The Flood

[MMcNeely]

So, new to the atheist thing, and stuff the above really makes me wonder how the hell people could be Christian... I mean come on.  Multiple documented events taking place during the Biblical flood.  Sadly, I never looked this up when I was Christians (and I'm sure most Christians haven't either.)  Even more sad was that I blindly followed something without researching it for myself.  I feel really stupid.

[BaalServant]

This is an awesome timeline.  That's a good question, too, regarding why information like this isn't more prevalent.

Don't feel stupid - like you said, there's not much in society that reflects these aspects of reality.  Besides, it's hard to differentiate between things you've been taught that are valid and things you've been taught that haven't been shown to be valid.

It's a question I've asked many christians myself - how could the flood have happened if we can see that there was no sudden break in civilizations?  Not once has someone acknowledged that since all evidence points to the flood not happening, the flood didn't happen. 

[12 Monkeys]

The Indians of North America are NOWHERE to be found on this timeline   But then again you would have to look back another 8 thousand years or so

[Samuelxcs]

Well Noah certainly had a long life.

[changeling]

That explains how the Egyptians built the pyramids.
They floated the stones up to the top during the global flood.

All they had to do was tie the stones to all the dead bloated bodies floating around.
And some people say it was extra terrestrials, huh!

[Rustybeatz]

I've taken history so I know there were Indians in north America up to 10,000 years ago or more, as well as people living in china, etc.  What makes it confusing for me is when I read stuff about how "radiometeric dating has flaws" and "the scientists are off base because of these flaws". Of course I read that stuff on the answers in genesis website so I'm sure they're flubbing the numbers or something to work in their favor. I just don't know enough about that kind of stuff yet to make an educated determination on what's correct. I'm sure they're relying on that, also -that is, people not knowing enough.  The way they word it sure does sound convincing, though!  I'm not going to ask to have all of that explained to me here because that's just ridiculous. I'll do the research. I guess what I'm getting at is, if the measuring of the age of the earth is accurate why do they still try to hang on to the flood happening when it's proven that it's impossible for it to have happened?

[velkyn]

I've taken history so I know there were Indians in north America up to 10,000 years ago or more, as well as people living in china, etc.  What makes it confusing for me is when I read stuff about how "radiometeric dating has flaws" and "the scientists are off base because of these flaws". Of course I read that stuff on the answers in genesis website so I'm sure they're flubbing the numbers or something to work in their favor. I just don't know enough about that kind of stuff yet to make an educated determination on what's correct. I'm sure they're relying on that, also -that is, people not knowing enough.  The way they word it sure does sound convincing, though!  I'm not going to ask to have all of that explained to me here because that's just ridiculous. I'll do the research. I guess what I'm getting at is, if the measuring of the earth is accurate why do they still try to hang on to the flood happening when it's proven that it's impossible for it to have happened?

Answers in Genesis is notorious for lying outright, misquoting people and using long superseded information to support its claims for a global “flood” and creationism.  Yes, radiometric dating is not perfect.  That’s why we use other methods in conjunction with it.   As you noted, AiG depends on willful ignorance.   

Christians cannot agree even when their supposed “flood” happened.  Was it 5000 years ago?  30,000?  You can get all sorts of answers.  Unfortunately, for them, floods leave very distinctive evidence and we see NOTHING that would confirm a world-wide flood.

As for why they continue to lie, my opinion is that they have so much of their self-worth wrapped up in their religion and being “right” that they can’t stop.  If they admit they lied about one thing, there is nothing that stops people from guessing that they lied about a lot of other things.   

If you would like good places to start to look at the evidence that supports that there was no bible flood, I have a bunch.  I also have a background in geology so if you have questions, I can try to clarify.

[Nam]

I had a flood in the bathroom the other day.  I blamed Biblegod.  It was obviously its doing.

-Nam

[Rustybeatz]

lol @ nam.

@ velkyn - yes, I would very much like that.
Also, I just made an intro post to give you a little better idea of where I am with everything.

[velkyn]

@ velkyn - yes, I would very much like that.
Also, I just made an intro post to give you a little better idea of where I am with everything.

I'll take a look.

