Thinking about Noah's ark

[MennoSota]

The reply is to the bold underlined green text in the post quoted above.

What MonnoSota offered appears to be allusions to biblical texts so we can dispose of the idea that it is original immediately.

Proceeding from there we may notice that the second choice suggests that

• God exists
• God thinks
• God communicated at least some of what he thinks in written form presumably in the bible
  
  given that MennoSota's ideas were drawn from his reading of the bible​
• so God communicated at least some of what he thinks in written form in the bible.

But the story of Noah's flood may not be one of the things that God thinks and communicated in written form because it could be a story handed down in a family group, tribe, or group of related tribes of people and included in the same "book" that contained some of what God thinks and communicated in written form.

And we were waiting for MennoSota to explain how his post was "original thinking" while mine allegedly was not. And so far that has not happened. So I am still waiting for MennoSota's explanation of why his post is original thinking and why mine is not.

MC, I don't care about your requirement for unsupported opinion as the means of expressing thought. It seems to me you desire such a foolish approach so as to lift yourself up and ignore God and His word. I won't play your fools game.

 

[MoreCoffee]

It is an assumption that every part of what is written in the holy scriptures is from God. It is eisegesis to read 2 Tim 3:14-17 as meaning that every story found in the 66 books for MennoSota's bible is inspired.

 

[psalms 91]

They are, othewise it is just mans thoughts and carry no more weight than say Shakespere. This is exactly why the church is in the mess it is in, it is called a lack of faith.

 

[MoreCoffee]

They are, othewise it is just mans thoughts and carry no more weight than say Shakespere. This is exactly why the church is in the mess it is in, it is called a lack of faith.

Some may call it lack of faith yet others will call it level headed careful evaluation of the evidence.

 

[psalms 91]

Some may call it lack of faith yet others will call it level headed careful evaluation of the evidence.

Leading to what conclusion? Will it build people up or will it show God better? What do you come away believing with this, as I said it is called a lack of faith in the inspired word of God

 

[MoreCoffee]

Leading to what conclusion? Will it build people up or will it show God better? What do you come away believing with this, as I said it is called a lack of faith in the inspired word of God

Eventually leading to the conclusion that no one ought to use a book to mistreat others no matter how holy the book is alleged to be. Just remember the things that have been written in CH about predestination and the punishment of the allegedly pagan Catholics or others who do not agree with all that is alleged to be taught in the bible either expressly or by good and necessary consequence. This comes to mind for me because I've been the object of comments about how pagan I am or how wicked Catholicism is and that is alleged to be so because Catholics read more books as holy scripture and regard holy tradition as authoritative. It is useful to be careful about what others say is "God's will" because God's alleged will was used to excuse religious wars, persecutions, and killing of innocents (relatively innocent). So I am careful about accepting the pills offered - red for one thing blue for the other as in the movie the matrix. Waking up to "reality" only to find it squalid, poor, dirty, and mean is not exactly what one signs up for in Christianity.

 

[psalms 91]

Eventually leading to the conclusion that no one ought to use a book to mistreat others no matter how holy the book is alleged to be. Just remember the things that have been written in CH about predestination and the punishment of the allegedly pagan Catholics or others who do not agree with all that is alleged to be taught in the bible either expressly or by good and necessary consequence. This comes to mind for me because I've been the object of comments about how pagan I am or how wicked Catholicism is and that is alleged to be so because Catholics read more books as holy scripture and regard holy tradition as authoritative. It is useful to be careful about what others say is "God's will" because God's alleged will was used to excuse religious wars, persecutions, and killing of innocents (relatively innocent). So I am careful about accepting the pills offered - red for one thing blue for the other as in the movie the matrix. Waking up to "reality" only to find it squalid, poor, dirty, and mean is not exactly what one signs up for in Christianity.

Or why believe any of it and I guess there really is no God. What you use as a way to make people better will ultimately make them worse and also take away all hope of a greater meaning to anything. Good luck with that

 

[MoreCoffee]

Or why believe any of it and I guess there really is no God. What you use as a way to make people better will ultimately make them worse and also take away all hope of a greater meaning to anything. Good luck with that

You ask a pertinent question so what answer do you have for it? "why believe any of it?" then you add "and I guess there really is no God" which I take to be a rhetorical question expecting our thunderous reply never, never may we be so unfaithful as to abandon God.

