[__ Science __ ] How Could the Ark Have Survived the Stresses of the Flood?

[miamited]

Hey Barbarian

There was a great regional flood in the Middle East about the right time,

Care to share your evidence of the boundaries of that flood and that the flood waters stood for at least 6 months?

If all the animals all over the world were packed into the Ark for a year, God would have had to suspend natural laws for a bit to make that work.

God's word testifies that two of each 'kind' was brought into the ark. Unfortunately, we don't really know how God defines and separates kinds. We do know how man does, but not God. We know how man has devised a scientific system to separate the living creature world into the various phylum and kinds. But man's scientific definitions of separation aren't necessarily God's separation of the living creatures into 'kinds'. So, we don't really know what the actual count of animals that entered the ark would be.

People today look at all the bazillions of creatures and think that every one of each and every color and variance had to be represented. I doubt that's the truth of the matter. But I believe that there was ample room for all of the 'kinds' as God defines them. But I must admit that I basically believe that because of theorem #1. If God's word says it, God did it! Again, I don't need to know the physical 'how' He does the things that He testifies to us that He has done. I just know that if He says He does a thing, that thing gets done. Just like that woman in Israel who was found to be with child but had yet not taken a man unto herself. You do realize that by any medical or scientific knowledge that we have today, that account is impossible to have happened. A woman does not become pregnant unless sperm is introduced within her egg. That's a fact that has never been shown to be false.

Trust me friend, God filling a watercraft with a bunch of animals to continue the existence of the earth after the flood is a comparative piece of cake.

That an entire civilization of people having the first born child to die in one single and specific night is also an impossibility. But God's word says that it happened. That three men could walk around in a fiery furnace and come out without a single singed hair on their heads, is not possible. But God's word says it happened. That a man could make an ax head float is another impossibility. But God's word says that it happened. That a donkey or some such beast of burden could speak to a man in his language is an impossibility. But God's word says that it happened. I believe it.

I believe in a God who cannot lie and whose purpose in having His Scriptures written upon the earth is an honest and forthright account of His creating all that is and sustaining it and working through it all to bring about His will of creating a body of people to be beholden to Him, just as He did in raising up Israel. But this second group will be better than the first because their reward will be eternal life in peace and satisfaction in all that we do and all that are there to share God's merciful promise to us.

But yes, everything that God has told us in His Scriptures is true and for events that are spoken of within their pages... they happened in real time and real life in the generation in which those things are told to us to have been done.

We know it happened once. Which is all that is needed.

I'll wait for your report from question #1 to see if we do actually know that.

If there really never was a Good Samaritan, would that make Jesus' parable untrue? It seems the flood was a real event, but even if it's an allegory, it makes no difference at all. Focusing on the mechanics of the flood is to miss the whole point of the narrative.

That's generally what it boils down to when pressed for evidence. The complaint becomes, what does it matter?

Well, I contend that what God's children believe about God's word is important to God. So yeah, send me that information on that regional flood that stood for 6 months, and the proof that we have to know that it did.

God bless,
Ted

 

[Barbarian]

Care to share your evidence of the boundaries of that flood and that the flood waters stood for at least 6 months?

Evidence for a Flood ​

Sediment layers suggest that 7,500 years ago Mediterranean water roared into the Black Sea

Evidence for a Flood

Sediment layers suggest that 7,500 years ago Mediterranean water roared into the Black Sea

www.smithsonianmag.com

Much of it is still there, if the evidence is correct.

 

[Barbarian]

That's generally what it boils down to when pressed for evidence. The complaint becomes, what does it matter?

The evidence indicates a great flood in the Middle East about the right time. Certainly there were humans living there, and the land was flooded, even the mountains are now submerged. But as I asked, does it matter if there really wasn't an actual flood? Would it matter if there wasn't an actual Good Samaritan, and it was just a parable?

I can't see how. Focusing on the details is missing the point.

 

[miamited]

Evidence for a Flood ​

Sediment layers suggest that 7,500 years ago Mediterranean water roared into the Black Sea

Evidence for a Flood

Sediment layers suggest that 7,500 years ago Mediterranean water roared into the Black Sea

www.smithsonianmag.com

Much of it is still there, if the evidence is correct.

