(07-07-2017 11:50 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 10:23 AM)miko33 Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 10:12 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I don't believe in the Greek Gods either, but visiting the temples built to honor them is pretty awesome.

I don't think Apollo drawing the sun across the sky with his chariot was based in reality either.

I don't even know what Stonehenge was built for, but it's still a cool thing to experience.

Having said that, I don't think I'd be interested in this attraction... and I'm a Christian. On paper it reminds me of 'Bible Land' in the "Fletch' movie. I understand though why some people might want to imagine what it could have been like. I suppose it depends on how much commercialism there is.

Of course one of these things is not like the other. The Greek temples and Stonehenge were real life structures utilized for religious practices by ancient peoples, so there is actual history that was made on those sites. This attraction is a gross caricature of what "might" have happened... Having said that, I would love to see the Ark Encounter if it cost one or two bucks to visit. But not at the jacked up prices they charge.

well of course they're different... but how is the ark depiction not a real life structure utilized for religious practices? It's not the ark of the story, but the chariot of Apollo in the temple isn't the chariot of the story either. The painting of the last supper isn't an eyewitness account either. How is the story of Noah any less 'true' than the stories of the sun being drawn across the sky? Those temples and paintings were also gross caricatures of what 'might' have happened (no sun chariots etc etc). Said differently, in 5000 years (if it stood which I doubt), what would be the difference? The ark would be no more than a 'temple' built to honor the 'gods'... much like any other church.

I get your point and don't disagree... but I was responding to the claim that the Ark attraction wasn't 'worthy' because it wasn't 'real'. I wouldn't attend an ancient temple because of the gods that they worshiped, but to learn of ancient people. You'd attend THIS attraction because of the God they worship (to learn, discern or affirm). No need to go here to learn of the people... they live next door. The major difference for me is 'ancient'. I just don't see the difference in the 'religious reality' of either site.

I get what you are saying. I would view the ancient structures as part of the cultural heritage of an ancient people and the history of the land where these places reside. The Ark Encounter is actually not a place of worship in the analogy but is like a museum. It is a museum of one group's interpretation of how the middle east (Jews) might have interpreted history based on a the book of genesis. I would say the best comparison of the ark encounter is perhaps maybe the various cultural centers around the country. Even at that, the attractions are not in line with modern scientific knowledge.

(07-07-2017 12:06 PM)miko33 Wrote:  I get what you are saying. I would view the ancient structures as part of the cultural heritage of an ancient people and the history of the land where these places reside. The Ark Encounter is actually not a place of worship in the analogy but is like a museum. It is a museum of one group's interpretation of how the middle east (Jews) might have interpreted history based on a the book of genesis. I would say the best comparison of the ark encounter is perhaps maybe the various cultural centers around the country. Even at that, the attractions are not in line with modern scientific knowledge.

Fair enough.

As I said, my correction was confined only to the aspects of being 'real places' or 'depicting a myth'.

It's not a place of worship, but certainly it's a monument to a religion/religious event... sort of like The Last Supper. I'm not saying it's on the same scale in terms of its artistic value, but it certainly could be described as an attempt at that. Sort of like how Islam feels about depictions of Muhammad, I've seen some who hold depictions of Christ as 'holy', despite their numerous obvious scientific inaccuracies.

I think the comparison to a cultural center is perhaps a good one.... maybe like going to Gruene Tx for Octoberfest?

Reading the posts from Ohio Poly & Miko doing his usual anti-Christian trolling reminds me of a discussion we had at supper at the firehouse one night. EMS was eating with us and when the topic turned to religion the EMT went off on a typical atheist rant where he got most of what he was saying wrong he got his ass handed to him. He turned to his partner and said "I know you are an atheist too, help me here." His partner said "You are on your own." When pushed as to why he wouldn't get involved he said "Just in case I might be wrong. If they are wrong when they die nothing happens. If we are wrong we suffer eternal damnation. I figure if I keep out of these conversations that I might stand a chance at salvation if I'm wrong. If I'm right it never hurts to avoid being a total dick when you can."

