The Fallacy Of Biblical Stories, Part 1: The Great Flood & Noah's Ark

[Gordy327]

"People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers." ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

This article is the first in a series of articles I plan to write (depending on my available time and interest) objectively examining popular biblical stories to establish their veracity or likelihood of having actually occurred. While many people might view the stories as fables and allegories, some do view them as actual, literal events that have occurred (Looking at you Ken Hamm, lol). These stories have significantly influenced people and societies throughout the centuries. So I will analyze the empirical evidence which either supports or refutes the stories as portrayed. For this Part 1, I will examine the biblical Great Flood and Noah's Ark mythos.

In a nutshell, the Great Flood/Noah's Ark goes like this: God was ticked off at humanity's shenanigans and decided the best way to deal with the situation was genocide via mass drowning (save for Noah & few of his followers, along with certain animals). So God instructed Noah to gather two of every animal and build a great ark to house them during the 40-day/night deluge that would flood the world and kill virtually every living thing on the planet. Afterwards, he would release the animals and themselves to repopulate their respective species.

This story has so many problems with it, it's difficult to know where to begin. To simplify, I will not be focusing on other cultures earlier flood myths, which probably influenced the creation of the biblical flood myth. Neither will I be focusing on God's own imperfection (or incompetence), as his Creation had some major design flaws forcing him to essentially reboot Creation over again. I also won't delve into the implausibility of rapid repopulation over a short time after the flood either. So here are some problems with the Flood story:

1. The sheer number of animals that had to be aboard the Ark : For this, I'm going to assume that the animals on the ark were all land animals. According to the California Academy of Sciences, there are approximately 6.5 million species of land animals. I'll be conservative and round down to 6 million, give or take a million. Since we have two of every animal, the ark must be capable of holding and supporting 12 MILLION animals for an extended duration, without additional support. That alone makes the Flood story quite implausible (even more so if one includes dinosaurs as passengers). Anyone who has been in a pet store will know housing many animals takes up quite a lot of space and resources. To put that into perspective, a single adult elephant (the largest land mammal in the world) can weigh upwards of 14,000 pounds, grow up to 35 feet long, and eat 200-600 pounds of food and drink 50 gallons of water PER DAY! And Noah had 12 million animals to feed and water daily, which is an impossible task for the relatively few people aboard the ark (never mind cleaning up after the animals too). In addition, it is supposed to believed that many of those animals traveled thousands of miles, some over the ocean, and from remote places like Antarctica, outside of their natural environments and ecosystems, in time to board the ark before the flood. Really?

 

[Gordy327]

Due to character limitations, I have to post the rest of the article in the discussion forum. Here are the rest of the points:

2. The lack of paleontological evidence : Once the flood occurs, that means EVERY SINGLE ANIMAL not on the ark dies (and PETA takes issue with people wearing furs? They should have quite the issue with God's cruelty to animals here). Not only land animals left behind, but this also includes all land based plant life, insects that feed off of plants, amphibians and avians that feed of the insects, ect.. Essentially, the Flood would destroy entire ecosystems, collapse the food chain, and cause a sudden mass extinction event. This would also include sea based plants and animals, as the sudden influx of freshwater rain would dilute the salinity of the oceans, thereby disrupting the environmental conditions ocean based life requires to survive. If such an extinction event occurred, we would expect to see LOTS of fossils or remnants of the deceased lifeforms all at the same geological strata evenly distributed all over the earth. But we clearly do not observe that being the case. To be fair though, fossilization would require a burial in sediment layers thick enough to preserve them. But we're not seeing that in any sediment layers going back approximately 4000+ years (the time of Noah). Another thing to consider is, when the flood receded and the Ark landed, we should see a large collection of fossils or remains of all the animals that lived and died within a region around the ark. In other words, we should expect to find (for example) penguin remains mixed in along with kangaroo remains in the same general area. Needless to say, we do not see that.

