Noah and the Flood

[deacon blues]

Frankly, the basis of my disbelief in many LDS teachings is based on the irrationality of the official LDS stance on certain fundamental teachings. See this example from lds.org below:

Flood at Noah’s Time
See also Ark; Noah, Bible Patriarch; Rainbow.
During Noah’s time the earth was completely covered with water. This was the baptism of the earth and symbolized a cleansing (1 Pet. 3:20–21).
God will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, Gen. 6:17 (Moses 7:34, 43, 50–52; 8:17, 30).
The waters of the flood were upon the earth, Gen. 7:10.
God set a bow in the cloud as a token of the covenant, Gen. 9:9–17.
After the waters had receded, the land of America became a choice land, Ether 13:2.
The wicked shall perish in the flood, Moses 7:38; 8:24.

Why hasn't lds.org come up with an essay justifying this official belief in Bible fundamentalism? Surely they could play "plain and precious parts removed" card in combination with historicity of the BOM world view. But they haven't done it. They just leave the rationalization to FAIR. Any insights as to why?

[wtfluff]

...
Why hasn't lds.org come up with an essay justifying this official belief in Bible fundamentalism? Surely they could play "plain and precious parts removed" card in combination with historicity of the BOM world view. But they haven't done it. They just leave the rationalization to FAIR. Any insights as to why?

Without a literal flood and literal tower of babel, the Jaredite's can't exist, and thus the Book of MORmON can't have any basis in reality. (Not that there aren't hundreds if not thousands of other reasons why BoM has no basis in reality...)

It's much easier to let apologists spew idiotic answers and wallow in plausible deniability.

[Gatorbait]

There's not much in the Old Testament that I've got much use for apart from some of the Psalms and things that aren't just plain silly, like God killing off everything in the world that wasn't in the ark. Good grief. I know, I know, some theologians have answers for the flood, rain just happened like it's done in California this year and kept raining and raining and raining like the pioneer children walked and walked.....annnnd walked. I guess back then people and animals were not wise enough to come out of the rain, get on their own boats, go to higher ground and so on and so forth and were were drowned by God. God needed to make a point. Wasn't going to just make pillars of salt out of them like poor ol' Lot's wife. At least they had a lifetime supply of salt. Was it Kosher salt? Hmmmm. She was Jewish wasn't she? Can't remember. Or burn them up, or flies bears eating them up.

They must had some good laughs though, watching Noah herd elephants, rhinos, giraffes, bears, lions into a boat. Poor ol' Noah didn't have any skin left, being drug all over hell and half of Mississippi by the horses on the American continent and cape buffalos and the like. Whew. Good laughs. Good times....then the rains came.

Why doesn't the church admit this Noah and the ark business is total B.S.? Maybe it's because they don't want to appear non-Christian. Bad press. Bad everything. Yet still and all, the only ones who feel Mormons are Christians are- you guessed it- Mormons. (Sigh)

[dogbite]

Noah is attested in all the modern revelation: book of Abraham, doctrineand covenants, book of Mormon, conference sessions...

Joseph mentions having seen others in vision, including Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, but does not detail their association (D&C 128:20-21). President John Taylor identified yet others who ministered to the Prophet, notably Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (JD 17:374; 18:325-26; 21:65, 94, 161; 23:48).

https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Visions_of_Joseph_Smith

To soft pedal Noah you have to throwvJS jr and all modern revelation under the bus which is to deny the very premise that gives the leadership its power and authority. And even FAIR can't make that move.

Noah is the specific issue that broke my shelf.

[Hagoth]

Why hasn't lds.org come up with an essay justifying this official belief in Bible fundamentalism?

They don't have to. They have the entire Abrahamic world on their side when it comes to the Bible, and that's whose respect, especially from the Christian world, they care about. They need apologetics to explain away all of the unique and uncomfortable wackiness that stands between them and that world.

[Gatorbait]

Dogbite wrote: "Noah is the specific issue that broke my shelf."

Yowser- first time I've ever heard of Noah and the ark being a shelf breaker to anyone. Having passed that old wore-out story off together with half the other nonsense in the Old Testament years ago, it is surprising to hear that of you. I mean that as a compliment by the way as your posts are quite meaningful and your depth of understanding regarding church matters impressive to say the least.

