How big should a ship really be to truly house all animals in the world (two of each kind) as told in the Bible?

that depends on the definition of “kind”

Pretty f-ing big.

Here’s the wikipedia count on number of species (not going into subspecies):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species#Numbers_of_species

Think about the food that is needed too. And water since the oceans would make the water salty.

You also need to take into account all the extinct species. (Creationists believe that Noah also took dinos, etc. on the ark, and that they went extinct post-flood)

Out of all the species that have ever existed, the vast majority are now extinct.

As @ragingloli points out, creationists get around this absurdity by defining “kind” to mean “whatever level of cladistics that wouldn’t be noticeably absurd to fit on the ark.” So Noah didn’t take lions, tigers, and hyenas, he just took some kind of basal cat-carnivore.

Of course, this necessarily means that all the genera and species “evolved” from the base “kind” brought on the ark. (I put “evolve” in quotes because there is no way so many speciations could happen in less than 5,000 years—so creationists believe in some kind of magical super-evolution.)

A big mo…fu…!
And where did they throw their waste? In the ocean? Didn’t they mate? Wouldn’t that have created more of each animals?

Something like 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. Impossibly big.

Gigantic. Huge. Beyond belief. Too big to float. What about the waste created by two of each animal?! I’m guessing dinosaur defecation is something to be reckoned with.

Thought it had something to do with 40 cubits, but I ditched a lot of Sunday School.

@IchtheosaurusRex – Me too!!

No, it was TWO of each UNCLEAN after its kind and SEVEN of each CLEAN after it’s kind…go read your Bible.

@mellamashermosa Bravo!

Not to mention it would be unlikely that the genetic material from two individuals could repopulate an entire species

Correct me if I’m wrong – are there people on this site seriously giving time to arguing against a 4,000-year-old piece of prehistory from an ancient early civilisation as if it were a scientific fact-book?

Bigger than a bread box.

@markce: Everyone is entitled to his opinion. We have a broad variety of believers and non.

@markce

It’s hard to ignore something that a significant portion of the US population believes.

I just wonder how their numbers spread with such a small gene pool.

Kinda huge I’d guess! I have a 1/12 scale model and it’s currently sitting inside the O2 arena

If you know how big a “cubit” is, then the answer is in the bible. They specifically mention the dimensions.

Personally, I think it’s a nice story but there’s no way 2 of every animal got on an ark the way the bible says it happened. It’s phsyically impossible unless kangaroos can swim and hop from Australia to the middle east.

Can you imagine the smell on that ship? I’d hate to draw cleanup duty.

I said doody. Heh heh.

@AstroChuck You said “I wonder how their numbers spread with such a small gene pool.” I wonder that with Adam and Eve. Who did Caine and Abel mate with?

450’ long, 75’ wide, 45’ high. remember he took 7 dogs, the breeds came latter, the same with the other species. Water came from collecting rain.

@AstroChuck

Able was murdered before having children.
Cain met his wife in the land of Nod, east of Eden.

@DrBill I asked that. So was Cain’s wife his sister?

Reproducing with your relatives was not a sin until Moses time.

If the survival of humanity depended on me getting it on with my sister – we’d all be extinct. I can’t imagine anything less appealing.

@DarkScribe Brings a whole new meaning to “not if you were the last person on earth…”

well we’ll say 100 mil different species, just for arguments sake. we’ll say on average(obviously an elephant will need more than a hamster, but in the end it balances out) each animal needs a standard 6 by 8 foot living area. that means there needs to be at least 9,600,000,000 of square feet to house two of each animal. So how long would such a ship be? if it was a 20 deck ship each deck would have 480,000ft^2. that’s a length of about 80,000 feet. something tells me an old man, and some helpers wouldn’t be able to build something of that magnitude.
Now obviously, christians hold that this is more of a symbol, a metaphor. Many different cultures speak of a great flood, but there is no evidence that one mega flood enveloped the earth, but what is more like is every often there’s an exceptionally large flood that kills many people, and since most early civilizations congregated near large rivers or coast line, many cultures did experience at least one very large flood, but nothing on a global scale.

ps it’s embarrassing that I actually explained a likely length and sq footage…..

^ hehe nerd ^_^

I have heard a minister say recently that millions of people died because of the flood. His proof was that they have found sea shells on the top of mountain peaks. What was not explained was, why are there not millions of human bones found?

I’m a closet nerd.

I like playing my guitar and chasing girls but at home my bookshelf is filled with nothing but history books, philosophy, comic books and math theory

The sea shell argument is a very simple explanation actually.

you see this is a common phenomena, the reason being that 50 million years ago, mountain ranges like the Rockies, Appalachian, etc, didn’t exist. and in many of these areas there was flat land, ocean, or lakes. and due to the constant shift of plate tectonics, mountains formed on once flat land. Another good example of this is in a few million years, Alaska will form a land bridge once again with Russia, it moves at a rate of almost 2 inches a year towards the Asian continent.

Smart dude
How did this question get from a ship of animals to sea shells?

lol the Fluther Gods work in mysterious ways…

:)

One of my favorite historical anamolies is the End Permian extinction, which happened 251 million years ago. Back then, 90% of life was wiped out, including saber toothed reptiles and their rhinoceros sized prey, as well as vast numbers of fish and other ocean creatures. Yet, every living thing that has lived since then all the way up to today, including humans, evolved from those creatures that survived. Now that’s a fascinating story, and it makes the whole flood myth seem silly.

remarkable, isn’t it?

I read about some of the massive sea predators, dwarfing great whites and most wales, rows of teeth longer than a grown mans hand… truly astonishing.

Wasn’t this problem solved long ago?
Higitus Figitus

@DrBill, how many species of insects do you believe Noah took on the ark? Non-extinct insect species alone number almost 1,000,000.

@Qingu
insects don’t take up much room

@DrBill

2 million of them do.

@DrBill- All the species of insects combined outweigh all the other animals.

A million insect species (plus several millions of extinct insect species) also presents hilarious logistical problems. How long was Noah collecting insects?

@AstroChuck
they did not take ever insect, only a few of each.

@Ivan
A Million insects occupying one cubic inch (the average size is closer to one cc) it would only take 578 cubic feet. Then deduct the ones ridding around on the other animals.

@DrBill, how many insects do you believe Noah actually gathered and took on the ark, if not two of every species?

And are you saying that the million existing species evolved from the limited number of insects Noah took on the ark?

@Qingu

Why not? Look at all the breeds that came from the seven dogs he took.

and nematodes! Did Noah go about gather two of each nematoad?

