Water Canopy? Huh?

by Mr. Falcon 116 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

OUTLAW

DjEggNogg
there reason I never lose a debate is because I'm never on the wrong side of one.....DjEggNogg
....................... ...OUTLAW
OUTLAW

DjEggNogg
No, I'm an educated person, highly educated. A Bible scholar; also a genius.....DjEggNogg
.......................... ...OUTLAW
kurtbethel

Hmmm.....for all the "new light" allegedly shining into the minds of the FDS, They have still not gotten far removed from phrenology, pyramidology and medical quackery. This pseudoscience serves an important purpose. It sifts out people who are not gullible, because when they hear this nonsense they turn and distance themselves from it. That leave a core of people who will easily swallow any rubbish they cook up and serve as a "nourishing spiritual banquet".
djeggnog

@bohm wrote:
Is there any scientific evidence that the world at one time was rain-less, enclosed in a "water canopy"? not at all.
@djeggnog wrote:
So do you, therefore, think it reasonable to conclude that there was no water canopy in the expanse above the earth because no scientific evidence exists to support what the Bible says?
@bohm wrote:
its a completely retarded idea which is why they have stopped putting it into print....
@djeggnog wrote:
I would say that it is your conclusion here that is "retarded." Everything about the global deluge is based on the Bible, even if there is no scientific support for the water canopy that existed in that antediluvian world. There is, however, evidence of the global deluge, but the OP didn't ask about the existence of such.
@bohm wrote:
right. so now you have an idea with no scientific support which require magic to work as well as a rejection of numerous fundamental results in various fields of science -- it could hardly get any worse.
Not an idea; what I know is based upon what the Bible teaches as to the water canopy as its contents were responsible for the destruction of the ancient world in which Noah and those of his family survived the global deluge caused by the emptying out of that "watery deep." The same power that brought the water canopy into existence is the same power that emptied that canopy, and this supernatural power belonged to God. No magic trick or sleight of hand could have accomplished such a feat. Whereas many of the ideas said at the time to have been scientific in nature have been urged by scientists upon human beings over many centuries have had to later be abandoned by them, there is nothing to which you could point in the Bible that has ever required revision. Not everyone has faith in what things the Bible teaches, so the fact that you and many others here on JWN find in easy to discount the evidentiary things put forth in the Bible in favor of science isn't surprising, considering that the Bible does so indicate. (2 Thessalonians 3:2)
what is the C14 date of an object from the time of the flood?
What possible difference would it make what the carbon-14 date is for any particular object that you might have had in mind when you asked me this question -- I did notice btw that you were vague in your question by your deciding not to name any object -- when those flood waters would make using it to determine the age of an object an unreliable method of reckoning its age since carbon-14 dating is based upon the assumption that the rate of radioactive decay has been stable? Please read this question again to make sure you understand it so that you do not ask me another foolish question as if the 5,568 years that constitutes the half-life of carbon-14 has been scientifically proven to be true.
Do you realize that because our planet's magnetic field had doubled in strength to what it was 5,568 years ago and is now decreasing in strength that it isn't possible to assume the rate at which cosmic rays were bombarding the earth? More radiocarbon is produced when more cosmic rays reach us, which is what occurs when earth's magnetic field becomes weaker in strength. You may not know this, but this is yet another assumption on which carbon-14 dating relies and is why it doesn't matter how old it reckons an object to be.
Did you not think of this before asking me this question or did you just decide that you would doggedly ask me this question anyway thinking a professor (even one no longer employed as such) wouldn't know or be able to answer it? I know that you've read many of my posts in the past, @bohm, so you have to know that I am in possession of both scientific knowledge and spiritual knowledge, and I really want to assume that you're not a stupid person. It's clear to me because you brought it up that you really don't know enough about the assumptions on which carbon-14 dating is based to be here challenging me on the science; let it go. This thread is about the water canopy, and if you don't want to believe that such ever existed, that's ok.
how do you explain the correspondence of dendrochronology, C14 and ice core samples?
Why do you now, after arguing about carbon-14 dating, bring up the technology that uses the relative radiocarbon date and tree ring count to come up with the absolute date of an object? Bone artifacts excavated here on the North American continent that had once been reckoned as being some 30,000 years old, were back in 1986 determined by archaeologists to have been only 3,000 years old. Why would you be here bringing up dendrochronology, carbon-14 dating or ice core samples if you really had an understanding of this subject?
Was the water canopy in orbit or sustained by a [continuous] miracle?
The earth orbits around the sun in approximately 365.25 days, so it would stand to reason that if the water canopy would have been in orbit around the sun as well. Whether you think the orbitting of our planet around the sun to be miraculous or not, I think it to be nothing short of miraculous that everything that exists in the physical universe in which we live, including things like magnetism and gravity, all work in the way they do without any need for man to have to try to find a way to tweak things to make the scientific principles on which these operations are based work properly.
what was the kinds on the ark?
There are many that have espoused the impossibility of Noah's having gathered some 30,000 to 40,000 animals of all kinds, both those of the "domesticatable" variety (e.g., horses, sheep, goats, camels) and of the "non-domesticatable" wild animal variety (e.g., lions, tigers and bears, oh, my!), and directing them to walk in lock-step, two-by-two, into one of the compartments, or "rooms," contained in that three-story ark, the dimensions of which were, according to Scripture (Genesis 6:15), 300 cubits long (437 ft. 6 in., 133.5 m.), 50 cubits wide (72 ft. 11 in., 22.3 m.) and 30 cubits high (43 ft. 9 in., 13.4 m.), in order to preserve them alive over the year that the ark was going to be their home. (Genesis 6:14-16)
People say that if there was a flood, it was local in nature, and if Noah boarded any animals onto the ark, they had to all of them have been of the domesticated variety alone, for the rest of the animal kingdom unaffected by such a local flood would not have been in any real danger of extinction. Some have even suggested that seven days wasn't really enough time to corral a male and female of each kind of animal and board them all, believing it to be absurd that Noah could have taken enough food into the ark to feed themselves and all of these animals.
They believe that feeding so many animals and carting away the lion dung, the giraffe dung, the raccoon dung, the porcupine dung, the crocodile and alligator dung, all of the bird dung from the various birds, the deer and the antelope dung, the bear dung, and dog and cat dung, the pig dung, the cow dung and the bull dung, and all the other dung, in addition to the human excrement, that would have been manufactured over the year that Noah and his family would have been aboard that ark would have been a tremendous chore that would surely have overtaxed eight people.
Scripture indicates (at Genesis 1:24) that God made 'cattle, creeping things, and the beasts of the earth after their kind,' just as He made plants and vegetation after their kind, so out of an estimated 1,300,000 species, 60% of which being of the insect variety, Noah didn’t really need to make accommodation for as many pairs of animals as some might imagine, considering inbreeding among the different "kinds" of animals. Scripture also indicates (at Genesis 7:2, 3) that Noah was commanded not just to take pairs of unclean animals, but sevens of clean animals and birds, so not all of these sevens would survive the global deluge since Noah would be offering sacrifices for the duration of their "voyage" of deliverance.
