Noah's Ark and The Great Flood



The Ark

This boat would have had to have been bigger than anything man has ever made. There are around 25 MILLION species of animal on earth. There's over three hundred fifty-thousand species of beetle alone. The sheer nuraber of insects could fill several arks, before you even consider the larger creatures. The ark would have to be the single largest ship ever in earths history. Modern day technology could not possibly create a ship large and stable enough to act as Noah's Ark (it's been suggested that Noah would have needed a space-suit to walk on the deck). Yet the bible states (after translation) that the Ark was only about 550' long, by about 85' wide, and about 50' high. That's less than half the size of the RMS Titanic.

Many species of land animal require highly specialized habitat and food to survive. Koala bears, for instance, only eat leaves of the Eucalyptus tree. Also, no matter what time of year it is, many creatures would be hibernating (it's always winter somewhere on the globe). Many creatures are only found on one continent, indeed some are limited to a small island, forest, and/or mountain.

How could the ark cope with all the specialized requirements of food and environments for millions of creatures? 320 different species of hummingbird alone, for example, have very high metabolic rates and have to consume large amounts of nectar throughout the day. The Ark would have had to cater for 640 hummingbirRAB, requiring a constant supply of insects and nectar.

How could the ark cope with disposing of the waste products of all those creatures? It must have had an incredibly advanced plurabing and ventilation system, superior to anything to be found on modern ocean liners or large military vessels (e.g., aircraft carriers). Next time you are at a zoo, ask one of the keepers how easy it is to deal with the neeRAB of a few hundred animals they have for a month, then imagine scaling that up to a gigantic floating zoo with tens of millions of creatures being looked after by one old man and his family.

The Flood

Then we come to the flood itself. I believe the bible states that all land was covered. Up to the top of Mt. Everest then? The volume of water would have been astronomical. Millions of cubic miles. Where did it come from? Where did it go? The polar ice-caps are not big enough. The atmosphere doesn't contain that much water. With a bit of armchair math, we can roughly calculate how much water would have been needed to cover the planet to the top of Mt. Everest:

The radius of the Earth is approx. 6370 km. Mt. Everest is approx. 8.8 km. Therefore, earths volume is approximately 1,082,696,932,000 km³, or 1,080 billion cubic kilometers. The volume of Earth to the height of Everest is 1,087,190,293,000 km³. Subtracting the first volume from the second gives approx. 4,493,361,000, or four thousand, five hundred million cubic kilometers of water!

Also, the rain is supposed to have fallen in about 40 days. That means that there would have been about 220 m of rainfall every day over the entire planet (8800/40 = 220)! (Note: volume of sphere = 4/3 pi r³, and I use the American billion of 1,000,000,000 here).

Since rain is fresh water, this would have severely diluted the oceans, causing devastation among the marine creatures. Ask anyone with a marine fish-tank just how sensitive reef-fish and corals are to changes in water conditions. Virtually all sea-life that could not stand brackish water would have been destroyed.

How did so many plants survive being submerged in brackish water for so long? Again, many plants are quite sensitive to conditions. Take some of your household plants and leave them submerged in the bath or a pond for a month and see how they do. Then, after the waters subside (where to?) there are still more problems with the story. What happened to all the corpses of the countless nurabers of animals and humans that died? Surely there would have been terrible plague and disease caused by all that rotting meat. Many sea-creatures would have been deposited in places they could not normally reach inland lakes, etc. Is there any evidence of marine fish skeletons being found in high, freshwater lake beRAB?

The Animals

It was believed back then that the earth was flat, having four corners, it's in the bible. But then that same book later states the earth is circular (take your pick). This is still wrong, circles are two dimensional objects. Earth is a sphere, a THREE dimensional object. A circle is no more the same to a sphere than a square is to a cube. What does this have to do with animals? The earth was believed to be flat, the North and South American continents were NOT KNOW TO EXIST till the late 1400s! So how did they know of all the animals over here? Did Noah's family forget about this part of the world after all this? Next, you have to ask how all the creatures managed to get back to their original habitats, or at least ones that would support them.