Dog breeds are all of the same species. They can readily reproduce with each other. Different species of insects cannot reproduce with each other—in the same way that dogs and bears cannot reproduce with each other.

But that’s neither here nor there. I believe I asked you for a number. How many insects? You can estimate.

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but did you just agree that species evolve?

Noah must have been quite the entomologist if he managed to collect representatives of the millions of insect species which we don’t even know about yet.

“A Million insects occupying one cubic inch (the average size is closer to one cc) it would only take 578 cubic feet. Then deduct the ones ridding around on the other animals.”
that requires that you pack them together really tightly, which means they will all die of asphyxiation.

Which brings up the question of ventilation.
clearly he only had passive ventilation and circulation of air, e.g. none.
After a few days, the entire ship would be filled with a mix of carbon dioxide and animal exhaust gases. considering that a ship with so much cargo would have a pretty big draught, ventilation openings could only be fitted in the upper part of the ship, meaning only the upper parts of the ship would be supplied with fresh air, everything below it would die.

Not to mention, what are you going to feed all of these insects? What about the species of insects that have life spans less than 40 days?

@Qingu
Yes, I do support evolution, and creationism. God created all the life on earth, and it then evolved. See my website for complete details of how it works.

@ragingloli
Ventilation slots 18” high supplied fresh air via the winds. My house is sealed tighter than the ark would have been, and I can breath just fine, even in the basement.

@Ivan
breeding was allowed, short life spans only meant their children or grandchildren would have gotten off the ark.

@DrBill
your basement likely has windows.
your house and basement isn’t filled to the brim with animals who consume oxygen and pollute the air with their farts.

also when insects breed they produce hundreds of thousands of offspring at once. multiply that with the million insect species and you have a massive problem on your hands.

@ragingloli
My basement has windows that do not open, therefor no ventilation.

As far as animal farts, you need to meet Sam, Max, Rowdy, Dusty, Catgut, AC, BC, Snowball, etc.

The only ones who would need to breed are the ones with a shorter life span than the 40 days allotted.

@DrBill
that’s merely 8 animals compared to the thousands onboard the ark.

@ragingloli
I agree, but my house is a lot smaller also

@DrBill, does your website give any indication of how many insects Noah took on the ark?

Can you at least give me an order of magnitude? Like, 10,000 insects? (So that each one would evolve into 100 separate species)? 100,000? 1,000?

@DrBill- I never said every insect. I said every species of insect.
And I don’t believe you’re a real doctor.

That all depends on whether or not they underwent divergent evolution after stepping off the ark. If they did, then it depends on the time frame. Not much divergent evolution occurs in 4000ish years, so the boat would have to be huge – too big to be built of wood.

@FireMadeFlesh, I’m mostly waiting to see at which point DrBill resorts to claiming that God steps in to make some logistic impossibility possible. Like, divergent evolution for even 10 speciation events per ark-bound insect is physically impossible in 4,000 years… but maybe God personally stepped in and fast-domesticated the insects into all the new species. You can’t prove it didn’t happen!

You see, these questions always turn into the endless debate of God VS. The Atheists. The story of the Ark is a parable anyway; anyone who takes it as literal truth has some very serious problems with logic and reality.

And if you want some animal information, well, pigs produce six gallons of waste per animal per day. That’s 480 gallons of pig crap for two animals in 40 days. The average horse urinates 4 times a day. One single elephant turd is about the size of a man’s head. Animals use urine and feces to mark their territory, and there is no way that predators and prey could be confined on the same vessel without having chaos ensue. Wild animals are much too unpredictable to be placed in a large floating enclosure and to even try it would be insane. Wild animals do not take well to confinement.

As for birds, and insects, the logistics of that is basically insurmountable. And what of the fish? Freshwater fish would die in saltwater, and saltwater fish will die in brackish or dilute sea water. Some species of water creatures cannot take even the slightest pH change without expiring.

There is a reason why zebras, antelopes, deer, and other large herbivores have never been successfully domesticated. they do not do well in enclosed spaces, and will injure or kill themselves trying to escape. Anyone who knows anything about animal behavior can easily figure out that the story of the ark isn’t true. Have you ever smelled fox urine? Well if a prey animal, such as a rabbit smells it, it will beat itself to death against any encloseure to get away from it. To believe the ark is a true story means suspending belief in the facts of animal behavior. don’t even get me started on the baby dinosaurs.

Noah’s ark is a nice myth, but there isn’t a grain of truth to it, as far as carrying animals on a big boat. Flod myths abound in the Middle East, but then, when you live near rivers, flooding is a common occurrence. Happens here every Spring on the Mississippi.

@Qingu
I never claimed to know how many species existed at that time. The website explains how both creationism and evolution can be true.

@AstroChuck
I’m not here to convince you. I know I have two Ph.d’s, what you believe is up to you.

@FireMadeFlesh
How can a boat be too big to be built from wood?

@evelyns_pet_zebra
If the flood is a myth, why is it that every religion from all parts of the world, (even ones who had never interacted with one another) tell of a world-wide flood happening during the same time period?

(while entering the ark)...and God pacified the beast… (no fighting)
(while leaving the ark) ....and the wild beast will fear you… (no longer domesticated)
The animals waste was collected and thrown into the sea.
Dinosaurs died out as a result of the KT event.
The flood was real, the myth is the unicorns.
Just because you don’t believe, does not mean it did not happen

@DrBill- I was j/k, as usual.

@DrBill How can a boat be too big to be built from wood?

You accept that little country bridges can be built from wood?

Do you REALLY think that they could build the Golden gate or the Sydney Harbour bridges from wood?

You could build a raft of any size from wood, but not a ship that has structural stress requirements.

@DrBill
Wood is elastic, and the ark would be built from planks.
The larger the ship, the bigger the resulting gaps between the planks when it bends due to the stress caused by the water currents.
Meaning the ark would leak so badly that it would be filled with water in no time.
not to mention that parts of the ship would break under the stress.

and everyone knows that the flood was caused by the passing home planet of the Annunaki, Nibiru, which caused a gravitational tide (like the moon does, but bigger). The Annunaki then built an orbital space station on which they stored genetic samples of all life on earth and repopulated the earth based on these genetic samples with their superior technology.
google zecharia sitchin for more info.

@DrBill just because various cultures have similar beliefs systems, that doesn’t mean they are true. That is like saying that the savior of Mankind was born of the union of a human and a god, lived his life performing miracles, was executed, lay dead for 3 days, and then ascended to heaven. No, not Jesus, I’m talking about Horus, the son of god even older than the Jesus story. There are at least 22 other known gods that have the exact same story. Right down to a mother named Mary. See, humans all pretty much think alike, and just because a story has similar traits with other stories in other cultures, that doesn’t make it true.

