Poll ~ The Flood & Noah's Ark ~ Fact or Fiction?

You are not a Christian and YET you know who the true Christians are. Huh??? How do you arrive to that conclusion?

I believe all liars go to hell and that is why I am not lying in telling you what I believe. So you can be sure I am not winding you up.

 

Skeptics paint a picture of Noah going to countries remote from the Middle East to gather animals such as kangaroos and koalas from Australia, and kiwis from New Zealand. However, the Bible states that the animals came to Noah; he did not have to round them up (Genesis 6:20). God apparently caused the animals to come to Noah. The Bible does not state how this was done.

We also do not know what the geography of the world was like before the flood. If there was only one continent at that time, then questions of getting animals from remote regions to the ark are not relevant.

There are severe practical limitations on our attempts to understand the hows and whys of something that happened once, was not recorded in detail, and cannot be repeated.

Difficulties in our ability to explain every single situation in detail result from our limited understanding. We cannot go back in a time machine to check what has happened, and our mental reconstructions of what the world was like after the flood will inevitably be deficient. Because of this, the patterns of post-flood animal migration present some problems and research challenges for the biblical creation model. However, there are clues from various sources which suggest answers to the questions.

When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, the island remnant remained lifeless for some years, but was eventually colonized by a surprising variety of creatures, including not only insects and earthworms, but birds, lizards, snakes and even a few mammals. One would not have expected some of this surprising array of creatures to have crossed the ocean, but they obviously did. Even though these were mostly smaller than some of the creatures we discuss here, it illustrates the limits of our imaginings on such things.

 

That sounds pretty convenient

If you assume that evolution is a myth then you have to accept that the contents were in their present places. Animals living in the Arctic and Antarctic wouldn't be suited to warmer climates.

 

Evolutionists acknowledge that men and animals could once freely cross the Bering Strait, which separates Asia and the Americas. Before the idea of continental drift became popular, evolutionists depended entirely upon a lowering of the sea level during an ice age (which locked up water in the ice) to create land bridges, enabling dry-land passage from Europe most of the way to Australasia, for example.

How did animals make the long journey from the Ararat region? Even though there have been isolated reports of individual animals making startling journeys of hundreds of miles, such abilities are not even necessary. Early settlers released a very small number of rabbits in Australia. Wild rabbits are now found at the very opposite corner (in fact, every corner) of this vast continent. Does that mean that an individual rabbit had to be capable of crossing the whole of Australia? Of course not. Creation speakers are sometimes asked mockingly, "Did the kangaroo hop all the way to Australia?" We see by the rabbit example that this is a somewhat foolish question.

We also lack information as to how animals were distributed before the flood. Kangaroos (as is true for any other creature) may not have been on any isolated landmass. Genesis 1:9 suggests that there may have been only one landmass. ("Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.") For all we know, kangaroos might have been feeding within a stone's throw of Noah while he was building the Ark.

There is a widespread, but mistaken, belief that marsupials are found only in Australia, thus supporting the idea that they must have evolved there. However, living marsupials, opossums, are found also in North and South America, and fossil marsupials have been found on every continent. Likewise, monotremes were once thought to be unique to Australia, but the discovery in 1991 of a fossil platypus tooth in South America stunned the scientific community. Therefore, since evolutionists believe all organisms came from a common ancestor, migration between Australia and other areas must be conceded as possible by all scientists, whether evolutionist or creationist.



It may be asked, if creatures were migrating to Australia over a long time (which journey would have included such places as indonesia, presumably) why do we not find their fossils en route in such countries?

Fossilization is a rare event, requiring, as a rule, sudden burial (as in the flood) to prevent decomposition. Lions lived in israel until relatively recently. We don't find lion fossils in Israel, yet this doesn't prevent us believing the many historical reports of their presence. The millions of bison that once roamed the United States of America have left virtually no fossils. So why should it be a surprise that small populations, presumably under migration pressure from competitors and/or predators, and thus living in only one area for a few generations at most, should leave no fossils?

 

What did they mean by the world back when the Bible was written? Probably not very far, especially if they weren't in a position to see that the world is round. Did a tribal story of a massive flood that really took place grow in the telling to encompass the then-known world?