Here are some links and a youtube video:

Talk Origins is a good website on evolution, creationism and the attendent nonsense that theists often come out with:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html

very good video showing that a global flood has no evidence: 



Let me know if you have any questions. 

[Backspace]

Love the chart.  Since it mentions "Creation" in the biblical section, I'll share one of my favorite's from The Onion, "Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World."  I laugh every time I read it.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/sumerians-look-on-in-confusion-as-god-creates-worl,2879/

[jaimehlers]

That timeline, even leaving aside the secular part, really illustrates just how weird some Christian beliefs are.

I mean, think about it.  If Adam lived 930 years, and Noah lived 950 years, that means Noah was a contemporary of Adam (at least if you follow the Biblical timeline based on "X begat Y").  It makes very little sense for humans to be as fecund as we are with lives of almost a thousand years...or, to put it another way, just how many children did Eve have?  Most of them didn't even get an honorable mention in the Bible...and yet people trust that the Bible is accurate?

[Historicity]

The Indians of North America are NOWHERE to be found on this timeline   But then again you would have to look back another 8 thousand years or so

You overlooked, "Evidence of corn cultivaition in Mexico" and "Parts of Caral, Peru bulit".

[Gnu Ordure]

Jaime:

I mean, think about it.  If Adam lived 930 years, and Noah lived 950 years, that means Noah was a contemporary of Adam (at least if you follow the Biblical timeline based on "X begat Y").

A pedant writes:

Using the Biblical timeline, the year of the patriarchs' births and deaths were:

Adam 0-930
Seth  130-1047
Enosh 235-1140
Kenan 325-1235
Mahalalel 395-1290
Jared 460-1422
Enoch 622-987
Methuselah 687-1656
Lamech 874-1651
Noah 1056-2006.

So when Noah was born, all his direct paternal ancestors were alive except for Enoch, Seth and Adam.

Gnu.

PS: A question which irritates Christians. The Flood took place when Noah was 600, ie 1656. Note that by that time all the patriarchs were dead except for Methusaleh, Noah's grandpa - who died that same year.

So the question is, did Noah refuse to give his old grandpa a place in the Ark and leave him to drown?

The Bible doesn't say...

PPS The chart for some reason gives the period from the Creation to the Flood as 1670 years. I'm not sure where they get the extra 14 years from.

[nogodsforme]

The Indians of North America are NOWHERE to be found on this timeline   But then again you would have to look back another 8 thousand years or so

You overlooked, "Evidence of corn cultivaition in Mexico" and "Parts of Caral, Peru bulit".

Ya gotta kinda stretch to make Mexico and Peru part of North America. Okay, I'll give you Mexico. 

[Rustybeatz]

I'll take a look.

Here are some links and a youtube video:

Talk Origins is a good website on evolution, creationism and the attendent nonsense that theists often come out with:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html

That video was very crazy.  I can't believe he used that experiment as an example when he's never done it himself to know that it's wrong lol.   I'm going to check out the talkorigins website and see what goodies are there. 

[velkyn]

I'll take a look.

Here are some links and a youtube video:

Talk Origins is a good website on evolution, creationism and the attendent nonsense that theists often come out with:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html

That video was very crazy.  I can't believe he used that experiment as an example when he's never done it himself to know that it's wrong lol.   I'm going to check out the talkorigins website and see what goodies are there.

don't quite understand what you mean about the video. "he" who? 

[Rustybeatz]

don't quite understand what you mean about the video. "he" who?

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.  That Hovint guy.  I think that's his name.  I'm at work right now and our computers don't allow video so I can't watch it to get his name   

