Noah's Ark story is all wet!

Arguing with a Young Earth Creationist, or someone who absolutely believes that the Bible is the inerrant “word of God” can be like pounding your head against a brick wall. You can try to educate them about evolution and the usual response is “It’s just a theory, you can’t prove species to species transition”

OK, skip evolution. I have found that perhaps the best way to use the Feeble Lance of Reason is to address what is, perhaps the most feeble-minded story in the Bible – Noah’s Ark.

The Bible provides a descriptive and vivid account of the who, what, when, where, and why (see Genesis 6). Given this narrative, with its enormous world-wide implications, either it never happened, as there is no physical evidence whatsoever of such a flood, or God completely covered up all the evidence of the flood, putting him on a par with a carnival huckster.


Problems with a “global flood”

1. If the water rose to cover all land, where did the water come from? Even if all of the polar ice melted, there wouldn't be enough.

2. Even if enough water could be found, where did it recede to if already covered all of the land?

3. How can you fit a minimum of 2 of every animal on the planet into a craft that could fit within the confines of a high school football stadium?

4. Even if you could pack the animals in, what about the plants? The existing flora would not survive being inundated for months. How did tropical and temperate plants get to the ark and how did they return to their respective environments?

5. What about space for food for the animals, both during the flood and later when they disembarked?

6. What prevented the carnivores from eating their prey? What about waste products?

7. How did far-flung species get to the ark and how did they get back to their original lands?

8. Assuming you could get all of the animals and plants/seeds on the ark, how long would it take for those plants to mature and spread sufficiently to provide food, and what do the animals do in the meantime?

9. OK, so ignoring the lack of water, the drainage problems, the transport of animals and plants to the ark, the space constraints, the food problems during and after the flood, dispersal of ark contents back to original environments, and so forth; forgetting all of it for a moment, how do simple pairs of animals manage to repopulate the entire planet when we know that there is insufficient genetic diversity to do so?

The true believer may wave all of this away by saying that with God, anything is possible, but they may possibly start to think that it just doesn’t make any sense.