101
Reasons Why Noah’s Story Doesn’t Float
I can think of no superior example
thoroughly demonstrating why the Bible is not the holy word of any deity than
the tale of Noah and his ark. Although this book is intended to be a short
introduction of biblical problems for those still hanging onto their programmed
beliefs, I’m unable to fathom how I can be concise with the tale of the global
flood. Rather than bogging you down with some mind numbing scientific data,
I’ll try to present the various problems in an organized yet fun to read
manner.
A Dose Of
Common Sense
Let’s begin by looking at this highly
questionable account from a common sense point of view. Within the story, we have
a god who has to modify virtually all of his creations for the solely expressed
reason of the people having become wicked and evil (Genesis 6:5), yet wicked
and evil people continue to exist throughout the Bible. Right off the bat, the
foundation for the story fails to make sense. Why would an omniscient god have
to destroy all of his work for a specific quality that he knew would continue
to exist even unto this very day? The flood was for naught, yet God carried out
his horrific genocide anyway. I find this to be the most disturbing and perhaps
the most ridiculous premise ever conjured by the human mind.
The author clearly tells the story from
the perspective that God had just recently realized the way the world had
become. This, too, fails to make sense because biblical authors repeatedly
claim that God is omniscient. By definition, his omniscience requires him to
have known at the time of Adam and Eve that he would later desire to start from
scratch at Noah. This unnecessary and foreseeable correction is hardly the
logical course of action for an omnipotent god to take. If you let your
inhibitions loose, however, it should be painfully obvious that the original
authors of Genesis didn’t consider these salient points as they were writing.
One might even ask if they bothered to proofread their work. Such casual
observations work well against the hypothesis of an all-knowing god, a
consideration we’ll revisit repeatedly. At this point in our study, one must already concede that God is not
omniscient, God behaves in an acutely illogical manner, or the flood simply
never took place for the reasons provided by the Bible.
Appallingly, God drowned unborn children
in the flood. This indisputably necessary consequence of his actions should
ironically put a huge kink in the pro-life arguments from the church. God
aborts countless unborn children for the questionable sins of their parents,
yet the church expects society not to do the same? Infants and young children
who do not possess the intellectual capacity to tell right from wrong were also
casualties of the flood! How could they be among the wicked and evil? These are
hardly the actions of the loving God depicted in the New Testament. The
innocent children didn’t deserve the fate God inexcusably dealt them, end of
story. Helpless animals also suffered the horrible fate of the children.
However, given the apparently twisted love that God has for smells from animal
sacrifices (Genesis
No one has ever found the enormous ark
even though we know its final resting place is among the mountains of Ararat
located around present-day Turkey (Genesis 8:4). All evidence presented as
proof of the ark’s discovery has been admitted to be a hoax, proven a hoax, or
withheld from testing. Although one could reasonably anticipate that someone
would have discovered a tangible piece of evidence from the craft if it hasn’t
decomposed, multiple expeditions have turned up absolutely nothing. While many
people claim they have evidence for the ark being conveniently underground, no
one has ventured to exhume it from the earth.
Genesis, the only known source of Noah’s
story, has several hundred additional problems in need of answers before we can
consider it a reliable historical source. No known individuals recorded this
particular version of the global flood myth until nearly 2000 years after the
floodwaters vanished. Since oral accounts of an event can obviously undergo
drastic changes even over a few generations, there’s really no telling how much
alteration the story incorporated before existing in its present form. In
short, as we have seen and will continue to see, the book of Genesis is not a
reliable source of historical information by any stretch of the imagination.
