Oh, boy — get out the model airplane glue and little bottles of paint: you can build a model of Noah’s Ark! And it’s only $74! (The price of plastic models has sure gone up since I used to buy them with my lawn mowing money).
This injection molded plastic model kit measures over 18 1/2″ long and includes 3 separate interior decks with embossed wood texture and many details including ramps and animal cages and corrals. The kit offers several building options. Modelers may display the Ark in cross section to reveal the internal decks or in the full-hull version. Additional building options include: constructing the Ark with or without the deck cabin and a choice to include the “moon pool” (an open center well allowing access to water and waste disposal). This deluxe kit also includes a figure of Noah and 8 pairs of animals!
Cute. Check out these details:
- Museum-quality replica
- Highly detailed tooling
- Accurately scaled to the cubit
Wait…what kind of museum would show this silly thing? Can we also get a museum-quality replica of, say, the Millennium Falcon?
And this talk of detail and accuracy bugs me. Here are the complete, total, unedited specifications for Noah’s Ark, straight from the book of Genesis. This is really all it says about it; it isn’t as if it even includes photos or movies or piles of glurge from George Lucas.
14Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
Where’s the moon pool, the cabin, the details? All we know is that it will fit within a 300x50x30 cubit box (and cubits are very sloppily defined), and it has one window and one door on the side. It seems to leave a lot of room for interpretation. In fact, this seems like an opportunity for some Big Daddy Roth-style customization — it really needs a big rat fink mounted on the prow.
I built one of those when I was a kid. If you hear anything from interested museums, they may have my pyco (if I can find it). It may be slightly jagged, but I guess most pieces are in place :)
Yeah, and why so chintzy with the animals? You only get one human, and eight pairs of charismatic megafauna?
The manufacturer really ought to provide two of every animal, so the kids can learn how all the “types” we have now fit in that space (sort of like a puzzle) and why there was no room for the dinosaurs.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there’s a museum-quality replicas of the Millenium Falcon. After all, that is an important bit of cultural history.
Noah’s ark, of course, is always a personal interpretation of an ancient myth… a little like “reliable replica’s of Atlantis”.
(sorry, had to jump to the defense of the Gospel according to Lucas here :D )
Moon pool?
They drew their drinking water from the cesspool?
Wow. They were tough in them days.
Can we also get a museum-quality replica of, say, the Millennium Falcon?
Wait… are you saying that those women in the Picasso paintings and the elephants in the Dali are like real? Like they exist outside some peoples imagination?
Well, one more thing that creationists suck at.
Scale.
Look at the elephant and then the Ark.
How the hell are they going to fit two of every “kind” in there?
What’s with the “animal cages?” I thought that back in Noah’s time all the animals were vegetarians and lived in peace and harmony with one another. Or was that before the “fall?” In any case, it would have been fun watching Noah trying to clean all of that animal waste by himself. Or maybe he got the “little Missus” to do that kind of work for him because she would clearly “know her place.”
Comparing Noah’s Ark to the Millenium Falcon is really taking things too far. They are not at all similar: One is the product of the overheated imagination of people who prefer science fiction to reality, and the other is, well, Han Solo’s spaceship.
where are the gro lights for the bamboo and eucalyptus??
the “moon pool” (an open center well allowing access to water and waste disposal).
Now, I’m not a civil engineer, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want those two functions together.
That’s nonsense! I have bought several japanese resinas and plastic models, some with photoetched parts and they don’t come that expensive. Acurate to the minute detail, with decals and crew also… and by the looks of this, and if I was a creotard, I wouldn’t pay more than $12.99 for that piece of junk. (wait… if I was a creotard, I surely would pay that outrageous price, since I already sold my “soul” to Jebus).
Anyway, I’ll never buy such a “replica” (wonder why they callit a replica, if there are no that many, hey, even a single one to take measures from) :P
Would’nt a moon pool on a wooden ship lacking any sort of watertight pressure doors simply sink?
Unless of course Noah had access to steel bulkheads and welding equipment that is…
Does it include miniature fodder turtles?
It should have the realistic stench of shit.
A potential upside of this model is that some bright young child’s dull parents will buy it, they will build it, realize how utterly ridiculous it would be to try and fit all the worlds animals into a little wooden boat and start questioning the other silly aspects of the faith. This could be a surprise boon to atheism.
Even as I small child, I thought The Ark was the most clearly bogus of the stories they tried to sell us in Bible School– and they REALLY try to sell this story to kids. [Literally! Check out all the children’s books and toys dedicated to it.] Forget the “Can god himself make a rock so big even he can’t lift it?” dilemma– when they told this one, I’d think the tiny me version of, “You’re shitting me. You expect me to believe THIS?! HAHAHAhahahahaaaaa!”
Actually this “replica” could be useful as a teaching aide. Have children add as many animals (two of each kind one male, one female) that are weighted to scale as the space will allow. Then see if it floats or sinks. Guess what will happen?
But there is an out. Maybe all the birds were tied to strings and made to fly so it would stay afloat. Like in James and the Giant Peach.
@Carlie
well, I don’t know, see how the “almighty creator” made us, humans, with the recreational place really close to the waste disposal ;)
Well I have seen those. Of course the manufacturers were claiming the Millennium Falcon was anything other than a spaceship that had appeared in a number of highly popular films.
It was rather pricey if I recall, around £100. Not my thing, but it did seem to be well made.
A door in the side? Not the most sea worthy design. I guess god never thought of loading the ship from the top.
This is brilliant. If the door were set in the bottom of the ark instead of the side, water would come in and the whole thing would sink. Only an omniscient being could have come up with such profoundly insightful ship-building.
Personally, I’ve always wondered where Noah kept the two tapeworms.
So what’s the status of the “two-by-two” vs. “seven-by-seven” thing on Noah’s big boat?
I just want to know where the lido deck is. Everyone on the Love Boat hung out there. It seemed like the place to be if you weren’t slamming back a couple with Isaac in the bar.
Wait a minute!
Where are the DINOSAURS??
What a ripoff.
Posted by: Robyn Slinger | December 10, 2008
Personally, I’ve always wondered where Noah kept the two tapeworms.
This is a case where Noah was the ark.
Did Noah have a cockroach wrangler?
Those little fuckers are hard enough to smash let alone catch.
and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
So, where’s the pitch in this kit? Or are we supposed to drop by the tar pits to get some to smear on the model?
As for price – wow – one can purchase a Jebus wristwatch for about $40. Last night, in some horror, the Biophysicist and I watched an antique nun hawking these on TV. [Channel surfing can be humourous.] Sooo, when people are being forced out of their homes, can barely buy food and can no longer afford health care, the Xtian thing to do is buy a plastic boat and an overpriced watch…
Eight pairs of animals?
Finally. It took two millennium but at last some bold creationist has prepared to commit to how many kinds were on the ark. I see something that appears to be elephant-like and another ur-creature that resembles a camel, so I guess genetic plasticity was even more dramatic than previously indicated.
This model throws the childishness of a literal belief in Genesis into sharp relief.
@ #22
I want to know where the bio-containment vault on the arc was for all the microorganisms that Noah had to save. Surly there was a place for the Ebola virus and streptococcus.
300 cubits? That’s about half the length of the Titanic, LOL.
No was ark.
I think the moon pool woulda worked fine for that. Hell, they had 800-year lifespans and drank out of the cesspool.
If you go to onlineconversion.com (not somewhere to become an Xtian, but a place to do units-conversion), they have “standardized” the cubit into different types. However, using the range of those different cubits, the dimension above become a ship that is roughly:
430-515 ft x 72-86 ft x 43-51 ft
(Just as a comparison, the [Remember the] Lusitania was 787ft long and 87ft wide, and carried about 3000 people, and we would consider this a small ship by today’s cruise ship standards.)
Assuming that the height was 43-51 ft, with three lower levels, with each level requiring 1 foot of wood for stress support, then the height of each deck would be 13-16 ft.
The height of a male bull elephant is 9.8-11.5 ft at the shoulder. A snug fit.
The height of a male giraffe is 16 to 18 ft, so they would have to duck.
A camel is roughly 7 ft tall at the top of the hump, so no problem in terms of height, there.
However, the proportions of the animals on the ark are WAAAY off from what they should be, let alone how the animals are in relation to the height of the compartments in the ark.
