Comment by Sidian M.S. Jones on March 11, 2009 at 6:56pm

Lol. I know! The Ark must have been the size of Texas! Also strange that we've never built a boat since then which could possibly hold this load AND keep the animals from ripping one another apart or shitting all over the place. More like Noah's Barf.

Comment by Gene Johnson on March 26, 2009 at 6:26pm

Now there's just one ark and we're ripping up from the inside in order to melt our marshmallows on the bonfire.
That reminds me; wouldn't it be a little insulting to God and to Noah that we're making all the animals he saved go extinct?
"Go save the animals so that you have something to drive into oblivion later on. I'll throw that in for free."

Comment by Dane on March 26, 2009 at 11:35pm

Come on guys, have some FAITH. Magic man done it, after all

Comment by Jeff H on March 27, 2009 at 12:13am

none of the swimmers had to go on the Ark folks.

A couple of sites for your consideration>

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/thinking-outside-...

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/sizeark.html

I also find it curious. How was the earth "born" as per this diagram, and when did ocean rust become not only alive but able to multiply.

Also isn't amazing that all this wonder and complexity moving from rust to human as an unguided cosmic accident.

Comment by doug on March 27, 2009 at 6:01am

As I'm certain the sites that Jeff has listed detail, there was PLENTY of room on the ark, given the dimensions that the Bible lays out (approximately 450'(length) x 75'(width) x 45'(height)), for 2 of every "kind" of animal. When the calculations are actually examined, this becomes very clear. And it is also common knowledge that in a situation like that, many of the animals would hibernate (or something similar). Plus all the animals were vegetarian still at that time, according to the Bible. Noah and his family would have had a lot of work, but certainly not more than they could have handled. Feasability studies have been done that give details on these subjects.

Whereas if we look at "cumulative action of mutations", we would not have what we presently have on the earth, since the overwhelming vast majority of mutations (that are not destroyed by the "built-in DNA autocorrection-system) are pejorative (harmful). You have never looked at the actual numbers to say that "large numbers in action" give rise to evolution. It's a wonderful dream (and diagram), but a far cry from reality and what is actually found in the fossil record. Leonard Eisenberg must have been on drugs when he produced that chart.

Rust becomes living organisms ONLY when we put aside science, so that evolution can be accomodated. And of course subsequent to that, tons of information must be imputed into the living goo...and that just happens, over billions of years.

Comment by gneognostic on March 27, 2009 at 1:02pm

Leaving aside the scientific evidence (which some of us are inclined to do anyway), let's think about the aesthetic argument.

A god of infinite beauty creates a universe - does he make a universe that requires constant intervention and micromanagement to achieve his goals, or does she set up a universe with all the physical parameters (the gravitational and electromagnetic constants) with all the necessary preconditions for life, and then just let it take its course, maybe with some gentle nudging now and then. (perfect pool break)

My study of physics and biology has lead me to a constant wonder at the elegance of the universe. Evolution is the most elegant, explanatory model, so I'm inclined to agree with it generally. The idea of a god who created the world POOF by fiat, 6000 literal objective years ago, and then micromanaged some kind of weird ecology without any predation (since doug suggests all animals were vegetarians) - beyond unlikely, it seems so unsubtle and inelegant.

Comment by Dane on March 27, 2009 at 7:57pm

Ark feasibility. I've seen many comments here on how the dimensions of the Ark given of 450ft.*75ft.*45ft* could hold eight human beings, all creatures on the Ark, as well as food and water for all for 40 days (depending on what information in the Bible you draw information from, it could be as much as 150 days.)

Lets go with best case miracle scenario. With the given dimensions, the Ark, without crossbeams or any internal supports, would have 1.52 million cubic feet of room. That is quite a large space. Put into perspective though, it is not nearly as massive as it sounds. Let's take an example of houses as a relative equivalent. Let's say you have a two-story house with the given dimensions: 100ft.w*100ft.d*30ft.h. That would give us 300000 cubic feet in a two-story home, not taking out room for walls, A/C, appliances, cupboards, etc. So we could say that the Ark, at best, had slightly more room than five large two-story homes. It's clear that when put into these terms, the mind cannot even begin to consider the idea of packing one of every species that would not survive the flood (plus seeds from all land plants that also would not have survived 40 days of drowning) into five empty two-story homes. Doesn't sound very feasible does it?

So let's do some more math to illustrate the point even more clearly. According to this site: http://www.earthlife.net/mammals/welcome.html there are currently 4260 Mammals, 6787 Reptiles, 9703 Birds, 1000000+ Insects, and 44000 Arachnids. Keep in mind these don't include animals that have become extinct, nor species that we do not know of. This gives us a total of 1064750 species from these groups. Notice that bacterias, fungi, land worms, and no forms of vegetation were included. There are 41 whale species included with the mammals, so we'll subtract those. This gives us a total of 1064709 distinct species that would have to have been loaded into the Ark, for a minimum of 40 days, along with eight humans, plus food and water. Again, best case scenario for the amount of space required would be 1518750 cubic feet/1064709 species/2 (male and female of each)= .713 cubic feet allow for each creature on the Ark. Less than one cubic foot each to survive in, with all other creatures, the full interior of the Ark being used w/o any internal supports, with humans, food, and fresh water not included. So the feasibility of the Ark is already gone. Add in some large creatures with non-square dimensions (such as giraffes, camels, moose) or very large appetites (elephants, horses, gorillas) and the you quickly realize that the idea of a large wooden craft supporting so many creatures for over a month is simply a ridiculous one.

