ALDO ALSO, said "What, the earth created in 6 days, on a flat circle suspended ontop of foundations and with a curved roof (from which God 'poured' the great flood) book of Genesis?
I think, considering he is a Christian, you should consider the meaning of 'allegory'. Because if you're suggesting the Bible can be taken entirely as literal truth..... pi=3."
The earth was created in 6 days. Allegory? Well, only if you concider the meaning of "Literal". Im suggesting, some of the bible can be taken figuratively, literaly, and alegory. Many scholers and learned historians reconise the bible, expecially the Old Testament, as a Historical book. They even have confirmed its accuracy. From the text of the Old Testament, most of it, is history of the people, families, and certian events. Historical Document. Proof. When it gets to Genesis, about the beginning, and the arc, it may get a bit fuzy for the historical refrences, as, no one was there to prove or disprove or witness anything, about 'in the beginning'. Well, besides that, look at the worldwide flood. Several peoples ancient history tells of a great flood, covering the mountians. The Noahainac Flood (sp?). Canopes of water from the sky\space w\e area came crashing down, and at the same time, water from under the earth, came crashing through the earths crust and it filled from the bottom too. Meh, more later. Tired as ****.
Ok, biblical literalism is stemming from the whole creationist thing, but I'll bite regardless.
The biblicals honest historical value is of an allegorical/mythological reflection of historical events. Most, if not all, myths are based upon some event which becomes mythologised in order to understand it, or use it to push a particular belief system. If you accept the bible as literal truth, why not the Quaran? Or the hieroglyphic records of ancient civillisations such as Aztec, Egyptian, etc. Or the Greco-Roman creation story? Or the Viking creation myth?
One of the modern theses is that the Biblical flood story is inspired/derived of a similar story in Assyro-Babylonian mythology. I'll quote the wikipedia entry for quickness;
[q]The Atrahasis Epic, in Akkadian (the language of ancient Babylon), tells how the god Enki warns the hero Atrahasis ("Extremely Wise") of Shuruppak to dismantle his house (which is made of reeds) and build a boat to escape a flood with which the god Enlil, angered by the noise of the cities, plans to wipe out mankind. The boat is to have a roof "like Apsu" (the underworld ocean of freshwater of which Enki is lord), upper and lower decks, and must be sealed with bitumen. Atrahsis boards the boat with his family and animals and seals the door, the storm and flood begin, "bodies clog the river like dragonflies", and even the gods are afraid. After seven days the flood ends and Atrahasis offers sacrifices. Enlil is furious, but Enki defies him, "I made sure life was preserved," and eventually Enki and Enlil agree on other measures for controlling the human population. The story also exists in a later Assyrian version.[/q]
Now, you could take this as correlative - but if you do, it contradicts with the bible and Noah. (the biblical story itself contradicts itself in alternating between taking 7 pairs and 1 pair of animals IIRC). The origin as babylonian myth is supported by the term 'gofer wood' in the bible (to construct the ark), which is a type of wood not referred to elsewhere in the bible or known in Hebrew, and likely to be a translation of either the Assyrian word for 'reed' (giparu) or Babylonian 'cedar wood' (gushure iş erini).
For there to have been substantial
local flooding precipatating the Noah myth isn't exactly unlikely; you'd be hard pressed to find an inhabited region that is not affected at some point in its history by flooding. Flood myths are common across civillisations, but
they all vary, for example some have people surviving in treetops or high hills rather than boats - and that would contradict the bibles global flood. Also, the flood (based on biblical generation lengths and the building of the first temple) can be dated at about 2250BC; Egyptian records go back further than that (to 26BC) and have no mention of a global flood. The Great Pyramic at Cheops was built at around 25th BC, and has no water marks upon it
Moreover, there is no evidence whatsoever of a 'mountain topping' flood. Perhaps you're referring to the 'anomolies' on Mt Ararat which are purported to appear as if timber. Analysis by the US Defence Intelligence Agency has dismissed this and described them as 'long linear facades', which are caused by the falling of accumulated ice and snow (the only analyst who had trouble resolving this was one who 'badly wanted to believe' it was the ark).
