Why noahs ark is real

Stony Brook's Zimansky agreed. The Noah's Ark Ministries International explorers are "playing in a very different ballpark than the rest of us," Zimansky said. Even if the Noah's Ark Ministries International team did find a wooden structure or even a boat on Mount Ararat, there are other explanations for what the structure might be. For example, it could be a shrine constructed by early Christians to commemorate the site where they believed Noah's Ark should be, Zimansky said.

Even in that speculative case, it wouldn't be 4, years old. Bible scholar Sasson said he thinks biblical writers intended the story of Noah's ark to be allegorical, not a true recounting of historical events. By presenting a scenario in which humanity is punished for its wickedness, "they were trying to draw us to the notion of a God who asks us to be acceptable," Sasson said. All rights reserved. Better Explanations for "Noah's Ark" Structure? Such a move would take time, Amelan added.

Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants. This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city Caracals have learned to hunt around the urban edges of Cape Town, though the predator faces many threats, such as getting hit by cars. India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big. Environment Planet Possible India bets its energy future on solar—in ways both small and big Grassroots efforts are bringing solar panels to rural villages without electricity, while massive solar arrays are being built across the country.

Go Further. Animals Climate change is shrinking many Amazonian birds. Animals Wild Cities This wild African cat has adapted to life in a big city. Animals This frog mysteriously re-evolved a full set of teeth. We need to remember that the Bible, while written for us, was not written to us.

The Bible in ancient context The Bible is a record of encounters between Almighty God and ordinary humans that lived thousands of years ago. Ancient cosmology in the Flood story Not only do we need to read the Flood story through the lens of ancient literature, but also ancient cosmology. The meaning of the Flood To some, the view outlined here of the Flood account denies the divine inspiration of the text and instead makes the story entirely a human invention. What is BioLogos?

Subscribe Now What is BioLogos? Common Question. How long are the days of Genesis 1? How should we interpret the Bible? Is Genesis real history? By Jim Stump. Article Advanced. By Joel Duff. By Pete Enns. By Stephen O. By Tremper Longman.

Guest Cart. It looks like your cart is empty! Most zoologists, however, would agree with Neill when he writes that "the mortality rate is usually very high among seedling plants and young animals; but once the critical juvenile stage is passed, the organism has a good chance of reaching old age" p. In birds, for example, as many as 80 percent die before reaching maturity Dathe —facing everyday hazards. Furthermore, the young of many species cannot survive without parental care and feeding imagine two tiny unweaned kittens shivering in their stalls!

The luckless animals aboard the ark were confronting the gravest challenge to their endurance ever known, and they needed to be the strongest, healthiest, and most virile representatives their species had ever produced; juveniles would not do. As for the dinosaur eggs, how did Noah know whether one would yield a female, the other a male—or even that both were fertile?

And since no eggs require a year's gestation, he soon would have had a hoard of fragile hatchlings on his hands. Noah's responsibilities did not end with animals, for without plants all life would perish. Whitcomb and Morris grant that many seeds were aboard the ark in the food stores p. George Howe, too, referring to an experiment where three of five species showed germination after twenty weeks of soaking in sea water, concluded that the survival rate through dormancy would have been high December However, two of these three sprouted only when their seed coats were scarified cut.

This presents a special problem. The abrasive force of the deluge would have easily scarified the seed coats, but this would have been too soon. The seeds would have sprouted under water and died. But after the flood waters receded and the seeds were exposed to dry land, what would guarantee their being scarified then? Howe's experiments failed to properly duplicate the conditions required by the flood model and hence his work offers no support for seed survival during the deluge.

In reality, seed dormancy is a complex affair and involves metabolic and environmental prerequisites for entrance into and recovery from the state as well as several forms of quiescence.

The vast majority of seeds which become dormant do so in order to endure cold temperatures or prolonged drought, and in the warm flood waters most would germinate immediately and then drown for lack of oxygen cf. The waters weren't the only thing that would bury them, however, for huge deposits of silt and lava would have been laid down as well, entombing entire forests and paving the way for coal and oil formation.