It's the Christian guy that said all you have to do is poor dirt and sand and mix it up and it will naturally fall into layers, and that's his reason or evidence for the flood.  So they do the experiment in the video and it doesn't work lol.  That had me laughing (with my mouth gaping open in astonishment, though). 
Oh, that reminds me, I was at school today and I'm walking out of the UC (center where you can eat/study/etc) and somebody hands me a tract that says EVOLUTION on it.  "OK", I think, "you have my attention".  And then below the word evolution it says "Hear the other side".  It's a church putting on a seven week program on the "implausibility of Darwinian evolution".  I can't go though because it's every Tuesday in the evenings, which is when I'm at work. 
That's not all, about 100 yards later, in front of the library, this girl steps out from nowhere (the bushes? no it wasn't a burning bush, ha!) and hands me a pamphelet titled "Don't Believe the Lies They Tell You in College".  It had the usual advice - don't drink and have sex too much just because everybody's doing it, get enough sleep, blah blah blah.  But as it went further it started getting "spiritual" and then I saw it.  "Don't believe it when 'educated' people tell you that evolution is the origin of life."    And I thought to myself, "Well, they at least got that part right.  Evolution DOESN'T CARE about the origin of life."   And the rest of the part on evolution was 100% wrong.  I dont' even know that much about evolution and I could tell it was written to be intentionally misleading.   Anyway, I know this is kind of off topic from the flood, but in a way it isn't because Christians fail again.  It kind of made me mad when I read that part because they're obviously lying.  I almost went back to that girl that gave me the pamphlet to tell her she's handing out lies, but that's not the right way to go about it.  It's just crazy though.

[velkyn]

ah, got it.  Yep, it's pretty funny, and sad, that creationists can't even do simple experiments and depend on ignorance and outright lies to try to support their religion.  Sometimes I do feel embarassed for them, and wonder if they understand just how bad that makes them and their religion look.   

and I'd have to tell you I'd probably have gone back and said "I'm sorry, but your pamphlet is full of lies and attempts to spread ignorance about the science you hypocritically use everyday.  How does that work with your god saying he hates lies and liars?" 

But I know that would make going to college hard.   I think it's so neat that you're going back.  I should but I'm nervous that I couldn't do it again. 

[nogodsforme]

Every so often there's a presentation or "debate" on campus about religion or evolution vs creation or some such. Usually one of the physics profs[1]is put up against some Christian pastor brought in by the student evangelical group.

I have not gone to one yet, because the very idea makes me tired. I mean, will I hear anything new? The pastor will say that god fine-tuned the universe. The physics guy will give a detailed, well-supported scientific presentation that shows why that is not the case. The pastor will preach and wave the bible around. The religious attendees will shrug off whatever the physics prof says with, "None of that stuff matters, I know I feel Jesus in my heart" and congratulate the pastor for witnessing for Christ and holding his own against the secular evilutionists.

Then they will get into their cars with their cell phones and satellite radios and head off oblivious to the fact that they are using evilutionary science every minute of their lives.

1.	a cynical Russian atheist who once told me he had given up on democracy and thought dictatorship was better--yikes!

[Poseidon]

Backspace; The onion article to which you referred is hilarious. God is a party crasher it would seem. LMAO.

[ungod]

Well Noah certainly had a long life.

Had to...it's a long walk to Australia to get those Eucalyptus leaves to feed the Koalas during the voyage.

[ungod]

If you want to read a better version of Noah and the Flood than the Bible version, you've got to read "Not Wanted on the Voyage", a novel by Canadian author Timothy Findley, which presents a magic realist post-modern re-telling of the Great Flood in the biblical Book of Genesis."

See plot summary at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Wanted_on_the_Voyage

[RaymondKHessel]

Oh, this is great. The Flood is my absolute FAVORITE story in the bible. 

I'll hold off on my usual bullet-points of retardatry and the 1001 plot-holes, and just pose this one question... It's a new one that just came to me about 10 minutes ago.

So forgetting ALLLLLL the logistical, physical, logical, etc. problems with the Flood, let's jump ahead to the part where Mt. Everest is covered in water.

As has been discussed previously, we're talking a world-wide rise in sea-level of 5.5 *MILES*. K? Who knows where it came from, or where it went, let's just say it was magical space water from the 5th dimension. Right.

Now, obviously Noah & his kin are going to be floating around on TOP of the water rather than underneath it.

So here's the problem. All that water is compressing world-wide air pressure to unsurvivable levels. The air is trapped and then insanely condensced between the stratosphere (is it the stratosphere I'm thinking of?) and this new 5.5 MILES taller sea level... Am I wrong, or would this not flatten Noah & his little wooden boat into splinters?

Assuming of course that they somehow managed to get around the fact that they're FLOATING AT THE HEIGHT OF MT. EVEREST... Did they have the foresight to pack life-saving oxygen tanks for Noah and family? Did they have giant ones for the elephants and little baby ones for the 22,000 species of flies?

