by sizemik 91 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Floods happen all the time....
Have we not seen them in our lifetime???
And way back when ....Hell it probably seemed the whole World was flooded.
The Ark story....just don't know... I never believed the Whole Earth was flooded Canopy or No Canopy....
And I heard the stories over finding the Actual Ark in Iraq... Maybe thats why America Invaded it .....
GLOBAL FLOOD . . . Did it Really Happen?
Well, of course it did, silly.
In between when the snake talked a naked woman into eating a piece of fruit which doomed us all to death and the time that a virgin gave birth to a perfect god in order save us, it rained 40 days and 40 nights. The rainwater covered the globe and caused great upheavels in the earth's surface, pushing mountains up and valleys low so the water would eventually 'drain' off so the ark could land with all the millions of species of animals that were on board with the 8 humans (dinosaurs were on their own...no room at the inn).
I mean, what's to doubt? It's right there in the Book...
I mean, what's to doubt? It's right there in the Book...
Thats right, if its in a book well you known its has to be the truth, look at at all the things written in WT literature.
Fear mongering businesses like the WTS/JWs know there's just a small segment of the population that are poorly educated and ignorant enough
to buy their BS. The sad and maybe laughable part about the JWS is they think they have something over ordinary people
that equates to them building up their own prideful self arrogance.
Fear is the catalyst that creates the support for the WTS. publishing corporation, which leads to this $
Prisoner: Sorry if I jumped the gun a bit with my comment. The whole flood thing was actually the first issue that got me thinking the WT could be wrong. I went from believing in a global flood to a localized one and was stuck there for years - waiting for Jah/WT to catch up with their new light. In the meantime, I would try to pretend in my mind that there were scientific methods and such for backing the localized flood idea, but the more I learned and studied up on real science - the more glaringly obvious it was that even a localized event described as it is in the bible, is just imppossible. I then went to pretneding that 'well - God must have had a miraculous hand in it' - but that makes zero sense. If god was going to miraculously intervene throughout the whole flood process - why bother with flood in the first place? So - sorry to be a bit brash in chiding you. I was chided a plenty in my long prideful ride to come to truth - unfortunately, I didn't visit sites like these, nor did I know an any former JWs to go over this with. It was all with neutral historical and scientific research - added to the lack of answers and the dishonest ones from the JWs and other literal-Bible apologetics. Feedback from professors, friends with masters degrees in fields like zoology, and colleagues with incredible intelligence, all put me to shame - but they did so without any agenda.
Anyway, glad you're learning - it sounds like you're going way faster than I did. Congrats.
Another problem with the flood is the amount of water it would've taken to cover the whole earth. The fastest downpour ever recorded was 73 inch in 24 hours. 40 days at this rate = 2920 inch or 74m of water - this wouldn't even have been enough to fill the nearest valley. The amount of precipitation to simply quadruple that would've made the air unbreathable.
Also, there is no geological evidence of large shifts in the geological features of the earth. First of all, the water would not have been heavy enough to create eg. the Himalaya or even the Alps. The tremors to create such features would cause tsunami's and other waves which would have actually broken the ark. You would also have to see evidence of a massive shift in the earth's rotation speed and tilt and human's nor animals would probably be able to adapt in 40 days to a much hotter day and much colder night.
Given that all the trees were probably downed by these geological shifts and grass doesn't survive 40 days under waters, what did Noah eat for the first year or 3. Where is the ice age that would've followed right after this due to the greenhouse effect of rotting plant matter? Most of the earth would've been a swamp for the next century.
If you keep the geological features intact you would need 3x as much water on earth as there is currently. Where did the water come from and where did it go?
Another great point Anony Mous, All this material on this post has been extremely helpful, even the personal negative posts have had a positive impact because with the benifit of hindsight I have been forced me to re-evaluate my attitude, and help me see more clearly where I am on this learning curve,NOT quite as high up as I thought.
My next thoughts are what else is False, or a metaphor ??
The Mesopoatamian Gilgamesh Epic was written long before the Hebrew Bible and discribes the Flood, similar with Noah-Gilgamesh. Besides Abraham came from that region, so he carried the traditions of the area.
Indeed it happened, around 3500 B.C, when Bosporus straits had natural land barrier that collapsed and it was to separating the Black Sea, at that time dry land, with the Aegean Sea. Plus we have the last Ice Age, 10,500 years ago when ice melt and regional floods occured in the Globe, that is why we have the story being repeated all over the world.
The idea of World wide flood it is rediculous and stupid.
My next thoughts are what else is False, or a metaphor ??
Big question the prisoner No6 . . . there's a lot to choose from . . .
God-made gardens
Talking snakes
Humans living to 900 + years
Men who turn sticks into snakes
Men who stop the "sun"
Men who have extraordinary strength as long as they avoid a haircut
Food falling from the sky
Angels wiping out massive armies in seconds
Talking donkeys
Etc . . . Etc . . . Etc
I don't mean to sound trite . . . but has anyone you know ever witnessed anything like this? . . . Is it reasonable to take accounts of such happenings at face value?
The Jews were also familiar with the Gilgamesh story. For instance, the third century BC Book of Giants (as preserved at Qumran and in the Manichaean scriptures) gave the giants names that belonged to characters in the Gilgamesh Epic, including Gilgamesh, Ut-napishtim (= Atanbish), and Humbaba (= Hobabis). That the name Gilgamesh turns up in Jewish literature should be of no suprise.
A lot of it can be explained however with simple insight into how fairy tale stories develop from an outstanding experience:
God-made gardens => Explorers probably saw a lot of nice things with unique features, poisonous trees or shamans that promised such a land when groups of people travelled and stories about it probably went from generation to generation and became better and better until they were written down and interpreted as fact.
Talking snakes => Probably somebody that ate or came near the wrong tree and started hallucinating. Certain grains, fungi and mushrooms do induce such things. Did you know potato's are also poisonous? And tomato's were long thought of as poisonous as well. Stories about how people got to eat certain things (current day eat-your-veggie stories).
Humans living to 900 + years => Immortality and near-immortality is a typical story device. A lot of stories revolve around how people found immortality and couldn't live with it.
Men who turn sticks into snakes => Magic tricks - as the story shows, both Egyptians and Israelite magicians were able to fool the others perception of reality. Bunny in the hat trick.
Men who stop the "sun" => Legends and exaggerated stories about how one army defeated the other. Such an event would've messed a lot of things up (things such as tides, gravity and even climate). It would also have been noticed by such sun cultures like the Celts, the Mayans etc.
Men who have extraordinary strength as long as they avoid a haircut => Legends and exaggerated stories about a local war hero.
Food falling from the sky => I don't know, it looked like snow so maybe somebody interpreted a snow-in-the-desert (very rare but not impossible) story where somebody survived because of the water it provided.
Angels wiping out massive armies in seconds => Can be explained by disease in a war camp. Also, the whole army gets wiped out but the king and his entourage stay alive?
Talking donkeys => Somebody ate the wrong mushroom.