Now, of the canopic / underground models used to suggest how the flood occured - if a canopy of water equivalent to 40 feet global flooding existed in the atmosphere, it would raise atmospheric pressure and increase oxygen and nitrogen levels to be toxic. For that vapour to occur, it would need to be superheated - so Noah and co would be poached. Such a canopy would also have reduced the sunlight and caused significant temperature drops. And there are questions like how was this water suspended, why,m and why did it all fall at once?
Now the underground water idea; rock, i.e. the crust, doesn't float. So any water would need to be in there from before the time of Adam, somehow compressed down. Even a mile deep, the earth is boiling hot - and the water would be superheated, poaching Noah. Again. Finally, underground water would cause erosion around the fissures, leaving erosional deposits that would have come out with the water and been extremely noticeable and covered significant areas - none have been seen.
The other models have similar flaw, mostly relying upon miracles or selective blindness. your suggestion here would, in particular, have poached Noah because it requires superheated water. There is also no evidence of flood sediment/deposits in Greenland ice cores, which have been dated back 40,000 years. Also, such a mass of water would have broken up the icecaps, and they would not have been able to reform by modern day. There is also no comparative erosion between geographically disparate mountains; i.e. the Sierra Navadas would show the same erosion as the Andes, but they don't. There's also no evidence of a catastrophe in tree-rings, which go back to 10,000 years.
The ark, to be 450 feet and made of timber, would not only be too large to be seaworthy (wooden boats >300 ft need metal straps to strengthen them), but also too small to hold a pair of every animal and the food and water to sustain them. This becomes even more problematic when we consider the animals that exist in the world today - how would Noah get a penguin? Or a sloth? Or a koala? Or a dodo? The latter is important because it can't just have been sitting around handy; it's a species that only survive(d) in isolation from predators on an island, and in that it's scarcely alone. If we go the alternate view and say the animals included in the ark were only a select subset, how do you explain the animals that weren't included and live in the world today?
Additionally, the bible makes no mention of species like earthworms (the ark contain animals walking on the ground), which would be extinct under a global flood. Also, there's no explanation exactly how, say, a sparrow could surive the best part of a year flying continuously above a flood covered earth with no food source. Not to mention the likes of the dinosaurs, and any extinct animal, contradicting with either Noah putting every animal on his ark (brachiosaur on a 450 foot barge? Eek!) or God not letting his creations die.
There's no explanation of how the ark contained enough food for all that time, including special diets for the animals, or how that food was kept fresh and free from parasites. The small crew would also need to dispose of a rather large amount of manure, which was deposited by animals housed below the waterline. Tonnes, in fact. There's also no explanation of how the ark could be ventilated. The animals would also require a massive amount of excercising (including the predators); how was that achieved on a tiny crew with animals cooped in small rooms? Or how could you feed and water all those animals with just 8 people?
There are also numerous geological features that contradict any form of great flood. And the survival of plants, fish (because fish survive in either salt, clear, etc water - global flooding would mean at least some died from the change in that, not to mention inter-species competition), diseases (that don't exist in hosts other than humans), or short lived species (such as mayflies, which require to lay eggs in fresh water within a few days) contradicts the bible. Also, the flood would destroy the habitats for all those animals on the ark, meaning they'd die once released anyways (pity the poor penguin, who treks all the way to discover the icecaps have fragmented due to the flood water buoyancy). Also the predators would be
screwed, because predators need to have a singificantly larger number of prey than their own population, and you'd see the predators kill off the prey and then starve to death. Not to mention populations of <20 animals are effectively unviable and doomed to extinction. And that the flood myth doesn't mention the hermaphrodite animals, those reproducing asexually, etc.
And of course there is no explanation for the geographical disparity of animal species - why are marsupials only found in Australia? Why lemurs only in Madagascar? what about interdependencies between organisms, like between the yucca plant and yucca moth? None of these can occur with the flood scenario.
Plus, if God is omnipotent (and you'd have to be to deposit water at a rate of something like 30ft per hour), why use a flood? Why not just click fingers and remove everything you don't want? Did the flood remove all the wicked people from the world?
Although this is all a digression from the topic.
FORDPERFECT, said "Did you see the fish changing? I don't think so. Evolution didn't happen so shut up!"
"Yeah, what he said!"
Please tell me you're not taking that seriously?