Because it's very, VERY easy to straight up die at the top of Mt. Everest for lack of oxygen. And cold. That applies to humans... I'd imagine moreso for things that require more oxygen, like big ol' Hippo lungs. And how did all the cold blooded critters survive the -20' temperatures?

What drives me nuts is that when you have an all-powerful character at the heart of the story, the believer can hand-wave away ANYTHING. Not enough space for 9 million species? God made pocket dimensions on the boat. What did they eat? God made it so none of the animals got hungry. Where did they get enough potable water? It was RAINING, DUH! Too cold? Yahweh's fiery lovins made them totally warm & toasty. 

it goes on and on, so that by the time you patch the 300+ plotholes and rifts in the story, the whole thing was a MASSIVELY overcomplicated exercise in ultimate futility (considering the world ended up "shitty" again later on down the road).

ALL this crap Yahweh would have had to do to make this story actually work, and you have to ask yourself, Why? WHY would Yahweh do all that? And why was *NONE* of it mentioned in the actual bible? Wouldn't Yahweh know these details would be important to future generations who would naturally be more skeptical due to their increased knowledge of things like physics and geology and biology and, er, boat making?

Wouldn't it have ADDED to Yahweh's glory to detail all the fantastic things he did to make this happen? Like Adamantium nails or cosmic water troughs or magically sating their hunger and poofing away the 1,000 metric tons of poop and 10s of thousands of gallons of urine being produced on the daily? Insulating the boat in a holy forcefield made out of Glory in order to stop the boat from being flooded and torn apart in the (what must have neccesarily been) hurricane force winds, repelling the various trees and buildings and billions of corpses that would have made the water a minefield for a wooden boat?

Why wouldn't those things be mentioned?

Could it be because the dumbasses who wrote the thing had virtually no imagination to ask these questions? This was long before Hollywood or the printing press; it's not like they had a whole lot of stories to inspire them. Well, actually, they did, but they were OTHER religious works, and they didn't so much use them for inspiration as they just flat out plagarized the s**t out of them and ripped them off.

But anyway, could it be the authors, for all their lack of imagination (and low opinion on their target audiences' capacity for critical thought), could it be they thought it sounded like a totally plausible idea just the way it was? Sure seems like it to me. <shrug>

I mean, why explain where all the animals go, there's only 1,000 species! And the boat is big! How big WAS this flood exactly? Oh, it, like, totally covered the tallest mountains. You betchya. What did they all eat? Shut up, next question. What? Sure the boat would hold together why don't you build one and prove us wrong oh yeah you CAN'T 'cos you're a broke ass illiterate bronze age pig farmer and god hates you. Now stop asking questions, this story is WATER TIGHT yo!

But after SO MANY apologetics and excuses and patches for this just really poorly thought out and badly told story... Why would your god go to all that trouble? And not only go through the motions of the 300+ magical "McBuffings", but make no mention of it so future generations will read the story and point and laugh at it's outright stupidity...

Why not just snap his fingers and "poof" away all the bad things?

Why the drama of the flood and all the magical protections and quantum space boats n' s**t? Again, we're talking like THREE HUNDRED or more magical miracles Yahweh would have had to poof-up in order to fortify the boat and it's cargo with the qualities and attributes they'd need to survive.

Why even have Noah build the ark in the first place if the actual vessel was irrelivent, since Yahweh would have had to put "pocket dimensions" in it anyway? Why did the size matter at all?

If you're going along THAT line of apologetics, wouldn't a floating box car of infinite holding have been just as effective? Or they all rode on a giant tree trunk or on the back of an enormous bird or something? How about the belly of a super huge fish?

Why not a giant floating palace? There ya go! MUCH better! Yahweh's Indestructable Floating Palace of Infinite Floor Space. Wouldn't that have made a nicer image? A great golden palace floating around, Yahweh's glorious golden light illuminating it in the pitch-blackness of the apocalyptic down-pour... The place where Yahweh's chosen survivors could lounge around and eat grapes and the kids could play with magically pacified lions n' stuff?

