[Tanker]

I have always found it....convient how the ark came to rest on the tallest mountain in the world....to an untraveled, unlearned, bronze age, sheep hearder. By the time Mt. Arafat was uncovered HUGE amounts of land mass would already have been uncovered. Much of it for weeks by the time that particular mountain was uncovered.

[pinkocommie]

I have always found it....convient how the ark came to rest on the tallest mountain in the world....to an untraveled, unlearned, bronze age, sheep hearder. By the time Mt. Arafat was uncovered HUGE amounts of land mass would already have been uncovered. Much of it for weeks by the time that particular mountain was uncovered.

Thus the convenience of faith.  With faith, all things are possible and if you bring up valid arguments, you A - don't get it.  B - are being purposefully rude. or C - the devil blah blah blah.  In fact, I would say stories like Noah's Ark probably give people of faith a bit of a righteous thrill.  Everything about the story is impossible, so by believing in it, they prove the strength of their own faith.  What I don't understand is why anyone who is religious is trying to prove the scientific validity of Noah's Ark at all?  Doesn't that remove all power of the faith from the story, basically making it a really old news article?

[Whitney]

I think it would also require that waters rise at the rate of about 625 feet a day in order for the entire world to be covered in water (over Mt. Everest) in 40 days/nights.  Assuming it was all rain, then at that rate of downpour no wooden structure, including boats, would remain intact.

Almost all sea life would die because of the miles of fresh water added to the mix.

Although you didn't exactly just say it....I had never thought about the affect the added water pressure would have on the sea life.  

As a side note in case I never said it before:  It's is one thing for believers to claim that the flood happened and yet another for them to claim there is scientific proof of it.  If they want to claim it was all magic, so be it....it just doesn't make much sense as a magical story either since in that case God  could have just thought the bad guys out of existence!

[elliebean]

Like many of his followers, god has a flair for the dramatic. lol

[happynewyear]

The Noah's ark myth was plagiarized from an earlier Sumerian flood myth.

http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/SumerianMyth.htm

and

http://history-world.org/sumerian_floor_story.htm

[Sophus]

This myth appears in several different cultures. Scientists confirmed there was an actual flood that covered a fair amount of land in Greece, of course that's a longshot from being the entire earth. It probably felt as though the entire earth was flooded to these pagans. I don't know about their language, but in the Biblical version wasn't there only one word for earth/land in the Hebrew language? Is it possible they only meant a certain area of land or does the Bible specify it was all of the earth?

Here's a video of Richard Dawkins debunking Noah's Ark from an evolutionary standpoint.

[Godterminator]

I'm sorry this post is kind of long but it might help:

The Council of Nicaea had the colossal task of turning the Hebrew bible into everybody’s sacred book. That was not going to be an easy job. They knew they could not change the people’s mind to accept other people’s origins as theirs immediately. What they could change was the bible! They just had to modify some key words to make the Jewish tradition everyone’s origin.
   
       One of those key terms was Israel. In Hebrew, the word Israel and the word earth are homonyms. So, where the original writers of the bible wrote Israel, the members of the Nicaea Council translated “earth”, to give the words in the scriptures a universal sense. But they overdid it! It could not always be done. In some instances, changing the word Israel to earth does not even make sense.

Let us see an example:

       Do you remember the conversation between god and Cain short after Cain killed Abel? I’ll cite it for you again.
Genesis

4:14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me.

       God drove him from the face of the earth? Where was Cain going? Was he going to the moon, to Mars, to Saturn? No. He headed to the land of Nod, east of Eden. That was still on the face of the earth! It was just a few miles from his homeland. He was not traveling into outer space. Now let us change the word earth in that excerpt for Israel.

Genesis

4:14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of  Israel;

It makes perfect sense now.

The second word earth in the same paragraph makes sense. He will be a vagabond on the earth.

The bible is full of these “mistakes”. Here are other examples.

Genesis

6:13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

       God will destroy all living things, including people, but will he also destroy the earth? No. After the flood, the earth was still here. Let us make the same change we made before.

