Noahs Ark?

Ok, for the record I am a god fearing man, and I've read the bible. I certainly am no historian, however of the many things that i find highly questionable about different Bible stories, the one that gets me the most is Noahs Ark.
Two of EVERY living creature on earth? Impossible.
A real easy argument against the story of Noahs Ark would be, if all of the animals were in the Ark, then why are their species which are indigenous to single locations, take for example Australia. There are a plethora of animals that are unique to the continent.
Can anyone see any validity to this particular story?

like ive said many times if you are not a religious person do not try and interpret the bible from a literal point of view. i am not a religious person and i read the bible from neither a spiritual view nor a literal point of view. if you do read the bible to be literal many complications arise...such as noah's ark.
my personal opinion is that it was not a world wide flood, and that noah did not get two of every animal. i also belive noah and his 3 sons (apparently all of difference ethnicity) did not have 120 years to build the boat. if you try and look at this story from a scientific, logical or literal point of view then it becomes very silly indeed.
i myself can't really go any further in to how noah got two of every animal, or even how much truth some christians hold to this story.
if you believe the noah story 100% then you will also belive everyone else died, and that prety much the whole world's decendants are his 3 sons... not sure who they would have had sex with to create us, i guess there's some sort of loop hole that christians get themselves out of aswell...like they each had sex with their mum...hence noah's wife

As I recall, if you search Google for Noah's Ark, you will discover that many expeditions have climbed Mt. Ararat to see if they could find the ark itself.

Some expeditions actually took photos of a large flat wooden structure upon the side of that mountain.

Now, if that's not Noah's Ark, I'd like a list of all the OTHER sea-faring vessels that have landed on the side of that mountain.

Noah's ark happened before the breakup of the cont.'s. The 500 years after the flood is when the cont's made it to their current positions. However, there is some data that shows perhaps North and South America were closer to Africa during the middle ages. References to the "sargaso sea" which is a few miles off Florida.

All three sons had their wives with them.

thanks for clearing that 3 sons of noah with their wives thing.

so defrag99...because you say there's some pictures of some wood on a mountain top we should take noah's ark to be literal then?

Try reading the Epic of Gilgamesh

No, the wood is "one indicator," not the whole story.

I was being partly facetious, also.

Flood accounts exist in practically every culture around the globe.

But, the reason I believe the Noah account is special is that God established a covenant with Noah--to protect the weak--in a generation in which the cool thing to do apparently was plunder.

That's what Noah's generation was about--plunder, pillage and ruin--if you read Genesis chapter 6. Instead of plunder, Noah set about to protect his family members from calamity. That story has value to me.



[edit on 3-1-2005 by defrag99]

Ooops. Meant this to be a new thread.

[edit on 3-1-2005 by defrag99]

Interesting point. I still can't fathom the validity of having 2 of every, most, or even some animals. Where would the food reserves be held? How would they have stopped the predators from taking out the victims?

There is no proof that the things found are indeed, a ship. There is supposition, but it doesn't really fit the evidence there (which is why you haven't heard much more about it....

The problem of course, really is that historically, the continents were fairly split apart at the time of early man, not Pangea...so the diversification had already begun. If there is any truth to the story, it's likely an exaggeration about a farmer saving his livestock and farm animals from a flood, as well as his family. I'd love to see ANY ancient boat (whether using the dimensions in the Bible or not) hold two elephants, two hippos, two of each bear, two rhinos, etc. etc. Would sink like a stone, hehe...

seems like the most logical explanation to me...afterall aren't most stories exagerated or changed through time like a chinese whisper. if noah was real then in the day of noah there would have been no scripture, stories would be passed from generation to generation. so the story however much you believe in it is either false or exagerated greatly.

[edit on 3-1-2005 by shaunybaby]

Noah did not take two of every creature. He took at least two of every kind of creature. For example say that tigers and lions existed at that time. We know that they can interbreed so they are of the same kind. Noah would only have had to take one pair of lions or one pair of tigers. He would not have had to take tigers and lions. Here is a link with much more information regarding the logistics of Noahs Ark:


www.answersingenesis.org...

nice try of explaining how he would get all those animals but that's not the way it would happen. you cannot take a pair of tigers and breed them to make lions

noahs ark is in Turkey!, bits of the ark is still there, but Turkish people will not allow anyone to get close, because its a religious thing,

yeah there was a recent documentary on channel 4. the people went to turkey to find the ark and go visit the supposed resting place of it. however, they prety much got forced out of the country, a mob gathered them when they were in the streets. what were they trying to hide from the documentary makers??

I didn't say that is what happened. I was giving an example. It is perfectly reasonable to assert that all of the different breeds of cat that are alive today originated from one breeding pair. The complexity and diversity included in one couples DNA is a testimony to the profound intelligence of the creator. Have you ever noticed the diversity of dog breeds that have all come from one original kind in a realtively short period of time due to mans manipulation. This manipulation of the dog kind would not have been possible is the potential did not exist in the original kind.

www.answersingenesis.org...

well your idea that every species of cat derived from just one or prehaps two would mean there had to be some sort of evolution to get to the probably 1000 or so species of cat we have today. but ofcourse that goes against the bible because god created us and evolution is just theory and not reality. the diversity of dogs has come from inter-breeding. sometimes you get pedigree dogs, when you breed those together you get many many inbred diseases. i think the most graphic example is that of dalmations, 1-4 are born blind i think. thing is i dont see how man inter-breeding all these dogs has any significance to noah putting only one breed of the feline family on his boat?

Not all Christians discount some evolution...

But, even if we grant you the one big cat, one small cat, etc. etc. we're still looking at thousands of different speciesof non-interbreedable stock, just considering insect life alone! Not to mention birds, reptiles, and mammals... There is NO way to logistically explain Noah's Ark, because it is a logistics impossibility, no matter how you try and manipulate species in existence at the time... Oh yeah, he would have also had to have those that are now extinct...but were around during early man. The image of Noah coaxing two 12' carnivorous birds onto the Ark is pretty humorous....

Ok, so lets forget all about that, and say he got all the animals on the boat. Good job Noah! Now, where's all the feed for 40 days and 40 nights for each animal? What about the strict carnivores? Did he bring extra members of species as yum-yums? What about those eating only certain plants? I suppose he brought those along too eh? What did Noah and his family eat? No meat I guess, hehe.... How did he ever manage to get them all to ignore their instincts (given by God presumably) and NOT eat their fellow passengers?

You can try and explain it till you're blue in the face, but the logistics simply aren't there.

Evolution defined as diversification within a created kind is not inconsistant with the Bible and is an observable fact. Evolution defined as one kind changing into another kind is opposed to scripture and has never been observed. I pointed out that the diversification of the dog kind has been manipulated by man selecting the breeding traits for desired traits. This has been accomplished by inbreeding and has resulted in genetic problems in pure bred dogs. Such problems are more rare in wild populations. My comment about dogs was to point out the diversity that can exist in one set of genes, traits that can be expressed in future generations that were not visible in the original breeding pair.