Observable
Facts In Any Day And Age
A little known but important piece of
information about the Genesis flood is that the extremely similar Epic of
Gilgamesh in the Sumerian legend predates Noah’s story by at least one thousand
years in the written form and at least five hundred years for the setting. The
similarities between the two tales are so remarkable that we cannot write them
off in good conscience as mere coincidences. In the earlier flood legend,
Utnapishtim receives instructions and exact dimensions on how to construct a
large ship to avoid an imminent flood (as does Noah in Genesis 6:14-16), takes
animals and his family aboard to preserve life on earth (as does Noah in
Genesis 6:19-7:1), lands the ship on a mountain after the flood has stopped (as
does Noah in Genesis 8:4), releases a dove and a raven from the ship in order
to aid his search for dry land (as does Noah in Genesis 8:6-11), and burns a
sacrifice after the flood for the gods who find its odor pleasing (as does Noah
in Genesis 8:20-21). Because several additional minor parallels exist, I would
encourage everyone to read Tablet XI of the short epic in its entirety in order
to appreciate fully the similarities between the two legends. Since the
Gilgamesh tale is the earlier version of the two, we can only surmise that the
authors of Genesis copied the Epic of Gilgamesh or inadvertently patterned the
story of Noah’s ark on an even more ancient flood legend that we have yet to
discover.
Records of flourishing civilizations in
Most people with a reasonable level of geographical
education are aware of the existence of
To this day, no one has ever been able to
assemble a seaworthy boat the size and best possible composition of the ark
even though the all-knowing God personally dictates the dimensions. Experts in
the field agree on the long established three-hundred-foot limit for a wooden
vessel, yet the ark extends 50% beyond this repeatedly verified limitation. In
addition, researchers carried out their attempts to break the
three-hundred-foot barrier under tranquil weather, not conditions indicative of
the apocalyptic downpour depicted in Genesis. Furthermore, the modern boats
used in these attempts had the benefit of iron braces to maximize cohesion.
There’s no indication that Noah used any
metal when building his ark. If we accept the Bible as an accurate account of
the event, Noah was necessarily confined to “gopher wood” and pitch (Genesis
6:14). Had the authors ever attempted to construct a craft the size of the one
that they championed as a global flood survivor, they would have failed
miserably. Consequently, the size of the ark would have been yet another factor
of the flood story in desperate need of adjustment.
Hundreds of millions of animal species
existed during the time of Noah, many of which could have been observed by
undertaking a long journey from Mesopotamia. Had the authors spent more time
researching animal life in the neighboring regions, they probably would have
come to appreciate the futility in fitting two animals of every kind onto the
ark. As a result, the authors would have to expand the ark’s dimensions in
order to accommodate Noah’s guests. At the same time, however, the boat’s
larger design would further handicap its credibility as a seaworthy craft.
A surviving population of eight could not
have rebounded quickly enough in order for the equally comical Tower of Babel
story to take place only one or two centuries later. While God commands Noah’s
family to be fruitful and multiply, seemingly providing the story with a mirage
of plausibility, the population simply could not have grown to more than a
hundred or so even under ideal environmental conditions. Could this minuscule
group of people have possibly posed a threat to God by building a tower so
immense that Heaven would become attainable to them? Ignoring the obvious reply
that God doesn’t live on top of the sky, Noah’s future descendents certainly
didn’t have the resources to accomplish this assuredly impossible task.
The Water
Fiasco
As the title of this section indicates,
we’ll now look at a few problems created by the water supply, most notably the
lack thereof. The amount necessary to produce a flood of global proportions far
exceeds the current amount available on, in, and above the earth. While this
doesn’t prove the water wasn’t present, the burden of proof is on those who
defend the story to provide it with a plausible explanation. As the “fountains
of the deep” (Genesis 7:11) contain only 1% of the necessary water, 99% would
have to fall from the supposed sky ocean. Thus, the goal of covering every
mountain with only forty days’ worth of precipitation would require a rainfall of
six inches per minute, which is far
too tremendous for the primitive ark to remain intact. In great contrast, we
would typically expect a rainfall of only six inches per hour from a category five hurricane. One can only decide that this
requirement is hardly feasible to carry out, especially when the heat generated
by the impact of the raindrops on the flood surface would have been more than
sufficient to boil the water and prevent it from rising.
