From: lbarrass@phillip.edu.au
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Noah's Ark Apologetics (was Laura questions)
Date: 24 Aug 92 17:28:57 GMT
Organization: RMIT (Bundoora Campus)


In article <1992Aug20.165305.26051@gboro.glassboro.edu>, kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dr Nancy's Sweetie) writes:
> 
> There have been way too many articles about Noah's Ark lately, and I think
> the people posting them are not thinking clearly about what they are saying.
> 
> If we take the story (found in Genesis 6-9) as exactly literally true, and we
> use Mt Everest as our highest mountain, that means that 29,000 feet of rain
> fell in 40 days -- over 30 feet of rain *per hour*.% This is enough to destroy
> virtually anything.  We can postulate an extra miracle to explain how the ark
> survived, but how do we explain other man-made artifacts?  How did the
> Egyptian pyramids, or all the topsoil on the mountains, survive?  Do we
> suppose that God preserved all of that stuff he was trying to destory, and
> the artifacts of people he thought were irredeemably sinful?
>  --
> % For scale, the wettest place on earth is Mt Waialeale, Hawaii, which gets
>   only 38 feet of rain per YEAR.
>  --

	In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the
	seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the
	great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

						Gen 7:11 (NKJV)

This verse shows/implies that not all of the flood came from the heavens, that
some of it came from the "great deep" which is probably the bowels of the
earth. I am sure other versions make mention of this but I can't remember off 
the top of my head which ones (prob NIV).

	

> 
> 
> If we keep down this trail, shrinking the flood as needed to fit the evidence
> available to us (the ice cores drilled out of the poles, the pyramids which
> still exist, the cultural records which show no sudden disappearance of people
> at one time, and so on), we'll eventually end up reducing the story so much

   What about all the cultural records (from all faiths) depicting a
catastrophic flood?



> that it isn't interesting.  Noah built the ark and a big rain washed him out
> into the Mediterranean; he couldn't see any mountains so he assumed the whole
> world was flooded, and when he came to rest near the Taurus mountains in
> Turkey he assumed that the water had dried up.  By this point, we've made the
> details in the Bible so inaccurate that there's no reason to believe he really
> had that many animals, or that he'd built an ark so big.  In sum, we've taken
> everything miraculous out of the story!  You don't need a miracle to get a
> major storm to wash you out to sea, and you don't need a miracle to get a few
> dozen animals into a boat.
> 
>  --
> 
> The Bible gives us the story of Noah without much commentary; there is no
> "this is a true story, the names have been changed to protect the innocent"
> appended, and there is no "this is a parable told by Aaron".  The story is
> just there.


    If it is just a story, why was year, month and day given??



> 
> There is some scientific evidence which calls the details of the story into
> doubt.  Some people respond by concluding that the story is a fable, and that
> earlier assumptions of its literal truth were a mistake on the part of the
> human interpreters.  Many similar mistakes have been made -- people used to
> claim the sun went around the earth based on Psalm 104:5, using poetry as if
> it were expository text.
> 

  True, many of the "Ratbag" fringe fundamentalists (note that I am a
fundamentalist) have done the "fundo" cause a disservice by making stupid and
unscriptural claims. In their zeal to prove the Bible they seem to lose use of
their cognitive faculties (as do a lot of evolutionary scientists.) and in
doing so turn many away from believing the Bible.



>  --
> 
> What I can't fathom (pun intended) is the approach which tries to preserve the
> literal accuracy of the Bible by rewriting it to fit whatever scientific data
> we have on hand.  Firstly because this take God out of the story, since it
> tries to make a purported miracle seem non-miraculous.  (Who cares about some
> guy who made a boat, got lost at sea, washed up later and thought he'd
> survived a planetary flood?)  But also it takes the supposedly reliable Bible
> texts and rewrites, revises, or discards them as needed.  Why defend the
> Bible's accuracy by discarding most of the details from any story that gives
> a few problems?

   True scientific Biblical study (fundamentalist) doesn't try to reconcile the
Bible to Science but science to the Bible (not by fudging results either).
Both camps (evolution vs creation) are guilty at times of not being objective
(yes that includes me), their worldview effects what conclusion is made about
the eveidence 




> 
> [ There is an alternative approach, which is to claim that the scientific
>   data supports the Bible's account of the Flood.  Usually this relies on some
>   scientifically illiterate assertions, or even intellectual dishonesty.
      
   Just as much on the evolutionary side!!


>   attempt along these lines to reconcile the Scriptures with scientific data
>   must, in my view, proceed along painstakingly careful lines with thorough
>   research.  If your beliefs are The Truth, then there is no need to be either
>   sloppy or inaccurate in defending them. ]


   Yes (for both sides of the debate) 



> Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
> "The Hebrews were not the greatest sailors.  There's only one boat mentioned
>  in the Old Testament, and it ran aground.  In a planetary flood."
>                                                                -- David Joyce





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lbarrass@phillip.edu.au                     Lindsay     
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