Hope for your project - a little off topic.

D

David Brown

"Juha Nieminen" wrote in message

Reply at the end...

-----------------------------------------


It is taking Ken Ham over 73 million dollars to build a completely
unseaworthy ark "replica" using modern technology, modern materials,
and a crew of probably hundreds of people. This "replica" would
probably not float even for a minute, much less be safe on the ocean.

You believe that one man and his three sons (or whatever the number
was) was able to build a wooden boat that's vastly bigger than any
other boat made of wood that has ever been built in the history of
humanity, with bronze-age technology and a crew of about four people,
and have it seaworthy? (Sure, bigger boats have been built in modern
times. They were not built of wood. There's a maximum size that you
can build from wood before it crumbles under its own weight.)

Even if it were to build a boat of that size from wood alone (it's
not, but let's assume it is), it's logistically impossible to do with
such a small crew with bronze-age technology.

Building a boat of that size with such a small crew and such primitive
technology would have taken decades, if not hundreds of years. "That's
fine", you say, "Noah was hundreds of years old." Yeah, sure, let's
accept that myth. However, that's not the problem. The problem is that
a wooden structure of that size would require constant maintenance,
especially given that it's constantly exposed to the elements. At some
point, when the structure reaches a certain size, the amount of
maintenance will take all the effort of the four-man crew, stopping
them from actually building any more of it.

Even if the boat wouldn't crumble under its own weight, it just cannot
be seaworthy. There's a lot of engineering that goes into building big
modern vessels, such as oil tankers. The sea exerts all kinds of stress
onto the ship and it has to be designed to withstand them.

Even if it had been just a *building* made of wood, rather than a boat,
it would have been completely unprecedent for the time. The technology
just wasn't there and, once again, there's a limit of how big a wooden
structure can be.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: (e-mail address removed) ---
-------------------------------------------


For me, to believe that there is some degree of truth in the story of
Noah's Ark means accepting that there was considerable divine
intervention at every step of the way. Personally I have no problem
with that and don't try to "prove" the story based on science alone and
nor do I feel I need to.

If there wasn't a divine force or supernatural powers then not much of
the Bible makes sense anyway. I believe Jesus was God and rose from the
dead. Nothing scientific in that. Not a problem for me.

That's consistent, I suppose.

However, I think it makes more sense to divide the Bible stories into
three fairly obvious categories.

One is the divine or supernatural parts - such as Jesus rising from the
dead. That sort of thing is clearly a matter of belief and not
scientific, but still has to be accepted as basically factual if you are
a believer at all.

Another group is the historical stuff - things like the records of the
kings of Israel, or the letters to the early Christian church. These
are probably at least partly based on real lives and events, though
highly biased (as many histories are) and almost entirely without
third-party corroboration. Much of these parts are not particularly
relevant anyway.

Finally, there are the myths, allegories, legends, fairy tales, and
parables. This includes the creation myths, Noah's arch, and much of
the books of Moses. If you treat these the way most religions treat
their myths (including the way almost all Christians treated them until
a couple of centuries ago), they are stories to describe God, his
relationship to people, his strengths, his weaknesses, and how he wants
people to behave. It is pointless to try to view these things as "real"
events - it involves so much waving of magic wands and divine
intervention that it becomes meaningless as "real" events, and you lose
all purpose and teaching from the story. When Jesus told the parable of
the lost sheep, he did not mean it literally - the same applies to the
old prophets talking about Noah's ark and similar tales.

If you believe in a creator God, and you believe he cares for you, then
you have /got/ to believe he gave you rational sense for a purpose and
expects you to use it. If he wanted you to have blind faith in what
people tell you, he'd have made you a North Korean.
 
D

David Brown

And it's in the Daily Mail. Similar levels of veracity as History Channel.

No, the History Channel is a lot more accurate and entertaining. But
the Daily Mail has more scantily clad women.
 
D

David Brown

Entertaining, perhaps. Accurate? UFOs? Ghosts? Grail Legends?

It's been a number of years since I've had the History Channel, so maybe
it's gone downhill. It is certainly possible to make accurate
documentaries about what people /think/ about UFOs, ghosts, etc. - there
is plenty of scope for good history about the place of such things in
societies. But the History Channel suffers from the same problem as
Discovery, Nat Geo, etc., in that Americans like to portray all opinions
as equally valid. If you can mentally filter out the crackpot opinions,
which are usually obvious, you can get real information from the
programs. (The Cosmos series seems to be an exception - I've only seen
a couple of the programs so far, but the crackpot opinions are mentioned
briefly to show that they are wrong.)

And sometimes these channels show BBC documentaries, which are always
accurate :)
 
D

David Brown

Tonights schedule:

American Pickers (two guys from iowa buying old junk)
three more episodes of AP.

You can Take it with you.

(that's it!)

Tomorrow morning:

Vikings (Sitcom set in obvious era)
Info-documentaries ("Only available on TV")
Conspiracy?: Princess Dianna
Info-documentaries
Real Deal: Knife Fight (have no clue what this is about)
7 more Real Deal episodes
American Pickers.

Downhill is putting it kindly. Reality TV, Ghosts, UFO's.


But why not, then, watch them on the beeb (iplayer?)

