Most of the stuff in the Bible is miraculous; I don't find the concept to far a stretch of the imagination.  But, if I did, it wouldn't matter. Take, for example, a quote by Richard Lewontin, evolutionary biologist and author of Billions and Billions of Demons,

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door".

We both have an a priori commitment.

Consider my earlier post:

If the story of Noah's Flood was true, there would be evidence for a global flood and it would make sense that one man could build a boat and put two of every animal in it, and that somehow fresh or salt water fish could survive such an event and be saved from whatever composition the flood water had.  I'm assuming since the flood came with rain that it was mostly fresh water so all sea life would have died.

This is miraculous, as there is a lot of magical things going on.  However, if I told you that I have a pet dinosaur that I found in a cave that goes to the bottom of the Earth, that would be equally miraculous and you would easily denounce my story.  Whats the difference between the two stories, how can you logically deduce that my story is false and the story of Noah is true?  The difference is that one story is older and a lot more people told you it was true.  If the story was switched, and I told you that I built a boat and put every animal on it and the Bible had a story about a dinosaur living in a cave that goes to the center of the Earth, you would switch which story you believed in.

Concerning Noah's Flood, it makes much more logical sense to say that it was a myth just like countless other myths going around at that time.

By absurd, I mean that hundreds of other things are needed to explain the idea (refer to the biologist's quote) in order to keep it internally consistent.  Most of the Bible's stories are not in need of that (you just have to decide whether or not God actually exists).  As for the flood, I do think that there is global-wide evidence for it (but let's not get into that), and also recognize that I don't know what sealife was like some 4000 years ago and that I do not know what type of water covered the Earth (perhaps it wasn't homogeneous).

In any event, absurdity does not disprove anything, anyways.

Guys, the Jewish cosmology that gave birth to the story of the Flood said that the sky was a dome which actually held back an ocean from falling down on the Earth. The Flood was caused by cracks appearing in the dome.

Ever wonder why Noah did all that sealing on the roofs and the doorways and in places that boats don't really need?

The ark wasn't a boat.

It was a mythological submarine.

@appolose

The global wide evidence for a flood?
It had to have been a magic flood then, to just come and go and not leave the signs you would expect from a global flood.

http://evolution.mbdojo.com/flood.html

So believing in God gives you the fortune of not having to worry about the minor details, you can just say God made it so and be done with it, but my believing in evolution is absurd because I have to explain every minute detail in science.  You aren't taking the logical way out, you are taking the easy way out.

As Wessle said, there is no evidence for the global flood where there should be massive amounts of evidence if such an event occured.  Even local floods cause a lot of destruction, so much so that geologists can easily determine flood deposits in sediment layers.  Other than sedimentation, if the world was covered with water glaciers would have lifted up due to buoyancy, so there shouldn't be ice deposits that are hundreds of thousands of years old (as they are in Antartica).

Concerning flood water, the water would either be fresh, salty, or somewhere inbetween.  Fresh water fish would die if the water was too salty and salt water fish would die if the water wasnt salty enough, but there is no inbetween where fresh and salt water fish can live in the same water.  So some fish had to die in the flood, and they obviously didnt since we have fresh and salt water fish today.

Khuutru,

Thanks for the info, I didnt know that part of the story.

Appolose believes the "answers in genesis" approach of "if the bible and reality contradict each other, side with the bible". It is impossible to reason with that kind of mentality because there is absolutely zero room for anything that doesn't agree with the bible. And if you show concrete evidence to the contrary, the evidence is mistaken not the bible. If the bible says that the entire planet was covered in water, and somehow trees survived for 150 days submerged, somehow fresh and saltwater fish were just fine, somehow every single parasite was being contained in every animal, and none of the animals died and 2 of each animal (whatever "each animal" means) managed to create our entire biosphere over the entire planet in 4000 years, and that entire biosphere came from mount arrarat with bears and bison and every other kind of life crossing the ocean to arrive in north america in significant enough numbers to start a working ecosystem, and all of the fossils of countless extinct species laid in the ground prior are either from the devil or god (who can say?) then it must be so. No matter how insane or absurd, or contradictory to the reality we see, it must be so.

There is no arguing with that kind of sense. If somebody believes that they are receiving revelations in their head that cannot be explained verbally or even questioned (which every religion around the globe purports to have) then it is a kind of mentality that cannot be argued with. You're wasting you're time. I only wasted my time this time because I was drunk. Had I been sober I would've known better to even bother.

@vagabond. I've realised this =P

Probably not going to post any more because somebody who is completely unwilling to even acknowledge that there is the slightest possibilty that they are wrong is not really worth arguing against.

Dammit vagabond, I tried to give you some 90s music. I thought we could hijack the thread and take it on a fantastic journey together! Now I just feel dirty.

Dammit, I'm sorry rubang. Shortly after that post I pass out in the floor. I so would've hijacked it with you. My bad man, my bad.