Ararat is one of the tallest mountains in the area at over 5,000 metres tall. Supposedly Noah saw the tops of the mountains as the water receeded. That's way way more than a few cubits, and there's no way melting the ice caps could produce that much depth. If all the ice in the world was melted, sea levels would only rise about 60 metres, I believe. I live above 60 metres altitude.
As soon as you try to take the bible literally in these areas, it'll make your head hurt. It's a story, told and retold for generations. Ever played telephone, where one friend tells another friend a sentence and it gets further mangled with each telling?
The bible is filled with contradictions. It disagrees on when Noah actually went into the ark:
Seven days before the flood...
Gen.7:7-10
And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark.... And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
The day the flood began...
Gen.7:11-13
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark.
I've got a
contradiction for every day of the year. Just let me know if you need more.
As an athiest, I'm perfectly happy for people to believe in whatever religion they choose, but I find it strange that people would use it to justify or disprove the discoveries of science. Religion and science can and should be two separate entities.
I've said in the past that I'm not interested in debating creationism versus evolution, etc, but I'm seeing religion as justification in many conversations on the board, and not enough counter arguments.