3. The lack of geological evidence : So if a worldwide flood did indeed happen, there would be geological evidence of the event. However, geologists have not discovered any evidence to support the flood story. Just the opposite actually, current geological evidence directly contradicts the idea of a world wide flood covering landmasses. If there were such a Flood event, we would see mountains and other rock formations have a relatively uniform smoothing or massive erosion from the receding Flood water equally around the world. Of course, that is not the case. We would also see erosion and sedimentation occurring simultaneously, which we do not. Not only would we find even sedimentation layers around the world if there were a flood, certain sedimentation layers we see today could not exist.

4. The amount of water needed to flood the earth does not exist on earth : The volume of water on Earth is fairly constant: it evaporates form oceans, lakes, rivers, ect., condenses in the atmosphere into clouds, and falls back to Earth as rain, where the cycle repeats. So 40 days & nights of rain would have to drop enough water to cover ALL of Earth's landmasses, up and including Mt. Everest, at 29,028 feet above sea level (God wouldn't want to have a little animal stay safe on the peak of Everest while he's trying to smite every living thing, right?). The problem with that is there is not enough water on Earth to actually flood it to the level described in the bible. According to certain estimates , it would take 813,875,076 CUBIC MILES of water to sufficiently cover the entirety of Earth. That's a lot of water. By comparison, all of Earth's oceans, which cover 70% of the planet, equals approximately 321,000,000 cubic miles. I would expect that volume of water to fall in 40 days would be less like being constantly under rain, and more like constantly under a waterfall. Then there's the problem of where all that extra water went after the flood (I know, some people might invoke God's magic and all that).
Continued...

 

[Gordy327]

Continued...
5. The Ark itself is implausible : Now we get to the centerpiece of the Flood Story, Noah's Great Ark itself. By now, many people are probably familiar with Ken Hamm's Ark Encounter park in Kentucky, where Mr. Hamm built a supposedly accurate, full-size replica of Noah's Ark. For the purposes of this discussion, I will use Mr. Hamm's Ark as a "functional" duplicate of Noah's Ark. So the Ark itself is 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high, smaller than the Titanic (and yet 12 millions animals were housed on board? Really?). I don't think the bible states Noah was a master carpenter or ship builder with the skill to construct a vessel of this magnitude or for the conditions it would face. Presumably, Noah only had wood and the simple tools of his time to construct the Ark. The problem here is, wood is not the ideal material to construct large seagoing vessels. The largest wooden vessels built by master shipbuilders of the recent era was the 6 mast schooner Wyoming, which had an overall length of 450 feet. The problem with such large wooden vessels is that sea travel would cause the wooden hull to twist and warp, resulting in leaks or even structural failure. So the Ark, built by unskilled individuals with primitive tools, meant to remain stable on water rather than actually sail over it, somehow, even with all it's gross tonnage of material, animals, and any cargo, was able to withstand stormy weather and oceans without breaking apart or becoming water logged enough to cause sinking? That seems highly unlikely to me. as does the Great Flood story itself.

 

[Gordy327]

So what do you think? Could the Great Flood and Noah's Ark actually have occurred? I don't think so. There are flood stories long before the bible was written. The Epic of Gilgamesh immediately comes to mind. Biblical stories like the Flood seem borrowed from other sources and expanded upon and/or exaggerated.

 

[LittleNipper]

The Smithsonian Magazine had a very scientific article regarding whether Noah's Ark could even float. And the consensus was as follows: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/could-noahs-ark-float-theory-yes-180950385/

 

[LittleNipper]

How many animals of each kind did Noah take on the ark: https://apologeticspress.org/how-many-animals-of-each-kind-did-noah-take-into-the-ark-656/

 

[LittleNipper]

What is a KIND and what is a species. The answer may surprise you: https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/species-and-kinds-and-the-ark/

 

[Loulit01]

A myth is a myth regardless of what book or oral tradition it's in.

