Patrick said:
No, it would still be incumbent on you to prove how it got there.
Just because it’s there, and it matches a Bible story, doesn’t prove God put it there.
Jeff
A huge, wooden box on the side of a mountain, hmmm?
It doesn’t sound much like a large boat, but it does sound a lot like a large barn.
Maybe the story of the Flood grew a out of a “snipe-hunt” type tale. The traveler asks the owner of a REALLY HUGE barn on the side of a mountain “what’s that? and how did it get there?”. The farmer makes up a cock & bull story to fool the “city-slicker”.
No miracles required. Just one cranky old farmer.
You should tell the truth, expose the lies and live in the moment."-Bill Hicks
“You should tell the lies, live the truth and expose yourself.” - Bill Clinton
dhanson:
Getting back to the subject here is really a fruitless endeavor especially since Pat is relying on
Which, in even simpler terms is*:
*This quotation is what should’ve been posted in lieu of the “unknown’s” statement, as they are equivalent.
Well I for one would take such a discovery as highly important. it would require an explanation, and as you describe it, I would say that someone had built a large boat for the transportation of animals. Whether they did this because they expected a flood would still be debatable; they may have done it to transport animals on a large waterway. Such a boat would then float if there were subsequently a flood. Although a 500’ vessel does make such a commercial use unlikely, I admit, and the cube shape is about as stupid a shape for a boat as can be imagined, but then this whole ridiculous premise is hypothetical anyway. At any rate, a truly enormous flood would have had to occur, at least around Ararat, to deposit the thing up there at any height, and that would surely have left enormous markes on the surrounding landscape - which is where we should first turn to for “further” evidence. Erosion patterns should be visible.
There. I’ve answered. Now we’re left with, so what? CKDexterhaven made a good point, why make your hypothetical so obscure? Why not ask how nonbelievers would deal with TRULY incontrovertible evidence of Biblical truth? Say a personal visitation by God, that I was sure did not arise from those tricks of the human psyche we all share and that lead people to believe in…well, pick something you don’t believe in that others do. Islam, Buddhism, whatever. ESP. Bigfoot. Whatever you think other people are misguided about. if I could be sure I were not falling prey to the same type of mistakes, I would take such a visitation as proof of God’s existence. I would believe, and be devout in my belief, and I would venture most atheists here would say the same. And if God told me that the Bible was, indeed, his message, and not the Koran or anything else, well then I guess I’d believe that too.
Why is any of this important to you? These hypotheticals lead nowhere since none of it has happened, nor is likely to. is it because you hold out the childish hope that Noah’s Ark actually WILL be found?
I debated Noah’s Ark some months ago on this board. The most sensible responders, from among the devout, held (as my admittedly faulty memory recalls) that (a) the number of species was restricted to those that were important to the animal husbandry of the day, and maybe a few other local species, (b) the flood was local, not global, and God’s wish was to remake a region of the middle east, not wipe out those sinful Filipinos and American Indian tribes, and © the Genesis version of the tale is an adaptation of an older story, either from the oral tradition of “the people who would later become the Hebrews” (for lack of a better term), or from a closely related group.
Some of those believers may want to correct me there, but that is the only “believing” version of the story I’ve heard that is not 100% completely untenable right from the outset.
Well, OK, Pashley. Now you’ve got me started, and like a lot of old sailors I’m going to be hard to shut up, once I get rolling on the sea stories. On your head be it.
A flat bottomed box will float, in a tank, but to say it can’t be turned over is, umm, not very realistic at best. Big waves can turn over very large ships, and have done so many times.
You said “to speculate that waves were that high is just speculation.” Well, that’s true, because if you try to calculate what the effects of continual rainfall of 350 inches an hour for 960 hours straight all the parameters for weather prediction go so far off the scale that nobody could possible forecast what would happen. But you can be sure that there would be some very very heavy weather associated with a storm like that. And under any reasonable (non-supernatural) weather conditions you can predict fairly well what the waves are going to do, and you had better be able to if you want to survive on the sea. I’m not going to get into sea states and wave progression
right now because I want to talk about the Ark, but if you want I’ll post some weather stuff later.