Today the surface of the ground consists of 80 percent Phanerozoic rock and only 20 percent Precambrian "pre-diluvian" , the latter found mostly in large shields and entirely absent in many areas Kummel, p. These shields themselves would have been eroded to the bedrock by the flooding "the vegetation would have been uprooted.

Floating is also unsatisfactory as a means of riding out the storm. Less than 1 percent of sermatophytes produce disseminules which drift for as long as one month, much less a year Gunn and Dennis, p.

And although many debris rafts could have been torn loose during the early days of the storm, such vessels tend to break up in rough water Zimmerman, p. If somehow a few of them did, how would they know where to unload their precious cargo afterward? Suppose, for example, that a hefty chunk was torn loose from a densely grown forest and managed to swing through a sparse desert area, where such rafts presumably wouldn't form, to pick up seeds from a few rare cacti.

After a year at sea, what is the likelihood that these seeds would be dropped in an area where the temperature, rainfall, soil, and light would be suitable for their growth?

As the retreating waters evaporated, the topsoil would become saturated with salts much like the beds of dry lakes in arid regions, and all but the hardiest halophilic plants would find the ground too toxic for any growth. Seawater contains thirty-five grams of salts per liter, and most plants cannot tolerate one-tenth this concentration Levitt, p.

Finally, assuming that some seeds did reach a survivable spot, how long would their flowers have to wait before the birds and insects arrived from Ararat to cross-pollinate them? Could the many species indigenous to the New World hold on while the transatlantic trip was made? Isaac Asimov observes that the ancient Hebrews did not regard plants as alive in the same sense animals are p. Today's fundamentalists should have learned some botany since then, but they still carry on about the "hardiness" of olives Whitcomb and Morris, p.

If we are to take the deluge seriously, we must be much more skeptical about such stories. The creationists need to soak seeds in very deep, muddy water for a year and then plant them in unconsolidated, briny silt in an unfavorable climate without insect or avian pollinators to see what happens. Have their mathematicians, so skilled at calculating improbabilities for protein formation, ever determined the odds of a seed enduring the flood and then landing in the right soil and climate rather than being swept out to sea by the retreating waters or coming down in Antarctica?

It seems that Noah needed to have not merely "many" seeds but many samples of all the seeds and spores of the ,plus species of plants in order to guarantee their survival—or else we must tally up a few million more miracles of divine preservation.

We can finally begin to make some calculations. Robert D. Barnes lists the number of living species for each phylum, ranging from the sole member of Placozoa to the , in Arthropoda pp. Using his figures, we arrive at a total of 1,, species. In addition, there are many animals that are as yet unknown. Wendt estimates that only 2 percent of all the parasitic worms are known, which would easily add another million species p. This includes as many as , nematodes, although only 15, have been described Levine, p.

Ten thousand new species of insects are discovered every year, yet still only a small fraction of those in existence have been found Atkins, p. All of those creatures were known at one time, for Adam gave them all names Genesis , and, since they exist today, they must have been on the ark. But we shall be extremely generous to the creationists and add only , undiscovered species to our figure of 1,,—thus giving a mere 1,, species with which Noah had to contend.

To this number, we must add the myriad of extinct prehistoric animals, which creationists assure us were alive at the time of the flood, making tracks in the Paluxy River, and which were known to Job afterward John Morris, , p. This would vastly increase the numbers, since "only a tiny percentage of the animal and plant species that have ever existed are alive today" Kear, p.

However, since creationists do not believe in transitional forms, we can again give them the benefit of the doubt and add to our total only the , different fossils that have been described. This brings the number to 1,, species or animal pairs that were to be boarded onto the ark. Of course, we can't forget that Genesis particularly in the Revised Standard Version makes it clear that only unclean animals come in single pairs, male and female; the clean animals and birds come in seven pairs, male and female.

That means fourteen of each clean animal and each bird. But since figures for the number of clean animals are hard to find, we will have to let creationists off the hook and ignore them. Birds are another story. There are 8, species of birds. Since they have already been calculated into our figure of 1,, species or 3,, individual animals on the ark, we need only six more pairs of each species of bird to make it come out to seven pairs.

That brings our count up to a grand total of 3,, animals aboard the ark—two of each species, except birds which number fourteen each. This figure may seem excessive at first glance, but in reality it is so small as to be unrealistic. Many animals need more than a single pair to reproduce. Bees and other hymenopterans live in colonies and "apart from the community [they] cannot properly function or survive" Lindauer, p.