 

[HIP56948]

A huge amount of Biblical stories were passed down by ancient society's fables. Yeah, nobody, not even Charlton Heston actually separated the sea.

 

[Exquisitor]

So what do you think? Could the Great Flood and Noah's Ark actually have occurred? I don't think so. There are flood stories long before the bible was written. The Epic of Gilgamesh immediately comes to mind. Biblical stories like the Flood seem borrowed from other sources and expanded upon and/or exaggerated.

In 2807 BC a three mile wide comet hit the South Indian Ocean making an eighteen mile wide crater and sending all that water into the atmosphere causing torrential rains across the globe, and everybody wishes they had an ark. Besides evidence in the atmosphere told the race that such were a regular occurrence, and so they all wrote their stories.

And it is that the ark is a common pastime across the cosmos, although here it is fictional.

Israel came from Jericho when clever priests from India preached to them who knew the Lord's coming and that He needed a people.

 

[LittleNipper]

A huge amount of Biblical stories were passed down by ancient society's fables. Yeah, nobody, not even Charlton Heston actually separated the sea.

I'll let you in on a little secret --------- Moses didn't actually separate the Red Sea either. It was GOD.
If one doesn't believe in GOD the rest of the stories make no sense. GOD is the KEY to ETERNITY!

 

[LittleNipper]

A myth is a myth regardless of what book or oral tradition it's in.

That is certainly true with DARWINISM. It sounds "scientific," but it's all fabricated under a wrong assumption.

 

[LittleNipper]

A scientific theory as to why we have not found fossils of Dinosaurs and humans together ----- YET!:https://answersingenesis.org/dinosaurs/humans/why-dont-we-find-human-dinosaur-fossils-together/

 

[MikePrime]

"People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers." ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

This article is the first in a series of articles I plan to write (depending on my available time and interest) objectively examining popular biblical stories to establish their veracity or likelihood of having actually occurred. While many people might view the stories as fables and allegories, some do view them as actual, literal events that have occurred (Looking at you Ken Hamm, lol). These stories have significantly influenced people and societies throughout the centuries. So I will analyze the empirical evidence which either supports or refutes the stories as portrayed. For this Part 1, I will examine the biblical Great Flood and Noah's Ark mythos.

In a nutshell, the Great Flood/Noah's Ark goes like this: God was ticked off at humanity's shenanigans and decided the best way to deal with the situation was genocide via mass drowning (save for Noah & few of his followers, along with certain animals). So God instructed Noah to gather two of every animal and build a great ark to house them during the 40-day/night deluge that would flood the world and kill virtually every living thing on the planet. Afterwards, he would release the animals and themselves to repopulate their respective species.

This story has so many problems with it, it's difficult to know where to begin. To simplify, I will not be focusing on other cultures earlier flood myths, which probably influenced the creation of the biblical flood myth. Neither will I be focusing on God's own imperfection (or incompetence), as his Creation had some major design flaws forcing him to essentially reboot Creation over again. I also won't delve into the implausibility of rapid repopulation over a short time after the flood either. So here are some problems with the Flood story:

This is the equivalent of right wings people saying there is a communist plot with in our government. Are there communist in America? Sure. Do they constitute a decent percentage to actually be a political threat? no.
Are there people who take every word literally in the Bible? yes. Do they constitute a decent percentage of theist thinkers? no.

Bottom line- in 2022 science is not at the threat of biblical literalist.

 

[MikePrime]

Due to character limitations, I have to post the rest of the article in the discussion forum. Here are the rest of the points:

2. The lack of paleontological evidence :

3. The lack of geological evidence : So if a worldwide flood did indeed happen, there would be geological evidence of the event. However, geologists have not discovered any evidence to support the flood story.

4. The amount of water needed to flood the earth does not exist on earth :

I don't think the story as in the Bible is true but it seems to come from a true source, this doesn't mean that all or even the overwhelming vast majority of claims and statistics behind it are real.