•How did the koalas and kangaroos get back to Australia? •How did the polar bears and penguins get back the north/south poles? •How did the giant tortoises get back to the Galapagos IslanRAB? •How did the dodos get back to Mauritius (or was it Madagascar)? •How did the army ants get back to the Amazon rain-forests? •And as you will see under the next topic, what of the dinosaurs?

As there were only two (or seven, depending) of each species, how did they manage to travel thousanRAB of miles back to their place of origin without being eaten, dying in accidents or of starving to death due to lack of their normal (specialized) food supply?

The Dinosaurs and the Fossil Record

This is an area that causes problems for Flood-theorists. They usually state that dinosaur bones we find today are the remains of dinosaurs that died during the Flood. Why didn't Noah take any of these dinosaurs on the Ark? The Bible clearly states he took two of EVERY land animal. Dinosaurs surely fit into this category, do they not?

Also, if the fossil record was indeed created during the flood, then why do we consistently find that the lower down you go, the smaller the fossils become? If you take a large tank of water, and empty a big bucket of stones (ranging in size from silt and sand up to large rocks) into it, you will notice that the BIG ONES SINK FIRST. If the fossil record was created during the flood, surely we should see large bones in the lower strata, and the smallest ones higher up. What we actually find is the exact opposite, directly contradicting this part of the Flood hypothesis, but supports evolution.

If all the land animals died during the flood, we would expect the fossil record to be a hopelessly jurabled mess, with human bones being mixed up with dinosaur bones and Trilobites. What we actually find is a neatly layered set of strata that appears to be in chronological order, showing development from early, simple creatures up to large, complex creatures. If anyone can explain how this could have happened, I'd be intrigued to find out. Maybe the small animals all drowned and sank first, while the larger creatures were able to float about a bit before sinking? Can you imagine that?! Noah looks over the side of the Ark to see ants, dogs, cows, T. Rex, Moas, etc., all treading water, and disappearing in order of size...

The People

Once Noah had seen all the animals off, he then had to set about repopulating the world. Once again, incest in the bible rears it's ugly head. Noah's family had to inbreed to have children. Sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, all nicely mixed together (here's a thought, as all people before Noah were now dead, how does anyone know if the other events in the O.T. are true, we only have Noah's word for it). The human race effectively began again with Noah & CO. Makes you wonder why the omniscient God even bothered with Adam & Eve. Why not start straight away with Noah?

The Rainbow

While discussing the Ark story with a Jehovah's Witness, the subject of the rainbow cropped up. According to the Bible, God placed a rainbow in the sky after the flood, presumably to brighten the place up a bit, what with all the mud and dead plants and animals.

I asked if it was the first rainbow to ever be seen, and she said yes it was. This raises some fairly major questions:

•Were the laws of physical optics changed that day? They must have been, as rainbows are extremely simple phenomena. •How did light refract through water before that? •Did the eyes of all creatures have to change also? •How did we see color before that?

She couldn't really answer this, but, after talking to other JWs, she came up with this: "There was no rain before the flood, just very a heavy dew each day." I laughed until I needed hospital treatment.

Conclusion

This seems an incredibly complex way to go about getting rid of a bunch of sinners, doesn't it? God, who can create or destroy entire galaxies with no effort at all, has to get a poor slob to build an enormous ship, transport millions of animals from all over the planet to this ship, flood the entire planet, drain the water and then redistribute the animals again. What’s the point? Why not just snap his fingers and cause everything to be as he wishes it to be? He does have the power to do so, does he not? Why go to the trouble of causing terrible deaths of billions of animals, plants, and humans? Very odd behavior for an all-powerful, infinitely compassionate God, is it not? I cannot imagine how anyone could give any credibility whatsoever to the story of Noah's Ark, it really does defy belief.