Where were we? Right, box shaped boats. Even very small flat bottomed boats are only
suitable for inshore or river use, in part because they pound so badly in any kind of chop that they’ll shake your teeth out, if they don’t come apart first. Water is incompressible, as we all learned in high school, and if you pick up something flat and drop it a few feet, the water behaves a lot like concrete. (Think about a bellyflop off the high board, and your belly isn’t that flat.) (At least mine isn’t.)
If you don’t believe me, go rent a racing sailboat like an A-scow, which is somewhat flat underneath, and take it out on a lake when it’s blowing up and see what happens.
I once sailed an old 45’ catamaran from Ecuador to Mexico. It had a sort of pod between the twin hulls, about 20 feet long and 4 feet wide, with a flat bottom that was normally more than 2 feet above the water.
Every time we hit a wave just so, I was reminded of the time I tried to drive a VW van down a 4 foot high ramp and the ramp was one bay to the left of where I drove out.
The pounding is bad enough; the structural problems are much worse. A square corner in a boat puts incredible loads on the fasteners when a force is applied away from the corner. The Ark was supposed to be 50 cubits- 75-90 feet- wide. Push up on the middle of the bottom and you get a lever acting on the fasteners of the corner that far exceeds the strength of any known material, let alone gopher wood, whatever that was. (Nobody knows, AFAI can find out.)
In my second post, I said that a boxboat was a hydrodynamic (how it reacts to the ocean), structural (how it’s put together) and functional (how it works as a machine to carry things) nightmare. I’ve mentioned a couple of the hydrodynamic and structural problems- just scratching the surface; there are lots of others I’ve left out. As for functional, again I’ll just note one: a flat bottomed Ark wouldn’t have a bilge. That’s the lowest part of the boat, under what you would call the floor in a house but don’t in a boat; it’s where all the water that leaks into the vessel accumulates so you can pump it out again. Also all the other unpleasant stuff that you absolutely don’t want washing up and down the inside of the boat, and that’s, in most non-Ark situations, a lot less unpleasant than what Noah would have had washing up and down his boat’s insides. Believe me, you need a bilge.
As far as the impossibility of the boat-shaped boat, I mentioned that if asked I would document my claims at length, and I will, only not tonight. I live outside a city of 350,000 people that, the last time I checked, had 14 lines for internet connections, so I can only post late at night. I’ve gotta work tomorrow, and anyway those of you that aren’t all that interested in boats are probably sufficiently bored, so I’ll sign off. Maybe tomorrow I’ll send some more. Adios.
Pashley, I agree with Sam here - you can’t use some science to prove your theory, then disallow the rest of it because it doesn’t. Either use faith or reason, but you can’t use only parts of both that verify your hypothesis.
And Mapache, I think my father would fall in love with you quite easily. 
You need to post more often.
Esprix
I concur that the existence of a “god” cannot be proven with science; however, how does a “need for faith” have any bearing on that arguement? Perhaps more central to the aim of the OP is the question, “Why do some have a need for faith?”
Actually God mainted a close relationship with Man up until the time of Noah. But they became so wicked, he was sorry he ever created them, and was ready to not only wipe them out, but the entire Earth (Genesis 6:13)They knew he was there, but still continued to sin. Dummies.
How do you propose defending against something that could wipe us out with a thought?
I like that Bill of Rights thing you got going on there, however, you should remember that God is a loving God, but a just God, and as such, is worthy of our worship.
Wouldn’t you feel natural attraction to an entity that can give you everlasting life, unconditional love?
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
That’s a stick-your-head-in-the-sand response, Andros. :rolleyes:
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
How dare you malign the holy name of the Invisible Purple Unicorn? You will surely forever reside in the Horrible Land of Ugly Paisley Prints upon your passing over to the Great Fields of Clover!
Seriously, why do you say that? A Hindu could just as easily say Vishnu put it there; a Roman (Greek?) would have said Poseidon put it there; A Buddhist would say Buddah put it there (or ignore it completely as irrelevant); a Movementarian would say The Leader put it there {Simpsons reference!}; and you say God put it there. What makes you so special?
I cringe at your answer, which I predict will be, in a nutshell, “Because I’m right.” One of the most smug, offensive, egotistical, arrogant things I ever saw was a button that read, “You’d smile, too, if you were going to Heaven.”
