With todays Public talk being about the Global Flood as a real event, please give any information/views that you have on this topic. Evidence either for or against is more than welcome. Thank you.
Did the Global Flood of the Bible really happen? Please give evidence
by The Quiet One 39 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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bohm
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
More interesting, what evidence was given in the public talk? I did not believe the WTS actually presented any evidence aside "jesus says so" and the lame idea that flood myths imply a flood.
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Jack C.
Just the consistancy of flood legends throughout most of the worlds cultures would seem to indicate that there was some type of catastophe that was evident throughout most of the world. This could very well been consistant with the sudden melting of glacial formations at the end of the last ice age. Many large groups of animal bones found in large piles in caves and canyons also seem to indicate that a sudden catastophic event like flooding caught them off guard. The idea of floodwaters covering the entire planet as well as the story of Noah and the ark and the sumarian story of the epic of Gilgamesh are of course myths, metaphors and exaggerations of such a catastrophe. Ancient peoples most likely assumed that the entire planet was flooded if their particular homeland were completely submerged.
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bohm
Flood myths indicate survivors who could make flood myths in direct contradiction with genesis. Bones in caves without flood sediments indicate the animals did not die in a flood.
There was no flood.
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tornapart
I believe certain evidences of a major flood of some kind, myths and legends seem to indicate that it actually happened. I believe the bible account but not that it covered the whole globe. The fact that most marsupials are limited to Australia proves to me that it was limited. But mammoths caught with vegetation in their mouths encased in ice prove to me that a limited flood occurred.
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Leolaia
But mammoths caught with vegetation in their mouths encased in ice prove to me that a limited flood occurred.
How does that prove anything other that a mammoth died suddenly while eating? What does that have to do with a Flood, as opposed to, say, a landslide or a stumble into the bog or any other hazards in the tundra steppe?
Wikipedia: "Preserved frozen remains of woolly mammoths, with much soft tissue remaining, have been found in the northern parts of Siberia. This is a rare occurrence, essentially requiring the animal to have been buried rapidly in liquid or semi-solids such as silt, mud and icy water, which then froze. This may have occurred in a number of ways. Mammoths may have been trapped in bogs or quicksands and either died of starvation or exposure, or drowning if they sank under the surface. The evidence of undigested food in the stomach and seed pods still in the mouth of many of the specimens suggests neither starvation nor exposure are likely. The maturity of this ingested vegetation places the time period in autumn rather than in spring when flowers would be expected. The animals may have fallen through ice into small ponds or potholes, entombing them. Many are certainly known to have been killed in rivers, perhaps through being swept away by river floods". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth)
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Leolaia
The biblical Flood story is derivative of the Mesopotamian flood myth found in the Eridu Genesis, Epic of Gilgamesh, and Atrahasis. There is some evidence that the Mesopotamian story preserves memories of an actual Flood that occurred in Mesopotamia around 2900 BC:
In the WB-62 Sumerian king list recension, Ziusudra, or Zin-Suddu of Shuruppak is recorded as having reigned as both king and gudug priest for 10 sars, or periods of 3,600. [ 5 ] In this version, Ziusudra inherited rulership from his father Šuruppak (written SU.KUR.LAM) who ruled for 10 sars. [ 6 ] The line following Ziusudra in WB-62 reads: Then the flood swept over. The next line reads: After the flood swept over, kingship descended from heaven; the kingship was in Kish. The city of Kish flourished in the Early Dynastic period soon after an archaeologically attested river flood in Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara, Iraq) and various other Sumerian cities. This flood has been radiocarbon dated to ca. 2900 BCE. [ 7 ] Polychrome pottery from the Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3000–2900 BCE) was discovered immediately below the Shuruppak flood stratum, [ 8 ] and the Jemdet Nasr period immediately preceded the Early Dynastic I period. [ 9 ]
The significance of Ziusudra's name appearing on the WB-62 king list is that it links the flood mentioned in the three surviving Babylonian deluge epics of Ziusudra (Eridu Genesis), Utnapishtim (Epic of Gilgamesh), and Atrahasis (Epic of Atrahasis) to river flood sediments in Shuruppak, Uruk, Kish et al. that have been radiocarbon dated to ca. 2900 BC. This has led some scholars to conclude that the flood hero was king of Shuruppak at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3000–2900) which ended with the river flood of 2900 BC. [ 10 ]
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The Quiet One
Thanks Leoleia. Did you ever believe in the Flood of the Bible as you were taught, or have you always been too well educated to believe it? (Assuming you were a Jw)
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QuiteRational
It only makes sense that there are flood myths all over the world. People would usually settle near water because it allowed for easy transport, because they landed there by boat and because they had to drink too, of course. But such is the nature of bodies of water that they flood and villages are easily swept away.
What does not make sense, however, is a worldwide flood as described in the bible. What's more, the whole account is absolute nonsense. Why?
1. The ark itself is problematic. A boat that size could only hold if it was reinforced with iron, and Noah supposedly lived in the early bronze age; that means the vessel is out of the window.
2. Still the boat was too small. Don't forget, Noah supposedly took a pair of every kind of animal on the boat (or seven of some, depending on which of the two contradictory stories you read) so he had to fit them all on there. He would need food, fresh water, places for them to move around in (otherwise their muscles would atrophy). They would need enough resources for them to eat for a whole year. And if your solution is to assert there were few animals on board, that would require a superfast evolution any evolution-denialist would not touch with a ten foot pole!
3. The vast amounts of work involved. Remember I talked about food earlier? Yeah, it comes out too. There were only a eight people on the Ark who would all have to scoop shit for *hundreds if not thousands of animals*. That alone would have been a 24/7 job and you would still need more time.
4. The waters. The bible says that "all the tall mountains that were under the whole heavens came to be covered." (emphasis mine.) That's right, all mountains, under the whole heaven! That's mount everest too, at 8 km above normal sea level. Actually it's 8848 meters, but let's give them those 848 meters since it was so long ago. You know at which depth tropical coral dies? 50 meters. It would have died out. Just like every single fish because when salt water and sweet water mix in such a catastrophic event, nothing survives.
5. The waters. Seriously, 8 km. Think about that for a moment. In 40 days and 40 nights, it rained 8 km. Let's do a bit of maths here. 40 days/nights is 40x24 = 960 hours. If 8 km of water fell in 960 hours, that means 8.33 km/h (for the Imperialists here, that's 5.16 mph) or 2.3 m/s (7.56 ft/s). And that would have happened all over the world! Oh, by the way, a wooden boat supposedly survived that violence.
6. Plantlife. It died. All of it. You know how you can't give a plant too much water or it dies? No imagine submerging a plant in an 8 km high flood of salt and sweet water with violent torrents everywhere. Noah would've had to have those on the boat too, and take care of them. At least now we know some of the animal dung was used as fertilizer, eh? Let's just hope he had enough water for those plants left too. Where did he keep that anyway?
7. The aftermath. What do you suppose happened to the ground after it was all done? Animals would go outside, either promptly attacking each other for food in the case of the carnivores or eat some of the kept plants in ark in case of the herbivores. Noah must've had a huge job trying to cultivate all these plants and forests *all over the world* again and keeping them out of harms way against those pesky herbivores!
8. So I wonder who carried all these viruses and bacteria. Perhaps Noah carried the HIV and then Shem could have the ebola.
There is so much more to be said about this flood, including some physics on how all the water going from cloud-vapour to water would burn the planet to a crisp, but let's keep it with these simple proofs.
The global flood from the bible did not happen. Period.