You asked me here about the kinds that were on the ark, but Scripture is silent on this, but I have faith that Noah was told to bring flying creatures, domestic animals and all moving animals of the ground into the ark "according to their kinds." (Genesis 6:19, 20) If Noah didn't bring the various "kinds" into the ark, the wide variety of animals that exist today would not exist, since their existence is the result of Noah's obedience, and God's desire that these various animal "kinds" be preserved through the flood along with Noah and his family.
But one thing that often escapes the notice of many of the people that have actually taken the time to read Genesis account with respect to his building of the ark is that Noah dealt with gathering what food would be needed for a year, while God handled the animals, male and female, that would "come unto [Noah]" (Genesis 6:20). God did something similar when he "brought [the animals] unto Adam to see what he would call them." (Genesis 2:19)
Also, what is hard for me to understand is why anyone should think that Noah would have had to concern himself with bringing more food than would be required to feed his family for a year. What with manna being at least one means we can know from reading the Bible that Jehovah could easily have provided to Noah as a provision to keep His family alive, I'm sure that foodstuffs weren't a real issue.
It seems to me that Noah would also have gathered sufficient food to accommodate the diet of the various animal kinds that would be on the ark, but only enough to last for about seven days' time, for once God closed the door to the ark, God could have quelled all dissent among the animal kingdom to their feeling a bit cooped up by putting them all into a state of hibernation for an extended period of time (like a year). Recall that God did this something similar when he "caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept." (Genesis 2:21)
Now if God demonstrated the ability to put a man to sleep for awhile (and we have absolutely no idea how long the "operation" involving his taking a rib from Adam’s body and forming Eve took, perhaps it took as long as nine months or a year to complete it), why couldn't God have "caused a deep sleep to fall" upon the animals in the ark? If God needed Noah to bring some of the seeds necessary to grow fruit trees and certain plant life, Scripture is silent on this, but if it was necessary, obviously Noah would have brought these seeds aboard the ark to preserve them as well, in view of the fact that flora and fauna exists today not just in New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Australia and Palestine, but in other places as well, such as in the mountain of Kenya, Malaysia, Tahiti and Brazil.
God asked Noah to build an ark, and Noah obediently did so, so I do not think that he would have balked at being asked to bring a few seeds into the ark as well. It does seem to me though that an ecological balance does exist in nature for some reason; of course, I could be wrong. It does occur to me though as I speak of the ecology that possibly one of the proofs that God removed the curse that had been upon the ground until after the Flood (Genesis 3:17) is the very existence of flora and fauna, and the rainbow that appears in the cloud after a rain (Genesis 9:11-17) is another proof that serves as a visible reminder of God's promise to mankind, a sign that He would never again bring judgment against the earth by water again, and that there had once existed a water canopy from which those flood waters originated; at least, the very existence of the rainbow as a sign is consistent with there having been a global deluge and gives credence to it having occurred. Likewise, I believe the idea that a water canopy once existed to be just as plausible.
The "tradeoff" though is the extremes in temperatures we now experience on earth in certain regions of the earth since the Flood, due to the emptying of the water canopy ("the waters which were above the firmament"--Genesis 1:7) that destroyed that antediluvian world ("the windows of heaven were opened"--Genesis 7:11), in exchange for the tropical climate that formerly existed when that canopy was in place. Whatever sanitation issues that one might imagine would have arisen during the year could have been managed by the eight people aboard the ark since the animals would have not have been a problem for anyone should it turn out to be the case that these animals passed the year that they spent in the ark in a state of deep slumber.
While Scripture is silent as to many of the details that many find perplexing regarding the ark, the point that should not be overlooked by Christians is that it is due to Noah's faith in building the ark during that 120-year period of judgment upon an ancient world that we are alive today, and are able to consider the significance of the salvation it represents, for that ark -- a massive three-deck structure the length of three football fields and then some, the tangible demonstration of Noah's faith, which led to his salvation and the salvation of seven other souls -- has become a symbol of our faith in Jesus, as we die as to sin when we are momentarily buried under the waters of baptism and become alive as to righteousness upon our coming up out of those waters. (1 Peter 3:20, 21)
@kurtbethel:
Hmmm.....for all the "new light" allegedly shining into the minds of the FDS,
The OP (@Mr. Falcon) ostensibly asks folks to opine whether there is scientific evidence to support what "the WTBS claims" as to there having existed before the flood a "rain-less" world that had been "enclosed in a 'water canopy,'" believing that such would not have been likely due to his belief that a water canopy would "go against the whole water-cycle" thing. When someone phrases a question that way the OP did in this thread, it was clear to me that he was anti-Bible and that he was seeking the comments of others that were anti-Bible, too, and he embraced all of their anti-Bible comments while treating my comment with disdain, which I suspect is because I happen to support what Jehovah's Witnesses have taught for decades now. Because you decided to post an "anti-FDS" comment in this thread pertaining to "all the 'new light' allegedly shining into the minds of the FDS," it seems clear to me that the OP would embrace your comment as well, even though you mention nothing about the water canopy. You refer instead to "phrenology, pyramidology and medical quackery:
They have still not gotten far removed from phrenology, pyramidology and medical quackery. This pseudoscience serves an important purpose. It sifts out people who are not gullible, because when they hear this nonsense they turn and distance themselves from it. That leave a core of people who will easily swallow any rubbish they cook up and serve as a "nourishing spiritual banquet".
For all of the talk of "new light," the discussion about the water canopy isn't new at all and Jehovah's Witnesses teach to the effect that a water canopy once existed above the earth because the Bible describes such. Your mention of "phrenology, pyramidology and medical quakery" indicates a strong anti-Jehovah's Witnesses bias since not one of these things were raised by the OP or by anyone else that posted their respective opinions to this thread. You could have started a thread of your own, than to bring what really is a rant to someone else's thread, but you elected to hijack @Mr. Falcon's thread. Ok.
I am one of the few people that posted to this thread for the purpose of clarifying what Jehovah's Witnesses believe and teach about this water canopy, not so much for the benefit of the OP, but for the benefit of the lurkers that peruse these threads on JWN, and really do not know themselves what Jehovah's Witnesses believe in this regard or the scriptural basis for what we teach others as to the water canopy. I believe I have satisfactorily done this, but I really wish you would have started your own thread for your comment seems to me to be completely out of place.
@djeggnog
Retrovirus

