Every religious person I know believes the story about Noah's Ark is literal.
But its physically impossible. And not even close.
Lets look at all of the obvious problems with the story.
1. You can't fit all the animals on one boat. Period.Stop it already.
2. Even if you fit two of every animal on the boat... what did they eat? That is a tremendous amount of food. (I guess now the Christian thing is to say they were in some kind of suspended animation now. lol)
3. What about all the insects? Did they get on the Ark too... or... what?
4. What about other people with boats. Why didn't they survive?
5. When the floodwater receded... wouldn't all the plants be dead?
6. When the animals got off the boat... once again... what did they eat? All the plants would be dead. And carnivores would have to eat other animals.. so... er.. going to lose quite a few species there. Like. Pretty much every time a carnivore ate, an entire species would die.
7. Certain animals require certain conditions to live. They would die on the trek there or the trek back to their native habitat.
8. Certain animals live in delicate ecosystems. They can't trek across the world without dying.
9. Take bees for example... were there two bees on the boat? Just imagine how crazy it would be to figure out how two bees can live on the ark and then repopulate the world with bees. A world with no flowers. what....
10. Many plants require insects to breed and grow. With only two left of each insect... how did the plants come back... what..
11. Where did all the parasites that animals have come from? Did God choose animals with parasites like tapeworms? Otherwise... the parasites would have had to have... like evolved or something.... after the floods. But wait, evolution is... not real right?
12. Lets not even get into something as complicated the salt content of the oceans, or the salt that would have been left, or the destruction of topsoil or anything.
So basically... the longer you think about it... the more childish and insane this one story becomes. Out of the big three judao christian religious texts, this one story is literally the weakest point. It is so ridiculous. So stupid. So childish.
At the same time however, you can see how it would have made sense to some desert nomad writing down a myth. They didn't know anything about insects role in the ecosystem, or ecosystems, or how big the world was or how diverse the climate or... all that stuff. Two of every animal? The only animals they knew existed were like camels, goats, sheep, n stuff. Things in their immediate environment.
And despite how absolutely stupid, insane, and totally impossible and crazy this all sounds, religious people take it at face value.
I feel the crux of any argument against religion should be this story. Every scientist on Earth should come out and laugh about how totally absurd this is.
Is there anything in the bible more blatantly absurd than the story of noah and his boat?
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This argument has been repeated over and over again in several topics here.
Here are the most popular videos about it.
NonStampCollector
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_BzWUuZN5w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLr5vl-n0Bo
TheThinkingAtheist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CccaGaKOlSI
DarkMatter2525
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I225Vcs3X0g
Only a brain damaged person can believe the litteral version of this story.
Not to mention what Bill Nye pointed out: The longest sailing vessel ever built was less than 1/2 the reported size of the "ark", and it broke up in only fairly rough seas: the wood structure couldn't take the twisting of the frame throughout it's length, so she broke up and sank!
Thus... As you say, impossible. It's truly amazing what ignorant people are willing to believe in, isn't it?
Atheist Jon-You mentioned only 12 examples why the story of Noah's arc is impossible. There are more than 14,435,213 reasons Noah's arc is stupid and ridiculous. --Your conclusion --"Is there anything more blatantly absurd than the story of Noah and his boat.". Adam and Eve and the talking snake is way way way more blatantly absurd than Noah's arc.. Of the 27,689,234 absurd "stories" in the bible I rank Adam and Eve # 1 and Noah's arc # 2.. God Bless
i think noah's ark is a better argument. I mean... in a weird way, you can't prove there wasn't a talking snake and a magical apple. But you can prove that you can't fit two of every animal in the world on a damned boat.
Zing!
Atheist.Jon--Give me a fucking break.. You don't know what your talking about.. Adam and Eve and the talking snake is way way way way more ridiculous than Noah's arc. The virgin birth of Jesus is pretty ridiculous and comes in as #4 . # 3 has got to be Moses getting the 10 commandments from the burning bush (God). I have a book coming out around Christmas listing all the "impossible miracles and immorality an injustice in the bible and Koran. I rate the most absurd bizarre and crazy stories from 1-100. Don't argue with me about which "miracle" is more worse than the other. I have devoted 10 years of my life researching this subject. I am the greatest expert in the universe on this subject. Anybody interested in purchasing my book 'THE CRAZIEST MIRACLES IN THE BIBLE AND KORAN send me a self addressed envelop to Blasphemy P.O. Box 666, 72 virgins street , heaven and hell, Alabama 66666. God Bless
Please note.....
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Public information announcement:
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"blasphemy" is actually the infamous troll of the Atheist Republic forum.
Generally referred to as "Kenny", has been banned many times under different names.
Previously known aliases include: "Kenny Schweiger", "Kenny", "myself", "alleycat", "richardd", "Christopher", "marken", "punkin", "amber", "Simon", "fred,k".
