Noah and the Ark

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by pelathais

No. See: Genesis 7:11-12. "... the rain was upon the earth..." after the "windows" in the firmament were opened. Liquid water is NOT the same thing as ice in this context.

Is there water on Mars?

See also this link.

But we're still waiting for you to show us the pictures of the "interstellar clouds of water." You've taunted me about them... lets see what you've got Chris. Show us the pictures. You've been Googling frantically the last two days for them. You've tried to stall by taunting me but time's up: show us the pics!

This is a picture of a stellar cloud I found...

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/b...ages/cloud.jpg

And you still haven't answered my questions either.

I think we're on two different wave lengths.

Where is the watery abyss that was held back by the "firmament?"

You said you had picture of this. Now show us.

I didn't mean that I have a picture of an abyss. I did say that I had pictures of interstellar clouds (from Google lol) that have ice particles (water) that are in the abyss of space.

(I'm secretly hoping that you'll try and get us to envision the earth passing through something like the Orion nebula and saying this was the cause of the flood. You've been close, it's in the back of your mind... why don't you go for it?).

It was a thought rattling around in my head, yes. But I'm an honest man. I couldn't see how earth passing through one of these "clouds" would produce the biblical flood... so I didn't say anything.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by pelathais

Just my humble opinion. Sorry to be so feisty, too. You're a good guy. Gotta check my meds, as they say.

You're alright with me Pel, this is a great conversation.

This is actually the same pic as the other... in a way. The "Hebrew Cosmology" pic has the stars, planets, sun and moon all on the "dome" of the sky. Beyond that was the watery abyss.

This picture takes into account the fact that we've discovered the stars to actually be a bit too massive to fit upon the "dome" and so the artist has simply backed everything away by a factor of who knows how many millions.

Amen.

The problem that I see here is trying to get the water from "the waters above" and onto the surface of the earth.

I was thinking the same thing. I came up with an idea, but it's a bit on the wild side. lol I'm going to consider theoretical quantum physics or more accurately hyperspace physics (personally I know very little about this stuff lol). The idea is that space and time can bend... or be bent. The Bible describes the "windows of heaven". The ancients believed these "windows" to be literal "windows" in the firmament. However, what if these "windows" were "openings" wherein space and time were "bent" to allow waters from above the firmament to enter our atmosphere without actually traveling the distance necessary to traverse the known universe to earth? I'm not sure of how much pressure the waters above the firmament are under, but in my mind I pictured a "window" opening transdimensionally high in our atmosphere through which these "waters" entered our atmosphere. I also don't know the form of these "waters". Are the waters above the firmament liquid, solid (ice), or gas (water vapor)? I imagined water vapor. Perhaps these "windows" were the size of an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper or perhaps the size of your typical bedroom window. When these transdimensional "windows" were "opened" in the heavens the vapor from beyond the firmament poored forth into our atmosphere setting into motion atmospheric conditions leading to massive rains throughout our world. I know it's a wild notion... but God can do anything.

Then we'd have to find some way to accelerate the water up off the earth's surface after the flood.

That's assuming that water levels were what they are now before the flood. What if the oceans and seas were lower before Noah? The flood being on the earth a little over a year would have caused masssive glaciation. We see this geologically. As the waters receded to back below the earth's surface (fountains of the deep) the flood waters subsided to some degree. However water levels were still hightened and the glaciers began to melt and we're still witnessing this. This would imply that perhaps flood waters are still upon our world in the form of the oceans we know today. However, if there were need for a greater explaination the same "windows" could essentially open lower upon the earth and serve as "drains" for a sigificant amount of the flood waters, returning them to beyond the firmament.

Just theorizing in a wild way here. lol

The simplest solution is still to just accept the Bible for what it does say and not to try and force a literal interpretation on Genesis 1 through 11.

Accepting the Bible for what it does say is taking it literally.

[Aquila]

Of course this lends itself to the notion that the ancient cosmology is far more advanced than we assume. Perhaps the ancients knew more about our universe than scientists today.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Aquila

Is there water on Mars?

No, not presently. Just water and CO2 ice. It does appear to have been flowing at some point in time millions of years ago from the erosion and cratering. It looks like subsurface ice warmed and melted for some reason causing erosion patterns that NASA geologists refer to as "wasting." The water then either refroze and has been buried or it sublimated out into space.

Originally Posted by Aquila

This is a picture of a stellar cloud I found...

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/b...ages/cloud.jpg

Did you choose that particular one because it looks like it's "flipping the bird" at me?