Yes, flooding in river delta cultures during the history of human kind is true, because water means life in an arid climate, but the ark story is not true, as the logistics are insurmountable, as many people have shown here time and time again. No one can tell you what to believe, but we can give you a pretty good idea of what is possible and what is not.

There are 30,000 species of spiders in North America alone, and yet, you say they all evolved from the time of Noah until the present from the handful of spiders on this boat? What of the millions of spiders all over the world, and the ones we have yet to find in the various rainforests and other wild places? They evolved from Noah’s handful of spiders? What of the millions of years old spiders trapped in amber that one can find in various parts of the world? Spiders that have no living descendants, or even the ones that do? Now who has no clue about evolution? The lifespans and cycles and various diet requirements of so many terrestrial species is so complex that keeping even a handful of them alive for 40 days in a high humidity/constantly moving environment is impossible. The Giant Australian roach only eats the leaves of the gum tree, where did Noah find the time to get to Australia to gather up those creatures and enough leaves to keep them alive for 40 days?

And well, if we are going to introduce magical thinking and God causing things to behave against the laws of nature, (your bible quotes up there) well then, what’s the point of science at all, when we can depend on God to change the rules of the game at any time that he sees fit?

You can believe what you like, but to get others to believe, you’d better be ready to answer some questions NOT taken from a book that has been proven to be a copy of a copy times twelve. Flood myths are a staple of early human religions, but then, so are tales about gods that direct the weather and other beings that science has proved are non-existent. Saying the story of the flood is true because there are thirty variations of it is the same logic I can use to prove vampires are real, because look how many authors have written stories about vampires. There are thousands of stories about vampires. I’ve even written a couple myself.

If you want to believe the flood myth of the Christian religion, more power to you. but I doubt you’ll ever convince anyone with a good deal of knowledge about the natural laws of science that is could even begin to be possible.

Life is about choices, your results may vary.

@DrBill Unicorns are not a myth! They just drowned because they didn’t make it on the raft in time. How do you know god didn’t make unicorns?

@evelyns_pet_zebra Now who has no clue about evolution?
If you don’t believe the proven fact that evolution does occur, Then I would say you are the one who does not have a clue.

Noah built the ark, God brought the animals to it.

The seas were calm, you need shore line to cause currents large enough to cause problems. (physics 101)

…other beings that science has proved are non-existent. It is not possible to prove something does not exist, only that it does. (Logic 101)

Every book about vampires has been marketed as fiction.

If you want to believe the flood myth of the Christian religion
That would be every major religion the world has ever known, not just Christian. Geologist have also found evidence of flooding during the same era on every content.

Considering 92% of the people in the world believe in a supreme being, you are in a very small minority

@benjaminlevi
I was basing that on the fact that no one ever found fossils of unicorns, but I’m open minded and will consider any evidence to the contrary.

@DrBill, just because something is popular, that doesn’t make it true. The belief in ghosts is pretty common, but there is no evidence of them at all that can be scientifically proven. And why would it be that being in a minority is a bad thing? The Polish Underground were in the minority during WW2 and look at all they accomplished while the Nazis were hunting them down like dogs in the street.

Hmm, science can prove unicorns are nonexistent, so now what? Science shows no evidence for them, so obviously they are as nonexistent as the 2,500 gods man has worshipped over the centuries and we have no evidence for either.

But hey, you go right ahead and follow the creationism rhetoric, because I have spoken to enough scientists and read enough peer reviewed journals to know that Intelligent Design is neither.

@evelyns_pet_zebra
That is why ghost are theorized, and theory’s are beliefs that can not be proven or disproved.

I did not say being a minority was bad, only that you were in the minority.

Science has not proven unicorns didn’t exist, they have only proven they have not found any evidence they did.

If you could open your mind a little bit and consider both sides, you may learn this is not as cut and dry as you imply it is. I have considered all of your views, but you have only commented with skewed statements that imply one dimensional thinking.

I think we will have to settle to agree to disagree, at least on this subject.

“theory’s are beliefs that can not be proven or disproved.”

No PhD in the world would ever say such a thing.

@Ivan
agreed. i wonder where he got his PhD from.

@DrBill, you said “every religion from all parts of the world, (even ones who had never interacted with one another) tell of a world-wide flood happening during the same time period?”

This is absolutely false. Lots of religions have flood myths, but most of them are only superficially similar and certainly do not take place “during the same time.” Since flooding is a common, and dramatic, problem for early civilizations that tend to form along rivers, this isn’t surprising.

Now, the Bible’s flood is extremely similar to flood myths in Mesopotamian religions. For example, the Atrahasis myth and the earlier Gilgamesh myth—both written hundreds of years before the Bible—contain many identical details about the nature of the flood, the ark, the animals, even the birds being released from windows to find dry land.

The Bible shares a lot of other similarities with earlier Mesopotamian religions too, including the shape of the world, the concept of Shabat days, a sky god who does battle with the sea, Mount Sinai.

I guess I don’t see how any honest person could look at these similarities and conclude “therefore the Bible must be true!” It’s hard not to conclude the opposite: that the Bible is itself Mesopotamian mythology, which is why it cribs from earlier myths and uses them as a template for its own theology.

Also, doesn’t your religion say you shouldn’t bear false witness? That’s exactly what you did when you claimed every religion tells of a flood happening during the same time. Please try to be more honest in the future, it makes these discussions more pleasant.

@Ivan
If something is proven, it is no longer a theory. I am impressed that you know every Ph.D. in the world. By the way, as I did said it, it proves you wrong in your assumptions.

@ragingloli
I received a double doctorate from U.C.

@Qingu
Did you even read the post?

I guess you are also dismissing all the scientific evidence. I did not say ALL religions, I said MAJOR religions.

I looked back at every post I made, please point out where I said “the bible must be true”.

As you are the one not reading the post, but rather read into it what you want, you are the one having trouble being honest. Since you are basing your opinions on made up text, you’re bound to come up with wrong conclusions

@DrBill
the only field where things can be proven is mathematics. anywhere else, claims and ideas can only be supported by evidence. when ideas are supported by evidence, make testable predictions that are verified in experiments/findings, they are called theories.
in science, a theory is the highest thing an idea can be.

In that sense i hereby retract my support for the statement that no one with a PhD would claim that theories cannot be proven or disproven
since nothing can be proven outside of of mathematics.
though I still have reservations wether you really meant proven/disproven and not “without evidence”

“Geologist have also found evidence of flooding during the same era on every content.”
I would like you to define “era” in terms of time frame as well as links to references that support this claim, especially the conclusion that local examples of pretty common natural events point to one single global occurance.

