Why the story of Noah's ark is scientifically impossible: Minimum Viable Population

by ILoveTTATT2 28 Replies latest jw friends

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  redvip2000

  Well then you have to ask "why"? If he can do all that, why have this elaborate work plan and story when he could have just clicked his fingers. Why try to come up with a 'believable' story. I say believable because it probably is to people back then, now I think it's one of those bits of the bible that shows it up to be all bollocks.

  yes agreed. I make this point as well. Why the need to use so much "magic" to get past so many problematic logistics? If the goal is to kill a few humans, a few of Jeevoovas angels could accomplish this in one night, without killing all the plants and animals.
  
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  OUTLAW

  Why the story of Noah's ark is scientifically impossible: Minimum Viable Population

  It has to be true..

  Ken Ham built a replica Noah`s Ark,it doesn`t float but that`s besides the point!..

  ......................
  

  It has Dinosaurs..

  

  ....................................
  

  A Gift Shop..

  

  ............................

  A 1500 seat restaurant....And..

  A Ken Ham Sandwich.....Made from 100% Baloney..

  Ken Tastes Every Sandwich..................................BEFORE IT`S SERVED!..
  

  .

  ........................

  That`s why Noah`s Ark is REAL!..
  
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  fulltimestudent

  TheOldHippie : ... I happen to believe in the flood story - but not that it was global. Huge and quite possibly having worldwide effects, but the flood itself local. There was not enough time for human or animal population to spread as fast as it must have in order to be as plentiful as it must have been during the days of Abraham etc.

  Of course, floods are part of the real life and the mythical life of various situations. The flood myths invariably come from societies that live in river valleys, that's why the myth from which the biblical flood myth is most likely derived comes from the Tigris-Euphrates river system. If you've never heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh, you can find a reasonable discussion in the Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh.

  Much of the mythical account has been preserved on clay tablets that archeaologists have discovered. This image shows what they look like.

  
  
  

  The first half of the story discusses Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk. After an initial fight, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become close friends (or lovers, according to some). Together, they journey to the Cedar Mountain and defeat Humbaba, its monstrous guardian. Later they kill the Bull of Heaven, which the goddess Ishtar sends to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances. As a punishment for these actions, the gods sentence Enkidu to death.

  In the second half of the epic, distress about Enkidu's death causes Gilgamesh to undertake a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life. He eventually learns that "Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands".[1][2] However, because of his great building projects, his account of Siduri's advice, and what the immortal man Utnapishtim told him about the Great Flood, Gilgamesh's fame survived his death.
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  fulltimestudent

  In a river valley system floods can be expected, right now Louisiana in the USA is experiencing serious flooding.

  But in pre-history there may well have been catastrophic floods that affected our primitive ancestors. Melting ice as ice-age epochs (never mentioned in the Bible-ever wondered why?) came to their end and the ice melted must have killed whole areas of early humans.

  Another theory, that accounts for the flood memories of West Asian peoples is now known as the Black Sea Deluge hypothesis. In brief (from the National Geographic web-site) states:

  Quote:" Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman wondered what could explain the preponderance of flood legends. Their theory: As the Ice Age ended and glaciers melted, a wall of seawater surged from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea.
  • During the Ice Age, Ryan and Pitman argue, the Black Sea was an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland.
  • About 12,000 years ago, toward the end of the Ice Age, Earth began growing warmer. Vast sheets ofice that sprawled over the Northern Hemisphere began to melt. Oceans and seas grew deeper as a result.
  • About 7,000 years ago the Mediterranean Sea swelled. Seawater pushed northward, slicing through what is now Turkey.
  • Funneled through the narrow Bosporus, the water hit the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls. Each day the Black Sea rose about six inches (15 centimeters), and coastal farms were flooded.
  • Seared into the memories of terrified survivors,the tale of the flood was passed down through the generations and eventually became the Noah story.

  Reference: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html - if this concept is of interest, there are more pages to explore.
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  fulltimestudent

  And then there are the Graeco-Roman flood myths, which should be of greater interest to Bible students, since the Palestinian area, where the Jewish people's lived was part of the Hellenic cultural zone, and naturally the Jews were greatly influenced by that culture.

  Cutting and pasting from Wikipedia we see some interesting parallels between the mythical Greek version and the Jewish mythical version.

