A question for those who believe in noahs ark

by bohm 22 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  bohm

  Many times in the recent weeks, I have heard statements to the effect of "you dont understand biblical science", "science proove the bible right" etc. I want to begin by saying i really like it when people make those kind of broad, sweeping statements because when each party in a discussion come clean about what they believe to be true, you can easier get down to a factual discussion.

  And i really do want to understand biblical science. I has spend a long, long time reading cuts-and-pastes on this site, and i have read a large part of the content on AIG. But i have never seen an author of any of these articles address the question that is at the very heart of the two original statements; namely what are the facts of noahs ark. More precicely, i want to ask the following question:

  Which quantitative predictions of the world that has later been observed to be true has been made based on the Noahs Ark/flood hypothesis?

  Its my observation that evidence FOR noahs is allmost never discussed. Its allways how various dating methods fail, how geology fail, etc - a negative and often not very fact-based discussion. So i want to play the ball into the other court and ask the question above - notice that the above statement are held by most scientists as the defining property of a scientific theory.

  I can give an example from other theories: General relativity. General relativity predict that two bodies orbing each other while rotating (think of the earth and a sattelite) will experience "frame drag". This follows easily from Einsteins equations, but it took allmost 90 years to verify it by gravity probe B. The existence of such predictions make general relativity a theory, and if frame dragging is actually observed it will be held as a more accurate theory for the world.

  Another example: plate tectonics. If one assume south/north america and europe/africa was once connected, that makes a lot of predictions about the kind of rocks (type and magnetization) which are found at the boundaries of the continents in question. This can later be verified by geology, and that makes plate tectonics a theory.

  So, what predictions does noahs ark make? Most theories make a lot of predictions, so dont be afraid to list multiple per post!
• 

  jaguarbass

  I dont think Noahs ark makes any predictions. Noahs ark is bible history.

  Noahs ark tells something about God.

  Our experience here is a work in progress.

  God allows free will, he didnt make robots and free will got out of hand before the flood

  so he destroyed man and the hybred children of the angels the nephalim, and he started all over again.

  Today we are having another experience with free will and I'll bet a dollar to a donut that God or what some

  people call nature will destroy everybody and save a remanent and start all over again.

  Probalby the next destruction will be some nuclear detonations followed by the plagues and calamites that

  it brings and the modern day Noahs will be saved from it.

  The Us government has several safe places to save mankind from disaster, they have tunnels and citys under

  Washington D.C. and they have other safe havens which after the melt down or impending disaster will

  be refered to as Noahs ark.

  And I would think other rich non American people and governments have safe havens to save themselves from the coming dark hour.

  Whats to stop India and Pakistan from ligthing it all up, they are not wired like US Christians. Totall destruction would probably be

  an improvement to both parties.

  And as soon as the Moslems get the power its lights out.
• 

  JeffT

  I don't know that I "believe" in Noah's Ark, but I'll take a swing at this anyway.

  I don't know what you're trying to assert here, Noah's Ark was at most, a building that floated. I don't know that it ever predicted anything. Or do you mean to ask what conditions some one might expect to derive from a global flood?
• 

  bohm

  jaguarbass: well, its a pity so little research is being carried out by those who believe in noahs ark to turn it into a scientific theory, i think.

  JeffT: The noahs ark hypothesis contain the following: (okay, there are multiple, but the one i most often hear is this)

  • 3400years ago all of the planet was covered with water
  • A man build a very large boat and filled it with animals and some of his relatives. The animals outside which could not survive in water died.
  • The water went away, the man, his family and the animals repopulated the planet

  So there are many avenues where a person could look for predictions in the noahs ark hypothesis. For example, what predictions can be made regarding ice cores? regarding genetic diversity (the chetah is an interesting case study because there is very little diversity in the chetah genomen due to a recent genetic bottleneck. Notice i am not bringing this up as evidence against noahs ark, i am interested in the evidence for)?

  How about the way the geological column. Those who believe in noahs ark ofcourse think the geologists got that one completely wrong, but i believe that interpreting the geological column based on a true model - ie the earth was covered with water 3400 years ago - would mean one could make some rather stunning predictions, rather thank poking around like geologists do and try to fit the column with the wrong model (no flood).

  Where did the water come from? If it was shot up from below the planets crust, perhaps it would be possible to make a model for how that happened and make some predictions based on that?

  How about history. The archeologists got it completely wrong, ofcourse, but how about piecing a "correct" history together, and use that to make predictions on future archeological findings, etc?

  The various dating methods rely on a vast array of different physical phenomena, which mean scientists got very fundamental laws of nature all wrong. There should be ample room to turn that into predictions, just like kepler could predict the orbit of the planets more accurately using a heliocentric model of the solar system.

  Im not the person claiming noahs ark is a theory, but there are plenty of other here who do. I am trying to get the facts on the table.
• 

  designs

  Why are Witnesses and Fundamentalists the last of the Christian groups to still believe it is a literal account.
• 

  bohm

  designs: it would seem there is an equivalent of heisenbergers uncertainty principle which govern every discussion of noahs ark - you can either have fundies STATING there is facts and evidence which suppport the ark, or you can have non-fundies ASKING for facts and evidence, but never both at the same time.
• 

  designs

  bohm-

  Ships passing in the night
• 

  wobble

  It is interesting that JW's and other creationists attack evolution, but believe that all the variety of species we see now have developed from the ones that came out of the Ark.

  This would be evolution at a rate 16,000 times faster than the science tells us it happened.

  The story also ignores the difficulty of animals getting to Australia and New Zealand,including flightless birds, and the difficulty of persuading the big cats to not eat the gazelles etc etc .

  As you rightly say BOHM, where is the proof ?
• 

  designs

  wobble-

  You're making waaay to much sense
• 

  Witness My Fury

  Off the top of my head I think it's supposed to be 1600 yrs after Adam, so about 4400 yrs ago not 3400 yrs ago.

  As to having a go at answering your question, ...Umm there's a hell of a LOT of water on this planet. That could easily be argued to satisfy your question, or not depending on your angle... In fact any satisfactory answer to your question can be argued away as well, because it is too easy to do so and it depends on what your are looking for in the way of an answer. Pro Noahs Ark or Pro Evolution.

  For me, the more I look into Noahs flood the worse it gets. However......

  I did do some basic (note basic!) research into population growth thru the ages and that did throw up some interesting points. (This again is all off the top of my head)

  E.g If the population were to double in size every 150 yrs then it could easily achieve many billions within 6000 yrs. If it were to double every 80 yrs then it could easily achieve the many billions we have now after just 4400 yrs since the "flood" (yes allowing for death rates). Statistically population tends to double faster than that at about every 40 - 50 yrs currently although that is flexible and by no means fixed. So in other words it is easily possible to go from 8 people 4400 years ago to 7 Billion living now. Which then raises the other side of that point... If man is 100,000s of years old and there havn't been any Mass Extinction Events in the recent 100,000 yrs then why are there so FEW people on the earth? This DOES raise an interesting line of reasoning. But it looks flimsy when you consider the animal questions though.

  After that the problems go deeper than that though, because throwing out Noahs ark throws out Christ, The Bible and quite likely God as well. Christ taught using Noah as an example, if it was just allegory then he was lying by doing so and as such greatly undermined his credentials.

  Cheers