I'm so happy Aronofsky got this idea before Mel Gibson.
NOAH - Grading & Discussion
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
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Zing!
Dunno, does it ever say in the texts that the FSM doesn't spontaneously create new humans for breeding purposes as needed?
The idea of Adam and Eve is sort of an implicit endorsement of the contextuality of morality. Like, incest is wrong...unless of course your sister is the only existing human female. Murder is wrong...unless of course God's not a particular fan of the murderee.
If you take the old testament texts literally morality is more a question of obedience than principle, the story of Noah is a prime example of that.
If you take the old testament texts literally morality is more a question of obedience than principle, the story of Noah is a prime example of that.
I just tried to start a thread on this but told them to shut it down in that forum.
Regarding the film, I gave it a B+ if only for Emma Watson and Crowe.
Regarding following the bible as someone asked - elements not in the bible in the film:
1. The secret aerated potion that makes the animals sleep for apparently months - but not die from starvation.
2. Rock monsters who were the muscle in building the boat.
3. Methuselah helping make a women go from barren to being able to bare children.
4. The stow away on the boat.
Also, it's disappointing that Christians have such a difficult time living up to the fact that if they believe in even some elements of this story they must also believe that Noah and his children must have engaged in incestuous relationships [ alot - I mean all the time for years ] in order repopulate the planet. They like to pretend this never happened. The film also glossed over this issue.
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And the interpretation of the "Will of God" is usually done by the priesthood types, who in an astonishing coincidence are also the ones that typically decide which stories are included in "holy scripture."
It should hardly be surprising that unquestioning obedience to authority is a recurring theme in a book published by authority figures. Also, it's all that woman's fault so be sure to beat your wife and if a mob of homosexuals look at you funny, be sure to offer them your underage daughter for a gang rape to turn them from their evil ways.
Yeah, I know, I'm still annoyed that Lot is considered one of the "good guys".
Given that until relatively recently, the church considered living one's entire life as a pious virgin as the ideal standard to which all should aspire, I'd say some of these people had a very poor grip on biology. Yeah, all that blustering about gay marriage violating the sanctity of Christian faith is just hot air. It was considered one of the lesser sacraments and looked down on as "encouraging fornication" among couples. Because of course fornication has nothing to do with childbirth, only God creates life after all!
Weird considering how many simple farmers and herdsmen feature in these stories. I mean if anyone should know about the birds and the bees (literally) it should be people like that. Of course generally, they weren't the ones actually writing the stories down...
Having said that, whomever came up with the "two of each animal" thing clearly knew how things worked. One of the major drawback of a book written by hundreds, if not thousands of authors over the course of several thousand years is that there's bound to be some very drastic inconsistencies.
It's one of the main reasons why Biblical Literalists utterly baffle me.
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What, they knew how procreation worked? You mean two male horses wouldn't procreate?
I'm not a geneticist but, I believe that there is a insufficient gene pool to repopulate any species with only only a male and female w/o causing major abnormalities with future off spring.
What, they knew how procreation worked? You mean two male horses wouldn't procreate?
I'm not a geneticist but, I believe that there is a insufficient gene pool to repopulate any species with only only a male and female w/o causing major abnormalities with future off spring.
Actually, if those abnormalities are negative survival traits then the offspring simply won't survive in a harsh environment. On the other hand if they provide an advantage then they will survive and pass said "abnormalities" onto their offspring.
Yay Darwinism!
Realistically speaking though, no, at least I don't think so. For a complex animal species, you'd probably be hard presses to get a sustainable population any-time soon. I suppose there might be an outside chance, but you'd have to be very lucky...or have an all powerful being watching your back...
Both the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees talk about the Nephilim, who liked to get their freak on with human women and who possibly survived the flood because they were under the earth.
Jehovah's magic wand - doubt made of dragon heart string -
- can fix any problem. Which is why after Noah proved his obedience and built the damn boat - he should have instead simply eliminated the evil humans w/o destroying the planet in the process to begin with water.