Sediment layers suggest... that's now an accepted scientific proof? That certain evidences might 'suggest' some reality? And that flood waters stood for 6 months? What evidence do you have to 'suggest' that?

From your article:
The scientific version of Noah's flood actually starts long before that, back during the last great glaciation some 20,000 years ago. Oh, and this did or didn't happen before Adam and Eve existed? I mean, 20,000 years doesn't fit with man having been created, at least the point of Adam and Eve walking around naked. Oh, and it's called a scientific version.

So, it would seem that the flood that they're referring to lasted for several thousand years. You see a similarity there do you?

I was encouraged though that they are getting closer to the creation of the earth:

Carbon-dating of shells in this mud indicates that it was laid down between 18,000 and 8,600 years ago.

Having read through it all, I don't see any offering of evidence to prove the two questions I posed. What were the boundaries of the flood and that the waters stood for 6 months before receding.

I did add the 'before receding' because a lot of what your body of evidence is saying is that the coastal areas of the earth are now flooded some 75-100 miles more inward than they were at the time of the account. So, I do want to make sure that we realize that the flood of Noah is told to us to have receded and the ark came to rest on the earth again.

Anything?

I can't see how. Focusing on the details is missing the point.

Yeah, I can see where God had a lot of time on His hands and thought to Himself, "Well, even though none of most of what I've written to mankind is important in anyway, and honestly, really isn't true in most of the details I've included, to what I want to reveal to them, it was great story telling time. They love me down at the angelic children's library."

I mean really, God spends a couple of pages telling us all about the entire event of the flood. How He told Noah to build an ark. How Noah did apparently build it. How He then closed Noah up in it and brought on rain and flood the likes of which the world has never seen since. How the span of time that Noah and his family were afloat and how the waters finally receded and how long it took for Noah to again set his foot on dry land.

None of that's important to our understanding of God to you.

OK.

Ever consider that maybe you're wrong and it is important to God what His children believe about Him and His testimony to us? Ever consider that God spent the time and effort to see that all these accounts were included in His word to show us all what He has been doing in sustaining and working in this realm of His creating?

God bless,
Ted

 

[Barbarian]

Sediment layers suggest... that's now an accepted scientific proof?

Scientific evidence.

And that flood waters stood for 6 months? What evidence do you have to 'suggest' that?

Well, most of the water is still there from that flood. Over a period of months, channels were cut by the water, and some of it drained off after the initial flood. But the basin remains partially filled.

So, it would seem that the flood that they're referring to lasted for several thousand years. You see a similarity there do you?

Well, it was a few thousand years in the making, but the flood itself (the flooding of the Black Sea basin) took months.

Having read through it all, I don't see any offering of evidence to prove the two questions I posed. What were the boundaries of the flood and that the waters stood for 6 months before receding.

It seems to match the data from Genesis rather well. How do you think it differs?

I did add the 'before receding' because a lot of what your body of evidence is saying is that the coastal areas of the earth are now flooded some 75-100 miles more inward than they were at the time of the account.

Depends on the land. Where it was steep, the sea covered much less. The flooding after the last Ice Age was not the same as the flood that filled the Black Sea basin. The former was quite gradual.

Yeah, I can see where God had a lot of time on His hands and thought to Himself, "Well, even though none of most of what I've written to mankind is important in anyway, and honestly, really isn't true in most of the details I've included, to what I want to reveal to them, it was great story telling time.

He chose to tell us some things in parables and other figurative language. I can only suppose He had His reasons.

None of that's important to our understanding of God to you.

The details of how it happened, is not what God wants us to get from the story.

You are right to understand God as loving and merciful, but God is also just. We count on God’s justice when we suffer from evil. In the context of the story of Noah and the flood, the fact that a loving and merciful God thought that the only just thing to do would be to flood the Earth reveals just how wickedly sinful and evil humanity had become.
Jewish tradition relays that murder and bloodshed were common, and no one cared for his neighbor. God was mocked as unneeded, given the greatness humanity had achieved. This time period is portrayed as a moral wasteland in which Noah, as shaky as he was in both morals and faith, was considered the most righteous of his generation. Without the flood, it is said that humanity would have destroyed itself on its own and that the flood was the chance for any human person with any goodness to start over and save the human race.
However, Jewish tradition does not portray God as uncaring. It reveals that God instructed Noah to build the Ark slowly. This was meant as a last warning and chance for repentance and mercy. Everyone had a chance to repent and enter the Ark.

