In the January, 1998 edition of the Ensign, in an article titled “HE FLOOD AND THE TOWER OF BABEL,” Donald W. Parry states:

“In spite of the world’s arguments against the historicity of the Flood, and despite the supposed lack of geologic evidence, we Latter-day Saints believe that Noah was an actual man, a prophet of God, who preached repentance and raised a voice of warning, built an ark, gathered his family and a host of animals onto the ark, and floated safely away as waters covered the entire earth.”

It’s like they’re saying “Never mind those pesky facts, we know the truth.”

Yeah, fresh water and salt water fish commingled in a sea that covered the whole earth. The water went...somewhere when the flood receded. Polar bears got off the ark and just started walking north. Kangaroos somehow jumped to Australia.

At the the time of Noah, all species were indigenous to within 5 miles of the ark.

How else could all those land animals migrate to Africa and other continents from Missouri? God promised us his prophet would never lead us astray. Joseph himself said so. I’m just not sure whether it was before or after he pulled out of Fanny Alger.

Fresh water creatures could not have survived. Many, like the mayfly, need running fresh water to reproduce. No fresh water fish could live through the salinization of all the world's water. Plus the ark's size, which is given, is too small to contain all the species. Mormons are just being assholes when they claim to believe the fairy tale.

I have a new theory about TBMs. They lie. That's all. They just lie to keep the status quo. They can't all be dumb, but they can all be liars.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2018 10:13PM by donbagley.

“They can’t all be dumb, but they can all be liars!” Don, can I please, please use that line sometime? So good.

Sure as shit. But I think lying makes them dumb. Just the way TSCC likes them.

Mormons are definitely NOT taught to be liars. They are taught to be obedient and taught to define words in accordance to the law of Obedience. If anyone lied it was Joseph Smith and if he lied then those who perpetuate such lies. But everything I've ever heard of in Church, thanks to the beloved Correlation program, paints the picture that Joseph Smith was this incredibly honest and good person. Thus it would be unthinkable for me or anyone to think of him or any subsequent leaders of being liars. Instead we are well-conditioned to think they are super honest good people. We are also well-conditioned to be super obedient to them and to define the following terms as follows:

"Honest" = Someone who keeps their covenants to obey the LDS leaders

"Liars" = Someone who obviously did not honestly make their covenants to obey the LDS leaders as they are somehow questioning the leaders.

For example, the Brethren teach that the Spirit testifies that the Church is true and thus I can presume that whenever any investigator hears the message then they get a witness but they may lie and pretend to not get such a witness so they never make those covenants to assimilate themselves to be good obedient sheep. That's why I guess that I can call all the nevermo's liars?

Now about those exmo's - once they have made those covenants to get themselves assimilated then its all about Obedience. If the Ensign says there was a flood then there was, period and the debate is over. The honest ones accept the Ensign statement verbatim without questioning. Everyone else are liars.

Well of course this is all in accordance of whether or not the words "Honest" and "Liar" were defined correctly by me. However because the Law of Obedience is what it is & its not the "Law of Questioning" then its inconceivable that I could ever re-examine how I've defined these words. My mission in life, because I've been assimilated into this peculiar bubble, is to unquestionably obey the Lord's holy middlemen on the local level and not ask unapproved questions. Isn't this awesome?

They have to believe in the Flood, because to them, it was the Earth's baptism.

They await the baptism by fire before Jesus comes.

Well, they say the Yellowstone Volcano is ready to erupt. I wonder if that is what Mormons are waiting for as their baptism by fire?

I would really like for statisticians to do surveys of Christians and Mormons to really see what they believe.

We know what they teach but would they really respond that way?

I am not so sure!

My theory is religion is mainly a 'social club' and the club members are there for 'community' primarily and will 'go along' with the rest. My college educated TBM mother had no clue of 'many doctrines' when discussed in great detail at home!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2018 10:30PM by spiritist.

Dammit ! You KNOW how I hate to agree with you !

