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Do You believe Noah?

Do you believe Noah?

  • Im Christian. I believe his age and the Ark

    Votes: 8 11.4%

  • Im Christian. I dont believe the Ark. I believe his age

    Votes: 1 1.4%

  • Im Christian. I dont believe his age but I believe the Ark.

    Votes: 2 2.9%

  • Im Christian. I dont believe EITHER his age nor the Ark.

    Votes: 8 11.4%

  • Not Christian but I believe both the age and the Ark

    Votes: 1 1.4%

  • Not Christian and its total and utter rubbish!

    Votes: 42 60.0%

  • Other / I dont Know

    Votes: 8 11.4%
  • Total voters
    70
isn't there something like 30,000 different species of bettles alone.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
As far as what you've lost...you've spent your life subjugating your choices and will to a human interpretation of an imaginary being.
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I don't consider choosing not to be a scummy douchebag much of a loss.

You've forced yourself through daily mental contortions in order to maintain your faith in the unbelievable (i.e., Noah was 900 years old).
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it requires no mental contortions.

You've lost 1 out of every 7 days.
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how? by spending a few hours in the company of like minded individuals who's company I enjoy? oooh big F-ing loss there

You've contributed 10% of your income to a myth that accomplishes nothing.
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a significant portion of that goes to help those less fortunate than I and at least this way (instead of theft by the govt) I get to have some say in who my $$$ goes to help.

That's a significant loss, in my book.
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glad I'm not on the same page then. :shrug:
 
Ikari said:
I think at some point there was a major flood through human controlled areas which gave rise to the flood stories. Since these stories are so pervasive throughout different cultures, it seems reasonable that at some time there was a major flood event. However, as it relates literally to Noah, being 900 years old or building the ark and the animals arriving and the entire world being reset by the contents of the boat; that's all very very clearly made up. Maybe not in a bad way, probably meant to be allegorical. But still, it's not true.
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There wasn't just one flood, there were many, these stories sprung up in areas that were prone to both seasonal and catastrophic flooding and they spread from there. No flood story came from areas where flooding was entirely unknown. We do know of a couple of major floods that happened throughout human history, but nothing approaching the story in the Bible. It just didn't happen. Even if we want to assume that it was based on an ancient memory of a real event, the details of the Noachian flood are complete fantasy. Pointing to a real flood doesn't make it any less so.
 
Whovian said:
That's my whole point... it's not really a matter of 'prove God did this'... or 'prove God did NOT do this'... there is no 'proof' one way or the other. You can say 'statistics show' or 'random chance says' all you want, but it's not 'proof' in either direction.
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Dude. The idea that an all-powerful deity intervened in your situation but refused to help 61,000 people in similar situations is simply illogical. Thus, your position fails, logically. That IS scientific thinking.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
Dude. The idea that an all-powerful deity intervened in your situation but refused to help 61,000 people in similar situations is simply illogical. Thus, your position fails, logically. That IS scientific thinking.
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maybe he intervened because he knew that if he did, I would wind up here communicating with you and might therefore be able to spare you from spending eternity in an imaginary hell?
 
OscarB63 said:
I don't consider choosing not to be a scummy douchebag much of a loss.
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Another false dichotomy. You seem to specialize in these. In your book, one must either choose your specific belief paradigm, or be a scummy douchebag.

Sorry. A false dichotomy = logic fail. There are plenty of non-believers who aren't scummy douchebags. Or, were you directing that at me personally? :)

it requires no mental contortions.
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So, all your talk of free radicals....lulz. Whatever keeps you balanced, sunshine.

how? by spending a few hours in the company of like minded individuals who's company I enjoy? oooh big F-ing loss there
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You couldn't spend your time in that way without your beliefs?

a significant portion of that goes to help those less fortunate than I and at least this way (instead of theft by the govt) I get to have some say in who my $$$ goes to help.
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In most congregations, the percentage of contributions that goes to serve the least fortunate (unless you consider ministerial staff and their buildings to be "the less fortunate") are quite small.
 
OscarB63 said:
maybe he intervened because he knew that if he did, I would wind up here communicating with you and might therefore be able to spare you from spending eternity in an imaginary hell?
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What percentage of those 61k people do you think are currently residing in hell? As stated, your position on this issue fails logically. Your God is an illogical construct of illogical human beings, and requires you to be illogical to suspend your disbelief and maintain your faith.
 
No, and if you do believe it then you're either an idiot or delusional.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
Dude. The idea that an all-powerful deity intervened in your situation but refused to help 61,000 people in similar situations is simply illogical. Thus, your position fails, logically. That IS scientific thinking.
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By 'your situation', I imagine you are using that figuratively, and not specifically about me, as I've made no such claims.