How the Flood Squares with God's Mercy

When the LORD saw how great the wickedness of human beings was on earth, and how every desire that their heart conceived was always nothing but evil (Gen. 6:5)....

www.catholic.com

Ever consider that maybe you're wrong

It's possible that the flood is an allegory based on the experience of Mesopotamian people who had experienced repeated catastrophic floods in that area. It's even possible that God miraculously cancelled all the problems with a literal worldwide flood and poofed the whole thing.

But it makes no difference whatsoever to the point of the story, any more than it matters whether or not there was an actual Good Samaritan.

And since it's not a salvation issue, there's no need to make it anything more than it is. What you think of the evidence for a flood is not what determines your eternal home.

 

[Barbarian]

I missed this.

God's word testifies that two of each 'kind' was brought into the ark. Unfortunately, we don't really know how God defines and separates kinds. We do know how man does, but not God. We know how man has devised a scientific system to separate the living creature world into the various phylum and kinds. But man's scientific definitions of separation aren't necessarily God's separation of the living creatures into 'kinds'. So, we don't really know what the actual count of animals that entered the ark would be.

This is a good point. Science initially classified organisms according to physical characteristics and later by genetic data. It's noteworthy that the same classifications first worked out in the1700s by people who knew nothing about evolution, are still pretty close to the ones we have now.

But the classification of animals in Scripture is functional, not according to characteristics. Hence bats are classified as birds and whales as fish. Which, from a functional POV, is quite logical.

Some creationists have considered the limit of "kind" to be around the level of family, meaning they accept the evolution of new species and genera. But there's a lot of disagreement between them as to the precise meaning. Perhaps you are familiar with the term "baramin", meaning a kind. Some creationist biologists are trying to form a science of barminology, which is a form of creationist taxonomy.

So if the "cat baramin" was on the Ark, then two (or 14 if they were considered clean) would be ancestors of everything from tabby cats to tigers. That would require the formation of thousands of alleles to account for the subsequent variation, but it's not impossible. It would require evolutionary change hundreds of times faster than it has ever been observed to happen, however.

Edit: Apparently cats are considered to be "unclean", so there would be just 1 pair aboard the Ark.

 

[miamited]

Hey Barbarian

Some creationists have considered the limit of "kind" to be around the level of family, meaning they accept the evolution of new species and genera.

Yeah, I don't know. Don't have a clue 'how' God classified the kinds. But that's an issue for which we have no word from God that gives us any way to understand that specific question.

God bless,
Ted

 

[KV-44-v1]

Matthew 13:10 And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”

11 He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the [a]mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. 12 For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 13 Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

In this way, the Creation story is understood by those realizing it's meaning, but some will try to make it a literal history.

Nobody is making anything literal here.

It shows that what is figurative in scripture often has hidden meanings,

begs the question that Genesis is "allegory".
So you believe that context doesn't matter? Ok

hidden meanings

So if the Genesis text means something else than what it REALLY says, what does it mean? Doubt you can tell.

Your salvation doesn't depend on knowing all of it.

I agree. AIG agrees.
But, the stable-mindedness of faith depends on knowing enough of it.

 

[KV-44-v1]

Evidence for a Flood ​

Sediment layers suggest that 7,500 years ago Mediterranean water roared into the Black Sea

Evidence for a Flood

Sediment layers suggest that 7,500 years ago Mediterranean water roared into the Black Sea

www.smithsonianmag.com

Much of it is still there, if the evidence is correct.

Yep. The Global Flood.
Nothing has ever proven that the Flood of Noah was ONLY local.

Trying to prove local flood ONLY is like saying "oh look, a nuke hit a building, therefore it mustve only affected this building and not every building within a 1mile radius"

 

[Barbarian]

Yep. The Global Flood.
Nothing has ever proven that the Flood of Noah was ONLY local.

The lack of scriptural support for a global flood, along with the lack of evidence for such a flood, along with the evidence for a great regional flood in the Middle East about the right time, makes that a very unlikely belief.

