THE ANIMALS INSIDE:
Let's say the animals on the ark were kinds, not species. Great, now let's take the number of kinds from 'Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study', where it says the number was 8,000 kinds of animals, but there were also insects and parasites.
That's about 11-12 tons of manure per day according to answersingenesis which has articles trying to explain the ark with imagination and presupposition. Regarding the manure, the basic idea they present is that maybe Noah let the manure gather and be trampled by the animals which just adds to the constant smell and to the weight of the ark. And this idea is actually good because the 8 people wouldn't have had enough time to clean everything alongside feeding all the animals and insects with supplies for a whole year. Not only veggies/grains, but also meat for the animals that die of malnutrition without the nutrients needed and found only in flesh. Did Noah really think up the idea of drying the meat and storing it, I wonder? That's what the person in charge of the recreation of the ark seems to imagine.
Going back to smell, however, it is said that it kept being ventilated, thus not killing the inhabitants, because of the constant movement of the ark. I find it quite hard to see how it would constantly move since the whole planet was a lake for almost a year without turmoil because Genesis says that God made the waters calm after the rain. And there was also one window made (-granted it doesn't specifically say there was only one).
Something the bible doesn't mention is that breeding already started for some while still in the ark, otherwise the kind would not have lasted the ride. Insects, for example, don't tend to survive more than a few days or months at best. And there are also some animals like mice and some reptiles that have the average life span of a year. But maybe the animals that live a year are then later created forms through micro-evolution from kinds that survived longer. That brings me to my next point.
THE EVOLUTION AFTER:
Incest was necessary for the generations of the animals to continue their kind, as it was necessary with Adam and Eve's kids. Let's say that, even with the potential miscarriages and retardation of offspring, in a few thousand years, it is possible for a kind to make dozens of species. (-or you could interpret that, incest not being a sin yet, it becoming a sin only in Leviticus where God first forbids it, the negative outcomes didn't exist yet, either. It is reasonable from a divine perspective. It would be a sin that affects animals now, too, then).
Without taking the negatives of incest, the offspring would still be left with no genetic variability to account for adaptability and immunity.
Furthermore, this implies that we'd take one pair of one type of bear, and within a few generations we’d have grizzly, polar, brown, panda, Tibetan blue, giant, spectacled, sun, Asiatic black.
Or that we'd take a pair of lions and we'd later have 37 species of felines, domestic cats being only one of them.
That requires mutation and under ordinary circumstances, mutation due to environment or duplication errors during meiosis or DNA replication to occur takes around 1,000 generations. That's typically when a new species emerges.
"Researchers also show that the polar bear has developed the capabilities to live in the Arctic during just a couple of hundred thousand years – and this is a very fast evolution." ~Arctic Research Centre
To put it more simply, evolution into millions of species and repopulation in such short of a time is impossible.
THE CONSTRUCTION:
The recreator of the Ark, Ken Ham, also claims that he built the ark with modern tools and machinery, as well as using concrete and metal, because he cannot know what tools Noah had. Historical records, even from the depths of the Black Sea, don't show from that time anything more advanced than exists now.. quite the contrary, they show basic tools of the stone and bronze ages. But Ken Ham did calculate based on biblical text that it took ONLY between 20 to 40 years to build the ark.
"Noah was 500 years old when Japheth, the first of his sons, was born (Genesis 5:32 ). Yet Noah’s second son, Shem, had his first son two years after the Flood, when he was 100 ( Genesis 11:10).2 This means that Shem was 98 years old when the Flood came, and it also means that Shem was born when Noah was 502 years old. So for Noah to begin having children at 500 means that Japheth was indeed the older brother, as per Genesis 10:21, being born when Noah was 500. Ham is mentioned as the youngest of Noah (Genesis 9:24)."
Pretty impressive for a bunch of amazingly old buggers to build the ark and so fast. The explanation must be divine intervention, thus, right?
WATER LEVEL:
Calculations that I'm not gonna go into now, conclude that it would take more than five times the amount of water in the oceans and atmosphere to submerge the earth up to its mountaintops. And if that amount of water entered the atmosphere, the resulting pressure would crush people's lungs. You can't claim the terrain was a whole lot different. The mountains at the time weren't significantly smaller, considering the Everest as an example which has the growth rate at about 4 mm per year.