@DrBill

In science, proof is impossible. The best we can do is formulate explanations by using the scientific method. Those explanations are called ‘theories.’ Theories are not beliefs; they are merely explanations for a phenomenon that are self-consistent and testable. A theory can be proven false (and if it is, it’s still a theory, it’s just a false theory), but it can never be proven true. A theory, as ragingloli said, is the highest level of achievement an explanation can reach. Theories do not graduate into anything else. Think of any fundamentally true explanation, and there’s a good chance that it’s a theory. The idea that the Earth revolves around the sun, the idea that disease is caused by germs, these are theories.

@DrBill Your question is well answered by @DarkScribe. If a wooden boat is (for argument’s sake) 100m long and it meets a wave in the open ocean, up to 50m of that boat may be suspended in the air. The ark is said to have been 135 metres long, 22.5m wide and 13.5m high. Fill that with animals, and it will get very heavy. No wood would have the structural strength to hold up a box of dimensions 67.5×22.5×13.5 of its own weight, let alone the end of the ark with the elephants and hippopotamuses in it.

@FireMadeFlesh I’m really tempted to run the numbers on how big the wood members would need to be.

Basically, because wood is (generally) buoyant, you can build an “infinitely large” boat with it, and it will not sink. It might break up and become flotsam, but it won’t sink. That means you could make internal trusses that might be able to span the deepest waves.

Or you could make the boat as a series of boats linked together… =)

@bpeoples Basically, because wood is (generally) buoyant, you can build an “infinitely large” boat with it, and it will not sink. I

How do you explain the tens of thousands of wooden boats that did sink in the last few thousand years?

The ocean floor is littered with them. Ships are made of hardwood, and it doesn’t float, at least not for long. Try dropping a railroad sleeper into the water and see how long it floats.

@bpeoples An infinitely large wooden boat would have problems with torsional rigidity, as it would be exposed to opposing currents. It may break up and still float if it were made of the right types of wood, but that wouldn’t do Noah much good unless he managed to grab quite a bit of food and water as it broke up. And then he’d have the wrath of God to deal with when the animals drowned.

@FireMadeFlesh
I’m sorry but @DarkScribe did not answer anything, you cannot compare the structure of a bridge to explain the structure of a boat, the answer was just meandering tripe. @bpeoples is more correct than you give credit for, add as stated earlier, currents and waves are dependent on shorelines, if all the land is covered by water, there are no shorelines. there would only be ripples caused by the winds (...and God calmed the seas…).

@DarkScribe
The ark was made of gopher wood, not railroad sleepers.

@DrBill dude… you’re reeeaaaallllyyyy stretching to hold up what ever shred of your argument you’ve got left. Trust me, a boat THAT big, is largely impossible, especially on open water with that much cargo. It’d fall apart, everyone knows it, gather up that many animals is also impossible for Noah(tell me, how did he get certain animals from the Americas? in which he had absolutely no knowledge of at the time…) It just couldn’t of happened with the his level of ability. Also, how long do you think it would take for him to build such a massive structure with just a few farm hands? centuries bud, he didn’t have a whole army of slaves like the Pharaohs did for the pyramids(which also took 25–75 years to build with thousands of round the clock workers.) it just didn’t happen there’s no way around it man, let up….

and Gofer wood… look at this… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_wood

All of the possible wood species that Gopher wood could actually be are all dense, hard, sinking woods… in which are needed to stand the structural stresses of larger boats. most of which will sink… so please… give it a rest…

@DrBill
“there would only be ripples caused by the winds”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave
Wave size up to 30 metres. surely just a ripple.

And yet again I deal with people with a closed minds that have not read the previous post.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03

People without vision still say we did not go to the moon. Before going to “the wood is too heavy”, explain how we make boats out of steal, which is a lot heaver.

As posted earlier, Noah did not go get the animals, they came to him. (try reading the post already posted)

Just because you do not know how they did it, does not mean it was not done.

@ragingloli

add as stated earlier, currents and waves are dependent on shorelines, if all the land is covered by water, there are no shorelines. there would only be ripples caused by the winds (...and God calmed the seas…).
(try reading the post already posted)

EVERYONE is doing a great job of getting off the subject. These comments have nothing to do with “how big is the ship?”

No No I’m Aware Bill. that’s not what I was saying.

But let’s address the easiest question first…

Tell me… I didn’t know Buffalo were such great swimmers… but I’m sure they made it across the Atlantic just fine…..

@ABoyNamedBoobs03

If you want to take that route, one theory is the land bridge from Alaska to Russia. Buffalo’s can swim, but you are right that they are not good at it.

Just to be interesting, if you are such a devout non-believer, why are you bothering with a question aimed at believers?

@DrBill

This question was not aimed at believers.

The land bridge disappeared well before you believe the Earth began.

@DrBill
If you had read the article, you would have seen that these waves occur in open seas and that then they are independent of shorelines.
I seem to deal with someone who doesn’t read what his opponents write.

“add as stated earlier, currents and waves are dependent on shorelines, if all the land is covered by water, there are no shorelines. there would only be ripples caused by the winds”
False.
Currents are also dependent on temperature differences, ocean bed surface characteristics, and gravitational pull by the sun and moon

“Before going to “the wood is too heavy”, explain how we make boats out of steal, which is a lot heaver.”
YOU made the claim that a boat made out of wood will not sink because it is lighter than water.

@Ivan

…So a land bridge cannot exist in the same place twice?

If you know what I believe so well, when do you think I believe the Earth began? (I can guarantee you will get this one wrong)

@ragingloli
I seem to be dealing with someone who doesn’t read what others write.
If you had read the previous post, you would find the answer to every one of your concerns except one, “YOU made the claim that a boat made out of wood will not sink because it is lighter than water.” I looked at every post I made, and it is not there.

As you are the one not reading the post, but rather reading into it what you want, you are basing your opinions on made up text, you’re bound to come up with wrong conclusions

@DrBill
You’re right, that was @bpeoples. Sorry for that.

“If you had read the previous post, you would find the answer to every one of your concerns”
Answers which we were arguing against.

Your attempt to reconcile the folktales of an ancient culture with modern science is futile.

So, slightly more than promised, not quite sober structural engineering:

Assuming a 450×75x45 ship entirely full of water (which yes I know wouldn’t float, but is the worst case), the beam would need to be able to support 17993#/inch plus its own weight. Assuming Spruce-Pine-Fir, which does float, it has a weight of around 2.5#/sf per inch of thickness.

Our worst case theory is the bending imposed (ignoring deflection) by the front and back of the ship being picked up by rogue waves. We’re also assuming Noah was able to join the beam to make up 100% of strength.

The equation I ended up for this is as follows:

83.3*b*d^2 = 6.5×10^10 + 6.3×10^3*b*d

where b is the width of the beam (in inches) and d is the depth of the beam (in inches). Wolfram Alpha gave me a solution where b = 900” (the width of the ship), and d = about 80 feet.

At this size, the beam would weigh 15000# per inch, so it’s supporting over 15 tons of weight per inch.

We could go into trusses and such, but I’d rather not =) I would surmise that it is possible for Noah to have constructed the beam of the Ark as a truss, permitting much lower sizes required (as the truss has less self-weight to support)

@DrBill it didn’t, we know that as a fact, there would be Sedimentary evidence. virtually everything you’ve said followed the lines of “well what if this happened?!?!?!?!?” and we go… “well, it didn’t…” because, factually, most of the things you’ve been saying aren’t true. You don’t need to try and prove your point so avidly, everyone is misjudges things every now and then, we’re not attacking you, but please, before you make a counter argument, do research about it first.

I can’t do research for fact that no one has supplied. I never claimed to know all the details of HOW it happened, but no one has been able to provide any proof it did not happen, except for their opinion.

I am getting tired of correcting everyone claiming I said things I didn’t, so I am no longer following this thread.

Everyone can just lie to each other all you want, but I am out of it.

“proof it did not happen”

http://history.howstuffworks.com/asian-history/noahs-ark2.htm

@DrBill, you said “all major religions” have a flood story just like the Bible’s, on the same timeline. This is false. No such flood story exists in Hinduism, Bhuddism, Shintoism, or other Chinese religions. The ancient Greeks had a flood story, but it was not the same as the Bible’s and certainly did not claim to occur at the same time.

Christianity and Islam have the same flood story… because they are derivative from Judaism. Ancient Mesopotamian religions have the same flood story because Judaism is derivative from them. And these religions are not “all major religions” by any stretch of the imagination.

Stop making shit up. If your deity exists, you’re probably angering him.

I’ll let the others deal with your rape of the terms “science” and “proof.” As a religious studies major, however, I’m not going to let you get away with misrepresenting this stuff.

@Qingu/ Dr Bill seems to lack the basic ability to grasp simple concepts. For instance he cannot see the similarity in engineering requirements between a long span bridge and a large ship. They both need to be capable of flexing without breaking and withstanding longitudinal torque etc. A ship has cladding, but the the “skeleton” is not dissimilar to a bridge. He also doesn’t understand that any hardwood, not just the type used for sleepers, will not float. Railway sleepers and ships are both constructed of timber that has strength and withstands exposure to elements, something no softwood can do. Though softwoods float, they will not carry much weight, so his whole scenario is pointless, if the Ark broke up, the flotsam would not carry the animals weight, let alone their food and water, so all of the animals would drown.

I think that maybe he just likes making things up and ignoring all responses that don’t agree with him. Sort of like Mother-in-Law are fond of doing from time to time.

To me the modern version of Noah’s Ark would be the size of a small rowing boat loaded with a tiny computer and couple of hundred external terabyte hard drives storing two genomes of each animal. The computer contains a smart compression/decompression algorithm dealing with frequent sub-genomic patterns. And off you go.

@mattbrowne oaded with a tiny computer and couple of hundred external terabyte hard drives storing two genomes of each animal.

Maybe that’s what happened – most of the animals came out ok, but with the humans there was some data corruption.

@DarkScribe – You got that right. The human genomes were handled by Microsoft firewalls failing to block unwanted access! I always told Noah to go with Linux.

take the babies

@pikipupiba, okay. You have 1,000,000 insect larvae which will soon hatch into insects, mostly with a lifespan of several days.

Command?

My guess is either that there were several generations of those bugs on the arc, or that God just stopped them from maturing for the duration of the trip.

Did God also use his magic powers to help Noah collect a million species of insects?

(Actually it’s probably more like 10 million species, and probably a lot more than that if you count the extinct ones that would have been on the ark, but I’m feeling charitable.)

@Qingu You obviously have no understanding of God.

I will respond to your question when it doesn’t sound like it was asked by a five year old.

@Everyone

To anyone who has said “It’s impossible to build a boat that big, it would fall apart, sink… etc.”

Anything is possible through Christ the lord who strengthens me.

Suck on that…

People have also said it’s impossible that the sky is a solid dome, and that the sun revolves around the earth, like the Bible says.

But anything is possible through Christ.

where in the bible does it say that the sun revolves around the earth?

Genesis 1: And God said, ‘Let there be a dome (Hebrew word is raqiya, meaning that which is hammered out) in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky.
...
And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth…

See also Joshua 10, when the sun stops in mid-sky, along with the moon.

Who do you believe—God, with his infinite power, or Copernicus and those pesky scientists who say the earth revolves around the sun?

Ok, I’m going to try to keep my cool.

Are you freaking serious!?!??!?

No where, and I mean NO where, in either of those two scriptures does it say that the sun revolved around the earth.

I can honestly say that I have no idea where you ever got that notion.

Please explain YOUR reasoning.

Um. It says explicitly that the sun is set in the dome of the earth’s sky.

Note also that there is water above this sky-dome in which the sun is set. That water supplies the rain for the flood when God opens the “windows in the sky” in Genesis 7.

The sun is ‘in’ the sky just like I can see my-self ‘in’ a mirror. It’s not saying that the sun i physically in the sky, that is just where you see it.

And just in case that is not what you were referring to exactly…

It is 100% possible to create the earth, then create the sun, and not have the sun revolving around the earth

@Qingu
I think you should not waste your time on trying to debate with piki. He seems very fond of the God of the gaps. If it is impossible, but the bible says it happened, then apparently goddidit.

So God didn’t really set the sun in the sky, it’s just an illusion? Similarly, the sun didn’t really stop in its motion through the sky in Joshua 10, that’s also an illusion?

But the Bible doesn’t say it’s an illusion. It says this is the shape of the earth and the sky:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~WATER~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~=~~~(moon)~~~~SKY~~~~(sun)~~~=~~~~

_______________EARTH_________________

(note the windows in the sky!)

Wouldn’t it be easier to say that all of our current science that says otherwise is an illusion?

@ragingloli, we have yet to see how much of the Bible our friend actually believes.

@ragingloli Keep in mind that people writing this stuff lived a really long time ago. Even they THOUGHT that the sun revolved around the earth. God didn’t just come down and show them a diagram of the solar system, they explained it how they understood it.