6:13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with Israel.

       There. Now god will destroy all living things and people, and Israel, and the earth will be left alone.

Genesis

7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

Conceding that there was a flood of such magnitude, if we change the word earth to Israel, it makes more sense:

7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon Israel.

Extracted from. . .    http://www.godmakers.info

[Icarus]

Poke some serious holes in the Noah myth with a bit of math. The good book says that the whole damned earth was covered with water. That means the water was pretty deep in the lowlands. It rained forty days and forty nights. That is 960 hours. Lets be generous and say that Everest, K2 and other big mountains were only about 20,000 feet high at the time.  Divide twenty thousand by 960 hours and you get 20.8 feet of rain per hour. That was a bitchin rainstorm!  In fact that rate of precipitation would easily sink our largest  aircraft carriers, container ships, tankers, and all the rest. Noah had to be a Naval architect of other wordly intelligence. Fundies refuse to hear simple math style rebuttals so let them live in peace and languish in ignorance.

[Davin]

Poke some serious holes in the Noah myth with a bit of math. The good book says that the whole damned earth was covered with water. That means the water was pretty deep in the lowlands. It rained forty days and forty nights. That is 960 hours. Lets be generous and say that Everest, K2 and other big mountains were only about 20,000 feet high at the time.  Divide twenty thousand by 960 hours and you get 20.8 feet of rain per hour. That was a bitchin rainstorm!  In fact that rate of precipitation would easily sink our largest  aircraft carriers, container ships, tankers, and all the rest. Noah had to be a Naval architect of other wordly intelligence. Fundies refuse to hear simple math style rebuttals so let them live in peace and languish in ignorance.

You can't really poke holes in what is already holy.

[elliebean]

Noah had to be a Naval architect of other wordly intelligence.

....or using the plans of such an architect, which is their premise, iirc.

Not that earthly intelligence isn't more than sufficient for seeing this fairy tale for what it is.

[Gawen]

Written by Marty Leipzig:
First - the global flood supposedly (Scripturally) covered the planet and Mount Everest is 8,848 meters tall. The diameter of the Earth at the equator, on the other hand, is 12,756.8 km. All we have to do is calculate the volume of water to fill a sphere with a radius of the Earth plus Mount Everest; then we subtract the volume of a sphere with a radius of the Earth. Now, I know this won't yield a perfect result, because the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, but it will serve to give a general idea about the amounts involved.

So, here are the calculations:

First, Everest:

V = 4/3×pi×r3
= 4/3×pi×6387.248 km3
= 1.09151×1012 km3

Now, the Earth at sea level:

V = 4/3×pi×r3
= 4/3×pi×6378.4 km3
= 1.08698×1012 km3

The difference between these two figures is the amount of water needed to just cover the Earth: 4.525×109 Or, to put into a more sensible number, 4,525,000,000,000 cubic kilometres. This is one helluva lot of water.
For those who think it might come from the polar ice caps, please don't forget that water is more dense than ice, and thus that the volume of ice present in those ice caps would have to be more than the volume of water necessary. Some interesting physical effects of all that water, too. How much weight do you
think that is? Well, water at STP weighs in at 1 gram/cubic centimetre (by definition), so:

4.525×109 km3 of water,
×109 (cubic meters in a cubic kilometer),
×106 (cubic centimetres in a cubic meter),
×1 g/cm3 (denisty of water),
×10-3 (kilograms),
(turn the crank)
equals 4.525×1021 kg

Ever wonder what the effects of that much weight would be? Well, many times in the near past (i.e., the Pleistocene), continental ice sheets covered many of the northern states and most all of Canada. For the sake of argument, let's say the area covered by the Wisconsinian advance (the latest and greatest) was
10,000,000,000 (ten million) km2, by an average thickness of 1 km of ice (a good estimate... it was thicker in some areas [the zones of accumulation] and much thinner elsewhere [at the ablating edges]).

Now, 1.00×107 km2 times 1 km thickness equals 1.00×107 km3 of ice.

