Image via Wikipedia
Where did all the water come from and where did it go?
The Bible says the water covered the mountains up to a depth of 15 cubits- which is nowhere near the height of our tallest mountains. Mt. Ararat, where evangelists claim Noah’s Ark has been found is 14,000 feet high. You have to ask how there could be enough water to simultaneously fill the Mariana Trench and cover Mt. Everest. And you have to ask where it went.
Was the floodwater salty or fresh?
Sea animals provide a special problem for biblical literalists. If the floodwaters were salty, how did the freshwater animals survive? If the floodwaters were fresh, how did the saltwater animals survive?
Were all of the animals on board?
Young Earth Creationists maintain that evolution is impossible. Minor changes through mutation and adaptation are obvious and impossible to deny. Young Earth Creationists reject the possibility that all these changes could give rise to a new species.
Yet Noah’s ark presents a problem. It is obviously not possible for two (or seven) of every species to be on board the ark. Creation scientists resolve this problem by stating that the biblical word “kinds” is a taxonomic division. In other words, you wouldn’t need two of every individual species, you would just need two representatives from the kinds. The variations that we see today would arise later.
How did all of this variation arise?
Some say a “kind” corresponds to a genus. Others name different taxonomic classifications. The fact remains that animals that animals that were of the same kind during the flood are no longer of the same ‘kind’ today. If the natural selection and mutations and adaptation of animals cannot change them from one species to another, where did all of the extra species come from?
Evolution, maybe?
What kind of person is God?
We have to suppose that every single one of the animals, plants, men , women and children allegedly killed during this flood were actually truly wicked. Horribly evil. Not a good one among them. You have to wonder why an omniscient god would go through all of this: create Adam and Eve, knowing they would be wicked. Let them procreate, knowing they would be wicked. Yet, all the while you are punishing every human being for their wicked nature…the nature that you created. Furthermore, the children born after the Original Sin shouldn’t even be responsible for the actions of Adam & Eve. In a human being, we would call these actions sadistic. That they are associated with ‘goodness and mercy’ should be disturbing.
Very interesting questions. And the answers?
OK, so now obviously I am going to have to go read your other articles. Well written.
very interesting post!
As a child attending church I have never questioned this story But you do present more questions then answers here.I have often thought that there couldnt have been 2 of every species on the arch….didnt seem to be enough room and for the surviving people to.
Bravo.
Many people don’t realize that these fables are just that. They are stories told and passed down by superstitious people. We should have somewhat more intelligence today.
The answers are simple. There was no worldwide flood. There was probably never a man named Noah. There was no collecting of animals onto a wooden boat. There was no 40 day period of floating on the waters. This is a myth just like the other similar myths written at the same time. The point of the article is to make this clear and to make you think about the lack of sense and evidence for fundamentalist religious beliefs. The problem is that those of a religious persuasion refuse to see the truth and continue to believe even in the face of the overwhelming contrary evidence.
you idiots as you know something onfact you know nothing!!
The Bible has a unique language. It was written to be read, first by the people of the then known world. In the time of the apostle Paul, he said:
(Colossians 1:23) “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister…”
Here, he used the past tense of the word ‘kerusso’. Paul is confident when he wrote to the Colossians that he was able to preach the Gospel to ‘every’ creature which is under heaven. At about the same time that Paul was preaching the gospel to the known world (the world of the Roman Empire), the famous Rice Terraces in Banaue, Mountain Province in the Philippines is being built by the Ifugaos, one of the aborigines of the Filipinos.
But Paul did not reach the Philippines, or the Americas, so, having flexibility in mind in understanding the language of the Bible we can discern that what the apostle Paul means when he said he “preached the gospel to every creature under heaven”, is to the people only of the known world then. Incidentally, the Philippines was discovered only in the sixteenth century by the Europeans led by Ferdinand Magellan.
Analizing this verse;
“And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.”, it means that the whole heaven refers to the heaven of the known world that time, the world of noah.
