Man builds life-sized replica of Noah's Ark | Hacker News Reader

Man builds life-sized replica of Noah's Ark

foxnews.com

40 pointsrecycleme81 comments

> “I will kill everything, except the floating ones and the swimming ones, who will get out due to a loophole.”

-- Eddie Izzard, speaking as god

I've never understood why bible fanatics are so fixated on that story, it's one of the bible's most conspicuous flaws.

Edit: When I say "bible fanatics" I'm referring specifically to bible fanatics: people who are obsessed with the bible and view it as the literal word of god. I'm not trying to classify all bible followers as "fanatics", nor do I mean to impart any negative connotation to that word.

If you read it the latter way, it's most likely a projection of your own bias -- either towards excessive political correctness or anti-theism.

"Bible fanatics" is a little insulting to several religions. Anyway a lot of things that look like they took a lot of time (I think the Grand Canyon is the canonical example) are alternatively explained as being results of the Flood.

Or rather, 'explained'.

Technically, "bible fanatics" is only insulting to one religion, Christianity. The Jews observe the Torah, which while being 99'ish percent the same as the OT is technically different because of ordering of the books and the combining of some.

Well the Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons use different "bibles" even though they are largely the same content. So I was including the Jews as well.

Yeah, although it pretty much depends on how you define bible.

The Catholics use the KJV with the Apocrypha inserted between the OT and NT. Most of the denominational churches (loosely what you referred to as Protestants) use similar bibles unless you want to be picky over their use of different translations or get into which original manuscript they were translated from. And that's just getting warmed up. I'm into this stuff.

Catholics don't use the KJV. King James was a Protestant. The contemporaneous parallel to the KJV used within the Catholic Church is the Douay-Rheims, but even that isn't approved for liturgical use in English; only the Revised Standard Version (RSV) and New American Bible (NAB) are.

The term "apocrypha" is one only used by Protestants, as a pejorative term for the books Luther excised from the Septuagint, the Old Testament used by Jesus and the Apostles. The non-pejorative term is "deuterocanonicals", so-called because they were canonized later than the Old Testament books Luther accepted. Notably, Luther also excluded four New Testament books from his canon: Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, and Revelation. I suppose he found sola fide a lot easier to defend when he didn't have to contend with James' "So you see that a man is justified by works, not by faith." The Reformation didn't follow Luther's lead on the New Testament, though, and that's why Protestant Bibles have 66 books, not 62.

I'd suggest a little more warm up :) Some of us were really into this stuff before departing the faith.

Thank you for the pointers, I shall read some more on this.

Sorry you departed the faith. Perhaps, you should have been really, really into this stuff? :-)

Being "really, really into this stuff" is why I lost my faith. The deeper I dug, the more I found that none of the meaningful Christian beliefs that I held stood up to the epistemic bar I'd adopted as an adult.

You can read more details at http:?/epistemicfaithcrisis.wordpress.com/ if you're interested.

Catholics/Protestants/Orthodox scriptures are almost entirely the same content. Jewish scriptures are a much smaller subset, while Mormon scriptures are a much larger superset.

Specifically: Jewish scripture consists of what is called the "Tanakh" [0], which is the same content as the Protestant Old Testament but in a different order. The Tanakh tells the history of the Jewish people from "origins" to around 500 BC.

Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox scripture (generally called "the Bible") consist of everything in the Tanakh, in this case called the "Old Testament", plus the "New Testament" which tells the story of Jesus and his first generation of followers. Additionally, Catholics and Orthodox include other Jewish writings (pre-Jesus) which mostly fill in the gaps between the two narratives [1]. A number of other post-Jesus writings (such as letters written by early Christians, which tell the history of the next generation of the church) are sometimes included as additional reference material.

(As a brief aside: among Protestants in particular, there's a tendency to use different "translations" which consist of the same material but use different vocabulary and sentence structure. Generally speaking, which translation is used matters only for doctrinal edge cases.)

Mormon scripture consists of the Protestant Old and New Testaments, usually the King James translation, as well as three additional books collectively called the Standard Works [2]. The "Book of Mormon" tells the history of the inhabitants of the Americas. "Doctrine and Covenants" contains official teachings of Mormon leaders, who are considered to be modern-day prophets. "Pearl of Great Price" is kind of a grab bag, consisting of everything from revisions of other parts of the Bible to the controversial "book of Abraham" [3] to the life of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. In addition, Mormons consider their president and his 12 closest advisers to be "prophets, seers, and revelators" [4] whose teachings are more important than scripture.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanakh

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Canon#Canons_of_various_C...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_works

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham - LDS founder Joseph Smith claims this tells the story of Abraham; Egyptologists say it has nothing to do with Abraham.