Now, remember earlier that we noted that it would take 4.525×109 km3 of water for the Flood? Well, looking at the Wisconsinian glaciation, all that ice (which is frozen water, remember?) would be precisely 0.222% [...do the math] (that's zero decimal two hundred twenty two thousandths) percent of the water
needed for the flood.

Well, the Wisconsinian glacial stade ended about 25,000 YBP (years before present), as compared for the approximately supposedly 4,000 YBP flood event.

Due to these late Pleistocene glaciations (some 21,000 years preceding the supposed flood), the mass of the ice has actually depressed the crust of the Earth. That crust, now that the ice is gone, is slowly rising (called glacial rebound); an this rebound can be measured, in places (like northern Wisconsin), in centimetres- per-year. Sea level was also lowered some tens of meters due to the very finite amount of water in the Earth's hydrosphere being locked up in glacial ice sheets (geologists call this glacioeustacy).

Now, glacial rebound can only be measured, obviously, in glaciated terranes, i.e., the Sahara is not rebounding as it was not glaciated during the Pleistocene. This lack of rebound is noted by laser ranged interferometery and satellite geodesy [so there], as well as by geomorphology. Glacial striae on bedrock, eskers, tills, moraines, rouche moutenees, drumlins, kame and kettle topography, fjords, deranged
fluvial drainage and erratic blocks all betray a glacier's passage. Needless to say, these geomorphological expressions are not found everywhere on Earth (for instance, like the Sahara). Therefore, although extensive, the glaciers were a local (not global) is scale. Yet, at only 0.222% the size of the supposed flood, they have had a PROFOUND and EASILY recognisable and measurable effects on the lands.

Yet, the supposed flood of Noah, supposedly global in extent, supposedly much more recent, and supposedly orders of magnitude larger in scale; has exactly zero measurable effects and zero evidence for it's occurrence.

Golly, Wally. I wonder why that may be...?

Further, Mount Everest extends through 2/3 of the Earth's atmosphere. Since two
forms of matter can't occupy the same space, we have an additional problem with the
atmosphere. Its current boundary marks the point at which gasses of the atmosphere
can escape the Earth's gravitational field. Even allowing for partial dissolving of
the atmosphere into our huge ocean, we'd lose the vast majority of our atmosphere
as it is raised some 5.155 km higher by the rising flood waters; and it boils off
into space.

Yet, we still have a quite thick and nicely breathable atmosphere. In fact, ice
cores from Antarctica (as well as deep-sea sediment cores) which can be
geochemically tested for paleoatmospheric constituents and relative gas ratios; and
these records extend well back into the Pleistocene, far more than the supposed
4,000 YBP flood event. Strange that this major loss of atmosphere, atmospheric
fractionation (lighter gasses - oxygen, nitrogen, fluorine, neon, etc. - would
have boiled off first in the flood-water rising scenario, enriching what remained
with heavier gasses - argon, krypton, xenon, radon, etc.), and massive
extinctions from such global upheavals are totally unevidenced in these cores.

Even further, let us take a realistic and dispassionate look at the other claims
relating to global flooding and other such biblical nonsense.

Particularly, in order to flood the Earth to the Genesis requisite depth of 10
cubits (~15' or 5 m.) above the summit of Mt. Ararat (16,900' or 5,151 m AMSL), it
would obviously require a water depth of 16,915' (5,155.7 m), or over three miles
above mean sea level. In order to accomplish this little task, it would require
the previously noted additional 4.525×109 km3 of water to flood the Earth to this
depth. The Earth's present hydrosphere (the sum total of all waters in, on and
above the Earth) totals only 1.37×109 km3. Where would this additional
4.525×109 km3 of water come from? It cannot come from water vapour (i.e., clouds)
because the atmospheric pressure would be 840 times greater than standard pressure
of the atmosphere today. Further, the latent heat released when the vapour
condenses into liquid water would be enough to raise the temperature of the
Earth's atmosphere to approximately 3,570 C (6,460 F).