"Nah. Fuck that. You'll get a big ol' wooden boat and you can either accept it, or we can bludgeon you to death with big fucking rocks for being a heretic."

Oh. Well, you put it THAT way. Sure. Big ol' wooden boat. No problem. <thumbs up>

Blah. SUCH a stupid story. Just, really really bad. I've barely even warmed up here. I honestly just wanted to get that original question out about how they'd survive the increase in air pressure and the conditions at Mt. Everest heights.

And look what happened. I really oughta know better by now I guess.   

[Backspace]

Remember, without the flood, we wouldn't have the rainbow: Yahweh's promise to man he would never do such a dumb thing again.  And we all know Yahweh's record on keeping promises...

[nogodsforme]

Remember, without the flood, we wouldn't have the rainbow: Yahweh's promise to man he would never do such a dumb thing again.  And we all know Yahweh's record on keeping promises...

God's promises are as reliable as a government treaty giving land rights to Native people.....

[Truth OT]

It is possible that the biblical narrative about the flood may in fact lend itself to hyberole? Within the story itself (Gen 7:20, I believe), we read that the waters, if one converts cubits to feet, were said to have risen to a height of around 23 to 27 feet. That's hardly high enough to cover Mt. Olympus, I mean Everest.
Considering that the Sumerians and others all share similar flood stories, I would not call someone foolish that believed that there was a great, LOCALIZED Meditterainian (I refuse to spell check, got a problem with that?!?!) flood.

[Graybeard]

As has been discussed previously, we're talking a world-wide rise in sea-level of 5.5 *MILES*. K? Who knows where it came from, or where it went, let's just say it was magical space water from the 5th dimension. Right.

No! You have obviously not been educated in the Hydroplate Theory http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hydroplate_theory

Now, obviously Noah & his kin are going to be floating around on TOP of the water rather than underneath it.

So here's the problem. All that water is compressing world-wide air pressure to unsurvivable levels. The air is trapped and then insanely condensed between the stratosphere (is it the stratosphere I'm thinking of?) and this new 5.5 MILES taller sea level... Am I wrong, or would this not flatten Noah & his little wooden boat into splinters?

I fell into this trap and was corrected by a Physics 101 lesson from Pianodwarf...

Assuming of course that they somehow managed to get around the fact that they're FLOATING AT THE HEIGHT OF MT. EVEREST... Did they have the foresight to pack life-saving oxygen tanks for Noah and family? Did they have giant ones for the elephants and little baby ones for the 22,000 species of flies?

Because it's very, VERY easy to straight up die at the top of Mt. Everest for lack of oxygen. And cold. That applies to humans... I'd imagine moreso for things that require more oxygen, like big ol' Hippo lungs. And how did all the cold blooded critters survive the -20' temperatures?

...including that bit...

[pianodwarf]

As has been discussed previously, we're talking a world-wide rise in sea-level of 5.5 *MILES*. K? Who knows where it came from, or where it went, let's just say it was magical space water from the 5th dimension. Right.

No! You have obviously not been educated in the Hydroplate Theory http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hydroplate_theory

Now, obviously Noah & his kin are going to be floating around on TOP of the water rather than underneath it.

So here's the problem. All that water is compressing world-wide air pressure to unsurvivable levels. The air is trapped and then insanely condensed between the stratosphere (is it the stratosphere I'm thinking of?) and this new 5.5 MILES taller sea level... Am I wrong, or would this not flatten Noah & his little wooden boat into splinters?

I fell into this trap and was corrected by a Physics 101 lesson from Pianodwarf...

Assuming of course that they somehow managed to get around the fact that they're FLOATING AT THE HEIGHT OF MT. EVEREST... Did they have the foresight to pack life-saving oxygen tanks for Noah and family? Did they have giant ones for the elephants and little baby ones for the 22,000 species of flies?

Because it's very, VERY easy to straight up die at the top of Mt. Everest for lack of oxygen. And cold. That applies to humans... I'd imagine moreso for things that require more oxygen, like big ol' Hippo lungs. And how did all the cold blooded critters survive the -20' temperatures?

...including that bit...

Heh.  I remember that.  I remember how amused I was that you had found one of the very few arguments that can't be made against the flood myth.  *chuckle*