The Biblical Flood Caused An Ice Age

[Lion IRC]

Btw, how did people procreate if only Noah, his wife and their sons survived the so called great flood?

Noahs sons had wives. Those sons procreated with their wives. Pretty basic stuff.

Did Noah have sex with his daughter in laws, his granddaughters,

I'm sure the bible would have mentioned it if this had occurred. *rolls eyes*

or did his wife have sex with her sons? So many unanswered questions,

The one thing we can be pretty sure of is that everyone on the Ark was heterosexual.

but that's the thing about mythology. It doesn't have to make sense for people to believe it.

You seem to have it the wrong way around.
It's atheist bible skeptics who can't make sense of it. I don't find anything in the Noahian Flood account hard to make sense of.

 

[southernhybrid]

Btw, how did people procreate if only Noah, his wife and their sons survived the so called great flood?

Noahs sons had wives. Those sons procreated with their wives. Pretty basic stuff.

Did Noah have sex with his daughter in laws, his granddaughters,

I'm sure the bible would have mentioned it if this had occurred. *rolls eyes*

or did his wife have sex with her sons? So many unanswered questions,

The one thing we can be pretty sure of is that everyone on the Ark was heterosexual.

but that's the thing about mythology. It doesn't have to make sense for people to believe it.

You seem to have it the wrong way around.
It's atheist bible skeptics who can't make sense of it. I don't find anything in the Noahian Flood account hard to make sense of.

None of the story makes one bit of sense. There is no way that the entire earth could be covered with water from 40 days of rain. There is no way that every animal could fit into one boat, fed, and cleaned up afterwards. The Bible is a book of mythology, just like all other holy books. Even the nicer religion, the Bahai' Faith is full of idealistic myths, but at least that religioun supports gender equality, world peace and racial equality, unlike a book that was used to justify slavery. Plus, Bahai's don't condemn nonbelievers to. hell, like conservative Christians do. I'm probably done with this silly discussion. Reasoning with a Biblical literalist is like trying to reason with a Trump supporter. Have fun.

 

[bilby]

I don't find anything in the Noahian Flood account hard to make sense of.

Really? Or do you just ignore the parts that even you cannot manage to rationalise?

Like the marsupials. How did marsupials (and monotremes) get on the boat? How did they get back to Australasia and South America after the flood? And how come not one single trace of any marsupial remains can be found within 9,000km of Mount Ararat?

The entire story varies between absurd and impossible claims; A child could see that it can only be make believe. But a skilled rationaliser can find an absurd but (to themselves) acceptable excuse for each objection individually, and might be comfortable as long as he never questions the contradictions between these*; Or considers the sheer number of things that need tortured "explanations"; Or is tasked with persuading someone else that his rationalisations are even vaguely plausible, and not obviously ad-hoc bullshit.

I do however note that you are carefully avoiding the marsupial question, and wonder if even you are struggling to find an acceptable rationalisation for that particular absurd and impossible implication of the tale.

The claim:

I don't find anything in the Noahian Flood account hard to make sense of.

...is to me indistinguishable from "I have turned off my brain and decided to believe literally any old garbage, no matter how crazy, rather than to challenge my belief system".









*For example, using "hibernation" to brush off a set of problems, while ignoring that the text of the story implies the need to feed the animals, which wouldn't be the case for hibernating species; Or that many "kinds" of animal do not hibernate at all; Or that even hibernating animals occupy space.

 

[Lion IRC]

None of the story makes one bit of sense.

Personal incredulity isnt an argument.
I realize youre just expressing a sentiment but it doesnt exactly persuade a person who does think the story 'makes sense'.

There is no way that the entire earth could be covered with water from 40 days of rain.

Not even if God did a miracle?

...leaving aside the fact that the text doesnt say rain alone flooded the earth.

...leaving aside the fact that the text doesn't say the flood water depth was uniform around the entire earth.

...leaving aside the fact that the text doesn't say how high the mountains were.

There is no way that every animal could fit into one boat, fed, and cleaned up afterwards.

The bible doesn't say "every animal".

The Bible is a book of mythology, just like all other holy books.

No it's not.
(See how easily I can just gainsay your assertion. Hitchens Razor?)

Even the nicer religion, the Bahai' Faith is full of idealistic myths, but at least that religion supports gender equality, world peace and racial equality,

The bible does that.

It says husband and wife are ONE. That's gender equality.

The bible supports world peace. (Blessed are the peacemakers...strive for peace with everyone...love your neighbour...)

The bible supports racial equality.
Here's an example from church today.

"God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right."

unlike a book that was used to justify slavery.

Most Americans in Abraham Lincoln's day were Christians. (Christians who didnt own slaves.) Why did Christian America vote to abolish slavery?

Plus, Bahai's don't condemn nonbelievers to. hell,

Christians dont do that either.

I'm probably done with this silly discussion. Reasoning with a Biblical literalist is like trying to reason with a Trump supporter. Have fun

I'm waiting for your reasoned arguments.

So far, you've misquoted the bible, mistaken Noah for someone else, assumed God can't perform miracles, blamed the bible for bad stuff done by people who think the bible approves of bad stuff...AND you've appealed to personal (bible skeptics) incredulity despite the overwhelming numbers of bible believing theists who DONT find it hard to make sense of.

 

[bilby]

The bible does that.

It says husband and wife are ONE. That's gender equality.

It ALSO says:

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

That's NOT gender equality.

Congratulations, you have helped to demonstrate one of the many contradictions in the Bible.

 

[Politesse]

Another thing about this fairy tale that I don't understand is the idea that Noah was the only righteous man in the world, so only he was permitted to survive a flood that wiped out the entire world and all other humans.

How many people do you think there were?
Hundreds? Thousands?

It's not inconceivable that wickedness was so pervasive that Noah might have been the most righteous on earth.

Afterwards, his daughters got him drunk and had sex with him, so they could carry on the family genes , aka seeds, but Noah claimed he didn't know his daughters had sex with him.

The reason Noah didnt think he had sex with his daughters is because he didnt have any daughters.

Sure right. He had no idea that his daughters were giving him wine and he didn't know they had sex with him.

Youre thinking of Lot.

Haven't we heard something like that in modern times? I didn't know what I was doing because I was drunk, your honor.

A person could be so intoxicated that they didnt know their sex partner was equally intoxicated and couldnt give informed consent.

In the age of gender equality women are entirely free to get plastered and not know who they are having sex with. It's their body their choice to get blind drunk and wake up the next day not knowing what happened.

Its a pretty old-fashioned notion to believe men should protect the honor of wimmin by not letting them have recreational sex whilst inebriated.

Then again, I think he may have been about 500 years old so perhaps he had dementia.

Go back and read the text.

Oh you are right about one thing. I might have been confusing Noah with Lot. Lot had sex with his daughters, but there are verses that mention Noah being drunk and naked, and his sons covering him up. There is so much incest in the Bible, it's hard to keep it all straight. Btw, how did people procreate if only Noah, his wife and their sons survived the so called great flood? Did Noah have sex with his daughter in laws, his granddaughters, or did his wife have sex with her sons? So many unanswered questions, but that's the thing about mythology. It doesn't have to make sense for people to believe it.

Noah's families situations would be considered incestuous by modern American standards, but the peoples of the ancient world did not regard cousin marriages as incest.

 

[southernhybrid]

Actually, it was legal in some states to marry your cousin or at least 2nd cousins until 2014. So, even in more contemporary times sex or marriage to a cousin wasn't considered incestuous in all places.. Who was talking about cousins? I was talking about daughters having sex with their father.

 

[Lion IRC]

Who was talking about cousins? I was talking about daughters having sex with their father.

Insofar as you brought up incest, we were talking about incest.

But it's OK.

Society is finally becoming woke enough that we don't single out minorities. Love is love. Love wins. If two brothers want to call themselves married...

 

[Learner]

I am frankly amazed that some of you have made up such insanely absurd explanations for how the animals were rounded up and cared for in the so called great flood.

Southern, I would have thought 'all' Christians would be that way to you.

I was told as a child that every animal species was included. Does your version of the Bible say only some animals were included?

I was told the same thing as a child. The bible narrative would quite understandably, be told to children in a much simplified 'easy to digest' language!

Fairy tales are made for children and the story of the Biblical flood that wiped out all humans other than one special family is nothing but a fairy tale.

I can go with your statement: 'fairy tales are made for children'..
...and the bible is made for grown-ups so therefore..

I didn't realize that our Christian posters actually took that stuff literally. Wow!

It shouldn't be that much of a shock since Christians believe Jesus was risen from dead, plus the many miracles that is also mentioned in the bible.

Like my young church friend said to me. Don't think too much about it, if you want to maintain your beliefs regarding the Bible.

Whatever floats your boat guys.

That's where it's at. There are Christians who DO want to think and understand much about it. Not for everyone I know.

 

[Learner]

Genesis tells us it rained 40 days. And the tallest mountains were covered. You do the math.

