Noah's Ark: The Flawed Literalist Interpretation

[Nationalist State of Knox]

I'd put it down to being uninformed rather than due to blind faith. It's not hard to accept the story of Noah's Ark if you haven't bothered to understand the logic (or lack thereof) of it.

In the logic of the day, you could save half the "exotic" species of the world by saving a male of one species and a female of another.
The whole thing is so "logically flawed" and as mentioned, predicates the existence of a God, that trying top deconstruct it is pointless.

It's necessary to deconstruct the story to expose how the story is simply down to basic biological and general misconceptions of the time.

If our beliefs can't adapt and evolve over time, and require such a flawed concept as an "omnipotent God" to function, then why believe anything at all?

[Nationalist State of Knox]

Would the three shining examples of perfect logical consistency who chose the third option on the poll care to "debate" their beliefs?

[Samozaryadnyastan]

It's necessary to deconstruct the story to expose how the story is simply down to basic biological and general misconceptions of the time.

If our beliefs can't adapt and evolve over time, and require such a flawed concept as an "omnipotent God" to function, then why believe anything at all?

Good question.
Not my opinion.

[Regnum Dominae]

Would the three shining examples of perfect logical consistency who chose the third option on the poll care to "debate" their beliefs?

BIBLE! GOD! JESUS!

/argument

[Mike the Progressive]

Would the three shining examples of perfect logical consistency who chose the third option on the poll care to "debate" their beliefs?

Jesus.

[Benuty]

Would the three shining examples of perfect logical consistency who chose the third option on the poll care to "debate" their beliefs?

It is obvious summertime users had explosiosn of logic in their mind and clicked option 3 before logic completely absorbed them.

[Ashmoria]

rats
now that I have looked at the OP I realize I chose the wrong option in the poll.

tl;dr;dnntr

dnntr?

do not need to read. it was far too much discussion of how an impossible event is impossible.

[Poland-ball (Ancient)]

Tag. Haven't read the OP

[Benuty]

Tag. Haven't read the OP

Why are you tagging in General?...this is OOC.

[Poland-ball (Ancient)]

Well, i didn't read the OP, but i choose option 2 anyways.

[The Joseon Dynasty]

It's necessary to deconstruct the story to expose how the story is simply down to basic biological and general misconceptions of the time.

Yeah, but God is the ultimate trump card. It isn't logically shaky because of the misconceptions of the time, it's perfectly consistent because God willed it to happen and therefore it happened. You're just trying to apply concrete logic to something as complex and other-wordly as God, which is a natural human fallacy.

That's the response you're going to get, and it's perfectly consistent with their beliefs.

[Risottia]

61% of Americans in 2004 believed the story of Noah's Ark and the Global Flood literally happened.

Well, at least 61% of Americans in 2004 were utter ignorants. I don't think this datum is much worse or much better than the world average.

[Nationalist State of Knox]

It's necessary to deconstruct the story to expose how the story is simply down to basic biological and general misconceptions of the time.

Yeah, but God is the ultimate trump card. It isn't logically shaky because of the misconceptions of the time, it's perfectly consistent because God willed it to happen and therefore it happened. You're just trying to apply concrete logic to something as complex and other-wordly as God, which is a natural human fallacy.

That's the response you're going to get, and it's perfectly consistent with their beliefs.

It's impossible to suggest "omnipotence" as being logical, anyway.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

Yeah, but God is the ultimate trump card. It isn't logically shaky because of the misconceptions of the time, it's perfectly consistent because God willed it to happen and therefore it happened. You're just trying to apply concrete logic to something as complex and other-wordly as God, which is a natural human fallacy.

That's the response you're going to get, and it's perfectly consistent with their beliefs.

It's impossible to suggest "omnipotence" as being logical, anyway.

Implying the people who would suggest otherwise give two fucks about how impossible you believe it to be.

[Nationalist State of Knox]

It's impossible to suggest "omnipotence" as being logical, anyway.

Implying the people who would suggest otherwise give two fucks about how impossible you believe it to be.

This isn't a belief, this is basic logic.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

Implying the people who would suggest otherwise give two fucks about how impossible you believe it to be.

This isn't a belief, this is basic logic.

To them, it won't be.

