I personally believe that The Ark and other flood legends (every society has one) stem from the massive climate change at the end of the pleistocene. Any civilization in existence at that time would have been destroyed, and survivors would have many stories of what happened. Undoubtedly some prepared for the flooding and destruction by building such ships. I just don’t think they were divinely inspired. (Beyond simply “Oh my God I’d better build something to save my people from the shitstorm that’s coming down”.)
The massive central door in the side of Noah’s Ark was thrown open Saturday — you could say it was the first time in 4,000 years — drawing a crowd of curious pilgrims and townsfolk to behold the wonder. Of course, it’s only a replica of the biblical Ark, built by Dutch creationist Johan Huibers as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible.
Reckoning by the old biblical measurements, Johan’s fully functional ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high and 20 cubits wide. That’s two-thirds the length of a football field and as high as a three-story house.
Life-size models of giraffes, elephants, lions, crocodiles, zebras, bison and other animals greet visitors as they arrive in the main hold.
I wonder if the ship model also handles the sewage and feed issue (water is obviously taken care of, at least for the first 40 days)?
This man would have been better off investing that money for the first Ark to Mars. Is this art? If not, why not look to the future instead of the past?
So you’re saying Jesus was in the global warming camp?
So, can multiples of every animal fit in there? That was always my question as a kid – is it physically possible?
Would two of every species fit in there?
I can’t believe that people take the Noah’s ark story literally. I remember learning about it in Sunday school and realizing it was bunk. When I was a kid I used to think that the adults secretly didn’t believe it either. I guess I was wrong about that part.
3 & 4,
well, no, not every animal. but given noah’s background in genetics he devised a method whereby ‘essential variations’ were kept in the select group of creatures chosen. this way when it came time to set down on terra firma again, an explosion of new life would come about from a limited number of animals and a highly sought after interspecies aphrodisiac
the other camp, however, doesn’t subscribe to this view. it’s believed that toy manufacturers at the time were facing sluggish sales thanks to the impending doom. an agreement was reached whereby noah agreed only to take the classics (giraffes, hippos, etc.) enabling the toy makers to save dearly on production costs and noah to fill his ark with a more reasonable number of animals.
Gen 7: 13: In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;
14: They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.
15: And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
Here you have God’s word. You may not pick and choose which parts of it you believe. It’s either all or none.
So, they accounted for the fact that there would have to be *two* pairs of elephants on that thing right (Asian and Africa)? They also accounted for penguins, grizzly bears, polar bears, kodiak bears, black mamba snakes, crocodiles, allegators, diplodocus, t-rex, and California Condors right? I’d love to know how they managed to get all of the bacteria of the world collected. Seriously people, can any sane person really believe that this event happened even remotely as it is presented in the Bible?
Huibers choose a bad time to launch his ark, considering we are having the longest dry spell ever in the Netherlands.
#8…..but, according to the latest scientific maybe…..the Netherlands will be inundated by the sea in 50 years…..no matter how many dykes move there. 🙂
#9
The Netherlands is already loaded with Dykes, speciall Amsterdam 😉
#6 – Higghawker
“Here you have God’s word. You may not pick and choose which parts of it you believe. It’s either all or none.”
But the picking and choosing is the best part! That’s how we came up with so many wonderful interpretations.
It’s called The Joy Of Sects.
The purpose of the Bible, and any scripture for that matter, is to teach good moral principles, not to be scientifically valid. There are at least four glaring impossibilities in the Noah’s Ark story:
1. If the polar ice caps melted, all the water vapor in the sky liquefied and all of the available oxygen atoms found hydrogen atoms to combine with, there would still only be enough water to raise the oceans around 200 feet or so.
2. Two of each species of animal could not possibly fit in a boat the size of a large school gymnasium.
3. The rate of rainfall needed to completely flood the earth on 40 days and 40 nights would come down with a force greater than Niagara Falls, such that steel aircraft carriers could not withstand the pressure, let alone a weighted down wooden ark.
4. The genetic diversity of humans is far too complex to be reduced to 8 people that only lived 5000 years ago.
I am sure there are other faults as well, but lets focus on these. All of these objections can be addressed if we accept that Noah’s Ark took place as a local phenomenon, not a global one. What if instead of a planet wide disaster, it was a village that got flooded out. What if it did not flood the earth, instead it flooded a valley.
Waters rise on a regular basis every spring, so maybe there was a man called Noah, and in his life time he has seen some devastating floods, with people being washed away with the current. Lets say he has the foresight to build his house so that it could float, if such a devastating flood ever happens again. Then the flood does happen and Noah and his family are the only survivors of the valley. The water does not go everywhere, ruling out impossibilities 1 and 3. And, life continues normally outside the valley, eliminating objections 2 and 4.
Some might object on grounds that I am reducing God’s miracle to insignificance. But, what is the actual moral of the story? A wise man is one who is prepared for any disaster. Does this moral seem any less true by localizing the story? I think not. And, that is the whole point. Someone probably thought it would sound better as a world wide flood, not knowing about physics and diversity, and did a little embellishing. The animals marching in two by two was probably added later to avoid embarrassing questions of why all the people were killed but not the animals.
