Generations of Noah (Body)

Seeing as Noah never asked about the welfare of all of the people and animals who didn't go on the ark, I see him as perhaps a hero for saving humanity but one without much of a conscience. He never, ever asks about the welfare of the others, and never warns them or tries to help them.

Actually, Jewish history regarded Noah as a preacher who repeatedly warned others about why he was building the ark. I'll try to find the reference.

Mindy, on the other hand, is inscrutable.

I still find it hilarious to contemplate the allegation that a dude over one hundred years of age, with sons also over one hundred years of age, cut down thousands of trees, stripped them, sawed them into planks, and then built that abortion of a wooden ship.

You boys and girls are willing to swallow the most outrageous nonsense.

It's also astounding how the ark apparently never needed cleaning, there was infinite food for all, the carnivores didn't hurt the vegetarians and no one stepped on the insects.

neo, please correct me if I'm wrong about the preaching part. Noah was also a drunkard, at least after the flood. I'd've thought the drinking would've started while on board. Durn animals!

Good Day
This is wrong Noah is a preacher. He tried to warn others, but as always people will laugh and scoff.

2 Peter 2:5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth [person], a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Good Day

Good Day

Just as Noah is symbolic of a mass of people who survive a catastrophic disaster, the ark is also symbolic, and the animals are symbolic.

Good Day

According to a source I found online, there are 6,000 species of reptile, 9,000 birds, and 15,000 species of mammals (found here). Not to mention the millions of species of insects. Even discounting the insects, Noah was still commanded in the following way:
Genesis 7
2Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.

3Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
That's a lot of animals to fit into 100,000 square feet (9,300 m²) (according to Wikipedia)

Either the story was not meant to be taken literally, or it is a lie. I'll let each person decide that for themselves.

Quite apart from showing an appalling ignorance of some many other things, the authors of the bible display an hilarious ignorance of naval architecture in wooden ships. One of the biblical literalists as this site had contended that Ol' Noah actually had forty years to build his boat. That just makes matters worse. If the vessel was constructed immediately as the wood was available, then it would have been built with "green" wood. Green wood changes shape as it ages, and the planking would "start." That means that it would separate along the lines at which the planks were joined. This would have meant that it would have required more and more caulking to keep the seams waterproof. It the wood were aged first, it would have eliminated most of the problems with the planks of the hull starting, but as wood ages, it becomes harder and more difficult to shape.

There are a host of other problems, as well, never mind the hilarious notion that two of every creature were on board, and lived peacefully together for more than a year, with sufficient fodder for all the critters. Wooden ships are based upon a hull, which is constructed by laying a keel, upon which a keelson is built in order for the masts to be stepped. Now the "Ark" of this fairytale seems not to have had masts, and to have had no sails rigged. That, of course, means that it would have been impossible to steer the vessel. Even if water covered the face of the earth for most of that year, when they began to receded, the "crew" (such as it were) would have had no means of avoiding a disasterous grounding at some point. The lack of a keelson would have meant that the keel was much weaker than in ships with stepped masts, so running aground would have been far more dangerous.

When the keel has been laid, and the keelsons built on the keel, strakes (upright, curving post to which the planks will be atttached) are added, and the exterior planking is attached to the strakes. But then wooden ships were always launched before any decking were built in, and before any superstructure were built upon the decks (all the pretty pictures always show this big, hulking pig of a boat, with a huge house like structure on top). Ships have to be launched before the decking is laid, and before any masts are stepped or superstructure added, because the wood of the keel, keelson and strakes cannot support the weight of wood on them in the open air--they require the bouyancy of the water to prevent them from warping and/or breaking altogether. So if Ol' Noah had forty years, how many years was there between the launch of the hull (absolutely necessary to prevent it from destroying itself with its own weight) and it's actual use? Even ten or twenty years would be enough for the wood to begin to rot--and a rotten hull is a prescription for disaster.

Another major problem of wooden ships, a problem which increased with increasing size, was "hogging." Hoggin describes the tendancy of the ship to bow up in the middle from the effect of the combined weight of wood and fittings at the bow and the stern. Hogging drastically reduced the working life of a ship. In the frigates and line of battle ships built in the United States after 1787, the problem of hogging was largely obviated by the use of diagonal strake-like supports built into the hull after launching (once again, the launch was absolutely necessary to preserve the hull against the mere weight of the wood). This solution, however, was only feasible in ships of war, which did not need a great hull capacity. The diagonal supports greatly reduced the capacity of the hull. In the "Ark," the hull capacity was crucial, due to the necessity of accomodating all those critters.