One of the greatest comments about religion by someone who was agnostic and/or atheist:

Quote:Some of you may know that I am neither Christian nor Jewish nor Buddhist, nor a conventionally religious person of any sort.

I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I'm dead. My German-American ancestors, the earliest of whom settled in our Middle West about the time of our Civil War, called themselves "Freethinkers," which is the same sort of thing. My great grandfather Clemens Vonnegut wrote, for example, "If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not?"

I myself have written, "If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake."

Kurt Vonnegut - NPR Broadcast titled "God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian, 1999."

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith no explanation is possible." St. Thomas Aquinas.

Kap

I said something similar at one point in my life and both an atheist AND a believer 'nailed me to a wall' over my 'faux' belief. SOmetimes you just can't win.

I'm not sure my specific beliefs jive with any specific religion, but I find that when I find a good church home, the individuals I speak to either support my right to not simply regurgitate what I'm told or actually have similar beliefs. I find those churches that leave open the possibility that they don't really have it all figured out, but they think they're generally on the right path to be most appealing to me. I'd probably enjoy Joel Osteen's 'Everything's gonna be okay' style if I could get past the whole idea that all we have to do is have faith and everything will be okay. I think we have to do more than that... and that what we think is okay isn't necessarily what God wants for us.

I think the primary message of most religions is just that.... that it never hurts to avoid being a total dick when you can

Vonnegut was more eloquent, but he's saying the same thing

(07-07-2017 01:28 PM)Kaplony Wrote:  Reading the posts from Ohio Poly & Miko doing his usual anti-Christian trolling reminds me of a discussion we had at supper at the firehouse one night. EMS was eating with us and when the topic turned to religion the EMT went off on a typical atheist rant where he got most of what he was saying wrong he got his ass handed to him. He turned to his partner and said "I know you are an atheist too, help me here." His partner said "You are on your own." When pushed as to why he wouldn't get involved he said "Just in case I might be wrong. If they are wrong when they die nothing happens. If we are wrong we suffer eternal damnation. I figure if I keep out of these conversations that I might stand a chance at salvation if I'm wrong. If I'm right it never hurts to avoid being a total dick when you can."

Show me where I was being disrespectful in this thread. The things I stated were that the evidence is against a world wide flood. That's not disrespectful. I then stated I would like to go to the attraction if it was dirt cheap, but not if it was expensive. Finally, I thought hambone and I had a respectful interaction about the attraction.

I'm actually not an atheist. At this time, I'd consider myself agnostic. However, I still participate in and attend church.

I fully expect the atheist/agnostics to question the flood story, but what I find fascinating is how many "Christians" today don't believe in it either. Satan has done his work well, even in the Churches. The NT told us there would be a deceptions so strong in the end times that even belivers could be fooled by it.

They will tell you they believe fully that Jesus rose from the dead on the 3rd day, even though modern science says this is totally impossible. And at the same time they say they doubt Genesis 1-11 because modern science says this is totally impossible.

huh?

How can you claim faith in Christ when you reject then ENTIRE foundation Christ Himself stood on? Jesus Himself said these things are REAL and the very foundation of everything.

Eric, at the risk of derailing the thread I'll simply state that significant portions of the OT at least have to be pushed into the allegory/legend category in order for Christianity to remain viable for the long term. Even the ancients understood this. Population numbers, ages of great people and origin stories were not meant to be taken literally.

(07-07-2017 03:37 PM)miko33 Wrote:  Eric, at the risk of derailing the thread I'll simply state that significant portions of the OT at least have to be pushed into the allegory/legend category in order for Christianity to remain viable for the long term. Even the ancients understood this. Population numbers, ages of great people and origin stories were not meant to be taken literally.

So we are allowed to believe a man ROSE FROM THE DEAD on the 3rd day and later ascended into heaven, but we can't believe in Gen 1-11?