(btw, looking up “gopher wood” on the wikipedia takes you to a page saying – basically – that there is no known tree of that type, but that it is likely a cypress.)
Oh crap, I want an outside stateroom to get away from those animals in steerage. Will honored guests sit at captain Noah’s table? There has to be a model of Mount Arawat next with the ark dangling from a precipe. Freaking insanity.
Here in St.Paul, MN I took my 6 year old son to the Science Museum several months ago. On display were many artifacts from the Star Wars movie series, including the large model of the Millennium Falcon, maybe some 10 cubits long. -HG
If you go to the Wikipedia page for Noah’s Ark, you find this (somewhat farther down the page), just waiting for editing:
Obligatory Cosby: RIIIIIIGHT.
I love the fact that it talks about how accurately it’s scaled but it appears that the elephant, giraffe, and camel are all the same size?
GAH! I now want to gnaw my own head off in frustration.
Meh, depending on the marketing spin, this is about as big a deal as someone offering a high quality model of Odysseus’s ship from The Odyssey. The did claim “educational, social, and religious” merits to building this model, and well, that can definitely be spun in both pro-religion and anti-religion ways. I’ll leave out the pro-religion spin, but the anti-religion would be:
Social: building models with your kids can be fun
Educational: Shows how ludicrous the idea of cramming a boat this size with pairs of every animal on the planet is
Religious: Shows that this religious myth is just that, a myth, due to the above Educational reasoning.
pixelsnake
You must remember, the creationist definistion of accurate is “fits into our worldview”, so they would not notice the error in scale.
oh, apologies @#34 you beat me to it lol
Willy: If I don’t save the wee turtles, who will?!
Wait until you see the mice, they’re HUGE…
Anyway, I can’t see anything on the “replica” *snicker* of the ark to make it move. You know, sails, ores, combustion engine driven propellers etc.
Aside from the need to get all the animals in, and the need to shovel all that manure, what about all the *feed* they would need? A cow eats her own weight in hay in about two weeks (which is pretty typical for a ruminant), and the Ark was supposed to have been underway for, let’s see, an hundred and fifty days total, right?
So, every ruminant has to have just about 10 times its weight in hay. That’s going to eat up space fast. Especially if we go by the “7 pairs of clean beasts” count.
I spent a lot of my childhood stacking up hay to feed our cattle for the winter (which lasts about 150 days in Michigan). We only had 40 head to feed, and that pile of hay that filled all the spare space in all the barns was *enormous*.
Didn’t you know? Because of space limitations Noah took baby dinosaurs on board. They were later driven to extinction by human predation (think dragons). If you watched some Dr. Dino videos you’d know this.
@22 Robyn
I’m more interested in where he kept the Dermatobia hominis and the Phthirus pubis.
As River Tam so eloquently expressed it, “Noah’s ark is a problem. We’ll have to call it ‘early quantum state phenomenon.’ Only way to fit five thousand species of mammal on the same boat.” But that is NOTHING compared to the THEOLOGICAL problem of an omniscient, omnipotent being having to resort to fluid hydraulics as his solution to the problem of evil. Which, not incidentally, did not even work. A lot of dead sentient beings, drowned and crushed, because YHWH’ answer to violence, greed, and lovelessness was…plumbing.
I can just hear Roy Scheider saying as the animals were starting to fill the boat: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat”
For a second there PZ, I thought you were referring to the other Big Daddy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock
You’re all missing the obvious explanation: The ark was bigger on the inside.
Noah was a Time Lord.
I happen to know exactly what the ark looks like
The guy would built this, spending 1000000 euros (slightly more in dollars) is now building a second one. The first was half biblical size, the next will be full size!
“…shalt pitch it…with pitch.” I would hate to think they would pitch it with whipped cream.
And what is this mysterious “gopher wood”???
That’s what the gophers used to propagate their species after the flood.
Thanks.
I’m here all week.
Try the Veal.
Akshewally, not only did Boston’s Museum of Science have a big Star Wars exhibit, but they still have some parts scattered around. Every time I am there, I am surprised that Anakin’s y-wing, or whatever the hell it is, is hanging from the ceiling next to a Mercury capsule, for all the world like it’s the real thing.
I recognize that these things are appealing — they are to me, too — but I also find it super frustrating that “science” museums have to pander like this.
Personally, I’ve always wondered where Noah kept the two tapeworms.
What about the genital lice and the human botflies?
*insert obligatory “poopdeck” joke*
To their slight-mitigation-of-shame, the Hobbymasters site with the ark also has science kits. It would be fun to make some dino models and have them attack the ark. This time, Leviathan effing WINS, bitches.
http://www.hobbymasters.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=208
There is where we go back to the concept of Noah being the ark.
If you want a museum quality Millennium Falcon, I’d say check out the Fine Molds kit. Last I remember, it ran about $200 in 1/72 scale. :)
Posted by: Greg Peterson | December 10, 2008
To their slight-mitigation-of-shame, the Hobbymasters site with the ark also has science kits. It would be fun to make some dino models and have them attack the ark. This time, Leviathan effing WINS, bitches.
They would have to make the ark look like a coconut.
I got a plastic model of this Arc when I was a kid, and within a couple of years, it had been turned into a Viking Longship. This one looks like it would make a cool Verne style sub.
Oh god! I dont understand! What am I supposed to pitch the boat with?? Hamburgers? Bowling trophies? Newmans Own Ranch salad dressing???
I DONT UNDERSTAND!!! **SOB**
As some others have implied if this is really an authentic representation of the design in the bible then it should be possible to squeeze all the earth’s animals into it. They are kopping out by just offering eight.
Perhaps this should be made a challenge at the next Christopher Hitchens debate on creationism. Someone give him a built model, with plenty of scale animals (big ask though and plus scale food?), and he challenges the creationist to squeeze them in all without breaking any! That beats the logic stuff and would be fun to watch too.
All the shit on the lower deck was great for growing psychedelic mushrooms.
I think they have to provide that themselves. It says not included on the box.
Not biblical.
Vic @20
Indeed. It’s not like Noah was short of a couple of cranes.
And when little ark makers grow up, they become BIG ARK makers.
If I had a museum, I would absolutely display the Millennium Falcon in it.
One of the most comprehensive commentaries on the many impossibilities involved in Ye Tale Of Ye Olde Arke is “The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark” by Robert A. Moore at:
http://www.grahamkendall.net/Unsorted_files-1/A130-Noah_Ark.txt
Susan@16,
I’m with you. In fact, I recall being told about it in Sunday school and immediately thinking there’s no possible way the teachers actually believed it. It was a Santa story, a talking snake story, a “turned into a pillar of salt” story (seriously? salt? God needed seasoning?).
All practicality vanishes with these people, though. They can all just point to the omnipotence of the mythical deity. Manure? God made it so animals didn’t need to defecate. Food? God put them in suspended animation. Space? God made it so they all fit. When you’re willing to have an “ultimate magic” trump card, there’s nothing you can really reject.
I’ve taken to telling my son a lot of the Biblical stories, though. He just got such a kick out of the idea that Catholics thought a cracker was the body of the ancient dead prophet, and that the best thing to do with this was eat it.
If you can call a unit that was only ever meant to be “about this big”, “accurate”, sure.
ObPedant: Wood floats. What would happen is that the boat would fill up with water until the wood’s buoyancy supported its weight.
Janine, it took me a second to get it, but that’s hilarious.
REQUIRES:Paint (Wood, Brown, Flat Black, Flat Gray, Cream, Flat White, Military Brown, Flat Tan, Rust)
Paint Brushes
Hobby Knife
Sandpaper
Plastic Cement
Medium CA Glue
Very Large Pinch of Salt
Gullible faithead to build it.
Skill Level 2 for Modelers[sic] IQ 10 and Over with Adult Indoctrination.
Isn’t there any trade descriptions legislation in the US?
Holy Crap! I just realized where this place was. It’s literally two miles from my house. I used to spend hours in there when I was a kid. The owner used to follow me around making sure I wasn’t stealing anything.
If they want to use the “kinds” argument, then how much would a bunch of Bronze Age goatherders know about “kinds” of animals? You just know they would have thought gophers and rabbits were the same, because both liked to burrow. On the other hand, do you think they’d see baboons and apes as the same “kind”? Given how jaw-droppingly stupid the writers are about everything else, I’d feel safe in betting the answer would be no.
