I Struggle With My Faith

So overall I do believe in God and Jesus, but there are things that make me question just if certain things were true or not. And I can't just accept God make it happen.

Here's an example. Noah and the flood. First off its suppose to have been for 40 days and nights.

So my questions are 1) How did they survive? Fruits and vegetables would not have lasted that long nor would they have been able to have eaten meat.

2) How could they keep all of the animals, reptiles, etc controlled and fed?

3) How could they have built the Ark that big? I mean after all 2 of every single animal, bird, reptile, and so on. Not to mention rooms for his family.

4) What about bodily extracts? And all of the fecal matter produced by the animals?

5) After the flood how could Noahs family have repopulated the Earth?

All if these technical questions I have for a lot of the Bible stories. I don't believe most of what is written in the Bible is actually true. It can't be.

But yet I still believe there is a God and Jesus. Does that make me odd?

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Challenger1 · M

So I totally understand having a basic faith and struggling over some details, especially gaps/discrepancies in scripture.

But I think I have a few fairly simple response to these specific questions:

1. God sustained the Israelites through the desert for 40 years... if you buy that he can sustain the boat for 40 days.

2. Same as above...

3. May have been less variations of individual species...(only one breed of dog for example, meaning the other variations of dogs evolved later) in addition anything that could survive being in the water 40 days...

4. It would be a lot of work, but Noah and his sons and their lives could chuck the excrement over the side of the boat.

5. The same way we do now, sex -> babies. The bible does say that his son's and their wives came along, presumably their children too. The genes may have been stronger and thus capable of continuing in a smaller pool back then. This is supported by the recorded amount of time people lived...less disease etc.

I don't think it makes you odd. A lot of many people's faith is based on personal experience and testimony as opposed to purely on scripture.

What do you think of my reasoning? Does it makes sense?

Parrothead5600 · 46-50, M

It does but I don't totally believe it myself. My mind is so analytical that I need facts. As for the Israelites in the desert, I don't believe that story completely either.

And if we were to take the Ark story on fact then Noah and his whole family would have been alive when JesuS was born. Because from my understanding the time frame between those stories is only about a thousand years or so. That isn't enough time to repopulate the world with humans and animals.

Also if the flood did happen it covered the whole earth. Over the tops of the mountains. At that high if an altitude they would have frozen to death. They couldn't light a fire without risk of lighting the Ark on fire.

And there would have been no trees. Trees give oxygen, no trees, no oxygen. How did they breath?

Challenger1 · M

@Parrothead5600: I am a very logical and analytical person as well. I totally understand your difficulties. I do my best to explain it with as much of the information that I have.

The time between the stories is very hard to accurately estimate.

Mountains may have been lower having been forced up by shifts in the tectonic plates later...

Much of the oxygen we breath is actually a product of the growth of ocean plankton as opposed to trees, two thirds actually. In addition to that the vastly decreased animal population would mean that oxygen is consumed much slower for a few generations, giving the plants lots of time to grow back... The grasses and weeds that could have sustained the animals and Noah's family would have grown back in short order, especially as the ground would have been fertile from the flooding.