All around the worlds people have a story of a massive flood.

The lack of paleontological and geological evidence is not true. It just means the exact "facts" given is the Bible are a folklore narrative, that has been telephoned, dramatized, and changed in ways we will never know.

There was dramatic climate change 12,900 year ago that abruptly ended the last ice age. From 12,900 to 11,600 years ago is known as the younger dryas period, that ended the ice age and rose the temperature of the Earth. In this, massive flooding and sea level rise is well established. It is coming to be understood that this younger dryas period might of been initiated by a relatively large meteor that hit the ice shelfs and cause catastrophic flooding. This lack of geological evidence you claim has actually been discovered by geologist. The North American continent is full of this geological evidence.

Though the story as told in the Bible is a messed up depiction of it that traveled orally for ten thousand years. The folktale is a dramatization of humans having to start over again.

 

[Gateman_Wen]

"People cited violation of the First Amendment when a New Jersey schoolteacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's ark carried dinosaurs. This case is not about the need to separate church and state; it's about the need to separate ignorant, scientifically illiterate people from the ranks of teachers." ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

This article is the first in a series of articles I plan to write (depending on my available time and interest) objectively examining popular biblical stories to establish their veracity or likelihood of having actually occurred. While many people might view the stories as fables and allegories, some do view them as actual, literal events that have occurred (Looking at you Ken Hamm, lol). These stories have significantly influenced people and societies throughout the centuries. So I will analyze the empirical evidence which either supports or refutes the stories as portrayed. For this Part 1, I will examine the biblical Great Flood and Noah's Ark mythos.

In a nutshell, the Great Flood/Noah's Ark goes like this: God was ticked off at humanity's shenanigans and decided the best way to deal with the situation was genocide via mass drowning (save for Noah & few of his followers, along with certain animals). So God instructed Noah to gather two of every animal and build a great ark to house them during the 40-day/night deluge that would flood the world and kill virtually every living thing on the planet. Afterwards, he would release the animals and themselves to repopulate their respective species.

This story has so many problems with it, it's difficult to know where to begin. To simplify, I will not be focusing on other cultures earlier flood myths, which probably influenced the creation of the biblical flood myth. Neither will I be focusing on God's own imperfection (or incompetence), as his Creation had some major design flaws forcing him to essentially reboot Creation over again. I also won't delve into the implausibility of rapid repopulation over a short time after the flood either. So here are some problems with the Flood story:

1. The sheer number of animals that had to be aboard the Ark : For this, I'm going to assume that the animals on the ark were all land animals. According to the California Academy of Sciences, there are approximately 6.5 million species of land animals. I'll be conservative and round down to 6 million, give or take a million. Since we have two of every animal, the ark must be capable of holding and supporting 12 MILLION animals for an extended duration, without additional support. That alone makes the Flood story quite implausible (even more so if one includes dinosaurs as passengers). Anyone who has been in a pet store will know housing many animals takes up quite a lot of space and resources. To put that into perspective, a single adult elephant (the largest land mammal in the world) can weigh upwards of 14,000 pounds, grow up to 35 feet long, and eat 200-600 pounds of food and drink 50 gallons of water PER DAY! And Noah had 12 million animals to feed and water daily, which is an impossible task for the relatively few people aboard the ark (never mind cleaning up after the animals too). In addition, it is supposed to believed that many of those animals traveled thousands of miles, some over the ocean, and from remote places like Antarctica, outside of their natural environments and ecosystems, in time to board the ark before the flood. Really?

It's allegorical. What really happened is a comet was about to strike the earth and an advanced alien race came to earth and rescued the DNA of every animal including humans and the story is kinda like a genetic memory of the whole incident.

Or maybe it just makes a good story and none of that ever happened.

 

[Monica33]

OP . You are taking the story literally .
The same story occurs everywhere on the planet .

