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Could Noah's Ark have really happened ?


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Since sin is based on morals then it changes as the generations change. For example it is morally wrong these days for first cousins to marry and yet a few hundred years ago (or less) it was perfectly acceptable even to the point where the church happily performed the ceremony. Of course this has nothing to do with the lack of evidence to support the existence of God.

Actually in most nations of the world today, you can marry and have children with a first cousin. In a few you can even marry and have children with a half sibling (with government approval).

The United States has the only bans on cousin marriage in the Western world. As of February 2010, 30 U.S. states prohibit most or all marriage between first cousins

http://en.wikipedia....e#Other_regions

The dark blue regions allow first cousin marriages...

375px-CousinMarriageWorld.svg.png

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The reason usually cited for such laws is to prevent inbreeding, although it takes generations of inbreeding for the genetic effects to begin to appear. I think the real reason we evolved an incest tabu is because of the Hell such activity would cause within the family.

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The reason usually cited for such laws is to prevent inbreeding, although it takes generations of inbreeding for the genetic effects to begin to appear. I think the real reason we evolved an incest tabu is because of the Hell such activity would cause within the family.

If cousins have children, and on of the cousins has a genetic disorder?Then chances are the children will inherit the disorder.

Pure breed dogs have more chances for genetic problems than mutts.

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If cousins have children, and on of the cousins has a genetic disorder?Then chances are the children will inherit the disorder.

Pure breed dogs have more chances for genetic problems than mutts.

That's the reason for sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual to begin with. I think the evolutionary reasons for genetic diversity go way back
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That's the reason for sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual to begin with. I think the evolutionary reasons for genetic diversity go way back

You know it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

One of the complaints I've long had on the Noah story is the oft quoted biblical timeline. Entirely bogus. Ussher's date for the Flood pegs it at 2348 BC, which is 3 years before the start of Egypt's 6th dynasty and 13 years before Sargon the Great conquered Sumer. If the world was supposed to be so empty after the Flood, then where did all those other people come from?

Solution? Well, we could ignore the Bible altogether. We could, like atheists and Fundamentalists take the Bible literally and ignore everything else. Or we could find clues in the Bible that lead to a new timeline compatible with those of mainstream science.

In my new book, *snip* , I detail the evidence leading to a new biblical timeline, and through science, the discovery of the Flood's target -- a species which went extinct at the new Flood date. When you understand God's purpose, then understanding why the Flood was necessary becomes easy.

Was there more than one "Noah?" Many cultures have myths of a Noah-like character and a boat with animals. Perhaps one boat would have been too unrealistic. Thirty or forty Noah's and their boats would have increased the chances of starting again and enriching the gene pool.

Some complain about all that extra water. Where did it come from; and where did it go when the deed was done? Right now, we don't have a clue, except for a few scraps in Genesis. "Waters of the deep" and "windows of heaven" don't tell us much. But if you've ever read science fiction, the idea of gates comes to mind. Either the water was gated to Earth from a similar ocean somewhere else in the universe, or God (who created every galaxy in the universe) added a few "drops" of water on this tiny, out-of-the-way planet.

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If cousins have children, and on of the cousins has a genetic disorder?Then chances are the children will inherit the disorder.

Pure breed dogs have more chances for genetic problems than mutts.

Dammit I know that. Read what I posted more carefully.
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One of the complaints I've long had on the Noah story is the oft quoted biblical timeline. Entirely bogus.

Two potential dates for The Flood are 2917 BC and 2807 BC, both based on an apparent climate-related disturbance in growth rings of bristlecone pines. But those are in California - if they are records of a world-wide disturbance, it would have to be something HUGE! But there are other chronologies that date back that far - I'll have to check them. I would have to agree that the biblical time line is all messed up, but if you've ever dated other biblical events, you already knew that. Ancient records are extremely poor about getting dates right, unless they happen to mention an astronomical event

Solution? Well, we could ignore the Bible altogether. We could, like atheists and Fundamentalists take the Bible literally and ignore everything else. Or we could find clues in the Bible that lead to a new timeline compatible with those of mainstream science.

