I listen to a lot of podcasts. I was looking around for some new ones when I stumbled on some podcasts by How Stuff Works. One of the podcasts tackled the question “Fact or Fiction: Could Noah’s Ark Really Have Happened?” Curious about what they might have to say, I gave it a listen. They hit on some criticisms I’ve heard before — like if there really was a vapor canopy above the atmosphere, as the Bible suggests, that the increased atmospheric pressure would make human life impossible, and that there doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to enough water on earth to cover all the land.
They talked about the fact that flood myths appear all over the world (suggesting that it might be true), and the possibility that the flood myth was just an exaggerated account of a real flooding. Overall, not a very through discussion about the plausibility of Noah’s Ark.
But, then, right at the end it got weird and non-committal:
Also, as you mentioned, it’s just impossible – atmospherically, meteorologically – for the water to have risen to the point that [it covered the] top of a mountain … [Robert Ballard] went diving at the bottom of the Black Sea to see if he could find any remains [of the Ark], and he didn’t. But, that’s not to say that the Ark didn’t exist, and it was never built. It could be simply that it wouldn’t have sunk into the Black Sea. Perhaps there was a different locale. And, so, really comes down to a question of ‘how much evidence do people really need?’ It sounds like it comes down to question of faith … So, if you want some empirical answer to whether or not the Ark existed, you could simply say, “the wood disintegrated”. Or skeptics could say, “It never really did happen.” But, we know for sure that there was the possibility that the world could have flooded based on the annual rise and fall of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, or there could have been an ice-cap. Whether or not anyone built an Ark to withstand the flood is a question that I think people have to answer on their own.
I see this all the time with popular magazines and television. They present a little bit of information – hopefully, stuff that people haven’t heard before so that they look knowledgeable and informative – and then retreat to a totally bogus non-committal conclusion so that they can please everyone, and not anger the religious people who actually think the flood was a historic event.
First of all, it’s obvious non-sense that the annual flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates or an ice-cap could cause a global flood. Maybe she meant that those things could’ve caused a local flood that was greatly exaggerated, or maybe she was looking for anything that could superficially justify “we know for sure that there was the possibility that the world could have flooded”. Based on the editing of the clip, I had to wonder if management forced them to go back and sound more conciliatory towards global-flood believers. (I can only imagine the kind of hate mail they would receive if they actually said that Noah’s Ark was fiction.)
How do we know that Noah’s Ark didn’t happen?
There are already a bunch of arguments out there about Noah’s Ark that I’m not going to discuss because they’ve already been discussed to death. They include:
- Could a person in 2350 BC build a wooden ship 450 feet long that was sea-worthy? (The only known wooden ship approaching this size was the USS Wyoming. It was 450 feet long, completed in 1909, and the water tended to flex the planks in high seas so water seeped in and had to be pumped out.)
- Could Noah fit all the world’s animals on that boat, including space for food?
Instead, I think the bigger problems for Noah’s Ark are:
(1) The Bible goes into quite a bit of detail about ancestral lineages, and how old people were when they gave birth to the subsequent generation. This allows us to calculate backwards and figure out when the global flood supposedly happened. According to the Bible, the date of the global flood ends up being around 2350 BC. This date is simply not realistic. Ancient civilizations go back earlier than that. Egypt, for example, has a series of dynasties leading back to 3000 BC. (See my post “Creationism versus Archeology”.)
(2) If the 2350 date were correct, then human civilization would’ve had to undergo an extreme population explosion in the millenium following the flood. According to Biblical sources, there would have been millions of Jews leaving Egypt, so assuming a global population of 40 million around that time (~1350 BC), and comparing that to global population estimates later in history (an estimated 200+ million by 0 AD), would require an incredibly high population growth between 2350 BC and 1350 BC (5,000,000 fold increase in 1,000 years), and a much lower population growth after 1350 BC – usually less than 5 fold population growth within any 1,000 year period between 1350 BC and 1800 AD.
