Applying Math, Physics, Archeology to THE STORY OF NOAH

by Terry 464 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • Phizzy
    Phizzy

    That much water in a canopy would exert too much pressure for Noah's lungs to survive.

  • Yan Bibiyan
    Yan Bibiyan

    Terry, I may have inadvertently derailed your thread a bit….

    Truthseeker,

    Having a certain belief system should be everyone’s right; I have nothing against yours.

    Where I see a conflict is when beliefs, or facts/laws to that effect, are applied inconsistently.

    Let me explain.

    When you get on an elevator, do you suppose a supreme being or one of its aids holds and moves the elevator cabin, or are you certain that there are ropes, counterweight and motor that facilitate the up-down movement? Do you think the elevator manufacturer just guessed the size and tension of the ropes, the power needed for the electric motor and the weight of the counterweight?

    Or, are you certain the manufacturer calculated and tested all of the above using defined, established and provable formulas derived from laws of physics that behave CONSISTENTLY and impartially?

    When you drive your car and apply the brakes, do you think an invisible hand is slowing your car down, or are you certain that there is a rotating disk to which friction is applied by specially fabricated brake pads? Is the momentum of your slowing car simply leaking in the time indefinite or is all of the kinetic energy being transformed to heat by said disk and brake pad assembly?

    When you board a plane, do you have any doubt in your mind that the lift created by the forward motion of the airplane and the wings design/surface area is going to somehow disappear midflight and the plane will fall out of the sky like a rock (it weighs few hundred tons, afterall) ? No, or you wouldn’t board it.

    Point I am making is that our lives, down to the minute daily details, depend on a set of rules (physical or natural laws) that behave PREDICTABLY and CONSISTANTLY.

    Those rules, whether put in place by a supreme being or not, are blind and impartial, just like the ocean that supports the tiniest paper boat or the largest cruise ship, as long as they conform to the laws of buoyancy.

    Yet, when we try to apply the same rules to an event that has happened in the confines of our (same) physical world and the math/principles/events do not add up, we somehow turn a blind eye on them and replace them with faith……

    Events in our physical realm are either subject to the same laws that govern its very existence, or they are not subject to it.

    We either believe the rules or we don’t. We do not hope for the rules to work, we know they do. We do not set a sail on a cruise ship hoping that it floats, we know it does.

    In any event, I respect your choice of beliefs and wish you the best.

    -Yan

  • thetrueone
    thetrueone

    One other thing which I don't think has been touched on yet is something called biology.

    Those animals would have had to eat the same vegetation that was indigenous to where they were taken from

    or they would have died off quickly. Not to mention carnivorous animals who ate meat.

    You'd have to be complete fool to believe such a story.

    This one bible story and the one where Jonah got swallowed by a large fish, possibly a whale,

    then after a couple of days of being inside the fish, walked out unscathed are nothing but stories.

    They were simply told to bring reverence and power to the god of whom these people worshiped.

    It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out.

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    I have a question:

    The Watchtower religion used to teach (& probably still does) that the "Tree of Life" in the garden of Eden was destroyed in the flood.

    If the "Tree of Life" could be destroyed by the flood, then why weren't ALL trees destroyed in the flood - and why are there trees on earth today?

  • thetrueone
    thetrueone

    They were simply told to bring reverence and power to the god of whom these people worshiped.

    I should also say problems occurs when so called modern day Seers do not teach this.

    There were many stories told in ancient times of what the various gods, within the various civilizations

    did and were capable of doing, creating a purposeful connection between those gods and those people.

    The supposed imminent Armageddon as taught by the JWS is just another of these stories told of the god Yahweh

    by the people who worshiped this particular god.

    The bible should be taught as a history lessen, unfortunately its taught as piece of nonfictional reality

    by modern day religionists, with other mitigating agendas.

  • Terry
    Terry

    Those rules, whether put in place by a supreme being or not, are blind and impartial, just like the ocean that supports the tiniest paper boat or the largest cruise ship, as long as they conform to the laws of buoyancy.

