And the tree fell

by startingover 16 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  startingover

  In the middle of the night, a tree in my yard split and half of it fell right across the street. So early this morning I was up cutting it up and getting it out of the road.

  Now as I was doing this I started thinking about the Noah story and what it would take to build something out of wood as large as the ark was described to be. Now I had a chain saw that made relatively quick work of it, but I can tell you that even a 2 foot piece of green lumber is quite heavy. How an ark that size could be contructed by the number of people described doing it is beyond comprehension. How were the trees cut down? How was the wood cut precisely enough to allow it to be used to construct a vessel that wouldn't leak? I'm fairly sure that the grocery stores and restaurants that we have today didn't exist then, so feeding yourself had to be a major concern of the day back then.

  I came away from the experience wondering how I could have ever been so gullible as to believe such a story.
• 

  Ellie

  Yeah but Noah had Jehovah's holy spirit to help him
• 

  Lilycurly

  Oh yeah, that's right! *sniggers* Now we don't need to ask ourselves...God arranges everything.
• 

  RunningMan

  Well, people have been known to construct large buildings out of heavy timbers. With a little leverage and a lot of manpower, it could be done. It was always explained to me that Noah may have had assistance from helpful neighbors. The real problem of the ark, however, is the impossibility of the structural integrity of a wooden floating device of that size - it just can't be done.
  
  
  Now, you can always argue that God whipped up a little miracle and held the ark together. But, the flood story required dozens of miracles to perform all of the impossibilities. So, if God was going to help Noah miraculously, why didn't he just make all of the bad people miraculously wake up dead? It would have saved a lot of work, and a bunch of innocent animal lives.
• 

  sinis

  The real problem of the ark, however, is the impossibility of the structural integrity of a wooden floating device of that size - it just can't be done.

  I guess they said the Spruce Goose was impossible as well? The Pyramids also seem to baffle modern day scientists and are as straight as any modern day laser transit can do. I don't believe it is as far fetched as some propose.
• 

  rebel8

  Maybe I'm wrong, but don't we know that the Vikings and other ancients constructed such vehicles, pretty much with the same technology Noah would have had available to him? IMO the real feat is doing it yourself or with the assistance of only a few sons. Would have taken him years, no? And then there's the fact that he had no experience building ships. Would have had to have been divine intervention to teach him the needed skills.

  What about the weight of all those animals? If he supposedly carried elephants and other large animals, would a ship of the dimensions described in the bible really support all that weight? I really don't know, just wondering.
• 

  RunningMan

  The largest wooden ships ever built, were around 300 feet long - 150 feet shorter than Noah's ark. These large ships could only function if they had steel reinforcing beams. Even then, they did not work very well, and continually needed to be pumped out. We are expected to believe that 600 year old Noah managed to solve engineering and construction problems that people 4000 years later have not mastered, without having the aid of any metal.
  
  
  And, as for the pyramids, yes they are pretty cool, but did you realize that they pre-date the flood?
• 

  Hellrider

  Well, the Bible says he had a lot of time to do it. Noah was warned about the flood 120 years before it happened. Give me 120 years and a handful of workers, and I`ll build a big ship too...however...wasn`t this before the age of iron and bronze? Or am I mistaken? Building it with stone-axes, that wouldn`t work at all!
• 

  sinis

  The largest wooden ships ever built, were around 300 feet long - 150 feet shorter than Noah's ark. These large ships could only function if they had steel reinforcing beams. Even then, they did not work very well, and continually needed to be pumped out. We are expected to believe that 600 year old Noah managed to solve engineering and construction problems that people 4000 years later have not mastered, without having the aid of any metal. and, as for the pyramids, yes they are pretty cool, but did you realize that they pre-date the flood?

  The Chinese seem to have done it.

  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sultan/explorers.html

  As far as a Global flood, I tend to believe it was local based upon the wording/meaning of the ancient Hebrew text. I believe the sory was blown out of proportion through the past few centuries and taught that it was Global.
• 

  upside/down

  You got it all wrong...

  Noah was an independently wealthy shiek...

  He used Union labor and did an under the table payoff to keep OSHA at bay...

  Duh

  u/d (of the who needs chainsaws when you have slaves class)