How did Noah fit so many animals on his Ark?

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDeJEtHZ-KU[/youtube]

the story is just that. A story. A deeply flawed story but there you are.

Do you know there are some places, even in the US and Canada where it rains for up to and exceeding 40 days and 40 nights. No one sees the need for an ark.

In the Biblical Flood, the Fountains of the Deep broke out and the windows of heaven opened up letting lots of water in. So the Biblical Flood was not just condensed water from water vapor in the atmosphere.

ruveyn

They made it up.

Except that there are no "Fountains of the Deep" - there just isn't enough water on or in Earth to have flooded the whole thing. Further, a ship of the described dimensions (450 ft long, 75 ft wide, 45 ft tall) could not possibly have held 7 pair of each "clean" animal, and two pair of each "unclean" animal, as well as seven pair of each kind of bird (Gen 7:2-3, which for those who claim there are no Biblical contradictions, directly contradicts the "one pair of each animal" instruction in Gen 6:19-20).

(By way of comparison, the Queen Mary 2 comes in at 1132 ft by 147 ft 6 in by 236 ft 2 in - and I sincerely doubt it could be used to fulfill Gen 7:2-3, at least if you had to segregate the carnivores from the herbivores.)

This is usually where a Christian pops up to explain how Carnivores don't eat Herbivores on Gods Life-raft because God Said So, thus rendering your argument null. I assume also that they don't rampantly f**k or crap everywhere either. Maybe God miniaturises animals, or maybe the Ark is like a Tardis, but I'll wager there's also a ridiculous explanation for the capacity issue as well. There usually is.

We do not know for sure how many ice bearing bodies from the Kuyper belt or the Oort belt struck the earth during its early formation periods.

Over the eons much water has seeped into the depths of the earth (hundreds of kilometers deep) by way of tectonic plate subduction. I have seen estimates that there is 12 times as much water sequestered Way Down Deep as there are in the oceans. Under the pressures that hold down there the water is not in free pools nor is it turned to steam (water vapor) because of the high pressures. Most likely it is forced into the pores of the magma. Not much chance of this deep water getting to the surface.

There is clearly not enough water vapor in the atomosphere nor water in shallow aquifers to flood the earth so deep that the level of the flood is fifteen cubits higher than the highest mountain (that would be Everest or K-2 were are nearly seven miles about mean sea level.

ruveyn

Floodgate topic

Simple. there was the Ark-angel.

or he used Tardis technology.

Ruveyn, I'm not talking about just atmospheric and shallow-aquifer water - even taking into account deep-mantle water pockets (of which there really aren't that many) there is simply not enough moisture on Earth to flood it like that. And moisture doesn't just "go away" when you're done with it - water is eternally recycled through the biosphere.

Unless you're going to posit a God who is willing to blatantly break His own rules when it suits His whim, there can be no scientific basis for the Noah tale - and if you are willing to so posit, there is nothing to discuss on the matter, as there is no counter to such an "argument". It leaves the realm of logic and evidence, and enters into theology and philosophy, where any idea is just as "good" as any other.

Now, there are a number of such tales in the Fertile Crescent region, most likely dating from some catastrophic flood event on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (which experience such floods every so often); one such event might well have given rise to the tale of Noah's Flood. However, I believe that the tale's essential lesson of trust in God during times of disaster is far more important than the tale's "truth" or "falsity" - a point often missed by literalists, who apparently insist that God was writing a cosmic textbook, rather than trying to teach His people a better way of life.

Or trapped very deep under high pressure and not in a free state at all. We do not know how much water reached the earth from the Oort and Kuyper. In any case no matter how much is Down There it is not going to come to the surface by any natural means that we know of.

ruveyn

Ruveyn, seismic imaging has given us a pretty thorough idea of exactly how our planet is constructed. The water simply is. Not. There.

Ice comets don't even factor into it - for one thing, an ice comet large enough to contribute the water needed for the Biblical Flood would have resulted in something more like the K-T extinction than the tale of Noah. For another, even if water were contributed from Kuiper objects and the Oort cloud - where did it all go? It doesn't just drift through space like some cosmic fog bank, interacting with a planet then going away and taking all its water with it in complete contravention of gravity.

No, it's a tale with important things to say about faith, and about the importance of obeying God's Word - but it is not a history text.

the water came from several hundred thousand meteors, asteroids and comets that impacted the earth during its 4.5 BILLION year lifetime. Besides, it's not inconceivable that two of the most common elements in the universe, oxygen and hydrogen could come together in mass quantities to form the oceans.

Master Jedi, I reiterate - where is it all?? Are you supposing that all this water just magically formed into a giant cloud and flew off like some silly Dragon Ball Z episode?

It. Is. Not. There. Had that much water been present before, Earth's early history would have more closely resembled Waterworld than Jurassic Park. Had it suddenly come to Earth, it would have marked a disaster so profound, the Flood would have been no more than a minor footnote. And had it ever been here, it would still be here, somewhere. Atmospheric moisture, polar ice packs, deep-mantle pockets - it would be somewhere. And it isn't.

Seriously? We are trying to use fact to disprove the historical veractity of the Bible?

Wow, this is just a whole new level of silly (though not, I will grant you, as silly as a blind belief in the literal truth of the events described in those texts).

Yes, there is not enough water on the planet to flood us to a depth of 29,002 ft + 15 cubits. Yes, the biblical story of the flood is not merely 40 days of precipitation. Yes, the ark was big, but not that big.

None of which is remotely important.

Well, the Ark was a large one I'd guess - that they were inaccurate about the Size about the Ark, that they meant the 'known world', etc.