 

I wonder the same thing when they told me the story (fairy tale) about the frog that turned into a prince. That is more believable than the evolutionists one where the fish turned into a monkey and then into a fully logical human being.

 

proteindude - all your posts prove the original point that you and the other Fundies make yourself jump through all sorts of ideological hoops to try and 'prove' that the Old Testament is factually accurate. Also a lot of your conclusions are wrong - either the water in the salty oceans, covering two-thirds of the world's surface, would have swamped the freshwater (thus killing all the freshwater fish) or the rain would have diluted the oceans thus killing the sea fish. You went off on some tangent about water on the moon!

Your 'proofs' also leave you with more explaining to do. I agree there was probably one landmass at some stage in the earth's history. I accept that if that were the case at the time of the flood then two 'representatives' of each species could have found there way to Noah to be put in the ark. So when did this landmass split into the continents we know today? Was it when the waters receeded? Also if Noah and his family were the only survivors why hasn't EVERY other culture got a creation story along the lines of "The world was flooded, then the waters receeded and a few years later some people turned up?' (Why are there different races as well btw?)

And what about the rainbow? Did they REALLY not exist before?

 

If the whole earth were covered by water in the flood, then there would have been a mixing of fresh and salt waters. Many of today's fish species are specialized and do not survive in water of radically different saltiness to their usual habitat.

We do not know how salty the sea was before the flood. The flood was initiated by the breaking up of the "fountains of the great deep" (Genesis 7:11). Whatever the "fountains of the great deep" were, the flood must have been associated with massive earth movements, because of the weight of the water alone, which would have resulted in great volcanic activity.

Volcanoes emit huge amounts of steam, and underwater lava creates hot water/steam, which dissolves minerals, adding salt to the water. Furthermore, erosion accompanying the movement of water off the continents after the flood would have added salt to the oceans. In other words, we would expect the pre-flood ocean waters to be less salty than they were after the flood.

The problem for fish coping with saltiness is this: fish in fresh water tend to absorb water, because the saltiness of their body fluids draws in water (by osmosis). Fish in saltwater tend to lose water from their bodies because the surrounding water is saltier than their body fluids.

Many of today's marine organisms, especially estuarine and tidepool species, are able to survive large changes in salinity. For example, starfish will tolerate as low as 16-18 percent of the normal concentration of seawater.

There are migratory species of fish that travel between salt and fresh water. For example, salmon, striped bass, and Atlantic spurgeon spawn in fresh water and mature in salt water. Eels reproduce in salt water and grow to maturity in fresh water streams and lakes. So, many of today's species of fish are able to adjust to both fresh water and salt water.

Major public aquariums use the ability of fish to adapt to water of different salinity from their normal habitat to exhibit freshwater and saltwater species together. The fish can adapt if the salinity is changed slowly enough.

There is also a possibility that stable fresh and saltwater layers developed and persisted in some parts of the ocean. Fresh water can sit on top of salt water for extended periods of time. Turbulence may have been sufficiently low at high latitudes for such layering to persist and allow the survival of both freshwater and saltwater species in those areas.

 

Why on earth would fishes need to be on board the ark? Ummm...wasn't the ark kinda floating on the sea according to the Bible? No danger to fishes is there???

 

if there was only one family left alive how come there are people looking so differently these days? black people, white people, asian people, eskimos, native americans, they all look differently. How did that happen? isn't that evolution?

 

I think that is a question you have to ask evolutionists. For evolution to happen it must follow something. After all, we know that nothing comes from nothing. Something does NOT come from nothing. So can nothing evolve into something???

 

I'll throw the ball back to you and ask you what skin colours were Noah and his family (including wives)?

 

This is believed to be the print of Noah's ark located in Agri, Turkey. (also known as Ararat)



There's also a model built by the greenpeace now, for global-warming awareness.

 

it doesn't really matter. The question is how did their ancestors ended up looking so differently. Can you answer that?

 

Ahem....it matters a lot actually...by finding the answer to that question I posed, you will find the answer to your question. But, here's another one to meditate on whilst you are there.

How can a son or daughter be born with olive skin or red hair or freckles when neither parent has any of those attributes?

If you think how this can happen, maybe that thought will enlighten you to figure out how to answer your own question.

