by VM44 42 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
An Almighty God who could do the astronomical big bang ground zero of everything could also do the flood just like the Bible says.
Remember the Bible story was recorded for a simple pastoral people not for doctorates.
I am not a fundy the above is possible IF God exist.
And God could have simply placed Noah, his family, the animals and all the food they required on a mountaintop and just surrounded them with a force-field...kept the waters parted ala the Red Sea.
Seems like a whole lot less work.
The fact is the story is copied from the Babylonians and the Gilgamesh Epic account and from other ancient accounts the wording from Gen. proves from the study of the liguistic language used that Gen was written while the Jews were under Babylons bondage so they copied the Gilgamesh Epic story to suit themselves. Now I can believe the Gilgamesh Epic story because it could be true
And God Damn the Watchtower's exploitation of the Biblical flood account for their sleazy gain.
1990 DC the watchtower compared the childless ark builders to Jdubs remaining childless in the 'last days'.
I often think of the thousands of women close to menopause who complied with this 'papal bull' WT directive who lost forever the chance to nurture their maternal instincts and have a baby.
God damn you senile annointed baldhead old farts.
DannyHaszard wrote:
: An Almighty God who could do the astronomical big bang ground zero of everything could also do the flood just like the Bible says.
The point is not whether a postulated omnipotent God could make a global flood, but whether there was such a flood.
Suppose I told you that, a month ago, I suffered 3rd-degree burns over 100% of my body. You look at me today and see nothing but healthy skin. Would you believe that I had very recently been terribly burned? Of course not, because you know that severe burns take a long, long time to heal, if ever.
It's the same with Noah's Flood. A flood big enough to destroy the entire world of man and animals would have left massive and unmistakeable geological traces. There are no such traces. Therefore there was no massive, global Flood.
Now, some Christians postulate that Noah's Flood was actually local to the Mesopotamian region. While this idea has some attraction for Bible believers, it creates both textual problems, and still more geological problems. Again there is no evidence that, just a few thousand years ago, the entire Mesopotamian region was under water for a year.
The geological evidence is conclusive that there was no global Flood, and extremely good that there was no gigantic local Flood that matches the Bible's description.
AlanF
Good point Alan it was devestating for we to acknowledge the evidence.
There is no evidence of a catastrophic global deluge,there is still evidence of some weird freaky phenomenon,frozen alive mammoths etc and a whole lotta water.
Insightful thread,apostates 'R smart (thinking) people.
"It's the same with Noah's Flood. A flood big enough to destroy the entire world of man and animals would have left massive and unmistakeable geological traces. There are no such traces."
In fact, there is a world full of evidence to the contrary. I live in Arizona and recently took a trip into the White Mountains, on the edge of the Mogollon Rim. As you climb up into the mountains from the desert floor, you can observe miles and miles of fantastic rock formations, peaks hundreds of feet tall, obviously eroded by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years of exposure to wind and rain. There is a massive split through the mountains called the Salt River Canyon. It almost rivals the Grand Canyon, which Arizona is of course famous for, in size. At the bottom of both these canyon are the comparatively tiny rivers that formed them by cutting through solid rock.
Any Human Being with even half a brain can observe these things and determine that they weren't formed in the 4,000 or 5,00 years that have passed since the earth rose from under the flood waters of Noah's day, as the WTBTS claims.
Sometimes it sickens me to think that for 22 years, I let the Borg think for me.
Great read with clear explanations of the Flood:
*** it-1 pp. 609-610 Deluge ***
The
Floodwaters. It has been said that if all the moisture in the atmosphere were suddenly released as rain it would not amount to even a couple of inches if spread over the earth’s surface. So from what source was this vast deluge of Noah’s day? According to the Genesis account, God said to Noah: "Here I [Jehovah] am bringing the deluge [or, "heavenly ocean"; Heb., mab·bul´] of waters upon the earth." (Ge 6:17, ftn) Describing what happened, the next chapter says: "All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened." (Ge 7:11) So overwhelming was the Deluge that "all the tall mountains that were under the whole heavens came to be covered."—Ge 7:19.Where did this "heavenly ocean" come from? The Genesis account of creation tells how on the second "day" Jehovah made an expanse about the earth, and this expanse (called "Heaven") formed a division between the waters below it, that is, the oceans, and the waters above it. (Ge 1:6-8) The waters suspended above the expanse evidently remained there from the second "day" of creation until the Flood. This is what the apostle Peter was talking about when he recounted that there "were heavens from of old and an earth standing compactly out of water and in the midst of water by the word of God." Those "heavens" and the waters above and beneath them were the means that God’s word called into operation, and "by those means the world of that time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water." (2Pe 3:5, 6) Various explanations have been offered as to how the water was held aloft until the Flood and as to the processes that resulted in its falling. But these are only speculative. The Bible says simply that God made the expanse with waters above it and that he brought the Deluge. His almighty power could easily accomplish it.
Since, as the Genesis account says, "all the tall mountains" were covered with water, where is all that water now? Evidently it is right here on the earth. It is believed that there was a time when the oceans were smaller and the continents were larger than they are now, as is evidenced by river channels extending far out under the oceans. It should also be noted that scientists have stated that mountains in the past were much lower than at present, and some mountains have even been pushed up from under the seas. As to the present situation, it is said that "there is ten times as much water by volume in the ocean as there is land above sea level. Dump all this land evenly into the sea, and water would cover the entire earth, one and one-half miles deep." (National Geographic, January 1945, p. 105) So, after the floodwaters fell, but before the raising of mountains and the lowering of seabeds and before the buildup of polar ice caps, there was more than enough water to cover "all the tall mountains," as the inspired record says.—Ge 7:19.