The water originating from underneath the
earth’s surface would erupt with noxious gases, such as sulfuric acid, that
would make their way into the atmosphere and cause the earth to become
uninhabitable. The lava expected to accompany the subterranean water would also
bring the already scalding liquid to its boiling point. Furthermore, if the
oceans somehow miraculously avoided vaporization, nothing would have prevented
the water from receding beneath the earth once the outpour ceased unless the
pressure exerted by the water above collapsed the previous passageways. Such a
scenario would then force the water to remain or evaporate. Since the water is
no longer present and the clouds in the supposed sky ocean don’t have the
capacity to hold this amount of liquid, we can only assume that it mysteriously
vanished. However, the problems of the water’s source and destination are moot
points since the entire ocean should have almost instantaneously been converted
to steam. In fact, the steam rising from the ocean beds would have been
concentrated enough to boil off the planet’s atmosphere.
Keep in mind that this tale would make
sense to the early Hebrew who apparently believed there was an oceanic
reservoir in the sky (Genesis 1:6-7). If a mysterious canopy of water existed
above the earth at one time, as some Christians have offered as an explanation
for the origin of the water, the mass of liquid would raise the atmospheric
pressure enough to cause a dramatic increase of oxygen and nitrogen to toxic
levels. Such a canopy would also extend beyond the ozone layer, a problem
concluding with the denaturation of water molecules by high levels of
ultraviolet light. If you subtract the requisite of covering the world’s
highest mountains, of which we have no reason to believe the story’s inventors
were aware, most of these problems would conveniently disappear. As it stands,
however, the necessary water requirement is too extraordinary for covering the
earth’s surface by fifteen cubits.
The
Geological Fiasco
One should also realistically expect at
least a scant amount of geological or natural evidence for a global flood if
the supernatural catastrophe took place, but the signs overwhelmingly point to
the contrary. The flood should have created a massive extinction along the
floors of the oceans. Likewise, millions of land organisms that would have
certainly been victimized by the flood would also have deposited a large layer
of terrestrial fossils. Of course, neither one of these evidential necessities
is apparent.
Miles of coral reef, hundreds of feet
thick, still survive intact at the Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The
violent flood would have certainly destroyed these formations, yet the rate of
deposit tells us that the reefs have survived for over 100,000 undisturbed
years. Similarly, the floodwaters, not to mention the other factors leading to
a boiling sea, would have obviously melted the polar ice caps. However, ice
layers in Greenland and Antarctica date back at least 40,000 years.
Impact craters from pre-historical
asteroid strikes still exist even though the tumultuous floodwaters would have
completely eroded them. If these craters were formed concurrently with the
flood, as it has been irresponsibly suggested, the magnificent heat from the
massive impacts would have immediately boiled large quantities of the ocean, as
if it wasn’t hot enough already. Like the asteroid craters, global mountain
ranges would exhibit uniform erosion as a result of a global flood.
Unsurprisingly, we witness just the opposite in neighboring pairs of greatly
contrasting examples, such as the Rockies and Appalachians.
Even if we erroneously assume there to be
enough water under the earth’s surface in order to satisfy the required flood
levels, the size of the openings necessary to permit passage for a sufficient
amount of water would be large enough to destroy the cohesive properties of the
earth’s crust. However, the outer layer is firmly intact, and there’s no
evidence indicating that it ever collapsed. All this hypothetical escaping
water would have greatly eroded the sides of the deep ocean fissures as well,
but no such observable evidence exists for this phenomenon either.
We can obtain additional geological
evidence suggesting that there will never be records discovered for this
particular global flood by examining fossil deposits via radiometric dating.