They think there is water in the sky cause it’s blue.
They think that there are windows cause they are solid, yet can be opened.
They think the sun STOPPED, because that is what it looked like.

@pikipupiba

Can’t you see the fallacy of simply saying “God can do anything” whenever you are confronted with an invalid belief of yours?

@pikipupiba: Certainly. I absolutely agree with you. In fact, the exact same description is found in many Babylonian and Akkadian myths which predate the Bible. And this description makes a lot of sense, if you’re a pre-scientific bronze-age person trying to figure out what the sky is.

But now it sounds like you’re saying that God lied in Genesis 1 because he didn’t want to come down and show the pre-scientific Hebrews the truthful shape of the solar system. (By the way, the ancient Greeks later figured this out on their own, no God-diagram required).

God didn’t lie.

People were created to have a choice whether or not to worship him. Our scientific understanding of the world has absolutely no bearing on whether or not we choose to worship him. He didn’t tell them exactly what was going on because they wouldn’t have understood it.

ex. “Oh, by the way, the sky is actually blue because shorter wavelengths of light are refracted by the atmosphere more strongly than longer wavelenghts. There’s not water up there, I was just kiddin”

Why didn’t God just make it so we could understand?

He made us curious beings for a reason. He didn’t want us to worship him because we had nothing better to do. If we knew everything, there would literally be NOTHING better to do.

now you are making stuff up.

ok, I’ll admit that the last line is complete speculation because I have no idea what it is like to know everything.

And I would actually like to take another stab at that answer.

God did make us able to understand. Look how far we have gotten in such a short time(take into account that we weren’t truely striving for technological advances until relatively recent in human history).

But as I said before, we are curious beings, so even if we did know everything, we would still want to know more (I still don’t know everything, so I can’t say for sure, but it’s a good assumption).

God built everything that we need to survive into our brain (I’m hungry, I have to poop, I’m cold, I’m scared, etc.).

@pikipupiba, you are now saying that the Bible’s description of the world is false. It’s not that it’s inexact. It is inaccurate. Not true.

If God wrote the Bible, that means that God lied.

Incidentally, you were earlier saying that God can do anything. So it’s interesting to watch you claim now that God couldn’t have used his infinite power to explain to the Hebrews about astronomy—something the Greeks managed to figure out on their own only a few centuries later.

Why didn’t he just make us not curious?

I’m not saying he couldn’t, I’m saying he didn’t.

@Ivan Why do we have testicles? He made us how he wanted us to be made. I don’t know why.

Also, I’m curious why you believe Genesis’ description of the sky is “just what people believed back then” ... but not Genesis’ description of the Flood and the Ark.

Just as the Bible matches earlier Babylonian and Akkadian stories about the shape of the sky, it also matches Babylonian and Akkadian stories about the flood. The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Epic of Atrahasis have many identical details to the Biblical flood story (with different gods of course, and a man named Atrahasis instead of Noah).

Why do you believe the flood story is literally true—but the Genesis creation story is inaccurate and just what ancient Babylonians believed at the time?

I’m curious. What other way is there to take the ark story?

What other way is there to take Genesis 1?

(Other than “God was just kidding because he thought you were too stupid to understand the truth)

No, like say you didn’t take the ark literally. What really happened?

I agree with you, dude. I don’t think you can take the story non-literally in an intellectually honest way.

It’s a myth—just like the earlier Babylonian versions of the flood myth starring other heroes and gods. But just because something is a myth doesn’t mean it’s not literal. The authors and original audience would have understood these stories literally.

Now, whether or not the story is true is another matter. Why on earth would you believe any Babylonian myth is true?

I’m sorry, by Babylonian, do you mean biblical?

The Bible’s creation story and flood story are extremely similar to Babylonian creation and flood stories.

Technically, I’d call the early parts of the Bible “Mesopotamian mythology.” Babylon was a specific city in Mesopotamia.

I believe that an Invisible Pink Unicorn created the universe. I don’t know why she created everything the way she did, but she told me that she did, and she wouldn’t lie. So therefore you are wrong.

By Babylonian, he means this ancient culture.

Hey, sexy.

@Qingu It depends on which one came first, cause it sounds like they ripped off the bible.

@Ivan Ah, a very good point… I’m inclined to believe you…

Nope. Bible came after.

The bible wasn’t put together until after. That doesn’t mean it origionated after. I didn’t mean the bible as the book, cause there was no bible back then.

Well obvs the bible came first because God was drafting it at the same time he drafted the world. But he decided to be a real perfectionist and wait until after these people had their beliefs fully articulated to let anyone start penning his masterpiece.

There were also no Hebrews back then.

The Epic of Gilgamesh dates to around 2400 B.C.
The Epic of Atrahasis and the Code of Hammurabi date to around 1700 B.C.
The Enuma Elish was around 1400 B.C.

First mention of Israelites in the historical record: 1200 B.C.

Most scholars date the earliest oral tradition for Genesis, Psalms, and some other texts a century or so after that.

no, the bible existed, it just wasn’t the bible.

Ex. Romans (a book of the bible) was just a buch of letters that were written too the Romans

Just to be clear, I didn’t mean the “Bible” as in the modern Christian canon. I meant some early form of the text for Genesis.

Of course, some scholars date the actual written text of Genesis to as late as 400 B.C. But I’m willing to go with the oral tradition if you like.

The oral tradition of Genesis is way, way after the Babylonian myths it closely resembles.

Genesis isn’t the earliest book, Job is.

Job or Psalms both probably predate Genesis, correct.

Interestingly, compare Psalm 104 with the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Both portray creator gods beating up the ocean and stretching out the sky amidst the waters.

(Whoops, I meant psalm 89)

I’m going to start a new thread, so others can get in on this.

@pikipupiba
_“To anyone who has said “It’s impossible to build a boat that big, it would fall apart, sink… etc.”

Anything is possible through Christ the lord who strengthens me.

Suck on that“_

way to be…

‘my opinion trumps your factual basis of reason…’

you really discredited yourself with that post bud.

and I should listen to someone called @ABoyNamedBoobs03 ?

@ABoyNamedBoobs03
completely agree

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 Its like what Stephen King said…

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance… logic can be happily tossed out the window.”

@pikipupiba you said above,
“Anything is possible through Christ the lord who strengthens me. Suck on that…”

That is precisely why many Christians resort to cop-outs. Whenever you come across a belief of yours that defies logic and well established principles of science and logic, you fall back on “God did it”. How juvenile. When all the evidence points to your parents sneaking around on Christmas Eve, you must continue your delusion of Santa Claus so your comforting world view does not collapse. When all evidence and logic points to the non-existence of God, you will (if you are anything like the Christians I personally know) resort to something along the lines of “God reveals himself to those who seek him”.