 

The Bible tells us how the population that descended from Noah's family had one language and by living in one place were disobeying God's command to "fill the earth" (Genesis 9:1, 11:4). God confused their language, causing a break-up of the population into smaller groups which scattered over the earth (Genesis 11:8-9). Modern genetics show how, following such a break-up of a population, variations in skin color, for example, can develop in only a few generations. There is good evidence that the various people groups we have today have not been separated for huge periods of time.

There is really only one race—the human race. The Bible teaches us that God has "made of one blood all nations of men" (Acts 17:26). Scripture distinguishes people by tribal or national groupings, not by skin color or physical appearance. Clearly, though, there are groups of people who have certain features (e.g., skin color) in common, which distinguish them from other groups. We prefer to call these "people groups" rather than "races," to avoid the evolutionary connotations associated with the word "race."

All peoples can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. This shows that the biological differences between the "races" are not very great. In fact, the DNA differences are trivial. The DNA of any two people in the world would typically differ by just 0.2 percent.2 Of this, only 6 percent can be linked to racial categories; the rest is "within race" variation.

It is easy to think that since different groups of people have "yellow" skin, "red" skin, "black" skin, "white" skin, and "brown" skin, there must be many different skin pigments or colorings. And since different chemicals for coloring would mean a different genetic recipe or code in the hereditary blueprint in each people group, it appears to be a real problem. How could all those differences develop within a short time?

However, we all have the same coloring pigment in our skin—melanin. This is a dark-brownish pigment that is produced in different amounts in special cells in our skin. If we had none (as do people called albinos, who inherit a mutation-caused defect, and cannot produce melanin), then we would have a very white or pink skin coloring. If we produced a little melanin, we would be European white. If our skin produced a great deal of melanin, we would be a very dark black. And in between, of course, are all shades of brown. There are no other significant skin pigments.

It protects the skin against damage by ultraviolet light from the sun. If you have too little melanin in a very sunny environment, you will easily suffer sunburn and skin cancer. If you have a great deal of melanin, and you live in a country where there is little sunshine, it will be harder for you to get enough vitamin D (which needs sunshine for its production in your body). You may then suffer from vitamin D deficiency, which could cause a bone disorder such as rickets.

We also need to be aware that we are not born with a genetically fixed amount of melanin. Rather, we have a genetically fixed potential to produce a certain amount, and the amount increases in response to sunlight. For example, you may have noticed that when your Caucasian friends (who spent their time indoors during winter) headed for the beach at the beginning of summer they all had more or less the same pale white skin color. As the summer went on, however, some became much darker than others.


Therefore the really important factor in determining skin color is melanin—the amount produced.

This situation is true not only for skin color. Generally, whatever feature we may look at, no people group has anything that is essentially different from that possessed by any other. For example, the Asian, or almond, eye differs from a typical Caucasian eye in having more fat around them. Both Asian and Caucasian eyes have fat—the latter simply have less.

 

Really? How many wite Australians and South Africans have turned black over the last couple of hundred years?

 

Maybe the generations aren't over yet. As an example, consider a group of people who moved to a cold region with little sunlight. Here, the dark-skinned members would not be able to produce enough vitamin D, and thus would be less healthy and have fewer children. So, in time, the light-skinned members would predominate. If several different groups went to such an area, and if one group happened to be carrying few genes for lightness, this particular group could, in time, die out. Thus, natural selection acts on the characteristics already present, and does not create new ones.

It is interesting to note that the ancient Neanderthals of Europe, recognized as fully human, show evidence of vitamin D deficiency in that many of their bones were bent. In fact, this, plus a large dose of evolutionary prejudice, caused them to be classified as "ape-men" for a long time. It is thus quite plausible that they were a dark-skinned people who were unfit for the environment into which they moved because of the skin color genes they began with. Notice (again) that this natural selection, as it is called, does not produce skin colors, but only acts on the created capacity for making skin pigment that is already there.

 

That makes it even more unbelievable. If a man collecting every animal from every country sounds far fetched, How far fetched is it to think that things like pilbara's are going to be able to make it from the western Australia to the middle east?

The story of noah is an adaptation of the Babylonian myth involving Gilgamesh and the flood from 2700 BC. If you compare the two stories you will see remarkable similarities.

 

This page also has some interesting points,

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html