Hi DJeggnog,
Since you have digressed from the OP topic of the discredited water canopy, to the possibility of the Flood and the Ark happening at all, I'll make no apology for responding to your points.
. . . out of an estimated 1,300,000 species, 60% of which being of the insect variety, Noah didn’t really need to make accommodation for as many pairs of animals as some might imagine, considering inbreeding among the different "kinds" of animals . .
Still these timesome long sentences. We non-genious lurkers strive for of brevity. Now when you say "inbreeding", do you mean "interbreeding"? So kinds are not really distinct? Heresy!! Also, what is the point of the 60% insects? Were they not on the Ark?
Noah was commanded not just to take pairs of unclean animals, but sevens of clean animals and birds, so not all of these sevens would survive the global deluge since Noah would be offering sacrifices for the duration of their "voyage" of deliverance
Noah offered sacrifices during the voyage? In the closed ark? In the pouring rain? Do give a Bible reference for this!
for once God closed the door to the ark, God could have quelled all dissent among the animal kingdom to their feeling a bit cooped up by putting them all into a state of hibernation for an extended period of time (like a year).
It doesn't say this in the Bible either, does it? Also a few months of hibernation leave animals scrawny and starving. What would a year of hibernation do? Or did the tigers and alligators "evidently" eat the manna or whatever God provided?
Not an idea; what I know is based upon what the Bible teaches as to the water canopy as its contents were responsible for the destruction of the ancient world in which Noah and those of his family survived the global deluge caused by the emptying out of that "watery deep
The water canopy is not Biblical, nor is it an interpretation unique to the Watchtower. It is a man-made interpretation discredited by an understanding of basic physics.
I am one of the few people that posted to this thread for the purpose of clarifying what Jehovah's Witnesses believe and teach about this water canopy, not so much for the benefit of the OP, but for the benefit of the lurkers
There may of course be some lurkers that are lulled by your posts into believing that there are rational answers to the problems raised by the water canopy "theory". It would help that they probably cannot read or understand these posts. Poor souls! Is that why you make them so long and confusing?
Retro
The Finger

