Noah's Ark (questions for christians)?

Question

What's your opinion on Noah's Ark?

Is it humanly possible to build something that large?

Can you agree that some of the animals that were on the ark don't exist anymore?

Are there animals that exist now that weren't on the ark?
(If so where did they come from and isn't that called evolution?)

Wasn't "Earth" back then considered to be flat?

Then isn't it likely that only the "known earth" flooded?

The following is for those of you who have used the words of Isaiah as the main argument in your answers.

The Geographical Meaning of Earth Seas in Genesis 1:10
by Paul Seely:

"There is one verse in the OT, however, which has often been cited at least by laymen as a proof that the earth was understood to be a globe. I refer to Isaiah 40:22 which speaks of God as the One sitting above the circle of the earth. This verse does imply that the earth is circular, but there is nothing either in the underlying Hebrew word (hug) or in the context which necessarily implies anything more than the circularity of the flat earth-disc which the historical context and Genesis 1 have given us as the meaning of. If Isaiah had intended to speak of the earth as a globe, he would probably have used the word he used in 22:18 (dur), meaning 'ball.' "

Answer 1

These are excellent questions and I hope the religious on this forum think about them with an open mind.

At the risk of being wildly unpopular I am going to declare that I am a Christian and I don't believe that the story of Noah and the ark are literal. In my opinion they are either allegorical or based on a simpler, more geographically limited area.

In direct answer to your questions

1) Yes it is humanly possible to build something as large as the ark (as described in Genesis). For Ex. The Titanic was much larger than the ark described in Genesis and humans built it, so yes it is "humanly" possible. Maybe if you had been more specific about ancient time frames and technology you might have gotten a different answer.

2 & 3) In the 5,000 + years since the flood supposedly took place many species have come into existence that did not live at the time. For example, the modern horse is very different from the horse that would have existed at the time of Noah. Even 2,000 years ago Julius Caesar rode a horse named "Toes." Why was it named toes? Cause it literally had toes, not a hooves. All kinds of official Roman records document this, including illustrations. Example 2: 5,000 years ago there was no such thing as corn. Corn, as we know it, is the altered (through breeding) form of a wild plant called Teosinte that stills grows in central America today. Thousands of years of cultivating Teosinte for specific traits has given us modern corn.

4) The chances of a "known earth" flood are far more likely than a world wide flood. I believe Noah was a real man, called of God. I believe his experiences are symbollic of many things, but are not as literal as many interpret the story to be. Look at the influence of the Epic of Gilgamesh on the Biblical story of the flood.

Risking the scorn of Christians (and even athesists) everywhere I am going to say that I strongly believe in God and Jesus Christ. I also strongly believe (simply because of intense study) that much of the Bible is metaphorical and not literal. Of course, much of it IS literal. Telling which is which is the hard part.

Answer 2

Is it humanly possible to build something that large.....Yes.

Can you agree that some of the animals on the ark don't exist anymore?......Yes.

Are there animals that exist now that weren't on the ark? (If so where did they come from and isn't that called evolution?).....Yes, and no. There are plenty of mixed breed dogs running around. If a mutt was part husky and huskies became extinct but the mutt continued to breed and a new breed came about, then 500 years down the road people forgot about huskies....does that mean the new breed evolved? Of course not! It means a certain type of dog once existed that nobody knows about anymore.

Wasn't "Earth" back then considered to be flat? No. Isaiah 40:22 says, "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in"

EDIT: The central sense the word heth waw gimel is a geometric circle, and this is evidently the sense in Isaiah 40:22. As to the term aleph resh sade, it is of paramount importance to keep in mind that word meaning is not
found in lexicons and word books, which just contain glosses, but word meaning is found in the minds of living people, those who spoke Hebrew in ancient times.

The letters of a Hebrew (or English) word have no intrinsic meaning, but they signal a concept (or sometimes two or more concepts) in the minds of native speakers. The context in which a word occurs does not generate new meaning, but helps the reader to understand which part of the concept the writer wanted to make visible. The word in question can refer to a particular area inhabited by a nation, a smaller part of this area, or to the whole earth.