The creationists don’t get to slide on this one. They had two of each animal. Period. These goatherders weren’t smart enough to do anything else.
And if that’s not enough, just look at the dick-wagging tone of the whole bible. You just know this little tale started off as, “My sky buddy can build a boat big enough to hold horses, donkeys and dogs!” “Oh yea, well mine can build a boat big enough to hold two horses, two donkeys, and two dogs! And two goats, too! So there!” And so on, until we get a boat big enough to hold two of all the animals.
and
I think Janine had the answer in comment #14 — there’s no shortage of that commodity wherever there are creationists.
Emmet, that was not what I meant but I will gladly take credit for the idea.
Holy crap, you ain’t kidding! Back in the 1970s, I thought a plastic model kit that cost more than around $5 was too rich for my blood. Of course, I was about 11 or 12 at the height of my model-building days.
And when you’re done with an imaginary ark, you can build a working jet powered boat!
http://www.hobbymasters.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=8578
Ah, so that’s what they’ve been huffing.
Thanks, but I’d rather build this…
http://seagifts.com/hmsbeagle1.html
-Accurately scaled to the cubit
Made me smile :)
Also, they didn’t even mention the fact that if you count the animal apartments you can figure out how many different types of animals there where in Noah’s day.
And they say Religion has nothing to offer to Science !
:)
Hey now! I have very fond memories of the Ark and it’s story. It was this story that, at the tender age of 7 or 8, made me realize that my sunday school teachers were utterly full of shit.
Noah’s ark got me on the path of rationality, don’t mock it!
;)
Noah’s Ark is real, it was discovered in Turkey. Apparently you silly atheists missed that. Archaeological evidence proves the Bible is true, but you atheists don’t want to be held accountable for your sins, so you pretend there is no God and attack fine Americans like Ken Ham.
Probably. There’s also:
http://www.ultraforcesabers.com/
What confuses me is how the description here made it clear to Noah that Yahweh wanted a boat as opposed to a box. From the description, wouldn’t something closer to a bathysphere have been a closer fit? Or, as Paul Nerves @63 suggested, a Verne sub?
Well, that and pretty much every bit of ‘logic’ questioned above. The Ark was one of the stories that convinced me the Bible was fiction as a young child, and given the choice at church between lingering with a bunch of old folks reading cryptic fiction with poor narrative flow or heading downstairs and reading somewhat more interesting fiction, there really wasn’t a contest.
“Noah’s Ark is real, it was discovered in Turkey. Apparently you silly atheists missed that. Archaeological evidence proves the Bible is true, but you atheists don’t want to be held accountable for your sins, so you pretend there is no God and attack fine Americans like Ken Ham.”
It’s true- they also found evidence of downed power lines in Japan, so Godzilla is also obviously true.
Is the “moon pool” the big room for poo that Eddie mentioned?
Ahem, Richard, Ken Ham is not an American if Barack Obama is not one.
Please explain to us “silly atheists” how this is a “museum quality” piece (citing AAM might help you – you know what that is, right?), and exactly which of the many outcroppings of rock on that mountain in Turkey that have been proclaimed to be the ark is the ark, and why the others are not the real ark.
You’re so smart. Educate us.
I see several have already chimed in on the “museum quality” thing, which refers to the level of detail and craft in the model, rather than the suitability of the model’s subject for museum display.
Interestingly, there’s a model of the alien mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind at a perfectly reputable museum: the (relatively new) Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (@Dulles Airport… an absolute don’t-miss if you’re anywhere nearby and have any interest in stuff that flies)… and it isn’t “museum quality.” Instead, it’s the actual model used in the movie production, optimized to look good on film in extreme closeup rather than to look good in an overall view at typical museum viewing distance. Unless you stick your face right up to it, it kinda looks like a big grey blob.
Neg is this you again? I’m calling poe but I’m a bit testy this morning so…
Nope.
again, no.
Um again no. It only proves that the bible has some historical references in it. Same as Oliver Twist. Is the Artful Dodger a real historical figure?
Sin? What’s that?
I’m not pretending.
fail
Ok enough Neg.
@90
I remember watching one of those silly arc documentaries that get shoved onto TV every few years and this one commentator claimed that the CIA had satellite photos of the arc. Of course they wouldn’t show anyone the photos because that would reveal how detailed our spy satellites are.
Posted by: Richard Walker | December 10, 2008
Noah’s Ark is real, it was discovered in Turkey. Apparently you silly atheists missed that. Archaeological evidence proves the Bible is true, but you atheists don’t want to be held accountable for your sins, so you pretend there is no God and attack fine Americans like Ken Ham.
You have just made the Pharyngula regulars from Australia very happy.
You can use your “science” all day to convince yourselves there is no God, but the only evidence you really need is deep down in your soul, where you KNOW God exists. But if you acknowledged that, you’d have to acknowledge that you’re accountable for your actions, which you’re terrified.
I don’t have to convince you. Deep down, you already know I’m right, though you’ll undoubtedly continue to deny it, which only proves my point.
You people need to listen to the teachings of great Americans like Ray Comfort and Ravi Zacharias.
Ok who is responsible for it this time?
you bastard.
@97, are you a Poe? Because anyone who thinks that Ray Comfort is a great American is clearly either delusional or kidding themselves.
My friend has a replica of the Millenium Falcon. He should get it displayed at the Smithsonian.
ObPedant: Wood floats. What would happen is that the boat would fill up with water until the wood’s buoyancy supported its weight.
And that’s why wooden boats never sink.
Richard Walker #87:
I know, I know, you’ve seen the supposed pictures, right? Like this one: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thevoyagers/328465033/
Yeah, I used to believe that too. Then I grew up and got an education.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
Richard Walker, I offer you The Golden Banana.
Richard. Questions are on the table. Answer, or eat [your words].
But it’s all good, because I think you’re being facetious anyway. You are not being real. You’re an atheist being funny.
Unless you’re actually this guy:
Richard Walker filed this action against the Soo Line Railroad Company (“Soo Line”). He seeks damages for injuries suffered by having been struck by lightning while working in a railroad tower. At trial, Mr. Walker sought to introduce expert testimony to establish that electrical injury could have been the cause of his condition. Much of that testimony was excluded by the district court on the ground that it lacked a scientific basis.
Hellooo… You guys, the Millennium Falcon was in a parallel Universe, of course you can’t find it here. It is just as real as the Noah’s Ark found in Turkey. Sheesh. You atheists, attacking fine truth-telling Americans like Ken Ham and George Lucas.
You people need to listen to the ravings of ignorant lunatics like Ray Comfort and Ravi Zacharias.
Fixed your spelling there. No…thank *you*.
It get’s “discovered” every once in a while. Fortunately for them they never feel compelled to show it to anyone. You would think it would be worthy of a news story of some kind, but the liberal media is more interested in Britney’s new album than displaying proof of god’s existence (note to Xians, this is a joke).
And that’s why wooden boats never sink.
Well, it would technically float, I suppose. Just…underwater. For awhile. Right?
This reminds of the classic Bill Cosby skit from the 60s:
http://www.jr.co.il/humor/noah4.txt
I thought they sank because they’re heavier than a duck!
[Aside: Last week’s House episode included a passing reference to the same joke.]
Where’s the cage for the pair of Bruhathkayosaurs?
Richard Walker #97:
No no, you have it backwards. You’re the one who isn’t accountable for your actions, you just ask your invisible superfriend for forgiveness and it all goes away. We atheists actually have to take responsibility for our actions.
Riiiight… ‘If you agree with me, it proves I’m right. If you don’t agree with me, it proves I’m right.’
Sigh. You’re a Poe, right?
1. What? No Mrs. Noah? Or would that require too much explanation to the kiddies?
2. The Star Wars exhibit was in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry a few years ago. I assumed it was related to “Industry.” I would be disappointed if it was presented as a science exhibit, SINCE IT’S FICTIONAL. The Millenium Falcon model was the only thing that didn’t look cheezy up close.
BTW – and this is guaranteed to offend, but did Ray Comfort and Ken Ham come to American on a, er, banana boat? I never thought I’d use that phrase.
Archaeological evidence proves the Bible is true
Ah, the irony of science deniers claiming the imprimatur of Archaeology for their preposterous fairy tales. Note to morons: Archaeology uses the same basic methodology as Evolutionary Biology and Geology, and its results are perfectly consilient with results from those and all other fields of empirical inquiry. Deny Biology or Geology, and you’ve already denied Archaeology any validity. You can’t have it both ways.