THE OTHER FLOOD MYTHS:
Noah made his first "appearance" about 1000 years earlier, at least, in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, but his name was Ziusudra in that version of the flood myth. He also is told by god that mankind will be destroyed by flood and he needs to construct a boat. Then he sacrifices an ox and a sheep.
Then there's the epic of Gilgamesh which is said to be an edit of the older epic of Atra-Hasis. Atra-Hasis was written on multiple tablets, the first of which contain the fact that the god Enki sent famine and drought before sending the flood. Noah is called here Atrahasis and is warned by a god that the flood is going to happen and how to build the ark decks, etc. Flood ends and the hero of the story offers sacrifices. Most gods love sacrifices.
But that's not all..
Geologist Robert Schoch says: “Noah is but one tale in a worldwide collection of at least 500 flood myths, which are the most widespread of all ancient myths and therefore can be considered among the oldest"
Calculations have been made after unearthing and studying more than 200 of the myths and in 95 percent of them, the flood was worldwide; in 88 percent, a certain family was favored; in 70 percent, survival was by means of a boat; in 67 percent, animals were also saved; in 66 percent, the flood was due to the wickedness of man; in 66 percent, the survivors had been forewarned by their respective gods; in 35 percent, birds were sent out from the boat to check the water level; and in 9 percent, eight people were spared.
CONCLUSION:
Considering how many legends there are, was there an actual global flood? Not possible, at least not at the level written in the bible. There is the idea that, since people thought the visible terrain was the world (example: Japanese thought their country was the whole world for millennia), the floods were local.
And evidence-wise, searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c.275–339 CE) to the present day. In the past 20 years, stories kept coming up with supposed findings and I've seen plenty, all proven to be fakes and absurd claims. Even a televised documentary showed proof of the ark and it later came out as a sham.
Documenting yourself from Christians with an agenda is very different from reading the works and findings of people who don’t abide by any specific exclusivist theology who don’t hide facts, who are not ashamed to say they don’t know something and don’t do mental gymnastics to prove a story that is faith-based only. That’s how I see it: a matter of faith. And if you need your faith reinforced, just remember it’s said that Jesus mentioned Noah and the flood - interpret it however you desire, but I will not ignore history and data which don’t account for a global flood.
Let's say the animals on the ark were kinds, not species. Great, now let's take the number of kinds from 'Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study', where it says the number was 8,000 kinds of animals, but there were also insects and parasites.
That's about 11-12 tons of manure per day according to answersingenesis which has articles trying to explain the ark with imagination and presupposition. Regarding the manure, the basic idea they present is that maybe Noah let the manure gather and be trampled by the animals which just adds to the constant smell and to the weight of the ark. And this idea is actually good because the 8 people wouldn't have had enough time to clean everything alongside feeding all the animals and insects with supplies for a whole year. Not only veggies/grains, but also meat for the animals that die of malnutrition without the nutrients needed and found only in flesh. Did Noah really think up the idea of drying the meat and storing it, I wonder? That's what the person in charge of the recreation of the ark seems to imagine.
Going back to smell, however, it is said that it kept being ventilated, thus not killing the inhabitants, because of the constant movement of the ark. I find it quite hard to see how it would constantly move since the whole planet was a lake for almost a year without turmoil because Genesis says that God made the waters calm after the rain. And there was also one window made (-granted it doesn't specifically say there was only one).
Something the bible doesn't mention is that breeding already started for some while still in the ark, otherwise the kind would not have lasted the ride. Insects, for example, don't tend to survive more than a few days or months at best. And there are also some animals like mice and some reptiles that have the average life span of a year. But maybe the animals that live a year are then later created forms through micro-evolution from kinds that survived longer. That brings me to my next point.
THE EVOLUTION AFTER:
Incest was necessary for the generations of the animals to continue their kind, as it was necessary with Adam and Eve's kids. Let's say that, even with the potential miscarriages and retardation of offspring, in a few thousand years, it is possible for a kind to make dozens of species. (-or you could interpret that, incest not being a sin yet, it becoming a sin only in Leviticus where God first forbids it, the negative outcomes didn't exist yet, either. It is reasonable from a divine perspective. It would be a sin that affects animals now, too, then).
Without taking the negatives of incest, the offspring would still be left with no genetic variability to account for adaptability and immunity.
Furthermore, this implies that we'd take one pair of one type of bear, and within a few generations we’d have grizzly, polar, brown, panda, Tibetan blue, giant, spectacled, sun, Asiatic black.