(3) The distribution of animals is not what we would expect if there were a global flood killing all life. If all life was limited to the top of a mountain in the Middle East in 2350 B.C., then how to explain the distribution of animals across the world? All the kangaroos on the Ark went to Australia? How did the animals get to the Americas? If they crossed via an ice-bridge in the Bering Strait, then the Americas should be limited to animals that are warm blooded and capable of traveling hundreds of miles across snow. This means no reptiles, no spiders, etc. Yet, the Amazon contains a wide variety of animal biodiversity. And why didn’t American desert animals stay behind in the deserts of the Old World? (See related post: “Creationism versus Animal Biodiversity”)
(4) Genetic evidence shows that human beings are far to genetically diverse to be descended from a single family in 2350 B.C. If Noah’s Ark were true, then all men alive today would’ve gotten their Y-chromosomes from Noah, and all human mitochondrial DNA would come from Noah’s wife and the three daughter-in-laws. Studies of the human Y-Chromosome show that you’d need far more than 4,300 years to accumulate that many mutations. Human beings could not be descended from a single male in 2350 B.C. What the studies show, instead, is that, in order to explain the number of mutations in the human Y-Chromosome, you have to allow for roughly 60,000-90,000 years. Similarly, human mitochondrial DNA requires roughly 160,000 years to accumulate that many mutations — showing that Eve could not have lived 6,000 years ago as the Bible says. (See Carl Zimmer’s article on Y-Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve.)
(5) If the entire human race were repopulated from a single family in the Middle-East in 2350 B.C., then we would expect the highest levels of genetic diversity to be in the Middle East. Populations who moved to Africa, Europe, Australia, etc would carry only a subset of that genetic diversity with them. In reality, the highest levels of human genetic diversity occur in Africa. For example, the Khosian (in South Africa) have some of the most diverse genetics. If the Bible predicted Noah’s Ark landing on Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, genetic diversity would at least align with the Biblical story. Unsurprisingly, humans appear to have arisen in the same location as our closest genetic relatives – chimpanzees and gorillas. (See National Geographic’s Genographic Project, which uses genetics to trace the migration paths of humans over the past 200,000 years.)
I suppose young earth creationists could side-step issues two and three by invoking miracles. For example, they can say that God miraculously allows a population explosion, and God miraculously moved animals back to their original locations (after miraculously moving them to the Ark in the first place — afterall, it’s not reasonable to suggest that Noah gathered all the world’s animals). Flood-believers already have to invoke a whole series of miracles (God sending enough rain to cover the earth, God talking to Noah, God removing the excess water from the earth after the flood, etc). Of course, if you add enough divine miracles to your story, nothing is “unreasonable”. However, it would be odd to say the other three can be cleared up by invoking a miracle — it’s not understandable why God would want to do a miracle in those cases (unless he was trying to deliberately obscure that a flood happened).
So genetics and archeology show that Noah’s Ark didn’t happen. Some Christians, Jews, and Muslims might suggest that Noah’s Ark did happen, but it was more than 4,400 years ago (i.e. the Old Testament is wrong about that detail). It still causes problems because you’d have to push back the date tens of thousands of years in order to allow for that level of human genetic diversity.
Check out what other cultures have recorded about The Flood. A statistical analysis of these presents some interesting results. Also, The notion of a “Vapor Canopy” (that might have caused a flood) based on Genesis is contradicted in the same chapter in which it appears. Check out this discrepancy and a lot of other biblical misconceptions and mysteries in
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ManAndHisPlanet.html
Every time I come to this site I am amazed at the things that are being discussed. I mean, the fantastic things that some people hold dear are absolutely ludicrous. Of course no one built a giant boat with two of every animal. Of course the entire earth didn’t flood. Of course people didn’t routinely live outrageously long lives. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see how that flies in the face of any and all empirical evidence. It simply doesn’t make any sense, and deep down, everyone knows it isn’t true. The fact that these supposed events need to be debunked in print at all says a lot about the damage a widespread belief in magic has done to the human race. People everywhere need to wake up. It is complete and total nonsense, and it is really annoying. Tiny – Thanks for fighting the (impossibly uphill) battle for me and many others who hold similar beliefs (based on fact!).
It really shows just how ignorant of history the bible’s authors were. It’s really amazing that anyone can entertain such an idea these days, though.