That ark in Turkey was mine. The Noah has always been a money-grubbing poser trying to claim he was the one who built it.
Once again, PZ is clearly frustrated that he didnt’ think of this business plan first. First…have a hilarious 5 dollar model built in China, where they’ve never heard the myth, and sell it to ignorant, American, Genesis idolatrists for $80
It’s pure genius…and will no doubt outsell all ‘science toys’ combined this holiday season…If only C.S. Lewis was still around to fashion some talking animals for the ark….
Wooden boats sink if they have enough non-buoyant material on them to overcome the buoyancy of the wood. Engines, anchors, cannons, etc. I sincerely doubt Noah’s ark had an engine or much use for an anchor or a cannon considering its entire supposed purpose was to float around until the flood waters receded (to where one wonders, though).
Now, whether the animals could be that material is another question that I can’t answer. Do elephants float? And were there enough sinking animals to overcome the buoyancy of the wood? I don’t know.
Besides, it was discovered to be full of dead animals. Explain that.
Richard Walker #87 – You sir are obviously no True Christian. The words of the Master are clear to any that have ears to listen.
11 Peter said to him: “Since you have become the interpreter 12 of the elements and events of the world, tell us: 13 What is the sin of the world?” 14 The Teacher answered: 15 “There is no sin.”
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
Jesus himself absolves atheists of sin, who are you to judge us?
The flood waters receded to the same place a man’s hairline recedes….into the ether….
George Lucas is Chinese. You can tell, because “The Force” is a lot like the Eastern concept of “chi,” which is clearly an attempt to indoctrinate Christian American youth with Godless Communist Chinese ideology in an attempt to undermine the authority Jesus, the Greatest American of All Time.
No wonder the guy drank.
I’m not up on latest Ark theory as perhaps considered by a ‘creation scientist’.
But surely plants and trees (or at least the seeds) had to be stored too? They couldn’t cope with 40 days under water. And all the creepy crawlies and microcrobes? Freshwater fish?
Logistical nightmare!
Yes, and they are excellent swimmers as well. Some have been found swimming in sea as far as two miles from land.
O.K Richard, if your not poe then your insane. :)
If I was inclined to spend the $74 on a model of the ark…I would then spend a few extra dollars and buy this model kit of a dragon…http://www.hobbymasters.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=14163.
Then I would create an elaborate diorama of the dragon attacking the ark, setting it ablaze, and eating all of the animals and people.
Because if you are going to live in a deluded world of fantasy…you might as well make it a cool deluded world of fantasy.
The fact that all seven billion humans living on the planet came from the recent inbreeding of one small family, whose patriarch hears voices telling him to do build things, and do strange things with animals…
…really explains alot when you stop to think about it.
I’ve always wondered how the flat roof stood up to 40 days of torrential (I make it at least 120 inches/hour) rain. The scuppers must have been enormous. Perhaps someone could get the dimensions off the model ;-)
Pretty sure there are museum quality replicas of the Millennium Falcon, PZ. I seem to remember seeing one at the Smithsonian when I was there about 10 years ago.
#1111 Errr… what’s a Poe ?
I’m presuming you’re not referring to Edgar Allan Poe there ?
Some sort of code for a bible-thumper ?
(Did a quick google and got zilch, except I now know you can transfer power via an Ethernetcable and there”s a Fillipian (sp) Actor named Poe too !)
poe’s law
God – you locally well known smart ass, is that you Poeing as Richard Walker?
Gilian;
Try googling “Poe’s Law”
All these animals cramped in such little space -this would definitely ring the alarms at the animal activist headquarters…
Rev.
No it’s not me. There has already been a Richard Walker commenting on Pharyngula several times though. Don’t know if it’s the same.
He used to even link to a blog.
“You can use your “science” all day to convince yourselves there is no God, but the only evidence you really need is deep down in your soul, where you KNOW God exists.”
Reminds me what my flying instructor used to tell me:
“100 Hour pilots a dangerous because they think they can fly. 200 Hour pilots are REALLY dangerous because they KNOW they can fly.”
gazza #123 “But surely plants and trees (or at least the seeds) had to be stored too? They couldn’t cope with 40 days under water. And all the creepy crawlies and microcrobes? Freshwater fish?”
And freshwater fish, too. The rains (which covered even the tallest mountains) would have diluted the seas to the extent that pretty much all fish would have died.
Here :
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/wide_open_thread_for_anything.php#comment-988279
R A T T F I N K rattfink. Gawd, I thought I was the only one who remembered that. Pretty groovy.
Enjoy.
Posted by: Kristine | December 10, 2008
BTW – and this is guaranteed to offend, but did Ray Comfort and Ken Ham come to American on a, er, banana boat? I never thought I’d use that phrase.
DAY-OOO!
Just as an aside- when looking for a museum quality model of the Millennium Falcon, or any type of model- search for Studio Scale. Kind of a catch all for models that are detailed enough for filming. Yup- I’m a geek.
The fact that all seven billion humans living on the planet came from the recent inbreeding of one small family, whose patriarch hears voices telling him to do build things, and do strange things with animals…
…really explains alot when you stop to think about it.
Dunno if anybody’s mentioned this but…
A ‘cubit’ was the “length of an arm from elbow to fingertip…”
On me, that’s about 18″…
Cool! All that’s missing is the massive flood and all those bloated, dead, drowned bodies floating all over the place.
Lets see….
14,000 species of ants, 28,000 species of bees, 1,000,000 to 30,000,000 species of other insects….
… nope, wont fit on Noah’s ark.
I thought “studio scale” was not neccessarily a comment on quality (“good enough to be filmed”) but more that it was the same size as the model actually used for filming. It was up to the skill of the builder as to whether it could be considered “museum quality”, i.e. worthy of being put in a museum.
Maybe I’m just being OCD keeping “scale” and “quality” orthogonal.
@115
Liar, it was mine. You are nothing but an Ablisin-come-lately opportunist trying to grab all the glory.
People are always hung up on the cutesy animals.
I want to know how Noah collected two of every insect and spider the world over. What did he feed the spiders? How did he feed the bees and the ants? He would need a live plant just for the two aphids. How did he keep the 18,000 birds from eating the insects? Did he bring extra bees to feed the bee eaters? For all the carrion eaters, did he bring some carrion along, or did he let them feed on the pairs of animals that died in his care and went extinct thanks to his lack of animal husbandry skills?
SteveM- Yeah I would go with that. Look at what was used in old Flash Gordon serials. I meant it as shorthand.
Patricia, om @ 132
Hi Patricia! Congrats on your well deserved “doctorate”!
Had to reconvert as I could not stand that insane mental state. Now you can twirl in a wider circle!
Ah, thanks for the link/reference.
I can think of better ways to waste $74.
To all of those suggesting that the arc couldn’t fit all the animals: it’s obvious that each cell contained a several animals in quantum superposition. Indeed their interactions operated as a working quantum computer. That is why god specified the number of qubits required.
Too bad the unicorns and dragons he chose were same sex couples.
As far as fish go, the creationists say that the earth was relatively mountain free and that all the water was in aquifers under ground, it would come gushing out and change the salinity for certain, but it should be noted that there are anadromous fish that can take that kind of punishment. Granted the rest of the story is still shit, but at least 4 dozen species of fish would have survived. Also the seeds of about half of all the plants on the earth could probably take that too.
T. rex not included. Magic power pods sold separately.
I’ve always wondered what it was the animals were supposed to EAT on the ark. 40 days of food is a lot. My dog gets whiny if he goes a morning without food. And I’m not sure an ark of the size described here had enough room for 40 days’ worth of vegetation for the critters that wouldn’t be eating each other.
I asked a creationist once what the animals ate, and his answer was “Fish.” You know, as if Ham, Japeth and Shem were all fishing off the side of the ark while Noah and the women cleaned out the cages. Never mind where the fish came from, or how they arrived in such quantities that they could feed two of every animal. When I pointed this out, the creationist shrugged and said that God provided manna from heaven to the Israelites and that Jesus could divide fish and bread to feed thousands. Why couldn’t God give the means to feed the animals?
Moral of the story: you can’t reason with people who believe in magic.
Hmm…I wonder where Noah put all the black people and Eskimos.