That is a total contradiction in every way

Obviously none of this applies to you because you aren't a believer.

Jesus lived and taught everything on the basis of a LITERAL Genesis 1-11. How can one be a believer in Him and His Resurrection, but reject the foundation of everything He said and believed in?

You don't grasp the depth of this. If Genesis 1-11 is NOT literally true, then there is NO NEED for a Savior or for Jesus at all. There is nothing for Him to fulfill and NO ONE needs any salvation or redemption to God in any way, shape or from. If you don't believe in Gen 1-11 then you have totally destroyed the entire foundation for Christ and redemption.

Speaking of a global type flood, this guy has done the most research on it.

Graham Hancock is perhaps best known by millions of readers and fans as the author of “Fingerprints of the Gods,” a book that made him world famous and started a revolution in thinking about the hidden history of humanity. As Graham often puts it, we are a “species with amnesia” about our distant past, where distant means more than about four or five thousand years ago. That book came out in 1995, and much of his speculation, convincing though it was, had to remain in that mode due to lack of hard archeological evidence. He has spent his time in the years since traveling the world, trying to discover those kinds of sites and artifacts with some success, but it has only been in the last few years that several new pieces of the puzzle have come to light. These include the spectacular archeological site in Turkey called Gobekli Tepi. This site has been carbon dated to around 12,000 years in our past, which coincides perfectly with the idea of a now lost civilization that existed prior to the end of the ice age and which was destroyed by the cataclysm that caused the ice to melt and the “world of men” to flood, giving rise to our worldwide flood myths and the stories of lost lands like Atlantis.


Magicians of the Gods: Updated and Expanded Edition - Sequel to the International Bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods Paperback – January 31, 2017
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/125011...UTF8&psc=1

“Magicians of the Gods” poses the questions; what if our civilization is not the first and was instead a legacy of an earlier advanced culture that had a firm grasp on architecture, astronomy, and all the related knowledge that directly influenced the civilizations in the Fertile Crescent and beyond in the earliest days of their seemingly abrupt beginnings? What evidence do we have that this may be the case? What form would it be likely to take? What might this evidence tell us, both about those who first created it and about ourselves?
http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/but-the...gods-0835/

(07-07-2017 03:41 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 03:37 PM)miko33 Wrote:  Eric, at the risk of derailing the thread I'll simply state that significant portions of the OT at least have to be pushed into the allegory/legend category in order for Christianity to remain viable for the long term. Even the ancients understood this. Population numbers, ages of great people and origin stories were not meant to be taken literally.

So we are allowed to believe a man rose form the dead on the 3rd day and later ascended into heaven, but we can't believe in Gen 1-11?

That is a total contradiction in every way

Obviously none of this applies to you because you aren't a believer.

Jesus lived and taught everything on the basis of a LITERAL Genesis 1-11. How can one be a believer in Him and His Resurrection, but reject the foundation of everything He said and believed in?

You don't grasp the depth of this. If Genesis 1-11 is NOT literally true, then there is NO NEED for a Savior or for Jesus at all. There is nothing for Him to fulfill and NO ONE needs any salvation or redemption to God in any way, shape or from.

Can you see the Christ that gave the sermon on the mount drowning almost every living person because he didn't like their sexual practices or what God they praised?

(07-07-2017 03:59 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 03:41 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 03:37 PM)miko33 Wrote:  Eric, at the risk of derailing the thread I'll simply state that significant portions of the OT at least have to be pushed into the allegory/legend category in order for Christianity to remain viable for the long term. Even the ancients understood this. Population numbers, ages of great people and origin stories were not meant to be taken literally.

So we are allowed to believe a man rose form the dead on the 3rd day and later ascended into heaven, but we can't believe in Gen 1-11?

That is a total contradiction in every way

Obviously none of this applies to you because you aren't a believer.

Jesus lived and taught everything on the basis of a LITERAL Genesis 1-11. How can one be a believer in Him and His Resurrection, but reject the foundation of everything He said and believed in?

