BeamMeUpScotty

This is my first time starting a thread. I wanted to do a mathematical refutation of the possibility of Noah’s Ark. The math isn’t too difficult, but please let me know if I made any mistakes.

I am using The New Oxford Annotated Bible.

In order to set some ground rules for the following discussion, I propose the following:

1. Arguments shall be based upon scripture from known and acknowledged versions of the Bible. Such arguments should be referred to by the translation, book, chapters and verse(s). Religious arguments based outside known translations of the Bible shall not be valid. (e.g., God “spiritually feeding� the animals, or “shrinking them to fit into the ark� shall not be accepted.) I will make arguments that are not in scripture, but only when it benefits a creationist's view of the Bible.
2. OR, arguments shall be based upon documented sources within the scientific community, verifiable by any person who wishes to pursue the issue.
3. Mathematics, geometry, and physics shall be considered to be the same in Noah’s time as they are today.
4. Evolution shall be a mute point. It shall be assumed that all animals existing today existed in Noah’s time and that he was responsible for bringing them on the ark.
5. Water species shall be ignored. This is just to make the whole argument easier for the “creationists�. Merry Christmas.
6. Genesis 7:2-3, which states that 7 pairs of clean animals and birds, and two pair of unclean animals, shall be ignored. This is to make the creationists’ argument easier.

According to Panda.org (i), which is part of the WWF, there are two types of elephants: the Asian and the African. Obviously if we believe the Bible, there would have been at least four elephants on the ark.

The Asian elephant eats around 300kg of fodder per day (see above source), while fully grown African elephants eat up to 200kg of food/day(ii).

Now, we know from Gen 6:21 that Noah was commanded to take food for all the animals and his family, thus nullifying a possible miracle explanation for not needing to bring food. However, in the interest of being conservative, lets assume that Noah had younger elephants and thus needed less food than a full grown adult (although growing children need their vegetables!!!). So lets assume that the elephants needed half of their adult counterparts.

Therefore, collectively, the Asian and African elephants would need approximately 500 kg of food/day. That’s 1,102.31 pounds a day!! In the interest of simplicity and being conservative in our estimates lets just say 1,000 pounds of food/day. For the (approximate) year that they were on the ark, that would mean NoahCo would have needed 365,000 pounds of food just for the elephants!!! This is 1,825 tons, which will be important later.

Next step, calculating how much space was in the ark. This has been done repeatedly so I hope there is little contention here. Gen. 6:15 says, "The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits (aprx. 450 feet), the breadth of it 50 cubits (aprx. 75 feet), and the height of it 30 cubits (aprx. 45 feet-ed.)." This is 1,518,750 cubic feet. Let’s also assume for the sake of simplicity and being conservative that the ark was a perfect box with these dimensions (i.e., no space lost at the front or back due to needing to actually float, no need for going through sea/waves, no keel, etc). Also for the sake of simplicity and conservatism, lets assume by some miracle that there was no need for floors, which would take up even more space (this directly contradicts Gen 6:14, which instructs Noah to build rooms on the ark). This means the area of the ground floor would have been 33,750 sq. feet and that the total interior cubic feet are as stated above. Of course this is absurd as the animals, food, and NoahCo would have been stacked on top of each other for a year. I also assume that the animals do not have much chance to walk around and exercise. But let’s continue.

Next we need to know approximately how much space the food for the elephants would have taken up (and ignoring the fact that most of it would have gone bad eventually in a hot damp environment—remember there was only one door and a small window—I would have hated to be on waste removal duty!). This also assumes that the food for only the elephants is being stored on the ground floor, and also ignoring the fact that many animals are carnivores. That would mean that many more than just a pair of many types of animals would have been needed to have been brought aboard to feed any given “chosen pair�. Of course these "feed" animals also needed to be kept alive, many of which were carnivores also, which meant that even more animals would have been needed. It’s a geometrically unsolvable problem for such a situation.

Given that, Elephants are vegetarians; so lets assume that they were fed hay for the entire year (again ignore the monumental task of growing, harvesting, and storing of such an immense amount of hay by one family). According to the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food (iii), "Regardless of bale size and stacking method, any building with 16' sidewalls will accommodate at least 1 ton of hay in every 20 square feet of floor area." This means one ton of hay needs 320 cubic feet of storage. But it does say 'at least', and of course this is assuming ideal conditions. So again for simplicity and conservatism, lets assume one ton of hay needs 300 cubic feet of storage. That means the 1, 825 tons of hay needed for just the 4 elephants alone would have take up 547,500 cubic feet!! That’s about 36% of the space available on the ark, again assuming ridiculously conservative (and sometimes impossible, i.e., no floors) conditions. If we have adult elephants that eat twice as much (again at a very conservative estimate) that’s 72% of the space in the ark for just 4 animals!!!! There is no physical possibility that Noah's ark ever happened. Considering there are anywhere from 1.5-1.8 million KNOWN species, and estimates of up to 100 million existing species, I would love to know how NoahCo ever took care of even the smallest fraction of them.

Thank you for reading.

i Panda.org
ii WWF.ogr
iii Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food

Killer Mike

I have seen similar calculations published in Creation/Evolution Journal. There simply would not be enough room for all those animals nor could noah have taken care of them all. I mean just go to a zoo and see a tiny fraction of the animals here on earth. It takes a full time staff, special diets, special environments, etc.. Also waste products from animal feces and urine, getting enough food on the ark are all problems as well. Even more liberal Christians openly admit Noah's Ark is myth. But its still somewhat entertaining watching literalists defend the myths found in the Bible. I look at them and think the're like this :Cheeky:

keyser_soze

But as you beat your head against the wall, you will be refuted by "goddidit". He made them not eat, he made the inside of the ark infinitely large, he placed a turbine powered vent in that cheezy assed little window that couldn't have let enough air in for noahs family, let alone the entire complement of animals. I foresee brain matter covering yon brick wall.

Calzaer

Well duh! Any REAL Creationist knows there's such a thing as "micro" evolution! In Noah's Time, the elephants were 1/8th the size they are now and only needed to eat unleavened yeast to survive! They simply "micro"- evolved into the species we see now! It was God's Grace, a reward for protecting Noah, which made it so that none of the smaller ones died before they "micro"-evolved into our modern elephants. So obviously we won't ever find any fossil evidence of them.

DaninGraniteCity

Yeah, I was expressing the argument about how wooden ships can not sail when they're just 300 feet long. The response was, goddidit.

Sven

As others already pointed out, creationists will simply not agree on this point. They'll simply make up dozens of additional miracles to explain the problems aways, ignoring that there's no shred of evidence either inside or outside the bible. Just leave it at that - you can not win this game since creationists never follow the rules.

Chili

The only mistake you made is to accept their premises as true and then proving that you cannot life the rock you are standing on.

The flood story is an allegory wherein the ark was built by indoctrinated values and eternal truths of religion while we depart from Eden and continue to move away from Eden and go inland far until we reach the end of our world. This is where the flood begins and the ark is supposed to carry us to the other side of life while we are beyond theology = the end of our world where our faculty of reason has been exhausted.

All of the animals in two by two's speak of the bread of life as eternal truths that will work for us when needed. That they are indoctrinated means that we took them to heart and that it was unleavened bread means that we accepted them as given to us despite their extreme nonsense if we would give them a second thought = no yeast.

The equivalent of the flood today is the Advent period in Catholicism that leads us to the darkest point of our life which is midlife, midwinter and midnight, to be exact, because that is the time we will have reached the darkest point of our life where only the glimmer of hope can be detected that was promised to us in Baptism when we first began to work on this ark. The white Baptism candle will be recognized as the white candle in the Advent wreath that set the Magi in motion through which the new land is loved into existence (sic, this a bout where the dove returns with a branch).

Anyway, gtg, but you get the drift of he story as myth.

Here's a poem for you:

If he had known
unstructured space is a deluge
and stocked his life-houseboat
with all the animals
. . . even the wolves,
he might have floated.

But obstinate he stated:
the land is solid,
and stamped . . .
watching his foot sink down through stone up to the knee.

keyser_soze

You couldn't get all the animals supposedly on the ark, along with their food and providers on a modern day naval fleet, I would imagine...doesn't stop the fundies from believing they all made it onto a wood boat though.

BeamMeUpScotty

Thanks to all who replied. Too bad none of the creationists decided to take it on. Maybe its a compliment in disguise in that they can't do it within the restrictions.

I meant "moot", not "mute". Though it still kinda works.

Evoken

BeamMeUpScotty, you may want to post this over at Christianforums, specially in the Origins Theology Creationism forum. I am sure you will get more input there.