Ergo, telling them so is pointless and this thread is an irrelevance, which will only serve as ego-stroking of how "logical" and "clever" you are to see how "wrong" the bible is.

I'm just Devil's Advocating here at this point, I don't believe the bible stories to be correct.

[Nationalist State of Knox]

This isn't a belief, this is basic logic.

To them, it won't be.

Then they're lost causes.

[Samozaryadnyastan]

To them, it won't be.

Then they're lost causes.

And such, the thread is an irrelevance.

[Volnotova]

Then they're lost causes.

And such, the thread is an irrelevance.

I am going to bookmark this though.

Might come in handy.

[Nationalist State of Knox]

Then they're lost causes.

And such, the thread is an irrelevance.

At least to those incapable of grasping basic concepts, rather than those merely uninformed.

I mean, I was taught and believed Noah's Ark at one (early) point in my life.

[The Joseon Dynasty]

Implying the people who would suggest otherwise give two fucks about how impossible you believe it to be.

This isn't a belief, this is basic logic.

And God exists outside of and above basic logic. It's why these things hold up against scrutiny, because something as seemingly ludicrous as the Noah narrative follows logically from their premise, which is that God exists and can do whatever He wants. Unless you debunk the premise, which is impossible, everything that proceeds from it is untouchable.

[Ryccia]

The story of Noah's Ark and the Global Flood is rather famous, regardless of whether one is theist or an atheist. It's a story that might've been taught to you when you were young, as a literal story that is historically accurate, or you may have even encountered the story at a later date. The story is in fact present in many mythologies in many forms, famously being a part of the "Epic of Gilgamesh".

It was until recently that I assumed that most regarded the literal account of this tale as such: a myth, nothing more. However, to my dismay, I encountered a shocking statistic: 61% of Americans in 2004 believed the story of Noah's Ark and the Global Flood literally happened. Although this statistic was from 9 years ago, I'm fairly confident that it hasn't fluctuated significantly in under a decade, unless, of course, the majority of the American public have actually become informed about major Biblical flaws (Yahweh forbid).

I shall hence categorically and comprehensively deconstruct and analyse the Genesis Flood Account as if it were a literal event, and not, I must emphasise, a symbolic account. So yeah, you can put those strawmen back into their cases.

---

The Account
First of all, the actual story, from Genesis 6:9-22, Genesis 7 and Genesis 8: 1-21.

9 This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress[a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.[b] 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit[c] high all around.[d] Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

7 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.[e][f] 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[g] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

Water: A lot of it
The first problem demonstrated by this account is water, or rather, the sheer quantity of it. The account explains how "all the high mountains under the heavens were covered", which, of course, implies that the water level was higher than Mount Everest, the Earth's highest mountain. Taking into account that the surface area of the Earth is 510 million kilometres, and acknowledging that the height of Mount Everest is 8.848km , we can perform as basic volume calculation, revealing that the total volume of water required to flood the Earth to such an extent is 4,512,480,000 cubic kilometres of water. In comparison, the present volume of water on the Earth (i.e in oceans, lakes etc) is 1,338,000,000 cubic kilometres, meaning that approximately 3.4 times the Earth's current water volume came out of absolutely nowhere. That's right, nowhere.

That's not all of it as well. The account details that the flooding process occurred for "forty days", meaning that approximately 112,812,000 cubic kilometres fell per day, 4,700,500 per hour, 78,342 per minute and 1306 per second. At any one time, the Earth's atmosphere holds approximately 12,900 cubic kilometres of water, which means that during the flood, approximately six times the Earth's atmosphere's water volume was falling every minute.

Of course, there's also the problem of where 4.5 billion cubic kilometres of water actually went. The floodwaters began to fall on the 17th day of אייר or "Iyyar", a 29 day month, and had fully receded by the 27th of that month one year afterwards. This puts the duration of the flood at 394 days, allowing us to calculate that it took 204 days for the waters to fully recede. This means that at a rate of 22,120,000 cubic kilometres per day, this water was evaporating into the atmosphere. However, the Bible offers no explanation where this water 34,980 times the average volume of water in the atmosphere actually went. Did it dissipate into space? Improbable, considering that the occasional water molecule only ever leaves the atmosphere to space by being broken into its respective hydrogen and oxygen atoms by ultraviolet radiation; a process almost completely stopped by the Earth's protective ozone layer. The atmosphere would no doubt be unable to cope with that volume of water, condensing and thus creating even more precipitation in an endless cycle.