It is going to be extremely difficult to use science to confirm Bible stories without crossing the line into pseudo-science.

In my new book I detail the evidence leading to a new biblical timeline, and through science, the discovery of the Flood's target -- a species which went extinct at the new Flood date. When you understand God's purpose, then understanding why the Flood was necessary becomes easy.

Science can tell you what happened. It might tell you that a given species went extinct (or at least, was locally extirpated), but because it can't demonstrate that there is such a thing as a god, it can't tell you anything about a purpose such a god might have had. THAT is pseudo-science.

Some complain about all that extra water. Where did it come from; and where did it go when the deed was done? Right now, we don't have a clue, except for a few scraps in Genesis. "Waters of the deep" and "windows of heaven" don't tell us much. But if you've ever read science fiction, the idea of gates comes to mind. Either the water was gated to Earth from a similar ocean somewhere else in the universe, or God (who created every galaxy in the universe) added a few "drops" of water on this tiny, out-of-the-way planet.

There are karst springs in the Persian Gulf. When it rains in the mountains, the water flows through cave systems, exactly like water in a storm sewer. It vents under the Persian Gulf. That's what the "fountains of the deep" are. They still flow today. Admittedly, they aren't as spectacular as the biblical description. But if their story is an exaggeration, then maybe other Bible stories are also exaggerations.

Until you can answer the question of where all that water came from (and where it went), you don't have a case, unless you want to argue that Noah's Flood was just an unusually large, but still very natural, storm. That is the approach I would use.

There have been some titanic storms. In 1862 the Trout River in Oregon set a high-water record. In 152 years since, river levels have reached no higher than one-quarter of that record. That was called the "Noahkian Flood."

In 1886 Wichita, Kansas recorded a temperature of 42 degrees below zero. Hopkinsville, Kentucky recorded 40 degrees below from the same storm and the harbor at Portsmouth, New Hampshire froze over - the only time in history that it has done so. Across the northern plains, cattle died by the tens of thousands - 7000 in the Cherokee Strip alone. Settlers living in the new, but poorly insulated, clapboard houses froze to death - whole families - while those in the old soddies pulled through. Snow was so deep that a Central Pacific train was forced to stop. Melt water from the stoves and boiler ran down onto the tracks and froze the train to the rails so hard it couldn't move. This one storm forever changed the western livestock industry.

On Halloween, 535 AD, Irish King Eochaid MacErc drowned in a vat of wine. That kept him from having to live through the storm that hit later that winter. In Gottland, there was no summer in 536 or 537 - just continuous snow. The Annals of the Four Masters reports a "failure of bread." A yellowish haze settled through Europe and the sun was weak. The starving Franks crossed the Alps, hoping to find food in Italy. Caught between them and Justinian's army advancing from the south, Rome capitulated. This storm is often cited as the beginning of the Dark Ages. This was the time of Beowulf. In Scandinavia they still remember the name of this storm - Fimbull Winter.

Anything that might be claimed for Noah's Flood is going to be up against some stiff competition - competition strong enough to have been the actual source of the story.

Doug

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At the supposed time of the flood there were humans living on most of the planet and the vast majority had not heard of the Christian God nor had their ancestors. God, upset because all the world did not worship him destroyed them all with a world wide flood thus committing genocide on a global level.

The Bible didn't say that God was upset that mankind wasn't worshiping Him. He was upset because their thoughts were continually evil (and thus were their actions). Noah was the last one that was righteous and God was going to protect him and start new with humanity. The same story is found with Lot in the city of Sodom.

The question then becomes is genocide a sin or not. If i is not a sin for God because he is God then it is part of his nature so committing genocide by humans is not sin because it does not go against God's nature. If it is a sin regardless then God committed a huge sin.

Not as clever an answer. Genocide is spawned from hatred of an entire race simply because it is not your race. God placed His image on mankind. So I don't assume it was an easy thing for Him to do. He even gave them 125 years to change! For 125 years, Noah built the ark and the people witnessed it and scoffed. They had 125 years! That doesn't sound like God hated them. It sounds like, if God did not intervene, Noah would have been killed and his descendants would have been consumed with the evils of their culture.
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Actually in most nations of the world today, you can marry and have children with a first cousin. In a few you can even marry and have children with a half sibling (with government approval).