You don't grasp the depth of this. If Genesis 1-11 is NOT literally true, then there is NO NEED for a Savior or for Jesus at all. There is nothing for Him to fulfill and NO ONE needs any salvation or redemption to God in any way, shape or from.

Can you see the Christ that gave the sermon on the mount drowning almost every living person because he didn't like their sexual practices or what God they praised?

There is huge cognitive dissonance between the God of the OT vs the God of the NT. So much so that gnosticism became popular. The gospel of John in particular seems to have a gnostic bent with a lot of Jesus's sayings having dual meanings for the crowds vs the disciples. Back then, the OT God was believed to be the demiurge.

(07-07-2017 03:59 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  Can you see the Christ that gave the sermon on the mount drowning almost every living person because he didn't like their sexual practices or what God they praised?

He does use flood imagery, particularity in the closing of the sermon to describe the world and setting your house on a solid foundation to withstand the floodwaters.

(07-07-2017 03:48 PM)SuperFlyBCat Wrote:  Speaking of a global type flood, this guy has done the most research on it.

Graham Hancock is perhaps best known by millions of readers and fans as the author of “Fingerprints of the Gods,” a book that made him world famous and started a revolution in thinking about the hidden history of humanity. As Graham often puts it, we are a “species with amnesia” about our distant past, where distant means more than about four or five thousand years ago. That book came out in 1995, and much of his speculation, convincing though it was, had to remain in that mode due to lack of hard archeological evidence. He has spent his time in the years since traveling the world, trying to discover those kinds of sites and artifacts with some success, but it has only been in the last few years that several new pieces of the puzzle have come to light. These include the spectacular archeological site in Turkey called Gobekli Tepi. This site has been carbon dated to around 12,000 years in our past, which coincides perfectly with the idea of a now lost civilization that existed prior to the end of the ice age and which was destroyed by the cataclysm that caused the ice to melt and the “world of men” to flood, giving rise to our worldwide flood myths and the stories of lost lands like Atlantis.


Magicians of the Gods: Updated and Expanded Edition - Sequel to the International Bestseller Fingerprints of the Gods Paperback – January 31, 2017
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/125011...UTF8&psc=1

“Magicians of the Gods” poses the questions; what if our civilization is not the first and was instead a legacy of an earlier advanced culture that had a firm grasp on architecture, astronomy, and all the related knowledge that directly influenced the civilizations in the Fertile Crescent and beyond in the earliest days of their seemingly abrupt beginnings? What evidence do we have that this may be the case? What form would it be likely to take? What might this evidence tell us, both about those who first created it and about ourselves?
http://www.camelcitydispatch.com/but-the...gods-0835/

It's interesting to speculate on prehistory, and fortunately technology appears to be allowing us to peer further back into history. An interesting theory I've seen is related to the "garden of eden" being submerged under the tip of the Persian Gulf in what would be Iran. There is evidence of civilization submerged in the shallows of the gulf, and that land would have been very fertile relative to the rest of the world in the ice age. I believe the ruins at Dilmun factor into the story. The idea is that the "garden of eden" was flooded when the rising oceans breached the valley they were in and the Persian Gulf greatly expanded and wiped out this beautiful land. This is a combination of paradise lost and a great flood. Of course over time as the centuries pass the story changes over time - as all oral traditions will - and we end up with these interesting stories.

(07-07-2017 04:09 PM)miko33 Wrote:  There is huge cognitive dissonance between the God of the OT vs the God of the NT. So much so that gnosticism became popular. The gospel of John in particular seems to have a gnostic bent with a lot of Jesus's sayings having dual meanings for the crowds vs the disciples. Back then, the OT God was believed to be the demiurge.

The Jews before Christ didn't understand a whole lot of things because they had not been revealed or fulfilled yet.

They didn't understand that when they killed a Lamb without blemish on the Passover for 1500 consecutive years that they were acting out a prophecy that CHRIST was the Lamb without blemish and would die for ALL mans sin at the Passover.

