Arikay

Hello,
These forums are going to keep me reading for along time. Ive posted this in other forums and thought I would post it here. It originally was ment to be short but it became rather long, so it is a long read, but I did seperate it out a bit.


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This is a fun look at the great flood based on the literal interpretation of the bible and our current study of the earth.
Please feel free to check and correct any math mistakes I make.
This turned out a bit long.

Math of the flood:
The bible says the flood covered every mountain (Gen 7:19-20). Mount Everest is the current largest mountain. Its approx 5.5 miles above sea level. I have rounded it down to 5 miles because the earth is bumpy and its better to under estimate than over estimate.
There are some theories that mountains weren’t as high as they are now, and that the flood only flooded a 17,000 foot high mountain. However there are flaws to both of these, and ill address them later.
The Radius of the Earth = 3963 miles
The Radius of the earth with 5 miles of water = 3968 Miles.
The volume of the earth = 260711882973.3396 cubic miles
The volume of the earth with water = 261699925947.5533 cubic miles.
261699925947.5533 - 260711882973.3396 = 988042974.2136999965

So the volume of the flood water = 988,042,974.2136999965 cubic miles. But lets round it to 988,042,974 Cubic Miles.
If this water was put into a sphere, it would have a radius of 618 Miles.

According to this site (http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html) there is a total of 326,000,000 Cubic Miles of water on the earth. So the flood waters were 3 times the total amount of water on the entire earth.
The data says there there is approx 9,016,000 Cubic Miles of water that is currently underground or not filling a space on the surface (like an ocean). These sources of water would include Ground water, soil moisture, and ice caps and glaciers.

The bible says that some of the water came from the ground and some from rain (Gen 7:11). So if we gave the bible the benefit of the doubt and said that 10x more water resided under ground then, than it does now (10 times more water in the soil and ground water) and that the ice caps melted. We would get 27,160,000 cubic miles of water. It would still only equal 3% of the total flood waters.

Lets take a look at a square foot section of the earth. Over the course of 40 days, it would rain 25608 cubic feet(instead of 26400 cubic feet because of the 792 feet of ground water). We can use this data because we are dealing with a 25608 foot, by 1 foot by 1 foot column.

25608 ft^3 / 40 days = 640.2 cubic feet of water per day per square foot
640.2 ft^3 / 24 hours = 26.7 cubic feet of water per hour per square foot
2.6.7 ft^3 / 60 minutes = 0.4 cubic feet of water per minute per square foot. Or 3 gallons of water per minute per square foot.
That would equal 25.5 pounds of water per minute per square foot.
It doesn’t seem like too much water at first, but lets look at it outside of a square foot.
A standard american football field is 360 ft x 160ft (including end zones). 57,600 square feet.
So that would be 0.4 ft^3 * 57,600 = 23,040 cubic feet of water per minute on the football field. Or 172,351 Gallons of water. That would weigh 1,464,983.5 pounds or 732.5 tons of water per minute, will fall on that football field.

The ark is said to be 300 cubits long, by 50 cubits wide (Gen 6:15). The dictionary definition of a cubit says that its between 17” and 22” so ill use the average of those at 19.5” so the ark was approx 487.5 feet long 81.25 feet wide. Or 39,731.25 square feet. Assuming that the top of the ark was the same approx square footage. That would mean that 15,892.5 cubic feet of water would fall on the ark per minute or 118,884 Gallons per minute. Or 505 tons of water per minute falling on the ark.

After the flood, it was said that a dove brought back an olive leaf (Gen 8:11). Olive trees grow at the utmost of 5000ft. The weight and power of the flood would probably have destroyed olive trees. The few leaves that would remain would have settled down in the mud.

There are quite a few more problems with the flood, but this is getting rather long so I think ill cut it rather short.


Flood Theories:

I have heard a couple different flood theories about why the literal flood could have happened. None that I have heard so far hold any water.

First: Is that the flood, flooded only high hills (Gen 7:19), and yet it covered the entire earth because there were no big mountains before the flood. The flood water then somehow formed all the mountains.
There are a couple problems with this. First of all, animal fossils of different dates layer these mountains If the mountains formed from a small hill all at once, then every animal fossil should be around the same date. Second, the earthquakes and geological disasters of the formation of these mountains would be catastrophic. Much more compared to the flood. Both science and the bible lack any reference to a giant catastrophic earthquake and formation of 5.5 mile mountains. So its pretty safe to say that these mountains were there during the flood.

Second: The flood only flooded the top of a 17,000 high mountain.
This would mean that area was left on the earth. So taking the bible literally, god didn’t actually cover the entire earth. Nor would the flood secure the death of every animal and man on the planet, as there was still land left for them to run too. Most would die, but a few could remain.

Third: Animals on the ark were taken as babies, so they could fit them all on board.
There are a couple problems with this. First of all, there are quite a few animals that need their mothers to take care of them. This would increase the work load on Noah's family to way beyond the ability of 8 people. To act as a constant parent to many, many babies.
The second problem comes from the fact that many animals learn how to act when they are young. Being held in a captive environment for part of their young days would possibly hinder their ability to live in the real world.The ark was only floating for half a year, however that could be enough to effect some animal babies. However, an adult animal would still remember how to live in the real world and it wouldn’t have an effect.

Fourth: Only a small amount of animals were taken aboard, many micro evolved afterwards.
This wouldn't work. Basic Science categorizes a species as an animal that cant breed succefully with another species (there are some species that can, however it doesn't create good results). So every single species on earth, Must have been on the ark. Unless creationists want to concede that macro evolution is possible.


Noahs Fish problem.

This is where the bible gets slightly cloudy It doesn’t specify that noah took aboard fish, however he needed too, and it does say All animals (Gen 6:20). So we can assume he took aboard fish.
Especially since there are many fish that are sensitive to the salt content in the water, the flood would have lowered it and caused many fish to die. But since those fish are alive today, they must have been on board the ark. This posses an interesting problem for Noah. Not only did noah have to load all of those animals, he needed to find the correct salt and PH content water for these sensitive fish. He then needed to fill tanks for them and transfer the fish into those tanks. The bible lacks any description of how this activity was done.

Noah's Whale problem.

Whales couldn’t survive the flood, as the amount of water falling would displace the air and not allow them to breath. Also if we look at the bible, god says he killed everything on earth (that wasn’t on the ark) (Gen 7:23).
Now, whales pose and interesting problem. Not only do they need water to swim in, but they need an air pocket to get oxygen from. This air pocket would need to be replenished with fresh oxygen, without filling up with water from the flood.
Just two blue whales alone would pose a big problem. If we go with an average size as 70 feet long, 16 feet wide and 16 feet tall. If you built a tank that the two whales could move in but was cramped. It would span the entire width of the ark at 81.25 feet. Around 145 feet long (only 5 feet longer than the two whales end to end). If the height of it was cramped and was only 25 feet high, only 9 feet of room to move, (this would limit the other two stories on noah ark (which was 48.75 feet tall) to 11.88 feet tall for each story). The tank would be 294,531.25 cubic feet of water or 2,203,246.75 Gallons of water. That would equal 9,363.8 Tons of water. For two animals. Not to mention the problem of getting the blue whales into the ark, as it was sealed before the flood waters came (Gen 7:13,16).


“God Did It”

A common explination for the flood is that “God did it” since he can do anything he wants. Now this is fine, however it does pose a couple of problems.

One, If “god did it” why didn’t he have everything he did written down in the bible? Why does the bible state the small fact that god closed the ark’s door (Gen 7:16), but not that he protected it from all the flood water?

Two, If you take the literal interpretation of the bible as the truth, then god did nothing else than was is written in the bible. To say that god did do something else, is to rewrite a part of the bible, or to not take it literally. To rewrite the bible and to put words and actions in gods mouth is not something a christian would want to do.
- Ari
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Opinions?

A great FAQ about the flood can be found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

I tried not to repeat anything there and touch on new subjects but some may overlap.

Spaz

Hehe, yeah I read the christian forums nice job with the fundies

Baloo

I took the "enegery of condensation" approach:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=34101

with additional amusing results...

Arikay

Very interesting.

Would you like a cooked Noah with that?

Albion

There's a third problem if you're taking the Bible as the source material. It specifies that the pairs of animals that went on were an animal and its mate. Far as I know, unless they went in for early betrothals of their young back then, babies don't have mates.

tgamble

Everyone of those problems could be solved if you stopped useing the so called logic of those god hateing, christian persecuting, bible bashing, evil, immoral, degenerate evilutionists.

Not enough water? That's only if you assume mountains were around. They formed after the flood. Or during.

Obviously God provided the ark with protection and gave the olive leaf to the dove.

That's the definition of the evilutionists. True science should catagorize all life as different kinds just as God did.

Noah didn't have a fish or whale problem. If fish and whales needed to be on the ark, God would have told him to take em on. He didn't, so it wasn't a problem. END OF STORY!

All you evilutionists will pay for your doubts and mockery of GOD'S WORD! You will be cast into the fires of hell and you will burn and suffer and scream and cry and be forced to watch Barney the dinosaur videos for all eternity. You will scream and burn and be in eternal torture. God will make you suffer more than you have ever suffered and your cries for mercy will be ignored.

But he loves you.

Arikay

hehehe.

Arbogast

Noahs Ark is an inspirational parable, not a history lesson!!!

:boohoo:

Arikay

well, that may be obvious to you, but there are plenty of people who believe it really happend.

Arbogast

Them kinda people Arikay...

I forgot some of them were still around...

I think they call them kinda folks Employees...

:notworthy