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophet,_seer,_and_revelator

Don't be so sensitive. Us 'non-Bible fanatics' are always very accepting of religious people in general. You should do the same.

You can't really speak for everyone who does not believe in the Bible. Intolerant atheists are not exactly rare, nor are followers of other religions who are not very accepting of bible-believers.

Don't be so sensitive. I said "slightly", but it is definitely belittling.

edited for clarity

Please don't refer to atheists as "militant" unless they're wielding weapons and waging wars for atheism. There really are militant groups in this world, many of them militant in support of their religion; it's utterly unfair to put "atheists who oppose religion on Internet discussion boards" in the same group as true militants.

Though I sympathize with the plight of atheism (both militant and non-militant), you are wrong about your very alliterative definition of militant as someone who wields weapons and wages war.

militant |ˈmilətənt| adjective combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods: a militant nationalist.

More people have been killed by officially atheist governments (esp. in 20th century) than by any religions.

Where's the data to support this claim? You do understand there were the crusades and all the violence out of that. (Don't get me started on the wars actually talked about in the bible as well, where god says from Deuteronomy 20:14 "As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies." So basically he gave the warriors clearance to rape and pillage.)

Scan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_...

The crusades are probably smaller, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of world population, than you realized.

I'm not sure how many of those events you can officially put down to atheism, but the death toll from officially atheist states alone--e.g., the USSR--are pretty bad. My reading is that religiously motivated manmade disasters are a blip compared to the secularly motivated ones. Your reading may vary, though. :)

I do not find this to be the case here on HN.

When there are difficult or tragic circumstances and we believers speak up to try to help or encourage, we get voted up, but the rest of the time, we get downvotes and negative responses.

For the most part, people on Hacker News want to read thoughtful and insightful comments. They want to learn new things, or gain new perspective, or otherwise extract value from the comments they read.

Comments about religious history (especially with sources) or religious artifacts (like manuscripts), clear explanations of interesting doctrines, and descriptions of how different religions/sects view some particular issue tend to be pretty well received. As a religious person, I've made a lot of comments along these lines (some about my own religion, some about other religions) and gotten a lot more upvotes than downvotes for them. Even the negative responses I get are thoughtful most of the time.

Assertions that religion X is true/false, statements that aren't backed up by appropriate evidence, and preachy comments tend to be poorly received.

I'm glad that you have had more positive experience on HN with faith/religious comments than I have. Others have made similar observations to mine.

Some conversations have gone well, but there are more that have not. Most likely my own fault for calling people on their intolerance rather than just shrugging and finding another story to comment on. :-)

Remember that HN members aren't particularly concerned with being "tolerant". We tend to be very intolerant of weak or tired arguments, particularly those that don't seem to get basic facts straight (say, the kind of stuff you can find on wikipedia.) So, for example, an assertion that there's evidence of a worldwide flood, without a link to significant research, won't be taken well.

But HN members do like to learn new and interesting things, even from foreign worldviews. If the idea of "speaking in tongues" came up, a quick explanation of the practice and the history (especially with links) would be quite welcome.

Anyway a lot of things that look like they took a lot of time (I think the Grand Canyon is the canonical example) are alternatively explained as being results of the Flood.

That is not remotely plausible. I'll admit I am a little aggravated, but I'm not going to climb up on my high-horse and lecture you. This is already way off-topic and if you were interested you could easily find the information on your own.

I will just say that if you believe in God and miracles then you don't need an alternative explanation for the Grand Canyon (or anything else since God can do anything). So lets not needlessly force the religious history pieces into the science puzzle.

I will just say that if you believe in God and miracles then you don't need an alternative explanation for [anything]

Not at all. Here's a crude thought experiment: suppose you believed in a God who performed confirmed miracles, but who had only performed two or three in recorded history. Now suppose you lost your wallet and spent five minutes looking for it, without success. Would it be rationally responsible, at that point, to ascribe its disappearance to divine intervention?

How long and how hard would you have to look before that even made it onto the list of hypotheses?

Just because God can do anything doesn't mean that's always a good explanation.

In fact, to a naive observer, secularists are kind of in the same boat. Bear with me for a moment:

There's an intelligent design argument that says the laws of physics for this universe are extremely fine-tuned; change any number of physical constants by even a small amount, and the universe never develops stars.