Richard Walker @ 87
You sure are real, a real winner of a religious moron. I bet you were on the ark, living in the bilges from all that effluent from those millions of animals. How the hell did you survive that nastiness and make it back here to now pour your deranged mental effluent on this site? Was your god with you on the ark and reduced to cleaning out all that shit from the stalls?
And your comment @ 97:
We can use our science to disprove that your imaginary god never existed (did you get that triple negation?), but you can never prove with your insane religion that you are here by the uncaring hand of evolution. Are you referring to my shoe sole, which is real, or to that religious insane description of an imaginary nothing, the soul of insanity? Your god is as real as the ark, and just as laughable as you are with putrid rantings that more than amuse us. We are omnipotent; your imaginary god is fake shit. Let’s see your god right now.
This model has five windows. The Bible clearly says the Ark has only one. The manufacturers of this model are obviously satanists seeking to corrupt the minds of our children with their anti-biblical lies. Doubt one word of the Bible and the whole edifice comes tumbling down.
Oh my! I’d forgotten all about the termites on a wooden boat. Well at least it couldn’t sink :)
Hey guys – this thread is WAY over the top. I cannot read more than a few posts before my eyes tear up to the point of having to do something else.
By far the funniest topic so far. The tape worm bit was what took me over the edge.
Chris P
Well PZ, if Ed “Big Daddy” Roth isn’t on hand to design the ark, I guess we could call in George Barris. I’ll go back to my Aurora models and glue now. -sniff-
@6 (Rev. BigDumbChimp:)
How the hell are they going to fit two of every “kind” in there?
Ah, but that’s why I think this model will be a good thing. Any intelligent kid is going to assemble it, and realize that there’s a serious space problem — as well as food, water and waste removal.
From there it’s a short step to asking, if the “entire world” was flooded, how exactly the animals got from Mt. Ararat to, say, North America.
Insisting on engineering and dimensional accuracy in a product such as this will do nothing but undermine the biblical account of the flood, and that’s not bad at all.
Wooden ships, are, in fact, notoriously difficult to sink barring fire. The presence of a door in the side is no bar to buoyancy if it is above the waterline–think of a gunport. And since it was more of a barge than a ship, not having any sort of propulsion,(or steering oar, probably) a big box would work just fine.
The big problem is that a hundred-meter long wooden ship is going to be a bit…flexible. Without extensive use of metal braces, it will ‘work’ in the sea. Which is to say, it will leak like a sieve, pitch or no pitch.
The pitch, in fact, is probably a waste of time, since it will wash out in short order in any sort of sea besides dead calm, which torrential rains seldom accompany.
The eight crew, in their copious free time not occupied with moving the tons of manure, or feeding and exercising the animals, would be entertained by trying to repack the seams between the pegged-together planks with oakum or bronze-age equivalent. Or just bailing. If they had a moon well, they’d be doing it anyway from the rain, so what’s another few meters per hour of water in the bilge?
Once the water level approached the center of gravity of the hull, the ark, which, as a flat-bottomed construction, would be rolling like a log in the rain, would literally roll like a log and capsize.
It still might not–probably wouldnt sink, though. In fact, capsizing might dump out much of the accumulated water and dung through the moon well and the one window, and maybe even restore enough buoyancy to roll her back over thanks to the air-permeable seams.
Maybe that was how they dealt with it. Shovel everything into the well and wait for the next roll. Everybody hold your breath and hope she rights herself again.
Bad trip for the animals, though. That must have been a miracle.
Mind you, if the Ark ever did float, it would do so in a cloud of stench and a self-created lake of feces, urine and vomit.
Steve “Which no one of that time would likely notice.” James
God Botherers:
Bringing you ultimate delusions since 3000 BC
I guess this is as good as any opportunity to expound a vague thesis I’ve been mulling over in my head…
When people criticize Scientology, one of the things that is commonly pointed to as evidence that the whole thing is made up and not a Proper Religion like Christianity is the detail about Xenu traveling around in interstellar DC-10s. “It’s an airplane that was considered high-tech when L. Ron Hubbard wrote,” they argue, “its inclusion, even by analogy, shows that the story was just the product of him and his time.”
But what about the Ark? At the time the story of a global flood was being formulated, boat technology was about as high-tech as you could imagine. An ark like the one described in the Bible would seem like hard science fiction to people then. It would be like today saying God commanded the construction of a giant spaceship. It’s something that’s familiar and plausible, yet much more advanced than the state of the art. But this doesn’t seem odd to religious people who would mock Scientology, Raelism, or other similar new religions that use non-ancient technological references.
Another example is the “full armor of God” in Ephesians, where you’re supposed to wield the Sword of the Spirit and gird yourself with the Belt of Truth, etc. It’s all very contemporary Roman-era military technology, and you can today find numerous examples in Christian media promoting the imagery. But imagine some sect in our society today talking about the Flack Jacket of Faith and the M1 of Righteousness. That’s what it was like when Ephesians was written.
Or what about religions that have some deity moving through the sky on a chariot? At the time they were formulated, chariots were the technological equivalent of cars. It would be like today someone arguing that some astronomical event is really a guy driving a Prius across the sky. But flaming chariots are considered proper symbolism while flying cars are not.
Straddling the boundary between new, made-up nonsense and proper, respected religion is Mormonism, the Scientology of the 19th century, which involves Jesus in North America and extrasolar planets (God lives near planet Kolob). Being that it was written by an American during a time when thinking about life on other planets was becoming a part of popular culture, it all seems rather convenient, and certainly this obvious contemporariness played a role in non-Mormons thinking Mormons were being silly. But time appears to be putting a patina of respectability on Mormon craziness and now both America and alien planets have become the stuff of at least semi-proper myths.
Things like wooden boats, chariots, swords, bows and arrows, etc. are such old technologies that most of us in industrial western societies are familiar with yet unfamiliar in the sense of actually using them, that they have taken on meanings that are more symbolic than practical. For us, myths involving these things have a certain symbolic gravitas that myths involving planes, cars, computers, or other modern things that we use every day do not. We like our myths and religions to involve old things, and look at new things with suspicion.
I think part of this is probably the speed of technological progress that we’ve experienced. Things that were once high-tech quickly become silly and antiquated (which we don’t want our myths and religions to be). Thus the idea of a religion involving a DC-10 seems ridiculous, but a wooden boat is far enough into the realm of respectable mythological distance that we overlook how silly it is (why didn’t God just poof Noah and company into a magical sphere of protection? Having him build a piece of then-modern technology looks as suspicious as Xenu and his rocket-powered DC-10s.)
Then again, we did just recently witness some Christian church praying over three SUVs on their alter, so maybe not everyone is as adverse to the mythicness of new tech as my thesis assumes.
#159,
you haven’t been to Poe spotting summer camp these last decades, have you?
How many posts does it take for everyone to get it? I think there should be a 2nd Law of Poe to define that number.
It seems that the internet fundie community in reality consists of real fundies by about a half – the other half are Poes who nobody, themselves included, can discern.
One day in the future fundies will have ceased to exist, but nobody will realize it because all the Poes are still around.
Perhaps a dumb question,but: If it was the humans that were being evil, why would Gawd annihilate all the innocent animals?
Obviously the animals shrank to fit and then went into suspended animation during the 400 days and 400 nights.
Oh wait. it only rained 40 days and 40 nights and then the sewers backed up.
Oh, and the window and the door were on the Right side, because No True Christian ever looks left.
In all honesty, what’s the big deal? You can’t have model kits of a mythical ship? People build models of, as you mentioned, the Millennium Falcon.
It’d be a hoot to build it, and fill it with little plastic dinosaurs and aliens and Daleks and whatnot. :-) Man the bridge with some Imperial Stormtroopers. Jar Jar goes into the bilge area.
Wow…a really good thesis and excellent perspective JPF
Now then, I know a lot you god hating, hygiene-challenge, science-worshipin’, atheist cretins have countless questions about how this or that could possibly have worked on the ark…well then.. I give you two answers that will help satisfy your ignorant frustrations.
1. You will find out soon enough, when all your questions will be answered, by Satan, as you are burning in a lake of fire for all eternity…and I’m just snickering thru the one-way glass…
2. It was a friggin’ miracle of god…moron.
@171:
You can fill it with whatever you want, but surely you realize that by adding Daleks to the mix, you guarantee that any other creatures won’t be shipmates for long…
Followup to #93 – the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (main museum on the Mall, not the Udvar-Hazy Annex) also has the original model of Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise, on display in the gift shop. It’s amazing how crappy the models look in real life compared to how they look on film. For maximum geek points, get your picture taken with that one, then stop by Udvar-Hazy to get your picture in front of the actual Space Shuttle Enterprise.