When the apostles were commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ to make disciples and ‘teach all nations’, the Lord Jesus Christ knows, and the apostles understood it, that He speaks only of all nations of the ‘known world’. It is impossible for the apostles to physically reach the Americas or my country, the Philippines. The apostles do not have the slightest idea that there are countries existing that time, like the Philippines and the Americas! The phrase “all nations” does not necessarily include all nations of the world or the whole earth.
When the Bible mentioned that the whole ‘erets’ was flooded, it does not necessarily mean that the whole world, including the seas, were flooded! Remember that the word ‘erets’ was used in the Bible, not only to mean the planet earth, but also the dry land.
Most probably, Noah lived not far from where Adam and Eve lived. He is about the tenth generation from Adam. Adam and Eve lived not far from Eden after being expelled from the garden of Eden. Eden is within Turkey. So, the probability is that the flood happened within Turkey. The highest mountain ranges in Turkey are the mountains of Ararat. It was where the ark rested.
(Genesis 8:4) “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.”
The mountains of Ararat are at the extreme eastern part of Turkey. The ark of Noah did not go too far from ground where it floated because it was not meant to travel, but to float.
The idea of a worldwide flood did not come from the Bible, but from people who do not understand its language!
‘erets
eh’-rets
From an unused root probably meaning to be firm; the earth (at large, or partitively a land): – X common, country, earth, field, ground, land, X nations, way, + wilderness, world. (Dictionaries of Hebrew and Greek Words taken from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance by James Strong, S.T.D., LL.D., 1890.)
The word ‘erets’ may mean ‘partitively, a land, a country, a field, a ground, etc.
so the flood is just a local flood
First, Strong’s concordance actually does give this as part of the definition of erets:
land, earth
earth
*whole earth (as opposed to a part)*
earth (as opposed to heaven)
earth (inhabitants
It’s Strong number is 776, if u want to look it up again.
Also, 2 Peter 2: 4-5 says that only eight people were spared in the flood–Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives, which must mean a total wipe out.
This makes sense, because in Genesis 6 god does say “the end of all flesh is come before me”.
This is why so many Biblical literalists still fight for the idea that a worldwide flood actually happened.
But nevermind all this. Lets think of the implications of what you just said: u said that the flooding of the earth story only meant one land. That Paul meant only a certain land. When talking about limited human knowledge that makes sense, but when you claim that it was written by an omniscient being, the geographical narrowness of the Bible is surprising.
Paul may not have known about the Phillipines but you wonder why whole continents would come as a surprise to god–and we have testimonies from explorers that most undiscovered lands were “heathen” when they got there. Never heard of the judeo-christian god. Why would god create all kinds of humans and only focus salvation on one tiny group of people? One land?
Thus it makes sense to say the Bible was written by those people- who didn’t know anything about other nations and not divinely inspired. The ancient MesoAmericas lived in the “known” world–it was “known” to them! Why wasn’t it known to the Hebrew god?
All of your questions have been answered both biblically and scientifically by many bible believing creation researchers. You really should study the special theory of creation science before making false assumptions about the subject of origins. Since I don’t have the time to respond to your questions I will direct you to places where you can find answers to your questions at http://www.creation.com; Answers in Genesis website; and creation evidence museum. Finally evolution is a religious philosophy that has been demonstrated scientifically to be false for the past 60 years, only people who are committed to the religion of naturalism and materialism continue to apply this dogma to science.
Creation research didn’t map the human genome. It hasn’t developed AIDS treatments and it wasn’t used to develop the agricultural methods that have eliminated famine in the Western world. The way viruses and plants work is understood in the context of evolution– the talking snake doesn’t explain this.
This article doesn’t say anything about origins…in fact, neither does the theory of evolution. Abiogenesis is about origins.Evolution is the idea that species gradually change over time- it has been proven again and again. It was proven with nylon eating bacteria. It is proven by the fact that you need a new flu shot every year. It is proven by radiometric dating and the fossil record. It is proven by un-intelligent designs like the rabbit’s digestive system and the needlessly looping laryngeal nerve.
The Genesis story is a Bronze age creation myth no different than any other creation myth.
Nice article and thanks for share