Essentially, unless we disregard the fact that the atmosphere can't physically contain that volume of water without it falling as rain, the water vapour present would render the air unbreathable, as well as cause global temperatures to plummet by reflecting the sun's rays.

The Ark
Noah was instructed to construct his "Ark" based on an archaic unit of measurement known as the cubit. There are several variants of the cubit, the Biblical one being the "Near Eastern Cubit", which is approximately 18 inches (around 0.45 metres). The Bible states that the Ark was "three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high." Converting these into modern metric measurements, the ark was 135x22.5x13.5 metres. Noah is also instructed to make the ark out of "cypress", a reference to a family of conifer trees known as "Cupressaceae", and despite specifying what type of wood it was to be made out of, made no plans for a rudder or any other type of steering mechanisms. So, in summary, God instructed Noah to construct a ship 135 metres long, made of wood, with no method for steering at all, and this ark was to carry every animal species in existence.

By way of comparison, a modern Nimitz aircraft carrier is 332.8 metres long and can carry up to 90 aircraft, despite being over 2.5 times the size of this legendary ark. Not only that, but constructing the ark out of wood makes it relatively flimsy in comparison, and combined with the lack of a steering mechanism, it's fair to say that the ark wouldn't have lasted long as the Earth rapidly flooded in what would have resulted in intense storm waters.

Animals
Having touched on animals in my last section, I shall go into greater detail here. As of 2010, there were 1.7 million known animal species, and the number has no doubt increased over the past 3 years. In fact, it is estimated that there are over 8.7 million non-bacterial species in the world today. Of course, this raises numerous problems for the feasibility of the story once this is put into perspective, and numerous questions are raised.

Firstly, how did Noah collect "two of all living creatures" of approximately 8.7 million animal species? Assuming, of course, we're not ignoring the fact that God instructed Noah to "bring" them onto the ark himself, contrary to the belief that they actually came to Noah of their own will (which still has several problems I'll discuss soon).
Assuming Noah actually did collect 8.7 million species, not only does it mean he was the discoverer of the Americas, but in fact he was the greatest zoologist to have ever lived.
This man, in his early 600s, would have had to immobilise polar bears and transport them from the arctic to an isolated area in ancient Mesopotamia. Even if this process took 100 years, and Noah spent this entire time without any sleep (the average human will last 2 weeks before dying of sleep deprivation), he would have had to collect 238 species per day or 10 new species per hour, something not physically possible considering the time required to both travel to the location of these species and capture them (assuming none were hostile and decided to kill Noah, which many of them would have).

However, if we assume that Noah didn't collect all of the animals himself, numerous problems are still posed; for example, how did sloths travel 12000 kilometres (as the crow flies) from Central America to the area of modern-day Iraq. As comical as the idea is of a sloth, a famously slow and lazy animal, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, it frankly remains nonsensical to suggest a sloth could do so. On the other hand, one could suggest the sloth travelled up into Alaska to Chukotka (still required to traverse some water) in conditions considerably colder than what it is acclimatised to, without any of its natural habitat or nutrition, meaning that it would die pretty quickly.

In addition, many species will have had to have been collected hundreds of times, in order to provide food for the carnivorous species on the ship, which goes directly against God's commands to only take two of each species on board. Noah would have also had to cater for the specific survival needs of every animal on his vessel, providing the exact dietary requirement for 8.7 million species whilst keeping the vessel at a temperature they can survive in, which is something that would no doubt be difficult to achieve considering the 135 metre-long wooden vessel wouldn't have contained the necessary means to control said temperature for every single animal.

It's also worth noting that the Bible assumes that all species possess both male and female variants, something which is demonstrably false. By saying so, the Bible demonstrates that it knows nothing of hermaphroditic species or those capable of performing autogamy (or self-reproduction), and thus highlights the Bible's complete lack of understanding about basic biology, suggesting that it is less of the work of a divine being but rather a fallible human author from no earlier than 1500 bc.