Sorry Dave, I will try to not let this type of thing happen again!

I was studying some pretty interesting things today and must have became so bored I let a potentially agreeable comment get posted!

"My theory is religion is mainly a 'social club' and the club members are there for 'community' primarily and will 'go along' with the rest. My college educated TBM mother had no clue of 'many doctrines' when discussed in great detail at home!"

I suspect this as well. Most of the active LDS I've worked with over the past 10 years seem to fit in this category. The attitude I get from them is that the church is their culture and they just don't question it or think about it. They follow it because that's how they were raised and it's all they've ever known. It was good enough for their parents and grandparents so it's good enough for them. Most are unaware of many of the religion's actual doctrines.

When I've brought up some of the controversial and/or problematic teachings, instead of being shocked or denying them, most were apathetic and let me know they don't care if there is doctrine that doesn't seem to make sense. Then I usually get an additional reply that their church membership makes them feel good and that's all they care about.

Is anyone taking bets on how long they can play the “you’re all full of shit” card?

....Speaking of that, who had the job of shoveling out all the animal stalls in the ark?

Hercules! He took over from Ammon, who was only in it for the conversion numbers.

If I had been there I would have hated the job of trying to keep the lions away from the lambs.

It isn't only LDS who believe literally in the bible. Many religions take the bible at face value.

It is possible the world was covered in water at some points in its evolution. Most of the earth at one time was a giant land mass submerged under water until the earth broke away forming continents. The Grand Canyon was once submerged beneath an ocean of water before it became the Grand Canyon. At one time it was an ocean floor.

More to the point, what may have been a large flood to the Hebrews might have been mistaken for a global one at the time.

"Yes, Noah's Flood May Have Happened, But Not Over the Whole Earth"

"We read in the Bible that there is only one time in which the Flood waters are said to recede and leave the earth dry. That is, no multiple worldwide climatic conditions are described in which flooding, then drying to a dry earth, more flooding, more drying to a dry earth, in repeated cycles that occur over and over again in that Flood year. On that basis, it is logical that all the kinds of evaporite deposits and red beds in many different levels in the supposed Noachian Flood deposits could form only in local climates with desert drying-conditions and could not possibly have formed all at the same time — a time when a flood covered the whole earth for more than one year (Collins 2006). On that basis, the Noachian Flood story cannot describe a whole-earth flood, but it could only represent a large regional flood.

Regional Evidence for the Noachian and Similar Floods
Two rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris flow through Mesopotamia, which is now the country of Iraq (Figure 1). There are several layers in exposed rocks near these two rivers in southeastern Mesopotamia (Iraq) that are likely flood deposits. Most are about a foot (0.3 m) thick, but one is as much as 3 meters thick (MacDonald 1988). Flood debris from this same thick deposit along the Euphrates River near the ancient Sumerian city of Shuruppak about 200 km southeast of Baghdad has been dated by the C14 method, giving an age of 2900 BCE (Best nd). Flood deposits 2.4 meters feet thick are also reported by MacDonald (1988) as far northeast as the ancient Babylonian city of Kish (120 km south of Baghdad). At any rate, the many flood-deposit layers show that flooding in southeastern Mesopotamia was not unusual in ancient times....

Conclusions
If the 3.4-meter–thick layer of flood deposits in southeastern Mesopotamia (MacDonald 1988) represents a huge flood of ancient times, and if it is the remnants of the one described in the early Babylonian epics, then the authors of these epics were likely survivors who lived in a village on natural levees on the lower parts of either the Euphrates or Tigris Rivers where the flood waters covered their village, natural levees, and adjacent flood plains for distances of 160 to 320 kilometers so that no land could be seen, and their "whole world" would have been under water."

https://ncse.com/library-resource/yes-noahs-flood-may-have-happened-not-over-whole-earth



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2018 07:50AM by Amyjo.

O boy

Your fourth and fifth sentences are troubling to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2018 04:23AM by donbagley.

Yeah me too Don.

