[extropy-chat] Surviving a flood...

[Alan Eliasen]

   Ummm... just to be sure, did you somehow interpret this satire as
serious attempts at science?  Or were your comments to be treated as
good-natured satire as well, including the orders for me to revise my
work and the insult at the end?  Hope it's the latter.

   In any case, the bible doesn't say anything about *Mount* Ararat; the
original name Urartu was the name for a region of what is now in Turkey,
Iran, and Armenia.  Just for the record.

   In any case, a flood that covered the entire globe to a height of
about 17,000 feet (it would have to; water don't glob up that high like
a raindrop on a car hood) and only rained 60% as hard (17 feet an hour!)
would still tend to make one repent pretty quick.

-- 
  Alan Eliasen                 | "You cannot reason a person out of a
  eliasen at mindspring.com       |  position he did not reason himself
  http://futureboy.homeip.net/ |  into in the first place."
                               |     --Jonathan Swift

Jeff Davis wrote:
> --- Alan Eliasen <eliasen at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> "Okay, so the highest mountains of the earth were
> covered, plus an extra 15 cubits (approx 27 feet) for
> good measure.
> 
> The current measurements for highest mountain is Mt.
> Everest at 29030.8 feet (according to the highly
> dubious and utterly non-trustable 2002 Guinness
> Book of World Records.)"
> 
>          ------------------------------
> 
> Your use of Everest here doesn't seem right.  The
> authors of the scriptures likely were speaking of the
> "known" world, that is, the world known to them. 
> Supposing them to have been native to what we now call
> the mideast, the Himalayas would probably not have
> been known to them.  Consequently, I suggest the
> following method for determining the height of the
> highest mountain within the world known to the authors
> of the Biblical flood story.
> 
> Consider the expanse of the known world at the time,
> and take the highest mountain within that region. 
> 
> Or, take the location of Noah's home town as the
> starting point and Ararat as the ending point. 
> Calculate the rate of drift--to my knowledge, the arc 
> wasn't a sailboat, so speed derived in the
> conventional fashion based on hull speed, and power,
> doesn't apply here--of the arc based on its
> dimensions, load factor, upper bound on wind speed,
> and use this to calculate the maximum distance the arc
> could have traveled, out and back as it were, on its
> way to Ararat.  Then use this as the radius of a
> circle(actually Noah's home town and Ararat would be
> the foci of an ellipse) encompassing the region to
> which the biblical authors could have been referring. 
> 
> 
> The biblical authors must have been descendents of
> Noah, as all the rest of the people of the known world
> are presumed to have drowned.  And the more limited
> view of the flood that I am suggesting seems likely,
> since Chinese and African peoples either survived--the
> more likely conclusion--or evolved subsequently from
> Noah's descendents.  Given the large number of Chinese
> people compared to semites (ie spawn of Noah), I would
> have to go with survived and prospered rather than
> evolved, migrated, prospered and reproduced like,
> well, er,... Chinese).
> 
> Anyway, derive a "highest mountain on earth" by this
> method and then recalculate the rainfall rate.
> 
> It takes a village to make a village idiot. ;-}
> 
> Best, Jeff Davis
> 
>     I believe -- no pun intended:) -- the practical 
>     thing is usually to change those beliefs that 
>     cause the most immediate trouble...
>                       Daniel Ust
> 
> 
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