And to Q_D, #171 – can’t we tie Jar-Jar under the boat in a keelhauling position?
Is there a tank for the Nylonase?
Where do the carpenter ants, termites and teredos go?
Cubits are length from elbow to hand,so wouldn’t they be a lot smaller back then? On a replica of the Golden Hinde, we had to stoop because the cabin heights were built to accommodate sailors who were about 5’6″.
Followup to #173:
I posted that, but can’t type my name properly. Isn’t Woot some troll? Just wanted to clarify.
In all honesty, what’s the big deal? You can’t have model kits of a mythical ship?
Sure you can, I think the weird part was that they claim it’s a replica of a mythical ship?
when i was just a boy i lusted after boats (lived by a great lake). Dad and i built one, 12′ long. took quite a while to get it done. The ark, if Umlud (#34) is close, would be about 40 times bigger. And Noway could not pop over to Lowes for supplies so he would have to cut and shape all the wood. So, i, being no bibil scholor, wonder, how long was it that the construction of the craft…………….say, wait just a sec…………what happened to “thou shall not kill”?
@97 “Richard Walker”
Richard, even when I was a Christian, I found Ravi Zacharias to be intellectually dishonest much of the time. He’s one of those apologists who has the appearance of being very intellectual, but who uses fallacies regularly in his arguments. When he doesn’t like what the other side has to say, he uses ad hominem attacks, and when he has a point he thinks he can refute, he drills down on it and acts as if refuting part of an argument is refuting all of it.
The notion of a “god-sized hole” is apologist talk, found in the writings of people like C.S. Lewis. You can believe it if you like, but be advised that it’s just someone’s idea, not a Biblical teaching or a tradition in the Christian church. You can’t coldly dismiss people with that sort of rhetoric and expect it to stick; it’s not even a proper appeal to (perceived) authority since it doesn’t come from a holy book.
I used to be a creationist and a Christian, so I’m sympathetic to how you feel. But seriously, man… take a class on logic and learn how to argue, or take a class on marketing and learn how to persuade. Don’t spout the words of apologists and expect them to have any meaning here, because they’re very relative to the culture in which they were written. If you don’t believe me, try reading Anselm of Canterbury’s essays sometime and see what medieval Christian apologetics had to offer.
#176
Woot isn’t a troll. He just appreciates Boobies
Posted by: Jonathan Smith | December 10, 2008
Perhaps a dumb question,but: If it was the humans that were being evil, why would Gawd annihilate all the innocent animals?
For the same reason that National Lampoon threatened to shoot a dog if you did not buy their magazine.
#176
Let me try that again.
Woot isn’t a troll. He just appreciates Boobies
It has to be mentioned:
“A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters” by Julian Barnes
Chapter 1 The Stowaway
lolz @ ‘Flak Jacket of Faith’
Noah’s ark was not the only ark constructed. There we many beings contacted by God and ordered to build vessels to save their fellow organisms.
Unfortunately their names are by neccesity in their own language and my being a lowly sinner – and human – I cannot pronounce them well enough to even attemp a phonetic spelling.
Anyway, the lead builders for the dinosaurs was a small group of compsagothorus who built an ark large enough to accomodate even the Bruhathkayosaurus. It was built of gopher redwood.
Pigeons lead the way for birds, using gopher grass to build an ark that was Roc steady.
All micro-organisms banded together to build an ark of themselves capable of transporting Epulopiscium fishelsoni. Unfortunately their vessel was torn apart by the dischord started by E. choli and during the epic battle between archaeobacteria and Bacteriophage (all over whether prions should have been included) some were lost and fell to the depths never to be seen on land again.
See, that’s my point. It’s easy to lol at it because it’s modern technology and the idea of investing symbolic meaning in it seems weird. But outside of us mocking atheists, how many lol at the idea of the “shield of faith” from Eph 6:16:
Fiery darts too is old tech that sounds more symbolic than real. Translated into today-speak:
It just sounds silly, but it’s the exact same thing as the original.
Gophers don’t occur outside of North America. Problem solved. =8-)
ROTFL!
Thred can has WINZ0R!1!!
|It just sounds silly, but it’s the exact same thing as the
|original.
Are you saying you don’t think the original sounds just as silly?
At #148, Dirka Dirka wrote:
Yeah, but its thinking about all the cutesy animals who weren’t lucky enough to get on board the ark that makes kids like mine realize what a nasty guy the god of the bible is.
Seeing an illustration in a picture book of a cute little bunny, very sadly watching the already-closed ark as the rain began to fall, made my preschooler wail, “Why is God going to drown that bunny?!”
‘Cause he’s a mean guy who apparently thought that a great way to punish bad people was to drown poor cute innocent bunnies. :-(
For environmentalists & others who’d like to mitigate global warming and halt our current incipient 6th great extinction event of all times, Noah (ficitional tho he may be) is an inspirational character.
He didn’t listen to all the denialists (read “climate denialists”) around him, but forged ahead, despite vigorous opposition, to save life species from cataclysm. Sort of like I’ve been (figuratively speaking) banging my head against a brick wall these past 20 years trying to get people to believe global warming is real and to mitigate it…suffering many jeers & insults & heated arguments. (Luckily it seems people are now beginning to take the issue seriously.)
I sincerely wish there were more Noahs in our age to mitigate global warming and other enviro harms. Just wish the religious right would follow Noah’s example, rather than promoting Noah’s ark as a historical fact.
No, I’m saying they’re equally silly, but that many people don’t think the original sounds silly because it involves old technology that is invested with symbolic gravitas by our culture. When you translate it into modern references, it loses that unwarranted air of meaningfulness and becomes trite and silly (or at best, just a simple analogy, and not something you’d want to literally dress your kids up in).
A cubit is thought to be about 1 1/2 feet(18 inches), the length from the elbow to the end of the extended middle finger. 300 cubits would equal about 450 feet. Scaling from the picture makes the elephant and camel roughly the right scale. At that size where are they going to put all those animals and the food for them? Where are they going to get a big enough shovel? I know: it’s all done with magic.
Highly detailed tooling” – heh, meaning if you buy this, yer a tool!
“Wait…what kind of museum would show this silly thing?”
Perhaps they meant “Cration Museum-quality replica” which means “Crap” for quality.
“Can we also get a museum-quality replica of, say, the Millennium Falcon?”
Probably. Since you can get a FOUR foot long, 1/350th scale model of the starship Enterprise: http://www.starshipmodeler.com/trek/sw_deboer.htm
@192
I’m not buying it. Why were flaming chariots “acceptable” symbols back when the religions and the chariots were new, but new religions and new technological symbols are not “acceptable” today? According to your reasoning, wouldn’t a god carrying the sun across the sky sounded as silly thousands of years ago as a Prius would today?
Wooster @ 176
Is your first name “Bertie”? Just a nice inquiry as I am a fan of P G Wodehouse.
Holbach @ 197
I say, you’ve spotted the allusion, if “allusion” is the word I want.
@195
No, because we have become accustomed to technology that was introduced in our lifetime becoming obsolete within our lifetime. Chariots had a run of hundreds (thousands? I’m not a chariotologist) of years, Priuses have only been around for a few and will in a few more seem like outdated references that only hack comedians make.
Back when chariots were the state of the not-very-changing-art, it would have seemed reasonable to build myths around them. Technology then had a stability that might seem appropriate for something of as universal a significance as the gods.
But it was still just technology, used day to day by normal people. The difference with today’s tech is the expectation of obsolescence that makes tech seem inappropriate and undignified for such weighty and important matters as religion. It also becomes embarrassing when your almighty God is driving around the sky in an Oldsmobile or something else that isn’t even made anymore.
Today we can have Captain Kirk ask “What does God need with a starship?” and it seems a reasonable objection even to the religious, but religious people don’t seem to be too hung up on the question “What does God need with a wooden boat?” even though there’s no real difference.
Why were flaming chariots “acceptable” symbols back when the religions and the chariots were new, but new religions and new technological symbols are not “acceptable” today? According to your reasoning, wouldn’t a god carrying the sun across the sky sounded as silly thousands of years ago as a Prius would today?