Djeggnog,
"What else can we do? The Bible isn't clear on this point, so we must infer that each creative days was at least 7,000 years in length, but it could be that they were 10,000 years in length. We just do not know"
I didn't understand what you mean, may be you could elaborate on this.
I had always understood that the creative days are the same length. (As days are the same length)
The WT pubications showed Adam's creation to be 4026 and stated that this was the year the 7th creative day started. They also stated when the half way, the morning of the seventh creative day, was reached some 3500 years later (I think I mentioned this to you before) Which would make a 7000 year creative day.
The WT has taught that the end and the thousand year reign of Christ would take place before the close of the 7th creative day.
Are you suggesting we may have thousands of years to go until the end (Armageddon)? Or are you saying that the days may have been of different lengths? Or that we cannot use Bible chronology to say Adam was created in 4026. (There used to be a public talk, my father frequently gave about how to count the time back to Adam, didn't sound like speculation more like evidence.)
Aussie Oz

I too must confess much foolishness in believing the story of the canopy.
From my admittedly un-scholarly education even i can see however that the whole biblical account of creation is an attempt by man to come to grips with his reason for existing and how it came to be. The watchtower likes to refer to other ancient cultures so called creation and flood myths in particular as some sort of evidence that it must be true! But what they fail to see is that also make it distinctly possible that they all including the bible writers just borrowed the stories from each other... maybe even dividing up the tales as to who would 'own' which bit for their particular tribes belief system.
oz
bohm

