety of animal. The Bible says,
The key word there is every "kind." It's likely that Noah didn't need every variety. Like for example, we have a ton of dog breeds, but really Noah only needed two dogs- and more realistically, probably two wolf ancestors (creationists believe in natural selection since it's actually observable, but it's the loss of genetic information vs evolution's theoretical addition of genetic information). This brings the actual numbers way down from what you're probably thinking. I mean, even like zebras, donkeys, and horses were probably just coming from two horse ancestors.
2. This includes dinosaurs too. People forget that in a creationist view, dinosaurs were totally there as well. But again the pattern would be the same; probably just two sauropods, two t-rex/allosaurus types, two triceratops types etc.
3. It'd be stupid to bring adults. In pictures we always see the boat crammed with adult giraffes and stuff poking their heads out. That'd be dumb for two reasons: first it's not efficient since adults are bigger and secondly younger animals will be likely to mate more after getting off the ark. You have to remember the goal was to repopulate the earth afterward, and bring two old elephants both takes up a ton of space and only gets a few rounds of children. More likely God sent young animals to Noah to be saved. This also makes sense of how dinosaurs would fit on the ark because even young dinosaurs only average out to the size of a sheep- which is certainly more manageable, lol.
Now, does the account of Noah sound like a fairy tale? Absolutely it does. But my point is that it's equally as plausible as anything scientists are coming up with these days- and does a better job of explaining things like tons of fossils, seabed fossils on mountain tops, polystrate fossils, modern-day animals along side dinosaur fossils, and dinosaur bones that aren't entirely fossilized (and actually contain in-tact blood cells).
We're very quick to dismiss the Bible because its an old book from theoretically simpler people. But the Bible has managed to keep up with science and sometimes even call it before science gets there. The point is, keep your mind open to ideas other than what you're taught in school. I've heard non-Christians defend their beliefs by saying that "science keeps updating" but that means they keep changing their answer to suit new evidence. It's not a very stable ground in which to pitch your tent. The Bible hasn't changed and yet still manages to keep up with current evidences. Genesis was written probably what, almost 4000 years ago? That's darn impressive, lol.
The bigger issue is that most people don't want the Bible to be true; so they dismiss it and try to figure out some other (any other) answer (like the ever-changing geologic column) or just sticking with things they know are wrong (so many textbooks still use illustrations by Ernst Haeckel which have long been proven to be fraudulent and inaccurate- or the peppered moths, also a fraud that's already been known for a long time). Because those seem like better ideas than admitting that either A. We don't know or B. There is a God.
Just some food for thought.
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Kira Izumi
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Post by Kira Izumi on May 15, 2018 14:58:39 GMT -5
idk about dinosaurs living with humans... though. That's something that doesn't add up with how they died... well how they most likely died off anyways.
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Post by Mongo the Destroyer on May 15, 2018 18:19:36 GMT -5
In the flood model the death of the dinos was likely climate change. The flood could easily brought on a mini ice age.
And I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss dinos and humans, many cultures have dragon stories. Evolution's best guess is some sort of millions of years old memory imprint on early mammals which about as scientific as magic.
Meanwhile the Bible features dinosaurs and numerous cultures intrest in dragons suggest thst even after the flood dinos lived in pockets around the world until they went extinct
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