But Protestantism started with questions about the established system of thought and doctrine common in Christendom in the early sixteenth century and once the questions were asked and men pushed and pushed until the system broke in some lands they then went on to incite war and killing and were in turn warred against and killed too until the face of Europe's north was bloodied and broken but victorious in its endeavour to be set free from what had been accepted as truth before. So why stop with the questions that Protestant founders raised why not press on with more questions including the one you ask?

You go on to say "What you use as a way to make people better will ultimately make them worse and also take away all hope of a greater meaning to anything." But your statement is the voice of fear - fear that perhaps the system of religion that you have inherited (through various hands and changed in many ways) from the founders of Protestantism will fall apart if it is critically examined. Can anyone live their whole life under fear without losing more than they feared because the fear robbed them of the light that open eyes and fearless investigation give?

You end your post with "Good luck with that" which appears to be your way of signing off without really wishing good of any kind.

As some have said, such is life.

 

[psalms 91]

You ask a pertinent question so what answer do you have for it? "why believe any of it?" then you add "and I guess there really is no God" which I take to be a rhetorical question expecting our thunderous reply never, never may we be so unfaithful as to abandon God.

But Protestantism started with questions about the established system of thought and doctrine common in Christendom in the early sixteenth century and once the questions were asked and men pushed and pushed until the system broke in some lands they then went on to incite war and killing and were in turn warred against and killed too until the face of Europe's north was bloodied and broken but victorious in its endeavour to be set free from what had been accepted as truth before. So why stop with the questions that Protestant founders raised why not press on with more questions including the one you ask?

You go on to say "What you use as a way to make people better will ultimately make them worse and also take away all hope of a greater meaning to anything." But your statement is the voice of fear - fear that perhaps the system of religion that you have inherited (through various hands and changed in many ways) from the founders of Protestantism will fall apart if it is critically examined. Can anyone live their whole life under fear without losing more than they feared because the fear robbed them of the light that open eyes and fearless investigation give?

You end your post with "Good luck with that" which appears to be your way of signing off without really wishing good of any kind.

As some have said, such is life.

MC this isnt the only post you have posted that I findagainst what we believe and as you probably wanted you have gotten negative reaction to it. I am firmly grounded in what I believe others may not be and what might be a good post on another site that isnt Christian is not necessarily a good post here where there may be those who are not so firm in their faith. God is was and always will be and His Word doesnt change, so no I have no problem with you challanging what i believe but I do wonder why you would throw this kind of stuff out as I know you are also firm in your belief.

 

[MoreCoffee]

How did Noah and his family manage to fit more than 8,000,000 pairs of land critters into the ark? And how did all the food fit too and how did they dispose of all the waste? It must have been very hard work, they'd be exhausted by the end of the cruise.

 

[psalms 91]

MC this isnt the only post you have posted that I findagainst what we believe and as you probably wanted you have gotten negative reaction to it. I am firmly grounded in what I believe others may not be and what might be a good post on another site that isnt Christian is not necessarily a good post here where there may be those who are not so firm in their faith. God is was and always will be and His Word doesnt change, so no I have no problem with you challanging what i believe but I do wonder why you would throw this kind of stuff out as I know you are also firm in your belief.

More curious about your answer to this post

 

[Andrew]

How did Noah and his family manage to fit more than 8,000,000 pairs of land critters into the ark? And how did all the food fit too and how did they dispose of all the waste? It must have been very hard work, they'd be exhausted by the end of the cruise.

How did they build the pyramids or stone hedge?

 

[MoreCoffee]

MC this isn't the only post you have posted that I find against what we believe

Perhaps "against what you believe" but not against what I believe.

I like to give "the other side" of an argument a fair hearing. So I happily look at, listen to, and read what atheists and other sceptics have to say in their critiques of holy scripture. I acknowledge that numerous criticisms that such people raise are well founded. Noah's ark is a story that from scientific point of view is absurd. If the flood is taken as a flood that really did cover every land including all existing mountains under many fathoms of water thus killing not only all people but probably all land animals, birds, and fresh water animals as well as possibly many or all salt water animals and almost certainly all land plants and likely nearly all sea plants that depend on sunlight for photosynthesis and that is absurd because not wooden boat could hold all the animals needed to preserve each "kind". So Christians in this century and last century have relied on miracles that are not mentioned in holy scripture to "make it all make sense". In effect they have invoked a kind of magic trove of miracles to explain away each difficulty as it was raised by objectors. So now we have a situation where men, such as Ken Ham, are "defending the faith" by making patently untrue claims about creation, fossils, and the world as it existed in Noah's time (they say some time around 2,200 to 2,600 BC). So I just do not want to play along with his ilk in making such claims because they make Christianity into a religion of stupidity. I ask "why not believe that the story in Genesis is about a flood covering 'the whole Earth' known to Noah's people which would be an extensive local flood but not a global one?" and that is what I am doing in this thread. The atheist chap who made the videos I included in the first posts of this thread makes good and reasonable complaints about the global flood story.

and as you probably wanted you have gotten negative reaction to it.

