[Davin]

Aye, when you start with the conclusion and don't care about reality, all sorts of things can lead to the conclusion.

[PaulKing]

There are about 5,000 species (times two of each) of mammals plus fresh water fish and reptiles so the Ark would have to be about five time the size of the Titanic. Not bad work for a week not to mention rounding up all those critters.

Sound plausible to me.....when I am on mushrooms.

[fester30]

Just think of all of the hard work of Noah's family in the business of waste disposal.  There wasn't anything in the Ark plans about Elephant poopoo chutes.

[Sweetdeath]

So... Noah's family had to repopulate the Earth  through incest? Then why do we have different races/ethnicities?

I aleays wanted someone to touch ground on this, and the Adam/Eve story.  They annoy me the most.

I can't believe anyone would believe Adam/Eve story. And love how their all powerful God was nice enough to press the reset button and watch everyone drown in agony.

-Sweetdeath

[fester30]

So... Noah's family had to repopulate the Earth  through incest? Then why do we have different races/ethnicities?

I aleays wanted someone to touch ground on this, and the Adam/Eve story.  They annoy me the most.

I can't believe anyone would believe Adam/Eve story. And love how their all powerful God was nice enough to press the reset button and watch everyone drown in agony.

-Sweetdeath

Makes sense if you think about it.  Before Noah's descendents, humans had 1 eye.  Thank God for incest.

[Sweetdeath]

But I enjoyed being a unicorned cyclops ;;

[Gawen]

The Ark. There are a lot of 'if's' and 'givens'. But basically, the Ark would be nothing but a barge; no propulsion, no steering, no sails. All a barge does is float and hold cargo. Most barges are flat-bottomed. But the Ark couldn't be flat-bottomed and hold the weight of itself and cargo without breaking up. So there must be a keel and a keel is the backbone. Everything is built around and upwards from the keel. Most ships/barges with a keel have a draft, which is the depth of water a ship needs to float. Even if it has a keel, we need to keep the Ark from tipping over. To much weight above the water-line and it'll go over. So there must be some sort of ballast. Ballast could be anything from rocks and dirt to animals and feed for said animals. The ballast must be spread evenly throughout the bottom of the Ark.


Now we have to strengthen the keel and bulkheads and supports and then make the outside of the Ark below the water-line water-proof because the ballast is below the waterline. Enormous amounts of wood would be needed to strengthen the Ark. Perhaps Bronze Age peoples could have used bronze and other soft metals in strengthening, but these materials would have given way sooner or later and it would be sooner if there storms, wind, eddies or conflicting currents.

What would they have used to water-proof? Some sort of pitch, I reckon. But this pitch would not keep barnacles, wood-boring lifeforms and other oceanic lifeforms from adhering to the bottom of the boat. These lifeforms will weaken the bottom of the wooden boat by boring into it after time, creating soft spots and eventually rot and decay. Seventeenth century buccaneers had to periodically (as in several times per year) beach their ships to scrape off the bottoms and apply more water-proofing.

So, since we can't make a seaworthy long flat boat, we have to make one several storys high to hold the cargo. We have ballast to keep it from tipping. We have made the keel and superstructure so strengthened that there is little room below and must build higher. Still, we can keep from tipping over. We've distributed the weight of our cargo evenly throughout. And we've water-proofed it.

IF nothing inside the Ark moved about...
IF there were no storms or wind....
IF there were no eddies or currents or whirlpools or swells...
IF nothing adhered to the bottom of the Ark...
IF nothing sought to weaken the keel or structure in any way, the Ark may float for an unspecified time. There are so many 'ifs' that it just wouldn't be possible, especially using Bronze Age tech.

Also, there would need to be supports along the bottom of the beached preflood Ark. You can't make a boat without stabilising it some way because if it wasn't stabilised, as the water came up, it would put enormous pressures on parts of the boat not yet in the water. It would crack or even just pull apart.




But then again.....the Ark could float..and did float..because God held it together....

[fester30]

Hellllooooooo... haven't you watched Evan Almighty?  It's all right there!

[Sweetdeath]

I've only seen Bruce Almighty. I can  only part soup. ;_;

[Gawen]

I've only seen Bruce Almighty. I can  only part soup. ;_;

*laffin*

[Sandra Craft]

There are about 5,000 species (times two of each) of mammals plus fresh water fish and reptiles so the Ark would have to be about five time the size of the Titanic. Not bad work for a week not to mention rounding up all those critters.

Sound plausible to me.....when I am on mushrooms.

And what about all of the insects, and the birds?  Sure some of them could fly around above the water but even they'd need places to roost now and then -- 40 days and 40 nights is a long time to be airborne.  And what about the ones that can't fly, or swim? 

And if there's no evolution, you can't just collect one male and female beetle, for instance, you'd have to collect one male and female of every single type of beetle.  I'm thinking that even with only one mating pair of each kind of bug, there'd be enough weight on the ark to sink it before it set sail.

[Tank]

There are about 5,000 species (times two of each) of mammals plus fresh water fish and reptiles so the Ark would have to be about five time the size of the Titanic. Not bad work for a week not to mention rounding up all those critters.

Sound plausible to me.....when I am on mushrooms.

And what about all of the insects, and the birds?  Sure some of them could fly around above the water but even they'd need places to roost now and then -- 40 days and 40 nights is a long time to be airborne.  And what about the ones that can't fly, or swim? 

And if there's no evolution, you can't just collect one male and female beetle, for instance, you'd have to collect one male and female of every single type of beetle.  I'm thinking that even with only one mating pair of each kind of bug, there'd be enough weight on the ark to sink it before it set sail.

And of course if every species came from two progenitors 5,000(?) years ago there would be NO genetic diversity to speak of in any creatures. The closest we have to that are cheetahs which may have had a total population at one time of 20 or so individuals and they are all incredibly genetically close. Any way you look at it the ark is a fairy story, nothing more and nothing less.

[Sandra Craft]

Any way you look at it the ark is a fairy story, nothing more and nothing less.

But as the subject for a great game of "what's wrong with this picture?", there's nothing  better.  We could play it for years without repeating ourselves.

[Tank]

Any way you look at it the ark is a fairy story, nothing more and nothing less.

But as the subject for a great game of "what's wrong with this picture?", there's nothing  better.  We could play it for years without repeating ourselves.

Absolutly!

[Earthling]

It is estimated that there are somewhere in the vicinity of 1,300,000 species of animals, but 60 percent of these are insects. There are 24,000 amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. 10,000 are birds and 9,000 are reptiles and amphibians, many of which could have survived outside the ark. Only 5,000 are mammals, including whales and porpoises which would have been outside the ark.

There are probably only 290 species of land animals which are larger than a sheep and perhaps 1,360 smaller than rats.

Plenty of room for all on the ark for the period of time needed. Keeping in mind that there didn't need to be every breed of cat, dog, horse, cow etc. There needed to be only cats, dogs, horses and cows represented.