So, did the bible conveniently forget about all the sub-species in the story of "Noah's Ark"?

Question

Let's think about this. Apparently, Noah brought two of each animal onto his boat of fun. The simplest way to put it, is he had two elephants, two bears, etc.

However, there are many subspecies of each animal. For example, the African elephant (which also consists of forest elephants and savannah elephants...) and the Asian elephant. But let's be simple, we'll say there were just four elephants on the boat. Then there are rhinos...The five types of rhinos are the Sumatran, Javan, black, white, and Indian. Wow, that makes ten rhinoceri. There are three disctinct types of giraffe: Masai, Reticulated and Rothschild, so six giraffes on the boat...are you seeing a pattern here? This boat's getting pretty damn heavy.

Then, Noah had supposedly built this boat with his own bare hands, out of wood, no less, and somehow managed to make it big enough to carry all these animals?

"Plus the bible gives the length and it's less than 500 feet long...."

More icing on the cake!

Answer 1

Maybe the ark was like the TARDIS in Doctor Who. Sure, it was 500 feet long...from the outside.
Once you got inside, forget about it! There was room in there for kingdoms, phylums, class orders, families, sub-families, genuses, species and sub-species.
You wanted em', Noah had got 'em.
He was a damn fine carpenter, Noah. Bare hands, all wood, none of your lightweight-aluminium rubbish.
Maybe that's why God picked him.

Answer 2

It is obviously a myth for the simple minded to believe. There is no way Noah could have gone to Australia and brought back two of each marsupial species, Antarctica to collect penguins, and South America to collect two of each species of snakes big enough to swallow whole goats. Then there is the matter of how much water is required to cover the entire planet up to the top of a mountain; such a quantity does not exist in the oceans, the ice caps, and in the atmosphere.

The notion that all the subspecies could have evolved from the species in the Ark is preposterous. The Great Flood is supposed to have occurred fewer than ten thousand years ago, while the evolution of all the new subspecies would have taken millions of years.

Answer 3

"The US Navy uses the same dimensions proportionally on its ships. "

The US Navy doesn't build its ships out of wood. There is a limit to the size of a wooden ship and the bigger it is, the more internal bracing is required to stop it falling apart on a ripple. A ship the size of the Ark would have nearly half its internal space taken up with decks and bracing. There would not be room for the millions of species.

By the way, the animals you mention are not different sub-species but different species. African and Indian elephants are different genera.

Answer 4

I don't think the Bible forgot anything. The story of Noah's Ark was a story passed down for generations. Just because it isn't 100% accurate doesn't mean we should disregard it. There most likely was a flood that covered much of the middle east, this can't be that hard to believe. Ice used to cover most of North America. Much of our knowledge of ancient history comes from oral traditions, it may not all be right but it's good for something.

Answer 5

Plus the bible gives the length and it's less than 500 feet long....

Less than 500 feet to store more than a billion animals!

People would have to be lunatics (or extremely geometrically challenged) to believe in such a thing.

The story also conveniently forgets about how Noah feeds the damn animals, they'd have to bring in more than just two of many creatures just to feed the predators, not to count the several tons of grain/veggies/fruits/etc... It also ignores the other people who have boats, other people who didn't have to worry about feeding well over a billion different animals.

Answer 6

SASSY, don't ask such challenging questions. It upsets the Fundies, and next you know they'll be calling you names, saying you're a liar, saying god can do anything, saying Earth really is flat 'cause it says so in the bible, and that Darwin was a commie pinko liberal Bush-hater who ate babies for lunch. What you gotta do is just BELIEVE! Snakes talk, a man walks on water, people are raised from the dead, gosh, dear heart, that invisible god in the sky ain't too busy looking after a trillion galaxies in each of which there are a trillion stars...he's got plenty of time to run over to Australia for a couple of kangaroos and down to South America for a llama or two and to China for a panda and his missus... You're going to burn in hell for asking that question!

Answer 7

First off it is clear that you have not read Genesis Chapter 6 carefully or at all . Unclean animals Noah took by pairs. Clean animals and fouls he took in seven pairs of each kind. Understand that Noah took each kind. One pair of dogs which all species have come from by breeding. Same for cattle , and indeed every kind of animal. This is not rocket science. Micro evolution which does happen as opposed to macro evolution which does not, accounts for the different sub species as you call them . Noah did not bulid the ark by himself and he had his 3 sons to help him . Noah and his boys were 120 years in building the ark. that is how long the people had to repent. 120 years. But they did not. Evidence for the flood is everywhere . Grand Canyon, seashells on Mt Everest, Mass graves of animals and plants in layers laid down by the flood and turned into coal and oil by the pressure of the water. People who say that the flood did not happen and that evolution is true, and that Jesus is not coming back are fulfillment of this prophesy by the Apsotle Peter.

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. 2 Peter 3:3-7

God promised never to flood the earth again, but he will burn up all those who reject his free gift of salvation by faith in Jesus Come to Chrsit . We may have much fewer than 120 years left. Dont wait. Now is the time for you to accept Christ. Oh come to Christ I beg you. Time is short!

Answer 8

He did all this so that God could rid the world of sinful people by drowning all but about 10 of them...then, after he murdered everyone in the world, as well as the animal species not uncluded on the boat, the remaining humans and breeding pairs of animals could incestuously repopulate the earth, and have everyone turn sinful again. He of course knew this ahead of time, because he's God, afterall, but wen't ahead with the demonstration anyhow. I think fish and marine mammals we're cool though, no real change for them.

Answer 9

Well, the real deal is that the flood narrative as it is in the Bible is a Hebrew version of the flood narrative out of the Akkadian legend The Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to about 12-15,000y.a.
As such it is probably a bit like a story passed down via 'chinese whispers'.

Answer 10

Actually the text is Noah brought 7 clean and 7 unclean pairs of animals on the ark. So all the animals made what we have today. Evolution at it's finest. But it does make me wonder, Why does the creation museum say dinosaurs were on the ark? Don't they know their own bible?

Answer 11

The Bible only says that Noah brought two of every [unclean] "kind" of animal on the Ark (seven of every "clean" kind). He did not bring "sub-species", he just brought the "rhino kind", the elephant kind", the "giraffe kind", the "dog kind, the "cat kind", etc. and he only brought air-breathing land animals. He did not bring insects or sea animals. Science tells us that there are only about 8,000 different "kinds" of air-breathing land animals on Earth (and there are only about 28 different "kinds" of dinosaur). So that would be about 16,000 individual animals on the Ark, most of which would be not much bigger than a cat.
After the animals got off the boat, there would have been thousands of years in which different variations of those "kinds" could develop. But don't get all excited, because variation within a "kind" is NOT evolution! Evolution is change between kinds, which is impossible.