That's from the Carina Nebula and there is no doubt lots of water about - but in small quantities compared to everything else. By "small" I mean it's nothing like the amount water to "dust" (and rock) ratio that we find on the earth's surface.

Also, this particular area is bathed in lethal levels of radiation caused by two of the most massive stars that have been identified in the Milky Way. One of them. Eta Carina, is particularly unstable and has been spewing out massive amounts of material.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...EtaCarinae.jpg

As you appear to reason (below), the water from one of these dust clouds could not have been a source of "Noah's Flood." Had the earth passed through one of these regions of space - or if one of these clouds had passed through our region of space - the "nuclear winter" effects would have killed everything on the planet except perhaps bacteria.

Originally Posted by Aquila

I think we're on two different wave lengths.

Probably.

Originally Posted by Aquila

I didn't mean that I have a picture of an abyss. I did say that I had pictures of interstellar clouds (from Google lol) that have ice particles (water) that are in the abyss of space.

The original question sought to find out how the cosmology of Genesis 1 through 11, could be taken literally. The ancient cosmology had a watery abyss which was held back by the solid firmament dome over the earth. When the windows in this dome were opened, the earth was flooded.

The alternative proposed so far, is that the "firmament" was not really a solid dome but a layer of gasses. The "watery abyss" is still missing here, but it may have been supplied by ice crystals embedded within a giant dust cloud 58,786,300,000,000,000 miles away.

Traveling at the speed of light, it would have taken some 10,000 years for those ice crystals to get here - but then their mass would have been converted to pure energy at such an acceleration and the earth would not have been flooded, but bathed in whatever radiation signal is emitted when hydrogen and oxygen are annihilated. I suspect it would have been some sort of x-rays that would have cause serious harm, but little or no flooding on the face of the earth turned toward Carina at the time.

Slowing the ice crystals down to more reasonable speeds would result in the trip still taking longer than a literal reading would allow. Also, we have yet to find anything that would launch our ice on such a journey.

You're better off looking for help from the Oort Cloud of "dirty snowballs" which surround our solar system like a halo. But then again, how could the account in Genesis 6 - 9, be compared to a bombardment of comets upon the earth? The energy released from a single impact would certainly have warranted Noah's attention - just before it killed him.

And then after the flood, how did the water from the killer comets get back into space? I don't think this one works out for us either.

Originally Posted by Aquila

It was a thought rattling around in my head, yes. But I'm an honest man. I couldn't see how earth passing through one of these "clouds" would produce the biblical flood... so I didn't say anything.

I know you are. You're a good man as well. It's just that these issues have been argued out over the past 200 years with Bible literalism getting a sound thumping every time. It can be discouraging to the faith. I was prepared to just walk away from the Book entirely - but I couldn't.

John H. Walton - professor of the OT at Wheaton University in Wheaton, IL, has done some very excellent work in understanding the ancient cosmology and how the divinely inspired message was carried and transmitted through concepts that are simply not accepted today.

He points out that though we don't accept the ancient cosmology - we can still accept the inspired message of the Bible. The Lost World of Genesis One is his most recent book on the subject.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Aquila

Of course this lends itself to the notion that the ancient cosmology is far more advanced than we assume. Perhaps the ancients knew more about our universe than scientists today.

Where are the windows in this firmament? How did the water travel through space and find its way to the earth, flood the earth for a year, and then travel back out into space?

Also, no one even knew galaxies existed (apart from the Milky Way galaxy) until the 1920s. Why didn't the ancient cosmologies communicate that important detail?

How does the expansion of space affect the "waters above?"

Shouldn't the cosmic background radiation be affected as well? There should be some way of at least indirectly detecting the "waters above" - but no one has seriously proposed that any data even hints at such a scenario.

What keeps the "waters above" out at the fringes of the universe? The mass of the waters in the vacuum of space should draw the waters into forming a sphere rather than a hollow bubble.

[Mrs. LPW]

Parting waters is impossible too... as well as walking on them.
In fact, loving a creation that, as a whole, despised and rejected Him seems pretty impossible too.

"For with God..." Luke 1:37

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Aquila

...

