the flood, mammoths, elphants, and food.

by Crazyguy 280 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Vidiot

  jgnat - "...hubby hated it. Not 'accurate' enough for him."

  Now that's funny.

  Aronofsky's Noah was more true to the Old Testament account that DeMille's The Ten Commandments, and for eighty years, JWs have f**king loved that movie.

  Besides, an "accurate" Deluge movie (by JW standards) would maybe be an hour long, have very two-dimensional characters, and, frankly, would be so WT-biased that no one would want to watch it.

  EDIT: I told my devout JW mom that, and even she had to concede the point.

  jgnat - "...I am also pleased they included the drunk and naked scene."

  Naughty girl; you just wanna see Russel Crowe's bare ass...

  Seriously, though, I liked how they actually gave a compelling reason for Noah getting wasted (depression) and Ham not helping cover him up and self-exiling (resentment), instead of that stuff just happening out of the blue...

  ...the visible stars in daytime during the pre-Flood scenes were a clever creative touch, too.
• 

  redvip2000

  If god is going to perform miracles like causing the animals to sleep and not eat/drink/poop/etc, then when not just skip the whole ark thing and just miraculously levitate Noah and family and the animals above the water in a state of deep sleep?

  C'mon now. You know very well that Jehoober has a need for drama. The easiest solution is never a good choice for Jehoober. For example when Adam and Eve sinned, he could have simply killed 2 humans and save thousands of years of imperfection and heartache, but noo; instead let's drag the situation into thousands of years of drama at the expense of of all of us.

  Of course none of this is true anyway, but shows how absurd the whole concept is.
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  Vidiot

  Yup.

  The more one examines the Deluge account from a logistical standpoint, the more miraculous "cheats" have to be assumed to have taken place in order for the whole thing to work.

  Eventually, however, you can't help but reach the point where the sheer amount of supernatural phenomena needed for the account to be literal paradoxically undermines the account's credibility.
• 

  Comatose

  Poster jws made the same point I always make on the flood. It is one of the central things that woke me up. Either there miracles and the flood was not needed or the flood didn't happen.

  god wanted Noah to build a boat that was seaworthy for a year and could withstand the intense forces involved in the flood. So, one of two things happened, Noah built this type of boat or god used a miracle to protect the boat when rain and springs of water flooded the entire earth and covered even Mt. Everest. If it was a miracle then why spend 40 years building the ark instead of dedicating 40 years to finding children or orphans who could be taught right from wrong and saved.

  Noah was told to gather all the animals by 2's or 7's and then these animals survived a year in dark cramped and closed spaces without disease or death and walked out of the ark and proceeded on a long journey all on their own with no help. Or god again used miracles to protect tree's now living on earth that are older than the flood, protect coral reefs, protect all vegetation, protect ocean mammals, and god used miracles to get the animals back where they belong. If it was a miracle then why kill all the animals anyways? Just miraculously save them.

  If so many miracles were needed then why would god choose to drown an entire world using miracle after miracle along the way? Couldn't an Omnipotent god just blink and 'dissapear' all the people and buildings from existence? No need to have dead bodies, Omnipotence means you could just decide that all people are vanished as well as their civilizations. Easier than all the miracles that the flood requires. Plus, god supposedly felt bad for doing this and then promised not to do it again... God can't think ahead?

  The only excuse left for a religious person or a JW is to say that it was a good lesson for us today. It shows that god has a pattern of destroying the wicked and saving the righteous. Except based on the bible that is not what happened.

  Genesis 6:11-21 should be read. The key parts to notice, Genesis 6:15 god sets the dimensions of the ark prior to the preaching work Paul says Noah did. From the very start Genesis 6:18 says god made a covenant with Noah and his sons alone. So the ark was built to dimensions set by god that would hold Noah and his family and the animals. The ark had no room on it for righteous repenters or innocents. So any "preaching" work would have actually just been Noah telling everyone they were about to die. He couldn't offer them a spot on the ark. God made a covenant with HIM alone. Now, does anyone believe that there were NO orphans or street kids who could have been taught about this god and chosen to be good? Kids are gullible. You could easily take a starving child and offer shelter and teach them about god and his flood and thereby have more workers for the ark and save lives. Not to mention that it makes absolutely no sense at all to think that there were only 8 people on the entire earth who were decent.

  So, in conclusion we have a story that could only have happened with numerous miracles, and if so then why not just use your miracle power to do this all cleaner and kinder for the animals and planet? Also, it can't serve as a lesson of a loving god who saves the righteous since god made no such provision for the people on earth who were not bad.

  The last thing a JW could say is that god can ressurect good people. But, if god executed divine judgement on these people then they would not get a resurrection. To give them a resurrection acknowledges that god killed innocent ones which is wrong and immoral.

  It's a lie or a fable, take your pick.
• 

  tornapart

  I think that there was a flood, a large one but that it was localised. When the bible speakes of the 'earth' being covered by water it could mean just the area known at the time. The earth as we know it took thousands of years before all of it was discovered. I think the flood must have been somewhat significant because of other myths and legends about it in other cultures. As for the animals, maybe it was just the few known in that area too. Perhaps even just domestic animals.

  What has always bothered me about the story (even as a JW) was how did Australia come to have all the marsupials (bar the oppossum in the Americas). Why are nearly all the indiginous species of mammals in Australia either marsupials or monotremes? If the flood was global then this would have been impossible.

  The logistics of feeding/cleaning up after all those animals didn't make sense to me either.
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  Apognophos

  Well-reasoned, Comatose. The more one thinks about the story, the more it clashes with how we think of God today and what we know of science today. It becomes clear that this is an ancient story that was intended to make perfect sense to its primitive listeners, without any need to resort to unspoken miracles to make it believable.

  I think that there was a flood, a large one but that it was localised. [...] I think the flood must have been somewhat significant because of other myths and legends about it in other cultures.

  There's no need for a local flood to have been the same flood for everyone, nor does that really make sense when you think about how far back in human existence it would have to have happened in order for all those cultures to share the same story. It's more likely that a number of peoples smiply made their own flood stories based on their own flood experiences.

  What has always bothered me about the story (even as a JW) was how did Australia come to have all the marsupials (bar the oppossum in the Americas).

  That's a good point. One of the things that never occurred to me as a Witness is that the aquatic life would have had more than a wee problem surviving the Flood given all the debris in the water choking them, and the mixture of salt-water and fresh-water bodies.
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  St George of England

  Even if the flood story was true, it was a total waste of time.

  Within just a couple of generations mankind was as bad as ever, building the Tower of Babel.

  George; also very embarrassed that I used to believe this twaddle!
• 

  M*A*S*H

  What I want to know is, did rainbows exist before the flood?
• 

  Captain Obvious

  Wait a minute... Mammoths after the flood? Flood didn't happen yeah but... Mammoths only 4500 years ago?

  Citation needed please, sir
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  Comatose

  St. George you are right and I forgot about that point as well. The Tower of Babel was built about 120 years after the flood according to Watchtower and bible chronology. So, Noah's sons were all still alive or had just died. So the 3 people who had all those babies apparently didn't tell their kids or grand kids about the most amazing event in the history of the earth? I mean 120 years after the flood there would still be debris and bones scattered everywhere. But these people were so wicked that short time after that god had to confuse their language? Huh?