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?

@Stoufer thank you for the book recommendation!

And the poo. Imagine all the poo 💩

Presumably there was major flooding over a long period, after the last Ice Age ended, so possibly there were folk memories from way back, which entered into myth. If people were capable of quite sophisticated cave paintings over 30,000 years ago, they were presumably also capable of passing on stories of events they couldn’t explain.

I believe there are credible explanations for other Old Testament stories, e.g. the 7 years of famine in Egypt, which could have been caused by the aftermath (ash wiping out the sun) of that massive volcanic eruption in Greece (I forget the island involved) and an ensuing massive tsunami, which could also have wiped out the Mycenaean culture around 1600 (IIRC) BC.

If you read what I wrote specifically used the word "kind" and not "species".

But what are you claiming here? That kiwis didn't need to go to Israel because another of their kind did and kiwis subsequently evolved from that one? What kind would that be? Flightless birds? Birds in general? Anything that lays eggs? Anything with a spine? Anything that's multicellular?

@Calmomiletea I have read genesis 6. It reads like fantastical mythology rather than factual account. It's as impossible a story as the one about Finn McCool building the Giant's Causeway because he wanted to go and beat up another giant but didn't want to get his feet wet crossing the Irish sea.

Why should we believe the story about Noah's ark but not the one about Finn MacCool?

There was no floating magic zoo boat

Read the Bible. The world lies. God doesn't.

Study geology. The evidence doesn't lie. There was no global flood.

Study biology. There has been no huge wipeout of life during the period of human civilisation. Animals - and humans - do not all descend from a mere boatful. The evidence is in our genes. (Apart from the sheer nonsense of how the marsupials got to Asia Minor and back.)

I wouldn't be so harsh as to say the bible 'lies' (in the case of Noah) - men wrote down a flood story passed down through oral history, made into a myth about why it happened which fitted into the religion they'd developed.

Read the Bible, read the epic of Gilgamesh, read the Greek flood story.

I remember being taught even back in the 60s that those biblical events could have had natural causes and of course that will be what happened.

But when Christians agree (as they mostly do) then they are admitting that all god's actions were not his at all, but just natural events that the priests used to fool people.

Which is accurate, but I wonder how Christians can handle the contradiction.

Calmomiletea

"The whole purpose of it was to kill everyone who would not repent, I.e. everyone on the earth"

How do you make it work with the newborn babies and for that matter the unborn ones killed when their pregnant mothers drowned.

I think most of the stories have some basis in fact but have been exaggerated/added to of course over the years. I saw a programme years ago about the plagues of Egypt and how they could be attributed to seismic activity. Volcanic eruption = ash (black sky), leading to pollution in the river (rivers of blood) which lead to frogs relocating in search of food. Cattle drank from the river and became diseased and the first born sons got the lion share of the meat and were poisoned etc etc. can’t remember how the locusts and boils came into it but it all made sense and of course back then with no science it was simply attributed to God. Finally they said the Red Sea parting could have been the waters pulling back before a tsunami. Could have all been bunk but was very interesting!

I’m not religious, but IMO there are plenty of Christians nowadays who don’t take everything in the Bible literally, and can accept that in bygone eras had to find ways to explain things they didn’t and couldn’t understand.

Even in late Victorian times many people still found Darwin’s theory of evolution sacrilegious. And of course fundamentalist Christians, especially across the pond, still do.

Maybe Noah worked for Thames Water and just chucked it all in the sea like they do now.

Read the Bible. The world lies. God doesn't.

While that may or may not be true, you'd first have to demonstrate that the Bible is the actual word of God.

Yes I thought they had found evidence that an ark shaped object waa buried there ?
I was brought Up as a Catholic and was always taught that much of of the old testament was not to be taken in the literal sense more about ancient stories trying to describe good and evil and some historic events may have got mixed in
I'm agnostic at best now.

Thanks for all the responses and so interesting reading all these replies, I can so easily fall down a rabbit hole with this type of stuff because it's fascinating.

The thing is, as I child I was told these stories, not just by my parents but by school today (not even a faith school). I just believed it, like Santa. I was certainly never taught to take the stories as symbolic only.

But it's simply not possible.

Even with symbolic meaning, the idea that a loving God would kill all of his people including children, babies and animals.

How evil were these people?

There a few 'kinds' of aardvarks that eat a diet almost entirely of termites - a lot of termites. I wonder how many tons of termites would have had to be kept on board to feed those aardvarks. Also, what do termites eat?

I’m not religious, but IMO there are plenty of Christians nowadays who don’t take everything in the Bible literally, and can accept that in bygone eras had to find ways to explain things they didn’t and couldn’t understand.

I don't understand how anyone can believe in religion in this situation. Once you accept that most of your holy book is a story, how to you decide "but not this bit, this thing definitely happened" when there is no more evidence than for any other part.

Really.. what's so unrealistic about it, in your mind?

Well realistically there couldnt have been just one man and women that gave birth to the whole of the human race ,they had sons too so how wouldn't hat have worked ?

My very Catholic convent primary school taught us that a lot of the parables were stories to try and help people understand ,good and evil etc with some historical events thrown in.
We were supposed to beleive that the new testament was based on fact

That's what I think. How do humans today decide which bits to believe.

It seems to me that people interpret their own meanings which is fair enough. But I fail to see even any symbolic meaning in a lot of these stories.

I've found a copy of my old childhood bible, it's made me want to order one and try to decipher it.

Wood, so they gradually ate the boat while it sailed around. Obviously!

Theologian here

@x2boys I do vaguely remember my dad explaining to me that the Old Testament was not 'true' or not to be taken as literal but I don't think I really understood.

Oh and in my childhood bible Jesus was a blonde haired blue eyed man.

Lol yes!