The Flood of Noah

The Flood of Noah Abstract Many contemporary creationists believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis and accept that a worldwide flood occurred around 2350 BCE and that animals from all over the world were put on an ark to survive the flood. This belief still persists amongst creationists even after losing ten court cases, two before the U.S. Supreme Court. The traditional means of refuting creationist claims utilizes scientific evidence and there in is one of the reasons belief in creationism continues. Of the 38 percent of Americans that accept creationism many lack an adequate understanding of science and assume that accepting scientific evidence requires them to reject belief in the Bible. Scientific evidence that refutes creationist claims can be denied but not evidence found in the Bible. Was the Flood World-wide? According to a literal reading of Genesis there supposedly was a worldwide flood. The first clue that the literal reading is misleading is found in Genesis 6:7 where God supposedly is destroying all life on earth and that would include little children and infants. How does one reconcile this with Jesus who never caused the death of anyone? Why would the author attribute the cause of the flood to God? In the era that the flood took place it was commonly assumed that if there was a natural disaster it was God, or the Gods, punishing humanity for some transgression. The Bible however provides clues that there was a massive terrifying local flood but not a world-wide flood and thus God did not cause the death of anyone. This is demonstrable as there are three experiments anyone can conduct that will demonstrate that this is so; experiments that could have been conducted at any time during the last three thousand years. Evidence that there was no world-wide flood. In Genesis 8:11 the dove that Noah sent out returned with a fresh olive leaf. If the olive tree had been completely submerged under water, as Genesis 7:20 states, and for five months as Genesis 7:11 and 8:4 claim, the tree would be dead and leafless. Any arborist or olive orchard operator can testify to that fact. The following experiments demonstrate the flood was not world-wide. Experiment One – The Olive Tree Purchase a small five foot olive tree from a local nursery, place it in a burlap sack with two bricks on the bottom for weight, secure the top of the sack around the truck of the olive tree and attached a cord to facilitate lowering and 1 raising the tree. Completely submerge the tree in a swimming pool, or suitable body of water, and leave there for not five months but three. The first month nothing will appear to be happening. The second month leaves will began to appear on the bottom of the pool. At the end of the third month the tree will be leafless. Raise the tree from the pool and plant it in potting soil and care for it. After a month a gentle flexing of the outer branches will cause them to snap off. At the end of another month the truck will snap off. The tree is not only leafless but dead. The dove therefore could only have returned with a leaf from an olive tree that had never been underwater and thus there was no world-wide flood and God did not cause the death of anyone. See photos 1 - 2. Photo 1 - Olive tree on day one. 2 Photo 2 - Olive tree three months later. Dead and leafless. Experiment Two – What would the herbivores eat once they left the Ark? Obtain a small aquarium, or other suitable deep container, a plastic planter pan and several square feet of grass sod. Place grass sod in both the aquarium and the planter tray and cover the aquarium with window screen to prevent mosquitoes from breeding. Water both for a month to insure that the grass is growing and healthy. At the end of the month add water to the aquarium 3 and completely submerge the grass under six or more inches of water. In one month’s time syphon off the water in the aquarium. The best way is to take plastic or rubber tubing and hold in a U shape and fill with water. Pinch the ends of the tubing and place one end under water in the aquarium and the other lower down to a drain or receptacle. What is left of the grass sod is yellow stinking inedible goo. See photos 3 & 4 . Photo 3 – Grass sod on day one 4 Photo 4 - Grass one month later. A stinking mass of goo. Experiment Three – Noah’s Vineyard After the flood Noah is said to have planted a vineyard. If so the vines would have been planted in soil that was saturated with salty sea water and would have quickly died. Obtain a second plastic planter tray, clean the existing one and obtain a bag of potting soil and a variety of seeds. Barley, oats, rye and wheat seed can be obtained from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply1. Fill each tray with potting soil. Label one Water and water the soil well with plain water. In the other mix up a salt water solution by filling a one gallon milk jug half full with plain water and adding salt water from the ocean making a half and half solution If ocean water is not readily available then make up a solution of salt water by adding 2 1/3 ounces of common table salt to a gallon of water and use this in lieu of ocean water. If you do not have a scale then measure out a little more than 4 1/2 level tablespoons of common table salt per gallon of water. If you use sea 5 salt or rock salt grind it to a powder first. This produces a salt solution equal to half that of ocean water2 assuming that the flood water was fresh water. Water the soil with the salt water solution and label this tray Salt Water. Some creationists will insist that the ocean was less salty in ancient times or that the flood water did not combine with salty sea water. They have yet to offer evidence supporting their claim or to explain why there are 71 trillion tons of salt 1,200 feet under southeast Michigan and still larger deposits in the Midwest3. Next create four furrows in each tray. Plant a variety seeds in every row and lightly cover with soil and place in a location where the trays will receive sunlight. Water both lightly if the soil begins to dry out. In about seven days green growth will emerge from the tray with plain water. Nothing will emerge from the salt water tray. Grape vines are especially sensitive to salt water and Noah would not be able to grow grapes as stated in Genesis 9:20, or any grain crops, with soil saturated with salt. Further proof that there was no world-wide flood. See Photo 5. Photo 5 On the left Barley, Oats, Rye & Wheat 10 days after planting. On the right seeds in soil saturated with salt no growth appears. f the flood waters were thousands of feet deep, as creationists seem to suggest, then as the water drained away and evaporated in low lying areas it would produce a very high salt concentration that would poison any plant growth for many years There is a potential fourth experiment involving placing meat outdoors exposed to the air. Anyone should know that in short order that any flesh under 6 the sea would be consumed by scavengers and flesh on land by maggots and nothing would be left for the carnivore other than bones. Other facts to consider Creationists claim that the flood of Noah created the Grand Canyon by carving out many cubic miles of earth and rock. What then do they expect the swirling waters of the flood would have done to the top soil around the globe. Much of it would be washed out to sea along with seeds, nutrients, worms and bacteria that plants depend upon. In other regions plants and seed would be buried under vast layers of sediment. How would fish survive the flood? One might think that the fish in the world’s seas, rivers and lakes would easily survive a worldwide flood. Not so! There are three categories of fish: Anadromous – Fish born in fresh water but live their adult lives in salty seas. Catadromous – Fish spawned in the sea but live their adult lives in fresh water. The above are collectively referred to as Euryhaline fish as they are able to adjust to a wide range of water salinity. Stenohaline – Are fish that can live only within a narrow range of water salinity and the great majority of fish are of this type. They include fish that can survive only in fresh water and will often be unable to survive if the salinity levels of their surrounding water varies more than .05 percent, according to the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). Fish that can survive only in fresh water include: Centrarchidae – Sunfish, bluegills Characidae – Piranhas Cyprinidae – Carp, Minnows, Goldfish, Koi Dipnoi – Lungfish Percidae – Perch, Walleye Polypteridae – Ropefish, Reedfish, Dichirs Siluroids – Catfish Fish that can survive only in salt water include: Scombrinae – Bonito, Maceral & Tuna Thunnus - Albacore