If Noah had lived in the United States today the story may have gone something like this:
And the Lord spoke to Noah and said, “In one year, I am going to make it rain and cover the whole earth with water until all flesh is destroyed. But I want you to save the righteous people and two of every kind of living thing on earth. Therefore, I am commanding you to build an Ark.” In a flash of lightning, God delivered the specifications for an Ark. In fear and trembling, Noah took the plans and agreed to build the ark. “Remember,” said the Lord, “you must complete the Ark and bring everything aboard in one year.”
Exactly one year later, fierce storm clouds covered the earth and all the seas of the earth went into a tumult. The Lord saw that Noah was sitting in his front yard weeping. “Noah!” He shouted. “Where is the Ark?” “Lord, please forgive me,” cried Noah. “I did my best, but there were big problems.
1 I had to get a permit for construction, and your plans did not meet the building codes. I had to hire an engineering firm and redraw the plans.
2 Then I got into a fight with OSHA over whether or not the Ark needed a sprinkler system and approved floatation devices.
3 Then, my neighbor objected, claiming I was violating zoning ordinances by building the Ark in my front yard, so I had to get a variance from the city planning commission.
4 Then, I had problems getting enough wood for the Ark, because there was a ban on cutting trees to protect the Spotted Owl. I finally convinced the U.S. Forest Service that I really needed the wood to save the owls.
5 However, the Fish and Wildlife Service won’t let me take the 2 owls.
6 The carpenters formed a union and went on strike. I had to negotiate a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board before anyone would pick up a saw or hammer. Now, I have 16 carpenters on the Ark, but still no owls.
7 When I started rounding up the other animals, an animal rights group sued me. They objected to me taking only two of each kind aboard. This suit is pending.
8 Meanwhile, the EPA notified me that I could not complete the Ark without filing an environmental impact statement on your proposed flood. They didn’t take very kindly to the idea that they had no jurisdiction over the conduct of the Creator of the Universe.
9 Then, the Army Corps of Engineers demanded a map of the proposed flood plain. I sent them a globe.
10 Right now, I am trying to resolve a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that I am practicing discrimination by not taking atheists aboard.
11 The IRS has seized my assets, claiming that I’m building the Ark in preparation to flee the country to avoid paying taxes. I just got a notice from the state that I owe them some kind of user tax and failed to register the Ark as a ‘recreational water craft’.
12 And finally, the ACLU got the courts to issue an injunction against further construction of the Ark, saying that since God is flooding the earth, it’s a religious event, and, therefore unconstitutional.
I really don’t think I can finish the Ark for another five or six years.” Noah waited. The sky began to clear, the sun began to shine, and the seas began to calm. A rainbow arched across the sky. Noah looked up hopefully. “You mean you’re not going to destroy the earth, Lord?” “No,” He said sadly. “I don’t have to. The government already has.
#6 – Here you have God’s word.
I’m sorry Higghawker, but you’ve been ripped off. What you read in the bible are fictional stories by multiple authors… It’s a story book… nothing more, nothing less.
I can’t believe that people take the Noah’s ark story literally
You would be surprised how many religious nut bags believe this story verbatim, the same as they would an event in a real history book.
#4 – julieb
“When I was a kid I used to think that the adults secretly didn’t believe it either. I guess I was wrong about that part.”
#7 – Thomas
“Seriously people, can any sane person really believe that this event happened even remotely as it is presented in the Bible?”
It’s only possible for an adult to sincerely believe that such things did (or even could) actually occur if one is either [a] not completely rational, i.e. insane; or, [b] not very intelligent; or, [c] both. That’s quickly and easily confirmed by observing both the strong correlation between insanity and religious belief and the strong negative correlation between educated intelligence and religious belief.
All that need be drawn from this is: if one has a reasonable degree of education, a reasonable degree of intelligence, and is generally sane, one will reject such things.
(and general sanity necessarily entails having either overcome or never suffered childhood indoctrination)
So, any sincere believer is:
not intelligent
or
not educated (the norm for the Third World)
or
not sane (norm for the West)
or
a combination of those factors.
So the first step toward a cure would appear to be to stop indoctrinating children.
Huibers just in an interview on Dutch public radio: if this ark becomes a success — in helping me to spread the good word — I’ll build an even bigger one.
Fourteen times as big as this one [two and a half times as long, thrice as broad].
if we accept that Noah’s Ark took place as a local phenomenon, not a global one. What if instead of a planet wide disaster, it was a village that got flooded out. What if it did not flood the earth, instead it flooded a valley.
One of the semi-science channels (Discover/Nat’l Geo/History) did have a program about the ‘real’ Noah, which will probably be shown again in a few months or so. The story that they presented was that Noah was actually a businessman who used his boat(s) to transport animals and other goods along a river, and who survived because he already had the boat when the local flooding occurred. Since he already carried animals for trade, those animals (the ‘clean’ ones mentioned in the Bible) survived, and the story later grew (ever play the game known as ‘telephone’?).
Besides, the story was stolen from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
J/P=?
Most Christians take this story as metaphor, the old “The bible is teaching us morals or about God, not scientific facts” school of thought.