They didn't understand that when the marked their doorposts with Lambs blood that they were acting out a prophecy of the blood of Christ covering the sins of all those who believe on Him some 1500+ years later.

They didn't understand that when the Moses struck the rock and water flowed out, that they were acting out a prophecy of the waters of eternal life flowing out of the ROCK that is Jesus they would strike some 1500 years later.

They didn't understand when God gave them manna bread from heaven that they were acting out a future prophecy of Christ, who is the BREAD FROM HEAVEN some 1500 year later.

They didn't understand that the Messiah was to come and die for the redemption of man BEFORE He restored the Kingdom and Earth and sat on the Throne of David.

They didn't yet understand a lot of things because Christ had not yet come and begun to teach and fulfill these things. They were instead hidden in types, shadows and stories throughout the OT.

(07-07-2017 11:51 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 11:40 AM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 09:57 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 09:53 AM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  The Noah's flood story is not based in reality.

link?

https://ncse.com/cej/4/1/impossible-voyage-noahs-ark

I'm so glad that you were able to rid the world of mythology in just two posts!

/s

Problems for the builders.
So Noah grabbed his tools and went to work. LaHaye and Morris tell us that Noah and his three sons could have built the entire thing by themselves in a mere eighty-one years (p. 248). This includes not merely framing up a hull but: building docks, scaffolds, workshops; fitting together the incredible maze of cages and crates; gathering provisions for the coming voyage; harvesting the timber and producing all the various types of lumber from bird cage bars to the huge keelson beams—not to mention wrestling the very heavy, clumsy planks for the ship into their exact location and fastening them. What's worse, by the time the job was finished, the earlier phases would be rotting away—a difficulty often faced by builders of wooden ships, whose work took only four or five years (Thrower, p. 32).
- page 4 -
Faced with such criticism, the creationists quickly convert the humble, righteous farmer into a wealthy capitalist who simply hired all the help he needed (Segraves, p. 86-87). It is estimated that the construction of the Great Pyramid required as many as 100,000 slaves; Noah could have probably gotten by with less (there were, after all, "giants in the earth in those days" according to Genesis 6:4), but what he lacked in numbers he sorely needed in experienced and highly skilled craftsmen. How did he learn when to fell a tree and how to dry it properly to prevent rot and splitting, when the larger beams might take several years to cure (cf. Dumas and Gille, p. 322)? Did the local reed-raft builder have equipment to steam heat a plank so it could be forced into the proper position? A shipyard in nineteenth-century Maine would have been overwhelmed by the size and complexity of this job, yet Noah still supposedly found enough time to hold revivals and preach doomsday throughout the land (Segraves, pp. 87-90).

God told the patriarch to coat the ark, both inside and out, all 229,500 square feet of it, with pitch, and, in fact, this was a common practice in ancient times. But when Noah hurried to the corner hardware store, the shelf was bare, for pitch is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon similar to petroleum (Rosenfeld, p. 126), and we know that oil, tar, and coal deposits were formed when organic matter was buried and subjected to extreme pressure during the flood (Whitcomb and Morris, pp. 277-278, 434-436), so none of it existed in the prediluvian world. Morris (1976, p. 182) tries to say that the word for "pitch" merely means "covering," but not only do all other Bible dictionaries and commentaries translate it "pitch" or "bitumen," but creationist Nathan M. Meyer reveals that all the wood recovered by arkaeologists on Mt. Ararat is "saturated with pitch" (p. 85). Thus it seems that God accommodated Noah by creating an antediluvian tar pit just for the occasion, and we have another miracle.