There were many large pluvial lakes that collapsed causing large floods at the end of the Ice Age twelve thousand years ago -- but not a single flood that covered the whole Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outburst_flood

An earth submerged in water would be mostly fresh water with a small amount of salt in it. Fresh water fish would survive while salt water fish would not survive. Rain is fresh water and if enough of it fell from the sky to submerge the earth as high as the mountain top that the ark (supposedly) landed on, it would be almost completely fresh after mixing with pre-existing oceans.

So what did the lions on the ark eat? (taken from an episode of the Big Bang series), the bodies of dead sinners floating in the water.

Of course, the story is all false anyway.

How anyone can believe in Noah and the flood, etc., is beyond comprehension. However, one may draw some morals from the story and treat it as allegorical like the other Bible stories. For example, the apostle Paul specifically referenced the story of Abraham and Sarah as an allegory. The story is only false if one takes it literally. Really, it is best understood as fiction. The Garden of Eden is simply fiction designed to give man - prior to the age of science - a feeling of how he came to be. Other biblical stories are there to give a group of tribes a feeling that they were special. Examining the Bible, especially including the books such as Judith, one recognizes a story of evolution of religion which continues to now except for the ultra-orthodox, the LDS, the fundies, etc. who aspire for the ancient past thinking and a flat earth.

We know from archaeology that something happened at the close of the last ice age, approximately 12 000 years ago.
The oceans rose which caused great upheavals.

Such catastrophes probably happened more than once over the course of the earth's existence.
It is entire possible that there is factual a basis for the flood stories we encounter in so many ancient texts.

Not kidding. My mother in a conversation the other day mentioned Methuselah and made it clear she actually believes he lived to be 900 years old. We were on the phone so she did not see my jaw hit the floor. I didn't even know how to respond. Just put my hand over the receiver and laughed.

And yes. She and all my family take everything in the Bible literally. I would personally like to thank Mother Nature for giving us the ability to roll our eyes. How else do you deal with that?

And wasn't it Abraham's wife had a baby at 90 or something like that? I must bring that up next time.

"I would personally like to thank Mother Nature for giving us the ability to roll our eyes." Thanks--that made me smile.

The problem with trying to use facts, or logic, or reality to discuss the Bible with someone who takes it literally is that they can answer anything with "God." How can somebody live to be 900? God wanted him to live that long. How can a woman give birth at 90? God wanted it to happen.

I once read an article from somebody who was trying to defend a geocentric model of the universe. The author stated that retrograde motion was because God made the planets periodically moved backwards in their orbits to test our faith. I almost dislocated my jaw and neck at the same time from shaking my head while my jaw was dropping.

God has a rewind button on his remote? Hahaha ha. But he is God after all, so why not! Wow.

That is kind of the way I was as a Mormon though. Nothing needed to make sense because God/Magic.

Here is the link to the Ensign article:
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1998/01/the-flood-and-the-tower-of-babel?lang=eng
Only idiots and little children could believe this story. The moon being made of cheese is more plausible.

Whoa there!! Haven't you ever heard of the Correlation program? All this thinking nonsense is not approved. I am conditioned to be obedient. Thus it would be unthinkable for me to not believe this story fully. I say these things in the name of the sacred Correlation program, Amen.

There were massive floods after the last Ice Age 10,0000 BP that inundated the Black Sea, the Persian Gulf and the ancient settlements of coastal India. The flood is found in most cultures and is based on fact.

Boaz the Builder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There were massive floods after the last Ice Age
> 10,0000 BP that inundated the Black Sea, the
> Persian Gulf and the ancient settlements of
> coastal India.

Indeed. There have been many such floods.
None were "global."
Ever.

> The flood is found in most cultures
> and is based on fact.

"The flood" is a bible story, ripped off from the Enuma Elish (like several other bible stories). Other than the few that came from that source, no other culture has "the flood" story.