Bohm: right. so now you have an idea with no scientific support which require magic to work as well as a rejection of numerous fundamental results in various fields of science -- it could hardly get any worse.
djeggnog:
Not an idea;
I am willing to go with delusion, but idea sounds nicer.
what I know is based upon what the Bible teaches as to the water canopy as its contents were responsible for the destruction of the ancient world in which Noah and those of his family survived the global deluge caused by the emptying out of that "watery deep."
yes, i absolutely iagree, your idea is only supported by the bible and has no scientific support. Why deny it and affirm it in the same sentence?
The same power that brought the water canopy into existence is the same power that emptied that canopy, and this supernatural power belonged to God. No magic trick or sleight of hand could have accomplished such a feat.
... you call it supernatural, i call it magic. it mean the same: *Poof*, water!. *poof*, no water! What can be stated without evidence can be dismissed as such.
Next batch of silly things:
Bohm:what is the C14 date of an object from the time of the flood?
Djeggnog: "I did notice btw that you were vague in your question by your deciding not to name any object". Even small schoolchildren would not be confused by such a trivial point... if this continue to confuse you, just go with a typical air sample.
the next is golden:
when those flood waters would make using it to determine the age of an object an unreliable method of reckoning its age since carbon-14 dating is based upon the assumption that the rate of radioactive decay has been stable?
yes it is...
Please read this question again to make sure you understand it so that you do not ask me another foolish question as if the 5,568 years that constitutes the half-life of carbon-14 has been scientifically proven to be true.
oh boy ... yes i am asking you that question! Yes or no, do you seriously believe the rate of radioactive decay in C14 has not been stable the past 6000 years?
(this is simply to good to be true.)
Do you realize that because our planet's magnetic field had doubled in strength to what it was 5,568 years ago and is now decreasing in strength that it isn't possible to assume the rate at which cosmic rays were bombarding the earth? .. You may not know this, but this is yet another assumption on which carbon-14 dating relies and is why it doesn't matter how old it reckons an object to be.
oh i do. But more importantly, the people who perform radiocarbon dating are the same people who know the most about how the strength of the magnetic field affect the generation of the relevant isotopes, and incorporating such changes to the models allow to narrow down the errors in C14 dating a few percent making it more accurate.
So i think your point should begin by showing where the scientists who (as opposed to you and me) know jack shit about radiocarbon dating have got it all wrong and demonstrate that this effect has a magnitude which seriously call into question the entire methology behind radiocarbon dating. i fully anticipate you will do no such thing.
Did you not think of this before asking me this question or did you just decide that you would doggedly ask me this question anyway thinking a professor (even one no longer employed as such) wouldn't know or be able to answer it?
what was the title of your PhD? What university did you obtain it from and what papers have you authored and what field did you work in? you can PM me these details if you would like to keep them private.
bohm

I cant resist...
Bohm: how do you explain the correspondence of dendrochronology, C14 and ice core samples?
Djeggnog:
Why do you now, after arguing about carbon-14 dating, bring up the technology that uses the relative radiocarbon date and tree ring count to come up with the absolute date of an object?
yes i wonder why dating techniques which contradict noahs flood is relevant in terms of establishing if noahs flood occured.
come on! you cant seriously be asking such a silly question!. But thats your explanation for why C14 and dendrochronology agree, a 25 year old example of a misapplication of radiocarbon dating? So if DNA evidence is misapplied and give wrong results once, all DNA evidence is wrong? man i do wonder where you was a professor, but my instincts tell me we will never learn the details of your fruitfull academic career.
Ice core samples is apparently left as an excersize to the reader, or did the misapplication of C14 dating also invalidate that field? What abour Uranium-Thorium or Uranium-Uranium dating, i suppose the shoe-example invalidate them to?
It is a good thing they only dated ONE shoe, had there been TWO failures of C14-dating we might have ended up discarting the heliocentric model for the solar system :-).
bohm

Sorry, i have to post this again because the formatting is off.
Bohm: Was the water canopy in orbit or sustained by a [continuous] miracle?
This is properly the most classic response yet from djeggnog. We begin with an irrelevant fact:
The earth orbits around the sun in approximately 365.25 days, so it would stand to reason that if the water canopy would have been in orbit around the sun as well.
Yes! you are totally right. And the sun orbit the center of the galaxy in about 250 million years (of the top of my head), and i bet our galaxy would orbit the COM of the local cluster of galaxies in a gazillion years. Now what does that have to do with the question? NOTHING! you are simply misunderstanding the question on purpose because your answers are so weak they would make Ken Ham cry: you got no scientific evidence and thus you avoid a scientific discussion and must rely on misunderstanding me on purpose.
Whether you think the orbitting of our planet around the sun to be miraculous or not,
I still do not believe in magic...
I think it to be nothing short of miraculous that everything that exists in the physical universe in which we live, including things like magnetism and gravity,
I totally do not believe you ever had a degree in science.
all work in the way they do without any need for man to have to try to find a way to tweak things to make the scientific principles on which these operations are based work properly.
yes and i think this is amazing to. But did the water canopy orbit the earth(as opposed to the sun, moon, jupiter, alpha-centauri). I bet you do not have an answer because either yes or no would lead to problems for your idea. So you choose to derail the question. Shame on you for not having the interlectual curriosity and honesty to stand by your ideas even where they are weak!.
as for the kinds and the ark, we learn god may have done any number of things (using magic), that you do not know what a kind is (making the claim very difficult to test, as opposed to evolution), etc. etc. Your simply speculating and it reveal your two standards: With C14, you can speculate there may be a problem, and that should be taken very very seriously. With the ark, you can speculate there may be a solution, and then that is pretty much as good as a real solution.

Water Canopy? Huh?

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