Add in the fact that, even though myth of floods occur in many cultures, they are no means universal. Even just limiting it to myths that detail origin stories (such as previous worlds being destroyed and only a few people surviving), they vary between floods and fires, two things that primitive people had problems with. That’s just going off memory. Talk Origins has a fairly detailed listing.
all flood material: http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-flood.html
flood stories: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html
(the site was incredibly slow to load, so YMMV)
There was some interesting material on the Ark posted at FRDB (formerly the II forums): Here is one:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=53338&highlight=ark+naval+paper
We had some interesting discussions about creatures, reproduction, windows and ventilation, food, etc, plus all the vapor canopy+ fun. Even thermodynamics and the burning of the entire earths atmosphere. A simple search can lead to quite a few threads on the subject, if anyone is interested.
I think that people read the Bible and think of it all literally. They think if it says the sea was split it literally was. The Bible is an interpretation in my opinion. So maybe something similar to the ark happened but not exactly how it is written. You gotta have a little faith in some things and sometimes things are unexplainable.
Are you seriously considering the possibilities of a global flood and a cargo vessel that might survive it, or are you simply looking for any excuse to try and discredit the Bible? If Bible-bashing is important to you, it seems like maybe you should address the actual text, rather than arbitrary interpretations.
On the other hand, try to remember that history IS interpretation, and the real debate here is one of trust and authority: “Religious Authority” vs “Scientific Authority”. A direct approach to that debate would seem less disingenuous, don’t you think? Clarify the issues, please. Simplify. Try to be careful when lumping all of your distrustful feelings toward ‘religion’ together with the notion of Scripture; and be careful when lumping all of your grand feelings toward ’science’ together with the interpretation of whatever current paradigm it labors under. Pay attention to the distinctions, people!
Creationism does not = Christianity. Religion does not = Magic. Empirical evidence does not = proof. Biblical interpretation does not = Faith.
I was raised in a family (and Christian school) which believed in the literal interpretation of Genesis and the belief that the global flood was a historical event. The fact that some Christians don’t believe in a literal flood does not mean I cannot address the idea (still held by many Christians) that a global flood actually happened.
Take a look at the answers to this YahooAnswers question, if you don’t believe me that many Christians continue to believe in a literal flood story:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081229111627AASR6WU
Most of those responses agree that a flood happened. A few quotes:
“Yes, I believe it. Jesus did too. At Matt. 24:37-39, he said: ““When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. 38 In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings”
“Sure. Why not? Just because you do not understand something doesn’t necessarily make it untrue”
“I believe in everything what Bible says even if it is weird or immposible. But remember, in God’s eyes nothing is immposible. God can do everything.”
“Yes, I do believe that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and yes, I believe that Noah not only built an ark where there has never been rain before, and yes, I do believe he not only did that, but he preached righteousness for the 120 years that it took him to build the ark- Remember who created the weather. Not man, but the infinite, creator God.”
“You’re asking Christians yeah? Well is it in the Bible? Then you have your answer. True Followers of Christ follow His Word.”
I wonder how Christians who don’t believe in the flood deal with Matt. 24:37-39, where Jesus mentions the flood and Noah as if they are historical events. Or the lineage of Jesus in Luke, which includes Noah.
> the real debate here is one of trust and authority: “Religious Authority” vs “Scientific Authority”
I reject that argument because its fundamental premise is to simply setup two “authorities” against each other, which leads to questions like “whom do you trust — God or man?” It sidesteps the real arguments and problems in favor of a kind of “argument from authority” – where we are simply supposed to choose between religious and secular “authorities”.
The Old Testament is an account given to moses by God after the exodus from Egypt. Moses, a meek man is describing to his Clan the history of The Chosen race. A hostory with names familiar to the clans. Geneology and family and there history Was as imprtant as anything to the ancient Hebrews.
HumanKind was created on the 6th day. The Chosen race was a specific race that would eventually beget the messiah or Christ. Moses Account is to the Hebrews of the History of the Chosen Race. The secret missed is that to the Hebrews, all other races were in many places of the old testament called beasts. The Ark inhabitants were Noah and his family, whose decendents in that time were recognizable to the hebrews, as well as other races. to think that other races came from the hebrew line is a false understanding.