[2bizE]

Noah and the ark was my first real broken shelf. Mid 40’s and I finally allowed myself to analyze this story and agree that there was no way all of the animals on earth could fit in that boat. I allowed myself to believe this must be a symbolic story…then I moved on to Adam and Eve….

[deacon blues]

Noah and the ark was my first real broken shelf. Mid 40’s and I finally allowed myself to analyze this story and agree that there was no way all of the animals on earth could fit in that boat. I allowed myself to believe this must be a symbolic story…then I moved on to Adam and Eve….

I think for many people Old Testament myths don't really break their shelf- they seem too distant. More immediate matters like bias against women in leadership or LGBTQ's make people more emotional.

[2bizE]

Noah and the ark was my first real broken shelf. Mid 40’s and I finally allowed myself to analyze this story and agree that there was no way all of the animals on earth could fit in that boat. I allowed myself to believe this must be a symbolic story…then I moved on to Adam and Eve….

I think for many people Old Testament myths don't really break their shelf- they seem too distant. More immediate matters like bias against women in leadership or LGBTQ's make people more emotional.

I think you are right Deacon. As a TBM, I had a shield up to prevent myself from analyzing and developing my own conclusions on specific Mormon doctrine. The Noah and the Ark story was so distant and not necessarily specific to Mormonism that I was able to allow myself to let my guard down just to analyze that….this led me to contemplate other stories. Once I realized these OT stories I had been taught as truth, particularly Adam and Eve, and there was no way they could be, I started to doubt Mormon specific doctrines and stories I had been told….years later and down a seemingly endless rabbit hole, I find myself not believing religion at all.

[lostinmiddlemormonism]

Have you ever been in a rainstorm? A really, really bad rain storm? One where you can't see to drive? One where you are soaked to the skin before you make it 15 feet from the door? That is a rain storm that is delivering .5" per hour. A big hurricane might be able to deliver an inch an hour.

Mount Everest rises 29302 feet above mean sea level or 351,624".
Mount Olympus goes 9570 feet or 114,840".
Denali is 20,310 feet or 243,720"
Aconcagua? 22,837 or 274,044"

Now let's assume it really did rain for 40 days and 40 nights. That is 40 24 hour periods or a total or 57,600 minutes. If we are to believe the account in Genesis we have to believe that it rained:

119 inches per hour, 119x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Olympus.
253 inches per hour, 253x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Denali.
285 inches per hour, 285x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Aconcaqua.
366 inches per hour, 366x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Everest.

Now we have the problem of the animals. With more than 8 billion people on the planet we have discovered 5 totally new species of animals just since the beginning of 2023. One month! 5 new species of animal never before known to science. These aren't little microscopic animals either. One is a mammal the size of a shrew, 1 snake, 1 frog, and 2 lizards. If 8 billion people have missed them for more than 200 years of animal classification Noah must have really been amazing! And the travel! He had to go to South Pole to get the penguins and the North Pole to get the polar bears and everywhere in between.

Have you been to a zoo? Imagine the difficulty of maintaining all those different habitats (cold, heat, dry, wet, high and low pressure for elevations) and all on a wooden ark! Amazing.

Then we have my favorite. The fishes. I own aquariums. Fresh and Salt water. Get to much salt content or dissolved solids in a fresh water tank? Dead fish. Get to low of a salt content in a marine aquarium? Dead fish. If you think the fish are hard...try keeping stony corals. Not only is the salinity a problem but so is the light penetration. Get it wrong? Dead corals, and corals are animals too.

So imagine with me, if you will, dumping 29,302 feet of freshwater rain into those oceans. Every saltwater fish and coral on the planet - dead. Think it rained salt water? Well, you have some scientific challenges, but I'll play along...every freshwater species is dead.

So we are left with Noah having to collect every species of salt and freshwater fish into the ark too. Do you think the blue whales got along with the tigers?

But you just need to doubt your doubts and God is a god of laws or else he would cease to be God and he does move in mysterious ways, so I just need to have faith and know that Noah was a true prophet in the name of cheese and rice and ramen.