I want truthful responses. Not retold myths or absurd claims about God allegedly working a whole orchestra worth of miracles that are never mentioned in the holy scriptures with the whole lot of these unmentioned miracles invented simply to make Noah's flood be "scientifically acceptable". Christians would be better off ignoring science than they are by creative miracle invention to defend the story as a global flood. But better still would be to admit that the story may be using hyperbole when it says "the whole earth".

I am firmly grounded in what I believe others may not be and what might be a good post on another site that isn't Christian is not necessarily a good post here where there may be those who are not so firm in their faith.

No one who thinks a little bit critically and who wants to investigate what the holy scriptures say is true but whose truth is not immediately obvious can ignore the inconsistencies and holes in the biblical stories as told and interpreted by some Christian sects. It is not a matter of being well grounded in the teaching of your denomination or church. It is a matter of integrity about what is true and what is not. It is about being sane rather than a little bit religiously crazy and it is a little bit of religious craziness to insist that the story of Noah's flood really happened to every land and every creature on earth some time in the third millennium BC.

God is was and always will be and His Word doesn't change, so no I have no problem with you challenging what i believe but I do wonder why you would throw this kind of stuff out as I know you are also firm in your belief.

I throw "this kind of stuff" into discussions here because YouTube, Facebook, and every other kind of forum on the internet and on television and in every sort of medium of communication has "this kind of stuff" in prominent display anyway. Christianity Haven cannot be a haven from facts and debate and discussion of issues that arise out of biblical stories. We'd be pretending that no one ever raises these matters "outside in the world" if we did. And we know that "outside in the world" such questions are constantly raised so why not work to answer them in CH?

 

[MoreCoffee]

How did they build the pyramids or stone hedge?

Read a little archaeology and find out. I can't see why those things matter in a thread about Noah's ark.

 

[Andrew]

Read a little archaeology and find out. I can't see why those things matter in a thread about Noah's ark.

Really you can't see? You are asking questions about an event that happened loooooong long ago that no one today witnessed, I think your numbers are off too, remember 2 of each kind, thats like 2 muts NOT including all the different types of dogs today.

 

[psalms 91]

Perhaps "against what you believe" but not against what I believe.

I like to give "the other side" of an argument a fair hearing. So I happily look at, listen to, and read what atheists and other sceptics have to say in their critiques of holy scripture. I acknowledge that numerous criticisms that such people raise are well founded. Noah's ark is a story that from scientific point of view is absurd. If the flood is taken as a flood that really did cover every land including all existing mountains under many fathoms of water thus killing not only all people but probably all land animals, birds, and fresh water animals as well as possibly many or all salt water animals and almost certainly all land plants and likely nearly all sea plants that depend on sunlight for photosynthesis and that is absurd because not wooden boat could hold all the animals needed to preserve each "kind". So Christians in this century and last century have relied on miracles that are not mentioned in holy scripture to "make it all make sense". In effect they have invoked a kind of magic trove of miracles to explain away each difficulty as it was raised by objectors. So now we have a situation where men, such as Ken Ham, are "defending the faith" by making patently untrue claims about creation, fossils, and the world as it existed in Noah's time (they say some time around 2,200 to 2,600 BC). So I just do not want to play along with his ilk in making such claims because they make Christianity into a religion of stupidity. I ask "why not believe that the story in Genesis is about a flood covering 'the whole Earth' known to Noah's people which would be an extensive local flood but not a global one?" and that is what I am doing in this thread. The atheist chap who made the videos I included in the first posts of this thread makes good and reasonable complaints about the global flood story.


I want truthful responses. Not retold myths or absurd claims about God allegedly working a whole orchestra worth of miracles that are never mentioned in the holy scriptures with the whole lot of these unmentioned miracles invented simply to make Noah's flood be "scientifically acceptable". Christians would be better off ignoring science than they are by creative miracle invention to defend the story as a global flood. But better still would be to admit that the story may be using hyperbole when it says "the whole earth".


