A question about the Noah's Ark story.?

Question

If you are going to cover the Earth with water deep enough to cover mount Ararat, then you need over a 2 mile depth.

Noah spent over a year on the ark, so salty water covered the Earth for about a year.

So, how did any vegetation survive being covered with a depth of 2 miles of salt water for about a year? (At least 5 months from the start of the flood to the ark coming to rest at an altitude of about 2 miles)

Also what did the animals eat after getting off the ark? If there was no vegetation then the herbivores die.

If God performs another miracle and causes all the vegetation to just survive, then with only 2 herbivores of most species (or even worse, 'kinds') would there have not been an extinction event each time a carnivore got hungry?

Sparki777.

The oceans are salt water, they would have mixed with the fresh. You would end up with brackish water which will kill most plants.

Ararat is not the highest mountain, but we can go with that if you want.

It is over 16,000 feet high. so we have 3 miles + depth of water. Light penetrates <200 yards. No light for 5 months + means no plants and Ararat was not uncovered until 5 months.

Also at the top of Ararat there is no vegetation. it is too high. The tree line is varies from 5000 to 15000 feet, still 1000+ feet short, so plants would not survive on the tops of the mountains because there were no plants there to start off with.

No plants, no seeds. No seeds no weeds.

You fail to address the predator prey aspect too.

Jedi Master.

By my calculations you need about 3.5 X the current oceans' volume to cover Everest to 15 cubits. A pint of sea water + 3.5 pints of fresh will still kill most plants. This would also have soaked into all the ground preventing anything but ocean shore plants from growing again.

Answer 1

Crazy, isn't it? Today we know that a species is on the brink of extinction when their numbers drop into the thousands. I would think that common sense would tell people that two of each species remaining would be a certain death blow.

Answer 2

You are theorizing, of course, so let me offer you a different theory.

40 days of rain = getting the water high enough to cover Mount Ararat. The ark was floating around.

Rain isn't salt water. People catch barrels full of rain to drink and water plants with -- it's not salty. Salt comes out of the soils. That's why there are freshwater lakes as well as saltwater oceans. So the entire earth was not covered with salty water -- parts were certainly in fresh water or water with just a low ratio of salts, not enough to kill plants.

After the rain stopped, the water started to recede. Obviously, the highest points of the mountains would be exposed to sunlight and drying wind first, so they were not under water for a full year. Probably the apex of Mount Ararat was only covered over for a day or so.

Over the long, slow time that the water on the earth was receding, areas in higher elevations were out of the water early and weeds and other vegetation would start spouting in a matter of days. A vacant lot near my home was all over in knee-deep weeds just a month after the homes were razed.

Since the ark was rather small by comparison to all the land mass, the ratio of living vegetation to animals was surely more than what they needed.

Answer 3

I think the Noah's Ark story is allegorical. There really is a God, there really was a flood and there probably was a man named Noah, but the entire earth wasn't flooded. Perhaps the entire world that was KNOWN to the Jewish people at the time was flooded, which is a very small portion of the earth's service.
Also, Noah did not spend an entire year on the Ark but only forty days.

Answer 4

just to add to the impossiblitiy of the flood even happening...
god said that it would rain for 40 days... ok... BUT... for it to rain for fourty days to cover all of the land it would have to rain on average 200 meters of water a day! not only there isn't even that much water on earth! That amount of rainfall would have spun the earth out of orbit! so... technically it's not possible... and then there is vegetation, and inbred animals and another thing.... if it did happen... where did all the water go?...

Answer 5

How did they fit the dinosaurs, too? Did they sedate the T-Rex? I've wondered. It'd be fascinating to go back and see it all being done!

How did they get the animals that lived on other continents of which they were unaware?

Answer 6

if the earth was covered with that much water there would be NO salt water on the planet. dilution people...

EDIT

even if it was 100% pure water being submerged would still kill the plants...