Many types of flies engage in reproductive swarming. Some birds will not mate unless they are part of a flock Conway, p. In fact, "animals which unite into colonies for purposes of reproduction are by no means rare phenomena" Wendt, p. The whole process of mating, egg-laying, gestation, and the survival of the fragile young is a risky business that can easily be aborted by many factors, including predators, disease, exposure to the elements, and so on.

In many species of spiders, given the chance the female will kill and devour the male before they mate; on the ark, the hapless husband would have to be particularly fleetfooted or his wife would unwittingly exterminate her species! Infanticide is another significant concern and occurs frequently even among primates. Dayflies, so named because their mature stage lasts only a few hours, form a tiny cloud of dancing males trying to attract females, with a successful mating rate of at most 1 percent Wendt, p.

Even the prodigious rabbits fare poorly outside many-chambered warrens, the work of numerous individuals Andrewartha, p. Locating one's mate can also be tricky. The Sumatran rhino depends on communication points in its range, and, if it can't visit these, it loses contact with others and reproduction doesn't occur Lang. The tick, Ixodes ricinus, mates only on a sheep which must browse through a field and by chance pick up both a male and a female tick—and even then these poor crawlers can't find one another if they are too far apart on the sheep's body Andrewartha, p.

Imagine the microscopic parasites of a bull elephant, limited to two per species by Sacred Writ, searching for each other on the vast cosmos of their host's body! Competitive social behavior between males is often necessary to achieve successful androgen levels Kleiman, p. Individual incompatibility between a pair of animals is another commonplace, often thwarting the most determined zoo keepers' efforts at breeding.

All told, with but a single male and female apiece, or even seven pairs of birds and clean animals, every species on earth would be well below the margin of endangerment, and the chances of successful survival, especially in the devastation of the post-diluvian world, would be so small that they can be considered nil. Conservation biologists estimate a minimum size of fifty for a species's survival, with or more being a more realistic figure Franklin.

Hence our grand total could be multiplied many times and still represent only the most tenuous hold of life on earth. Was there room enough on the ark? Part of this was occupied by the quarters for Noah and his family. Room had to be provided for the orderly compartmentalization of plants and seeds.

An immense storage area for food, fresh water, and waste was needed. Also, the ark had to have corridors throughout, large enough for the passage of the bulkiest animals to their stalls when boarding and unboarding and at least large enough for the crew to pass into the most remote corners of the vessel.

There would finally be a considerable volume lost in wood alone; the decks, larger cages, supporting beams, and so on would occupy a considerable space. The six-masted schooners had keelsons 7 feet high and 8 feet wide running the full length of the hull and often used 20 x 20 inch beams Snow ; the switch to iron construction increased cargo capacity by upwards of 20 percent cf.

Hutchins, p. If we conservatively allow all of these requirements to consume 30 percent of the space, this leaves 1,, cubic feet to be divided among the nearly 4 million animals, resulting in a mere 0.

No arrangement of cages, however ingenious, no high-density packing of minute invertebrates, could squeeze everyone into this amount of room. For comparison, a sable antelope or red hartebeest needs a crate of 57 cubic feet for the brief journey from capture to quarantine; a zebra, 77 cubic feet; medium-sized giraffe, 99; eland, ; hippopotamus or small elephant, adapted from Hirst, p.

These seven species alone, male and female, require more than 5, times the allotment per specimen for a trip that rarely exceeds three days. For the days of the flood, the area would need to be greatly enlarged—for crowding and lack of exercise would be extremely detrimental, if not fatal, to most cf. Young, p. Many birds must have high roofs with room to fly, and even a pond snail needs a gallon of water for adequate living Orlans, p.

Probably the greatest space requirements are involved in keeping aquatic organisms. Many fish swim continually, even when sleeping, and the general rule is gallons of water per pound of animal weight Atz, p. Gruber and Keyes state that "the primary cause of mortality in captive pelagic sharks is that their living space is not large enough" p. Marineland of the Pacific has an 80 x 22 foot circular whale stadium of , gallons, containing four small whales and some dolphins; the many large whales would occupy aquaria "the size of a football stadium" Hill, p.

