@Justpassing Said
Well I guess we have to rely on science to give us those answers. Like looking at marine and ship history.
Just for the record, I'm not saying that the Noah story is EXACTLY how it happened. Just that it is possible... more so than 'something random happened where there was nothing, by nothing for no reason'.
And that it is interesting that building such a ship in those dimensions actually floats... and it took a few thousand years for ship builders to realise how valuable they are for building huge load carrying ships.
It is so easy to "Poo Poo" what is in the Bible but science is finding more and more things that give the contents of the Bible credibility.
What I'm getting at is that you're saying you're looking at marine and ship history and that science is giving us those answers...but according the the old testament everything prior to Noah was erased. There simply is no marine and ship history to look at until after the flood. And if you don't take it literally, how do you know what marine and ship history syncs up with the time of Noah? If the story is just something that happened somewhere in history and not when the Bible literally says it did, what historical records are you referring to and how do you know they are concurrent with an event you don't know the time of?
I'm not "poo pooing" anything. I'm asking for clarification here, you say you're just noting that it's possible but you also say that Noah's ship set the standard for ship building and no ships were built with those dimensions before the ark. You stated that as a fact, not a possibility, and it's kind of not possible to know that as a fact whether you believe the literal word of the Bible or not.
People like Ziusudra are known to have existed about 2900 years before Christ...who was the hero of the Sumerian flood legend and he loaded a ship with supplies and livestock and floated down the river when their sea god Enki told him to do so and instructed him on how to build it.
Following the timeline of the Bible based on dates we know with certainty, Exodus would have occurred about 1447 BC and the Old Testament flood around 2300 BC (give or take). So there are similar flood legends across the globe, yes, but there are also huge discrepancies in the timing of them. Not to mention, this "poo poos" most of the secular archaeological record and would mean that all of existing human civilizations that are in that record would have to fit in the last 4000 years.
Science and archaeology do indeed support a lot of what is said in the Bible in terms of historical events and people and places existing, but it's a mistake to then say that science supports the notion that the dimensions of the ark were handed down to Noah by a divine being and that no one knew how to build ships that way before then. Science, unequivocally,
does not support that and you can't say what you're saying without owning the fact that you're trying to make it seem that it does.
Prior to 1698 no one knew how to build a steam engine but then someone did it. If we believe that just because no one knew how to do something before a person figured it out means that that person was given those ideas by God, we have to submit ourselves to believing that every innovation and invention ever to happen was due to divine intervention and that humans have never really invented anything at all. And no matter how you paint it, that is absolutely not science.
You probably at this point think I'm an atheist (maybe you don't). I wouldn't be so sure about that. I just see it as problematic when we try to use science as an application to support something that is A) not supportable by science and B) not really provable in any fashion other than by faith alone, thus not provable.
I promise you I'm not trying to be mean or a jerk about this...just discussing.