That's okay. The waters eventually went away... somewhere.

The oceans are but a mere film of liquid coating the earth in proportion to the earth's solid mass. It shouldn't be that hard to suggest that water could recede fairly easy into a much greater mass being many times deeper in depth.

(I used an AI just to get a quick visual gist of the proportionate perspective)

Proportion of oceans = (Mass of oceans / Mass of Earth) x 100% = (1.335 x 10^21 kg / 5.972 x 10^24 kg) x 100% = 0.0223%

So, the oceans make up approximately 0.0223% of the Earth’s whole mass.
(estimation for arguments sake)

The volume of water is quite miniscule in proportion to the solid earth mass.

 

[Lion IRC]

Earth may have underground 'ocean' three times that on surface

Scientists say rock layer hundreds of miles down holds vast amount of water, opening up new theories on how planet formed

www.theguardian.com

 

[Lion IRC]

Oh look! There's Mt Everest

 

[ideologyhunter]

Sweet Jesus. We're actually discussing whether the Noah story is historical? Uhhh...Darwin has already happened, right??
Look, I don't care about the ridiculous details of housing thousands of wild animals in a boat (was it the only boat in the world, and all the people God killed were too stupid to put their kids in their own boats so God couldn't kill them?) I care that Noah was a 600-year-old alcoholic, because the real miracle in the story, for me, has always been that he didn't nail his own dick to the deck. At least in the text. Also, where in the hell was there room for his Fibercon, Pluto Water, Gas-X, Cialis, Grecian Formula, Spearmint Binaca, Brylcreem, support hose, suspensory belt, and Tom Collins fixin's?? How did he steer the boat if he could turn his head maybe 5 degrees, after he'd been up for an hour? (Not to mention the fact that 600-year-olds never use their turn signals.) Weren't his kids all in their late 500s, and didn't they need the same stuff from the drug store?
Isn't it sweet that there are kids still being taught this fairy tale in 2024 BCE as if it's history? That's the same as teaching them to disrespect their own brain power and ability to assess all the other nonsense they'll hear in their lives. Seriously --seriously -- when you encounter someone who wants to argue for the historicity of Genesis, there's no common ground for debate. Time to just stop.
I'll join the literalist crowd when they can solve the conundrum of How Did He Not Nail His 600-Year-Old Dick to the Deck. I'm waiting...

 

[ideologyhunter]

Make that CE!!!! It just seems like BCE, sometimes...

 

[Politesse]

I've been considering adopting BH/AH, just to piss off any conservative Christians well-read enough to know that I'm dissing them.

 

[ideologyhunter]

What the H...I mean, what is the H you're talking about?

 

[Politesse]

The Islamic calendar, of course, dates things from the Hijrah of the Prophet, peace be upon him.

 

[ideologyhunter]

My mind's in the gutter. All I could come up with was Hefner. And he did bring change.

 

[Swammerdami]

I'd be happy to argue in SUPPORT of the Bible, but only starting with the premise that much of it is allegory or exaggeration or midrash, etc. Our resident literalist doesn't seem to accept that premise, so I'll be no help to him.

Noah's families situations would be considered incestuous by modern American standards, but the peoples of the ancient world did not regard cousin marriages as incest.

Many "primitive" people practiced some form of exogamy. The Iroquois, for example, required that a mate be selected OUTSIDE one's Clan. The Iroqois are not particularly primitive, but DNA studies on ancient skeletons have demonstrated that exogamy was practiced in the Early Stone Age.

Really? Or do you just ignore the parts that even you cannot manage to rationalise?

Like the marsupials. How did marsupials (and monotremes) get on the boat? How did they get back to Australasia and South America after the flood? And how come not one single trace of any marsupial remains can be found within 9,000km of Mount Ararat?

Thanks Mr. B for pointing out the utter hilarity of the suggestion that the Bible supports gender equality.

However I'm afraid you've . . . well, "missed the boat" on the matter of why kangaroos weren't invited to Noah's party.

You see, Yahweh wasn't quite as Omnimax as he pretended to be and was completely unaware of the existence of Down-Under Land! Don't take this personally, Mr. B, but I'm afraid Australia was the creation of the Devil, Beelzebub himself. My citation for this claim is one of the most innovative books on theology it is my pleasure to recommend. It includes fresh insight about the Nazarene Himself and the unhappy Procurator who condemned Him.

 

[Politesse]

Many "primitive" people practiced some form of exogamy.

Dude, the ancient near east is only linked to the Iroquois by your tortured colonialist imagination.