So, which part of the concept signaled by aleph resh sade does the author of Isaiah 40:22 make visible? The setting is heaven and earth and their creation, and God is enthroned above the circle of the earth. The sense can hardly be
anything but the planet earth.

So did the writer of the chapter imply that the earth is a sphere?

The question is somewhat anachronistic, but it can be
rephrased. If your physician suspects that you have experienced a small bleeding inside your brain and a CT or MR picture is taken, and it shows a small bright spot, the physician will not say: "This finding proves that you have had a bleeding." But the physician will say: "This finding
conforms with our suspection that you have had a bleeding." So the question can be rephrased thus: "Do the words of Isaiah conform with the modern view of a spherical earth?" To this question the answer is yes.

To illustrate the case further, we can take a look at 40:26-28. These words conform with the first and second laws of thermodynamics, which are two of the most fundamental laws of nature. The first law tells about the constancy of energy and mass; energy can be transformed into mass, vice versa, but energy/mass cannot destroyed, so the amount is constant.

The second law tells that the total amount of usable energy
will allways decrease until equilibrium is reached. The words of Isaiah about the eternal God whose power/energy is the cause of the universe conforms well with law 1 (energy can be turned into matter - energy is eternal). The words about the creation of the universe (it had a beginning) conforms well with law 2.

If the universe was eternal, equilibrium had already been reached and radioactive material and and temperature differences would not have existed in the universe. While
the words of Isaiah conforms with the two laws, he did not know about these laws or about the equation E=mc2, which can be an expression of law I. The conclusion is that we should not try to read modern science into the Bible, but neither should we read mythology into it if that is not warranted. A more balanced approach is to ask whether particular words conform with or contradict fundamental data.

Then isn't it likely that only the "known earth" flooded? No. The Bible uses specific regions when necessary. The Bible is clear that the whole earth was flooded.

Answer 3

> What's your opinion on Noah's Ark?
The story of the Great Flood was greatly exaggerated. It wasn't worldwide.

> Is it humanly possible to build something that large?
Yes. If I recall, we make plenty of ships these days that are bigger.

> Can you agree that some of the animals that were on the ark don't exist anymore?
Yes.

> Are there animals that exist now that weren't on the ark?
Yes. The flood wasn't worldwide, so any of the specialized fauna of Australia and the Americas would be animals that exist that weren't on the Ark.

> Wasn't "Earth" back then considered to be flat?
Probably, at least by Moses anyway.

> Then isn't it likely that only the "known earth" flooded?
It wasn't even the whole of the known Earth. Like I said, greatly exaggerated.

Answer 4

It sounds very similiar to the Epic of Gilgamesh tablet 12

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/

Which given the location and the arceological and geological evidence the flood part could be the true story of Noah except he never landed on a Mountain, but a shore town to the southeast.

Just to say why this is more reasonable is because of the

1. The size of the ark, which back in those days they did not have the technology to build a boat of that size.

2. there isn't enough water on the planet and in the air to cover the world with water and if there was that much water on the planet Noah and the animals would of drowned just from breathing in the air which would be saturated with water if that much water was on the planet at that time.

3. You wouldn't have enough room on the ark to hold one of every animal unless more were created afterwards.

4. The other story is way more realistic in what could of happened and is the oldest or one of the oldest stories in existance.

Answer 5

You won't get many to take that bait. The believers believe in the face of impossible odds here.

It is not physically possible that all the life forms on the planet could fit on a forty cubit boat. There simply isn't enough room. And anyway, how did Noah get a hold of penguins, koalas, polar bears and animals from places he'd never heard of?

As to your question about the great flood: it's entirely possible there was a fairly wide-spread inundation within human memory. Within the last thousand years there have been extended warm periods... if one went on for long enough, serious worldwide consequences might have ensued.

But as for Noah's flood? It may well have been local... and the story of an animal husbander rescuing his goats, cows and chickens on a raft could easily get blown up to a big deal.

Recall that the dichotomy between husbandry, hunting, gathering and agriculture is at the very root of that Bible. Cain and Able were a farmer and a hunter gatherer, and that whole story seems like a parable of the coming agricultural revolution.

Answer 6

1) yes it is possible to build something that large.

2) i think all the animals that were on the ark still exist. which ones are extinct?

3) see answer 2.

4) the book of Isaiah says the "circle of the earth" the children of God have known this for aeons.

5) the word used is "cosmos", the "cosmos" was flooded, not Eretz...this is why the Native Americans, chinese etc...all have the flood narative....most of the earth was flooded but not the point as of the middle east since there was a reason for that geographic area to be flooded....giants and the offspring of the fallen..go back and read it again....why was noah chosen etc?

Answer 7

Great question! 1. Meat eaters do eat vegetation. Plus the animals were probably in a suspended state(hibernation). 2. The earth did not have time to cool. It is believed the the entire planet was one temperature prior to the flood. 3.We see fish today that migrate from fresh to saltwater and vice versa. Plus we are not for certain the saltinesss of the oceans before the flood. 4. Again, with the first answer, they were probably in a suspended state. Plus, insects could have survived outside the ark on floating debris. 5. Plants had already begun to grow back long before they exited the ark. Hope this helps!

Answer 8

The Ark took around a year to build. I do agree some of the animals that were on the ark don't exist anymore. I don't believe there are animals that exist now that weren't on the ark. The earth around the 1500's was considered to be flat, but around 6000 b.c. who knows. There's no evidence pointing towards that consideration. So then it wouldn't be evident that only the "known earth" flooded. Hope I helped.

Answer 9

Skeptics paint a picture of Noah going to countries remote from the Middle East to gather animals such as kangaroos and koalas from Australia, and kiwis from New Zealand. However, the Bible states that the animals came to Noah; he did not have to round them up (Genesis 6:20). God apparently caused the animals to come to Noah. The Bible does not state how this was done.
We also do not know what the geography of the world was like before the flood. If there was only one continent at that time, then questions of getting animals from remote regions to the ark are not relevant.
There are severe practical limitations on our attempts to understand the how’s and whys of something that happened not recorded in detail, and cannot be repeated.
Difficulties in our ability to explain every single situation in detail result from our limited understanding. We cannot go back in a time machine to check what has happened, and our mental reconstructions of what the world was like after the flood will inevitably be deficient. Because of this, the patterns of post-flood animal migration present some problems and research challenges for the biblical creation model. However, there are clues from various sources which suggest answers to the questions.
When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, the island remnant remained lifeless for some years, but was eventually colonized by a surprising variety of creatures, including not only insects and earthworms, but birds, lizards, snakes and even a few mammals. One would not have expected some of this surprising array of creatures to have crossed the ocean, but they obviously did. Even though these were mostly smaller than some of the creatures we will discuss here, it illustrates the limits of our imaginings on such things.

Evolutionists acknowledge that men and animals could once freely cross the Bering Strait, which separates Asia and the Americas. Before the idea of continental drift became popular, evolutionists depended entirely upon a lowering of the sea level during an ice age (which locked up water in the ice) to create land bridges, enabling dry-land passage from Europe most of the way to Australasia, for example.
The existence of some deep-water stretches along the route to Australia is still consistent with this explanation. Evolutionist geologists themselves believe there have been major tectonic upheavals, accompanied by substantial rising and falling of sea floors, in the time period which they associate with an ice age. For instance, parts of California are believed to have been raised many thousands of feet from what was the sea floor during this ice age period, which they call "Pleistocene" (one of the most recent of the supposed geological periods). Creationist geologists generally regard Pleistocene sediments as post-flood, the period in which these major migrations took place.

Answer 10

1) It existed.
2) Build a boat 400+ feet long? Of course, people do it every day.
3) I suppose so, though I have no evidence to support it.
4) I have no idea. Of course that's called evolution.
5) No, the ancients actually had a pretty good idea about how the stars and planets worked and how the Earth worked too. It wasn't until the Dark Ages that all that flat earth crap started.
6) Yes of course. It is the only way the story makes any sense.