This scientific process isn’t as complex as it may initially sound. We know
that isotopes, specific forms of chemical elements, will naturally convert to
other isotopes over time. The rate at which they undergo this change depends on
the concentration of the original isotope. Regardless of the original amount
present, half of isotope A will
become isotope B over x length of time, where x depends on the specific properties of
the isotope that one wants to measure. After the same x length of time, the present amount will reduce by half again,
leaving one-fourth of the original amount of isotope A. The length of time required by the isotope to reduce its
concentration by half is referred to as the half-life. We know that this
process will continue indefinitely, but we can only take an accurate
measurement while a sufficient amount of the original isotope remains. For
example, we know that Rubidium-87 decomposes into Strontium-87 over time. To
demonstrate the natural phenomenon of radiometric decomposition, we can begin
by collecting and measuring a pure sample of Rubidium-87. After a specified
period, we can again measure the sample and observe how much has converted to
Strontium-87. Now there’s enough information to extrapolate the precise rate at
which Rubidium-87 converts to Strontium-87. Many isotopes, such as the one
mentioned in our example, have half-lives of several billion years.
Results from this radiometric dating
method unambiguously indicate that many of the less complex fossils are
billions of years old. This realization drives a painful thorn in the
Creationist hypothesis that attempts to explain how the flood deposited the
fossils only a few thousand years ago. Furthermore, time has also neatly
separated the earth’s fossils into distinct layers according to their
radiometrically determined age. In fact, there has never been a verifiable
instance in which two fossils discovered in the same layer were dated
appreciably different. Even if we entertain the possibility of the fossils
being deposited by the biblical flood, the field of fluid mechanics tells us
that the smaller fossils of less complex, more primitive life forms would not
sink as fast as the larger fossils, yet the remains of these tiny creatures are
the sole occupants of the basement layer because they obviously settled
millions of years prior to the deposition of fossils belonging to more complex,
more recent life forms.
We can also observe algae deposits within
the fossil layers, a phenomenon that could not have formed during the flood
because they require sunlight to thrive. It’s quite reasonable to assume that
the clouds would have thoroughly obstructed the sunlight during such a
tremendous rain indicative of the flood. Setting aside this and all other known
fossil inconsistencies with the Bible, archaeologists have found human
footprints within the upper layers. Moving water simply could not have
deposited these markings. As I alluded to earlier, this seemingly endless list
of geological problems was completely unforeseeable to the primitive authors,
thus the Bible offers no justifications or explanations for our discoveries.
The Animal
Adventure
Shifting topics, let’s tackle the various
animal problems and the question even the most rigid believer has asked at one
time or another: “How did Noah get all those animals to fit on the ark?” An
appropriate sequential analysis should begin with the problems Noah would have
faced years before the ark ever left the ground. This recently appointed
shipbuilder would have had extreme difficulty in gathering some of the more
dangerous and sizable animals, such as tigers and elephants; and without
falling back on divine intervention once again, the apologist can’t justify a
reason why these animals would readily decide to return with Noah to the
construction zone. Thus, there’s no good way to determine exactly how long it
would have taken to trap and transport all the necessary animals in order to
comply with God’s orders. Noah would have also been required to know, collect,
and preserve the food for special diets required by certain animals. While many
finicky species, such as the koala, can survive
for short periods away from their primary sources of nutrition, the choice to
forego these considerations compounds the great risk of killing such animals
already traumatized by the drastic relocation.
As we all know, many animal species are
indigenous only to certain regions of the globe. There would have been no
rational means by which Noah could have traveled to Australia to catch two
koalas, North America to trap two grizzly bears, Antarctica to kidnap two
penguins, etc. Even if we allow a miraculous way for Noah to journey to these
remote regions, we’re still looking at that enormous amount of time to venture
across the earth for the sole purpose of preserving an insignificant percentage
of animals that God could have easily recreated after the flood. As Noah and
his family are already pressed for time with the ark’s assembly, successful
completion of such a futile journey seems exceedingly unattainable.
As a consequence of their forced
relocation, the overwhelming majority of the animals wouldn’t have survived in
the near-desert region of Mesopotamia due to the extreme climate. For example,
many cave dwelling animals require 100% humidity to survive. Such animals
couldn’t have lived through months of turmoil on the boat, much less a week’s
stay in the desert. Additionally, many animals require residency on an island
due to their nature of being easy prey. Mainland creatures would have quickly
driven them to extinction due to competition among the different species during
the time prior to the flood. These considerable animal anomalies were, once
again, unknown to the ancient authors.
In the last area you’d anticipate having
problems, the thoughtless God only provided Noah with a seven day warning to
load the ark (Genesis 7:4). This designated period wouldn’t have been
sufficient to secure even a few thousand animals onboard even when working
around the clock. However, this task would have been relatively easy to
accomplish if Noah was only boarding the handful of animals known to the flood
story’s original audience.
We also understand that God advised Noah
to take a male and a female of each kind onto the ship (Genesis 7:2). An unconditional
problem with this divine order is the presence of asexual and hermaphroditic
species. Because variant asexual species reproduce without a sexual partner,
there’s no male or female distinction of which to speak. As for the
hermaphrodites, they simultaneously exhibit qualities of being both male and female. These two anomalous creature
classifications have no distinct male and female members, thus Noah couldn’t
have gathered a male and female member of the kind as instructed by God unless
we alter the clear meaning of the text.
Unbelievably, the hypothetical sojourn
aboard the ark would have likely created problems even more numerous than those
encountered before the journey. The answer to the question on everyone’s mind
is that the animals, babies or not, clearly could not have fit on the ark if we
follow the building guidelines provided by God. Remember that according to some
Christian apologists, the flood was responsible for depositing the fossil
layers. The consequence of this hypothesis is the requirement for every
species, including those believed to have become extinct millions of years ago,
to be present at the time of the flood in order to deposit their share of
fossils in the geological column. Moreover, Noah would have been required to
load the ark with dinosaurs. These enormous creatures wouldn’t fit onboard even
if they had the crude vessel entirely to themselves. Apologists are really
grasping at straws by this point if they’re still asserting that the global
flood deposited the fossil layers.
Ignoring the dinosaur difficulty for a
moment, the ark still would not have been large enough to house the remaining
animals. Once again, the size of Noah’s boat would have been sufficient if you
only count the variety of animals known to the authors. While the attempt at
this feat doesn’t even come close to approaching success when considering two
of each species, apologists will
often regress to the “kinds of
animals” hypothesis set forth in the Bible (meaning one kind of cat, one kind
of beetle, etc.) However, this foolish proposition doesn’t allow enough time
for the deviation of species into their present forms. Once this issue is
settled, perhaps they can begin work on a method by which the dinosaurs can
come aboard.
Considering that there was only an
eighteen-inch opening near the roof, the boat’s ventilation system would have
been inadequate for the animals’ oxygen requirements. To make matters worse,
some of the rooms were separated entirely from this makeshift ventilation
system (Genesis 6:16). Any organism attempting to thrive in this isolated
environment would have fortunately died much sooner than those slowly suffering
with a more proximate location to the roof. In short, almost every living thing
would have eventually expired from asphyxiation. Furthermore, the buildup of
toxic methane gas from animal feces would have only compounded the respiration
predicaments. While I imagine the smell would have been simply intolerable, one
spark would have created a far more critical problem because methane is highly
flammable.
Many special types of carnivores become
very afflicted when forced to live off vegetation because they typically only
meet their nourishment requirements from live foods. Likewise, many herbivores
will only eat fresh foods. While the biblical authors would probably like us to
believe that these special need creatures survived off stored foliage, such
torturous concessions would be ill advised in this unfathomably hostile
environment. Even with the supposition of these animals being able to tolerate
a drastic change in their diets, Noah could not have feasibly provided fresh
vegetation throughout the duration of their confinement. The lack of
refrigeration and open storage of the accessible rations would have solicited a
number of pests to facilitate the natural rotting process. The high level of
humidity would also have created an ideal environment for mold to thrive and
spoil the food. Every living creature, except for the strongest carnivores
eventually able to dine on carcasses, would have soon starved because there
would be nothing edible remaining on Noah’s ark.
Several more dilemmas imminently faced
over the duration of the stay are readily apparent. Some species, such as ants
and bees, need a colony to survive. Thus, two members alone would not have been
sufficient for guaranteeing the continuation of their survival because each
individual has a limited capacity to perform only certain tasks for the
community. Host specific parasites could not have survived with only one pair
of hosts. Either the parasites would have expired from a lack of nutrition, or
they would have doomed their hosts’ species, as well as their own, by killing
their only acceptable source of nourishment. Since moderate activity is quite
necessary for most organisms to remain healthy, the relatively lucky prisoners
would have further suffered due to a lack of exercise from the necessary space
confinement. The lifespan of many species is shorter than a few months, but the
ark would not have provided a suitable reproductive environment for most of
these short-lived animals. There could not have been sufficient separation in
the ark to keep the violent animals from attacking the weaker ones. There were
no replacement animals for many species in the certain instance that one of
them met an early death. The eight-person crew would not have been large enough
to feed and take care of the countless number of animals taken aboard. I could
really go on and on about the animal problems on the ark, but I hope this brief
discussion will be sufficient.
Once nature has ultimately dispersed the
floodwaters and Noah has released the animals, the problems still continue. The unfathomably heavy
rains would have essentially annihilated any means for nutritive support to sprout
from the ground. In order for the animals to continue their unprecedented
survival, they would need some form of nourishment. Unfortunately, it would
take quite some time before the ground would be capable of ever yielding
anything of value. Of course, God could have recreated all the plant species,
but that would be incongruent with the purpose of taking life onboard in the
first place.
The two flood-surviving members of each
species don’t provide enough genetic variation to guarantee their futuristic
representation in the ecosphere. More specifically, diseases and genetic
defects had a great chance of pushing them into extinction due to the lack of
essential variety at the molecular level. As I mentioned in the scenario before
the flood, some species require very specific environments to live. The violent
downpour would have destroyed certain foods and shelter required by these
animals. Finally, we have no evidence that all the animals originated from the
resting point of the ark near Turkey, yet a reasonable deduction leads us to
believe that the animals found their way back to their original locations.
However, their assumed success in beating such overwhelming odds raises the
question of why they would want to return to their original habitats. It seems
that if all these species were able to survive in such radical conditions, they
would be equipped to thrive anywhere they desired.
People…
All the grueling but necessary maintenance
undertaken by Noah and company would have certainly led to lethal levels of
exhaustion if the tasks were successfully completed. In reality, Noah’s family
couldn’t have accomplished waste sanitation alone because the crude layout of
the ark requires them to carry the manure from the lower decks above the water
line for disposal. Let’s also not forget that Noah’s family still has feeding
duties along with whatever else the enormous crew at the San Diego Zoo
accomplishes every day. All the while, Noah’s family would have to tackle and
complete these superhuman tasks while serving as living hosts for viruses,
bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms capable of producing pathologically
based ailments in humans. A population of eight obviously had no chance to
survive this fatal concoction of illnesses. If everyone had gone onboard
disease-free, the microorganisms would have nowhere to thrive. Likewise, the
animals carrying their own specific parasitic problems could not have
realistically survived such turmoil. It should be a foregone conclusion that
the author wasn’t well versed in the microorganism theory of disease.
Ignoring all these factors working against
humans surviving the forty days of utter chaos, Noah’s family also lacked a sufficient gene pool to
guarantee continuation of our species once the ark landed. Even if we assume
that they were successful in surviving against these unprecedented odds, could
we have all descended from only eight original members? Genetic markers, such
as DNA, are excellent timekeepers to determine the interval back to a common
ancestor. Since delving into the subject in sufficient detail would require a
book in itself, just understand that it’s possible to observe the deviation of
DNA strands by retroactively measuring them to a common strand. This period
back to a common ancestor has been determined to be tens of thousands of years,
an age remarkably consistent with the ones established for human civilization
remains through previously mentioned dating methods. We do not see the five
thousand years that our DNA would reveal if all humans descended from the sole
survivors of God’s flood.
…Fish…
The seemingly immune marine life could
have fared no better than their terrestrial counterparts because, first of all,
the rapid mixture of salt and fresh water from the conglomeration of various
pure water sources would have killed all known marine creatures in a matter of
hours. End of story. Of course, that is not really the end of the story. Like
terrestrial creatures, some marine species have very specific requirements for
their habitats. One such example would be the delicate breeding ground for
salmon. The violent floodwaters would have certainly eradicated these fragile
aspects of their environment. Similarly, the force of the rainfall would
instigate an integration of large mud deposits with the now semi-salty water.
This scenario would undoubtedly create an increasingly lethal environment for
marine life requiring crystal clear water.
The required five-mile rise in the global
water level would have drastically altered the pressure exerted within the
ocean and forced many species to leave their only hospitable levels in order to
avoid a pressure-inducing death by implosion. You may also recall that the
oceans should already be boiling from subterranean lava, outer space asteroids,
torrential raindrop impacts, and whatever else might be necessary to maintain
apologetic proposals. Remarkably, we could consider salt and mud to be the
least of the threats against aquatic survival.
…Plants
The
world’s vegetation should also join the growing list of organisms without
immunity from the effects of the morally shameful flood. Many plant species
could not have survived throughout their continuous submersion in water,
especially if the flood introduced them to the new saline mixture. Even so, is
it possible that the vegetation could have vanquished, yet left viable seeds to
continue their species as many have suggested? The answer is no for several reasons.
The flood would have buried the vast
majority of vegetative offspring under hundreds of feet of sediment, far too
deep for successful sprouting. Similarly, many seeds cannot survive the
lengthy, yet necessary duration of the flood without undergoing germination.
Others cannot germinate unless they’ve been exposed to fire or ingested by an
animal, two specific conditions extremely unlikely to occur within the drenched
post-flood era of tremendously reduced animal populations.
To compound the vegetative problems
further, not all plants produce seeds as a method of reproduction. The common,
nontextual, apologetic hypothesis proposes that Noah brought seeds onto the ark
to assure plant survival, but this amateurish guess obviously fails to address
the aforementioned problems. As I mentioned earlier, these obvious errors
originally went unnoticed because ancient Hebrews almost certainly didn’t
appreciate the living quality of plants as we do today. A wonderful case in
point is the ridiculous inclusion of the dove returning and olive leaf that
absolutely could not have had time to germinate after the flood (Genesis 8:11).
Outside
The Box
Let’s now turn to the ark and its odds for
survival throughout the violent apocalypse. Even before the first raindrop
descends from the clouds or rises from beneath the surface, Noah would have had
no way to prevent the wood from rotting in the hot desert sun. Even so, this
factor is probably the least of Noah’s wood-related problems because he would
need to select a grain and species strong enough to prevent separation between
the ark’s joints during its hazardous journey. For reasons that should be
painfully obvious by now, I doubt this mysterious “gopher wood” was selected
using such advanced analytical thinking.
The endurance of the ark faces several
more formidable obstacles than its primitively wooden composition. Wave undulation
caused by the presumably violent winds accompanying the storm would have
undoubtedly capsized the makeshift craft. Incredible hydroforces would have
propelled loosened rocks from the sides of subterranean fissures into the air,
only to return to the surface with a great chance of doing appreciable damage
to the boat. Finally, there weren’t enough people available to operate
essential pumps for repelling the water that the primitively designed ark would
have assuredly taken on. If Noah and his animal guests didn’t kick the bucket
from methane poisoning, incineration, starvation, disease, asphyxiation,
dehydration, mutilation, or exhaustion, they would have certainly drowned.