-lost

[Just This Guy]

Have you ever been in a rainstorm? A really, really bad rain storm? One where you can't see to drive? One where you are soaked to the skin before you make it 15 feet from the door? That is a rain storm that is delivering .5" per hour. A big hurricane might be able to deliver an inch an hour.

Mount Everest rises 29302 feet above mean sea level or 351,624".
Mount Olympus goes 9570 feet or 114,840".
Denali is 20,310 feet or 243,720"
Aconcagua? 22,837 or 274,044"

Now let's assume it really did rain for 40 days and 40 nights. That is 40 24 hour periods or a total or 57,600 minutes. If we are to believe the account in Genesis we have to believe that it rained:

119 inches per hour, 119x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Olympus.
253 inches per hour, 253x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Denali.
285 inches per hour, 285x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Aconcaqua.
366 inches per hour, 366x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Everest.

Don't be bringing math into this! there is no way to get people to loose interest faster than math!

Maybe that's why i am so weird. I love this sort of stuff. Fascinating analysis, Lost!! Thanks.

[blazerb]

Have you ever been in a rainstorm? A really, really bad rain storm? One where you can't see to drive? One where you are soaked to the skin before you make it 15 feet from the door? That is a rain storm that is delivering .5" per hour. A big hurricane might be able to deliver an inch an hour.

Mount Everest rises 29302 feet above mean sea level or 351,624".
Mount Olympus goes 9570 feet or 114,840".
Denali is 20,310 feet or 243,720"
Aconcagua? 22,837 or 274,044"

Now let's assume it really did rain for 40 days and 40 nights. That is 40 24 hour periods or a total or 57,600 minutes. If we are to believe the account in Genesis we have to believe that it rained:

119 inches per hour, 119x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Olympus.
253 inches per hour, 253x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Denali.
285 inches per hour, 285x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Aconcaqua.
366 inches per hour, 366x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Everest.

Don't be bringing math into this! there is no way to get people to loose interest faster than math!

Maybe that's why i am so weird. I love this sort of stuff. Fascinating analysis, Lost!! Thanks.

The hardcore apologists will tell you that there were no mountains before the flood. The continents were all combined together in Pangaea until the days of Peleg. Radioactive decay didn't happen as we see it today. Light did not refract. In order to accept a worldwide flood, you need to be unaware of any sort of science or be almost totally disconnected from reality. All science comes as close to proving that the flood did not occur as is possible.

[moksha]

The Noah story was borrowed from Gilgamesh. It is fictional; any religious traditions expounding on this story are also fictional.

[nibbler]

Have you ever been in a rainstorm? A really, really bad rain storm? One where you can't see to drive? One where you are soaked to the skin before you make it 15 feet from the door? That is a rain storm that is delivering .5" per hour. A big hurricane might be able to deliver an inch an hour.

Mount Everest rises 29302 feet above mean sea level or 351,624".
Mount Olympus goes 9570 feet or 114,840".
Denali is 20,310 feet or 243,720"
Aconcagua? 22,837 or 274,044"

Now let's assume it really did rain for 40 days and 40 nights. That is 40 24 hour periods or a total or 57,600 minutes. If we are to believe the account in Genesis we have to believe that it rained:

119 inches per hour, 119x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Olympus.
253 inches per hour, 253x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Denali.
285 inches per hour, 285x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Aconcaqua.
366 inches per hour, 366x harder than a major hurricane, everywhere on earth for 40 consecutive days and nights in order to cover Everest.

Cracks knuckles...

Before the fall the world was relatively flat, there were no mountains, 500 feet above sea level and the Adamites are starting to get nosebleeds. To get to the top of Mound Enoch (750'), the highest point in Pangea, required a Sherpa.

God really liked a spot of land in the middle of Pangea that we call Missouri today and god also got the bright idea that it would be nice if only chosen people lived there. It was the first instance of gentrification in human history. The problem was that it was too accessible by the common riff-raff. They could just walk right on in. God needed to break Pangea into chunks as a form of access control.

Breaking the land into chunks would cause a lot of earthquakes, earthquakes that might wake up all the good people from their naps, so god got a bright idea. What if there was this layer of water to buffer some of the earthquakes' kinetic energy. Put all the good people on a boat and as an added bonus, everyone not good enough to live in Missouri drowns. Win-win.