  Quote: The fullest accounts are provided in Ovid's Metamorphoses (8 AD) and in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus.[9]Deucalion, who reigned over the region of Phthia, had been forewarned of the flood by his father, Prometheus. Deucalion was to build a chest and provision it carefully (no animals are rescued in this version of the Flood myth), so that when the waters receded after nine days, he and his wife Pyrrha, daughter of Epimetheus, were the one surviving pair of humans. Their chest touched solid ground on Mount Parnassus,[10] or Mount Etna in Sicily,[11] orMount Athos in Chalkidiki,[12] or Mount Othrys in Thessaly.[13]
  Hyginus mentions the opinion of a Hegesianax that Deucalion is to be identified with Aquarius, "because during his reign such quantities of water poured from the sky that the great Flood resulted."
  Once the deluge was over and the couple had given thanks to Zeus, Deucalion (said in several of the sources to have been aged 82 at the time) consulted anoracle of Themis about how to repopulate the earth. He was told to cover your head and throw the bones of your mother behind your shoulder. Deucalion and Pyrrha understood that "mother" is Gaia, the mother of all living things, and the "bones" to be rocks. They threw the rocks behind their shoulders and the stones formed people. Pyrrha's became women; Deucalion's became men.
  Deucalion and Pyrrha had at least two children, Hellen and Protogenea, and possibly a third, Amphictyon (who is Autochthonous in other traditions).
  Their children as apparently named in one of the oldest texts, Catalogue of Women, include daughters Pandora and Thyia, and at least one son, Hellen.[14]Their descendants were said to have dwelt in Thessaly. One corrupt fragment might make Deucalion the son of Prometheus and Pronoea.[15]
  On the other hand, Dionysius of Halicarnassus gives Deucalion's parentage as Prometheus and Clymene, daughter of Oceanus, and mentions nothing about a flood, but instead names him as commander of those from Parnassus who drove the "sixth generation" of Pelasgians from Thessaly.[16]
  One of the earliest Greek historians, Hecataeus of Miletus, was said to have written a book about Deucalion, but it no longer survives. The only extant fragment of his to mention Deucalion does not mention the flood either, but names him as the father of Orestheus, king of Aetolia. The much later geographerPausanias, following on this tradition, names Deucalion as a king of Ozolian Locris and father of Orestheus. Plutarch mentions a legend that Deucalion and Pyrrha had settled in Dodona, Epirus; while Strabo asserts that they lived at Cynus, and that her grave is still to be found there, while his may be seen atAthens; he also mentions a pair of Aegean islands named after the couple.[citation needed]
  The 2nd-century writer Lucian gave an account of the Greek Deucalion in De Dea Syria that seems to refer more to the Near Eastern flood legends: in his version, Deucalion (whom he also calls Sisythus)[17] took his children, their wives, and pairs of animals with him on the ark, and later built a great temple inManbij (northern Syria), on the site of the chasm that received all the waters; he further describes how pilgrims brought vessels of sea water to this place twice a year, from as far as Arabia and Mesopotamia, to commemorate this event.

  reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deucalion

  There's more, of course. From India, where civilisation grew up around the great river systems of the Indus and the Ganges, we find similar mythical accounts.

  And, in China similar myths exist, where Yu tames the Yellow River and becomes Emperor of the first Xia dynasty. Lots of excitement in academia lately as a researcher believes he's found the source of the great flood account that Yu tamed.
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  Heaven

  TheOldHippie said: How on Earth could I be in possession of a somprehensive list of hundreds of thousands of insect species and their whereabouts during the flood? I think Earthworms and others would have plenty of food and survival opportunities outside the ark. I did not say none were inside, I said they survived well outside - as far as I can think of. Why or how could I make out a comprehensive list?

  I ask because you seem to have extra knowledge of the flood event that isn't part of the story. No where does it state the creatures taken onto the ark 'survived' or dwelled outside of the ark during the flood.
  

  Also, there are actually millions of species of insects. Earthworms would not have survived outside of the ark as they dwell in soil but cannot dwell in it when it is saturated.
  

  
  
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  LisaRose

  I am kind of embarrassed that I ever believed this nonsense. A global flood could not have happened for so many reasons. How many species are in the Amazon region alone? Noah could not possibly have traveled there to get them and they could not possibly have developed in the few thousand years since then.
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  ILoveTTATT2

  Lisa, I am embarrassed that I believed in anything the JW's ever said! The Bible, and the Watchtower are such lies!
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  Vidiot

  @ ILoveTATT2...

  Not lies...

  ...myths.

  :sunglasses: