Jeremy Pallant

So, the size of Columbus's ships isn't in doubt.

The historical consensus is that Cheng Ho's ship's were very large. You doubt this because you've seen modern junks 120 feet long.

Way to make an assumption.

Name one shipyard that could reproduce Sir Edward Pellew's Indefatigable.

Magus55

If there is, you'll be sure to let me know in a few decades, k?

Biff the unclean

So, the size of Columbus's ships isn't in doubt.
No, there was nothing out of the ordinary about his ships.

The historical consensus is that Cheng Ho's ship's were very large. You doubt this because you've seen modern junks 120 feet long.
I doubt that because Ho had no steel ship building technology. There are structural limitations on all wooden ships which prevent them from being built to the size claimed. The historical consenus is that the huge size claimed is a myth. It's engineering not perjudice.
Two story all wood buildings are common place but you will never see an all wood skyscraper. For exactly the same reasons Ho's giant ships could not have been built. The materials just will not support the stresses involved.

Name one shipyard that could reproduce Sir Edward Pellew's Indefatigable.
The shipyard that refitted the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) about five years ago could handle that contract.
There are still square riggers around Jeremy. Several large East and West coast cities host fleet weeks for them. There are no secret, arcane ship building skills that are lost in the mists of time.

rlogan

Biff, you keep making unsupported claims. We cannot build Noah's ship today. So don't tell me there isn't any lost technology.

Now, I'm still waiting on Madmez, who promised a professional opinion on the hibernation thing. Do I have to look everything up?

I have food storage space for about 1,500 pairs of animals on the ark - a figure arrived at by taking the calculated 150 pairs of animals and multiplying by ten on account of hibernation and dwarfism. If this hibernation thing doesn't come through then we are going to really whack that fudge factor down.

Madmez did bring out some shocking data on animal survival - 3.7% sheep survival and 62.14% horse survival on the ocean crossing cited. The sheep must have died from rectal hemorrhaging, knowing the sailors of the time. Noah, though, had a wife. So I think we'll come out better there.

Celsus

You might like to check this thread at Theology Web analysing a group of Korean Creationists' attempts to salvage the ark story. George Herbert is the hubby of our very own Jackalope.

Joel

Dean Anderson

Sorry to bring the topic from naval engineering back to biblical criticism & history - but...

The quotes above from Psalm 104 about the waters being scared of by the voice of YHWH seem very remeniscent of the Marduk and Tiamat myth where Marduk fights Tiamat and her consort (who represent the chaos of the waters, both salt and sweet) and kills one of them, scaring off the other to hide underground - promising never to come out and cover the earth again (and hence giving us sweet water from springs).

Does anyone have any more info on this? My knowledge of the Marduk story is sketchy at best (I can't even remember the name of Tiamat's consort)...

Oolon Colluphid

Ever seen your god? Nope? Didn't think so.

rmadison

2,300 + posts, and you're still appealing to Pascal's Wager?

[Edited by moderator--there is no need for these sorts of statements].

Oolon Colluphid

More back of the envelope calculations for Magus...

Okay Magus, so Everest and the rest weren’t that high at the time. Well, Everest is now about 29,000 feet, and Ararat a mere 17,000. So let’s say that, whatever the highest mountain at the time was, it was just 15,000 feet high. Sound reasonable, for the highest mountain on earth?

Now, 40 days and nights implies 40 x 24 hours, or 960 hours. So the flood waters rose at an average rate of 15.6 feet an hour. Now suppose that fully half of that came from the mysterious fountains of the deep. So, about 8 feet an hour was rain. 96 inches. Per hour, non-stop. An inch and a half per minute, just as rain remember. And this to cover a pretty tiny highest mountain in the whole world.

To put that in perspective, the wettest place on earth, Cherrapunji in India, once had rainfall of 2,290cm in one season. That’s 902 inches, or 75 feet. Call a monsoon season 2 months, or 60 days. That’s 1.25 feet a day.

What’s that over 40 days and nights? Well, multiply it by 40. You get rainfall of 50 feet in that time. Not quite the 15,000 required.

Even if these numbers are very approximate, they give a good idea, surely, of the scale involved.

If you get 50 feet in a heavy monsoon in 40 days, how much heavier was the flood rain to give 15,000 feet? Again, simple maths comes to our aid.

To flood the earth to above the -- pretty low -- highest mountain, it would need to rain 375 times as hard as it does in the heaviest recorded monsoon in the wettest place on earth.

Ah, but half of that water was from the good ol' Fountains. Oh well. I only needs to rain 187 times as hard then.

Which, I’d hazard, would sink the Ark Royal, let alone a wooden ark.

And then there’s the mountain growth question. If one assumes that Everest was then at least as tall -- no taller -- as our thought-experiment highest mountain, then since the flood it has sprung up by 14,000 feet. Say the flood was 4,000 years ago. Divide the one by the other, and you find that Everest has shot up at an average of 3.5 feet a year. That is 42 inches a year.

Which should mean it’s grown 175 feet since Hilary and Tensing climbed it in 1953. Yet it is in fact presently growing at a mere couple of inches a year. Magus, when and how did it slow down so dramatically?

And don’t forget that if you raise Everest’s height to make its growth less implausible, then you need it to rain harder to cover its top -- plus some, which we ignored -- during the flood. If you lower Everest to make the flood rains more plausible, you need it to suddenly grow, then grind to a virtual comparative standstill, all the more dramatically.

Care to explain, Magus?

Sure, there's a load of assumptions here. I'd just like to know why any of them are in the least unreasonable. All I'm assuming is that things were as you say they were, and that a high mountain then would be in the same ballpark as a high mountain now. Actually only half as big, in fact.

TTFN, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

Okay, suppose the highest mountain at the time was only as high as Britain’s meagre Ben Nevis. About 4,000 feet. Half of that height is covered by the FOTD, so 2,000 feet of rain in 40 days. That’s still fifty feet a day, or 33 times as hard as that Indian monsoon. Three-quarters from the FOTD then? That’s still 25 feet (300 inches) of rain a day, or merely 16 times as hard as a monsoon. For, remember, a crappy Ben Nevis sized highest mountain.

And, if that low highest mountain was Everest (whatever the highest was at the time, Everest is highest now), it then had to grow to its present 29,000 feet. So it shot up 25,000 feet after the flood.

Okay, say the flood was 5,000 years ago, again being generous. And suppose it slowed down to its present growth 500 years ago, so that nobody recently saw it hurtling upward. It went up 25,000 feet in 4,500 years: averaging 5.5 feet (66 inches) a year. Wouldn’t the Chinese have noticed?

Okay, so it slowed down again a thousand years ago. 6.25 feet (75 inches) a year. Or, suppose this orogenesis was really miraculous, and ocurred in the first, what, hundred? years after the flood. 250 feet a year, 3,000 inches. Just what effect might any of this have on the surrounding countryside, do you suppose Magus?

When did this miracle start and stop?

Oh sure, sure, it’s a miracle, and God can do anything. Because any other option is what in normal parlance is termed ‘totally farcical’.

Please, Magus, try thinking.

And please, please, Magus, answer my oft-asked question: why does this have to be literally true? I have asked you this loads of times. Please answer this time.

Oh, and by the way Magus, perhaps you can tell us how it’s possible to get fossilised mud cracks and ripple effects -- from drying out, yeah? -- between layers of sediment in eg Arizona, so presumably laid down during a flood?

TTFN, Oolon