Provisions for a year? Where did the “one year” come from?
Just curious.
Al Dentesays
According to Genesis 8:5, the ark floated for at least ten months:
And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
kreativekaossays
Too soon? Are you kidding? Keep ’em coming!
Trebuchetsays
What’s a cubit? (/Cosby)
Dick the Damnedsays
This mythological story seems to omit reference to the major horticultural operation that Noah’s family would’ve been engaged in, gathering all the plant species that were also going to be drowned. And they even had to go to four continents that weren’t discovered until a few hundred years ago. And then they had to replant them back in the right environments, after the flood subsided. And get expert at sailing, spelunkering & mountaineering, too.
That Noah must’ve been a minor god, or else the old Bible Bogey gave him magic powers. Oh yeah, magic can achieve or explain anything.
arcticsays
“Nearer my God to Thee” just won’t sound the same coming from an empty parking lot…
Dick the Damnedsays
Of course, the Noah story was told by people who though that the Earth had four corners and could be seen in its entirety from a high mountain. They had no fucking idea, just like Ken Ham & his ilk.
Rey Foxsays
And this is the utterly silly story that will be getting the big-budget movie treatment this year. Sure, it’s a Darren Aronofsky film, so it probably won’t be pablum for the fundies. But one of the taglines on IMDb is “Rediscover the epic story of one man and the most remarkable event in our history.” GAH.
Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human.says
Does this mean that I can finally release my band’s rendition of “Dance Band on the Ark”?
It’s very simple. Noah and the boys fed the herbivore offspring to the carnivores. No food storage needed! But how did Noah get bamboo to feed the pandas, I wonder…
Rediscover the epic story of one man and the most remarkable event in our history.
Yes. How one man and his three sons shoveled shit 24/7 for ten months straight and lived to tell about it. That’s Homeric!
peterhsays
Ken Ham should do his nautical engineering homework. A wooden vessel of those dimensions would not begin to be seaworthy. He might wish to read of the Wyoming (longest overall but not at the waterline) or the Great Eastern @335′ & their structural woes.
anuransays
Which lucky member of Noah’s family got the pinworms, bilharzia, hookworms, lice, fleas, ticks and spirochetes?
@1 & @2: Yes, it bugs me no end when people talk about “40 days”. It *rained* for 40 days, but it took longer than that for the waters to go down, and they seem to have been stuck in the Ark for a full year (see Gen. 7:11 and 8:14). Pedantic maybe, but if you’re going to criticize a story, at least read it first.
suttkussays
@13: Well, one thing that’s great about the Noah’s Ark story. One of Noah’s family was infected by Smallpox when they got aboard. It spread to the others, probably killing 30% of them (historical average). And then, all of them were immune to reinfection, then the smallpox virus died, and has been extinct since the time they got off the ark! Smallpox has been gone for the majority of human history! In an atheistic universe, smallpox would have killed untold millions of people in misery, so thank goodness for Noah and his ark saving us all from that nightmare!
And this is the utterly silly story that will be getting the big-budget movie treatment this year.
If they had decided to make a film of Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage I would be much more impressed. It is a far more interesting story.
ChasCPetersonsays
This comparison is facile. The Ark simply had a smaller ballroom.
Oh, and no engine room.
QED.
Menyambal --- making sambal a food group.says
Nobody died on the ark, though, so there’s no tragedy. The people outside don’t count, of course, because they weren’t godly people.
Oooo, maybe one of the sons was in love with a heathen girl, and had to persude her to come with him …
Ken Ham points out that it had never rained before the flood, so Noah’s neighbors had no idea at all what he was trying to warn them about. Ken is not deeply offended by that notion.
Kent Hovind estimates that a billion people drowned. He pretends to taunt them, and he laughs.
robrosays
Menyambal @#20
Kent Hovind estimates that a billion people drowned.
So Hovind thinks the deluge happened in the early 1800s? Man, he’s a real YEC.
Oh sure, 50,000 animals when they landed… they started with 100,000 and a large barbeque!
Rob Plattsays
Chas @#19 –
And deck chairs, Noah didn’t need to waste space on those, what, with all the rearranging and all….
Thumper: Token Breedersays
@whitehatlurker #17
The point is that the measurements given in the Babble for the Ark mean that the Ark must have been smaller than the Titanic. And yet the Titanic could not hold anything even close to the amount of passengers and cargo which the Ark is said to have carried.
Thumper: Token Breedersays
@menyambal #20
Ken Ham points out that it had never rained before the flood…
Seriously? I could merely be exemplifying Poe’s Law here, but… let’s be honest, it’s entirely possible he believes that. How does he think people grew crops before the flood? X-/
sonofrojblakesays
As to the “obvious similarity that need not be mentioned”, is it that there’s going to be a big budget movie about it that’s absolutely Bodawful, has woeful CGI effects and will nevertheless rake in a metric fucktonne of money?
Please, PLEASE tell me the similarity is not that they’ve got Celine Dion to do the theme song…
When people are discussing this Jonah Ark thingy they are always going on about the people and the animals. Won’t anyone spare a thought for the oceanic marine life: with all that rain the salinity of the seas must have dropped significantly and suddenly. Think for a moment of their horrible osmotic deaths.
THINK OF THE SALTWATER FISH!!!1!!
THINK OF THE CEPHALOPODS!!!ONE!!!!1!
THINK OF THE CEPHALOPOD CHILDREN!!!ONE!!!UN!1!¡UNO!1!
Loftysays
richardelguru
THINK OF THE SALTWATER FISH!!!1!!
naah, all fish and other sundry aquatic life are all the same “kind” so species diversity arose after the fludd, cos of god magic. I mean, even now the worlds tinned fish industry relies on you not knowing exactly what’s in the tin.
fergl100says
Building an ark or simulating any of the bible miracles surely has the opposite effect that the faithful are looking for. When I believed, it was a pretty woolly belief that always took a knock when the reality of what was being said was brought home to me.
These stunts just cement in peoples minds how ridiculous the claims of the bible are rather than reenforcing any belief. Shooting themselves in the foot methinks.
Though you have a damned good point about the tins
killyosaursays
s it that there’s going to be a big budget movie about it that’s absolutely Bodawful, has woeful CGI effects and will nevertheless rake in a metric fucktonne of money?
First, you haven’t seen the movie so you really can’t claim it’s awful, second we are talking about a Darren Arronofsky film, even is bad films are better than most of the dreck Hollywood pumps out, I will most likely be seeing this film. The CGI effects in the original Titanic were damn good especially for 1997. The story was simple but so what, it was less of the point than a reason for James Cameron to recreate the ship (and to trick Fox into paying for him to take a sub down to film the actual wreck, seriously, that’s why he made the movie).
David Marjanovićsays
*sigh* Insects are animals, too.
THINK OF THE SALTWATER FISH!!!1!!
AND THE FRESHWATER FISH!!!1!!
I don’t know if all brackish-water fish are euryhaline ( = can cope with a wide range of salinity given some time).
David Marjanović
I wasn’t ignoring the poor insects, just including them in ‘animals’
I wasn’t sure about the freshwater fish. Does the flood add so much rain that the water has low enough salinity to spare them? Do they get salted as the waters rise? What happens to them as the waters recede (if they survive till them)?
I wonder how many people who believe Noah’s Ark was real don’t realise Titanic wasn’t just a Leo DiCaprio film.
But hey, we’re being too skeptical. The Ark held all those animals, and had all the provisions needed to keep them alive, because God used his powers to make it like a cross between a TARDIS and the USS Enterprise. It was bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside, and it had a magic thingy just like a replicator to make all the food and stuff.
Of course, the obvious problem with that explanation is why God bothered to have Noah build a boat, instead of just putting a force field over Noah and animals to keep out the water.
Ken Ham points out that it had never rained before the flood…
Thumper #25:
Seriously? I could merely be exemplifying Poe’s Law here, but… let’s be honest, it’s entirely possible he believes that. How does he think people grew crops before the flood? X-/
I’m also curious about that. I’ll do a quick bit of Google-fu after this comment.
I remember some derailing things. In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, most of the characters on White Base are from a space colony, and while flying through a storm cloud on Earth, a number of them thought the lightning was some new Zeon weapon. In 08th MS Team, Ensign Amada, a space colonist, ends up lost in Earth’s wilderness, falls in swamp water and emerges with leeches all over him, ripping them off. “And they say people live here? I don’t believe it.” We’ve got various sci-fi series where aliens from One Biome Worlds are unfamiliar with certain natural phenomena on Earth or other worlds, as well as humans ignorant of alien plot device weather, necessitating exposition. I once caught some snippet of Third Rock From the Sun where apparently the aliens mistook snow for some apocalyptic event.
I can buy the idea of a culture of humans that is ignorant and incredulous about rain if they never experienced it. But it’s kind of hard for me to imagine a version of Earth functioning without rain. Must be one of the consequences of the vapor canopy, which raised the air pressure and temperature up to Venus proportions and for some ill-described reasons, allowed people to grow to giant proportions, but not after it disappeared into the ether. How else do you explain PYGMIES + DWARVES?
@timgueguen: Yeah, I remember as a kid debating the flood with a friend who ad hocked all the problems with magical “help” from god. They don’t like it when you ask “What does god need with a starship?”
Tigger_the_Wing, Back home =^_^=says
I just visualised a rag-tag group of desert nomads, meeting up one night around a campfire, telling stories to stave off boredom.
The first tells of a flood that filled the valley where he came from one night, and there were hardly any survivors.
The second counters with a story of a flood that filled his valley AND the neighbouring one, lasted for several days, and only one family survived – because the father had the foresight to build a boat.
The next boasts that their flood filled the whole county and lasted a whole month; but their patriarch, warned by the local gods, built a boat big enough to hold his whole family and some of their livestock.
And so it goes around the campfire, each story more impressive (and less likely) than the previous one.
By the time it comes to the last to tell his tale, what is he to do? His story has to top the lot – so, of course, the whole world was flooded for a whole year, and the righteous man saved not only his family and livestock, but all the animals in the world!
… Which story gets taken back to the various tribes, embellished and passed down through the generations? =^_^=
chigau (違う)says
Tigger_the_Wing
So. Four Yorkshiremen?
Doug Littlesays
WhiteHatLurker @17,
You need to add the 40 days rain time = 10.3 months more or less.
Not only that, it would have taken a long time to load the ark in the first place.
Doug Littlesays
Of course, the obvious problem with that explanation is why God bothered to have Noah build a boat, instead of just putting a force field over Noah and animals to keep out the water.
Of course you can take this to its logical conclusion and ask why god needed a flood at all.
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays
Noah: Honey? Would you please shovel out the pens of the pigs, giraffes, elephants, sauropods, camels, hippos, and ground sloths? And then maybe scrub down the neornithine deck? Shem’s being a jerk about doing his share.
Emzara: What? Honey? Did you say something?
Noah: Yes. I asked you to do some work around here. I’m completely overwhelmed.
Emzara: Well don’t look at me. No one came to ask me to build a boat or put anything on it. This isn’t Emzara’s ark. Do you think when the time comes to write all this crazy history down that my name will even get mentioned?
Noah: Come on, honey, I’m not going to write Genesis, that’s some other guy. God says. Please don’t make the father responsible for the sins of the sons.
Emzara: That is rich, coming from you. You come waltzing into our tent making a big deal about how you are the only moral person left on this rock, then push me into a boat for a year and am surprised that I’m not endorsing your particular theories of moral accountability? You’re so noble, you scrub the bird shit. Make sure you bathe their cloacas, too, or you won’t have any eggs for breakfast tomorrow.
Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays
you can take this to its logical conclusion and ask why god needed a flood at all
I really like in the Iron Man stories how in the 90s he finally started getting smart (right around the time that the military was making a big deal about smart munitions, what a coincidence). The old IM built blasts that had bigger and bigger visible effects. The new IM built targeted devices that could streak directly to a vulnerable spot, releasing a payload where it need not be large to have a terrible effect. It’s in the movies at one point where he is facing a tank and sends off a relatively small missile that nonetheless pops the top off the tank. One with any knowledge of tanks presumes that the payload got to the fuel or ammo which, while well protected, can still be hit with a well placed shot.
But god, instead of going for precision, seems to go the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko route where somehow super geniuses haven’t figured out any advantages to aim.
It’s almost like the people who created those stories were completely physics-naive.
BeyondUnderstandingsays
you can take this to its logical conclusion and ask why god needed a flood at all
What I love the most about the story of Noah’s Ark, aside from the glaring technical issues (ie PZ’s info-graphic), is how idiotic it makes God himself look.
God is supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient. These omni-terms are tossed around a lot, but really think about it: unlimited power and knowledge. Everything God has said or done should always be looked at through that lens, that he is supposed to be perfect with infinite powers.
Just his decision alone to wipe out the human population via rain, without even getting to the rest of the story, undermines the very idea of an omnipotent and omniscient being. How could anyone seriously believe that was the best/smartest/perfect course of action? I’d bet big money that 1st graders could come up with way better ideas. No omniscience needed.
Doug Littlesays
It’s almost like the people who created those stories were completely physics-naive.
Funny that. I find it frustrating that people who believe this crap cannot see through the very obvious nature of the stories and how they make sense given what people knew about the world at the time.
Yes. The Jaynestown ep of Firefly covered it nicely:
Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?
River Tam: Fixing your Bible.
Book: I, um…
[alarmed]
Book: What?
River Tam: Bible’s broken. Contradictions, false logistics – doesn’t make sense.
[she’s marked up the bible, crossed out passages and torn out pages]
Book: No, no. You-you-you can’t…
River Tam: So we’ll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God’s creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah’s ark is a problem.
Book: Really?
River Tam: We’ll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.
[rips out page]
Book: River, you don’t fix the Bible.
River: It’s broken. It doesn’t make sense.
Book: It’s not about making sense. It’s about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It’s about faith. You don’t fix faith, River. It fixes you.
Doug Littlesays
We’ll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon
Actually, this sounds like an argument some new age Christians could potentially make. I haven’t ran across it yet though.
Amphioxsays
Ken Ham should do his nautical engineering homework. A wooden vessel of those dimensions would not begin to be seaworthy. He might wish to read of the Wyoming (longest overall but not at the waterline) or the Great Eastern @335′ & their structural woes.
Well, OBVIOUSLY the “gopherwood” that ark was made of was some kind of superwood not seen in the world today (since the seedlings drowned in the flood). Tensile strength exceeding steel, spontaneously absorbs all animal waste, able to be made into structures larger on the inside than the outside, like Dr. Who’s thing that looks like a phone booth….
I also note that the ark as commonly depicted not only has no engine room, it has no means of propulsion or navigation whatsoever – no sails, no ports for oars (and no oarsmen!), no rudder…..
Doug Littlesays
Hey in the construction section for the ark they left out Magic.
Doug Littlesays
Dr. Who’s thing that looks like a phone booth
NERD SACRILEGE… it’s called the TARDIS.
Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human.says
And Noah looked upon the ark
And despaired, for Noah saw
What was there. And God said,
“Let the animals, two by two,
Sleep with no breath, no food,
No waste. And God looked at the
Ark and it was good. And Noah
Looked at his shovel. And tosseth
it overboard. And it was good.
Silisays
2.
Al Dente
According to Genesis 8:5, the ark floated for at least ten months:
And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.
That’s P. The very next verse gives the J version:
And it was the end of forty days, and Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made.
(7 is P because of the raven, J continues 8-12, P has one of it’s formulaic additions in 13 with a bit of J stuck on at the end after which P takes over the plot again.
BeyondUnderstanding, I don’t think the people behind the Noah story actually did believe God was omnipotent. I think their version of God was just a version of the typical tribal strongman of the region with superpowers added.
Menyambal --- making sambal a food group.says
Thumper and Bronze Dog: Before the flood, the earth was watered by springs and by mists that arose from the ground. That is according to Ham’s _The_Answers_Book_. I am pretty sure that is in the Bible, but I can’t be arsed right now.
I have Ham’s Answers book on the back of the toilet, and am on my sixth reading of it, I think. I find more and more wrong with it, and learn a lot of science checking on him (today it was exponential growth and elephant reproduction).
Ham thinks the flood totally revised all geology, and that there were dinos on the ark. And that it all makes sense, scientifically.
Yeah, the flood story explains nothing and requires a boatload of miracles. I agree that God should have just collected all the animals around Noah, and had him do a Charlton Heston to the water. Or anything else except run a scenario that sounds like a twisted recounting of a farm in springtime.
evodevosays
The tenth month doesn’t refer to the length of time on the water – it refers to a specific date – like October is the tenth month in our calendar. In the Hebrew calendar it’s Tevet (Tebetu in Babylonian – note – that is also where this story came from in the first place!!)
WhiteHatLurkersays
@Thumper: Token Breeder #24
Thank you. I did understand the picture. The caption implies there is a similarity between the two objects, unmentioned in the graphic, yet obvious.
After some thought … I’m guessing the similarity is that they have both sunk. (The “ark” in this case being the theme park.)
WhiteHatLurkersays
@Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden #46
It’s almost like the people who created those stories were completely physics-naive.
Or biologically-naive. A properly constructed viral disease could do most of the work killing off the doomed. Vaccines would protect those intended to survive. No mess, no fuss, and plants continue to thrive. It is much tidier than this, for example. Oh wait a second – they were naive in many ways. I get it.
@BeyondUnderstanding #47
I’d bet big money that 1st graders could come up with way better ideas.
I’ll be more careful around first grade students. Thanks for the warning.
If the rainbow was supposed to be god’s way of saying “my bad, no more floods”, why do we still have floods?
chigau (違う)says
Because God’s message was not “no more floods”.
Onamission5says
I want to know how the olive tree survived. And how something which prefers a dry climate was hardy enough to sprout a sprig after spending months on end underneath the crushing depths of miles of brackish water.
Jackie wishes she could hibernatesays
Onamission5,
Maaaaaaaaaaagic!
Loftysays
Amphiox @53
I also note that the ark as commonly depicted not only has no engine room, it has no means of propulsion or navigation whatsoever – no sails, no ports for oars (and no oarsmen!), no rudder…..
Well, you see the spayshul qualities of the god-sent waters (as in they keep numberless fish and plants alive for 10.3 months) means that the aaark was driven by a difference in surface tension caused by the mountains of poop shovelled out the back. Steering was achieved by varying the mucking out of the elephants versus the camels. Some creationist would have proved this conjecture by putting a scrap of soap on a pop stick in his bath tub. Scale problems? Just invoke godmagic.
shadowsays
According to Hal Sparks, what turned him off xtianity was the ark story, because there’s no way the koalas made it.
Friendlysays
Let the animals, two by two,
Sleep with no breath, no food,
No waste.
Unfortunately, although such a scenario would be convenient for the fundies, in Genesis 6:21 God says to Noah, “You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them,” so it seems as though the animals did indeed consume food during the voyage.
Friendlysays
And as for “50,000+ animals,” in Genesis 7:2-3 God commands Noah, “Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.” That’s at least 140,000 birds alone (although fundie creationists will argue that the 10,000-odd bird species were represented by a few hundred bird “baramins” that diversified after the Flood was over — but of course that doesn’t constitute evolution, nosirree). As an aside, how much living and storage space would be realistically required just to keep 14 giraffes, 14 Irish elk, and 14 giant moas alive for a year without them going insane or killing each other? More than existed on the whole ark, I’m guessing.
Provisions for a year? Where did the “one year” come from?
Just curious.
According to Genesis 8:5, the ark floated for at least ten months:
Too soon? Are you kidding? Keep ’em coming!
What’s a cubit? (/Cosby)
This mythological story seems to omit reference to the major horticultural operation that Noah’s family would’ve been engaged in, gathering all the plant species that were also going to be drowned. And they even had to go to four continents that weren’t discovered until a few hundred years ago. And then they had to replant them back in the right environments, after the flood subsided. And get expert at sailing, spelunkering & mountaineering, too.
That Noah must’ve been a minor god, or else the old Bible Bogey gave him magic powers. Oh yeah, magic can achieve or explain anything.
“Nearer my God to Thee” just won’t sound the same coming from an empty parking lot…
Of course, the Noah story was told by people who though that the Earth had four corners and could be seen in its entirety from a high mountain. They had no fucking idea, just like Ken Ham & his ilk.
And this is the utterly silly story that will be getting the big-budget movie treatment this year. Sure, it’s a Darren Aronofsky film, so it probably won’t be pablum for the fundies. But one of the taglines on IMDb is “Rediscover the epic story of one man and the most remarkable event in our history.” GAH.
Does this mean that I can finally release my band’s rendition of “Dance Band on the Ark”?
It’s very simple. Noah and the boys fed the herbivore offspring to the carnivores. No food storage needed! But how did Noah get bamboo to feed the pandas, I wonder…
Rediscover the epic story of one man and the most remarkable event in our history.
Yes. How one man and his three sons shoveled shit 24/7 for ten months straight and lived to tell about it. That’s Homeric!
Ken Ham should do his nautical engineering homework. A wooden vessel of those dimensions would not begin to be seaworthy. He might wish to read of the Wyoming (longest overall but not at the waterline) or the Great Eastern @335′ & their structural woes.
Which lucky member of Noah’s family got the pinworms, bilharzia, hookworms, lice, fleas, ticks and spirochetes?
@1 & @2: Yes, it bugs me no end when people talk about “40 days”. It *rained* for 40 days, but it took longer than that for the waters to go down, and they seem to have been stuck in the Ark for a full year (see Gen. 7:11 and 8:14). Pedantic maybe, but if you’re going to criticize a story, at least read it first.
@13: Well, one thing that’s great about the Noah’s Ark story. One of Noah’s family was infected by Smallpox when they got aboard. It spread to the others, probably killing 30% of them (historical average). And then, all of them were immune to reinfection, then the smallpox virus died, and has been extinct since the time they got off the ark! Smallpox has been gone for the majority of human history! In an atheistic universe, smallpox would have killed untold millions of people in misery, so thank goodness for Noah and his ark saving us all from that nightmare!
Just to be pedantic, by my count that’s at least nine months, since the mountains appear on the first day of the tenth month.
You need to add the 40 days rain time = 10.3 months more or less.
The similarity isn’t obvious to me. One was an actual boat, the other a work of fiction. Was DiCaprio in an ark movie, too?
If they had decided to make a film of Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage I would be much more impressed. It is a far more interesting story.
This comparison is facile. The Ark simply had a smaller ballroom.
Oh, and no engine room.
QED.
Nobody died on the ark, though, so there’s no tragedy. The people outside don’t count, of course, because they weren’t godly people.
Oooo, maybe one of the sons was in love with a heathen girl, and had to persude her to come with him …
Ken Ham points out that it had never rained before the flood, so Noah’s neighbors had no idea at all what he was trying to warn them about. Ken is not deeply offended by that notion.
Kent Hovind estimates that a billion people drowned. He pretends to taunt them, and he laughs.
Menyambal @#20
So Hovind thinks the deluge happened in the early 1800s? Man, he’s a real YEC.
Oh sure, 50,000 animals when they landed… they started with 100,000 and a large barbeque!
Chas @#19 –
And deck chairs, Noah didn’t need to waste space on those, what, with all the rearranging and all….
@whitehatlurker #17
The point is that the measurements given in the Babble for the Ark mean that the Ark must have been smaller than the Titanic. And yet the Titanic could not hold anything even close to the amount of passengers and cargo which the Ark is said to have carried.
@menyambal #20
Seriously? I could merely be exemplifying Poe’s Law here, but… let’s be honest, it’s entirely possible he believes that. How does he think people grew crops before the flood? X-/
As to the “obvious similarity that need not be mentioned”, is it that there’s going to be a big budget movie about it that’s absolutely Bodawful, has woeful CGI effects and will nevertheless rake in a metric fucktonne of money?
Please, PLEASE tell me the similarity is not that they’ve got Celine Dion to do the theme song…
THINK OF THE SALTWATER FISH!!!1!!
When people are discussing this Jonah Ark thingy they are always going on about the people and the animals. Won’t anyone spare a thought for the oceanic marine life: with all that rain the salinity of the seas must have dropped significantly and suddenly. Think for a moment of their horrible osmotic deaths.
THINK OF THE SALTWATER FISH!!!1!!
THINK OF THE CEPHALOPODS!!!ONE!!!!1!
THINK OF THE CEPHALOPOD CHILDREN!!!ONE!!!UN!1!¡UNO!1!
richardelguru
THINK OF THE SALTWATER FISH!!!1!!
naah, all fish and other sundry aquatic life are all the same “kind” so species diversity arose after the fludd, cos of god magic. I mean, even now the worlds tinned fish industry relies on you not knowing exactly what’s in the tin.
Building an ark or simulating any of the bible miracles surely has the opposite effect that the faithful are looking for. When I believed, it was a pretty woolly belief that always took a knock when the reality of what was being said was brought home to me.
These stunts just cement in peoples minds how ridiculous the claims of the bible are rather than reenforcing any belief. Shooting themselves in the foot methinks.
Lofty @28
But THE ORIGINAL INNOCENT KIND STILL SUFFERED in their fishy way.
Though you have a damned good point about the tins
First, you haven’t seen the movie so you really can’t claim it’s awful, second we are talking about a Darren Arronofsky film, even is bad films are better than most of the dreck Hollywood pumps out, I will most likely be seeing this film. The CGI effects in the original Titanic were damn good especially for 1997. The story was simple but so what, it was less of the point than a reason for James Cameron to recreate the ship (and to trick Fox into paying for him to take a sub down to film the actual wreck, seriously, that’s why he made the movie).
*sigh* Insects are animals, too.
AND THE FRESHWATER FISH!!!1!!
I don’t know if all brackish-water fish are euryhaline ( = can cope with a wide range of salinity given some time).
David Marjanović
I wasn’t ignoring the poor insects, just including them in ‘animals’
I wasn’t sure about the freshwater fish. Does the flood add so much rain that the water has low enough salinity to spare them? Do they get salted as the waters rise? What happens to them as the waters recede (if they survive till them)?
Erratum: for ‘them’ read ‘then’
I wonder how many people who believe Noah’s Ark was real don’t realise Titanic wasn’t just a Leo DiCaprio film.
But hey, we’re being too skeptical. The Ark held all those animals, and had all the provisions needed to keep them alive, because God used his powers to make it like a cross between a TARDIS and the USS Enterprise. It was bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside, and it had a magic thingy just like a replicator to make all the food and stuff.
Of course, the obvious problem with that explanation is why God bothered to have Noah build a boat, instead of just putting a force field over Noah and animals to keep out the water.
timgueguen “putting a force field over Noah and animals”
Too showy?
Some of the water came from the “fountains of the deep”.
Is that water salty?
menyambal #20
Thumper #25:
I’m also curious about that. I’ll do a quick bit of Google-fu after this comment.
I remember some derailing things. In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, most of the characters on White Base are from a space colony, and while flying through a storm cloud on Earth, a number of them thought the lightning was some new Zeon weapon. In 08th MS Team, Ensign Amada, a space colonist, ends up lost in Earth’s wilderness, falls in swamp water and emerges with leeches all over him, ripping them off. “And they say people live here? I don’t believe it.” We’ve got various sci-fi series where aliens from One Biome Worlds are unfamiliar with certain natural phenomena on Earth or other worlds, as well as humans ignorant of alien plot device weather, necessitating exposition. I once caught some snippet of Third Rock From the Sun where apparently the aliens mistook snow for some apocalyptic event.
I can buy the idea of a culture of humans that is ignorant and incredulous about rain if they never experienced it. But it’s kind of hard for me to imagine a version of Earth functioning without rain. Must be one of the consequences of the vapor canopy, which raised the air pressure and temperature up to Venus proportions and for some ill-described reasons, allowed people to grow to giant proportions, but not after it disappeared into the ether. How else do you explain PYGMIES + DWARVES?
@timgueguen: Yeah, I remember as a kid debating the flood with a friend who ad hocked all the problems with magical “help” from god. They don’t like it when you ask “What does god need with a starship?”
I just visualised a rag-tag group of desert nomads, meeting up one night around a campfire, telling stories to stave off boredom.
The first tells of a flood that filled the valley where he came from one night, and there were hardly any survivors.
The second counters with a story of a flood that filled his valley AND the neighbouring one, lasted for several days, and only one family survived – because the father had the foresight to build a boat.
The next boasts that their flood filled the whole county and lasted a whole month; but their patriarch, warned by the local gods, built a boat big enough to hold his whole family and some of their livestock.
And so it goes around the campfire, each story more impressive (and less likely) than the previous one.
By the time it comes to the last to tell his tale, what is he to do? His story has to top the lot – so, of course, the whole world was flooded for a whole year, and the righteous man saved not only his family and livestock, but all the animals in the world!
… Which story gets taken back to the various tribes, embellished and passed down through the generations? =^_^=
Tigger_the_Wing
So. Four Yorkshiremen?
WhiteHatLurker @17,
Not only that, it would have taken a long time to load the ark in the first place.
Of course you can take this to its logical conclusion and ask why god needed a flood at all.
I really like in the Iron Man stories how in the 90s he finally started getting smart (right around the time that the military was making a big deal about smart munitions, what a coincidence). The old IM built blasts that had bigger and bigger visible effects. The new IM built targeted devices that could streak directly to a vulnerable spot, releasing a payload where it need not be large to have a terrible effect. It’s in the movies at one point where he is facing a tank and sends off a relatively small missile that nonetheless pops the top off the tank. One with any knowledge of tanks presumes that the payload got to the fuel or ammo which, while well protected, can still be hit with a well placed shot.
But god, instead of going for precision, seems to go the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko route where somehow super geniuses haven’t figured out any advantages to aim.
It’s almost like the people who created those stories were completely physics-naive.
What I love the most about the story of Noah’s Ark, aside from the glaring technical issues (ie PZ’s info-graphic), is how idiotic it makes God himself look.
God is supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient. These omni-terms are tossed around a lot, but really think about it: unlimited power and knowledge. Everything God has said or done should always be looked at through that lens, that he is supposed to be perfect with infinite powers.
Just his decision alone to wipe out the human population via rain, without even getting to the rest of the story, undermines the very idea of an omnipotent and omniscient being. How could anyone seriously believe that was the best/smartest/perfect course of action? I’d bet big money that 1st graders could come up with way better ideas. No omniscience needed.
Funny that. I find it frustrating that people who believe this crap cannot see through the very obvious nature of the stories and how they make sense given what people knew about the world at the time.
Doug Little:
I expect most people do, you know. Doesn’t matter, it’s about faith.
ahhhh faith, the catchall of catchall’s.
Doug Little:
Yes. The Jaynestown ep of Firefly covered it nicely:
Actually, this sounds like an argument some new age Christians could potentially make. I haven’t ran across it yet though.
Well, OBVIOUSLY the “gopherwood” that ark was made of was some kind of superwood not seen in the world today (since the seedlings drowned in the flood). Tensile strength exceeding steel, spontaneously absorbs all animal waste, able to be made into structures larger on the inside than the outside, like Dr. Who’s thing that looks like a phone booth….
I also note that the ark as commonly depicted not only has no engine room, it has no means of propulsion or navigation whatsoever – no sails, no ports for oars (and no oarsmen!), no rudder…..
Hey in the construction section for the ark they left out Magic.
NERD SACRILEGE… it’s called the TARDIS.
And Noah looked upon the ark
And despaired, for Noah saw
What was there. And God said,
“Let the animals, two by two,
Sleep with no breath, no food,
No waste. And God looked at the
Ark and it was good. And Noah
Looked at his shovel. And tosseth
it overboard. And it was good.
2.
Al Dente
That’s P. The very next verse gives the J version:
(7 is P because of the raven, J continues 8-12, P has one of it’s formulaic additions in 13 with a bit of J stuck on at the end after which P takes over the plot again.
BeyondUnderstanding, I don’t think the people behind the Noah story actually did believe God was omnipotent. I think their version of God was just a version of the typical tribal strongman of the region with superpowers added.
Thumper and Bronze Dog: Before the flood, the earth was watered by springs and by mists that arose from the ground. That is according to Ham’s _The_Answers_Book_. I am pretty sure that is in the Bible, but I can’t be arsed right now.
I have Ham’s Answers book on the back of the toilet, and am on my sixth reading of it, I think. I find more and more wrong with it, and learn a lot of science checking on him (today it was exponential growth and elephant reproduction).
Ham thinks the flood totally revised all geology, and that there were dinos on the ark. And that it all makes sense, scientifically.
Yeah, the flood story explains nothing and requires a boatload of miracles. I agree that God should have just collected all the animals around Noah, and had him do a Charlton Heston to the water. Or anything else except run a scenario that sounds like a twisted recounting of a farm in springtime.
The tenth month doesn’t refer to the length of time on the water – it refers to a specific date – like October is the tenth month in our calendar. In the Hebrew calendar it’s Tevet (Tebetu in Babylonian – note – that is also where this story came from in the first place!!)
@Thumper: Token Breeder #24
Thank you. I did understand the picture. The caption implies there is a similarity between the two objects, unmentioned in the graphic, yet obvious.
After some thought … I’m guessing the similarity is that they have both sunk. (The “ark” in this case being the theme park.)
@Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden #46
Or biologically-naive. A properly constructed viral disease could do most of the work killing off the doomed. Vaccines would protect those intended to survive. No mess, no fuss, and plants continue to thrive. It is much tidier than this, for example. Oh wait a second – they were naive in many ways. I get it.
@BeyondUnderstanding #47
I’ll be more careful around first grade students. Thanks for the warning.
If the rainbow was supposed to be god’s way of saying “my bad, no more floods”, why do we still have floods?
Because God’s message was not “no more floods”.
I want to know how the olive tree survived. And how something which prefers a dry climate was hardy enough to sprout a sprig after spending months on end underneath the crushing depths of miles of brackish water.
Onamission5,
Maaaaaaaaaaagic!
Amphiox @53
Well, you see the spayshul qualities of the god-sent waters (as in they keep numberless fish and plants alive for 10.3 months) means that the aaark was driven by a difference in surface tension caused by the mountains of poop shovelled out the back. Steering was achieved by varying the mucking out of the elephants versus the camels. Some creationist would have proved this conjecture by putting a scrap of soap on a pop stick in his bath tub. Scale problems? Just invoke godmagic.
According to Hal Sparks, what turned him off xtianity was the ark story, because there’s no way the koalas made it.
Unfortunately, although such a scenario would be convenient for the fundies, in Genesis 6:21 God says to Noah, “You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them,” so it seems as though the animals did indeed consume food during the voyage.
And as for “50,000+ animals,” in Genesis 7:2-3 God commands Noah, “Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.” That’s at least 140,000 birds alone (although fundie creationists will argue that the 10,000-odd bird species were represented by a few hundred bird “baramins” that diversified after the Flood was over — but of course that doesn’t constitute evolution, nosirree). As an aside, how much living and storage space would be realistically required just to keep 14 giraffes, 14 Irish elk, and 14 giant moas alive for a year without them going insane or killing each other? More than existed on the whole ark, I’m guessing.