So let’s see what we learn in this metaphorical story:
If God gets really pissed at us, it is his right to kill every man, women and child on the planet (if we are lucky, he will spare one family.)
Now let’s make some nice Sunday school lessons, with nice pictures of animals and a rainbow, for the kiddies. We will leave out the terror of what it is like to drown.
God, in this whole story comes off like an psychotic husband and father who hugs his last child in the hospital after slaughtering his wife and other kids in a drunken rage.
So tell me again, why do we teach this story to our kids?
Well, so much for the unicorns, from now on, all carnivores will be confined to ‘C’ deck. – The Far Side.
13, Comment by BgScryAnml — 4/29/2007 @ 12:32 pm
Now _that_ is a piece of work. Probably violates Title 19, section 312.b,, paragraph 2: ‘No intelligent entertainment allowed on any blog.’
I don’t think the true believers are all stupid. Of course there are exceptions. I think people let themselves be led along by other people who claim to know more about God’s will then they do. They just ignore the inconsistencies of the story(ies). Faith is just an excuser to stop thinking about things for which you do not have immediate answers.
You could switch the stories of the Grimm Fairy Tales with the stories told in the bible. Each is as likely to have happened as the other.
People allowing an ancient text full of wrongful translations to lead their lives is hilarious to me.
And exactly what would these meat-eating animals eat while on board? Wouldn’t it be OTHER ANIMALS? Also, if there were just two animals taken, why did Noah get to take his whole family? Seems pretty anti-animal if you ask me.
OK, Noah was at least an iconoclast – no one believed him at the time.
So, Perhaps, this guy knows something we don’t?
What do you want to bet that it is really an resturant or butchershop serving a wide variety of meat to order?
#12 – ArianeB,
I disagree. The purpose of religion is to unite people and make them willing to die in wars of conquest. We are already a violent species. But, cultures with religion fight for their gods with a ferver that is possible but difficult to generate without such ludicrous beliefs.
As I pointed out in my intro, the Ark legend could have been widespread and distorted via a mishmash of various survivor folklore.
Water does not have to remain around for 40 days and nights to be destructive. Earthquake-triggered tsunamis last a day yet can destroy a countryside. Considering the “biblical” weather that accompanied the last massive climate change at the end of the pleistocene ~12,000 years ago every coastline was beaten by weather like a redheaded stepchild.
Check out radical climate-change concepts like crust displacement. As some of you know, I am one of the believers that an advanced civilization (not plastics and microchips, but international commerce, advanced math, functioning society and such) was destroyed by climate change. Any survivors of that cataclysm would also have a flood and destruction legend (like Gilgamesh).
What we don’t know about the past is massive, and “historians” aren’t in the business of really finding out the truth. There is so much we don’t know about the Romans, and they’re from our relatively recent past. Here’s a thought-provoking article by Gary Kasparov, the retired Chess Grandmaster, on some of the discrepancies in what we claim to know about Rome.
If you are unable to accept the fact that when you die, that’s it, then, the idea of heaven or arising from the dead ‘to a higher glory’ makes sense. Naturally, you don’t want to mix with the Hitlers and Pol Pots of that world, so a heaven and a hell, with the attendant keepers (God and his angels, and Satan and his – well – angels) makes even more sense. The number is amazing of people who are believers just in case there is a hell or heaven.
#27 – Oladimeji,
Probably true. Remember that time before you were born, or even conceived? I expect death to be just like that.
#26 – smartalix
I read a science fiction story a few years back about an archeologist who finds uncharacteristic oxidized iron deposits (rust smears) in an area where there was no natural iron. He gradually came to believe there was an advanced civilization that was building things, not 12,000 years ago, but millions of years ago. A contrapuntal story line concerned sentient dinosaurs approaching their own end-times. The point was that, after millions of years there would be *nothing* left. “Millions of years” represents a timespan people simply cannot fully comprehend, any more than we can truly comprehend, in a “five KM down the road, then left at the general store” sort of way, the distance represented by a light year. The only trace left of such a civilization would be an occasional inexplicable smearing of rust in the rocks.
But that’s millions of years later. Wouldn’t an iron-based civilization still be detectable 12,000 years later? Not in any detail if it got washed away by a climate change, maybe. But wouldn’t there be SOME identifiable trace left – some hint of harbor or roads or manmade structures of some type?
There are places in China where archeologists are sifting through inside-the-cave human settlement crap-holes looking for discarded potsherds, according to a show I saw recently on one of those “semi-science channels” mentioned by John Paradox (#18). I think those settlements go back about 12K years.
Climate change or no, wouldn’t there be SOME trace left?
29,
You’d be surprised what gets destroyed over time, especially if it is made of metal. Where is all the metal used in the construction of the Pantheon? The Colosseum? Anything useful that is not buried gets used up. Having said that, there are artifacts scattered everywhere that hint towards an advanced civilization deep in the past.
Here’s an interesting article from Archinect, an architectural site, on how fast London would return to the Earth without maintenance. The timespan described in the article is “only” about a thousand years. Multiply that by twelve and you’ll recognize why mostly it is only the stones that last that long.