All of this would have constituted a tremendous weight. Filby would put a mere hundred tons of animals aboard, with a few thousand tons of supplies cited by Montgomery, p. However, a mature sheep the creationists' average-sized animal weighs pounds, and at this rate the vertebrates alone would exceed 4, tons.

When the huge volume of food and drinking water, the hundreds of thousands of gallons in the aquaria, and the giant dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals are included, it is clear that the ark would have sunk like a brick the moment it was launched.

At this stage, further discussion of the overcrowding becomes rather pointless. We leave the conundrum in the laps of the creationists, recalling the words of theologian Johannes Weiss, "The apologists. Perhaps God performed a miraculous miniaturization on the animals; as the flood legend takes on more and more of an Alice-in-Wonderland air, anything becomes possible.

Before moving on, we must briefly take note of an argument so popular that nearly every ark theorist uses it: that the interior of the ark could have held literally hundreds of standard-sized railroad stock cars and thus was quite roomy. But while the figures for rail car size and capacity are cited with fair accuracy, ignored is the federal law which requires a train on a long haul to stop every twenty-eight hours, to unload the stock, to feed and water them, and to give them a five-hour rest period Ensminger, p.

This may be just a minor inconvenience to American ranchers, but it would have been quite impossible for Noah. Thus the analogy collapses. The fact that every creationist has triumphantly trotted out his train statistics, yet overlooked this decisive flaw, demonstrates once again the sloppiness of creationists' research. Having drawn up a passenger list, the next order of business is to gather them all at dockside.

At this point, the creationists themselves are unable to propound any sort of scenario in which Noah and his sons could perform such a feat, so they resort to the convenient dumping ground of the inexplicable: miracles. God himself intervened by implanting in the chosen pair from each species the instinct of migration, and by this mechanism they gathered from the four corners of the world and headed for the Plains of Shinar Whitcomb, p.

LaHaye and Morris p. That this is not too farfetched we can see today, say creationists, for many animals still migrate, and this is the most "scientific" explanation available for their ability to do so. A closer look reveals that a miracle is indeed called for in the gathering of the animals, but it is a much larger and more complex one than merely imparting "premonition" and migration. In the first place, a glance at Jarman's Atlas of Animal Migration shows that of all the birds, fish, and terrestrial animals whose paths are shown, only one, the common crane of southern Russia, currently migrates to the Mesopotamian Valley.

Therefore, God not only programmed the animals to go to Noah's place before the flood, but afterward he deprogrammed most of them and rerouted all the rest except the common crane—a reverse miracle. Incidentally, it is noteworthy that many aquatic creatures migrate, a faculty whose origins the creationists find incomprehensible unless these creatures were also sent to the ark. However accurate their suddenly acquired instinct, for many animals it could not have been enough to overcome the geographical barriers between them and the ark.

The endemic fauna of the New World, Australia, and other remote regions, as well as animals unable to survive the Near Eastern environment, would find the journey too difficult no matter how desperately they yearned to go.

Flood theorists are unperturbed by such obstacles, however, for they simply gerrymander the map to give us an antediluvian world of undivided continents and a uniform, semitropical, spring-like climate, and —presto! But this resolves one question only to raise another: in such a world, where did the animals which are found today in the arctic, desert, alpine, and other specialized postdiluvian niches live?

The polar bear, caribou, walrus, yak, snow leopard, and many more would suffocate in the warm tropics; many desert dwellers could not have endured the excessive humidities they would have encountered.

Creationists would no doubt respond that these creatures evolved within their "kinds" after the flood, but we have already found that concept so vague as to be meaningless. Besides, since in their chronology the ice age immediately followed the deluge and started freezing woolly mammoths, the rapidity of intrakind evolution would be far greater than any Darwinist ever dreamed possible and there could be no logical justification for continuing to rage against interkind transformation.

On the other hand, there may have been a small desert here, a tiny tundra there, to house these specimens for the few centuries from the creation to the time their regular habitats appeared, but that puts us back on square one wondering how they struggled through the heat and humidity to the ark. Other creatures had it even rougher. Hundreds of species live only in caves and are so sensitive that many cannot survive in caverns just slightly different from their own and many may be killed by exposure to light Vandel, pp.

For these cavernicoles, even a very short journey from their homes would prove impossible. Could Noah have fetched them himself to save them from a fatal march? Could he have distinguished the species of pseudoscorpions and picked out a male and female of each? Aquatic animals would also find the trip challenging.

Did all the representatives of the oceans, lakes, and streams overcome their sensitivities to normally lethal changes in environmental conditions and swim up the ancient Euphrates or the "mighty Hiddekel" to the docks nearest the ark? How did the many sessile species, from sponges and corals to anemones and barnacles, detach themselves and waddle through however brief a trip it may have been? A problem analogous to that of terrestrial arctic and desert dwellers would be the exotic inhabitants of the abyssal and hadal zones of the ocean depths.

In this instance, too, creationists have postulated only shallow seas before the deluge, precluding the very existence of deep-sea dwellers. In reply, we again insist either that such accelerated evolution occurred that creationists have argued themselves out of a job or else that there was a trench somewhere in the "shallow seas" specifically for these organisms. Some important complications arise with that extensive group of organisms known as parasites.

Hundreds of thousands of species are known, and a very large proportion of them are host specific and must spend all or part of their lives within the host animal. Therefore the single pair of animals from each species had to carry aboard the ark the parasites that were adapted to living within or upon them. Although many of these are harmless freeloaders, others are pathogenic and often fatal to their host. Yet the fact that such organisms exist today demonstrates that they survived the flood, and the fact that they must inhabit their host shows how they survived.

The example of Homo sapiens will show the seriousness of the problem. Humans are sanctuary to over one hundred parasites, and many are host specific. Although the four species of human malarial parasites undergo sexual development in mosquitos, they must undergo further development in humans. Hence, a member of Noah's family must have had malaria at some point in his life and must have remained infected after the flood until the earth became sufficiently repopulated that the parasite passed to others.

In similar manners, the vectors of many other parasitic infections are also specific to humans, such as the tapeworms Taenia saginata and T. Also, of course, the five types of venereal disease bacteria cannot survive outside their human abode. These eight unfortunate souls were afflicted with enough diseases and discomforts to support a hospital—all as their part in "preserving life" through the great flood.

And nearly every other animal on board—from Shem's lice to the right whales—had parasites of their own to cope with. What remarkable creatures they must have been; in order to ensure their survival they ha, d to be the strongest, healthiest, most fertile pair possible, while at the same time they had to carry a full set of debilitating parasites so as to guarante, , e their survival.

How was Noah assured that the proper complement of viable tapeworms was present in each rodent and each lizard waiting to come aboard?

How could he confirm the presence of microscopic fauna in their tiny stalls? If a prospective passenger was lacking an essential flea, what could be done? Was there opportunity to correct any errors? If just one of the teeming hoard of animals turned out to be sterile, that species would become extinct.

Could Noah verify everyone's fertility? For that matter, could he even verify that the couple on the gangplank were male and female, when a great many animals, including 30 percent of the birds and even some mammals, are sexually monomorphic and cannot be distinguished without modern veterinary techniques or even hormonal analysis? Most fish are indeterminant as juveniles and will only become male or female when mature Bond, pp. No wonder Segraves proposes a miracle here p.

Creationists insist on a strictly literal interpretation of Genesis; so when those animals which reproduce by asexual budding, or the over one thousand thelytokous all-female species from insects to lizards, converged toward the ark, another special miracle would have been called for to fulfill the explicit command to take both male and female aboard.

By the time Noah encountered the sea star, Asterina gibbosa, which begins life as a male and eventually becomes female, he must have been ready to throw in the towel in frustration. The journey of the animals presents other remarkable facets. They traveled over hill, over dale, through the dense jungles, and across the mighty Edenic rivers without a single accident. No limbs were broken, no drownings occurred.

Amazingly, not one perished at the paws of a predator; from the tastiest earthworm to the freshest frog, all marched past the hungry inhabitants of the forest with impunity. Orr stresses that "migration is hazardous.

For species that engage in long migrations it may be a great strain on the bodies of the participants. There may be extended periods without food as well as long hours of travel.

