Here are some insurmountable problems with the ark myth. None of what follows is original work, but the points raised (by people more knowledgable than myself) do seem fatal to the story. This list is by no means exhaustive. Apos in advance if these points have been covered by other posters here.
1. The Animals Travel: Sure, they had a year to get to the ark site, but a lot of animals don't travel that fast (I'm fairly sure it would take a koala more than a year to waddle from Australia to the Middle East) and a significant number of animals have life spans of less han a year.
2. The Number Of Animals: Being as generous as possible, let's assume 10 000 species (there were considerably more). That's 20 000 animals. The ark as described could have held that many - barely. But the trouble is that there is a second passage in Genesis which instructs Noah to bring seven of each kind. That's 70 000 animals. The boat would not have held them all. And, even if we go with the lower figure, the ark would have been so crowded that the animals would have died during the year the boat was afloat.
3. Juvenile or Adult: Noah is told to take 'the male and his mate' aboard the ark. Juveniles, by defintion, do not 'mate', so he would have taken adult animals (if you accept the ark tale as literal, I don't see how you can get round this one).
4. Caring For The Animals: Eight people feeding 20 000 animals (being generous again) even one meal a day is 2500 meals served per person per day. But let's cut that in half (assuming the 'male and his mate) so that Noah, his missus, their kids and in-laws would only need to serve 1250 meals/day. If they worked at it round the clock, that gives us a little over 1 minute per meal. Which leaves - effectively - zero time to feed themselves, wash themselves, attend to sanitary needs, clean cages, and so forth.
5. The Ark: Without getting into the various definitions of 'cubit', a wooden boat, even a barge, that big is going to leak and leak badly. Given the problems in #4, Noah's clan would have had no time to bail and the boat would have sunk on Day 1.
6. The Ark Redux: Forty days and nights of rain, coupled with the specious 'fountains of the deep' is going to 1) smash that boat to flinders (that's a LOT of water pressure) and 2) steam-cook every living thing on that ark. Water gushing up from any significant depth is going to be hot. Really hot. And given the amount of water Arkologists need to posit to make this work, it's a safe bet that the water is going to carry the latent heat of fusion of rock with it.
7. The Landing: When the the cruise ended, there must have been gobs and gobs of dead animals lying around - there would haven't been enough fish to finish off all that carrion is so short a time. So, why weren't Noah et al carried off by the myriad diseases known to acompany dead, rotting flesh?
8. The Animals Leave: Ok, all their food is gone. I suppose the carnivorous scavengers could have made it home eating carrion, but what about pandas (who live almost exclusively on bamboo) or koalas with their all-eucalyptus diet? Why didn't they starve on the way?
9. The Logical Problem: All of the above can be explained away by simply saying God miracled these issues out of existence (the boat wouldn't leak, the animals were hibernating, and so on). But if you're going to be able to claim that, they why did God have Noah build the boat to begin with? If God has to tinker with everything along the way to make it happen, why not just spare the people and animals he wanted to save without gooing through all the kerfuffle of having the ark in the first place? The whole thing smacks of myth.
Boru
1. The Animals Travel: Sure, they had a year to get to the ark site, but a lot of animals don't travel that fast (I'm fairly sure it would take a koala more than a year to waddle from Australia to the Middle East) and a significant number of animals have life spans of less han a year.
2. The Number Of Animals: Being as generous as possible, let's assume 10 000 species (there were considerably more). That's 20 000 animals. The ark as described could have held that many - barely. But the trouble is that there is a second passage in Genesis which instructs Noah to bring seven of each kind. That's 70 000 animals. The boat would not have held them all. And, even if we go with the lower figure, the ark would have been so crowded that the animals would have died during the year the boat was afloat.
3. Juvenile or Adult: Noah is told to take 'the male and his mate' aboard the ark. Juveniles, by defintion, do not 'mate', so he would have taken adult animals (if you accept the ark tale as literal, I don't see how you can get round this one).
4. Caring For The Animals: Eight people feeding 20 000 animals (being generous again) even one meal a day is 2500 meals served per person per day. But let's cut that in half (assuming the 'male and his mate) so that Noah, his missus, their kids and in-laws would only need to serve 1250 meals/day. If they worked at it round the clock, that gives us a little over 1 minute per meal. Which leaves - effectively - zero time to feed themselves, wash themselves, attend to sanitary needs, clean cages, and so forth.
5. The Ark: Without getting into the various definitions of 'cubit', a wooden boat, even a barge, that big is going to leak and leak badly. Given the problems in #4, Noah's clan would have had no time to bail and the boat would have sunk on Day 1.
6. The Ark Redux: Forty days and nights of rain, coupled with the specious 'fountains of the deep' is going to 1) smash that boat to flinders (that's a LOT of water pressure) and 2) steam-cook every living thing on that ark. Water gushing up from any significant depth is going to be hot. Really hot. And given the amount of water Arkologists need to posit to make this work, it's a safe bet that the water is going to carry the latent heat of fusion of rock with it.
7. The Landing: When the the cruise ended, there must have been gobs and gobs of dead animals lying around - there would haven't been enough fish to finish off all that carrion is so short a time. So, why weren't Noah et al carried off by the myriad diseases known to acompany dead, rotting flesh?
8. The Animals Leave: Ok, all their food is gone. I suppose the carnivorous scavengers could have made it home eating carrion, but what about pandas (who live almost exclusively on bamboo) or koalas with their all-eucalyptus diet? Why didn't they starve on the way?
9. The Logical Problem: All of the above can be explained away by simply saying God miracled these issues out of existence (the boat wouldn't leak, the animals were hibernating, and so on). But if you're going to be able to claim that, they why did God have Noah build the boat to begin with? If God has to tinker with everything along the way to make it happen, why not just spare the people and animals he wanted to save without gooing through all the kerfuffle of having the ark in the first place? The whole thing smacks of myth.
Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