I was thinking the same thing. I came up with an idea, but it's a bit on the wild side. lol I'm going to consider theoretical quantum physics or more accurately hyperspace physics (personally I know very little about this stuff lol). The idea is that space and time can bend... or be bent. The Bible describes the "windows of heaven". The ancients believed these "windows" to be literal "windows" in the firmament. However, what if these "windows" were "openings" wherein space and time were "bent" to allow waters from above the firmament to enter our atmosphere without actually traveling the distance necessary to traverse the known universe to earth? I'm not sure of how much pressure the waters above the firmament are under, but in my mind I pictured a "window" opening transdimensionally high in our atmosphere through which these "waters" entered our atmosphere. I also don't know the form of these "waters". Are the waters above the firmament liquid, solid (ice), or gas (water vapor)? I imagined water vapor. Perhaps these "windows" were the size of an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper or perhaps the size of your typical bedroom window. When these transdimensional "windows" were "opened" in the heavens the vapor from beyond the firmament poored forth into our atmosphere setting into motion atmospheric conditions leading to massive rains throughout our world. I know it's a wild notion... but God can do anything.

God by definition can do anything. But the question is, "What did He do?" The fact that there is no geologic evidence for a global flood, nor even for a considerable regional flood lasting a year at any point in the past 4,000 years - why resort to such speculation?

We don't see His "fingerprints" at this "crime scene." In fact, we don't even find evidence that the "crime" took place. Why frame the Almighty for something we have no evidence even happened?

Originally Posted by Aquila

That's assuming that water levels were what they are now before the flood. What if the oceans and seas were lower before Noah? The flood being on the earth a little over a year would have caused masssive glaciation.

How would a flood cause massive glaciation? Water vapor is a potent greenhouse "gas."

Glaciation is caused by the long build up of snow falling upon an area. Over time the weight of the accumulated snow causes the snow and ice to push outward with slow - but incredible forces. We need snow falling, not waters of a flood.

Originally Posted by Aquila

We see this geologically. As the waters receded to back below the earth's surface (fountains of the deep) the flood waters subsided to some degree. However water levels were still hightened and the glaciers began to melt and we're still witnessing this. This would imply that perhaps flood waters are still upon our world in the form of the oceans we know today. However, if there were need for a greater explaination the same "windows" could essentially open lower upon the earth and serve as "drains" for a sigificant amount of the flood waters, returning them to beyond the firmament.

Just theorizing in a wild way here. lol

Yeah. But still, we have no evidence for such a flood (I forget, were you "Global" or "Local" flood? Prax was local, I think I may have mixed you two up in my mind a couple of times).

There is no evidence that all of our known existence is surrounded by a vast watery abyss, or vapor cloud.

There is a lot of water underground (you should see what I looking at in the ground floor bathroom right now); but the mechanisms for bringing just about all of it up onto the surface have left no evidence of themselves.

Originally Posted by Aquila

Accepting the Bible for what it does say is taking it literally.

I find an incredibly important message here too, it just doesn't appear to be a natural history lesson so much as a moral.

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by Mrs. LPW

Parting waters is impossible too... as well as walking on them.
In fact, loving a creation that, as a whole, despised and rejected Him seems pretty impossible too.

"For with God..." Luke 1:37

Again, the question isn't what CAN He do; but what DID He do?

And there is evidence that He can love you, Mrs. LPW.

Knowledge of this love is an important part of having faith in God (Hebrews 11:6). A person has to know that God loves them, probably in order to be saved. But attaching "Flood Geology" and all of its attendants to the Gospel just weighs it down.

How can I convince someone that God really does love them when they see that I've been deceitful about the natural history of the earth? Neither I nor the "god" that I'm trying to peddle in this circumstance are worthy of trust.

How can they say they trust God Whom they haven't seen, if they can't trust the Christians they have seen?

[NotforSale]

Originally Posted by pelathais

Again, the question isn't what CAN He do; but what DID He do?

And there is evidence that He can love you, Mrs. LPW.

Knowledge of this love is an important part of having faith in God (Hebrews 11:6). A person has to know that God loves them, probably in order to be saved. But attaching "Flood Geology" and all of its attendants to the Gospel just weighs it down.

How can I convince someone that God really does love them when they see that I've been deceitful about the natural history of the earth? Neither I nor the "god" that I'm trying to peddle in this circumstance are worthy of trust.

How can they say they trust God Whom they haven't seen, if they can't trust the Christians they have seen?

Another stellar Post, Pel!

[Aquila]

I look at it like this... if we had a time machine and traveled back to the garden of Eden we'd see two adults (Adam and Eve). Upon looking at them, we'd assume they were perhaps in their mid 20's. Yet they might not be 24 hours old. We'd spy a river running through the garden and measure erosion rates and conclude that the river was many years old. Yet it may not have existed the week before. Creation by it's very nature has an appearance of age.