Attrition through predation may be higher during migration" p. He also notes that getting lost can be a problem, especially for those traveling singly as opposed to flocks and herds pp. But if the divine instinct often fails today's travelers, what chance did such unlikely wayfarers as eyeless cave fish, giant sloths, and sea urchins have of locating a specific acre in Asia?

Christopher was clearly in his finest hour, performing literally thousands of miracles every day. Perhaps with a vivid imagination we can picture this divine Pied Piper saga in action; but no such excuse can save Noah from his responsibility for gathering the seeds of the nearly half million plants that survived the flood.

No premonition, however urgent, could cause a pine cone to commence rolling toward the ark; someone would have to go get it. Our biblical botanists would have to be able to identify fertile seeds and spores, find them at the proper season, and make sure that the storage area aboard ship would be suitable. In the damp depths of the ark, most seeds would either rot or sprout and then die for lack of nutrients and light. How did Noah prepare and maintain the special low-humidity containers necessary to ensure their dormancy?

How did he control insects, rodents, and fungi? Seed storage is a complex technology and, without proper techniques, "no seed can maintain its viability for long" Thomson, p.

In addition, God told Noah to gather food for the various animals Genesis , many of whom, as we shall see, have highly specialized diets. Hence, even if the animals could reach the ark unaided, an overwhelming burden would be placed upon our heroes with regard to the plant kingdom. At last this remarkable menagerie gathered before the gaping door of the great ship. Still the protective aura hovered over them, for natural enemies stood side by side without conflict: the mighty carnivores ignored countless opportunities to fill their stomachs; the panicky impulses of animals in strange surroundings were subdued; even the centipedes and beetles escaped extinction from the chance misstep of the elephant.

This surreal tranquility extended to animals that were not among the elect—for the sounds and smells of the teeming throng undoubtedly piqued the interest of the denizens of the surrounding jungle, yet none of them took advantage of having a meal spread out before them on a silver platter. The peaceful scene was about to come to an abrupt end, however.

All at once the command went forth to board the ark, and pandemonium erupted. The Bible emphasizes that all the animals and human passengers entered the ark on the same day Genesis Simple division of our grand total shows that Even if we grant that the parasites could hitch a ride with their hosts and many insects could go through at once, and if we simply count the vertebrates including the seven pairs of birds , this still averages out to two per second.

This was not merely a mad scramble for the door but involved weaving through the intricate maze of corridors until the correct cage—that one specific stall exactly designed to meet that animal's needs—was located, entered, and secured.

It includes Noah's unenviable task of getting clams and piranhas, barely visible mites, and killer whales, into their quarters. How did our overworked crewmen wrestle all the huge aquatic creatures from the river to their aquaria in half a second, especially when improper handling can severely injure such animals?

How did the "migratory instinct" guide the panicky porcupine to the right stall in the twinkling of an eye? Looking back over this entire wonderful journey, from the flicker of illumination that separated two grazing gazelles from their herd to the frantic stampede to their stalls, one can only conclude that Jehovah should have had access to a Star Trek script and simply beamed the animals aboard, saving everyone a whole heap of trouble and conserving a substantial supply of his own mirific energy.

No sooner had the last snail slithered aboard than the Lord accommodated Noah once again by supernaturally shutting the enormous door of the ark Genesis From this moment on, the die was cast, and everyone outside the ark was doomed. Sinful man and all his works were to be washed away.

It is worthwhile to pause here and wonder what became of this lost world, especially when we learn that it may have had as many as twenty-five billion inhabitants and a fairly high cultural level Henry Morris, , p. Yet aside from some supposedly human footprints in early strata and two insignificant artifacts Balsiger and Sellier, pp. All of the hominid fossils that have been found—from Olduvai Gorge to the caves of France—represent degenerate post diluvian tribes Kofahl and Segraves, pp. Henry Morris , p.

What remarkable tenacity these prediluvians had, clinging to the mountain tops even though they were submerged for five months as the waters surged "to and fro"!

And their cities wouldn't have been buried any deeper than the ocean floor dwellers whose fossils are exposed abundantly. With Nelson, we are forced once again to the deus ex machina: "It was God's deliberate purpose to leave no vestige of prediluvian man remaining" p. The flood not only destroyed wicked humanity. All of the innocent creatures on earth suffered and died in this God-ordained cataclysm Genesis Whitcomb and Morris reveal that "sub-human creatures" which have been used as instruments of sin are punished p.

But surely every animal on earth, many of which had never even seen a human, didn't deserve to be summarily drowned. What cruel hand of fate selected the two of each species to board the ark, leaving all the others behind without hope? These issues are beyond the scope of this article, but we merely mention them to indicate some of the many additional quandaries a literal acceptance of the flood story entails.

We have alluded to the immensity of the deluge already, but to really appreciate it we should savor some of the remarks of the experts:. The Flood was accompanied by violent movements of the earth's crust and by volcanic activity of momentous proportions.

Tremendous tidal waves and rushing currents scoured and deeply eroded the continental surface. Entire forests were ripped up and transported large distances to be dumped where the currents slowed. Kofahl and Segraves, p. Even after the first forty days, when the greatest of the rains and upheavals diminished, the Scriptures say that the waters "prevailed" upon the earth for one hundred and ten days longer.

This statement. The only way in which land could now appear again would be for a tremendous orogeny to take place. Mountains must arise and new basins must form to receive the great overburden of water imposed upon the earth. Yielding of the crust at even one point, with resultant escape of magmas and water or steam, would then lead to earth movements causing further fractures until, as the Scriptures portray so graphically, "the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up" Genesis Truly this was a gigantic catastrophe, beside which the explosion of the largest hydrogen bomb, or of hundreds of such bombs, becomes insignificant!

The worldwide ocean of the Genesis flood was swept by wind storms that would make modern tornadoes seem like a zephyr. Schmich, p. There are perhaps five hundred active volcanoes in the world, and possibly three times that many extinct volcanoes. But nothing ever seen by man in the present era can compare with whatever the phenomena were which caused the formation of these tremendous structures. Whitcomb, , p. For once we can agree that creationist rhetoric has not been exaggerated. A cataclysm that could accomplish the largest percentage of the geological activity in earth's history in one year—events that uniformitarians assign to billions of years—would be so overwhelming that we cannot begin to imagine what it would be like.

Yet into the jaws of destruction sailed a rickety wooden boat—oversized, leaky and unsound, carrying a cargo whose safety and protection was all important! It is utterly inconceivable that it could have survived even a few days of this maelstrom without being blasted to splinters—unless it was protected by the unceasing intervention of the deity. Curiously, when the talk turns to the fate of the ark, diluviologists suddenly paint a much rosier picture.

Whitcomb, for example, has read that tsunamis so-called tidal waves in the open sea are of such low amplitude as to be hardly noticeable and would "thus have had very little effect on Noah's Ark" , p. But why mention these and omit wind-driven waves, which have been known to exceed one hundred feet in an ordinary hurricane?

The winds that would make tornadoes "seem like a zephyr," blowing over the unlimited, unobstructed fetch of the entire globe, would have generated waves many times higher; arkeologist Meyer suggests a height of several miles p. And what sorts of waves would be produced by the breakup of the "fountains of the great deep," the splitting of the continents, and the worldwide orogeny?

The shock waves from present-day submarine earthquakes have been known to damage or destroy vessels far from land Thrower, pp. Furthermore, there were at least two occasions when the ark was not in the open sea. As she sat on the Plains of Shinar, her first encounter with the deluge would most likely have been a mountainous tidal wave or flash flood or both, smashing her to pieces just as easily as it uprooted "entire forests.

Ararat and battered a few more days by the violently receding waters. There were other hazards as well. Volcanic ash and molten boulders filled the air, while at least in the early stages of the storm vegetation rafts and the debris of civilization shot through the water like torpedoes. For most of the time, the ark was the only object projecting above the sea's surface, and, as such, it must have been subject to a continuous barrage of lightning, producing fires, splitting beams, and electrocuting soaked animals.

Then we have the puzzling currents of the flood, which flowed hither and yon, burying some places one week and uncovering them the next. For example, creationists tell us that the Llano Uplift of Texas remained a haven for men and dinosaurs while eight thousand feet of sediment was being deposited nearby John Morris, , pp.