Yes, other cultures have tales of floods. Which isn't at all surprising, given that someplace floods on the planet nearly every day. None of them have the bible "global flood done by god to kill everyone because he made a mistake making people, except one righteous dude who gathered all the animals on the planet (by twos or sevens, depending on which bible version you go by), built a humongous boat..." story.

And not a single bit of either the Enuma Elish or bible versions of "the flood" relate to any facts. While it's technically possible some local "great flood" inspired somebody to write the Enuma Elish/bible fictional stories, nobody knows which (if any) local flood was the inspiration for the fiction, and the stories ARE fiction. Not fact.

Claiming the bible story is "based on fact" is like saying the Black Panther movie is "based on fact" because Africa and black people really exist. Which is, of course, both absurd and flat-out wrong.

The BofM story of the Brother of Jared presupposes the historicity of the flood and the tower of Babel, so they can never deny it actually happened. When it comes to this topic they have painted themselves into a corner and can never get.

I left out a word at the end. I meant to say "get out".

No problem, just have Noah living at the time of the dinosaurs. The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs also caused massive tidal waves. The ark rode one of those waves like Snake Pliskin in Escape from LA.

You don't even have to go back to 1998. They declared it as literal doctrine in the Ensign as late as February 2014. It reads like a Children's Friend article: "Hi, I'm Noah!" and even has an idiotic "Fact Box" to accompany it. It's incredible that this is the church's flagship publication, intended for mormon *adults*.

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/02/noah?lang=eng

Adam was likewise featured in the January issue.

I once heard the theory that when the Strait of Bosphorus was formed by a break in the Mediterranean, water flooded into the land and created the Black Sea. Although it was pre-historic, the area was well populated, and it was indeed a great flood that killed much of the population. To the inhabitants, it must have seemed like the flood of Noah. Supposedly, the stories were told for generations, morphing into the Noah's Ark thing. That's why Mount Ararat is factored in. Couldn't say if it's true, or not.

Yes, that is how the Black Sea was formed. There have been a lot of studies conducted on the sea floor there (many conducted by Robert Ballard of Titanic fame). Mostly they are finding old shipwrecks:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/another-fleet-ancient-ships-discovered-black-sea-180964978/

Actually the entire mediterran sea was likewise created the same way, only centuries earlier and much more gradually and less likely to actually drown anybody. But I really doubt that specifics about Mt ararat for example are really that old. Perhaps some mountain/hill was flooded, but it was obviously you know actually flooded, and is still currently somewhere underwater in the black sea, not mt ararat. The Mt ararat detail is probably a much later author, smashing together a bunch of flood stories from various origins, then conviniently placing them in his own backyard. I.e. In the typical fashion humans invent myths.

Stupid Mormon History Proudly Unfurled

1. Adam and Eve live in Missouri

2. God kills everyone and everything and Noah sails from the USA
to the middle east.

3. All animals migrate from the mid east back to where they are
today. For example, sloths trek across the desert then swim
the Altantic to central america.

4. Thousands of years later, Nephites etc., return to America

5. In the 1800s Horney Joe announces we have come full circle and returned to the garden of eden - missouri. One last item: Adams altar as identified by Horney Joe has 100,000,000 plus year old fossils in it. OOOOPPPPSSS

How the Fuck does anyone believe this shit!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2018 05:48PM by perky.

My wife has picture of Jesus smiling down at a group of smiling children at his feet, beaming up at him. It has some scripted caption to the effect, "For He so loved the children."

And all I can think of is 3 Nephi 9 and of all the children who must have died horrible deaths in the cities Jesus destroyed when he arrived in the New World.

GregS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And all I can think of is 3 Nephi 9 and of all the
> children who must have died horrible deaths in the
> cities Jesus destroyed when he arrived in the New
> World.

Don't forget all the children that drowned in Noah's flood!

Even though I was TBM for some time into adulthood, I think I stopped believing in the Noah flood story around the age of 12. It just didn't make any sense.

Flood Schmud!

Mormons grasp at Anything that distracts the members from Honesty -Kindness

Depend on it.