***
w88 8/15 p. 31 Insight on the News ***Insight
on the NewsFlood
Not ExaggeratedThe Biblical account of a global flood has long been criticized as based more on fiction than on fact. The New Catholic Encyclopedia asserts: "It is generally agreed now that the episode of Noe and the ark is not a piece of historical reporting but an imaginative literary creation of another form entirely." Some skeptics have argued that all the moisture in the atmosphere would cause only a few inches of global rain.
But according to the Genesis account, the source of the floodwaters was not simply the moisture in the atmosphere. At Genesis 1:6 we are told that the Creator decreed: "Let an [atmospheric] expanse come to be in between the waters and let a dividing occur between the waters [of the seas] and the waters [above the expanse]." The waters suspended above the expanse evidently remained there until the Flood. According to the apostle Peter, the atmospheric "heavens" and the waters above and beneath them were the means by which "the world of [Noah’s] time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water."—2 Peter 3:5, 6; Genesis 1:7.
The devastating effects of a watery deluge were felt recently in South Africa when a flood struck the province of Natal and claimed more than 300 lives. Commenting on the disaster, conservationist K. H. Cooper observed: "I have often wondered what would happen in this day and age if it were to rain for 40 days and 40 nights non-stop. . . . Could such a rain have obliterated almost all life on earth? Having recently seen what happened after just four days of rain in Natal," Cooper continued, "I’m now convinced of the authenticity of the Old Testament story."
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w68 7/15 pp. 419-421 Was There an Earthwide Flood? ***SOURCE
OF THE WATERSObviously the source of the floodwaters was not the moisture that is ordinarily found in the atmosphere today. For it has been estimated that if all the atmospheric water were suddenly released as rain, it would cover the earth’s surface only to an average depth of less than two inches. There must be another explanation, then, for all this water, and the Bible gives it.
In its brief account of creation the Bible says regarding the forming of earth’s atmosphere: "And God went on to say: ‘Let an expanse come to be in between the waters and let a dividing occur between the waters and the waters.’ Then God proceeded to make the expanse and to make a division between the waters that should be beneath the expanse and the waters that should be above the expanse."—Gen. 1:6, 7.
The waters "beneath" the atmospheric "expanse" were the waters on the surface of the earth. Whereas, "the waters . . . above the expanse" were vast quantities of moisture suspended high above the earth, evidently in the form of a heavy vapor. These waters surrounded our earth in its earlier history.
Regarding the possibility of the existence of such suspended waters, the book The Genesis Flood (1961), by John C. Whitcomb, Jr., and Henry M. Morris, observes:
"The region above about 80 miles is very hot, over 100° F and possibly rising to 3000° F, and is in fact called the thermosphere for this reason. High temperature, of course, is the chief requisite for retaining a large quantity of water vapor. Furthermore, it is known that water vapor is substantially lighter than air and most of the other gases making up the atmosphere. There is thus nothing physically impossible about the concept of a vast thermal vapor blanket once existing in the upper atmosphere."
However, the exact height and the way in which the waters were held above the earth cannot be known by us with certainty. But we do know that it was to these suspended waters that the Christian apostle Peter referred when writing under God’s inspiration about the Noachian flood. He explains that there was "an earth standing compactly out of water and in the midst of water," and that "by those means the world of that time suffered destruction when it was deluged with water."—2 Pet. 3:5, 6.
The earth in the pre-Flood days was "out of water" in the sense that the ground on which men lived and walked stood above the waters of the seas and rivers. Yet, it was "in the midst of water," since a vast quantity of it surrounded the earth, suspended far above its surface.
"But," a person might observe, "such a canopy of water suspended above the earth would greatly affect earth’s climate."
Indeed it would! The light and heat rays from the sun would be diffused by the vapor canopy, while this vast canopy would prevent heat from escaping. Such a "greenhouse effect" would thus produce a milder, more uniform climate earth wide. Biologist Harold K. Blum explained this effect of water vapor upon climate, saying:
"Just as the warm glass of the greenhouse tends to raise the temperature of the interior, the water vapor tends to raise that of the earth’s surface below it. This surface, or any object on it, is constantly exchanging radiation with the water vapor in the atmosphere, so the temperature of the surface is closely dependent upon the amount and temperature of this vapor."
That earth’s climate was uniformly warm at one time is commonly recognized. In an article concerning dinosaurs, Scientific Monthly of August 1949 observed:
"In those days the earth had a tropical or sub-tropical climate over much of its land surface, and in the widespread tropical lands there was an abundance of lush vegetation. The land was low and there were no high mountains forming physical or climatic barriers."
Of the now-frigid Antarctic continent the French magazine Science et Vie, in its July 1966 issue, said:
"This inhuman land, this desert of ice, was once a green land where streams flowed among flowers, where birds sang in the trees."
According to this source, at least sixty-one kinds of plants then grew in Antarctica.
How consistent, therefore, is the Bible’s explanation that there was a suspended mass of water above the earth in man’s early history! This water vapor would have created the uniformly warm climate that is known to have once existed earth wide. And it was the unleashing of this tremendous reservoir of water, and not simply a severe rainfall, that caused the global deluge. Note how the Bible shows this in its description of the Flood:
"All the springs of the vast watery deep were broken open and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And the downpour upon the earth went on for forty days and forty nights."—Gen. 7:11, 12.
"How many at Bethel could even pronounce thermo-hydrodynamic?"
LoL, good one!
