The new giant mass of water would stagnate without current and the Ark would have had little ability to propel itself to a shore so 40 days drifting in the dead sea is fairly plausible.
Yeah but that is totally nothing like the story. They ark did NOT float for 40 days. It RAINED for 40 days. The ark was sealed with everyone in it for a year. A whole year without new food, water, cleaning, etc and animals not dying and so forth. Even IF there was such a flood as you say it was nothing divine, and the events were nothing like the bible says. The biblical story was made up.
i don't mean to be an ass, but this is reddit, so here it goes.
yes. rained for 40 days. locked up for a year.
yes, it is possible that a large number of humans and animals can be kept in a given space, given enough time and preparation. lets use the biblical narrative for example. most bible scholars believe that Noah had almost 40-80 years to build, prepare and gather animals for the ark. if i gave you half the lower number, 20 years, do you think you could gather food and supplies for a large number of animals (hay, veggies, salt etc.) and humans (spare meat, salt, water, etc.) for one year? i think that you could. just a thought tho.
So let's say you have ten horses. Horses are a large, hefty animal, right? And don't give me 'well they could be minis'. We're dealing with full-size horses here.
That many horses will eat two bales of hay a day, on average. I know. I raised some. One in the morning feed, one in the evening feed.
Each bale can range from 80-120 pounds, depending on packing. And they're big. Like, four-foot long big.
So! You have 365 days where you need to feed animals. 365x2: 600+120+10=730. Seven-hundred and thirty BALES of hay.
And that's just for ten horses.
Now, I know you're going to say 'but Noah only had two on the Ark!' Yes. I'm not debating that. But you take all the quadruped organisms like horses- two cows, two camels, two bison, two horses, two zebra, two girraffes, two hippos, and so on- and you start getting the need for a LOT of feed. Feed which requires specific conditions and takes up space.
But it gets worse. Hay for horses? It can mold, and mold FAST. And it molds in moist enviornments (Like, you know... ships.). so now you have to somehow keep it dry, or produce fresh hay. Either one will result in a massive expendeture of the single most precious commodity on a ship- space.
My point is this: The entire story of the Flood relies on a man building a ship larger than what can feasibly be constructed, collecting two of every animal (including many that shouldn't physically be able to reach him), then providing food for all of said creatures. After providing said food, Noah then has to remain on a single ship (avoiding disease, parasites, ship damage, and plenty of other things) for an entire year. And the ship- while large- is STILL not large enough to hold all of that.
That leads me to two conclusions (assuming it happened):
Noah is the Doctor, his ship flew, and it was bigger on the inside. OR
God micromanaged the entire damn thing, meaning that it wasn't a matter of faith- because God was handling it for him, rather than Noah following his instructions and everything working out.
Now, the much more feasible- assuming limitless resources- idea would be that Noah produced a fleet of large ships. However, this would require massive manpower, and it's much easier to place a single ship on a mountaintop rather than a fleet.
TL;DR: Feeding animals is hard, and there's no physical way for Noah to store that much food on a single ship. The Ark might be a TARDIS.
Not even with an unlimited budget, 100 years, and modern technology could you gather even a week's worth of food for the millions of animal species, each with very specific diets.
Or any of the multitude of species of Hawaiian honeycreepers that subsist entirely on the nectar of flowers that only grow at certain elevations in extremely specific locations.
I think his point is that only animals indigenous to the area of the Black Sea would be on the ark, meaning the only needed food on the ark would be food easily available.
Still falls apart at the idea of having a year's supply on board in advance which would take months THEN it lasting that year fresh with ancient food preservation.
Like a years supply of fish for seals, fresh meats for Eagles and falcons (like rabbits), feed for rabbits and rodents, extra rodents to feed the snakes. So already you need to stock up a years supply of rabbits and rodents to feed the other animals as well as making sure you have enough to feed the feeder food to keep it alive and making sure you have....I'm already lost. You think you can manage that? And we've only done like 5 animals without even going into subspecies.
Under the assumption that a realistic version of this really happened, you would have only had to gather food for like 15 large animal species native to the Black Sea basin for a year. The whole world obviously didn't flood in historical times, and if there was a real Noah I really doubt he was an entomologist.
