The Noahs ark and why it didn't happen

[Bad Wolf]

I realise that this subject has been done to death and that any reasonable person with the most basic scientific knowledge would accept that the biblical world wide flood didn't happen. We know it didn't happen, not just because it is physically impossible but also there is no evidence on earth that it happened except in a centuries old book.
However, unfortunately some people still don't get it. I guess i'm going to have to make a huge list of reasons why the tale of Noah's ark, couldn't have happened.

1) How did all the animals fit on the ark?

There are billions of species of animals. We would never be able to fit two of every species on the biggest ship we have today, so how the hell did they fit on the ark which is much smaller than modern vessels? Answer: They didn't. I have even heard creationists claim that they took baby animals to save space. That still wouldn't work, there still wouldn't be enough room. And if there was how did these baby animals survive without there parents to care for them? Magic? Godidit? Cause that's the only explanation I can think of.

2) How did all the animals get to the ark?
Firstly, it is impossible that two of every species travelled to the ark. Period. How did they get across the oceans? How did they know where to go? How did they travel millions of miles across unfamiliar land?
Also, countries like Australia were not known of back then, so how did the kangaroos and wallabies and koalas get to the ark? Noah sure as hell didn't know about Australia, so how did it happen? Did he sail over there and pick them up himself?

3) Even if we accept the nonsense that two of every species of animal fitted on the ark. What did they eat and drink for 40 days? Are you telling me that there was 40 days worth of food on the ark for each animal. Bearing in mind that the different species need different food sources. For example, pandas eat exclusively bamboo. Koalas eat eucalyptus leaves. What, did they grow the plants on board? Where was the room for that? And how did they store all the water for the animals? How much water did they need? Can someone calculate that?

4) What stopped the predators eating the prey animals? Were all the species kept in their own cages? Again, according to the size of the ark, there would be no room for it.

5) How did they get rid of all the waste? With every terrestrial and avian species on board, there must have been a hell of a lot of shit and piss. Please explain how, what was it? 8 people, managed to clean all that up?

6) What did Noah's family eat and drink?

7) A wooden ship the size of the ark would have had leaks. How did so few amount of people prevent the ark from sinking?

8) Once the flood had ended, how did all the animals get back to where they came from? How did they know where to go? A sloth for example would take thousands of years to get back. Did they all migrate together? Then where is the evidence of it?

9) Where did all the water come from and where did it all go. On earth, we have a finite amount of water? Just saying: 'it rained a lot' or 'the water came up from the depths of the earth' doesn't make sense.

10) All terrestrial plant life would have been killed by the flood waters. Granted, some seeds could have survived and species could have continued, but how did it grow back so fast as to sustain all the herbivores? And what did the predators eat, as soon as they came off the ark, they would have killed and eaten all the herbivores. GC thinks that the predators survived off of the dead bodies of the animals killed by the flood waters. Are you fucking kidding me? 40 days in the water would rot any corpse and make it inedible. Even if some fish survived the flood, there would not have been enough to feed all the predators. Also a lot of the predators would be unable to catch fish.

11) If only two of every species survived there would be evidence of a genetic bottle neck. But there isn't. We know that cheetahs went through a genetic bottle neck at the end of the last ice age. We can see this in there genes. They are almost genetically identical to the point that you can graft skin from one unrelated cheetah onto another and there will be no rejection, no immune response. Other animals such as pandas, elephant seals, American buffalo and yes humans went through genetic bottle necks. If the story of the ark really happened, then why do we not see genetic bottle necks in every species alive today?

12) How do you explain the fact that some trees are older than when the supposed flood happens. A global flood would have killed every tree.

13) I can't quite remember how many people were on board the ark but do you know when the pyramids were supposedly built? Wasn't it something like a few hundred years after the flood. Are you telling me that Noah's family multiplied so fast that they managed to create hundreds of thousands of people in a few hundred years? Enough jews to make the pyramids?

14) Creationists often claim that the flood could have layered down sediment. Although it is true that sediment can be layed down by floods, it is not the same as geologic processes. We can tell the difference you know. The KT boundary for example. This is a layer of sediment underneath which, all non-avian dinosaurs are found. None are found above this layer. In this layer, there is Iridium. Iridium is extremely rare in the earths crust but is common in meteorites. Which leads palaeontologists and such to think that a giant meteorite struck the earth and killed off the dinosaurs. If you don't believe this: How did the flood lay down this KT boundary with the iridium?

I would just like to point out that any sentence with a question mark at the end is indeed a question and I want it to be answered. I do realise that they won't actually be answered. This is pointless to say as I know it won't influence the answers at all but: claiming 'god did it' is not an explanation.

[pocaracas]

Of course god-did-it is an explanation. It can do whatever it wants, sort of like magic, but not really magic.... they will call it "supernatural influence".

[Anomalocaris]

Noah's ark and global flood are so improbable that to have to enumerate out loud the reasons why they didn't happen already suggest you've done something wrong and as a result have fallen into company of people of very vast ignorance and very low cognitive potential.

