Noah's Ark Explanation

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ServantofChristos

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How would you explain the story of Noah’s Ark to an Atheist/Agnostic?
 
I would start by describing historical accounts from nearly every ancient culture. They all have great flood narratives. The “jewish” flood, as narrated in Genesis, is an account that cleared up a lot of the myths surrounding the historic flood.

Think of the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Epic of Atrahasis, they both account a world flood.

Also, here is a key for the agnostics/athiests … and maybe even for Catholics … the first 11 chapters of Genesis are to be taken, “Lightly”, within accordance to the genre of writing.

The essense of the truth is true, that the Church will have us hold. But, the literal, two by two and all that, we don’t have to ascribe to those details.

Can go back to Gen 1 … created the firmament on day two, but the sun, that makes the day, isn’t made until day 4 … that kind of thing.

The world population back then was really rather very small in comparison to today’s numbers. Perspectives on time and cultures are difficult to perceive as the time and history is so far away and so far remote from our own modern experiences.

Think about the Bronze Age, started around 2300bc, seems so long ago? Well, the Flood narrative is even a thousand of years before that, maybe more.

LOL as I ramble on, I’m beginning to realize that this would be hard to explain to an agnostic, athiest, maybe pick something a little more “on par” … like, does God exist. Once you get there, then maybe you could start sharing God stories.

Best of Luck!
 
I’m not one of those who maintains that the universe was created 6,000 years ago. But neither am I inclined to take the Genesis accounts too lightly. For example, it is my understanding that the Hebrew word which we translate as “day” is a word that, in Hebrew, also just means “period of time”.

And we don’t know for sure what “the firmament” is. Astrophysicists tell us that before the Big Bang (assuming that’s even right) there was only a “string” of incredible energy. No matter. No radiation. When the “Bang” occurred, the baby universe separated into energy and primitive matter. The various forms of matter and energy occurred in sequence, not all at once. And so, it’s entirely possible, even probable, that the “firmament” (matter) existed before any stars (sun).

The more science seems to uncover, the less I tend to think of the Bible as “just stories”.

I’m not sure I would undertake to explain the Noah’s Ark story to an atheist at all. But it is not beyond the realm of possibility that there really was a “die off” of most of humanity with the agency of it being flooding.
Most anthropologists believe that humans evolved in Africa some immense time ago and slowly spread out over the earth. That necessarily implies a very small population at some point in time. Imagine what would happen if, say, the Congo flooded at ten times its normal flood stage. And let’s say the nascent human population lived along the Congo. You could easily get a mankind-destroying flood.
 
Great response Ridge! Yeah, I would totally agree, the more science discovers about our own existence, the more and more beauty we find in the bible, even the old stuff.
 
I would begin by sorting out the explanation of why a loving God would cause pain, panic, distress and death to virtually all living things including children and blameless animals. That’s harder to explain than loading all species of animals onto a boat.
 
I would explain that it is a story about what faith in God involves as demonstrated by the great faith of Noah. 🌈 🌈 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈
 
Why would I? They’re likely going to disagree with the whole thing :man_shrugging:t2:
 
Because in my experience the people who get the most upset about the Noah story are perfectly fine with legalized abortion.
 
That it’s an allegory used in a book full of allegories and needn’t be taken literally.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Because in my experience the people who get the most upset about the Noah story are perfectly fine with legalized abortion
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Is abortion not a part of the divinely-sanctioned retribution of the Noah story? Did not hundreds of thousands of unborn children die?
 
I would posit that it’s grossly inconsistent to believe that human beings may decide who lives and who dies, but then get worked into a snit when God does it.
 
The flood happened. Noah built an Ark, populated it with many animals and his family. They survived the flood in this way. These elements to the story are literal.

We don’t need to hold that all humans and animals outside the Ark died. We don’t need to hold that all animal species were represented on the Ark. We don’t need to hold that the flood covered all land with water. These elements to the story are figurative.

I adhere to W. Bruce Masse’s theory that the great flood was caused by a comet strike in the deep Indian ocean in 2807 BC.
 
I don’t get to decide if another woman has an abortion, which would be more analogous. A woman is only allowed to decide whether she herself has an abortion, not make that decision for other women. That’s why it’s not inconsistent, when an external actor causes a death we normally call that murder. When someone makes a decision about their own body, it’s more morally nuanced. FiveLinden’s point is God judged almost all of humanity as deserving of being drowned, with a select few being offered reprieve, and among the guilty were unborn children.
 
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I would instead move the conversation to some more fundamental questions: Who is Jesus? Does God exist? Can we trust the Gospels.

Noah’s Ark isn’t essential to the Catholic Faith. Want proof? Just look at this thread. There are as many opinions as people posting. But concerning Christ, there is only one official Catholic/Christian view: He is the Jewish Messiah, the Savior of the World, the Eternal Word made incarnate.

Start with the fundamentals. And then maybe the atheist will see that Noah’s Ark, how ever you interpret it, does not affect the foundation of Christianity in any way.

You can even get juicy and be like “well, no matter how you interpret the story, the New Testament uses it as a prefigurement of Baptism. Now let me tell you more about Baptism…”

We shouldn’t let the pop atheists or even culture at large define what the Christian Faith is. There are SO MANY caricatures of the faith in the West. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals are as much to blame as secularists and skeptics. But both get the faith wrong and feed off each other. In America, we’re too used to framing the Christian faith around things like: religious freedom, conservatism, the Republican Party, hot-button issues (abortion, gay marriage), science, creationism and evolution, Bible thumpers, cults, the Da Vinci Code, conspiracies, the History Channel, and so on.

We forget how strong of an impression our surrounding culture can affect how others perceive the faith. I imagine the Eastern Orthodox Christian’s heart breaks when he looks around America. I could come up with a list of friends who are automatically turned off by Christianity because they automatically relate it to a certain political ideology, for example.

So bottom line: Noah’s Ark ain’t essential. Start with the essential.

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ServantofChristos said:
How would you explain the story of Noah’s Ark to an Atheist/Agnostic?
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I think I would mention, like @KatyCatholic pointed out, that there seems to be a shared memory of an ancient catastrophic flood.

I would then point out that the inspired author of Scripture was inspired to write about this flood and provide a theological lesson from it. So, in the context of the Bible, it’s less about historical reporting than it is about a theological lesson about the free will of humans.

I would then point them to the ‘set-up’ and the ‘epilogue’ of the story, in which we learn what the lesson is:
  • the premise, in Genesis 6, is that nearly all humans are evil, and that we can expect to be able to remove evil from the earth by removing all the evil people and only keeping good people.
  • the epilogue, in Genesis 9, describes what two of these “good people” did, after the flood: one got passed-out drunk, and the other took advantage of him in a grievous way.
  • the lesson, then, is that it’s impossible to point to a person (or group of people) and say “impeccably good person” or “irredeemably bad person”. Rather, each person is responsible for using his free will to make decisions that are virtuous or vicious.
The vehicle through which this story is told (since the actions are clearly ones that only God could perform) is that of “God learns a valuable lesson”. In reality, though, the story is teaching us, not God. 😉
 
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