If the flood was worldwide then the above species would have gone extinct due to the mixing of fresh and salt water. Yet these species are alive today testifying that the flood was not worldwide. Was there a local flood? According to Genesis 7:11 and 8:14 the flood lasted 12 months and 10 days. That is an unusually long time for a river flood but it does match the flood 7 caused when the Mediterranean Sea broke through the debris blocking the mouth of the Bosporus flooding the Black Sea creating a massive water fall some two miles in width and four hundred feet high pouring in ten cubit miles of water a day. It caused the shore of the Black Sea to advance on average at the rate of a thousand feet a day as described in the book ‘Noah’s Flood’4. Such a flood would have been terrifying to those in the area causing them to flee. If Noah had drifted far out into the Black Sea he would eventually have lost sight of land and by his reckoning the whole world must be underwater. In the ancient world natural disasters were typically considered brought on by God as punishment for some human misdeed and would lead Noah to believe the world had been destroyed by God. This view probably was reinforced by Noah finding no other people when he landed; they having fled inland to escape the flood. Translation once again causes problems. The King James Bible says that the mountains were covered by water (Genesis 7:20). But the Hebrew word ‘har’5 may also mean a low hill. The King James also infers that the flood was over the entire earth (Genesis 7:17-21) whereas ‘eretz’ can also mean country size or a very large expanse of land but not the entire earth 5. Some creationists claim that the water burst forth as a fountain from fissures in the ground. True a fountain can be viewed as spouting water upward but it can also be a fountain with water pouring down from a basin or like a waterfall. Genesis 7:11 “—on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up—“. The word ‘deep’ refers to an underground source in only Ezekiel 31:4 and 31:15. In eleven other places, and specifically in Genesis, it refers to the ocean6. “Broken up” is a good description of sea water breaking through the debris blocking the Bosporus. Jesus mentions Noah only once to illustrate an event that is unexpected and occurs suddenly7. The flooding of the Black Sea fits that description. The traditional depiction of Noah’s Ark 8 Was there a Noah’s Ark? Look at the painting above and then look at the following image at the Ark Encounter Park in Kentucky. Notice anything wrong with both images? Neither is coated in pitch as Genesis 6:14 requires. Genesis states that the Noah’s ark was constructed of gopherwood but Hebrew scholars and Christiantheologians can’t agree on what type of wood it is. Some believe it is some species of pine others cypress, cedar or oak. Whether carvel or lap strake/clinker cladding is used the hull would be water tight and a coating of pitch would not be necessary (See Sketch 1). 9 Sketch 1 Types of Hull Cladding Whether the hull cladding is carvel or lap strake this presents a problem as the joints must be water tight. Think of a wood wine barrel where the staves have to be planed with precision to match adjacent boards in order to form a water tight fit. It is very doubtful that this could be accomplished with the primitive tools available to Noah. Noah would also have to fell trees with a stone or copper axe and then split the logs to form planks. In the absence of a steel saw splitting is accomplished with wedges and generally results in a wavy badly warped board. A major problem is the quantity of planks that would have to be produced for a wood ship 450 feet long by 75 feet wide and a height of 45 feet. If the planks are 12 inches wide then the total length of the planks, if linked end to end, would stretch some 33 ½ miles at minimum. Answers in Genesis claims that there were 3,300,000 board feet of lumber required to build the replica in Williamstown, Kentucky. That would require the equivalent of 625 miles of 12 inch planks. A board foot being a plank 12” wide x 1” thick x 12” long. Noah would have cutting tools made only of copper and possibly bronze as the Iron Age is 900-1,000 years in the future. He would spend half his time sharping tools that would quickly dull. Another problem is how to fabricate the keel framing, the timbers