Other basic and glaring issues with a literal world wide flood and the Ark are:

1. Where did the water come from, and where did it go?
2. How did Noah distribute animals and plants all over the globe after the flood subsided?
3. How did Noah get creatures from extreme arctic climates that he could not have survived and they could not have left?
4. How did Noah get creatures from Australia, South America, and North America?
5. How did Noah acquire the food, even assuming only grain and leaf eaters? This would be such a gigantic amount of food (adult African elephants eat between 330-375 pounds of vegetation daily).
6. How was Noah able to construct a viable wooden ship larger than any we can currently create using things like nails and pitch?
7. Rainbows did not exist before the flood...what properties of water and light were different before the flood then?

Comment by doug on March 30, 2009 at 3:38am

Dear mr. illiterate doone,

According to Gen 1.29-30, everything and everyone was vegetarian. Only in Gen 9.3 does God tell them they can start eating meat. This was largely because before the flood, the temperature was basically uniform throughout the whole earth, nor had it ever rained (Gen 2.5-6); there were no high mountains until after the flood (Psalms 104.8), which is partly why it was easy for the flood waters to cover all the "hills" on the earth (Gen 7.19), so there were no weather patterns as we presently have them (mountains are largely responsible for our weather patterns). The "canopy of water" (Gen 1.6-7) above the atmosphere (there are different points of view on this subject) kept the UV light at a very minimum (and also caused the C14 count to be much lower), and kept the humidity uniformly higher across the earth and the oxygen partial pressure was higher than now. These conditions provided for incredibly good conditions for plants to grow on all parts of the earth, providing plenty of food for all of life. After the flood, plant life radically changed, especially at and toward the poles, so that there was no longer ample plant "food" for all the animals that were reestablishing their populations on the earth.

I'll address the issues that you bring up, later, Dane....I'm at work right now.

Comment by Jeff H on March 30, 2009 at 1:02pm

doone... you are forgetting God's first words. "Let the be Light!"

I've been around awhile... I don't use any non-prescribed drugs other the very careful use of OTC medications, and I don't drink at all.

That said... If you grow pot and want the fastest initial plant growth, you use 24 hour light. You change to day and night cycles when you have gotten the growth you want, and now want to get the plant to reproduce, and bud.

The info you posted below is bogus doone, but I don't expect you to believe me, and still don't understand why you care if you don't believe it anyway.

Comment by doug on March 30, 2009 at 4:22pm

Thankyou doone,

You don't even understand what you have quoted in Genesis 1.29-30. Doug Linder's story is just that. God established Freshman Biology, so you're wrong on that account also.
....................
And thank you, Jeff, for trying to enlighten doone about light.
.....................
Dane,

There are numerous resources that address the issues you bring up; I will gleen from just a few of them.
Your figure of 1.52 million cubic ft. is rather generous. Nonetheless, most calculations give it about 1.4 million cubic ft, which would provide a volumetric capacity equal to about 522 standard livestock cars. And each of those is able to hold about 240 sheep, which is generously given as the average size of animals on the ark. The total amount of animals (generally 2 of each) has been calculated at about 16,000. It must be remembered that there were 2 of each KIND (species is apparently much more specialized than kind). (That means since wolves, dingoes, dogs, coyotes, etc. are believed to be descended from the same kind, it cuts our amount of animals down considerably; likewise for feline kind, and many others). By the way, land dwelling dinosauria are also included on the ark, since they were created on the 6th day. Many forms of life were not included, since God only told Noah to take those that "have the breath of life" (Gen 7.15)...insects, etc are not included. Most forms of animals are far smaller than sheep. Also worth pointing out is that God "brought" the animals to the ark, so he would have brought juveniles. Again, studies have shown that many animals will hibernate or undergo torpor for weeks at a times. Feeding challenges can be met with high fiber substitutes (pellets) for hay (for elephants and other larger animals)...this method was used by the Germans and Russians for their horses during WW II, and has been used effectively for rhinoceri and other ungulates and ruminants; other issues can be similarly addressed. If anything, there was an excess of space on the ark.

Where did the water come from and where did it go? Gen 7.11 says the waters came from rain and the "fountains of the deep". Studies show that if the earth's surface was flat, water would cover it to a depth of about 2 miles...the water is still here. And there is still much subterranean water now.

Noah let the animals out after the flood and they re-populated the earth themselves. There were no extreme climates (the water canopy provided for greenhouse-like conditions) , nor continents, as we now have, before the flood...it was probably one large land form.

As for the ark's construction, it is an assumption that man did not have refined woodworking and boat building skills at that time; archeology has shown otherwise. Sophisticated wood joinery was used by peoples 1000's of years ago, and was likely familiar to Noah or the builders he may have hired to build the ark for him. These issues have all been addressed in various resources, which I have listed below.

Rainbows form when raindrops refract sunlight. This implies that rainbows began after the flood, which would mean there was no preflood rain, which correlates with what the Bible teaches...that there was only a "mist that went up from the earth".

Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, Woodmorappe, 1996
The Genesis Flood, Whitcomb & Morris, 1961
The Genesis Record, Morris, 1976
In The Beginning (7th Edition), Brown, 2001
Panorama of Creation, Baugh, 1989
Frozen in Time, Oard, 2004
The World That Perished, Whitcomb, 1988
Origins, Roth, 1998
Flood By Design, Oard, 2008
.......there are others I also referred to, but that's enough (and hopefully I don't have too many typos).

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