To ask a stupid question? Noah's Ark

There used to be a petting zoo somewhere near Bristol called Noah's Ark. They had what they called a to scale model of the Ark. With an audio track discussing the dinosaurs getting onto the Ark and that they were fed on passing sea turtles. One of my absolute favourite comedy days out with small kids because it makes zero sense on almost every level.

Lst time I studied anything about a global flood, there was no evidence of a worldwide one. But flood stories are very common in all kinds of ancient literature so that does suggest some kind of experience of major serious flooding - who knows how far back.

But old texts like that, even in quite orthodox forms of CHristianity, aren't really seen as historical in the sense that we think of history. That is they may well have real historical elements but people in the ancient world at the time those stories emerged didn't have a historical study in the way we do. They remembered things with stories, and often the stories are crafted in such a way that they illustrate a kind of lesson.

A lot of the ancient Christian writers understood the story of Noah's ark to be about salvation, with the ark as the church itself.

'The Bible' by Karen Armstrong is a fascinating book. It is the history of the bible and talks about how the Bible came to be the way it is. She talks about how stories are passed down from generation to generation and appear in multiple cultures and that most cultures have something like the flood story. It also talks about the impact of translations both from a linguistic point of view and what was culturally important at the time and in the location of the translation. And other interesting insights.

Yeah, god gave man free will then when man didn't obey him (because, you know, free will) he committed genocide by flooding the earth.

And the church try and tell you he's a "loving God". The mind boggles

thats an unusual intellectual journey

I’ve read that too - although I’m taking about 10 odd years ago and actually could be more! What I remember reading was that some remains of a huge boat was found on Mt Ararat and one thought was that it could be the ark. Never heard anything about it since, so maybe it isn’t, or can’t be proved.

The existence of a flood is the least of the implausibilities of a story that would have us believe an ark of sufficient scale to house a pair of every animal in existence could be a built by a man purported to be 600 years old at the time of construction.

LOL.

In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!

The Sahul/Arafura Shelf between Northern Australia and Indonesia was exposed during the Last Glacial Maximum, which ended about 14,000 years ago. Same with Doggerland, between the UK and North-Eastern Europe.

As the ice sheets melted and sea levels rose, there were indeed many catastrophic floods.

Many ancient cultures tell of an 'ark'. The Golgafrinchans were supposed to have built 3 that travelled far to take their people ( well some of them anyway) to a place of safety. Their descendants are still around today.

These people were ahead of their time and are widely supposed to have invented a form of currency and even had problems with inflation!

I should say the expression of the recessive genes.

Wouldn't the health of 'an initial breeding pair' have an affect on offspring produced even within only two initial individuals?

A bit but not really. Initially yes. But you need diversity in a breeding population. Any population that inbreeds becomes more vulnerable and issues are always amplified. You don't have the diversity to survive environmental pressures. Recessive genes are expressed more. Typically recessive genes should be less common. In inbred populations they become the norm. Both desirable and undesirable. The pharaohs are a classic example!

In very basic terms, mortality is higher in inbred populations.

Most of the Bible stories are much, much older than the Bible or Judaism. They were built on pre-existing religions; we have documents, carvings and grave goods to show that the Flood, miracle babies, people living hundreds of years, giants, good and bad spirits - the whole caboodle - had been parts of unifying mythologies since forever.

Things like floods and droughts, epidemics, geological events, pest invasions, etc, have always been parts of people's lives. Most were catastrophic for prehistoric societies so they were greatly feared. They had religion instead of science; everything that went wrong or turned out well was analysed in terms of the supernatural.

The Old Testament's better on things like places, people and politics (though still pretty approximate). That's because they saw everything through this same supernatural lens, so a real war was no different in their minds from a supernatural curse.

Some say it was local, but I believe it was global and what they say was deposited in millions of years was deposited during the flood, fossils are from the flood and the continents split from Pangea to how it's now after the flood and after the flood an ice age. There are similar flood stories all over the world and in Australia were stories from Aboriginals that the sea level rose a lot.

Sorry, you believe a man called Noah built an ark (what is an ark)?

I thought only Bible literalist nutters believed shit like that.

Biblical genre is a bit more complicated than that... In the Bible there may be allegory and poetry, but Jesus and Paul certainly spoke as if many old testament stories were historical events. I'm also not sure if the story neatly maps onto these symbols in the way you've stated. Jews hearing these stories through thr centuries certainly believed them to be historical events, and their additional symbolic interpretations would be considered void if they were simply myth.

They used their boat! 😅

There is some evidence of a flood in the right area but it was fairly localised, plenty of documentaries on theories, national geographic often have had them. Worldwide, no, not feasible

Wouldn't the health of 'an initial breeding pair' have an affect on offspring produced even within only two initial individuals?

If eg the son and daughter of that couple went on to breed and both were healthy and had no genetic issues. Their offspring could well be fine. This could go on down the line for a period, each generation becoming more diluted.

If there really was a global flood and Noah's Ark took two/seven of every kind of animal, one wonders how the kiwis got to Israel and back to NZ again. They're not known for being particularly strong swimmers.

😂

https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=the%20irish%20rovers%20the%20unicorn%20lyrics&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:4d82d1c1,vid:dcPxhX_VQ3U,st:0&vuanr=16

Noah didn’t take the unicorns :(

The one I like is the plausibility of quails stopping for almonds as they migrate, and causing the death of the Israelites by cyanide poisoning https://www.massmed.org/about/mms-leadership/history/don-t-eat-the-quails/

(others have suggested hemlock seeds and other causes)