    Yet, when we try to apply the same rules to an event that has happened in the confines of our (same) physical world and the math/principles/events do not add up, we somehow turn a blind eye on them and replace them with faith……

    Events in our physical realm are either subject to the same laws that govern its very existence, or they are not subject to it.

    We either believe the rules or we don’t. We do not hope for the rules to work, we know they do. We do not set a sail on a cruise ship hoping that it floats, we know it does.

    In any event, I respect your choice of beliefs and wish you the best.

    -Yan

    I try to avoid having to BELIEVE. I can acquire confidence. I can rest assured on certain things. But, being a "person of Faith" now seems like a real dodge; an intellectual cop out that is the same as saying that you have no facts or evidence.

    Perhaps that is why the scripture says, "Without Faith it is impossible to please God". God likes credulous minds apparently!

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    I read an article on earth's weather which noted that if all the water in all the clouds in the atmosphere instantly came down as rain, it would raise the ocean's water level only about 1/2 an inch.

  • thetrueone
    thetrueone

    Belief, knowledge and epistemology

    The terms belief and knowledge are used differently in philosophy.

    Epistemology is the philosophical study of knowledge and belief. The primary problem in epistemology is to understand exactly what is needed in order for us to have true knowledge. In a notion derived from Plato 's dialogue Theaetetus, philosophy has traditionally defined knowledge as " justified true belief ". The relationship between belief and knowledge is that a belief is knowledge if the belief is true, and if the believer has a justification (reasonable and necessarily plausible assertions/evidence/guidance) for believing it is true.

    A false belief is not considered to be knowledge, even if it is sincere. A sincere believer in the flat earth theory does not know that the Earth is flat. Later epistemologists, for instance Gettier (1963) [2] and Goldman (1967), [3] have questioned the "justified true belief" definition.

    Belief as a psychological theory

    Mainstream psychology and related disciplines have traditionally treated belief as if it were the simplest form of mental representation and therefore one of the building blocks of conscious thought. Philosophers have tended to be more abstract in their analysis and much of the work examining the viability of the belief concept stems from philosophical analysis.

    The concept of belief presumes a subject (the believer) and an object of belief (the proposition). So, like other propositional attitudes , belief implies the existence of mental states and intentionality , both of which are hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mind whose foundations and relation to brain states are still controversial.

    Beliefs are sometimes divided into core beliefs (that are actively thought about) and dispositional beliefs (that may be ascribed to someone who has not thought about the issue). For example, if asked "do you believe tigers wear pink pajamas?" a person might answer that they do not, despite the fact they may never have thought about this situation before. [4]

    That a belief is a mental state has been seen, by some, as contentious. While some [citation needed] have argued that beliefs are represented in the mind as sentence-like constructs others [citation needed] have gone as far as arguing that there is no consistent or coherent mental representation that underlies our common use of the belief concept and that it is therefore obsolete and should be rejected.

    This has important implications for understanding the neuropsychology and neuroscience of belief. If the concept of belief is incoherent then any attempt to find the underlying neural processes that support it will fail.

  • truthseeker
    truthseeker

    Elderlite,

    The flood served three purposes:

    a. Removal of wicked people

    b. Forcing the angels to dematerialize

    c. Destroying all vestiges of the old system, including the secrets of heaven given to preflood humans by the fallen angels.

    Everyone else, I understand where you're coming from with the maths and science stuff. It happened a long time ago. We weren't there to see it. Miracles happen. This is speculation, but I think the water canopy is right where the North and South Poles are.

    I'll write more later today.

  • thetrueone
    thetrueone

    Miracles happen.

    Especially where they are created in the human imagination.

    a. Removal of wicked people

    Wicked people returned, Noah being one of them after the flood

    c. Destroying all vestiges of the old system, including the secrets of heaven given to preflood humans by the fallen angels.

    What stopped fallen angles returning and do the same things after the flood ?

    Sounds like a whole lot of killing and murdering for the entire earth just have it return into the exact state it was before the flood.

Share this

Google+
Pinterest
Reddit