Finally, our farmer-turned-architect had to confront the gravest difficulty of all: in the words of A. M. Robb, there was an "upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of the wooden ship; beyond such a length the deformation due to the differing distributions of weight and buoyancy became excessive, with consequent difficulty in maintaining the hull watertight" (p. 355). Pollard and Robertson concur, emphasizing that "a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet, and it was liable to `hogging' and `sagging' " (pp. 13-14). This is the major reason why the naval industry turned to iron and steel in the 1850s. The largest wooden ships ever built were the six-masted schooners, nine of which were launched between 1900 and 1909. These ships were so long that they required diagonal iron strapping for support; they "snaked," or visibly undulated, as they passed through the waves, they leaked so badly that they had to be pumped constantly, and they were only used on short coastal hauls because they were unsafe in deep water.

- page 5 -
John J. Rockwell, the designer of the first of this class, confessed that "six masters were not practical. They were too long for wood construction" (Laing, pp. 393, 403-409). Yet the ark was over 100 feet longer than the longest six-master, the 329 foot U.S.S. Wyoming, and it had to endure the most severe conditions ever encountered while transporting the most critically important cargo ever hauled. Clearly, God had to imbue this amateurishly assembled gopherwood with some very special properties to fit it for the voyage.

So it should be clear by now why "intelligent people" somehow see a "problem" in the building of the ark.

(07-07-2017 04:27 PM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 11:51 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 11:40 AM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 09:57 AM)UofMstateU Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 09:53 AM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  The Noah's flood story is not based in reality.

link?

https://ncse.com/cej/4/1/impossible-voyage-noahs-ark

I'm so glad that you were able to rid the world of mythology in just two posts!

/s

Problems for the builders.
So Noah grabbed his tools and went to work. LaHaye and Morris tell us that Noah and his three sons could have built the entire thing by themselves in a mere eighty-one years (p. 248). This includes not merely framing up a hull but: building docks, scaffolds, workshops; fitting together the incredible maze of cages and crates; gathering provisions for the coming voyage; harvesting the timber and producing all the various types of lumber from bird cage bars to the huge keelson beams—not to mention wrestling the very heavy, clumsy planks for the ship into their exact location and fastening them. What's worse, by the time the job was finished, the earlier phases would be rotting away—a difficulty often faced by builders of wooden ships, whose work took only four or five years (Thrower, p. 32).
- page 4 -
Faced with such criticism, the creationists quickly convert the humble, righteous farmer into a wealthy capitalist who simply hired all the help he needed (Segraves, p. 86-87). It is estimated that the construction of the Great Pyramid required as many as 100,000 slaves; Noah could have probably gotten by with less (there were, after all, "giants in the earth in those days" according to Genesis 6:4), but what he lacked in numbers he sorely needed in experienced and highly skilled craftsmen. How did he learn when to fell a tree and how to dry it properly to prevent rot and splitting, when the larger beams might take several years to cure (cf. Dumas and Gille, p. 322)? Did the local reed-raft builder have equipment to steam heat a plank so it could be forced into the proper position? A shipyard in nineteenth-century Maine would have been overwhelmed by the size and complexity of this job, yet Noah still supposedly found enough time to hold revivals and preach doomsday throughout the land (Segraves, pp. 87-90).

God told the patriarch to coat the ark, both inside and out, all 229,500 square feet of it, with pitch, and, in fact, this was a common practice in ancient times. But when Noah hurried to the corner hardware store, the shelf was bare, for pitch is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon similar to petroleum (Rosenfeld, p. 126), and we know that oil, tar, and coal deposits were formed when organic matter was buried and subjected to extreme pressure during the flood (Whitcomb and Morris, pp. 277-278, 434-436), so none of it existed in the prediluvian world. Morris (1976, p. 182) tries to say that the word for "pitch" merely means "covering," but not only do all other Bible dictionaries and commentaries translate it "pitch" or "bitumen," but creationist Nathan M. Meyer reveals that all the wood recovered by arkaeologists on Mt. Ararat is "saturated with pitch" (p. 85). Thus it seems that God accommodated Noah by creating an antediluvian tar pit just for the occasion, and we have another miracle.