You need to include the possibility of much closer involvement by a 'God' who most certainly was not the God of Universe but possibly one of the Anunnaki , for example , and used technology which was very different from the picture resulting from the attempted translation as found in the Old Testament .
And timing does seem to be within the 8000 - 11000 BC ( old currency ) timeframe .

 

[stevecanuck]

If water covered the entire planet, where did it recede to?

 

[Somerville]

The Smithsonian Magazine had a very scientific article regarding whether Noah's Ark could even float. And the consensus was as follows: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/could-noahs-ark-float-theory-yes-180950385/

Although interesting, the Smithsonian article is not "very scientific". The author mostly ignores the ever so small fact that a wooden vessel of the size examined by the students just wouldn't stay together. Even with steel beams added to the wooden hull structure of several large trading ships toward the end of the 19th century, none of them were as large as the mythical Ark and each of them had a very short life at sea.

 

[Questerr]

What is a KIND and what is a species. The answer may surprise you: https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/species-and-kinds-and-the-ark/

You realize Answers In Genesis requires its "researchers" to sign a pledge that they will never publish anything that contradicts the Bible, right?

 

[LittleNipper]

You realize Answers In Genesis requires its "researchers" to sign a pledge that they will never publish anything that contradicts the Bible, right?

This is to keep honest secular scientists out --- meaning those who really only believe in evolution and abiogenesis. And do you know that Creation researchers must be willing to accept evolution as entirely the only way or they cannot get a job at most secular science laboratories and institutions of higher learning?

 

[Questerr]

This is to keep honest secular scientists out --- meaning those who really only believe in evolution and abiogenesis. And do you know that Creation researchers must be willing to accept evolution as entirely the only way or they cannot get a job at most secular science laboratories and institutions of higher learning?

Please show where that requirement exists in any secular laboratory or college. Provide a quote or admit you are lying. And lying is one of those things that your God will send you to Hell for, isn't it?

 

[LittleNipper]

Please show where that requirement exists in any secular laboratory or college. Provide a quote or admit you are lying. And lying is one of those things that your God will send you to Hell for, isn't it?

God doesn't sent anyone to hell for sinning. GOD turns people away from heaven because they never accepted CHRIST as their personal SAVIOR. Have you done that?

AND I'm sure that if you wrote on your resume' that you didn't believe in Darwinism or that Evolution is the means from which life became diverse from one living thing, or such a belief came up in an interview ----you most likely wouldn't get the job. There are too many willing to accept anything to land a career.

 

[Questerr]

God doesn't sent anyone to hell for sinning. GOD turns people away from heaven because they never accepted CHRIST as their personal SAVIOR. Have you done that?

AND I'm sure that if you wrote on your resume' that you didn't believe in Darwinism or that Evolution is the means from which life became diverse from one living thing, or such a belief came up in an interview ----you most likely wouldn't get the job. There are too many willing to accept anything to land a career.

Is this the same Jesus that is also the God who was cool with people owning other people as slaves and who ordered his followers to kill children? Why would I accept such an evil being as anything?

What resume requires writing one's beliefs about Evolution? Do you think beliefs are a normal section to include in a resume?

 

[LittleNipper]

Is this the same Jesus that is also the God who was cool with people owning other people as slaves and who ordered his followers to kill children? Why would I accept such an evil being as anything?

What resume requires writing one's beliefs about Evolution? Do you think beliefs are a normal section to include in a resume?

Does GOD know everything? Did HE see them as already corrupt and evil? I can imagine if one attends a Christian University, it may just go without saying. You keep bringing up slavery; however the primary reason slavery ended in England and the US was primarily a Bible Believing Christian Movement and not an atheistic one. In fact, I can imagine an atheist who doesn't believe in GOD and has selfish ambitions would likely make an excellent slavery Taskmaster. I feel that pangs of conscience are GOD's way of softening one's heart... Perhaps you lack that also.