A Local
Flood?
It’s painfully obvious that the story is burdened
with a number of significant problems. For this reason, many apologists will
attempt a hopeless defense for it by suggesting that the tale was speaking of a
local flood. This notion, however, clearly contradicts the text, which states
that all the mountains of the earth are covered (Genesis 7:19-20). Although the
word in the text used for earth, erets,
has an ambiguously additional meaning of land,
we can still easily determine the author’s intended connotation for this
specific passage. How else would God’s flood annihilate every living thing on
earth, as this was his stated intention, unless the elevated water extended
well beyond the Middle East? An additional difficulty, randomly selected from
the pile of problems with the local flood suggestion, is the inability of the
ark to travel hundreds of miles to Ararat without water high enough to reach
the oceans. Liquids seek their own level and don’t stand in one area without
complete confinement. Since the barriers required for this magical constrainment
are not present, we can only conclude that a local flood scenario is not only
logically impossible but also entirely incompatible with the biblical text.
Recent archaeological evidence, on the
other hand, has shed some light on the possible origins of the ancient global
flood legends. Researchers have suggested that the Mediterranean Sea had likely
become swollen with glaciers during the most recent ice age. If this proposal
is representative of past conditions, it’s quite likely that the water pressure
increased to the point where a fine line of earth previously serving as a
barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the land currently under the Black
Sea collapsed. Such a scenario would then allow a violent surge of water to
rush inland and create the Black Sea. Needless to say, this feasible natural
process would result in widespread devastation in areas now buried under
hundreds of feet of water. As a further consequence, survivors who witnessed
the aftermath of the tragic event would certainly spread their contrasting
stories to neighboring regions.
Additionally, secular scholars agree that
the biblical version of the flood account most likely culminated during the
Babylonian Exile. During this troubling period for the Israelites, their
priests likely embellished the historical event with supernatural attributes,
possibly as a way of manufacturing propaganda to intimidate their captors. In
essence, the Israelites may have wanted to increase their own power by
frightening others with a deity angry enough to decimate even his own people.
If the mystery behind Noah’s ark has this much simpler explanation, why
shouldn’t we apply the same reasoning to the remaining ridiculous,
unverifiable, and supernaturally based accounts of the incredulous Old Testament?
Is There
Any Chance For Noah?
There’s really no need to search here for
a conclusion so obvious. The story’s utter ridiculousness is probably why many
polls indicate that an increasing number of Christians
no longer claim a literal belief in the Old Testament. Sure, one can easily
explain the whole fiasco by use of miracles: God made all the water appear and
disappear; God prevented all the water from becoming too hot; God put the
animals into hibernation; God kept the ark afloat; God repopulated the earth
with life; and God erased all evidence of the flood. By invoking the miracle
clause, however, Christians are using unverifiable events that any person can insert into any scenario in order to maintain the
legitimacy of any religion.
To rectify all these problems in such a
deceitful manner is to go against the whole purpose of constructing the ark in
the first place. Applying such implausible explanations would also mean that
God, once again, intentionally misleads people who rely on their logical and observational
talents that he himself gave them for deducing answers to readily apparent
problems. Searching for the truth behind Noah’s ark isn’t a matter of coming up
with any solution for a problem that makes the story fit, but rather
discovering the most likely solution to the problem so that we have the most
likely answer.
The intent of the story is sparkling
clear. An imminent flood was coming, and Noah was to perform specific duties to
keep life thriving on our planet. The eight members of his family could not
have accomplished this task for the reasons discussed at length in this
chapter. Like every other global deluge story that came before and after Noah,
the biblical flood is a lie. The source of the entertaining tale was most
likely a tremendous flood that would later be embellished to fantastical
proportions. When taken literally, the tale of Noah’s ark is an insult to human
intelligence and common sense. If the story didn’t appear in the Bible, as is
the case for dozens of other flood legends, no one would be giving it a second
thought.