This is my 350th question...so I am going back to an old one, but a good one..How long did it take Noah ...?

Question

... to gather all the animals on the ark?

There are between 30 and 50 million species. Take two of each, that's 60-100 million animals. Let's say he was working 24/7, moving 100 animals per minute (which is pretty damn fast, but we'll give him a little lee-way since the big guy was backing him). By my calculations it would have taken him between 416.7 and 694.4 days to complete his task. How did he keep the ones on the boat alive during that amount of time? How did he cope with the huge amount of fecies produced? Where did he keep the food for all these animals? Do I really need to go on? These are fairy tales people. They hold as much fact as Zeus chunking lightning bolts down from Olympus.

I loved this question because of the silly responses I got. I almost felt sorry for some of them for actually believing these things.

Answer 1

This Noah's story was my best question to god believers. Here is what I dug out from the forum I wrote some years ago:

The Sumerian mentioned the fable of a single family that save from the Deluge, and it was adopted by the Assyrians and Babylonian (also Akkadian)

Do you think that ark (450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high) could contain all the animals on earth for 40 days?

How could it be possible to congregate all these creatures like mammals, insects, reptiles etc in pairs from all over the world?

Lion and Panther, Tiger in the boat? If man themselves are not able to live in peace, could animals behave better than us?

The ark was supposed to be landed at Mt Ararat, Turkey? Didn't the biblical fables were all centred in Mesopotamia areas (Middle East)?

The flood was supposed to be around 3,000 ~ 4,000yrs old, yet the Egyptian had no record of the flooding except the annual flooding of River Nile. Ancient Chinese too did had such record of the great flood. Hence it was proven the Great Flood was of local than global.

In 1929, Sir Charles Leonard Woodley, an English archaeologist found water-deposited layers in his excavation near Euphrates. Such deposits were not found in any other regions. It was the best evident collected that the flood was of local nature.

By the way, how could Noah and his family could control the sanitary and climatic conditions for all these animals from different parts of the world? The biblical writers would write a better fable if they had visited San Diego Zoos before...

Sure we are not the Hebrew descendants of Noah, The Drunkard who was a flasher, Chosen by god as The Righteous Person!

Answer 2

I firmly believe that the tale of Noah's Ark is the most ridiculous story ever concocted.

Other questions about the tale:

Where did all that water go after the flood? Earth's atmosphere could not evaporate that much water.

The bible says "the heavens opened up". How many heavens are there, and why were they full of water? Is heaven an aquatic environment?

If the water came from the heavens "opening up", wouldn't it be like an ocean falling out of the sky instead of drops like rain?

How did Giant Pandas get from the forrests of China to the middle east? If Noah went and picked them up, how did he get through the himalayas?

How did animals of the western hemisphere get to the middle east and back?

What did the carnivores eat after the flood?

Why does DNA analysis show no evidence in the animal kingdom of a genetic bottleneck within the past several thousand years?

Answer 3

I was may be 5 years old when my Grandmother first told me the story of the Noah's ark - The irony is that, being from an asian country with a lot of elephants, I asked my Grandmother, whether It was possible to habve Elephants, Cattle, Lepoards, deers, Bears, Lions etc. in one Ship - whether they wouldn't fight with each other etc. At that tender age (I am proud of my self) I did understand some kind of reality - and being the good Catholic todate, my Grandmother told me that is was a story, and the actual scenario could be different to what is actually said.

Again, being in Asia, we hear many storys like this - like in Buddhism when they say that Buddha was once a leader of a group of Monkeys and when they had to drink water from a pond full of Crocodiles, they took bamboo and used as Straws instead of going near the river - See, now what I am trying to say is that you don't have to believe that Buddha was once a monkey in his previous life - there is much more to take from the story

1. Use of straw - conceptualized 2550 years ago - amazing ya ?
2. Think you have alternative ways of doing the same thing
3. Leadership Qualities
4. tactical planinng according to privaling situations

Keep the storey aside- which obviously was used as an example - we get 4 points to think of and improve our selves on. Isn't that wonderful ? But with a Story line like Noahs ark - there is nothing we could learn, but think that there was a flood that covered the earth, there was a ship that carried all animals - and we are decendents of Noah, who's fore father was Adam. Just myth and nothing to imrove life on - Sad ya ?

Answer 4

You have got to be kidding. Noah; a premium first class agent of The Lord would have been given a budget ample enough to hire thousands of assistants, agent,s, zoologists, animal collecters (Clyde Beatty were you there, too?), and disciples to assist him in the said collecting. How do you think that he got the cash to buy all the gopher wood (that's what the bible says it was), to build that ark? Do you know how rare that wood and its cost? Hooo boy! Pricey. And the nails (cheap iron was not even invented yet.) They were using copper metal nails, and it was affordable only by the elite.
Of course there is a God. Only He could finance an ark operation that expensive. (Rather a poor choice for population control. (he could have used a new improved bird flu.) But the Lord works in wondrous, mysterious ways. Unfathomable by us mere men.
Do I believe in God? Certainly. How do you think I got rid of my overgrown prostate, cheaply. Why Zeus of course! I just bent over, in my jockey shorts, and boom, voila goodbye prostate.
There is no other possible explanation! Jesus, Allah , Zeus, Kali, Vishnu.
He exists.
Dan.

Answer 5

actually it is true about noah... he and his wife and sons and sons wives boarded the ark with 2 of each animal on the earth, female and male. there was a few months for the flood to pass by and when it was all done they had all the land they could see. they stared the families on the earth and that is how we always have rainbows at the end of every storm. it is gods promise he will never flood the earth again.

Answer 6

There are between 30 and 50 million species today, but were there that many in the time of the flood?

Answer 7

My father kept a small herd of cattle and a few hogs; during my childhood I watched the manure pile behind the barn rise, and rise, and rise, and rise. The critters always produced a lot more than we could use for fertilizer. Worse, the barn was too close to the house, and upwind; and while my city-bred mother never complained about the stench, I can't imagine she enjoyed it. I feel sorry for Mrs. Noah!

Answer 8

Congratulations on 350 questions!

No one can explain away the total silliness of the story of Noah's ark or many of the other stories in the bible.

Answer 9

Hey anybody that can get their head around the concept of a married woman that is still a virgin getting knocked up by hairy thunderer that lives in the clouds, will pretty much believe anything. Wonder what Joesph's take was on his wife that wouldn't give him any, winding up pregnant w/ another man's child was?

Answer 10

There are plenty of food and water to serve the animal on board...
took him probably 2 year and 3 months to complete the evacuation.