The response to that goes, this is just the one universe we can see; there may be many others with different constants. And while this particular setup might be improbable, it's what we have to see in order to be here.

The response to that goes, if you can go invoking a practically infinite number of unseen universes, what's the point of trying to explain anything? Invoke a few more universes, and you could write anything off as chance.

And the response to that goes, roughly, well, you don't want to ascribe things to once-in-a-multiverse events unless you've looked really hard first (like we have with the cosmology stuff).

See? We're kind of in the same boat.

The reality--getting back to miracles--isn't anything like that simple; there is a great diversity of opinion in Christendom about how often God performs miracles, and when, and how you can tell he's done it. But as far as I can tell, they agree on two things: (1) The miracle has to make theological sense (there's usually an obvious reason for it), and (2) It doesn't happen anything like often enough to threaten the effectiveness of science.

Though there are folks who will claim God could have created dinosaur fossils just to test our faith, this is very much a fringe view. Most theologians would be very uncomfortable with the idea that God has behaved in a scientifically deceptive way. Quite the opposite; the entire well-accepted realm of natural theology is based on the idea that God has set up the world to make sense and to be investigated and even to teach us things. If there were evidence to the contrary, it would be profoundly upsetting for a lot of scholars.

Oh dear, we don't want to be insulting any religions. 'Santa Claus for grown ups' might get angry.

Wait... are you telling me Santa is not real?? Oh thanks a lot!

They fixate on it specifically because it is one of the bibles most conspicuous flaws. If you're going to try and argue that the bible is literally true the first thing someone is likely to throw back at you is this story. So you have to try and make it seem plausible.

It's actually much easier to disprove the fact that the bible is literally true by reading the first few pages, where the creation of Adam and Eve is told in two different ways: one where they are created at the same time and the other with the famous rib.

I think you are exactly right. If you are a sensible person the story is the low hanging fruit for any "not literally true" argument but if you are some sort of biblical literalist then the story is the obvious starting point. If you can get people to buy into that one, the rest fall like dominoes.

In general, I think religions require a few outlandish, unbelievable stories. Kind of like a shibboleth.

Anybody can believe stories backed up by evidence and reason. But it takes a special kind of devotion to our group/tribe/congregation/whatever to believe these ridiculous absurdities. That's how we know you're one of us.

Careful, your lack of tolerance is showing.

There are records in the ancient historical stories of many cultures of a world-wide flood.

Update: the downvotes have started already! Thank you for firmly establishing my point! :-)

World-wide flood? There has never been a worldwide flood during the brief time that we have been on earth. There are a few potential periods where the earth might have been covered in snow, the last of which might have been around 650 million years ago during the Marinoan period. There have also been plenty of big floods, but nothing remotely resembling what the bible describes.

I upvoted you, even though you misunderstood what I was saying ;)

Thank you. I shall both upvote your original comment and thank you for your update to your original comment.

I am one of those literal word of God people, but that kinda comes with the territory as a pastor. :-)

Not all pastors are literalists.

Mostly just those from the subset of Christianity called "Fundamentalism" [0], which was founded around a hundred years ago as a reaction (IMO, an overreaction) to "Liberal Christianity" [1]. It's worth reading up on the history of those movements to get a clear understanding of where the modern move toward strong literalism originated.

You may also find it worthwhile to read Origen's De Principiis, particularly book IV sections 16-22 [2], and Augustine's On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, particularly chapter 19 [3]. I've found a number of very early Christian scholars tend to treat certain sections of the Bible (particularly the first sections of Genesis) as not being intended to be understood literally.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fundamentalism

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Christianity

[2] http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.v.v.ii.html

[3] http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/alaffey/other_files/Aug...

There is some scientific evidence for a large flood in the Black Sea [1] which may easily have been the basis for a Noah's Ark type story, but not a world-wide flood.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis

There are also fairly epic floods or lands lost to floods in fairly recent times (i.e. since the last ice age):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

Not to mention a large tsunami in an area where you really wouldn't expect it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storegga_Slide

Part of me sort of wishes there was some kind of record of these events - even if it was a bit mangled.

I'll just leave this here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

Referring to "Bible fanatics" is no more intolerant than referring to "Tolkien fanatics". If you're being downvoted, it's because you're applying an inappropriate and prejudicial label.

