noah's ark
08 Aug '17 15:20Originally posted by @kellyjay@ those who think the flood and Noah's ark really happened
I don't think any but a small few doubt dinosaurs were real. With respect the world wide
flood could have created the fossil record, and where we seem some fossils upon
mountains could also be a clue. The fact that many cultures share flood stories though
vary could also point to a shared experience that has changed over time from mouth to
mouth.
Yo ...[text shortened]... do not think so, but it does not
mean it didn't happen as the people who experience shared it.
Let's do some rough calculations and simple logistics.
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-many-animal-species-on-planet-130923
There are 4 to 5 thousand species of mammals known to us. Some of them live in the sea, so we leave those out of account as they could have survived a flood without an ark. So, roughly 3,500 species of land mammals would have to have been collected and put into an ark. Not two of each, but seven of each species were to have been loaded onto the ark.
http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/was-noah-ark-big-enough-to-hold-all-animals.html
That's roughly 40,000 animals.
San Diego zoo is one of the largest zoos in the world. It holds 3,700 specimens and employs a full-time staff of several hundred.
http://zoo.sandiegozoo.org
There is no way that Noah and his immediate family of two dozen or so people could have collected and cared for more than ten times that number of specimens.
There is no way that land mammals peculiar to No. America (coyotes, raccoons, chipmunks, etc.), So. America (llamas, alpacas, etc.), and Australia (kangaroos, wallabies, etc.) migrated to the Middle East to be loaded onto an ark. So why are they here now?
There are unknown millions of species of insects, and 75,000 species of arachnids. That is not counting dinosaurs (we'll get to them in a moment). There is no way Noah and his immediate family collected and fed seven of each in an ark. So why are they here now?
The people who supported the ark entertainment park project evidently believe that dinosaurs were also loaded onto Noah's ark. Below is a list of dinosaurs we know about:
https://www.thoughtco.com/dinosaurs-a-to-z-1093748
I did not count them all, but just those beginning with the letter A number about 90 species. To give people a rough idea of dimensions: brachiosaurus, not the biggest one, was probably about 85 feet long and weighed 40 to 50 tons. Seven of those would have produced a quantity of dung every day to keep a steam shovel busy. Multiply that by a hundred or more similarly sized big lizards, plus all the species with hooves (bovines, moose, caribou, etc.), and you've got a waste disposal problem in an enclosed space which even a zoo twice the size of San Diego could not cope with.
The rains allegedly lasted 40 days, but the Earth did not dry out sufficiently for Noah and his menagerie to debark for ten months.
http://libertygospeltracts.com/question/prequest/flood.htm
That means that Noah's ark must have had on board a sufficient supply of fresh water for at least 8 1/2 months (after the rains stopped), for forty thousand or more animals. An elephant drinks about 100 liters of water per day (just google it), so 7 elephants would need 700 liters per day for 8 months, or 240 days x 700 liters = 168,000 liters. This would require a container 168 cubic meters in size. Just for the elephants, which weigh up to 8 tons each. Add 20 or so dinosaur species (seven specimens each) each weighing ten to twenty times an elephant; and that tallies only a few of the really big beasts. No buckets of sufficient size could be produced at that time, so the entire lower deck would have had to store water. Assuming it was used as ballast in the bottom of the ark at launch, the ark would have become unstable as the water was consumed. It is obvious that such a quantity of fresh water cannot have been stored aboard; moreover, that much rain water cannot be captured on deck, even assuming it rained every day. So what did all those animals drink?
Next question: what about all the plants? Plants and seeds were not taken onto the ark, except possibly for feeding herbivores. Very few land plants tolerate salt water(the mangrove is one). A worldwide flood covering the mountain tops would have killed all land plant life, too, not only all land animals. Plant life would not have recovered fast enough, after the flood waters receded, to support herbivores. So why are they (land plants and herbivores) here now?
As pointed out in a previous thread, herbivores cannot reproduce fast enough to stay ahead of carnivores, assuming only six of each got off the ark (the seventh was to be sacrificed). Carnivores are hungry every few days, whereas herbivore gestation periods range in months. Carnivores would have devoured all the rest of the animals within weeks, and then gone extinct themselves. So why are any of them here now?
Furthermore, not every pregnancy necessarily leads to a viable birth. Miscarriages happen. Moreover, carnivores tend to hunt down the young and vulnerable first, as these are easier to catch than adult prey. It is highly unlikely that every species could have successfully repopulated the planet from only three mating pairs of each species after a hypothetical worldwide catastrophe as envisaged in the biblical flood story.
The obvious conclusion is that story of Noah's ark and a worldwide flood simply does not add up in too many details and cannot be factual history. It's a myth, like Prometheus's liver being pecked out every night by a big bird.
This does not rule out local floods, which is a theme common to many religions older than Judaism. But then, not all life would have been extinguished in a local flood, which obviates the point of Noah's story (that God wanted to start over by extinguishing all the evil in the world).
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