Hey, can you clear this up for me, please? :3

[Afterthought]

Alright, so…

According to the Old Testament, Moses built a giant boat, put two of every animal and seven of every bird on the boat, and waited out a giant flood that destroyed all life on the planet for 40 days and 40 nights.

I’m perfectly down with that.
However…

How did a senior citizen get across to the other side of the world that nobody knew existed until Columbus 2000 years later (or possibly Leif Erikson), capture some turtles, eagles, hummingbirds, llamas, turkeys, and jaguars, and then haul them back across the sea without any dying, illness, or misfortune at sea? And these species here were so spread out, with your turkeys in the Northern half, eagles way up there, and turtles roaming the coasts.

How did we get so many different skin colors if only a white man and his white family were left to repopulate? They must’ve gotton a wicked tan that was so spectacular it changed their genes.

And then their great great grandchildren went back to the Western Hemisphere and abandoned their written language, way of life, and even god, to start a over as wandering natives of what is today America.

Where are my gaps and what am I not getting here?

No sarcasm intended, anywhere.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Alright, so…

According to the Old Testament, Moses built a giant boat, put two of every animal and seven of every bird on the boat, and waited out a giant flood that destroyed all life on the planet for 40 days and 40 nights…
Where are my gaps and what am I not getting here?

To begin…the first big gap is your knowledge of major characters in the Old Testament. The man who built the big boat is Noah, not Moses. Noah proceeded Moses by many, many, many generations. Moses released the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. The story of Moses is found in Exodus (the second book of the Bible) and the story of Noah is found in Genesis, (the first book of the Bible).

How did we get so many different skin colors if only a white man and his white family were left to repopulate? They must’ve gotton a wicked tan that was so spectacular it changed their genes.

We don’t know what Noah’s skin color was. Some of his descendents may have faded, not tanned as you suggested. You’re making a lot of assumptions, then asking questions based on those assumptions.

No sarcasm intended, anywhere.

You say you don’t intend sarcasm, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, (in spite of your signature.) But your knowledge of the Bible and Catholic understanding of Old Testament Bible stories is sadly lacking.

The story of Noah prefigures the story of Christ in Salvation history. You worry about how a guy whose name you don’t remember gathers birds, while you ignore the bigger issues of death and life, sin and salvation.

Quick plot summary: sin bad -->destruction and faith good–>salvation

 

[patrick457]

Alright, so…

According to the Old Testament, Moses built a giant boat, put two of every animal and seven of every bird on the boat, and waited out a giant flood that destroyed all life on the planet for 40 days and 40 nights.

First of all, it’s Noah, not Moses. But we’ll leave that minor quibble aside and get further:

The popular “Noah brought the animals two by two” assumption actually came from two verses (Genesis 6:19-20):

From all life, from all flesh, two from all you must bring into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female: of the birds after their kind, and of the beasts after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.

The next chapter (7:1-4), however, says that:

Then the LORD said to Noah: “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for you alone in this age have I found to be truly just. Of every clean animal, take with you seven pairs, a male and its mate; and of the unclean animals, one pair, a male and its mate; likewise, of every clean bird of the air, seven pairs, a male and a female, and of all the unclean birds, one pair, a male and a female. Thus you will keep their issue alive over all the earth. Seven days from now I will bring rain down on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and so I will wipe out from the surface of the earth every moving creature that I have made.”

How did a senior citizen get across to the other side of the world that nobody knew existed until Columbus 2000 years later (or possibly Leif Erikson), capture some turtles, eagles, hummingbirds, llamas, turkeys, and jaguars, and then haul them back across the sea without any dying, illness, or misfortune at sea? And these species here were so spread out, with your turkeys in the Northern half, eagles way up there, and turtles roaming the coasts.

It’s not necessary that Noah put that he did not know. He could have only put land animals; aquatic animals are perhaps left alone since they are in no danger of losing their natural habitats should a flood come by. Noah needed not worry about the ten thousand-fold species of fish, tunicates, echinoderms, mollusks, coelenterates, protozoans, aquatic mammals, amphibians, arthropods, most reptiles, or even insects!

Personally, I think the Ark contained representatives of “kinds” rather than specific species. The Hebrew word “kind” (min) denotes an organism that reproduces others like itself. The scientific concept of species is much narrower than this; therefore many species can be included in a single biblical “kind.” The word kind is probably closer to the modern taxonomic unit of genus, and in some cases the larger taxonomic unit, family.

How did we get so many different skin colors if only a white man and his white family were left to repopulate? They must’ve gotton a wicked tan that was so spectacular it changed their genes.

First of all, where in the world did you get the idea that Noah and his family were white? Wasn’t the Bible written by Semites in a Semitic culture (that should be common knowledge if it isn’t)? I usually hear about Jesus being mistaken for a white person, thanks to those cheesy ultra-blond depictions of Him – which I really detest, I’ll admit – but Noah’s a first; wasn’t there a theory that the original skin color of human beings were brown or somewhere in that spectrum?

Plus, the reason why we all have different skin colors is mainly to the amount and type of melanin in the skin and to genetics.