[John V]

I realise that this subject has been done to death

Yep.

and that any reasonable person with the most basic scientific knowledge would accept that the biblical world wide flood didn't happen. We know it didn't happen, not just because it is physically impossible but also there is no evidence on earth that it happened except in a centuries old book.
However, unfortunately some people still don't get it. I guess i'm going to have to make a huge list of reasons why the tale of Noah's ark, couldn't have happened.

1) How did all the animals fit on the ark?

There are billions of species of animals.

Really? Can you support that?

[quote]2) How did all the animals get to the ark?
Firstly, it is impossible that two of every species travelled to the ark. Period. How did they get across the oceans? How did they know where to go? How did they travel millions of miles across unfamiliar land?

Millions? Gee, just how big do you think the earth is? I guess it would need to be millions of miles around in order to fit those billions of species.

[Esquilax]

So, harp on what was probably a typo to avoid looking stupid having to defend the glaring inconsistencies in a biblical thing?

Standard christian refrain!

[John V]

So, harp on what was probably a typo to avoid looking stupid having to defend the glaring inconsistencies in a biblical thing?

More likely hyperbole than typo, but still funny. As he notes from the start, this has been done to death. But, if you insist:

1 - Yes, goddidit. Some Christians will note that there are fewer kinds than there are species, but I don't see the need to force natural explanations on an admittedly supernatural event.

2 - Again, goddidit. Alternatively, there was only one land mass before the flood so yes, the animals walked.

3 - Goddidit. Alternatively, kinds - see 1 above.

4 - Biblically there weren't predators prior to the flood.

5 - Goddidit. Alternatively, kinds - see 1 above.

6 - Food and water.

7 - Support please. Alternatively, goddidit. Alternatively, they simply drilled drainage holes in the bottom - see a documentary series called The 3 Stooges for information on how this works.

8 - Goddidit. Alternatively, they walked.

9 - Changes in topography can easily explain a flood with the water currently available.

10 - Goddidit, and this is the second time he incorrectly says 40 days. It was a lot longer than that.

11 - Creation models assume built-in genetic variation potential in the initial kinds, with much of it still existing at the flood (and indeed much remains today - e.g. all dogs supposedly came from wolves)

12 - The Bible doesn't give a date for the flood. Biblical genealogies are known to skip generations.

13 - See 12.

14 - Why did 25% of species survive?

[Rampant.A.I.]

[Anomalocaris]

I thought the biblical flood story itself was already the very nadir of human ignorance and wishful thinking. But I was wrong. Every christain can sink even lower trying to defend it.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

13) I can't quite remember how many people were on board the ark but do you know when the pyramids were supposedly built? Wasn't it something like a few hundred years after the flood. Are you telling me that Noah's family multiplied so fast that they managed to create hundreds of thousands of people in a few hundred years? Enough jews to make the pyramids?

This is actually one of my favourite arguments against the ark story.

The fine folks over at Talk Origins determined that, if we take 2350 BCE as the date of the flood, that meant that:

1. They pyramids were constructed by 13 people.

2. When Moses lead the 600 000 Children of Israel on the Exodus, the world population was 736 people.

3. In 481 BCE, when Xerxes the Great assembled an army of more than 2.5 million soldiers, the world's population was a little less than 87 000.

Boru

[Confused Ape]

There's a much earlier version of the flood story from Babylon. Another tablet came to light with information about the Babylonian version of the ark. This article about it is on the British Museum website.

Was the ark round? A Babylonian description discovered

When the gods decided to wipe out mankind with a flood, the god Enki, who had a sense of humour, leaked the news to a man called Atra-hasis, the ‘Babylonian Noah,’ who was to build the Ark. Atra-hasis’s Ark, however was round. To my knowledge, no one has ever thought of that possibility. The new tablet also describes the materials and the measurements to build it: quantities of palm-fibre rope, wooden ribs and bathfuls of hot bitumen to waterproof the finished vessel. The result was a traditional coracle, but the largest the world had ever dreamed of, with an area of 3,600 sq. metres (equivalent to two-thirds the area of a football pitch), and six-metre high walls. The amount of rope prescribed, stretched out in a line, would reach from London to Edinburgh!

To anyone who has the typical image learnt from children’s toys and book illustrations in mind, a round Ark is bizarre at first, but, on reflection, the idea makes sense. A waterproofed coracle would never sink and being round isn’t a problem – it never had to go anywhere: all it had to do was float and keep the contents safe: a cosmic lifeboat. Palm-and-pitch coracles had been seen on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers since time immemorial: they were still a common sight on Iraq’s great waterways in the 1950s.

If the flood had really happened you'd think that future generations would have

1: Agreed on the name of their ancestor who built it and not called him Atra-hasis or Utnapishtim (in the Epic Of Gilgamesh) or Noah in the Bible.

2: Remembered what shape the ark was so there weren't two different designs for it.