A few questions about the ark

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_Jersey Girl
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Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Jersey Girl »

Ray A wrote:
Jersey Girl wrote:The ark rested on the 17th of the 7th month upon the mountains of Ararat. Three months later we see this....

5And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

What does that mean? That the ark rested on a mountain peak that couldn't be seen until 3 months later? The water surrounded the ark while it sat upon a mountain top...without moving...but the peaks couldn't be seen. You've got water covering a mountain peak and yet the ark remains steady atop it. That makes no sense.


Why do you expect sense from mythology?

I'm sure FARMS will have an "answer".


I thought you were trying to make sense of it.

:-)

I'll come back to this tomorrow.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
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_Jersey Girl
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Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Jersey Girl »

Ray,

The 20 ft. of water is addressed in this piece:

http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/duration_of_flood_response.html

Try to read that before tomorrow and I'll come back to this thread. I really have to go now.
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
_Ray A

Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Ray A »

Jersey Girl wrote:I thought you were trying to make sense of it.

:-)

I'll come back to this tomorrow.


I'm not trying to make sense of it, just taking the statements as they are recorded. And weighing the logistical probablities and improbabilities.
Last edited by _Ray A on Thu Dec 11, 2008 6:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
_Pokatator
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Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Pokatator »

bcspace wrote:The river ascribed as flowing out of the Garden and becomming four heads doesn't really match anything in Iraq or Turkey.


Doesn't match Missouri either.
I think it would be morally right to lie about your religion to edit the article favorably.
bcspace
_ludwigm
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Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _ludwigm »

Sometimes, reaching a certain point in reading a document, I realize that it is not worthwhile to read more.
That was the point in the Ark article from http://www.christiananswers.net, quoted by Ray on the first page:
Most Hebrew scholars believe the cubit to have been no less than 18 inches long [45.72 centimeters]. This means that the ark would have been at least 450 feet long [137.16 meters], 75 feet wide [22.86 meters] and 45 feet high [13.716000000000001 meters].

The height of the ark is given by 16 digit accuracy. This means accuracy of one billionth micron.
As we would define/measure the distance between Sun and Earth with accuracy of one hundredth millimeter.

The Rydberg constant was defined with 13 digit accuracy.
(′rid′bərg ′kän·stənt) (atomic physics)
The most accurately measured of the fundamental constants, which enters into the formulas for wave numbers of atomic spectra and serves as a universal scaling factor for any spectroscopic transition and as an important cornerstone in the determination of other constants; it is equal to α2mc/(2h), or, in International System (SI) units, to me4/(8h3ε02c), where α is the fine-structure constant, m and e are the electron mass and charge, c is the speed of light, h is Planck's constant, and ε0 is the electric constant; numerically, it is equal to 10,973,731.568 549 ± 0.000 083 inverse meters. Symbolized R∞. For any atom, the Rydberg constant (first definition) divided by 1 + m/M, where m and M are the masses of an electron and of the nucleus.

Anyway, the size of the ark may be of thousand times important (+3 digit).
I can say it is a fundamental data.

by the way I definitely like the articles about The Ark. They can be better than the One Thousand and One Nights.
كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة‎ Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla (for DCP only).
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco
- To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
_Some Schmo
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Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Some Schmo »

squawkeye wrote: After the flood passed apparently the world was now divided into the continents as we know them. Is this correct? If so, how did he wallaby get from where Noah landed to Australia? The Komodo monitor lizard to a South Sea Island where it grew big enough to kill and eat people?

The alpaca and llama in South America, the Polar Bear in the arctic and the penguin in the antarctic?

I've mentioned here before that I told my daughter this story (she was 6 at the time) and her main objection was "How could Noah get animals from all over the world to come to his boat?"

Forget about how they were dispersed to their various habitats after landing... how'd they get to the boat in the first place?

Even a 6-year-old knows this story is rubbish.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_Ray A

Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Ray A »

Q: Who was the greatest financier in the Bible?

A: Noah - he was floating his stock while everyone else was in liquidation.
_cinepro
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Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _cinepro »

Awww...just when I was getting homesick for MAD, someone goes and starts a Noah's ark thread on MD. How nice.

Here's a recent thread from MAD where the subject is argued ad nauseum.