along the bottom of the ship that act like a backbone. There are no 500 foot trees and so the keel would have to be laminated with multiple beams fastened together with wood dowels or possibly bronze or copper rods. The latter is problematic as both copper and bronze at the time was in short supply and expensive. Neither would have sufficed to hold the keel together and in mildly rough seas the keel would most likely shatter sinking the ark. The S.S. Wyoming8 was a wooden ship similar in size to the Ark and in mildly rough weather the yawing, pitching and rolling of the ship cause its seams to open. As a result it leaked so bad that a steam pump had to be installed to keep it from sinking. Obviously Noah would not have access to a steam pump and would have a very difficult time bailing out water from the bilge. Deadly Gas Generation Answers in Genesis13 estimates that the animals aboard would generate some 12 tons of manure and urine waste a day but there would be no danger of asphyxiation as the methane generated would be vented out the windows nearly 5 stories up. What they fail to understand is there is more than lighter than air methane gas generated; there is carbon dioxide and deadly hydrogen sulfide gases. Many a utility worker has descended into a sewer manhole or manure pit without an oxygen mask and suffocated after one or two breaths. 12 tons of manure and urine would make the bilge a very dangerous place. Removing 24,000 pounds of manure and urine at the rate of 40 pounds every 10 minutes would require 100 man-hours or virtually the entire crew working non-stop for 12 1/2 hours. Where then would they have time to feed and water the animals and tend to their own needs? Someone needs to revise their thinking. What was the Ark constructed of? If Hebrew theologians can’t determine what type of wood was used in the 10 construction of the ark then perhaps they should consider gopherwood to be a Hebrew phonetic rendering of a foreign word such as the Sumerian word ‘guffa’ or ‘kuphar’9 meaning a reed coracle (See Photo – 6) that was coated with pitch just as Genesis requires. Photo – 6 A Guffa (Kuphar) coracle fashioned of reeds and coated with Pitch just like Noah’s Ark. A coracle would be too small to accommodate eight people and a variety of animals so perhaps it was mentioned only to indicate the material the ark was constructed of. The Sumerian story of Enu Elish, from which much of the Noah story may be derived, clearly states “Wall, wall. Tear down this wall of reeds and build an ark”10. What Noah most likely constructed was a ‘Kelak’9, a reed raft. Such a raft could easily be constructed by eight people using only local materials found near the edge of the Black Sea. The Danube delta has vast reed beds and flakes of obsidian, a volcanic glass, are found in central Turkey and were at the time a prized trade item and would provide a sharp tool to cut the reeds. Hemp and flax grow in the area and their fibers would provide cordage. Noah most likely also had a ‘Tarada’9, a reed canoe or a Guffa coracle9 for fishing. Most likely the ark would have been constructed of bundles of reeds stacked together to form a raft and may have looked somewhat similar to the reed Mudhifs of the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq (See Photos 7 & 8). 11 Photo – 7 Mudhif of the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq. Mudhif is on pilings as the water is only 4 feet deep and too shallow for a raft. 12 Photo – 8 Interior of a Marsh Arab Mudhif. The Mudhifs rest on pilings or mounds of soil as the depth of the water in the marsh area is too shallow for a raft. To construct the reed raft ark Noah would harvest reeds, lay them on the shore to dry in the sun and then may have driven two rows of stakes, a cubit apart (18 inches), into the ground and laid cords on the ground and filled the space between the stakes with reeds (See Sketch 2). Sketch - 2 Jig for forming reed logs 13 These piles of reeds would be tied together to form reed logs. These logs would be lain in rows with subsequent logs place and tied atop at a ninety degree angle (See Sketch 3). Sketch – 3 Layering reed logs to form a reed raft A multilayered raft 5-6 feet thick would be unsinkable and would flex in rough weather where as a rigid ship would be in danger of breaking in half. Noah could erect a house of reeds for his family and pens for