Noah's Ark

Great Debates
41

His old “Talk Back With Bob Larson” office/studio was about 10 minutes from where I now live.

I’m not sure how that’s relevant, but I felt the need to mention it.

Also, he came to the Tattered Cover (a HUGE bookstore in Denver) when his first “novel” (Dead Air) came out. He was doing a promotion thing. He had several goon-like bodyguards to “protect” him from the many Denver-based Satanists who wanted to silence him. :rolleyes: What a weird little creep. But there was a period, that as much as he pissed me off, I listened every day (mostly in horrified fascination).

Fenris

42

The obligatory link to the appropriate Jack Chick tract.

43

Alleluia! Having read Jack Chick’s stuff, I have seen the light and I know what I must do.

Fenris, have you a contact address for those Denver-based Satanists?

44

How did Noah stop the boat from being filled with water while it rained?

45

That woman reminds me of the recycling dude on the Simpsons:

“It’s mythology, man!”

Then a few panels down: aspirating a Mentos.

Never knew about the tidal waves carving the Grand Canyon, though. The things one learns on the Internet…

46

Dijon: for more info on this and other facts about the flood, check out the world’s dumbest creationist site. Seriously. In all my years of reading about this stuff, no one can beat this guy at dumbness. You’ll learn all about how the world was a perfectly spherical billard ball before the flood, so the flood waters didn’t have to go up too high, but the flood carved mountains and oceans.

I’m utterly convinced that this guy is Jack Chick’s primary source.

Fenris

47

That’s easy. See the very important contributions above by Max Torque and by Sam Stone. The millions of animals sitting in Noah’s four-dimensional tesseract drank it.

48

Oh, of course.

By the way, ‘four-dimensional tesseract’ is rather redundant :slight_smile:

49

Ahh, Bob Larson.

I’m ashamed to say that when I was a gullible teenager I actually gave him a little money. Ick! Patooie!

About that novel, “Dead Air”, the thing I always remember about it is that Cornerstone magazine reviewed it saying, “We have a new genre: Christian p-rn.”

Ahh, Hank Hanagraaff, “The Bible Answer Man”.

Hank is a bad word around my church, even though the leadership has enough class not to mention it officially. I’ve heard him say things on the air directly about my church that were simply untrue. Either he was badly informed and not taking the time to confirm his information before spreading it nationally, or lying. I assume the former, which is barely better.

It kind of makes a mockery of his parent organizations self-proclaimed maxim (and I quote): “In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things charity.”

Their emphasis on creationism also violated one of my basic rules: “Don’t try to prove spiritual reality with science.” Scientific “truth” and understanding changes every few decades. Who wants to now prove that humanity is the center of creation because the universe revolves around the Earth?

Jack Chick? Wow, it’s even worse that I bought a few of those about 12 years ago. I think there’s about 1 of his that’s not basically a bunch of junk. That’s out of what, about 60?

The mention of Larson also reminds me about Mike Warnke the “comedian” (term used loosely) who had everyone convinced that he was a former black mass priest who had done drug running and pretty much everything but assassinate the president.

Cornerstone magazine popped his balloon with a story backed up with 40 column inches of footnotes, proving that his 3 or 4 versions of his biography inherently contradicted each other, and anyway, none of them could have been true, considering the public information about when he entered college, got out of the Navy, etc.

He’s pretty much the entire genesis of that whole “there’s a coven on the corner” mentality that some people had for a while.

50

Don’t feel too bad, before the whole Satanic panic-type hysteria started, there was a period where Larson had a “caller” who was claiming to be prisoner of or victim-to-be of a Satanic ritual abuse cult thing. She’d call every day or two, drop dark hints about what was going to happen to her on Halloween and hang up. This went on for about three weeks before Halloween and it was great radio (although I kept wondering why the cops weren’t being called). I listened intently every day (remember: this started the Satanic Ritual Abuse thing, and it was just [sub]barely[/sub] plausable that there was a couple of nuts stalking this woman. I didn’t believe it as such, but…I almost…believed) Eventually around Halloween, the cops DID get involved (demanding to trace the calls, etc) and suddenly Larson…<ahem> discovered that the woman was having a multiple-personality disorder flashback to abuse she suffered as a child via the cult on Halloween, which was a major anti-climax. But man-oh-man, during that three-week period, I listened.

**

Last I heard, Larson is still claiming that Warnke is legit. (Cornerstone did a couple of big Anti-Bob expose’s as well)

Fenris

51

Speaking of Bob Larson…
On TV, several years ago, he was hawking a video called Disney and the Bible. I should have ordered it at the time for my paralegal pal who works at Disney and would have gotten a kick out of suing Bob and Co.
Anyhow, does anyone know where I could get a copy of it, if it is still available?

52

Wow. I’m convinced. The Earth can’t be that old because there are underwater canyons and mountains that haven’t been eroded, and the Mississippi River delta doesn’t reach all the way to the North Pole. What’s that you say? Plate tectonics account for that? Bah! You will burn, heretic!

I have never witnessed such an stupefying font of misinformation. Well, this site, one of several claiming the Earth is hollow, might compete for that distinction I suppose. How does one even begin combating such troves of nonsense, there is so much to attack…

53

I can’t believe it, but Mike hasn’t changed his story apparently:

His painful past history as a satanist high priest, hippie, drug addict, pusher and Vietnam Marine Corp medic has taught him compassion beyond compare. http://www.mikewarnke.org/biographies.html

My favorite part about this is that not only does he not give in on the subject of his occult activities, but he gets the branch of the service wrong!!!

If Cornerstone had said that he was in the Marines, I’m sure he would have screamed that they somehow couldn’t tell the difference, so their testimony was junk. But all of a sudden he’s an ex-Marine medic. Amazing.