Such technicalities aside, let's just put this into perspective: the absolute maximumvolume of the ark was 41006.25 cubic metres (based on the previous measurements), and this is assuming that the ark was a perfect box shape. Now, taking into account 2x8.7 million=17.4 million (2 of every animal), we can work out approximately how much space each animal had, if (and that's a big "if") we ignore the living room for Noah, his family and 394 days worth of supplies for these animals. Dividing the volume by the number of animals, we work out that the volume per animal would come to approximately 0.0024 cubic metres. So, assuming Noah did manage to get every animal on board, they would've either died of suffocation or being crushed.

What about the plants?
As I'm sure you'll notice from reading it, the Genesis Account makes no reference to what happened to plant life during the flood. Unless Noah collected all plant life on Earth, which is even more ridiculous than him storing all animal life, we can assume that the account implies that plants remained relatively unaffected by the floodwaters, managing to survive over a year submerged 8.8km beneath the water level. Of course, to believe that this was possible essentially requires you to know nothing about basic plant biology.

Firstly, terrestrial plant life is enabled to perform its basic functions through gaseous exchange, using its stomata to absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, allowing it to produce vital glucose for aerobic respiration. Aquatic plants, however, absorb carbon dioxide that is dissolved in water in four forms: carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, and carbonate and bicarbonate ions. Due to a notable difference between water and air carbon dioxide levels (i.e water has considerably less carbon dioxide than water), combined with terrestrial plants' lack of adapted exchanged surfaces to absorb carbon dioxide from the water, photosynthesis couldn't continue, at least at a rate that would allow the plant to survive for over a year.

Secondly, even with sufficient carbon dioxide, plants still require light to photosynthesise. Of course, light levels decrease substantially the further down one goes through the aquatic layers. If we compare the approximate depth of water at the time of the Flood with an actual location, the Puerto Rico Trench would be suitable, an oceanic trench with a depth of 8.8km. This depth in standard terms of aquatic layers is known as the "Hadal zone", which begins at depths of 6km and greater. In terms of the other layers, the Mesopelagic, the zone between 200 and 1000 metres, still doesn't receive enough light necessary to allow photosynthesis to take place. In the Hadal Zone (or Hadopelagic), sunlight is completely absent, making photosynthesis impossible.

If that isn't enough to convince you, the pressure of the Hadal Zone can reach around 1100 atmospheres (i.e. 1100 times standard atmospheric pressure). Such a pressure would completely crush the plants, effectively destroying them regardless of the limiting factors of photosynthesis.

So, in summary, as a result of a lack of carbon dioxide, light and immense pressure, the Global Flood would have completely eradicated all plant life on Earth. Still, that didn't stop Noah's dove from bringing him back a "freshly plucked olive leaf", did it?

Repopulation
If we somehow ignore the fact that, at this point, the Earth should be a wasteland devoid of plant life and the air should be saturated with water vapour to the extent that the air is unbreathable, and we excuse the fact that Noah had beat the impossible odds of collecting 8.7 million animal species and they weren't crushed to death on his wooden vessel that couldn't be navigated, we have to recognise that they would have to return to where they came from, despite being in the middle of ancient Mesopotamia.

Take, for example, the Walrus; there are only two in existence as of the Flood's end. It doesn't exactly take a zoologist to recognise that walruses aren't exactly adapted to traverse arid environments; in fact, quite the opposite. The walruses' lack of mobility (due to their immense bulk) combined with a lack of natural prey and overheating in post-flood Mesopotamia would result in the walrus' extinction. I can confirm that as of 2013, living walruses still exist.

In fact, all land carnivores would've died out within a day or two, due to a complete lack of nutrition. Those who argue that carnivores suddenly started consuming plant material, clearly don't understand that they can't efficiently digest plant material, many even not being able to digest it at all.

Only the few herbivorous or omnivorous animals lucky enough to be adapted to the Near East environment could have possibly survived to repopulate; once again assuming that all plant life wasn't completely destroyed. Still, the chances of fully repopulating with only two members of the species is incredibly slim, as one death would've resulted in that species' extinction.

---

So, that's it, the Global Flood as described in Genesis could not have happened. I probably could've stopped after the first point, as one point in this entire argument is enough to prove that such an event is impossible: however, explaining several issues with the story helps to explain how it is wrong on almost every conceivable level. If the 61% actually read this argument (or similar ones, for that matter), I'm certain that at least the majority of them would see reason and accept the impossibility of the Genesis Flood Account.