Trying to prove local flood ONLY is like saying "oh look, a nuke hit a building, therefore it mustve only affected this building and not every building within a 1mile radius"

Since we see the extent of the documented Middle Eastern Flood, your assumption is demonstrably wrong.

 

[Barbarian]

begs the question that Genesis is "allegory".

Since the text itself says so, that's not begging the question.

So you believe that context doesn't matter? Ok

The context is the text itself. If the days involve mornings and evenings before there was a sun to have them, it's impossible to revise Genesis 1 and 2 into literal accounts. The inconsistencies between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, if taken literally, also show us this. The first chapter says God took six days to make the Earth. The second chapter says that He did it in a day.

 

[Barbarian]

Yeah, I don't know. Don't have a clue 'how' God classified the kinds. But that's an issue for which we have no word from God that gives us any way to understand that specific question.

Right. It clearly wasn't meant to tell us about genetic relationships. It was a functional classification. Which is no less valid than a phylogenetic classification.

 

[hawkman]

But as I asked, does it matter if there really wasn't an actual flood?

Why would we ever suppose there was not a flood ? Jesus said there was a flood .

Matthew 24:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Matthew 24:38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

More about Noah and the flood in the NT .

Hebrews 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. 1 Peter 3:20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 2 Peter 2:5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

 

[Barbarian]

Why would we ever suppose there was not a flood ? Jesus said there was a flood .

I don't see any reason to suppose that if Jesus mentions figurative verse, that converts it to a literal event. The evidence and historical record leads me to think it was an actual flood in the Middle East, but even if it was an allegory or some kind of megamiraculous worldwide flood, it wouldn't make any difference.

And the NT uses "cosmos" for "world", which at that time meant something like "our civilization." Reference Caesar decreeing a census of the whole world.

 

[miamited]

Reference Caesar decreeing a census of the whole world.

Hey Barbarian

Except, I'm not sure that's a correct translation of what Caesar did. I'm not a latin scholar by any stretch, but most of the translations I have refer to that decree as being issued to the whole Roman world.

Even today, the word world is defined as a completeness of a set or things. And yet, can be used to mean an actual planetary world.

God bless,
Ted

 

[Barbarian]

Hey Barbarian

Except, I'm not sure that's a correct translation of what Caesar did. I'm not a latin scholar by any stretch, but most of the translations I have refer to that decree as being issued to the whole Roman world.

The word κόσμος was used for the Roman world. As in Luke 2:1
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus[b] that the whole world should be enrolled.
(Εκείνες τις ημέρες κυκλοφόρησε ένα διάταγμα από τον Καίσαρα Αυγούστου ότι όλος ο κόσμος έπρεπε να εγγραφεί.)

The globe was σφαίρα (sfaira) from which we get "sphere." And yes, they knew the Earth was a globe then. Centuries before, Eratosthenes even found a way to measure its circumference.

Even today, the word world is defined as a completeness of a set or things. And yet, can be used to mean an actual planetary world.

It can, but the usage in Koine Greek was somewhat different.

 

[Barbarian]

Except, I'm not sure that's a correct translation of what Caesar did. I'm not a latin scholar by any stretch, but most of the translations I have refer to that decree as being issued to the whole Roman world.

Mark was written in Koine Greek, not Latin. The word for "entire world" was spairos, not kosmos.

 

[miamited]

Mark was written in Koine Greek, not Latin. The word for "entire world" was spairos, not kosmos.

Hi Barbarian
While that may offer some solace when reading through the gospels, I'm really more interested in God's intended meaning 1,500 years before. When He directed by His Spirit the words recorded for us during the exodus. Where God gave unto His people their first lesson in History 101.

God bless,
Ted

 

[Barbarian]

While that may offer some solace when reading through the gospels, I'm really more interested in God's intended meaning 1,500 years before.

That depends on the difference between ארץ "erets" (land) and תֵבֵל"tevel" (world). Scripture says the land was flooded, but it does not say the world was flooded.

Hence, the NT uses κόσμος "kosmos", not σφαίρα"sfaira."

 

[miamited]

That depends on the difference between ארץ "erets" (land) and תֵבֵל"tevel" (world). Scripture says the land was flooded, but it does not say the world was flooded.

Hence, the NT uses κόσμος "kosmos", not σφαίρα"sfaira."

right! That's what God's word says. He flooded all the land.

God bless,
Ted