Finally, our farmer-turned-architect had to confront the gravest difficulty of all: in the words of A. M. Robb, there was an "upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of the wooden ship; beyond such a length the deformation due to the differing distributions of weight and buoyancy became excessive, with consequent difficulty in maintaining the hull watertight" (p. 355). Pollard and Robertson concur, emphasizing that "a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet, and it was liable to `hogging' and `sagging' " (pp. 13-14). This is the major reason why the naval industry turned to iron and steel in the 1850s. The largest wooden ships ever built were the six-masted schooners, nine of which were launched between 1900 and 1909. These ships were so long that they required diagonal iron strapping for support; they "snaked," or visibly undulated, as they passed through the waves, they leaked so badly that they had to be pumped constantly, and they were only used on short coastal hauls because they were unsafe in deep water.

- page 5 -
John J. Rockwell, the designer of the first of this class, confessed that "six masters were not practical. They were too long for wood construction" (Laing, pp. 393, 403-409). Yet the ark was over 100 feet longer than the longest six-master, the 329 foot U.S.S. Wyoming, and it had to endure the most severe conditions ever encountered while transporting the most critically important cargo ever hauled. Clearly, God had to imbue this amateurishly assembled gopherwood with some very special properties to fit it for the voyage.

So it should be clear by now why "intelligent people" somehow see a "problem" in the building of the ark.

You must be in your 20's.

(07-07-2017 04:27 PM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  Problems for the builders.
So Noah grabbed his tools and went to work. LaHaye and Morris tell us that Noah and his three sons could have built the entire thing by themselves in a mere eighty-one years (p. 248). This includes not merely framing up a hull but: building docks, scaffolds, workshops; fitting together the incredible maze of cages and crates; gathering provisions for the coming voyage; harvesting the timber and producing all the various types of lumber from bird cage bars to the huge keelson beams—not to mention wrestling the very heavy, clumsy planks for the ship into their exact location and fastening them. What's worse, by the time the job was finished, the earlier phases would be rotting away—a difficulty often faced by builders of wooden ships, whose work took only four or five years (Thrower, p. 32).
- page 4 -
Faced with such criticism, the creationists quickly convert the humble, righteous farmer into a wealthy capitalist who simply hired all the help he needed (Segraves, p. 86-87). It is estimated that the construction of the Great Pyramid required as many as 100,000 slaves; Noah could have probably gotten by with less (there were, after all, "giants in the earth in those days" according to Genesis 6:4), but what he lacked in numbers he sorely needed in experienced and highly skilled craftsmen. How did he learn when to fell a tree and how to dry it properly to prevent rot and splitting, when the larger beams might take several years to cure (cf. Dumas and Gille, p. 322)? Did the local reed-raft builder have equipment to steam heat a plank so it could be forced into the proper position? A shipyard in nineteenth-century Maine would have been overwhelmed by the size and complexity of this job, yet Noah still supposedly found enough time to hold revivals and preach doomsday throughout the land (Segraves, pp. 87-90).

God told the patriarch to coat the ark, both inside and out, all 229,500 square feet of it, with pitch, and, in fact, this was a common practice in ancient times. But when Noah hurried to the corner hardware store, the shelf was bare, for pitch is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon similar to petroleum (Rosenfeld, p. 126), and we know that oil, tar, and coal deposits were formed when organic matter was buried and subjected to extreme pressure during the flood (Whitcomb and Morris, pp. 277-278, 434-436), so none of it existed in the prediluvian world. Morris (1976, p. 182) tries to say that the word for "pitch" merely means "covering," but not only do all other Bible dictionaries and commentaries translate it "pitch" or "bitumen," but creationist Nathan M. Meyer reveals that all the wood recovered by arkaeologists on Mt. Ararat is "saturated with pitch" (p. 85). Thus it seems that God accommodated Noah by creating an antediluvian tar pit just for the occasion, and we have another miracle.