 

[John_Lavelle]

Watch the movie Evan Almighty and it will clear up everything for you. I am sorry but I think you were being disingenuous when you claimed no sarcasm. BTW I worked with schizophrenic patients who had both visual and aural hallucinations which were often terrifying and almost always led to desparate isolation. It wasn’t particularly funny or witty.

A cynic knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing- Oscar Wilde, mangled a little

 

[Afterthought]

Watch the movie Evan Almighty and it will clear up everything for you. I am sorry but I think you were being disingenuous when you claimed no sarcasm. BTW I worked with schizophrenic patients who had both visual and aural hallucinations which were often terrifying and almost always led to desparate isolation. It wasn’t particularly funny or witty.

A cynic knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing- Oscar Wilde, mangled a little

I’m not a big fan of movies, mainly because I have to really want to see them or have to have nothing else to do, otherwise I’ll lose focus at slow parts and find something more urgent to do.

I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic anywhere, really: I want answers to my questions, and if they were presented in a sarcastic way, I suppose I didn’t do a well enough job of presenting it. But those are my questions, straightforward.

 

[adrift]

It may not have been a world wide flood but only a local flood. To the people it would have seemed a world event.

 

[ccolley2]

Alright, so…

According to the Old Testament, Moses built a giant boat, put two of every animal and seven of every bird on the boat, and waited out a giant flood that destroyed all life on the planet for 40 days and 40 nights.

I’m perfectly down with that.
However…
Your question:
How did a senior citizen get across to the other side of the world that nobody knew existed until Columbus 2000 years later (or possibly Leif Erikson), capture some turtles, eagles, hummingbirds, llamas, turkeys, and jaguars, and then haul them back across the sea without any dying, illness, or misfortune at sea?
answer: God

And these species here were so spread out, with your turkeys in the Northern half, eagles way up there, and turtles roaming the coasts.
Your Question:
How did we get so many different skin colors if only a white man and his white family were left to repopulate?
Answer:God

And then their great great grandchildren went back to the Western Hemisphere and abandoned their written language, way of life, and even god, to start a over as wandering natives of what is today America.

Where are my gaps and what am I not getting here?

No sarcasm intended, anywhere.

Just kidding (kinda). In the first paragraph you bring up the story of Noah in Genesis. Stories in the Bible cannot be explained by using logical/mathematical/scientific reasoning. The thing about the Bible is that it doesn’t need to be “proven scientifically”. It is a collection of different styles/types of writing. Faith is belief in the absence of proof. For Christians, when we hear stories like this one, we just assume that God did a miracle(like the feeding of the 5,000). So for people who don’t believe, then all the logical proof in the world will not help in strengthening their belief. CAN we prove that a “Senior citizen” like Noah can do miraculous things, NO. Do we need to??

As to the Genetics question:

I can tell you that professional Anthropologists go to conventions and get into very heated debates about how early human variation/genentics occurred. So “the jury is still out” on how, when and where it occurred.

Pax Christi,
CC

 

[patrick457]

I’m not a big fan of movies, mainly because I have to really want to see them or have to have nothing else to do, otherwise I’ll lose focus at slow parts and find something more urgent to do.

I wasn’t trying to be sarcastic anywhere, really: I want answers to my questions, and if they were presented in a sarcastic way, I suppose I didn’t do a well enough job of presenting it. But those are my questions, straightforward.

Okay then. But I’d still really like to pick nits on that “Noah being white” statement – where did you get that idea, anyways? (no, I’m not being racist, I’d just like to clear that up)

 

[codebilly]

Alright, so…

According to the Old Testament, Moses built a giant boat, put two of every animal and seven of every bird on the boat, and waited out a giant flood that destroyed all life on the planet for 40 days and 40 nights.

I’m perfectly down with that.
However…

How did a senior citizen get across to the other side of the world that nobody knew existed until Columbus 2000 years later (or possibly Leif Erikson), capture some turtles, eagles, hummingbirds, llamas, turkeys, and jaguars, and then haul them back across the sea without any dying, illness, or misfortune at sea? And these species here were so spread out, with your turkeys in the Northern half, eagles way up there, and turtles roaming the coasts.

How did we get so many different skin colors if only a white man and his white family were left to repopulate? They must’ve gotton a wicked tan that was so spectacular it changed their genes.

And then their great great grandchildren went back to the Western Hemisphere and abandoned their written language, way of life, and even god, to start a over as wandering natives of what is today America.

Where are my gaps and what am I not getting here?

No sarcasm intended, anywhere.

Noah made the ark from גפר a word not otherwise known in the Bible or in Hebrew. It is an unknown substance. We call it “gopher wood” but that is because the translators don’t know what to make of it.

Also, pre-deluge there could have been all kinds of technology to build things we can duplicate today. Take the great pyramid of Egypt as an example. Water erosion on the Sphinx indicates it was there before the deluge (flood).

 

[Afterthought]

Okay then. But I’d still really like to pick nits on that “Noah being white” statement – where did you get that idea, anyways? (no, I’m not being racist, I’d just like to clear that up)

Based on citizens of the middle east today, I’d assume olive-like to darker skins, but with Bible I get Jesus, and with Jesus I get white. -shrugs- Stereotypical assumption.