Your point about "Tolkien fanatics" is a good one, but I was not reacting to just one word. As a Toby Mac fan, I like to refer to myself as a Jesus Freak, so mere labels aren't the issue. It's the tone of the whole comment and the inference that one who believes the bible is the literal word of God is an unwise and foolish person.

The only "tone" in "I've never understood why bible fanatics are so fixated on that story, it's one of the bible's most conspicuous flaws." is the one you've projected onto it. On its face, it's an honest statement of lack of understanding. It was neither unnecessarily offensive nor was it unnecessarily derogatory. You only see "tone" because it doesn't support or affirm your worldview.

Additionally, even explicitly saying, "Anyone who believes the bible is the literal word of God is an unwise and foolish person" isn't intolerant. Intolerance is more than just disagreement. Intolerance is saying, "You should not be allowed to think those thoughts," not just "If you think those thoughts, you're unwise and foolish." It's unwise and foolish to think that jumping off a bridge will solve your problems. It's unwise and foolish to believe that vaccines cause autism. Many things in this world are unwise and foolish, and it's meaningless to claim that whenever someone refers to a belief as unwise and foolish he's somehow "intolerant" of those who hold that belief.

It is no more "intolerant" of me to say "If you believe the Bible is the literal word of God you're being unwise and foolish," than it is for me to say, "If you believe that programming languages should be dynamically typed you're being unwise and foolish." The only difference is your sensitivity to those claims.

Your whole answer radiates a tone. Tone is that sentiment that is expressed over and above the words actually used. You could say that tone is found by reading between the lines.

Describing something as a conspicuous flaw is not a statement of lack of understanding. It is an assertion. You can say that you don't understand the Christian perspective on the flood account and then we could have a conversation about it. But making a strong assertion does indeed set a tone.

As a former atheist, I understand the perspective that causes people to make such statements, but please do not confuse my willingness to point out such things with being a sensitive little snowflake. Your whole reply is intolerant because of the combination of your statements and the tone you have used. Methinks you are the sensitive one here. :-)

I think I'm more shocked to see foxnews.com linked from HN.

Also, if you're planning on doing this yourself, start with the Minimum Viable Ark and see if other people and animals are willing to join you before going all in on the full ark yourself.

Yes, it may be the end of the world after all.

I think "replica" isn't the best word...

Next thing you know there'll be an authentic steampunk version.

It's got gears! GEARS.

What would this be called, anyway? Tunicpunk?

Eh... I get what you mean, but I think (as an example of many) the whole business of stamping out sword "replicas" of famous swords from fiction establishes a precedent for using the word like that.

Beaten still by relics during pilgrimage, a gajillion splinters from the "one true cross", thousands of "totally authentic" foreskins and knucklebones of every one of Christ's followers.

At least he's Dutch, so there's a decent probability it will be used, even within his lifetime.

From the article:

"For Huibers, a builder by trade, it all began with a nightmare he had in 1992, when the low-lying Netherlands was flooded, as it has been many times throughout its history."

That was my first thought as well. He's built himself a hotel on water. They're nearly below sea-level over there! =)

This thing looks about as seaworthy as a tin bath with a missing plug...

Oh look, glad to see my instincts aren't wrong: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan%27s_Ark

So it doesn't actually even float on its own, it's built on top of a steel barge. Fox News: "functioning" ark, "functioning" journalism.

I'd love to read a book detailing how he went about it. (Other then the bible.) It looks beautiful. That he had the forethought to put a restaurant and theater in is topping on the cake.

Yeah, I can definitely see value and interest in a book about i's construction, or even a documentary (which would probably have to have been planned in advance, oh well).

Probably worth investigating the Atra-Hasis flood myth.

It is the original version of the retconned Gigamesh myth, which was in turn retconned into the Noah myth.

It's always enjoyable how the literalists tend to blank out at any mention of syncretism.

The article references the phrase "the cities of the coast shall tremble" as being in the New Testament [1] but the closest verse I could find is Ezekiel 26:18 [2] which is in the Old Testament.

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/science/slideshow/2012/12/12/man-buil...

[2] http://studybible.info/LITV/Ezekiel%2026:18

You can't make a replica of something that never existed

Even if you're not religious, you don't know whether or not such an ark ever existed. Even if you don't believe in the Bible as being an accurate recording of events, it's still possible that some of the stories could have been based, even in part, on actual events.

Let's take Noah's Ark for example. It has been claimed that there is evidence that such a flood may have actually taken place [1]. It's even been claimed by some explorers that they found remains of a large ark-like vessel (though the fact that these explorers were evangelical Christians makes the credibility dubious, and thus seems unlikely) [2].

