dsgutman

I am a new user, and an agnostic. Recently I got tangled in yet another annoying debate with a deist in regard to Noahs Ark. I have three main problems, and would like to know how one who believes the story to be true can reconcile them...
1. the ark measured 120 x 30 x 50, which is 180,000 cubic feet, how can that possibly fit the 1.875 million identified species in the world today
2. how were the animals dispersed after the flood?
3. what did the herbivores eat after the flood, and what did the predators stalk?

cajela

Hi, ds, welcome. Try the search function, there have been heaps of Noah's Ark discussions. Also, as you see from your questions it's biologically ludicrous, and biology questions tend mostly to go to E/C (Evolution & Creation).

Amaleq13

And that is where I'm sending it.


Oh, and welcome to IIDB!

Dhaeron

Actually you have only one problem, you're crazy enough to argue with someone who's crazy enough to believe something that silly.
Besides that, try to find out where all that water cam from, and where it went. If the answer's god did it by magic, stop arguing, that will be the answer to all other question too.

Ezkerraldean

human parasites is another problem i like. noah must have had them on the ark, but where could they have lived other than inside noah and his family?

i have heard some YECs saying that before the flood, human parasites lived in the soil etc. and that they became parasites after the flood. funnily enough, this sounds like evolution!

Codec

Noahs Ark - is this cognitive dissonance in action?

I can't recall when I first heard the story, some time in childhood. I probably believed it then. However I'm sure by the age of 8 or so I'd considered it fable rather than fact. Its one of those things you go along with like Father Christmas. We all know he's not real, but we all play the game because its fun for the kids, and its part of the transition to adulthood, your now in the club.

So there you are, in your world view, that Noahs Ark is a fine old tale, harmless enough, mentally filed with Father Christmas, The Pied Piper of Hamlyn, and the Tooth Fairy.

Then one day you meet someone who really believes it.

It happened to me when I went on an alpha course. As a throwaway remark about some Bible story at the end of the session, I said something like "Well, like Noahs Ark, its also just a story isn't it".
When the person responded that no it wasn't, it was true, I was just so shocked, I didn't really know what to say. It was literally breathtaking.

There I stood, wondering if this person was having a joke, or maybe I'd misheard. I looked around at a couple of others packing up to see if they had heard it, and were they smiling? I said something like "um, so do you think Noahs Ark was real"? He said it was, and explained briefly about kinds.

I was still reeling, any minute now he's going to break into a big smile and laugh. But no! He really did believe it. I got into a bit of an argument about it bringing up the first 4 or 5 impossible things I could think of, but really my heart wasn't in it. I still suffering from shock. How can an otherwise very intellignet man (a partner in a law firm, extremely well read, very intelligent) just come out with stuff like that.

I've since met other people online who also believe it. The shock is less each time of course, but its still there.

Maybe its not cognitive dissonance, but there must be a term for it. The willing suspension of disbelief for something that goes against all your real world experience.

There has to be a paper or two in this!

Oolon Colluphid

A one-time poster here was fond of saying that God is Santa for grown-ups. In which case, Noah was the Pied Piper of Ararat.

Lunawalk

an deist believes in Noah's ark? are you sure, Deists believe that God created the universe and than did not interfere in its development. so an deist won't believe in noah's ark. If you are talk about an christian they belive that god can do anything.He would just say god did it. you won't get too far in this debate. but good luck.

Y.B

[Devil's advocate] The ark contained the original 'kinds', or baramins, about 16,000 animals altogether. After the flood, the animals migrated and adapted and speciated very fast. And that's just adaptation/microevolution, not goo-to-you evolution.[/Devil's advocate] Magic? Magic?

CanoeMan

You're also forgetting what the animals ate while on the ark. Remember, they where there for over a month. Check how much food two elefants need over two months. And the carnivores need meat, so they needed more animals to feed to those animals. And so on.

Another thing, Noah just brought animals on the ark, right? So why are there still plants? Most plants can't survive being under sea water for several weeks, they die. I'm no botanist, but it seems likely that not every plant that exists today have seeds that can survive that, either.

In a similar way, how can there still be both freshwater fish and saltwater fish? If the entire earth is covered in water, the oceans and lakes mix together. There are lots of fish that can only survive in one type of water, and they'd die. So did Noah have aquariums on the boat as well?

Also, I saw some guy (on this forum, maybe) calculate what would happen if it rained enough to cover the earth. He made very generous assumptions, (generous towards the theist) and still ended up with an earth where the average temperature was above the boiling point of water. (Since when the water falls, it gains speed, and that kinetic energy gets converted into heat when it lands.) So noah didn't just drift around on the sea, he sat in a boat surrounded by boiling oceans and steam. There's no way in hell he'd survive that.

To sum up, there are pretty much nothing but problems with this story.

The theist might try to answer that Noah brought two of every kind on the boat, and s/he'll invariably not define kinds, more than as an example. "Two of dog kind, two of insect kind", might be the closest thing you get. Then they say that every species today is evolved from those kinds. This means that there was a lot fewer animals on the ark.

Trouble is, this then suggests a rate of evolution that is thousands of times faster than biologists see! (Since the species have to evolve from earlier animals into their current forms over just a couple of millennia, instead of millions of years.) So, in a way, not only does these creationists need evolution to work in order to prove creation, they need it to work much quicker than scientists believe it does! If the theist wants a slower rate of evolution, they have to increase the number of kinds, to the point where they can't fit them on the ark again.

Also, you'll see that the term kind gets more sharply defined the closer you are to humans. They probably say "bacteria kind" and "flower kind", but they refuse to let human beings being part of "ape kind", even though there are less differences between us an other apes than there are between some bacteria or flowers.

Oh, and welcome to the boards! :wave: