GPLindsey

I came across a curious article in Answers in Genesis at:

Ancient Shipbuilding

The author quotes from apparent non-biblical sources from the Greek/Roman period describing huge ships with hundreds of oarsmen that would be of a size comparable to the Ark. He concludes that we shouldn't underestimate the Ancients, and that we should accept that ancient peoples could have built a wooden ship as large as the Ark.

If his quotes are accurate (and his footnotes suggest some sort of actual research) then the possibility of wooden ships that large back then is a suprise. However, the article is an example of a rhetorical tactic I've seen creationists use before--conflate all of early human history into a single time period of the "Ancients," and use any suprising discovery during the period anywhere in the world as evidence that some assertion in the Bible is supported. Never mind that there were things like a bronze age or an iron age, or that technologies like shipbuilding developed over centuries as a result of military competition or the growth of economies.

Even if the Greeks or Romans had managed to build a wooden ship as large as the Ark (which is open to question--I'd like to see the author's original source material and other sources further) how is this proof that a Noah could have done it 2,000 years earlier? The Greeks/Romans had well established civilizations and had developed advanced capacities in shipbuilding in response to their needs (trade, warefare, etc.). The supposed time of Noah (around 2,500 B.C.?) is at the dawn of civilization, and there would have been no need for peoples at that time to develop monster ships for warefare or trade. Where did Noah get his shipbuilding expertise from?

Ovazor

The ancients built some large ships. Ptolemy IV had a ship that was said to be more than 120 meters long and a crew of more than 7000. What the creationists omit is that such ships were built purely for show and if they ever actually went to sea it was in good weather and close the shore. And the biggest ones were probably two smaller ships lashed together to form a catamaran-like vessel.

Celsus

There was a hilarious thread at Theology web a while back on this. Read from this page onward.

Joel

Chili

They'd be like the family towers of Pizza and you just can't spend 35 years of your life building a small vessel that must get you to the other side of life and live to tell about it.