I kind of like his thinking. I’m not sure it goes anywhere, but it’s a take I haven’t heard before. In thinking about it, though, I think we have to admit that there’s just a gulf, culturally and psychologically, between us and the ancients. Myth and reality are so separate for us; even those of us who ‘believe’ myths –like Noah’s Ark– show a suspicious anxiety about it (witness this silly “replica”), a desire to bring their myths up to some standard of realism. No such anxiety attended ancient religious beliefs, and in most cultures there simply was no dividing line between nature and super-nature. Gods and demons and archons and ghosts, etc. etc. were simply part of the world, and very few but some crotchety old philosophers (who were always being accused of atheism anyway) would try to maintain otherwise.
A lot of interesting work in the Anthropology of Medicine has to do with ‘disease’ and ‘illness’ and curing and healing, and the different conceptions of these between modern and pre-modern psychologies. If you’re enculturated in modern (or ‘Western’) norms, it’s just hard to understand the mindset, whether you’re talking about a Prius versus a chariot or viruses versus evil spirits. I do kind of grok what jpf is saying about the aura of ‘gravitas’ around ancient technics making it easier for a modern to make that leap, though, or, and this may be more to the point, to pretend to be able to do so.
Posted by: Richard Walker
“.. you’d have to acknowledge that you’re accountable for your actions, which you’re terrified.”
-I am completely accountable for my actions and don’t need forgiveness from the imaginary vengeful god that terrifies you to live with and learn from the mistakes I have made.
“Deep down, you already know I’m right, though you’ll undoubtedly continue to deny it, which only proves my point.”
-Deep down I know you are superstitious insecure fool and your smugly ignorant comments prove my point.
“A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof”
Such sophistication.
“Don’t worry, I just drew up a little blueprint. Let me walk you through it. This is the door. He goes through that. … This is the roof. This happy character here is the sun. He shines down on the house, see?”
-Homer Simpson designing a doghouse
They have these on display at the creation museum… hilarious.
The Ark story is so quaint… nevermind it’s all about God drowning all non-aquatic species on the planet in a fit of pique.
And, as others have pointed out, Noah and his family would’ve had to be riddled with all the “kinds” of parasites that infest mankind. Eeew.
Yes, but can I fit all of my animals on there?? That’s all I need to know.
This was posted earlier in the thread (thanks MikeD #72), but it’s so good it’s worth reposting.
Everything you ever wanted to know about a real ark
http://www.grahamkendall.net/Unsorted_files-1/A130-Noah_Ark.txt
Even as a kid I had trouble accepting the ark story – apart from anything else I live in Australia, and there are a whole lot of animals here that no-one thought to mention in the bible – because of, not only the space issues, but the necessity.
It’s the judeo-christian god, who’s supposedly omnimax – why couldn’t he just poof new animals into being after the flood? Heck, why couldn’t he just get rid of the people who were offending him without having to go to all the time and effort of flooding the earth?
As it is it gives away the not-especially-consistent depiction of god through the course of the bible, and reminds us of the overwhelming likelihood that it’s either all made up, or someone left a bunch of chapters at home on the day it went to the printers.
I hate to break it to you PZ, but $74 is lawn mowing money these days.
And it has rooms for penguins at one end and polar bears at the other. And every other frickin’ species in between. Where do the freshwater fish go?
Every story has its flaws. Fish should be in the water of course, rain water is fresh water. But then what about the salt water fish? Somebody has some ‘splainin’ to do.
The ark was clearly a TARDIS.
[God, who was James Mason, to Noah] “Noah, stop what you’re doing and build me an ark!” [Noah, who was Sean Connery] “I’m working on a speed boat at the moment. Much more exciting. It’ll really kick ass, give great photographs for the people in Bible.”
XD Yes, the Bible is the inerrant word of God, but He’s a real bastard, and His name is Loki. It’s like every day is April Fool’s, and He just wants to see how gullible humans can be.
How far did the ark voyage in forty days, and what speed did this good ship maintain? We’ve got to account for Turkeys in North America, Seedsnipes in Argentina, Mousebirds in Africa, Crab plovers in India, Sheathbills in Antarctica, Kiwis (birds) in New Zealand, Iiwis in Hawaii, Bellmagpies in Australia, Wallcreepers in Europe, Parrot crossbills in Scotland and Dodos in Mauritius.
Looks like it circumnavigated the globe both North/South and East/West that’s 24,902 miles (equatorial circumference) x2 or 49,904 mi. This is of course assuming direct routs, divided by 40 days that is just under 52 mph- that boat was f-a-s-t. What was the mode of propulsion again? Unless of course all these species are just one ‘kind’ = bird. But molecular evidence does not show rapid evolution from an immediate common ancestor of these groups. Alternatively, there is no evidence for genetic bottlenecks in the vast majority of species (wait a century and as the biodiversity crisis deepens Creationists will use this latter argument). I can’t make the premise fit the evidence. Oh, I must add the magic ingredient- gullibility!
Ooops, that is a 49,804 mile voyage and the actual route must be longer as geometry prevents a simple double circumference trip. And that is even if we assume the lands ‘appeared’ from the receding waters just as the ark arrived.
Posted by: Carlie @ 10 ” “…the “moon pool” (an open center well allowing access to water and waste disposal).”
Now, I’m not a civil engineer, but I’m pretty sure you don’t want those two functions together.”
You could still separate the functions by time: waste into the hole between midday and sunset, the boat moves on in the night and by morning it’s removed far enough that it would be ‘safe’ to draw water in the morning for the whole day.
Should include a package of gummy bears to represent the bodies of all that didn’t make the boat trip.
Not 40 days, 150 days of floating time. This is a common mistake. It took “40 days and 40 nights” for the flood waters to rise, not how long Noah and company were in the Ark (which was ~370 days!) Noah was 600 when he entered the Ark and over 601 when he exited. They spent most of the time waiting for the water to rise and fall.
Also, you seem to be assuming that Noah floated around the world gathering local fauna, when in actuality they all came to him. The Ark only traveled as far as Ararat.
So sayeth the Wholey Bibble!
Jello:
And coincidentally the ark was later stolen and destroyed by unbelievers just days before Google Earth came online.
Good point jpf. I was assuming points of debarkation. Of course the image of two dodos water-walking like Petrels from Mauritius to Arabia is priceless.
For all you creationists out there, here is the possibility for you to do original research, we’re talking Ignobell quality work! First, read posts 112 and 116. . .
Back now? Hope that did not take too long. I set before you the following problems: what is the wing-beat rate required for an average sized dodo (use dodo-sized chicken for estimate) to generate enough lift to water-walk (like a Petrel)? And, how much energy (Kcal) would be required to maintain this rate for an hour. And, what speed would that dodo have to maintain to travel from Mauritius to Arabia before its fat stores were exhausted? Get cracking, AiG desperately needs your results!
Re: #81
True ’nuff. But look at the quality now. Compare our old Revell aircraft and Aurora tanks with Hasegawa and Tamiya. I mean, there is interior detail now, as well as accurate proportions! The models may cost 10 or 20 times as much, but, hell, I make way more now than then. (Yes, I build scale models — got back to it recently.)
Re: #126
Trogdor!
I’m with Wowbagger – which poor bastard had to round up the Atrax Robustus for the ark? That part of the story should surely deserve a chapter of its own.
I’ve seen one being evicted from its web in an old tree stump, and it came out ready to take on two burley farmers – one with a chainsaw. (I was up on the back of the truck, and not coming down…nope nope nope)
So I’m the only one who thought it was a rip-off of the ship cutaway in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Do i have to point out that this rain better have been salty- otherwise all the fish in the ocean would have died from the changes in salinity, as well as kill ALL deep sea creatures becasue they were squashed by the water pressure. And finally, WHERE the fuck is all this water?! Christians who beleive this ought to be hit in the head with a tire iron.
I think there is money to be made by selling an accessory for this kit of a *complete* set of couples for each “kind”. To bad there is no easy way to web stream each customer’s reaction when they receive delivery of the package.
Sorry, no museum-quality Millenium Falcon models; since it’s a movie prop rather than a “historic” vessel, all you can get are “studio” quality models (which run a lot more than $70). Even the plastic models you assemble yourself run in the hundreds.
At least they’re honest about how much Noah’s mythical ark would actually have been able to carry, had it been built.
