"The biblical account of Noah's Ark and the Flood is perhaps the most implausible story for fundamentalists to defend. Where, for example, while loading his ark, did Noah find penguins and polar bears in Palestine?" -Judith Hayes
I must start off with a warning that this will not be one of my most in-depth posts ever. For one thing, there's an incredible number of objections to be made as to the literal truth of the story of Noah's Ark. For another, I plan to revisit the topic later, so I'd prefer future posts not be entirely redundant. So today we'll look at the sorts of obvious issues one can find, without digging too deeply.
The story of Noah and the Flood is widely known, but I'll summarize here for those who don't recall it clearly. Mankind had become "evil" in God's opinion. He wanted a chance for a do-over, so he decided to kill everyone and everything on the planet in a worldwide flood. He decided Noah was a good guy, so he decided to let him, his wife, their three sons, and the sons' wives live. He went to Noah and told him his plan, and instructed him to build an ark to allow his family and all the animals to survive the flood. As best as I can tell, plants aren't mentioned, other than ones used as food. Noah did as he was told, and over the course of about 80 years built the ark God had given him the designs for. There's some lack of clarity on how many animals were included when it came time to load up. Suffice it to say there were at least 2, and often 7 (or maybe 14?), of each animal. Once the ark was built and loaded, God caused the rain to fall for 40 days and 40 nights, until it covered the whole earth. After about a year, things were dry enough for them to finally leave the ark. They went forth and multiplied, and thus the Earth was repopulated by Noah's family and the animals he saved in his ark.
So the obvious objections. As the quote at the beginning would points out, one of the most obvious problems is just how Noah managed to get ALL the different species into his ark. Since the Christians who are likely to take this story completely literally are also those most likely to insist that evolution isn't real, presumably all the species diversity we see in the world today must be accounted for by the animals saved on the ark. According to this article, current estimates of the number of species on Earth range from 5 million to 100 million. Even taking into account the fact that the vast majority of these are very, very small, that's still an incredible number of critters to fit on one relatively small boat. Not to mention trying to keep track of them all. How did Noah know he hadn't forgotten any of them? How did he collect any marine animals in the middle of a desert? How did he provide for the unique needs of each of them? And of course, how did he keep the carnivores from eating the animals they normally preyed upon?
Along those lines we have the question of feeding all these animals for an entire year. The food requirements for just the herbivores would have been astronomical. And many of them were carnivores. Were there actually more animals included than originally specified, in order to feed them? But in order for there to be enough meat for them, most of the "food" animals would have to be kept alive for a large portion of the year. Meaning even MORE food is required. The ark, already too small to hold the animals themselves, is even more woefully inadequate for holding the thousands of tons of food needed to feed them.
Then, of course, there's the need for water. For the first 40 days, one could argue, the rain would provide all the water they could need. But how did he provide enough clean, drinkable water for so many animals for the better part of a year? We've gone from one ark to needing an armada to provide for all the animals and their needs.
Mark Twain, in his Letters From the Earth, makes some even more interesting points with regards to the survival of all the parasites, bacteria, viruses, etc. For of course, for mankind to still be afflicted with all of the diseases we now see, they had to be saved as well. As this site puts it, all of Noah's family would have to serve "as living hosts for viruses, bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms capable of producing pathologically based ailments in humans. A population of eight obviously had no chance to survive this fatal concoction of illnesses. If everyone had gone onboard disease-free, the microorganisms would have nowhere to thrive. Likewise, the animals carrying their own specific parasitic problems could not have realistically survived such turmoil." And even if this were a less difficult scenario to have been carried out, why would God have wanted to save all the pathogens?
These are just a few of the many, many issues with the beloved story of Noah's Ark and the Flood. I'll discuss some of them at a later time, but surely these alone make it clear what an incredibly unlikely story it really is.
Check out this site for a much more thorough explanation why this story just isn't possible.