Now, it is true that hogging would have been much reduced in a vessel without stepped masts, spars, sails and rigging. But the boat described in Genesis would have been 450 feet long and 75 feet wide, with a depth from the main deck of 45 feet. That would have given it a draft of no more than 25 feet, and probably less. This was an extraordinarily long vessel in relation to its width. The United States Ship Constitution, the famous old frigate which now resides in Boston harbor, is 204 feet in length, 43 feet at the beam, and draws just 14 feet of water. The "Ark" as described in the bible is well over twice as long, but is not twice as wide, and does not draw twice as much water. Even though Constitution has three stepped masts with the weight of spars, sails and rigging, and the weight of naval artillery, it was not designed to carry over a million species of insects, and more that 50,000 species of other animals. The weight in the "Ark," even if all the species could have been stuffed into such a small space, would have far exceeded that carried by Constitution. Even without masts, spars, sails, rigging and naval artillery, the "Ark" would have been a far greater risk for hogging, which would have started the planking and sunk her within days, if not actually in hours.

I could actually go on like this for pages. These represent just some of the absurdities of the story, never mind packing all those critters in with enough food for a year. Our resident biblical literalists contends that god put the animals into suspended animation, so they would not need to eat for a year. There still was no way you could have had a sea-worthy vessel of that size, and packed all those critters into it. It is hilarious, though.

Yeah, you need some BS story like that, because there is no way that even approximates literal truth.

Actually Set, from a believer's perspective, Noah did the work and God held the durn thing together. If Noah had built the ultimate Queen Mary of arks without God's help, it would have failed.

Yes, it he had built a ship the size of the Queen Mary from wood, it would have collapsed before enough rain had fallen to float it. You, Neo, are at least honest in stipulating a necessary string of miracles, because the story is otherwise ludicrous. Of course, we can't blame the Jews for that, because they stole the story, fair and square, from The Gilgamesh Epic.

And so far as I can figure, we don't fudge things by calling Noah a preacher in the Old Testament. He's just a dude who builds a boat, grabs his family and animals and floats around for a while, as everyone else drowns.

no, it can be taken literally by interpreting two of each *kind* to mean two of each genus, not species. so two cats suffice for all cats, tigers, lions, jaguars, pumas, leopards, ocelots, caracals, lynx, bobcats, margays, and so forth. *then* the kinds have to speciate like mad after the deluge to produce all the living species. i've written at much greater length on the deluge in my blog; if you'd care to check it out, just click the www button under my sig. FYI, i completely reject the historicity of the Genesis flood.

Then you've got evolution going on, and we can't have that! Horrors!

As do I, but I'll check out your blog. I've heard that argument before myself, and I put as much stock in it as I do the literal version of two or seven of everything. That's not meant to be a statement against you, mind you, just stating my position.
I posted those same passages from Genesis over on the Evolution? How? thread. I find it interesting that the seven of each clean and the birds is all but ignored, or even not taught. When I was attending Sunday School as a youngster, I certainly never heard of this.

well, art, the 2 of each kind version is *possible*, whereas 2 of each species is not. can't give you the calculation, but working around the clock, noah & family couldn't have come close to putting each of 2 species on the ark within the seven days he was given to do so.

Although at this point, a religious person might point out that in God all things are possible and that since he brought the animals to the ark he certainly could have gotten them to go inside in a timely and orderly fashion over those seven days.
Provided one believes such tales, of course.
I'm still kind of blown away by the whole "seven (pair) of each clean animal and seven (pair) of birds" thing. Even if it was only versions, not species, that's still a lot of animals.

& those animals required a lot of food. looking into the question of food, BTW, i found more fodder for my blog: the young earth creationist insistence that all animals were vegetarian until the Fall, on account of Genesis 1:29-30.

Noah would have had to populate his box with an estimated 50 BILLION species of plants and animals in order to succeed. The literalists believe that everything was already created so that would include a significantly larger number of species than are now present. Even acceptin "real lifes" assertions that Noah would have taken Baby forms or since so many animals were 'of the same "kind" How would he know which ones they actually were. Was Noah an accomplished geneticist?

Since this is silliness anyway, I submit that Noah built his structure in a "post and Beam" fasion. Where none of the problems that set posed would occur. Course the damn thing'd have to have a good covering like balloon frame houses and it wouldnt look like a boat at all, more like a big shipping crate.

I can still here the old Bill Cosby routine on this.

No portholes. all the Ark pix Ive seen show a pilot house as big as Cleveland and windows. Even woodships sink easily when their masses displacement is accounted for by water, so we d want no windows or doors.

And what the hell is Gopher wood anyway? and its not the Cladastris (yellow wood) of the Southern US because that isnt found in the old world.