Here are some of my thoughts from conversations past:

I believe Noah's flood was not global, for reasons too innumerable to mention. But I believe the Old Testament describes a global flood.

I do not believe the flood could have been local, for reasons including the following:

- In the time it would take to build an ark, Noah and co. could have just walked to higher ground and camped out.
- An ark as huge as described in the Bible would take very deep water to float. A local flood wouldn't be deep enough.
- The ark supposedly ended up in the mountains. A local flood couldn't float a boat into the mountains.
- Local floods are inefficient and imprecise ways to kill people. Disease or war is much better, and God has used both to better effect.
- A local flood would wipe out very, very few species. Even fewer if those species could have migrated to higher ground before the flood.
- A local flood renders the covenant between God and Noah as meaningless and silly. And broken thousands of times since.


An ark wouldn't be needed to save animals from a local flood. You might have a few species of insects that are only found in the specific area to be flooded, and don't have the wherewithal for God to inspire a few to migrate to higher ground for a year; it probably wouldn't be too many. I seriously doubt there is a middle-eastern local-flood plain with more than a few such isolated species. Instead of an Ark, Noah probably could have put all the endangered species into his pocket with room to spare for a pita and some hummus.

And keeping in mind that the Bible gives the flood a depth of 15 cubits (about 22 feet), the endangered animals just needed to get to the nearest mountain range with a height greater than 22 feet to stay out of the flood waters. That would actually have worked for Noah and his family too.

None of the proponents of a local flood have ever gone so far as to actually propose a geography for where the local flood might take place. They can't. The best we can get is some vague generalization about the world "being different back then". The second we try to apply a "local flood theory" to any, you know, real place, it falls to shambles because there isn't a geography anywhere in the world that meets the requirements for a local flood theory. Meaning, the water would have to be deep enough to float an ark into the mountains or hills, deep enough to remain for a year, and wide enough to wipe out whole species of animals and every population that was known to a man who had lived in the land for over a hundred years. And big enough that a bird couldn't fly out to the edge of the flood waters.

The second we start to viewing the scriptures from the "point of view of the author", we totally nullify the ability to have faith in the scriptures (or our modern leaders.) What other stories have been misinterpreted because we couldn't read the mind of the author?

As I've said many times before, my favorite thing about the local flood theory is how silly it makes the whole story. It's like a giant joke, and not even God, Noah, and the modern apostles knew about it. Every verse takes on a bizarrely weird meaning, in which every word means something other than what it says.
_Trevor
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Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Trevor »

Jersey Girl wrote:Oh, I see how it is. I made a mistake. I'm running on oh, about 4 hours of sleep, Trevor. You must think you're pretty important to point out my error, huh.


It's really the only reason I bother to point out errors: to increase my lofty stature.


Jersey Girl wrote:Admission of total guilt: I, Jersey Girl, screwed up a post. I misattributed a post to Trevor instead of Ray A the original author of the post. I scanned the thread and did a crummy job of reading it. I am but a lowly worm in the garden of thought that is Mormon Discussions. I am the composter extraordinaire of posters.

Signed, (oh, excuse me) TYPED by,
The Jersey Girl


Your tone is just academic snotty enough to pass my snoot-test. If you had refrained from using a word like 'crummy,' I would have mistaken you for one of my colleagues. Also, remember that, as an academic, it is wise never to admit fault in the way you did. Better luck next time, or be glad you do not belong in my insane world.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
_Ray A

Re: A few questions about the ark

Post by _Ray A »

cinepro wrote:Every verse takes on a bizarrely weird meaning, in which every word means something other than what it says.


Arguing about Mormonism, or religion in general, is not only like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, thinking that the argument will end there, but it goes on about whether the angel is black or white, has wings or not, which kingdom it came from, whether it can shake your hand or not, whether it's male or female, resurrected or transit in the spirit world, and as if that's not enough, whether the pin is steel or plastic, thick or thin, needle-type or conventional, whether it refers to a gate through which camels pass through, or is some type of chiastic literary device embedded in scriptural tapestry which only prophets who can look into seerstones can really decipher, whether it's historical or symbolical, and, whether it came from Kolob or the star next to Kolob, then after all that there'll be a 50 page discussion on where Kolob is, all forgetting the original point - the ridiculousness of it all, if taken literally.
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