In any case, I don't pretend to be wise enough to decide what God would or would not do. I find it highly amusing that others do indeed deem themselves wise enough to do so, or to determine that there simply is no 'God'... simply because they cannot 'prove' it scientifically.
 
Whovian said:
By 'your situation', I imagine you are using that figuratively, and not specifically about me, as I've made no such claims.
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My bad, I thought I was responding to Oscar. However, the point still stands. It is illogical to make the claim that God intervened to save his life, based on the fact that there were 61,000 episodes in which God did not intervene.
 
Catz Part Deux said:
My bad, I thought I was responding to Oscar. However, the point still stands. It is illogical to make the claim that God intervened to save his life, based on the fact that there were 61,000 episodes in which God did not intervene.
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You're STILL trying to use logic where it doesn't belong. Science and faith are two roads that never intersect... ever. I'm not claiming one is right, or wrong, or better or worse. They are simply different.

Again, I find it somewhat amusing that some people (not including you in this group unless you include yourself) are 100% certain that God does not exist or does not act, without being able to use the science they prize so highly to prove it one way or the other.
 
Patria Antiqua said:
No, and if you do believe it then you're either an idiot or delusional.
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It's OK to be delusional. Without our delusions, many of us would suffer from the pangs of reality. IMO, as long as you keep religion out of politics, those kinds of delusions are a safe diversion. Sort of like believing wrestling is real....:2razz:
 
Whovian said:
You're STILL trying to use logic where it doesn't belong. Science and faith are two roads that never intersect... ever. I'm not claiming one is right, or wrong, or better or worse. They are simply different.
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The big difference is this...Science has its basis in fact/reason, and faith has its basis in imagination.
 
UtahBill said:
It's OK to be delusional. Without our delusions, many of us would suffer from the pangs of reality. IMO, as long as you keep religion out of politics, those kinds of delusions are a safe diversion. Sort of like believing wrestling is real....:2razz:
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I'm reporting this post for taking an unnecessary shot at Redress.
 
spud_meister said:
But if you look at all the different mythos in Europe/West Asia, you find they all mention a flood, from the Greeks to the Hindis and the Mesopotamians, so there may have been a nig flood in the area at one time.
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Years ago, I had an ancient history prof who spent most of an hour on this subject. The oldest flood story is in the Sumerian story The Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates to about 2250 BC. Gilgamesh was king of Sumer, and had Inki as a best friend. Inki died. Gilgamesh got lonely, went outside the city walls, and dug down to Hades to look up his old friend. Inki did not like Hades - too cold and damp - so Gilgamesh decided he wanted to live forever. After much asking around, he heard of an immortal man who lived in a valley in the mountains of western Iran. Gilgamesh set out to find this man, named Utnapishtim (which, in the Sumerian language, means "the man who lives forever").

Utnapishtim had been a Good Man, so when the gods became disgusted with humans and decided to flood the world and start over (ca. 2600 BC), one of the gods warned Utnapishtim and told him to build an ark to save himself and his family. After 40 days and nights floating on the water, the flood went down and Utnapishtim landed on the highest peak of the Zagros range in western Iran (I forget the name of the peak, but it's still there). The first thing the humans did was sacrifice to the gods. In those days the gods actually ate the sacrifices, so by now they were pretty hungry (ancient gods tend to be very shortsighted at times) and they all came trooping down for the feast. One of the gods eventually noticed Utnapishtim and asked "What's HE doing here? They were all supposed to be drowned!" A big discussion among the gods followed, and eventually they reached a compromise: for being a Good Man, Utnapishtim would be granted immortality; but so no one would ever find out what they had done, he had to live his life in the one little valley with the Tree Of Life.

Utnapishtim gave Gilgamesh a sapling from the Tree and sent him away, never to return. Gilgamesh started home. Along the way, he set the sapling down so he could drink from a well. A snake popped out of the well, grabbed the sapling, and disappeared back down the well. And that, children, is the reason men are mortal while snakes live forever - you can find the old skins every spring after the snakes are reborn.

Some four centuries later, the Babylonians adopted the flood story; they named their immortal Ziusudra ("the man who lives forever" in Babylonian) and they kept the same mountain in the Zagros range.

The name Noah doesn't mean anything in Hebrew, so the thread of the flood story had a break in it until the 1920s when someone discovered a race of people called the Hurrians who had moved into the Middle East from the direction of Armenia a couple of centuries ahead of the Hebrews. They adopted the flood story, named their man Noah (again, "the man who lives forever") and changed the mountain to Ararat, the highest peak they knew of.