So, do you believe the Genesis Flood Account, or have you ever in the past? Feel free to point out anything I missed.

Maybe it only happened in the areas of ancient Mesopotamia and its surrondings, and he only maybe collected the animals and plants of the region.

[Ainin]

Science 101: The quantity of water on Earth is permanently the same.

Logic 101: Noah was a pokemaster and he fit all the animals into Pokeballs.

[Rubiconic Crossings V2 rev 1f]

The story of Noah's Ark and the Global Flood is rather famous, regardless of whether one is theist or an atheist. It's a story that might've been taught to you when you were young, as a literal story that is historically accurate, or you may have even encountered the story at a later date. The story is in fact present in many mythologies in many forms, famously being a part of the "Epic of Gilgamesh".

It was until recently that I assumed that most regarded the literal account of this tale as such: a myth, nothing more. However, to my dismay, I encountered a shocking statistic: 61% of Americans in 2004 believed the story of Noah's Ark and the Global Flood literally happened. Although this statistic was from 9 years ago, I'm fairly confident that it hasn't fluctuated significantly in under a decade, unless, of course, the majority of the American public have actually become informed about major Biblical flaws (Yahweh forbid).

I shall hence categorically and comprehensively deconstruct and analyse the Genesis Flood Account as if it were a literal event, and not, I must emphasise, a symbolic account. So yeah, you can put those strawmen back into their cases.

---

The Account
First of all, the actual story, from Genesis 6:9-22, Genesis 7 and Genesis 8: 1-21.

9 This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress[a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.[b] 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit[c] high all around.[d] Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

7 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.[e][f] 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.

13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.

15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[g] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

Water: A lot of it
The first problem demonstrated by this account is water, or rather, the sheer quantity of it. The account explains how "all the high mountains under the heavens were covered", which, of course, implies that the water level was higher than Mount Everest, the Earth's highest mountain. Taking into account that the surface area of the Earth is 510 million kilometres, and acknowledging that the height of Mount Everest is 8.848km , we can perform as basic volume calculation, revealing that the total volume of water required to flood the Earth to such an extent is 4,512,480,000 cubic kilometres of water. In comparison, the present volume of water on the Earth (i.e in oceans, lakes etc) is 1,338,000,000 cubic kilometres, meaning that approximately 3.4 times the Earth's current water volume came out of absolutely nowhere. That's right, nowhere.

That's not all of it as well. The account details that the flooding process occurred for "forty days", meaning that approximately 112,812,000 cubic kilometres fell per day, 4,700,500 per hour, 78,342 per minute and 1306 per second. At any one time, the Earth's atmosphere holds approximately 12,900 cubic kilometres of water, which means that during the flood, approximately six times the Earth's atmosphere's water volume was falling every minute.

Of course, there's also the problem of where 4.5 billion cubic kilometres of water actually went. The floodwaters began to fall on the 17th day of אייר or "Iyyar", a 29 day month, and had fully receded by the 27th of that month one year afterwards. This puts the duration of the flood at 394 days, allowing us to calculate that it took 204 days for the waters to fully recede. This means that at a rate of 22,120,000 cubic kilometres per day, this water was evaporating into the atmosphere. However, the Bible offers no explanation where this water 34,980 times the average volume of water in the atmosphere actually went. Did it dissipate into space? Improbable, considering that the occasional water molecule only ever leaves the atmosphere to space by being broken into its respective hydrogen and oxygen atoms by ultraviolet radiation; a process almost completely stopped by the Earth's protective ozone layer. The atmosphere would no doubt be unable to cope with that volume of water, condensing and thus creating even more precipitation in an endless cycle.

Essentially, unless we disregard the fact that the atmosphere can't physically contain that volume of water without it falling as rain, the water vapour present would render the air unbreathable, as well as cause global temperatures to plummet by reflecting the sun's rays.

The Ark
Noah was instructed to construct his "Ark" based on an archaic unit of measurement known as the cubit. There are several variants of the cubit, the Biblical one being the "Near Eastern Cubit", which is approximately 18 inches (around 0.45 metres). The Bible states that the Ark was "three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high." Converting these into modern metric measurements, the ark was 135x22.5x13.5 metres. Noah is also instructed to make the ark out of "cypress", a reference to a family of conifer trees known as "Cupressaceae", and despite specifying what type of wood it was to be made out of, made no plans for a rudder or any other type of steering mechanisms. So, in summary, God instructed Noah to construct a ship 135 metres long, made of wood, with no method for steering at all, and this ark was to carry every animal species in existence.