I'm not saying whether or not this stuff happened or whether or not I believe it. All I'm saying is, given that stories could be based, even if exaggerated, on actual events, and given that unbelievable feats of engineering and construction exist from long ago, like the pyramids for example; it seems closed-minded to make disingenuous and dismissive statements about something we don't know with certainty.

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/evidence-noahs-floo...

[2] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100428-noahs...

Perhaps there's a kernel of truth in there, in the form of a boat. But kernels of truth can get pretty amazingly distorted over the course of centuries or millennia of developing mythology. There's a kernel of truth to the Greek myth of the Cyclops, but it has nothing to do with giant one-eyed men. It's fossil elephant skeletons, with their nasal cavity looking a lot like a huge eye socket.

Even given, for the sake of argument, that at some point there was an actual boat at the root of this myth, the likelihood that this Ark is a replica of that boat is only not a whole lot greater than the likelihood that the world did actually experience a rainfall rate of 12 inches per minute over the course of forty days. The vessel described in Genesis is simply not plausible, neither from an engineering nor a historical perspective.

You seem to get my point at the beginning of your comment when you acknowledge that it's possible there's a kernel of truth in the form of a boat. But then by the end of your comment, you for some reason concluded that the vessel described in Genesis is not plausible. No kidding.

We weren't talking about the vessel as described in genesis, we were talking about the boat that may have possibly existed at some point which may have inspired the story. Unless you're saying this guy built the boat as described in Genesis. But that wouldn't make sense, because it's not plausible from an engineering perspective, and well, this guy built it, so his boat is plausible from an engineering perspective.

Even if something like that happened, it has been first recorded in Mesopotamian texts and myths, by people who worshiped very different gods, and much later retconned in the bible versions we know now.

"you don't know whether or not such an ark ever existed"

I know that there was never an ark as described and used, literally, in the Bible.

Sure you can. People make "lightsabers" and call them replicas. http://trueswords.com/ has anime, game etc. sword replicas.

Ok, now lets try to fit every female and male of every species into that boat!

I wouldn't be surprised when it will actually fit. There aren't that much different large animals.

Edit: I agree this was a very unclear post. What I meant: The available space is about 20,000 m2. Lets say the African bush elephant fits in 25 m2. This means you can take 400 different kinds of the largest terrestrial animals on board. But I don't think there are that much different kind of large animals.

You are kidding, right? Unless you have some really weird definition of "large animal" in mind.

Why are you restricting it to "large animals"?

"Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth."

—Genesis 7:2-3

according to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl9oFHRJ6kE It is 1:14th size

I think thats the old version. He now built a 1:1 version. http://www.arkvannoach.com/informatie/geschiedenis/

"There are even vending machines because 'Man cannot live on bread alone'"

Impressive dedication and effort. Reminds me of that man who built an entire stone castle all by himself. I forget his name.

Quick Google search: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle

I made a bowl of spaghetti last night. Where was fox news on that one?

I'd like to see him try to fill that ark with two of every kind of animal on the planet.

Cool, though I think 20 years of time and however much that cost could have been put toward something that actually helps a fellow human. Maybe build a bunch of smaller houses for poor people instead of a giant houseboat for your stuffed animals.

Then again, maybe that's just me...

Great, now I'm going to feel guilty for every hour I spend reading HN instead of helping a fellow human.

Your hobbies are your own and investment into your personal concerns is not a zero sum game. Oh ...wait yes it is... I just wanted to say zero sum. But seriously, if you are able to dedicate time and effort into something even remotely positive you should do it. There's no predicting how, when, or to whom it will be of benefit. This guy could've been spending all that time and money into much less useful things - even self destructive things. At very least this is one hell of a grand art piece.

Personally, I find it is an inspiration. Amazing what can be done with sufficient dedication and effort.

From the article:

    > He said his motivation is ultimately religious, though. He wants to 
    > make people think what their purpose is on Earth. "I want to make 
    > people question that so that they go looking for answers," and 
    > ultimately find salvation through God and eternal life, he said.

If someone is willing to put that much time and dedication into something they believe in without hurting anyone, then who are you to judge what's worthy of their time and money?

I wonder how many people started writing a reply to you, attempted a few drafts, but ended up just slowly removing their hands from the keyboard, turning off their computer, and sinking their face firmly into their palm, never to return to HN again.

The perfect comeback (theirs, of course.)

What do you have against Pokemon?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com