54

OK, it looks like he was attached to a Marine unit, but he’s still stretching the point.

Anyone wondering what this whole deal is should read the article at http://www.cornerstonemag.com/features/iss098/sellingsatan.htm

55

Imagine, if you will, a young JC arriving 3 days late for first semester at lovely, scenic Frostburg State University (teach me to go to London without adequate return plans).

As I’m three days late my assigned roomie has found someone he’d rather room with and asks if I’d be willing to swap.

Little did I know.

My new roomie, Jeff, starts hitting me with Mike Warnke tapes sometime around week 3. I don’t know whether he was just finding himself, saving me because I’m a Jew, or saving me because I’m really not into the whole religion thing.

Time after time after time. Tales of Warnke overcoming the powers of evils and being rescued from his life of sin.

To be honest, though, Jeff was an alright guy. I still see him at cons every once in a while and we had fun when he wasn’t coming at me, full-tilt-boogie from the religious angle.

But, second semester, I still found me some new roomies (on the other side of campus) who were into drugs, girls and games. Really, what’s college all about?

56

For the record, I very much doubt that anyone of a scientific inclination ever tried to “disprove religion”. Yet, there is no doubt that science can be employed to compellingly rebut the empirical claims made by any religion, including the Noah’s Ark fable.

A case in point: Most Creationists and Biblical literalists make much of the so-called “vapor canopy” notion. Not only is there NO scientific support for this idea, it is fairly easily seen to be impossible.

Consider: the earth’s atmosphere is constantly pressing down on all of us, a result of the gravitational effect of the earth on the atmosphere and directly related to the mass of the air above us. There is much less atmosphere above us on mountain tops and in a jet flying at altitude, for example. At sea level, the air above us weighs almost 15 pounds per square inch.

According to the Bible, the “vapor canopy” prior to the Flood would have to contain all the water vapor necessary to rain down and raise the oceans to 15 cubits above the highest mountain. Today, the highest mountain is generally considered to be Mt. Everest. To flood the earth to the point where Everest was covered with 15 cubits of water, over five and a half miles of water above sea level would be required!

The amount of water vapor adequate to produce 5.6 miles of water over sea level weighs as much as 5.6 miles of water for every square inch of the planet. The air pressure at the earth’s surface (where Noah and his family would have struggled uselessly to survive) would thus be equal to 15 psi combined with the weight of 5.6 miles of water in the atmosphere.

This would amount to 13,500 pounds per square inch!

Under such conditions, it would be rather trying to construct an Ark, don’t you think?

As if that wouldn’t be enough of a handicap, the atmosphere would have been nearly 100% water vapor. Since this water didn’t condense out of the air and turn into rain immediately, this would have necessitated that God magically raise the boiling point of water considerably. Thus, on top of the fact that Noah would be about as thick as his skin and utterly unable to stand or move, he would be living in what would amount to a 13,500 psi boiler room.

The point is that invoking “God” as an explanation typically only adds problems rather than solving or reducing them.

57

ambushed…um… you just did what you said people don’t do. It really is no use saying that kind of thing. It’s the same as the religious people and their psuedo-science. That is, the people who you are arguing against aren’t going to change, just like you aren’t going to be changed by what they say. The only thing that happens is that the people who agree with you already, agree with you again.

It’s just a waste of time unless you’re unsure about it in your own mind and want to justify your stance to yourself.

58

apropos: the various stories concerning the Flood were copied from the OT. The assumption made in this thread is that the OT stories are rip-offs of different legends that circulated the area. However, considering that Judaism is the oldest religion in the world, even older than Hinduism, it is quite reasonable to believe that the other cultures copied it. After all, since all societies are offspring of Noah, they would’ve certainly heard his version.

This idea that first cousin relationships are incestual is a western one. In the middle-east, where I am originally from, first cousin marriages are so common that they are almost standard.

59

How do you figure? There’s evidence of Vedic traditions as far back as 7000 BCE, and the Aryans probably got into India , mixing their beliefs with the indigenous beliefs, around 3000 BCE. The Exodus is estimated to have occured around 1250 BCE, which is the earliest Judaism was codified.

60

Um… Kaje… I mean no disrespect, but you made the same major error Sam Stone did. In no way, shape, or form could anyone imagine that my post was an attempt to disprove religion! I would politely ask that you read my posts more carefully.

While the Bible and the Judeo-Christian religions stick mostly to mysticism, superstition, and the transcendent – none of which can be disproved – they also make a number of empirical claims! And empirical claims can be tested by science no matter who makes them!

One of those empirical claims is the Flood story. It is given in the Bible as a historical fact, and a great many believers take it exactly that way. Just because you may not so believe does not make my point any less valid or important.

All those people – of which I suspect you number yourself – who hold that religious empirical claims are completely immune to scientific investigation and criticism are seriously mistaken.

When a religion makes transcendental claims, such as that God loves me or of the existence of an afterlife, I fully acknowledge that science can say absolutely nothing about it. But when a religion makes empirical claims, like the creation of the Earth, the vapor canopy, the Flood, and Noah’s Ark, these are completely empirical claims and are indeed suited to scientific investigation.

Surely you’re not suggesting that empirical claims be given some magical immunity from rational investigation just because they’re written in an ostensibly “holy” book!

Sheesh!

And by the way, I have indeed changed a few believer’s minds with the weight of the scientific evidence against Genesis, the Flood, and Noah’s Ark. And as far as my “ulterior” motives go, I can’t help suspecting from your other posts that you may well be a crypto-Deist or something, which might possibly be biasing your perspectives.