I'll go only if they get dinosaurs to ride on...just like Noah did.
Creationist Theme Park: "Ark Encounter"
by leavingwt 91 Replies latest social current
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nolongerwaiting
I heard the JW Sunday talk outline on the flood twice in the 5 years before I woke up. The first time I thought it was a good talk. (Ah, animals once drowned in groups ... that must have been a global flood! Darn those people in Turkey for preventing us from going and taking pictures of the ark. It's amazing the illogic your brain will accept when it's conditioned to do so.) The second time I had some doubts. For example, they forgot to explain the ice cores in the arctic which hold a record of several 100,000 years of uninterrupted history. If the whole earth flooded about 4000 years ago, it seems like you'd see a pretty big disruption.
Also, how exactly did all the marsupials end up in Australia? And why don't we see the largest variety of species in the middle east with the variety reducing as you move further away? How did the American Bison swim across the Atlantic Ocean? And so forth ... The flaws in a global flood story are truly staggering when you think about it rationally.
I appreciate the discussion here about the limitations of wooden boats. I had never thought about the structural and leakage problems related to a vessel of that size.
This "Ark Encounter" Park is a testament to the power of religion in U.S. politics and the failure of our school systems to teach science and rational thinking skills.
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ziddina
Yes, TD, a "keel" would have been difficult - nay, impossible - for the "ark" in "Noah's" day, because ship-building - at that time, still very primitive - generally used a SINGLE TREE for the keel - being carved from the single tree....
Now, let's look at the size of the trees in the Middle East about 3,000 - 4,000 years ago - the climate would NOT have produced a tree large enough; and we KNOW that ol' "Noah" had NO CLUE about the existence of the New World, with its giant Sequoia and Redwood trees...
But even the giant Sequoias and Redwood trees do not produce the kind of lumber that would make a decent 'keel' - their wood is very soft, and tends to split and shatter easily...
Amongst the sea-going cultures of northern Europe, they generally used oak, especially for the largest ships... http://www.regia.org/Ships1.htm "All ships at this time were made principally of wood. For a long time, it was the considered opinion that only Oak was used, but as more shipwrecks from the Viking period have been discovered, we've learned that ships were made out of Ash, Elm, Pine and Larch and several other woods too. As a rule, only the greatest warships were always made from Oak, not only because of the great strength of the timber, but also because the tree was sacred to their warrior God Oðin..."
And from: https://thevikingworld.pbworks.com/w/page/3941468/Viking-Age-Shipbuilding comes "In the Viking Age, any type of wood was used by craftsmen that could be. Boats and ships were mostly made out of hard woods like oak and pine. Vessels would often be comprised of more than one type of wood. From the Skuldelev vessels we also know that lime, ash, alder, and birch were also used. In the Gokstad ship, pliable spruce roots were used to secure the strakes. Wood nails and pegs were also used. ..."
Unfortunately, the term "gopher" wood is very vague. This website: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=365&letter=G discusses the possibility that the "ark" was actually made of REEDS, like the Egyptian reed boats (which would have been the form of ship-building that the Israelites WOULD have been familiar with...)
"The material of which the ark of Noah was made. The word "gofer" occurs but once in the Bible, viz., in the expression
The renderings proposed by modern interpreters are as a rule arbitrary and unsatisfactory. The identification of "gofer" with "cypress" (Celsius, "Hierobotanicon," i. 328; Bochart, "Geographia Sacra," ii. 4) rests on the mere assumption that the roots of these two words are akin. According to P. de Lagarde, "gofer" stands for "gofrit," meaning originally "pine," from old Bactrian "vohukereti," and latter also "sulfur," on account of the likeness in appearance which sulfur bears to pine-resin ("Semitica," i. 64; comp. "Symmicta," ii. 93, and "Uebersicht über die im Aramäischen, Arabischen und Hebräischen Uebliche Bildung der Nomina," p. 218).Others think that "gofer" can best be explained from the Assyro-Babylonian literature. Cheyne, starting from the assumption that the Hebrew narrative of the Deluge is a mere translation from some similar Babylonian document, supposes that the passage under discussion read in the original "gushure i? erini" (cedar-beams). He thinks that first the word "erini" was overlooked by the Hebrew translator, who afterward mistook "gushure" for a tree-name, and accordingly wrote s.v.). F. Hommel holds the Hebrew
The "kufa" (Arabic, "kufr" = Hebr. "kofer" = "gofer") now in use on the rivers and canals of the land that gave birth to the Hebrew narrative of the Deluge are made of willow-branches, palm-leaves, etc., closely interwoven like basket-work, with a coat of bitumen on the inside. This is evidently a very old type of water-craft, suggested by the natural resources of a land devoid of large trees suitable for ship-building , but having an abundance of lighter material and bitumen. Such must have been the ark of Noah (Hastings, "Dict. Bible," s.v. "Babylonia"). J. Halévy implicitly adopts the same view ("Recherches Bibliques," i. 130).
The reading of the Masoretic text is correct, at least in the consonants. It is none the less certain that in course of time the Assyrian when the Hebrews had become familiar with the Phenician methods of ship-building, came by degrees to be considered as an absurdity, and was altered into
For passages of the Bible supporting, though only indirectly, the identification of "gofer" with "reed," see the Bible commentaries to Ex. ii. 3, Isa. xviii. 2, and Job xi. 26, and the Hebrew lexicons' s.v.See also Papyrus; Reed; Ship and Shipping ....."
