To ask a stupid question? Noah's Ark

[Besttimelftheyear]

So I am not religious, but I would say I was brought up Christian. I would say my parents were non practicing Christians, but I was taught bible stories as truth and facts. The logical adult in me now says that most of the events can be explained quite simply.

Onto the question. Noah's Ark, is there any evidence of a global flood? Noah was supposed to have taken two of each animals onto the boat while the earth was flooded and wiped out everything else.

Surely this was simply a regular flood like we see today?

What are peoples beliefs or knowledge on this?

LOL.

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.

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.

thats an unusual intellectual journey

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

'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.

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.

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.

I heard a rumour that it was those dinosaurs that kept eating the unicorns horns, that the unicorns evolved to not growing them and became horses. 😂

It must true- I read it in a book

I think you will find this of interest, OP

https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/

for what it’s worth, yes I believe the Biblical account of the flood. Not least because my Lord Jesus referred to it as factual when describing the events preceding His return.

“But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”
Matthew 24: 37-39

Some funny videos about Noah's Ark.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sVv9t_3t9Rk

me too!

Flood myths came from melting glaciers at the end of the last millennium ice age. Noah’s ark came from the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh.

Anyone who believes in a young earth and a literal interpretation of genesis is a fucking idiot

Why a global flood? It only needs a major flood in the area of the Brinze age peoples who tell this story. Many cultures experienced this at different times and mega floods occur all over the world: consider, for example, the tsunami that drowned Doggerland in about a day. This is a fascinating aspect of human history and I recommend podcasts featuring the British Museum expert Irving Finkel who found that Mesopotamian stories recount the building of what was, essentially a giant coracle: the vessel needed only to float until the water receded. There’s no need to limit yourself to “the bible”, which is only a selective collection of stories.

Utter rubbish, Pangea was millions of years ago. There is also no worldwide layer of sediment

I watched a documentary years ago on this. It said the area the story orrignates from was prone to extensive flooding and that to the people it probably felt like the whole world was flooded. It also said that archeoligists had discovered that the people built their homes on straw bases that were anchored into the ground so that they floated on the flood waters without drifting off. They'd bring their animals in when the rains arrived.

So like a lot of old stories there's probably a grain of truth in there. But it's highly unlikely that the Noah family were the only people left alive. And even more unlikely that they had 16 million creatures in tow.

Some interesting ideas to add to the discussion;

Evidence suggests that the Med has flooded and dried up numerous times, caused by the pinching and opening of the Straits of Gibraltar.

Cheetahs at one time may have been down to just 3 or 4 breeding animals, as their lack of genetic diversity shows.

St. Bartholomews church in Brighton was built to the exact dimensions of the Ark. It is so tall, it blocked the down draughts to the chimneys of the houses alongside it. So the vicar and his brother (the Wagner's) purchased the houses, and let them very cheaply to poor families.

I got in trouble at primary school because, when we had to write a story about Noah’s Ark, I wrote that the reason there are no unicorns anymore is because they didn’t make it to the ark on time. My teacher very stroppily told you that this was absolutely not true and I had to rewrite the story.

I look back now and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Imagine telling a child off because they wrote something that “wasn’t true” about a unicorn, but teaching them in all seriousness that one man put two of every creature in the world onto a single boat and used them to repopulate the world. Apparently THAT was fine.

Cheetahs at one time may have been down to just 3 or 4 breeding animals, as their lack of genetic diversity shows.

Yes. But they are pretty unique. And still struggle as a result.

My understanding is that there were global floods during or after the last glacial period which was many thousands BC. Not global as all happening across the globe at once but lots happening in different places and causing a lot of distruction. This definitely would make sense of the large number of flood stories in different religions from around the world. Some with ark type arrangements too. By the time the old testament story was put into writing it would have been an oral story/myth for generation upon generation. How reality became mixed with myth makes sense if we consider that these were devastating events and humanity, all around the world, had to believe that there was some reason for it. Their own misbehaviour - great one for the elites to keep the little people in line - or something out of our control but in the control of the gods (or god) who we must worship well. Those myths are scary but also comforting because they offer a reason.

I was brought up Catholic, convent school the whole kit and caboodle. We were more or less taught that the new testament was to be taken as history, although not revelation which was a bit too mental. The Old Testatment was not to be taken as - excuse pun - gospel. We understood that many of the stories were a bit like the parables of Jesus in the New Testament only more bloody, longer and sometimes scary. They were a way of explaining life. That said, I'm pretty sure that we would have been taught to believe stuff like Moses and all of that and other stories but not things like Adam and Eve, the flood, Noah, turning to a pillar of salt, etc. Most of the nuns were pretty agnostic even about the "true stories" and as we got to sixth form would be a bit more open about that. Always a laugh to say "But what about Lilith?" when getting anywhere near Genesis but looking back the majority of our religious education was the New Testatment because it was more relevant to our lives and faith.

My teenage son once asked a similar question after religion (or whatever it's called now) at school. They were doing Christianity and he pointed out how come the devil gets to be the bad guy when all he did was offer a women some knowledge and Jesus some food in the desert. Meanwhile God, the good guy, kills everyone in the world apart from Mr and Mrs Noah, burns down cities, turns people to salt, etc etc etc.