It’s just a shame the photo isn’t large enough to discern the Class 5 clean room Noah used to contain the two of each kind of hantavirus he brought along.
hm, some sources (like wikipedia ) give much larger swimming distances:
Dear Dufus Models of Kentucky,
I built the scale model of the ark, and since your kit only comes with 8 animal pairs, I built pairs of all the other species of land animals in the world, to scale, from clay. I found after making only a few more pairs, that they won’t all fit in the ark. Either you or the Bible are lieing. I think it’s both.
Disappointed Kit Builder
Here’s an even better Ark model. And what makes it better?
You can also watch a video (from GodTube!) of the model being used during a church presentation by the Dinosaur Hunter and his shela Shela.
More from GodTube…
If only we had seen this video before the election: The truth about Barack Obama (Poor kid.)
Just in case Richard Walker was not a Poe:
According to Bishop Usshers calculations, the biblical flood occurred 2348 BCE.
The oldest known living organism was the Prometheus tree, cut down in 1964. The latest this tree could have germinated was 2880 BCE, predating Usshers date of the flood by 532 years. Due to the location on the trunk where the tree rings were counted, it is estimated that Prometheus probably germinated 200 years earlier.
The next oldest known tree is Methusala, which germinated at the latest in 2832 BCE, predating the flood by 484 years. How did these 2 trees survive the flood, submerged under water for over 100 days?
Then there are the organisms that are estimated to be even older, but the 2 examples above should be enough to show you don’t need science to disprove the flood, just simple addition and subtraction.
Oh, and an axe.
Yes, but only two of each parasite. Two influenza viruses, or even two tapeworms, are probably not that big a deal…
(Of course, this does raise the question of why one would need two individuals of organisms that reproduce asexually.)
The Bible is full of science. This is just proof that horizontal gene transfer is part of God’s plan.
;o)
jpf: “So sayeth the Wholey Bibble!”
Hehehe…I use a similar “homonym”: Wholly Babble.
Melior’s comment #228 is hilarious. I’m rolling on the floor.
I’m not buying it. Why were flaming chariots “acceptable” symbols back when the religions and the chariots were new, but new religions and new technological symbols are not “acceptable” today? According to your reasoning, wouldn’t a god carrying the sun across the sky sounded as silly thousands of years ago as a Prius would today?
PZ,I don’t often agree with your strange statements on basic economics, I can only marvel at the occasional forays into deep biology stuff way over my head, I love the cephalopod pics, but I gotta say, the idea of Ratfink on the prow of the Ark is PRICELESS. Sigh, the memories you brought back…gonna order that kit and then scour the hobby store for the rat decal……will send photos.
How dare you denigrate the Millennium Falcon by comparing it to an impossible toy boat?!?! It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.
An unforgivable error on Lucas’s part — the parsec is a unit of distance, not time.
</pedant></geek>< ?p>
I would love a *museum-quality* replica of the Millenium Falcon.
To Emmet who uttered:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run
Star Wars apologists, at their best.
Jeez people.
The Earth was pretty much a smooth ball when the flood happened, the oceans were shallow and mountains no bigger than minor hills. Not much water was needed to cover it so the pressure was not enough to crush deep water organisms and all existing fish were brackish water kinds. There was no need for Dodos to run over water because there was only one continent called Pangea. Besides, dodos developed after the flood.
The number of kinds is much lower than the number of current species so the ark was easily large enough to hold those few kinds that needed a ride. Only one representative of each kind was necessary, all speciation came after.
It was only after the flood that Pangea separated into the continents we know now, and in the process created mountains and ocean rifts. All the heat generated by the process melted the previously solid and cold core.
See how easy it is to answer your questions? Anything is possible once you embrace the supernatural and ignore the material.
Diagoras opined:
Clearly lunatics from the outer planets of Star Wars fandom who will not brook any criticism of the movies and seek to rationalise every error or inconsistency.
As an obsessive pedantic git, rather than an obsessive spotty fan, I’m happy merely to point out the errors, rather than feeling the need to rationalise them away.
CJO at 199: Umm, archons weren’t figments of anyone’s imagination. They existed. Now everything else on that list is another matter.
Heather, read down that Wiki page a bit. I’m referring to what is discussed there under the heading Gnostic Archons.
Gotta follow the disambiguation link…
*looks abashed*
Hm, I see that they were used in The Invisibles.
And while Alan Moore does not use the term that I can recall, I think his depiction of various of the entities in Promethea (including Promethea herself), would more-or-less match the definition given.
It’s a very Gnostic graphic novel.
@127 We are all descended from one individual who suffered the fusion of chromosome two way back when. This mutation was propagated by inbreeding. I don’t see the Noah story absurd in this respect. Anyone disagree?
Oh and wouldn’t you think that a science minded creationist would have tried to put a similarly constructed ark to the test by now? Or would that be a sin?
*looks abashed*
No need. I imagine all of the fantasy versions you cite take their common inspiration from this usage, which was current in the Greco-Roman world.
It’s a subject of interest to me, because literalists take Paul’s “the rulers of this world” to mean the Romans who crucified Jesus, but he’s actually talking about a mythical event perpetrated by Archons, the closest modern translation to his meaning I take to be “dark angels” or something like that.
Do you mean 2 Corinthians 4:4? Because that does say “the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe to keep them from seeing the light”. In the original Greek, too.
Hm. 1 Corinthians 2:8 does say to “the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood;”, but then says “for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory”. I infer that “ην ουδεις των αρχοντων (archonton) του αιωνος” is what you mean (and I also note: “τουτου εγνωκεν (egnoken)”; the word for “understood” is a form of gnos)
Did Gnostics hold that Jesus had “really” been crucified by dark spirits/immaterial demons/supernatural beings/whatever?
Does Gnosticism predate Christianity, or did it arise from 2 Corinth. 4:4 (and others like it)? Or did a copyist modify that verse from out of an awareness of Gnostic ideas?
Just wondering out loud.
The monotheistic OT has God deliberately sending false prophesies, and other parts of the NT certainly imply that God had no problem with deceiving/tricking people (1 Corinthians 1:21).
1 Corinthians 2:8, yes. and a couple more (a passage or two from Galatians as well? I’m on my way out and I don’t have time to check. I don’t have the Greek either so I’m reliant on translations). But that passage from 1 Cor. is the epitome.
Does Gnosticism predate Christianity…?
I’d say yes. I think there were “Judeo-Hellenic” theologies with elements of Essene-style radical Judaism that had the “teacher of righteousness” figure as an agent or personification of sophia, or the logos of god, or what have you. Construe such a system more along the lines of a mystery religion, and you’ve got late 1st/2nd-century Gnostic Chritianity, with gospel literature essentially serving the function of the “outer mysteries.”
That’s my current hypothesis in a nutshell anyway. Ask me next week, though. There’s so little evidence and so many theories that it’s hard to make up one’s mind or be dogmatic: the supposed experts are all over the map on these questions.
My theory is that Noah stole technology from Atlantis. Then to cover up this great crime he had to create the great flood and submerge Atlantis under the sea. He then used this technology to digitalize all the animals and transpond them into compact flash cards. So the size of the ship and its logistics is inconsequential.
When he felt that all his detractors were dead he reconstructed all the digital images into living things to the last pixel and thereby repopulated the world.
This makes more sense than the biblical story.
And thanks to the “miracle” of inflation, the cost of lawn mowing has gone up substantially too.
[I ought to have posted this here because it pertains more; oh well, it’s here now!]
Time to move proactively! Sitting on our haunches and waiting for the sheep to come to the slaughter is not going to undermine their leaders! I Know a couple of our own OM’s have a flair for the Scriptures, so without further ado, i post this link to a “special place”: http://theologica.ning.com/
The highest of the lowest! The cream of the crap!
Oh, i do hope that some will take this a a great challenge! There is so much damage to be done. *Chuckles Maniacally*
Owlmirror, CJO, David, i REEeeeaally hope you guys will take this as a serious challenge. It would be Epic to dethrone Christians from their theology.
Any true god would know that the SI is the superior measurement system.
an interesting bit of trivia. you cannot have an accurate, museum quality replica of the millenium falcon. the ship is actually quite internally inconsistent. the interior sets cannot possibly match the exterior models and mockups, neither in scale nor in layout.
true star wars geeks noticed this a long time ago, and it broke all of our hearts.