Claims to be an atheist. But he has a fondness for using "sarcasm", even though no one ever gets his sarcasm and he has been told this many times, he keeps posting such deceiving comments.
He seems obsessed with religions, creationists and the stupidity of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, Joel Osteen, Ted Cruz, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, Vanna White, Sarah Palin, etc.
This announcement will be posted whenever he spams, agitates, confuses or flies of the handle.
Also, he finds these announcements 'boring'..
this announcement courtesy of Pragmatic....
watchman--say something you ugly devil looking asshole.. Meet me in the atheist hub at high noon and I'll will show you what it would be like to mess with me. Never mind you are so pathetic it is not even worth wasting time showing how "bad" I can be...
Be careful what you wish for Kenny.....
He's never seen V for Vendetta, I bet.
Hi Jon...Wow, what a surprise!! Theists believing in things that are physiologically, biologically, and scientifically IMPOSSIBLE!! But a theist will tell you "that is what "faith" is all about." Believing in things that are not real. Thats what they base their logic on...pretty scary, don't you think??!!
"Is there anything in the bible more blatantly absurd than the story of noah and his boat?"
It does happen to be one of the most absurd things in a book full of absurd things. Does that make it a good argument? Not necessarily, the people who believe it don't do so because they think it makes sense, but because they are intellectually bankrupt enough to believe that all of it is possible because their divine Gandalf can magic any problem away; so the answer to every absurd thing is "god magic". Also, even in the cases that you can convince someone that Noah's Flood never happened, they simply claim it is a metaphor or parable; so hand-wave it away pretending it is unrelated to the veracity of their bible.
You are dealing with one aspect of many peoples lives that they flatly refuse to apply logic or reason to, so logical or reasonable arguments will not effect their faith, as they would rather make-believe something that makes them feel good instead of dealing with a reality that doesn't.
I've come to the conclusion that people do not want to admit that all the crap that was thrust into their heads from when they were children was all just a bunch of nonsense,( just like Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc...God is the adult version of Santa Clauss) and that they have been made to look like complete idiots...NO ONE wants to admit that!! It's all a folly!!
Remember that the Noah's Ark story is just a rehash of a brutally similar story in the Gilgamesh epic. Don't forget that the majority of the Septuagint is just rehashing other ancient myths into a slightly less ancient myth. Equally irrelevant and untrue, however.
Yea that leads to my favorite video about Noah's ark(more informative and close to the truth):
43alley
Noah's Ark is Plagiarized. Here's how we know...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_um69RqBpSw
just a minor point, but there could have been species proliferation after the supposed flood.
Not in the timescale provided by biblical apologists, no, that would require a super-mega-hyperevolutionary event that would mean we would be seeing hundreds of new "unique" clades being born a year. No, no matter how one tries to slice it, the flood story is completely irreconcilable with reality without a liberal application of god's magical and mysterious pixie dust type of explanations.
"just a minor point, but there could have been species proliferation after the supposed flood. "
Which species would have proliferated after a world wide flood with waters up to the highest mountain?
(any change to the details to the story is like admitting that the bible is unreliable= dismissed hystorically)
Apart from that, if you start to think about what food they could have eaten to actually proliferate, one should come to terms that this is a story rehashed from previous stories that represented the culture of those people at the time.
Just like Santa Claus is for us today.
You can try to find possible ways how Santa existed but you will find that there is no real reason to do so, except desperation to make your belief at least possible.
Travis--This is what Vincent Paul said--"there could have been species proliferation after the supposed flood" Do you think that was even worth a response when something is so ridiculous, foolish, idiotic, stupid and dumb....God Bless..
I once had a conversation with a J.W. on this subject, I was at home and they came around soul soliciting. It went like this
JW: You know God loves you right?
ME: I dont believe in god.
JW: Why?
ME: That crazy book for starters.
JW: Which part?
ME: The whole thing, Adam, Eve, talking snakes, Noah's ark blah blah blah
(I'll just do the Noah's ark part of her diatribe)
JW: Noah didn't need to fit one of every animal, just one pair of 'TYPES' of animals, for example, he didn't need to take lions, tigers, house cats, bobcats etc, he just needed 2 cats. (Like two tigers) and all the cats we have now are descendants of those two cats.
ME: Wait, so you mean all the bobcats and lynxes are descended from two tigers?
JW: Exactly.
ME: So you guys believe in evolution then?
JW: No, absolutely not. (I wish you could have seen the look on her face)
ME:But what you just described about the cats, that's evolution.
JW: No, it''s not.
The discussion pretty much went downhill after I grabbed a dictionary but it kind of shows the inanity of arguing with the faithful about certain things like Noah's ark.
"ME: So you guys believe in evolution then?
JW: No, absolutely not. (I wish you could have seen the look on her face)"
hahaha nice one.