The Hebrews apparently adopted the Hurrian story wholesale. Or at least that's what my history prof said, and he's the only person I've ever met who could read both Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Mickey Shane said:
Divide Noah's age by 12 and you get 75. Which would have been extremely old for his times. They had a different calendar and figured their ages by the phases of the moon.
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Methuselah, an ancestor of Noah, supposedly lived to the age of 969 years. According to the history prof cited above, the oldest known copy of the story was written in Aramaic (which he could also read) and used the word for "seasons" which is how they tracked their months. In an age when the life expectancy was less than 40, anyone who actually made it to 80 would indeed be noteworthy.
 
UtahBill said:
It's OK to be delusional. Without our delusions, many of us would suffer from the pangs of reality. IMO, as long as you keep religion out of politics, those kinds of delusions are a safe diversion. Sort of like believing wrestling is real....:2razz:
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Agreed, but delusions are often functional. If not for motherly delusions about our beauty, wit and charm, most of us would be drowned at birth.
 
Diogenes said:
Agreed, but delusions are often functional. If not for motherly delusions about our beauty, wit and charm, most of us would be drowned at birth.
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Your mother, maybe...I suspect my mother tried it...:shock:
 
OscarB63 said:
whether you are a "believer" or not, it is just plain ignorant to claim that a physical object such as the ark would have been impossible. given the description in the bible, it would have been very possible to build such a vessel. and if a massive metal monstrosity like an aircraft carrier can float, surely a boat made out of gopher wood could have floated.
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No, it really isnt possible.

The dimensions given to the ark are 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. The cubit probably refers to the Royal Egyptian Cubit, the most standard unit of measurement at the time. This means the ark was 500 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 50 feet high.

Now consider that it had to be assembled using NO metal nails or fasteners. Such technology was not available at the time as nails were not around until the early Roman Empire. One of the largest wooden ships ever built was the Pretoria, a barge used on the Great Lakes. It measured 338 ft long, 44 ft wide, and 23 ft in depth. That's roughly half the size of Noah's ark and the Pretoria was barely seaworthy. Even with iron bracers and clamps, the ship still required a pump to constantly pump out water that leaked into the ship. There is no way Noah could have built a ship to the size of the ark and had be even remotely sea-worthy, it would have sunk like a brick. There is a size limit when dealing with wooden vessels and the ark exceedes that by several orders of magnitude.

Additionally, there was no realistic way for Noah to build the ark. He couldn't have used a drydock configuration, that technology wasn't available. There were no cranes available to lift him the 50 feet off the ground and he apparently didn't have much help holding the timber in place. On top of all that, the man was a wine-maker, not a shipbuilder. You cant just wake up one day and say "I think I'll build a ship!" and have it work first time. Shipwrights are EXTREMELY experienced people who spend decades learning what they do.


As far as the flood itself, the United Nations Environment Programme estimates there are 1.4 billion cubic kilometres (330 million mi3) of water available on Earth. Including underground sources and glaciers.

The highest point on the surface of the Earth is Mount Everest in Nepal. 8,848 meters tall (29,028 feet)

The mean radius of the Earth (Core to sea level) is 6,372,797 meters. With Everest added to that, it comes out to 6,381,645 meters.

The total mass of the hydrosphere of the oceans is about 1.4 × 1021 kilograms, which is about 0.023% of the Earth's total mass.

The volume of the earth in-between the highest and lowest points on earth assuming that the ENTIRE surface is flooded WITH landmasses accounted for is 5x105

Available- 1.4 billion cubic kilometers
Needed (To cover the ENTIRE surface)- 5 quadrillion cubic kilometers
Missing- 4.9999986 quadrillion cubic kilometers.

We would need probably nine or ten orders of magnitude more water than we actually have available. Even if there were a couple billion cubic kilometers hiding under the surface of the Earth, we wouldn't even BEGIN to have enough. To have that much water on Earth would disrupt the gravity of the Earth and SERIOUSLY mess with the tripple point of water which would result in the death of all life as we know it.

As you see, it it mathematically IMPOSSIBLE for the ENTIRE surface of the Earth to be covered with water.


The story, the way it's written, cannot possibly be true.
 
I think the people who wrote the Bible had a better grasp of the meaning behind the Noah story than those people today who treat the Bible as the literal truth. I don't think that part of the Bible was ever intended to be treated as the literal truth. For me the story is about a people and their unique relationship with their god in the context of vague, cultural events (e.g., "the flood").
 
Allegory is instructive to anyone that recognizes that it is allegory.






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digsbe said:
Originally Posted by Patria Antiqua
No, and if you do believe it then you're either an idiot or delusional.
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This is offensive and uncalled for.
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well, he is gay, hates religion because it is against his lifestyle. can't really blame him :shrug:
 
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