Or that we'd take a pair of lions and we'd later have 37 species of felines, domestic cats being only one of them.
That requires mutation and under ordinary circumstances, mutation due to environment or duplication errors during meiosis or DNA replication to occur takes around 1,000 generations. That's typically when a new species emerges.
"Researchers also show that the polar bear has developed the capabilities to live in the Arctic during just a couple of hundred thousand years – and this is a very fast evolution." ~Arctic Research Centre
To put it more simply, evolution into millions of species and repopulation in such short of a time is impossible.
THE CONSTRUCTION:
The recreator of the Ark, Ken Ham, also claims that he built the ark with modern tools and machinery, as well as using concrete and metal, because he cannot know what tools Noah had. Historical records, even from the depths of the Black Sea, don't show from that time anything more advanced than exists now.. quite the contrary, they show basic tools of the stone and bronze ages. But Ken Ham did calculate based on biblical text that it took ONLY between 20 to 40 years to build the ark.
"Noah was 500 years old when Japheth, the first of his sons, was born (Genesis 5:32 ). Yet Noah’s second son, Shem, had his first son two years after the Flood, when he was 100 ( Genesis 11:10).2 This means that Shem was 98 years old when the Flood came, and it also means that Shem was born when Noah was 502 years old. So for Noah to begin having children at 500 means that Japheth was indeed the older brother, as per Genesis 10:21, being born when Noah was 500. Ham is mentioned as the youngest of Noah (Genesis 9:24)."
Pretty impressive for a bunch of amazingly old buggers to build the ark and so fast. The explanation must be divine intervention, thus, right?
WATER LEVEL:
Calculations that I'm not gonna go into now, conclude that it would take more than five times the amount of water in the oceans and atmosphere to submerge the earth up to its mountaintops. And if that amount of water entered the atmosphere, the resulting pressure would crush people's lungs. You can't claim the terrain was a whole lot different. The mountains at the time weren't significantly smaller, considering the Everest as an example which has the growth rate at about 4 mm per year.
THE OTHER FLOOD MYTHS:
Noah made his first "appearance" about 1000 years earlier, at least, in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, but his name was Ziusudra in that version of the flood myth. He also is told by god that mankind will be destroyed by flood and he needs to construct a boat. Then he sacrifices an ox and a sheep.
Then there's the epic of Gilgamesh which is said to be an edit of the older epic of Atra-Hasis. Atra-Hasis was written on multiple tablets, the first of which contain the fact that the god Enki sent famine and drought before sending the flood. Noah is called here Atrahasis and is warned by a god that the flood is going to happen and how to build the ark decks, etc. Flood ends and the hero of the story offers sacrifices. Most gods love sacrifices.
But that's not all..
Geologist Robert Schoch says: “Noah is but one tale in a worldwide collection of at least 500 flood myths, which are the most widespread of all ancient myths and therefore can be considered among the oldest"
Calculations have been made after unearthing and studying more than 200 of the myths and in 95 percent of them, the flood was worldwide; in 88 percent, a certain family was favored; in 70 percent, survival was by means of a boat; in 67 percent, animals were also saved; in 66 percent, the flood was due to the wickedness of man; in 66 percent, the survivors had been forewarned by their respective gods; in 35 percent, birds were sent out from the boat to check the water level; and in 9 percent, eight people were spared.
CONCLUSION:
Considering how many legends there are, was there an actual global flood? Not possible, at least not at the level written in the bible. There is the idea that, since people thought the visible terrain was the world (example: Japanese thought their country was the whole world for millennia), the floods were local.
And evidence-wise, searches for Noah's Ark have been made from at least the time of Eusebius (c.275–339 CE) to the present day. In the past 20 years, stories kept coming up with supposed findings and I've seen plenty, all proven to be fakes and absurd claims. Even a televised documentary showed proof of the ark and it later came out as a sham.
Documenting yourself from Christians with an agenda is very different from reading the works and findings of people who don’t abide by any specific exclusivist theology who don’t hide facts, who are not ashamed to say they don’t know something and don’t do mental gymnastics to prove a story that is faith-based only. That’s how I see it: a matter of faith. And if you need your faith reinforced, just remember it’s said that Jesus mentioned Noah and the flood - interpret it however you desire, but I will not ignore history and data which don’t account for a global flood.
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