By way of comparison, a modern Nimitz aircraft carrier is 332.8 metres long and can carry up to 90 aircraft, despite being over 2.5 times the size of this legendary ark. Not only that, but constructing the ark out of wood makes it relatively flimsy in comparison, and combined with the lack of a steering mechanism, it's fair to say that the ark wouldn't have lasted long as the Earth rapidly flooded in what would have resulted in intense storm waters.

Animals
Having touched on animals in my last section, I shall go into greater detail here. As of 2010, there were 1.7 million known animal species, and the number has no doubt increased over the past 3 years. In fact, it is estimated that there are over 8.7 million non-bacterial species in the world today. Of course, this raises numerous problems for the feasibility of the story once this is put into perspective, and numerous questions are raised.

Firstly, how did Noah collect "two of all living creatures" of approximately 8.7 million animal species? Assuming, of course, we're not ignoring the fact that God instructed Noah to "bring" them onto the ark himself, contrary to the belief that they actually came to Noah of their own will (which still has several problems I'll discuss soon).
Assuming Noah actually did collect 8.7 million species, not only does it mean he was the discoverer of the Americas, but in fact he was the greatest zoologist to have ever lived.
This man, in his early 600s, would have had to immobilise polar bears and transport them from the arctic to an isolated area in ancient Mesopotamia. Even if this process took 100 years, and Noah spent this entire time without any sleep (the average human will last 2 weeks before dying of sleep deprivation), he would have had to collect 238 species per day or 10 new species per hour, something not physically possible considering the time required to both travel to the location of these species and capture them (assuming none were hostile and decided to kill Noah, which many of them would have).

However, if we assume that Noah didn't collect all of the animals himself, numerous problems are still posed; for example, how did sloths travel 12000 kilometres (as the crow flies) from Central America to the area of modern-day Iraq. As comical as the idea is of a sloth, a famously slow and lazy animal, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, it frankly remains nonsensical to suggest a sloth could do so. On the other hand, one could suggest the sloth travelled up into Alaska to Chukotka (still required to traverse some water) in conditions considerably colder than what it is acclimatised to, without any of its natural habitat or nutrition, meaning that it would die pretty quickly.

In addition, many species will have had to have been collected hundreds of times, in order to provide food for the carnivorous species on the ship, which goes directly against God's commands to only take two of each species on board. Noah would have also had to cater for the specific survival needs of every animal on his vessel, providing the exact dietary requirement for 8.7 million species whilst keeping the vessel at a temperature they can survive in, which is something that would no doubt be difficult to achieve considering the 135 metre-long wooden vessel wouldn't have contained the necessary means to control said temperature for every single animal.

It's also worth noting that the Bible assumes that all species possess both male and female variants, something which is demonstrably false. By saying so, the Bible demonstrates that it knows nothing of hermaphroditic species or those capable of performing autogamy (or self-reproduction), and thus highlights the Bible's complete lack of understanding about basic biology, suggesting that it is less of the work of a divine being but rather a fallible human author from no earlier than 1500 bc.

Such technicalities aside, let's just put this into perspective: the absolute maximumvolume of the ark was 41006.25 cubic metres (based on the previous measurements), and this is assuming that the ark was a perfect box shape. Now, taking into account 2x8.7 million=17.4 million (2 of every animal), we can work out approximately how much space each animal had, if (and that's a big "if") we ignore the living room for Noah, his family and 394 days worth of supplies for these animals. Dividing the volume by the number of animals, we work out that the volume per animal would come to approximately 0.0024 cubic metres. So, assuming Noah did manage to get every animal on board, they would've either died of suffocation or being crushed.

What about the plants?
As I'm sure you'll notice from reading it, the Genesis Account makes no reference to what happened to plant life during the flood. Unless Noah collected all plant life on Earth, which is even more ridiculous than him storing all animal life, we can assume that the account implies that plants remained relatively unaffected by the floodwaters, managing to survive over a year submerged 8.8km beneath the water level. Of course, to believe that this was possible essentially requires you to know nothing about basic plant biology.