Finally when your wrote learned rhetoric fails, you insult a member of the community. Tell me, how are you any closer to convincing us otherwise as your intention seems to be? It seems all you have done is get yourself worked up and bandage the widening chasms in your faith so you don’t have to admit your belief in a fallacy.

I’m not gonna lie, I have a lot of learning to do. This thread and others have pushed my faith, but I’m going to do a LOT more researching before I give up and say I don’t believe anymore. A lot of people are making a lot of good points.

In what way does an all powerful God doing, well, anything defy logic. If he is all powerful, shouldn’t he be able to?

C’mon everyone. Can’t we all just agree that the stories in the Bible are bullshit and move on?

@pikipupiba
“I’m not gonna lie, I have a lot of learning to do. This thread and others have pushed my faith, but I’m going to do a LOT more researching before I give up and say I don’t believe anymore. A lot of people are making a lot of good points.”

I really appreciate the open-mindedness of what you just said. More people need to take this approach. I hope you find a satisfactory answer.

As for God defying logic… no matter how powerful a god is he could not create a situation that was logically inconsistent. Theoretically, a omnipotent being could conjure up any number of cats and put them on a table, but that deity could not have a table that simultaneously had had both one cat and zero cats on it. There would either be a cat on the table or not, because no matter how powerful someone is they cannot have both cats and no cats at the same time.
It is kind of a crappy example (but the best I could come up with off the top of my head), basically I was trying to point out how if two scenarios are mutually exclusive you cannot have both, no matter how powerful you are. (ex.. something could not both be “blue” and “not blue”)

@pikipupiba

“In what way does an all powerful God doing, well, anything defy logic.”

It doesn’t. The argument itself is what’s illogical. You are merely pulling a trump card when you have no other answer. I could just as easily do the same exact thing with Invisible Pink Unicorns or magical forks. You simply stating that God is all-powerful and thus able to do anything is not a viable argument.

@pikipupiba, you asked, “In what way does an all powerful God doing, well, anything defy logic. If he is all powerful, shouldn’t he be able to?”

It’s sort of like playing Poker with the joker cards in the deck.

If you need to resort to invoking an all-powerful God to explain holes in your argument, your argument is indistinguishable from an invalid argument.

Let’s say that I claim that I, Qingu, am actually Yahweh from the Bible. I have come down from heaven to take human form, specifically to test your faith!

Now, you could respond that “that’s impossible!” But with Yahweh, anything is possible. Yahweh can certainly come down from heaven to pose as an atheist on a message board—he can do anything.

You could respond that it’s absurd on the face of it. But then so is the idea that Noah took a million species of insects on the ark. Yahweh can make things that seem absurd real.

Basically, if you allow “God-magic” as support for your argument, that means that you can make any argument and use it as support. You could argue that the sun revolves around the earth—and that Yahweh uses his infinite power to make it appear otherwise to evil scientists. You could argue that the earth is flat, and Yahweh makes it appear round as an illusion.

In other words, invoking the idea that “anything is possible with God!” is cheating.

Also, just to let you know, if you do decide to give up your faith, you realize that means you don’t get to run around and murder people, right? :)

I will admit that having an all powerful God does give me the ultimate advantage and is why you can never disprove his existence by saying something he did is impossible.

If he exists, its possible. Period. Anything that our minds can comprehend (and maybe even a little more) is 100% possible to God. If you can think it, he can do it.

I’m sorry, but that is never gonna change.

I will admit that having an all powerful shoelace does give me the ultimate advantage and is why you can never disprove its existence by saying something it did is impossible.

If it exists, its possible. Period. Anything that our minds can comprehend (and maybe even a little more) is 100% possible to the shoelace. If you can think it, it can do it.

I’m sorry, but that is never gonna change.

hehehehe, very funny

Why a shoelace?

@pikipupiba, it could be anything—fairies, Space Emperor Zargon, the goddesses from the Legend of Zelda, invisible pink unicorns, Allah, Vishnu, or magic shoelaces.

If you assume they exist and assume they’re all-powerful, then you can invoke their infinite power to explain away any problems or holes in the stories that say they exist.

I know it could be anything, buy why did he specifically choose SHOELACE?

Only God in the highest heaven knows.
Or perhaps He does not.

Now your just mocking me!

May our Lord God in heaven forgive you.

Actually, I was quoting from my favorite religious text, the Nasadiya creation hymn of the Rig Veda. :)

@pikipupiba

It doesn’t matter what I pick; the argument is inherently invalid whether you use God, a shoelace, or anything else.

@pikipupiba tell me why you think God is all powerful in the first place. why do you even think God likes you at all? when it comes down to it no one can really answer those questions without saying something along the lines of “the bible told me so” or even more out there “i had a vision”.

@pikipupiba The “you cannot disprove” argument is fundamentally flawed. In scientific research, we talk about falsifiability of a theory. A theory is only considered a valid scientific theory if it is hypothetically possible to conduct an experiment that will prove it wrong. For example, many of Sigmund Freud’s ideas are no longer accepted, because they are unfalsifiable. There is no way to prove that the cause of a particular mental disorder is due to an imbalance in one’s Oedipus Complex.

In the same way, claiming that God cannot be disproved immediately makes the theory of God invalid. Either God exists or he doesn’t, or a different God exists. Lets say we are working with the Biblical God, and we manage to form a universally accepted image of what this God is like. In order to test his existence or non-existence, the theory must first be falsifiable. We should be able to run experiments such as testing the effectiveness of prayer, with agnostic subjects and a placebo group of Christians. This experiment would show whether or not God responds to prayer, and therefore we may be able to directly ascertain whether or not he exists.

However there are numerous problems with my hypothetical experiment. First, there is no universally accepted picture of God, because each denomination, sect and cult has a different idea of what God is meant to be. Not surprisingly, each one’s god hates all the same people they do. The second problem is that whenever a feature of a religion is shown to be wrong, such as the predictions of William Miller and others who attempt to predict Jesus’ return, the religion is not re-analysed, it is just twisted to fit the new observations. This also makes most theories of God unfalsifiable, as the theory is never approached objectively by the theists. They feel a need to hang on to their ideas, regardless of their truth or error.

I hope you can see that the “you cannot disprove” argument is self-defeating. In and of itself, that argument makes the theory invalid.

1. I didn’t say that you could not disprove God. Re-read my post.

2. MY God doesn’t hate anyone, he hates sin. Heck, he even loves the devil.

3. I hope that you can see that the “I’m gonna argue my point without even reading your’s” approach is self-defeating. It just makes you look like a d-bag.

so why do you think you’re god loves anyone? is it just because it’s a nice notion or are you basing this off something other than your priest/religious figure defines him as so?

Cause that’s why he sent Jesus to die for our sins. Why would he do that if he didn’t love us?

@pikipupiba “I will admit that having an all powerful God does give me the ultimate advantage and is why you can never disprove his existence by saying something he did is impossible.” I thought that was enough. Maybe I should’ve read it in context, but I don’t really have the time. Still, your second point again proves my argument, by saying your god is different to the rest.

If your god doesn’t hate anyone, would he approve of you referring to people in obscene language – for example calling me a “d-bag”? Would he authorise/order genocide like in the old testament? Would he order the stoning of people for relatively minor discretions? Would he cause bears to eat children for teasing a man? The God of the Bible is not a god of love.

@pikipupiba, please define love.

I generally don’t think of someone who “takes delight at your ruin and destruction” (Dt. 28:63) as loving. Sounds more like a sadistic abusive husband who insists that he beats his wife because he loves her.

@pikipupiba – You might be right that “God can do anything”, however it is my Christian belief that He decided not to. Part of His creation are the laws associated with it. He does sustain the laws and chooses not to change them, therefore He refrains from using magic. As an example: evolution is God’s way of allowing species to evolve.

The same is true for his son Jesus Christ. No magic was involved when he lived. When he healed people no magic wand was being used. Jesus had extraordinary psychotherapeutic skills and many other skills.

The authors of the Bible tried to understand God’s laws and sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they didn’t. The Earth revolves around the Sun because of God’s laws. It’s our sacred duty to understand all laws correctly. When people resort to magic despite available evidence, to me this is a sign of disrespect for God’s wonderful creation.

@mattbrowne
what about him walking on water or multiplying one fish and loaf of bread into enough to feed 5000 people? or turning water into wine?
don’t tell me he had an antigravity device and a replicator.

@ragingloli – Well, when Captain Kirk traveled back in time he left a whale, not a replicator or an antigravity device, so I guess Jesus was on his own. But of course God’s powerful laws were available to him. Jesus multiplied disciples, symbolized by the fish. Jesus was a powerful and inspiring speaker who clearly left an impression. People were so overwhelmed sparking oral traditions till the first gospels ended up on ‘paper’.

@mattbrowne I like your approach to miracles, but if the Bible is not a direct record of events, it possible that other things have been inserted through oral tradition. I believe that the Bible is a relatively accurate record of events, but the highly religious Jewish people inserted a God into their stories because they interpreted perfectly natural events as being the hand of God. Jesus was a great man, and from the effect he left on the world he was a powerful and persuasive speaker with a good moral vision for his people, but he was not a god. That aspect came later when his followers’ posthumous respect for him approached that of a god, and his following became cult-like.
So if the Bible is not perfectly accurate, and does not perfectly describe events as they were (ignoring the prophetic books for a moment), then how do you choose which parts are historically accurate and which have been corrupted by word of mouth and incorrect translations?

see that’s my largest problem with the bible.

there are things that have been disproven. and many christians have began saying “oh jesus feeding five thousand with one loaf of bread and two fish wasn’t really a miracle, it was a metaphor for sharing and generosity” then, how can at this point, we accredit anything in the bible as indisputable fact?
My largest problem is that most christians simply adapt their faith to fit what makes sense I guess. it just seems sometimes, that certain theists in the christian religion are doing nothing more than trying to keep an idea alive in their head, not truly having faith.

@FireMadeFlesh – People were ‘hungry’ for spiritual guidance. I’m not sure about the origin of the fish symbol. Maybe it was Jesus himself using the term. Or a listener. Or someone in the chain of oral traditions. Or one of the evangelists writing a gospel. I’m a computer scientist and my background is not in theology. Jesus being a God or being the son of God has a symbolic and not a biological meaning. It’s fine to see him as a prophet or just as a charismatic leader.

Which parts are historically accurate? Incorrect translations? How do you choose? Thousands of historians and other scientists are working on that. I’m not an expert and I have to rely on their findings. On the web you will find millions of sources. My brother has a master’s degree in theology and I had many interesting discussions with him. He told me that some scientists believe the correct translation for the “Maria the virgin” part should actually be Maria the young woman. Little or nothing is know about the circumstances of Jesus’s birth. The part in the gospel is a wonderful tale, but not a ‘perfect’ description of an historic event. There is far more historical knowledge about the crucifixion though.

@ABoyNamedBoobs03 – How can you disprove something if you don’t understand the actual meaning? Again, people were ‘hungry’ for spiritual guidance. Why can’t fish be a symbol for that? When it comes to describing natural sciences the bible sometimes got it wrong. No wonder with the tools available at the time. But the key element is spiritual and social guidance. The bible is not about Biology 101.

Don’t you adapt your faith so it makes sense? If we can scientifically rule out that Jesus had a replicator creating thousands of fish star trek style, there must be another reason why this part ended up in the bible. Symbols are thousands of years old, many far older than the bible. Historians know that. The Egyptians had their symbols, the Incas, the Mayans, you name it.

I know several superstitious atheists who scoff at expressions like Jesus ‘walking’ on water but find Stonehenge events a wonderful spiritual experience and of course the Mayans could be right and the world will end in 2012. Especially when too many black cats cross the street from the wrong side stepping into broken mirrors.

Why are superstitious atheists acceptable and superstitions Christians childish or ridiculous? And if Christians are not childish they supposedly adapt their faith because they rule out the magic? Some atheists think the only “real” Christian faith is the one believing in magic and taking everything in the bible literally.

@mattbrowne – I don’t discount your interpretation of the story of the loaves and fish. Like you, my background is not in theology, so I am looking for a way for lay people to interpret the Bible without having to glean through the work of thousands of theologians. The New Testament was written within a time frame of 100 years (I think), and so all the books should have undergone the same abstractions and have had the same fudge factors inserted etc. Maybe it is not possible, because if theology is like the academic pursuits I have been exposed to then much of it is under debate and hard to draw a solid conclusion from.
I think it is reasonable to assume that if there really was a God and it was important for us to form a relationship with him he would make it quite plain what is real and what isn’t. Since the stories in the Bible may be false, possibly true, metaphors or true this does not seem to be the case.

A note on your answer to @ABoyNamedBoobs03, I do not think superstition from atheists is acceptable. A theist may be superstitious because their beliefs naturally lead to supernatural conclusions, but an atheist has no reason to assume supernatural involvement. Superstition from an atheist shows a distinct weakness in their ability to interpret the world from their professed religious attitudes.