In Genesis, all three of Noah's sons had wives of their own on the Ark, so their children would have married cousins, which wasn't/isn't terribly unusual in human history. In Aronofsky's version it's uncles marrying nieces, from the look of it (though that's also not unheard of).
It was certainly an interesting movie, and certainly not something one expects to see the like of any time soon.
Crowe, Connelly and Watson were all very good, but I wasn't sure about the casting of the sons (well, the youngest one didn't do anything much). The oldest one was just a pretty face; Lerman, an actor I've liked in the past, seemed a bit off at first, though he improved toward the end.
I mentioned this over in the Cosmos thread, but the depiction of the Creation story in this film absolutely blew me away. I loved how Aronofsky was able to show each of the days of creation in conjunction with the Big Bang, the formation of stars and galaxies, the creation of the Earth, and life.
^Try reading the ancient Greek creation myth some time. If you can look past the anthropomorphisms, they get freakishly close too. Indeed a lot (not all, obviously) of creation myths that I've read do appear to have the basic gist right. Makes you wonder if some ancient culture was more switched on than we tend to think...that or these things are so open to interpretation, you can read just about any model into them.
Yes, have read a lot of the Greek mythology, but most of that actually was written after most of the bible stories. The creation myth in the bible has many similarities to Babylonian and Mesopotamian stories, as well (especially Noah, in particular).
It is shocking how well we are able to adapt thousand year old texts to what we know today and make it fit, but then again things like "Bible Code" and "Nostradamus Code" are things that people believe in, too. I guess it really isn't that hard to make things fit after the fact.
My best friend, who is a rabid Russell Crowe fan, gave the movie a 4.5/5 while I said it was a three, maybe if I was feeling generous a 3.5. She said I didn't like it because i didn't understand it as well as she did. I said I understood it completely, I had marked it down because of lack of originality when compared to other fantasy movies and added that a grading of 3 to 3.5 is not a score I would give to a movie I didn't like.
As for me not understanding it as well as she did, it was me who knew which parts differed significantly from the Biblical account though I had no problem with the fact that it did differ, after all the whole Biblical story is just a myth. My friend's knowledge of the original story seems to have come from hearing children's version of the stories as she didn't think that Noah being drunk and naked was in the Bible.
As for me not understanding it as well as she did, it was me who knew which parts differed significantly from the Biblical account though I had no problem with the fact that it did differ, after all the whole Biblical story is just a myth. My friend's knowledge of the original story seems to have come from hearing children's version of the stories as she didn't think that Noah being drunk and naked was in the Bible.
What, they knew how procreation worked? You mean two male horses wouldn't procreate?
I'm not a geneticist but, I believe that there is a insufficient gene pool to repopulate any species with only only a male and female w/o causing major abnormalities with future off spring.
Actually, if those abnormalities are negative survival traits then the offspring simply won't survive in a harsh environment. On the other hand if they provide an advantage then they will survive and pass said "abnormalities" onto their offspring.
Yay Darwinism!
Realistically speaking though, no, at least I don't think so. For a complex animal species, you'd probably be hard presses to get a sustainable population any-time soon. I suppose there might be an outside chance, but you'd have to be very lucky...or have an all powerful being watching your back...
There's also the question of what all those carnivorous species were eating.
Lunch, species goes extinct
Dinner, species goes extinct
Maybe God inspired all the lions to become vegetarian just until there was a sustainable population.
What, they knew how procreation worked? You mean two male horses wouldn't procreate?
I'm not a geneticist but, I believe that there is a insufficient gene pool to repopulate any species with only only a male and female w/o causing major abnormalities with future off spring.
There is a bird species in New Zealand, the Black Robin, that got down to its last 5 members of which only one was a fertile female. The five were probably all related to each other as they had lived in isolation, on a separate island, from the main population that died out. Nowadays I believe the entire population on Earth today (about 250 birds) is descended from her and only two of the males - so only one more male than a one male/one female scenario, yet the population seems to be healthy. According to a wikipedia article
I believe that this might be the smallest population that a species has been known to make a comeback from. It is possible however that about 10000 years ago cheetah popuation dropped as low but the cheetah does have serious genetic problems as a result of this.
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