Someone, who shall properly remain anonymous, suggested that all the water needed
to flood the Earth existed as liquid water surrounding the globe (i.e., a "vapour
canopy"). This, of course, is staggeringly stupid. What is keeping that much water
from falling to the Earth? There is a little property called gravity that would
cause it to fall.

Let's look into that from a physical standpoint. To flood the Earth, we have
already seen that it would require 4.525×109 km3 of water with a mass of
4.525×1021 kg. When this amount of water is floating about the Earth's
surface, it stored an enormous amount of potential energy, which is converted to
kinetic energy when it falls, which, in turn, is converted to heat upon impact
with the Earth. The amount of heat released is immense:

Potential energy: E=MgH, where
M = mass of water,
g = gravitational constant and,
H = height of water above surface.

Now, going with the Genesis version of the Noachian Deluge as lasting 40 days and
nights, the amount of mass falling to Earth each day is 4.525×1021 kg/40 24-hr.
periods. This equals 1.10675×1020 kilograms daily. Using H as 10 miles (16,000
meters), the energy released each day is 1.73584×1025 joules. The amount of energy
the Earth would have to radiate per m2/sec is energy divided by surface area of the
Earth times number of seconds in one day. That is:

e = 1.735384×1025/(4×3.14159×((63862)×86,400))
e = 391,935.0958 j/m2/s

Currently, the Earth radiates energy at the rate of approximately 215 joules/m2/sec
and the average temperature is 280 K. Using the Stefan-Boltzman 4th-Power Law to
calculate the increase in temperature:

E (increase)/E (normal) = T (increase)/T4 (normal)

E (normal) = 215
E (increase) = 391,935.0958
T (normal) = 280.

Turn the crank, and T (increase) equals 1,800 K.

The temperature would thusly rise 1,800 K, or 1,526.84 C (that's 2,780.33 F...
lead melts at 880 F...). It would be highly unlikely that anything short of fused
quartz would survive such an onslaught. Also, the water level would have to rise
at an average rate of 5.5 inches/min; and in 13 minutes would be in excess of six
feet deep.

Finally, at 1800 K water would not exist as liquid.

It is quite clear that a Biblical Flood is and was quite impossible.

[Joe Klooski]

I recommend spamming this on Yahoo Answers

[deekayfry]

Ah a reply to on old post, I apologize if I repeat anything mentioned beforehand.  Reading 10 pages of information would be akin to tackling a new book.

Anyway, viewing the Ark from a structural point of view, the shear size of it would be a serious detriment.  When water has more surface to work with it becomes even more deadly. Water with same force across a small surface displaces less than than across a larger surface.

Look at floods on TV.  Items with little surface area at their face tend to remain while items with larger surface areas are swept away.  Things like stop signs and traffic lights can withstand flooding waters better than cars or sides of a building.  I grant that stop signs and traffic lights are anchored, but many structures are anchored too.

So with a boat that size, a small displacement such as a crest from a wave would have split it into pieces because water has more to work with on applying force to a greater surface area.

There are other serious holes in the myth, Noah did not have access to metals such as iron or bronze.  So his boat would have not been nailed together.  His boat would have been made from pitch, twine, and fastened with mortises and tenons.

We have trouble building commercial building within a month with modern equipment. This does not include labor that occurs prior to the construction such as  felling the wood, debarking, and cutting.  Do we accept that a family of maybe ten, include women and children, could construct such a structure without cranes, forklifts, saws, within a few few weeks?

[Thumpalumpacus]

There is also the issue of hogging, which is where the ship flexes in the middle -- the ends sagging -- as it crests a wave.  

On wooden ships, this phenomenon limits size to around 300', which introduces another engineering obstacle to the story, especially on a ship as overloaded as the Ark muct have been.  Adam Lee at Daylight Atheism has an excellent deconstruction of the myth on his site, too.

[Prea]

I personally don't believe the ark was a real, physical object. And the flood may have been more of a myth/story for entertainment. However I wonder if the ark is supposed to be representative of the human body as the ark/carrier of the soul/spirit.