Finally, our farmer-turned-architect had to confront the gravest difficulty of all: in the words of A. M. Robb, there was an "upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of the wooden ship; beyond such a length the deformation due to the differing distributions of weight and buoyancy became excessive, with consequent difficulty in maintaining the hull watertight" (p. 355). Pollard and Robertson concur, emphasizing that "a wooden ship had great stresses as a structure. The absolute limit of its length was 300 feet, and it was liable to `hogging' and `sagging' " (pp. 13-14). This is the major reason why the naval industry turned to iron and steel in the 1850s. The largest wooden ships ever built were the six-masted schooners, nine of which were launched between 1900 and 1909. These ships were so long that they required diagonal iron strapping for support; they "snaked," or visibly undulated, as they passed through the waves, they leaked so badly that they had to be pumped constantly, and they were only used on short coastal hauls because they were unsafe in deep water.

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John J. Rockwell, the designer of the first of this class, confessed that "six masters were not practical. They were too long for wood construction" (Laing, pp. 393, 403-409). Yet the ark was over 100 feet longer than the longest six-master, the 329 foot U.S.S. Wyoming, and it had to endure the most severe conditions ever encountered while transporting the most critically important cargo ever hauled. Clearly, God had to imbue this amateurishly assembled gopherwood with some very special properties to fit it for the voyage.

So it should be clear by now why "intelligent people" somehow see a "problem" in the building of the ark.

And therein lies the great deception of the whole world. If YHWH can create the heavens and the universe, then teaching Noah how to build a boat is a tiny, tiny, tiny little matter for Him. YHWH was the architect, not Noah. So stop blindly theorizing on his tools and understanding because it was over 4000 years ago. You don't have proof about any of this stuff, the GREAT PYRAMID was build right about this same time.

You and other secularists want the whole world to believe that these things have been PROVEN 100% false by science, when the truth is there is no such proof at all. Thus you want people to completely discount and dismiss the bible and the mountains of evidence it has in its pages illustrating it to be the divine Word of YHWH.

Science has theories and models they use to make projections and constantly changing estimates, but they have NOT proved these things as absolute fact.

THAT is the TRUTH

(07-07-2017 04:25 PM)ericsrevenge76 Wrote:  

(07-07-2017 04:09 PM)miko33 Wrote:  There is huge cognitive dissonance between the God of the OT vs the God of the NT. So much so that gnosticism became popular. The gospel of John in particular seems to have a gnostic bent with a lot of Jesus's sayings having dual meanings for the crowds vs the disciples. Back then, the OT God was believed to be the demiurge.

The Jews before Christ didn't understand a whole lot of things because they had not been revealed or fulfilled yet.

They didn't understand that when they killed a Lamb without blemish on the Passover for 1500 consecutive years that they were acting out a prophecy that CHRIST was the Lamb without blemish and would die for ALL mans sin at the Passover.

They didn't understand that when the marked their doorposts with Lambs blood that they were acting out a prophecy of the blood of Christ covering the sins of all those who believe on Him some 1500+ years later.

They didn't understand that when the Moses struck the rock and water flowed out, that they were acting out a prophecy of the waters of eternal life flowing out of the ROCK that is Jesus some 1500 years later.

They didn't understand when God gave them manna bread from heaven that they were acting out a future proepchy of Christ, who is the BREAD FROM HEAVEN some 1500 year later.

They didn't understand that the Messiah was to come and die for the redemption of man BEFORE He restored the Kingdom and Earth and sat on the Throne of David.

They didn't yet understand a lot of things because Christ had not yet come and begun to teach and fulfill these things. They were instead hidden in types, shadows and stories throughout the OT.

I'm not going to respond to your points above because we've done this in past threads and I think the original intent of the thread was to discuss the attraction that Ken Ham's group built in KY. My only other point is a clarification of the portion of my post that you quoted. My comments about God being the demiurge was a belief held by gnostics around 100 AD. The gnostics were a strange group where some incorporated Christian and Jewish beliefs while others were predominantly Platonists. There were also Platonists who were Christians but not gnostics. The bottom line is that a group of people who identified themselves as gnostics who also believed the OT and NT writings believed this. Definitely not all people did.