The biologists tell us that the more-closely related two individuals are, the greater their chances of raising healthy children, BUT the chnces of having a child with a birth defect is also greater. The optimum between these two conflicting facts seems to be second cousin.

I used to know two people who met in college, fell passionately in love, and decided to get married. They had been sleeping together for several months when word reached their parents. The parents and the kids all had a get-together where the kids got the bad news - they were half-siblings.

The birth certificate had the wrong name for the girls' father - a classic case of "mis-assigned paternity." That being the case, I think they should have quietly gotten married. After all, the law says they weren't related.

Doug

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Noah's ark and a global flood is just one of those stories that those who take it literally are in deep water.

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The version of the legends/myths we have originated in Sumeria/Mesopotamia. The oldest known copies in cuneiform script date from about 1200 BC. The stories are obviously much older. What the originals said, we'll never know, unless some archeologist digs up something. So my explanation of the original list consisting of barnyard animals is as viable as the Bible's version of the story. AND: mine makes a lot more sense. The Bible simply "borrowed" the flood story body-and-soul from Sumer.

That being said, the Bible's version of the story leaves some serious problems. How did the snake's descendents reach the Americas? It's a mighty long swim from Ararat. And the jaguar and the New World monkeys and the pronghorn antelope and the mountain lion and the grizzly bear and the Kodiak bear - the bears can't swim far enough to reach mainland Alaska, let alone cross the Bering Sea.

And while we're on the topic: just when did you say this all took place? I have a tree-ring calendar going back 8400 years and there are others that reach all the way to the Ice Age. There is no evidence of prolonged flooding in those rings. So Noah must have lived during the Ice Age; is that what you're saying? That would make him a contemporary of mammoths, mastodonts, saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, short-faced bears.... That Ark is really getting crowded. Then there's the question of how sloth dung could survive in a Grand Canyon cave if it had been soaked in a flood. And how pinyon pines, a desert species, could have survived nearly a year of inundation.

There's a single-stemmed Norway spruce in northern Sweden that dates back 9550 years. And a huon pine in Indonesia that dates back 10,000 years. A creosote bush in the Mojave Desert is 15,000 years old. And Clone Pando is somewhere between 100,000 and one million years old - the world's oldest living thing - we think - unless that 80-acre fungus in Oregon is older.

I assume you're just tossing out some difficulties with my version of the flood story, but if you really believe that stuff, you have a lot of explaining to do.

Doug

Hang on...I don't believe in the flood story.

Maybe I'm just reading it wrong (I am just up) but do you think I believe in the story as a literal event?

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Maybe I'm just reading it wrong (I am just up) but do you think I believe in the story as a literal event?

Yes. Not the way the Bible tells the story, but a monstrous flood did occur in the Near East about 2900 BC, give or take a few centuries. Bristlecone rings indicate two serious disruptions in 2917 BC and 2807 BC. Something big happened in those years.

For the YECs: Oaks record a flood ring in the anatomy of the cells. Oaks are highly ring-porous with very distinct differences between early wood and late wood. Normal early wood has extremely large elements that disappear in the late wood. But a flood ring resulting from oxygen starvation, has very small early wood elements and the flame cells in the late wood are disrupted. Makes it very easy to determine a flood year. The European Oak Chronology goes back 17,000 years, well into the ice age and was produced from trees that grew near rivers - the ideal place for recording floods. If there was a world-wide flood, there would be flood rings in oak trees from all over the world from the year of the flood - all in the same year. But no such world-wide ring exists. The trees say Noah's Flood did not cover the whole world. Have you ever heard a tree lie?

Doug

P. S.: For a picture of oak flood rings, see:

St. Georga, S. and E. Nielsen. 2002. Signatures of high-magnitude 19th-century floods in Quercus macrocarpa tree rings along the Red River, Manitoba, Canada. Geology 28:899-902. The rings are pictured in Figure 2.

Doug

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