So, "Noah" lacked the proper kinds of wood (Oak, Ash, Elm) in sizes needed to build a durable "ark" that would hopefully withstand the extreme stresses it would be subjected to, during a world-wide flood....
A "reed" boat would NEVER have withstood the stresses of the open ocean - not one with the dimensions that the "ark" supposedly had, despite the success of Thor Heyerdahl's Egyptian papyrus boat, the "Ra", in the 1970's....
Also, I looked back over my calculations for the amount of tar needed to cover just the outside of the "ark", and found that I under-estimated the quantity - I figured FIVE gallons to cover 64 square feet, but forgot to multiply the 740 gallons of tar by FIVE - which comes to around 3,700 GALLONS of tar - JUST for the OUTSIDE of the "ark"....
Times two, just for simplification - we actually come up with 7,400 gallons of tar to cover the "ark" both inside and out... Which is actully GREATER than the carrying capacity of a semi-truck-trailer....
And we all know that "Noah" didn't have semi-truck-trailers - or paved roads - or heating elements - or extension ladders - or cranes - to supposedly "build" this "ark"...
Which would be another good bit of logic to hit the guide with....
"What did it take to build THIS model of the "ark"???"
"Cranes, trucks, nail guns, ladders and scaffolds, etc.???"
"But "Noah" didn't have ANY of those things, did he????"
Then they would probably fall back onto "It's a miracle" or "God works in mysterious ways"....
Zid
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just n from bethel
Another thing that bothered me - how amazing was it that Noah could start out and end up in the same region (middle east) when all was said and done? Floating on an ocean-covered earth for many months... what are the odds that you'd end up in the same region you started out at? As I've always said, the math just doesn't add up when it comes to the noah/flood story.
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bohm
The ark is scientifically accurate.
How did noah build the ark? Miracle!
how did noah make room for the animals? Miracle!
How did noah fill the ark? Miracle!
how was the earth flooded? Miracle!
how did noah clean up after the animals? Miracle!
how did noah feed the animals? Miracle!
how did noah care for the animals? Miracle!
how did noah keep the boat floating? Miracle!
how did noah end up the place he started? Miracle!
how did the water go away again? Miracle!
how did the animals go to their respective parts of the world again? Miracle!
how did the animals survive the post-flood enviroment? Miracle!
and finally, how does one account for the hundreds of different geological structures which contradict the flood? Miracle!
Evidently, the ark does not contradict True Science(TM). Or does anyone want to say God cannot perform miracles?
(and all this hinge on the assumptions God cannot controls the sex drive of his angels without drowning babies).
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jam
Maybe the flood story would have been more conceivably if the Ark was
omitted. Noah gathered all the animals too the highest mountain and
waited out the flood. But nooooo he made A boat. I wonder how big where the waves.
1) Violent movement of the earth,s crust and by volcanic activity of momentous proportions
2) Tremendous tidal waves and rushing currents scoured and deeply eroded the continental
surface.
3) Entire forest were ripped up and transported large distances to be dumped where the
currents slowed.
4)Yielding of crust at even one point with resultant escape of magmas and water or steam
would then lead to earth movements causing further fractures until, as the scriptures
portray so graphically"the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up".
This was A gigantic catastrophe, beside which the explosion of the largest hydrogen
bomb, or of hundreds of such bombs becomes insignificant.
5) The worldwide ocean of the Genesis flood was swept by wind storms that would
make modern tornadoes seem like gas from A fly.
A catastrophe that could accomplish the largest percentage of geological activity
in ONE YEAR, events that uniformitarian assign to billions of years would be so
overwhelming.
Yet into the Jaws of destruction, Noah and his family singing Kindom songs, frying
up some bread cakes and drinking wine, sailed A rickety wooden boat-oversized
leaky and unsound. JUST UNBELIEVABLE.
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
Noah would have needed to include a large water purification system aboard the ark. Man and animals require clean water even more than they need food. The Bible doesn't include any reference to them bringing water aboard at the start. Although they could have collected some of the initial rainwater, the rain would have had to stop for a long time in order for dry land to appear. They couldn't have simply used the floodwater as is, since it would have been poisonous, too salty and badly polluted with dead bodies, as well as the discarded waste from the animals aboard the ark.
Personally, I find Santa's magical sleigh much more believable than Noah's mythical ark.
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ziddina
Good point, Billy...
I never noticed that glaring omission of fresh water, on the "ark", before...
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just n from bethel
Billy you just brought out another "It's a miracle" moment. I'm not sure at what point I stopped investigating plausible ways for this event to have occured.__ After a while, it becomes such a futile exercise.
Watching these folks in Kentucky try to reconstruct the ark is like watching a children's show about out how Santa Clause can reach every home, fit in every chimney, etc.
The sad thing is that these folks actually think their re-enactment is real. Just like the guy in the hall who gives the talk about the flood. It's just sad in a very pathetic kind of way.
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torn in two son
I suppose if they wanted to be really accurate, the park cannot have toilets. Large dirt pits may suffice.
I'd like to see an exhibition of the termites on the ark.
For the sake of accuracy, all food must be hunted and/or gathered by the guests.
It would be forever entertaining to see park golf carts whizz by a "first-century" style village.
While reports of it began only in 1817, I can only assume that cholera was prevalent at the time, meaning that fairly 30% of visitors must be infected before visiting.
I think as a park activity, there should be sick people in the middle of an arena, with Christians on one side, and Muslims on the other. At the mark, nonstop praying should begin to see who's God heals who's sick people first. Losers must be executed.
torn