No one who thinks a little bit critically and who wants to investigate what the holy scriptures say is true but whose truth is not immediately obvious can ignore the inconsistencies and holes in the biblical stories as told and interpreted by some Christian sects. It is not a matter of being well grounded in the teaching of your denomination or church. It is a matter of integrity about what is true and what is not. It is about being sane rather than a little bit religiously crazy and it is a little bit of religious craziness to insist that the story of Noah's flood really happened to every land and every creature on earth some time in the third millennium BC.



I throw "this kind of stuff" into discussions here because YouTube, Facebook, and every other kind of forum on the internet and on television and in every sort of medium of communication has "this kind of stuff" in prominent display anyway. Christianity Haven cannot be a haven from facts and debate and discussion of issues that arise out of biblical stories. We'd be pretending that no one ever raises these matters "outside in the world" if we did. And we know that "outside in the world" such questions are constantly raised so why not work to answer them in CH?

OK MC how do you square the flood and still hold that the bible is the inspired Word of God and not just another book? I will accept what is written and while I do not have the sources I believe the question of the flood has been looked at by scientists and over the last 20 years or so there has been evidence of it scientifially and I believe that there was even a report of finding the ark. What I do know is that as more is uncovered historically by archeologists it seems that more and more of the bible is true. Amazing how that works. BTW I really appreciate you taking the time to answer

 

[MoreCoffee]

Really you can't see? You are asking questions about an event that happened loooooong long ago that no one today witnessed, I think your numbers are off too, remember 2 of each kind, thats like 2 muts NOT including all the different types of dogs today.

2 dogs is fine, but likely to lead to a whole lot of inbreeding. 8,000,000 species has only 1 dog species. Dogs are a single species but African wild dogs, wolves, coyotes and so forth are different species, they are not domestic dogs. Same with cats, 1 species of domestic cat but it is not the same species as a bobcat, a lynx, and any other kind of cat that is not of the domestic species. That also applies to bears, grizzlies are one species, polar another, sun bear another, and so forth. The total is around 8,000,000 of land animals. Of course there are also many many water species both salt water and fresh water as well as plants and fungus and bacteria and ....

 

[MoreCoffee]

OK MC how do you square the flood and still hold that the bible is the inspired Word of God and not just another book?

The holy scriptures are "another book" because they are not God or angelic or anything other than human produced words. The difference between the holy scriptures and a book such as "gone with the wind" is that the holy scriptures purport to be produced by divine inspiration and to contain God's commandments for humanity and to record the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ as the good news that we commonly call the gospel. But the bible is just a book unworthy of worship or any other form of reverence beyond the reverence with which human beings treat the things they count as holy.

I will accept what is written and while I do not have the sources I believe the question of the flood has been looked at by scientists and over the last 20 years or so there has been evidence of it scientifically and I believe that there was even a report of finding the ark. What I do know is that as more is uncovered historically by archaeologists it seems that more and more of the bible is true. Amazing how that works. BTW I really appreciate you taking the time to answer

 

[Andrew]

2 dogs is fine, but likely to lead to a whole lot of inbreeding. 8,000,000 species has only 1 dog species. Dogs are a single species but African wild dogs, wolves, coyotes and so forth are different species, they are not domestic dogs. Same with cats, 1 species of domestic cat but it is not the same species as a bobcat, a lynx, and any other kind of cat that is not of the domestic species. That also applies to bears, grizzlies are one species, polar another, sun bear another, and so forth. The total is around 8,000,000 of land animals. Of course there are also many many water species both salt water and fresh water as well as plants and fungus and bacteria and ....

Well wolves then

 

[psalms 91]

2 dogs is fine, but likely to lead to a whole lot of inbreeding. 8,000,000 species has only 1 dog species. Dogs are a single species but African wild dogs, wolves, coyotes and so forth are different species, they are not domestic dogs. Same with cats, 1 species of domestic cat but it is not the same species as a bobcat, a lynx, and any other kind of cat that is not of the domestic species. That also applies to bears, grizzlies are one species, polar another, sun bear another, and so forth. The total is around 8,000,000 of land animals. Of course there are also many many water species both salt water and fresh water as well as plants and fungus and bacteria and ....

I dont know about cats but dogs evolved from wolves and I suspect that they are all interrelated