God flooded the earth with 10,000 or so feet of water, enough to make sure a toe wasn't sticking out during the baptism. Then once the earth had been baptized god started moving tectonic plates underwater. God had to be careful, making sure the good people's boat was on the opposite end of the globe from the plate that god was currently working on, far enough away to protect them from any tidal waves that could result. That's why it took a whole year, to make sure that the waves didn't get too high to interfere with the good people's boat. During this time mountains would poke up out of the water forming those places you mentioned.

That's why mountains are jagged today. If tectonic plates really only moved a few inches a year then the mountains would have eroded just as quickly as they were being built up. That's also why you don't hear much about mountains in the Bible until after the flood.

So in summary, the world was mostly flat pre-flood, it only rained a few thousand feet, and the flood waters lubricated Pangea up enough to break it into bits. Then the good people come out of the boat and breed like rabbits to populate Asia so people can eventually come from there across the land bridge to... oops. A security hole in god's access control to the promise land. Riff-raff just walked right on into Missouri. The whole reason god did everything in the first place, all shot to $#!+.

[Hagoth]

The hardcore apologists will tell you that there were no mountains before the flood. The continents were all combined together in Pangaea until the days of Peleg. Radioactive decay didn't happen as we see it today. Light did not refract. In order to accept a worldwide flood, you need to be unaware of any sort of science or be almost totally disconnected from reality. All science comes as close to proving that the flood did not occur as is possible.

And night and day were created before the sun. And fleas were the size of mountains, and rivers flowed with Fresca. It doesn't say that, but if it did people would just accept along with all of the other wackiness.

[Hagoth]

A TBM friend of mine saw all of these problems and came to the conclusion that it only had to rain really hard for a short period during those 40 days, just enough to cover all of the mountains with 1/4 inch of water. Baptism requires total submersion, but there is no minimum depth specification. The rest of the rain was just to fill the lowlands enough to kill everybody and keep the ark afloat.

[wtfluff]

A TBM friend of mine saw all of these problems and came to the conclusion that it only had to rain really hard for a short period during those 40 days, just enough to cover all of the mountains with 1/4 inch of water. Baptism requires total submersion, but there is no minimum depth specification. The rest of the rain was just to fill the lowlands enough to kill everybody and keep the arc afloat.

Kinda "funny" how there wasn't another human bean on the face of the earth who owned a boat during "Noah's time", isn't it?

[Hagoth]

A TBM friend of mine saw all of these problems and came to the conclusion that it only had to rain really hard for a short period during those 40 days, just enough to cover all of the mountains with 1/4 inch of water. Baptism requires total submersion, but there is no minimum depth specification. The rest of the rain was just to fill the lowlands enough to kill everybody and keep the arc afloat.

Kinda "funny" how there wasn't another human bean on the face of the earth who owned a boat during "Noah's time", isn't it?

Yeah, pretty funny. Right up there with the creationist explanation for why the fossil record has simpler organisms at the bottom and more developed ones at the top: because the smarter, faster ones ran uphill and the really smart ones clung to logs as long as possible.

I still haven't heard an apologist deal with the problem of Native Americans flourishing 10,000 years before Adam and Eve were picking fruit in Missouri (which the BoM DNA essay admits), and continuing uninterrupted to the present day.

[dogbite]

I had put the bible in the allegorical category prior to my faith crisis. But it was the attestation of Noah in modern revealed scripture that triggered the collapse.

[blazerb]

I had put the bible in the allegorical category prior to my faith crisis. But it was the attestation of Noah in modern revealed scripture that triggered the collapse.

Exactly. It is nearly impossible to maintain an allegorical interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis in light of Mormon scriptures. I tried, but McConkie and JFS were right. If evolution is true, the church is false. That makes the most sense.

If you're interested in hearing what evangelical creationists say, On No Ross and Carrie are doing a great series where Ross went to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky along with a bunch of home schoolers. It's frustrating but informative to hear how they get the science so wrong in order to maintain belief. The first episode can be found here: https://ohnopodcast.com/investigations/ ... at-edition. They are up to episode 9 in the series. It's kind of long.