Last I checked, "iplayer" doesn't work outside the UK (which is not
unreasonable - I pay TV license fees to the Norwegian equivalent, NRK,
but I don't pay TV license fees to the BBC). Also last I checked,
iplayer needs Windows.

But I get "BBC Knowledge" in my TV package, and a fair number of BBC
documentaries are shown on the Norwegian NRK national channels (a number
of them are made as cooperations between BBC and NRK).

I would probably watch the occasional program from the History Channel
if I got it (but not "Reality" TV and other nonsense), but I can live
without it.


But back to the point - based on your description of the History
Channel, the Daily Mail is still a worse source of information!
 
W

woodbrian77

Seriously, arguing logic with fanatic beleivers, or really any beleivers,
is futile. Anything can be made to fit with the "god did it" argument.

I'm doing my best here. Sorry if it doesn't help you.
I not a historian. But yes, I believe G-d helped Noah
in a variety of ways to be successful in the job he'd
given him. This is also my experience with what I've
been working on. G-d has led the way.
All you can hope for is for them to contradict themselves so badly it
cannot be explained away anymore, but you need a lot more subtle buildup
for that.

I believe Noah endured similar mocking of his faith
while he built the ark. Some probably thought the
work was crazy.


Brian
Ebenezer Enterprises - In G-d we trust.
http://webEbenezer.net
 
S

seeplus

On Wednesday, April 30, 2014 10:36:20 AM UTC, Martijn Lievaart wrote:
I'm doing my best here. Sorry if it doesn't help you.

I not a historian. But yes, I believe G-d helped Noah

in a variety of ways to be successful in the job he'd

given him. This is also my experience with what I've

been working on. G-d has led the way.


I believe Noah endured similar mocking of his faith

while he built the ark. Some probably thought the

work was crazy.

Just the one thing about the ridiculous bible story:

There are now about 90 species in the whale family.

The top 12 whales avg over 85 tonnes each, some are 200 tonnes.
So just 12 of them weigh about 1000 tonnes.
You need 2 of each on board = 2,000 tonnes.
Now you can't just put these things down on a piece of damp towelling.

They would need at least 10 times their own volume of water = 20,000 tonnes
of sea water displacement for just those animals.

The larger whales eat over 3 tonnes of krill a day.
For 180 whales that is about 16,000 tonnes a month.
The ships displacement now is 38,000 tonnes, to cater for 1 month.
And 30,000 tonnes of poop a month to clean up, or about 1,000 tonnes a day.

But then the magic guy with a broom could do his miracles again.

How do you create that daily feed from just 2 krill?

How does that guy Noah's mob manage to wrangle these things on board ...
and get them individually penned. Promise not to mock ... if there is some sane explanation.

Be interesting <not> to see Ken Ham's interpretation.

Most religions say that their magic book is the word of their <insert magic author's name> god.

If the magic book is just so absurdly wrong here, then how can anybody believe any of that other stuff in there?
 
Q

Qu0ll

"seeplus" wrote in message

[snip]
How does that guy Noah's mob manage to wrangle these things on board ...
and get them individually penned. Promise not to mock ... if there is some
sane explanation.

The whales are aquatic and hence were less prone to the effects of well...
more water.

They stayed in the water like the fish and all other sea-dwelling creatures.

Sane enough for you?

--
And loving it,

-Qu0ll (Rare, not extinct)
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
[Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me]
 
I

Ian Collins

seeplus said:
Just the one thing about the ridiculous bible story:

The one that used to flummox my RE teacher at school was a) where did
all the water com from and b) where did it all go?

If it cam from rain, the rain would have had to come form evapourated
water, see where this is going?
 
S

seeplus

"seeplus" wrote in message

The whales are aquatic and hence were less prone to the effects of well...

more water.

They stayed in the water like the fish and all other sea-dwelling creatures.
Sane enough for you?
-Qu0ll (Rare, not extinct)

To quote the book of myths.

Genesis 7 >NKJV:
"and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made"

Yes... the guy's just not sane, AND he did not say anything about leaving the whales alone did he?

Of course if your particular cult considers the whales "clean", then there would be 7 of each aboard. Ken's ark is now the size of a medium modern tanker.
 
Q

Qu0ll

"seeplus" wrote in message
Genesis 7 >NKJV:
"and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I
have made"

The "face of the earth"could of course refer to the land ("earth") as
clearly if a flood is His M.O. then flooding would not have much of a
negative impact on animals that already live *in* the water.
Yes... the guy's just not sane, AND he did not say anything about leaving
the whales alone did he?
Of course if your particular cult considers the whales "clean", then there
would be 7 of each aboard. Ken's ark is now the size of a medium modern
tanker.

As I have said many times, I for one do not believe that the story of Noah
is a fact-by-fact account of what happened and is more a statement of the
way the situation appeared to the peoples of the time. Much of the Bible is
like this and I have no problem with this. Also, as stated, many Biblical
events such as this one could only have happened in a manner even remotely
similar to how they were described if there was considerable divine
intervention.

But that's what we are talking about: God who is divine so once you accept
that then there is absolutely no point in trying to argue over apparent
scientific anomalies.

Divine power cannot be explained by science and does not appear to be
governed by scientific laws so why bother trying to somehow combine them or
use one against the other in futile arguments?

--
And loving it,

-Qu0ll (Rare, not extinct)
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
[Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me]
 

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