Noah's Ark

I know that the biblical story of Noah and the Ark is exageration at best and folklore at worst. However, among the fundamentalist Christians, the Ark represents a distinct opportunity to "square the circle".

If you ever have time to read some of the Bible tracts put out by Chick Publications (http://www.chick.com) then you will likely agree that the authors are not committed to the idea of logical reasoning. Here are a few of the interesting beliefs put out in the Chick bible tracts about the flood (You can find the tract in question at http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/5002/5002_01.asp):

1. Noah took baby dinosaurs (they used to call them dragons) onto the ark.
2. The earth used to have a giant "canopy of water around it".
3. "The canopy sheilded the planet from the sun's harmful rays and created a 'hot house' effect."
4. "Before the floor, weather conditions were perfect and people lived to be 900 years old."
5. "Tidal waves rocked the Earth, tearing out enormous canyons" (This is their explanation for the Grand Canyon)
6. The fossil record was created in those 40 days and nights of rain as sediment buried all living things not on the ark. This explains how we end up with bones buried so deeply in the ground.
7. The Earth is only 6,000 years old.

That ought to be enough evidence for you to see that these tracts are pretty much BS. While I don't have a problem with people writing their own bullshit and passing it along as fact, I do take issue with so many people accepting this stuff on faith.

Before, I go further, I do understand that these tracts represent the extreme. Not all Christians take a literal interpretation of the Bible. The risk is that so many people seem to let this stuff slide by without challenging the ideas as total crap.

If you see a bible tract in your church that says there was a "giant canopy of water" around the earth, then you need to challenge that belief.

The blanket acceptance of anything faithful is exactly how we end up with extremests blowing themselves up. By the way, since you may have forgotten, anti-abortion Christian groups routinely used explosives in their fight against legal abortion. Also, the IRA used explosives for decades. We aren't immune from this stuff.