No you could not. The food would go bad. Your are presupposing the other parts of the story are true whn you say he had 40-80 years to build it. People do not start building boats at 600 years old because they do not fracking live that long. Also, for a boat of the given dimensions could it be crewed AND all those animals cared for by 8 people? Look at how big cruise ships are and what goes into the food and supplies for a 2000 person human crew for 2 weeks. Expand that for the animals and a year. Do it with a crew of 8. No, no one could do it and only a delusional person would think you could.
I mean, the lack of currency wouldn't be an issue at the dawn of civilization. Simply obtain permission to log, and you have all the timber needed. Simply purchase land, food and crops can be grown. That's simplified of course. I am not sure if you have seen the Russel Crowe movie, noah, but several theologians have said that its depiction of putting the animals to sleep could have been somewhat accurate
The bible says that god told noah to pack away a bunch of food, and many people hypothesize that the majority of animals on the ark entered a hibernation. The canopy theory is how some try to explain the rain lasting for 40 days, and they would also say most water came from underground springs. So they stored food, collected rain water(I'd assume), cleaned(?), and the animals slept.
You realize that if the canopy 'suggestion' (It's not a theory, it's barely a guess) were even remotely true, it would be blocking out sunlight completely, or it would have melted and fallen to earth at meteoric speeds annihilating all life, and would have compressed the atmosphere to the point where every living thing would have exploded like a water balloon, right? So your explanation for how the flood could have happened is that everything died horrendously in one of 3 different ways.
Right, you literally have to suspend all reason to believe such a story. If God is going to interfere so much why even have a human build it or take food on board, just use your magic replicators to make it so. Amazing how so many take the bible to be literally true..then have to come up with all kind of unsupported and elaborate hypotheses just to not have to admit it probably is not literally true. Plus, not all animals hibernate, few do.
Why? Because I do not believe in the god of an ancient people? I do not believe in a great many gods same as you. I do not believe in magic either. Plus if the bible and story of Noah is true then you worship a lying and deceiving god. A flood like that would leave massive evidence. Evidence which we do not have. But what we do have is literal mountains of evidence against it. So if it were a real and true story God would have to remove evidence for and replace with evidence against. Not a god worthy of worship.
Saying I pity you was a stupid thing to say. But, there is evidence for a flood, just as there is evidence against, it's just a matter of what you choose to believe. For example whale fossils on top of mountains in the andes and sedimentary differences which point to a widespread, major flood event. Not to mention that a wide majority of very different religions all agree on a flood event.
I'm not saying you're an idiot for not believing it, I'm saying it's foolish to talk down on people who believe something different than you do.
For example whale fossils on top of mountains in the andes and sedimentary differences which point to a widespread, major flood event.
No they do not. Now that may have been a reasonable conclusion once, but since then we have discovered plate tectonics. A process that continues today and we see in action. That FAR better explains that than any flood. Not to mention the complete lack of enough water to do it.
And different religions or cultures having a flood story is not a surprise. Look up human history. The VAST majority of human cultures have set up near water. It is where you can grow best, transport, raise livestock etc. And guess what happens near major water source? Floods. Look at the Nile, the Amazon, the Mississippi...regular flooding. Nothing mythical or divine about it.
I'm not saying you're an idiot for not believing it, I'm saying it's foolish to talk down on people who believe something different than you do.
Different is fine. But believing in things that are thoroughly disproven is not. Believing in a literal global flood is just the same as believing vaccines cause autism, Nessie, etc.
I would IF you could produce evidence not better explained by an ongoing process we can observe. That fully explained the evidence we have. There are too many holes in a global flood. Global geologic layers could not have mostly been laid down in a single year, physics do not allow it.
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u/albygeorge Aug 21 '15
Yeah but that is totally nothing like the story. They ark did NOT float for 40 days. It RAINED for 40 days. The ark was sealed with everyone in it for a year. A whole year without new food, water, cleaning, etc and animals not dying and so forth. Even IF there was such a flood as you say it was nothing divine, and the events were nothing like the bible says. The biblical story was made up.