Esprix
I object to your referring to a tenet of our religion as being a “stick-your-head-in-the-sand” response, pashley. I fail to see why our belief that the Invisisble Pink (get it right, Andros, Esprix 
) Unicorn’s (pbuh) bath toy resides on top of a mountain is any more deserving of being mocked than a God that would drown millions of innocent animals because He was annoyed at a few hominids. If the IPU wanted to wipe out a few evil humans, She’d just do it, and not mess around with such tedious impossible-boat building and lengthy floods.
Ah, my friend, but it was alledged that a boat the dimensions of which God himself gave, couldn’t float, yet that has been shown to be true (at least at a scale-model and wave tank level).
I might submit it is necessary to ‘straddle the fence’, by the fact of the interface between God and Man.
But your’re right, if God commanded Noah to build it, washing over the world shoud be no problem!
Again, referring back to my OP, if the Ark were to be found high on Ararat, it would be interesting to hear what the non-believers of flood theory might say.
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
Ah, no, if you don’t believe a flood put there, YOU explain to me how it got there. That was the point of the OP.
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
Oh c’mon, people in a third-world country are going to carry what very sparse amount of wood they can find up a mountain to build a barn?
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
Hardly, Monty, but thanks for showing us your ignorancein not being able to glean the meaning of the statement.
I’ll make it simple for you.
If you have faith, you don’t need to ‘prove’ anything, faith in itself is enough.
If you don’t have faith, no amount of proof will be enough for you.
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
Don’t go around saying this as fact when you cannot cite the source, and the best you can come up with is “I read it somewhere.” In this instance, I am much more apt to take an experienced sailor’s opinion on the subject than yours.
Esprix
Based on those terms alone, I would say that a) it would have to be carried up there, or b) somehow it flew up there, or c) God put it there. In any of those cases, the whole Noah story doesn’t wash (pun intended).
But I suspect that this is not the answer that you are looking for. What you want is for people to say “Then I’ll believe in God, give up all of my wordly possessions, and join the priesthood.” It’s clear that you don’t want scientific discourse here, you want people to believe in God. Sorry, Pat, some people just won’t.
Ah, well, now that’s interesting, although I still think you’re expecting us to splutter and wave our arms so you can point a finger and say, “Ah-HA!”
How did a hypothetical boat of that size get up on the side of a mountain? Hmmm… I’m going to wait and see what others have to say about that, but I’m intrigued…
Esprix
Actually, I don’t think we’ll ever see such overt evidence, “proving” God. If we did, we wouldn’t need faith, which He asks us to have. I think we can give evidence though.
Ignoring your personal slam, I posted this simply to ensue a debate, which boils down to faith versus no faith. This board is “Great Debates” is it not? I would like to ask you, why do have to be hostile with a remark like that? Would it threaten you, if the Ark, or some other Christian artifact were found?
You’re right, it is not tenable right off the bat.
Would travelling to the moon have been tenable a 100 years ago?
Machines that could compose music, art, play chess or talk?
My point is, because we can’t explain something immediatley, doesn’t mean we should discount it’s occurence just as quick.
Patrick Ashley
“For those who believe, no evidence is necessary; for those who don’t believe, no evidence is enough.” -Unknown
And you still have not provided a source for that assertion. Not to mention, a scale model does not always act the same as a real-life model. I can make a scale wooden model of a two-mile high building (say, I’ll make it two inches high, and, oh, 1/16 of an inch wide, rather resembling a thick toothpick). I set it up and blow on it with the force of winds that I expect it to encounter, and it stands. Well, great…so a two-mile high building made of wood can stand? Uh…no. A two inch piece of wood will hold up a lot better in a wave tank than a two-hundred foot piece of wood will in a real ocean, and that has to be taken into account.
Maybe the mountain rose under the boat. Islands are formed that way, after all. Now, a volcano rising up would probably burn up the boat, but perhaps an earthquake in which one plate is thrust up into the air, forming a mountain?
I have no problem with the possibility, even probablity that it might’ve been a flood that put this hypothetical boat on a mountain. But there would need to be further evidence to prove it was the biblical whole-earth flood, and an explanation why we cannot find any other evidence of said flood, and reasons why the boat is not the boat from one of the other hundreds of flood myths, etc., etc., as others have stated.