Firstly, terrestrial plant life is enabled to perform its basic functions through gaseous exchange, using its stomata to absorb carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, allowing it to produce vital glucose for aerobic respiration. Aquatic plants, however, absorb carbon dioxide that is dissolved in water in four forms: carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, and carbonate and bicarbonate ions. Due to a notable difference between water and air carbon dioxide levels (i.e water has considerably less carbon dioxide than water), combined with terrestrial plants' lack of adapted exchanged surfaces to absorb carbon dioxide from the water, photosynthesis couldn't continue, at least at a rate that would allow the plant to survive for over a year.

Secondly, even with sufficient carbon dioxide, plants still require light to photosynthesise. Of course, light levels decrease substantially the further down one goes through the aquatic layers. If we compare the approximate depth of water at the time of the Flood with an actual location, the Puerto Rico Trench would be suitable, an oceanic trench with a depth of 8.8km. This depth in standard terms of aquatic layers is known as the "Hadal zone", which begins at depths of 6km and greater. In terms of the other layers, the Mesopelagic, the zone between 200 and 1000 metres, still doesn't receive enough light necessary to allow photosynthesis to take place. In the Hadal Zone (or Hadopelagic), sunlight is completely absent, making photosynthesis impossible.

If that isn't enough to convince you, the pressure of the Hadal Zone can reach around 1100 atmospheres (i.e. 1100 times standard atmospheric pressure). Such a pressure would completely crush the plants, effectively destroying them regardless of the limiting factors of photosynthesis.

So, in summary, as a result of a lack of carbon dioxide, light and immense pressure, the Global Flood would have completely eradicated all plant life on Earth. Still, that didn't stop Noah's dove from bringing him back a "freshly plucked olive leaf", did it?

Repopulation
If we somehow ignore the fact that, at this point, the Earth should be a wasteland devoid of plant life and the air should be saturated with water vapour to the extent that the air is unbreathable, and we excuse the fact that Noah had beat the impossible odds of collecting 8.7 million animal species and they weren't crushed to death on his wooden vessel that couldn't be navigated, we have to recognise that they would have to return to where they came from, despite being in the middle of ancient Mesopotamia.

Take, for example, the Walrus; there are only two in existence as of the Flood's end. It doesn't exactly take a zoologist to recognise that walruses aren't exactly adapted to traverse arid environments; in fact, quite the opposite. The walruses' lack of mobility (due to their immense bulk) combined with a lack of natural prey and overheating in post-flood Mesopotamia would result in the walrus' extinction. I can confirm that as of 2013, living walruses still exist.

In fact, all land carnivores would've died out within a day or two, due to a complete lack of nutrition. Those who argue that carnivores suddenly started consuming plant material, clearly don't understand that they can't efficiently digest plant material, many even not being able to digest it at all.

Only the few herbivorous or omnivorous animals lucky enough to be adapted to the Near East environment could have possibly survived to repopulate; once again assuming that all plant life wasn't completely destroyed. Still, the chances of fully repopulating with only two members of the species is incredibly slim, as one death would've resulted in that species' extinction.

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So, that's it, the Global Flood as described in Genesis could not have happened. I probably could've stopped after the first point, as one point in this entire argument is enough to prove that such an event is impossible: however, explaining several issues with the story helps to explain how it is wrong on almost every conceivable level. If the 61% actually read this argument (or similar ones, for that matter), I'm certain that at least the majority of them would see reason and accept the impossibility of the Genesis Flood Account.

So, do you believe the Genesis Flood Account, or have you ever in the past? Feel free to point out anything I missed.

Excellent OP!

I've been of the mind that the flood is something from the distant past that hit the Mediterranean and near east and handed down to the time of Gilgamesh which found its way into the Bible.

As for the Ark...utter fucking tosh.

[Nationalist State of Knox]

This isn't a belief, this is basic logic.

And God exists outside of and above basic logic. It's why these things hold up against scrutiny, because something as seemingly ludicrous as the Noah narrative follows logically from their premise, which is that God exists and can do whatever He wants. Unless you debunk the premise, which is impossible, everything that proceeds from it is untouchable.

*flips table*