the animals (See Sketch 4). Sketch – 4 Representation of what Noah’s Ark may actually have looked like. 14 As for the problem of animal waste urine would leak through the reeds to the water below and animal manure would be brushed off the side. In Noah’s days there were lions, hyenas and jackals in the area and to safeguard his animals he may have driven poles several hundred feet out in deep water and poles on land. In the evening he could board his animals and pull his raft far out into deep water. In the morning he would reverse the process. Did Animals Arrive from all over the World? Creationists have not provided a reasonable explanation of how animals from all over the world somehow manage to navigate the Artic, cross oceans. deserts and mountain ranges and find Noah’s ark. Many animals cannot tolerate cold weather and thus could not traverse through the Artic. Herbivores would find no food traversing the ice sheets. Some creationists believe animals may have floated across the ocean on rafts of vegetation. Such rafts might take up to a year or more to reach a shore in Africa. What would the animals eat in the interim? Creationists have no rational explanation of how pandas found the special bamboo along the way that they require or koalas the eucalyptus leaves they require. The idea that the pandas and koalas switch to alternate food has never been observed. Creationists have yet to explain how Noah managed to collect and store the tons of ants and termites that anteaters would require? Strange that Noah’s says nothing about any exotic animals that he has never seen such as kangaroos, platypuses and gorillas. Could it be that he didn’t find it necessary to describe the animals as they were his livestock? In addition 11 to the some 5,500 vertebrate animals speices (Table 1) 15 Table – 1 ANIMALS & THEIR WATER & FOOD REQUIREMENTS in GALLONS & POUNDS ANIMALS C=7X2 UC = 2 X 2 ANIMALS Ant Eater Armadillo Aardvark Bison Black Bear Bobcat Camel Caribou Cats Cheetah Chimpanzee Common Shrew Cow Dogs Elephant, African Elephant, Asian Ferrets Gerbils Giraffe Goats Gorilla Grey Squirrel Grizzly Bear Guinea Pigs Hamsters Hippopotamus Horses Humans Kangaroo Leopard Lion Marsh Shrew Meadow Vole Mice Mink Mole Monkey Moose Mule Deer Muskrat Nutria Opossum Pangolin Polar Bear Rabbits ANIMALS Clean (C) No. Unclean (UC) Each Weight Each Lbs UC UC UC C UC UC UC C UC UC UC UC C UC UC UC UC UC UC C UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC C UC UC UC UC UC UC 2 2 2 14 2 2 2 14 2 2 2 2 14 2 2 2 2 2 2 14 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 14 2 2 2 2 2 2 70.00 130.00 114.00 2,200.00 297.62 19.84 771.61 551.15 5.51 143.30 110.23 0.01 1,322.76 77.16 9,479.78 9,479.78 4.41 0.19 2,645.52 132.28 330.69 1.32 992.07 1.54 0.22 3,527.36 1,212.53 151.17 198.41 165.35 551.15 0.04 0.08 0.13 2.20 0.02 16.53 970.02 198.41 2.20 17.64 7.72 936.96 6.61 Clean (C) No. Weight 16 Weight Total LBs 140 260 228 30,800 595 40 1,543 7,716 11 287 220 0.02 18,519 154 18,960 18,960 8.82 0.37 5,291 1,852 661 2.65 1,984 3.09 0.44 7,055 2,425 302 397 331 1,102 0.09 0.17 0.26 4.41 0.04 33 1,940 2,778 4.41 35 15 0 1,874 13 Water/ Day Water/ Day Food/Day Food/Day Each Total Each Total Gallons Gallons Lbs Lbs 21.826 0.397 0.00 0.00 0.00 1,742.96 120.37 12.96 610.03 435.74 4.63 113.29 87.15 0.40 416.67 40.12 7,495 7,495 4.63 0.25 2,092 77.16 261.44 1.39 324.08 1.39 0.31 2,789 308.64 52.91 156.87 130.72 435.74 0.09 1.17 0.22 4.63 0.31 13.07 766.90 86.42 3.09 11.73 5.86 0.00 305.56 5.56 Weight Water/ Day Water/ Day Food/Day Food/Day 23.538 2.166 0.189 8.238 5.884 0.040 1.530 1.177 0.000 16.379 0.660 101.213 101.213 0.026 0.013 28.245 1.321 3.531 0.017 6.340 0.002 0.005 37.660 15.850 1.721 2.118 1.765 5.884 0.001 0.001 0.021 0.026 0.000 0.177 10.357 1.506 0.018 0.169 0.079 6.076 0.079 0.00 0.00 0.00 329.53 30.33 2.64 115.34 82.38 0.55 21.42 16.48 0.00 229.30 9.25 1,416.98 1,416.98 0.37 0.18 395.44 18.49 49.43 0.24 88.76 0.03 0.07 527.25 221.91 24.09 29.66 24.71 82.38 0.01 0.01 0.30 0.37 0.01 2.47 144.99 21.08 0.26 2.37 1.11 0.00 85.06 1.11 124.497 8.598 0.926 43.574 31.124 0.331 8.092 6.225 0.029 29.762 2.866 535.336 535.336 0.331 0.018 149.396 5.512 18.675 0.099 23.148 0.099 0.022 199.195 22.046 3.779 11.205 9.337 31.124 0.007 0.084 0.015 0.331 0.022 0.934 54.779 6.173 0.220 0.838 0.419 C=7X2 UC = 2 X 1 Raccoon Rats Rhinoceros River Otter Sheep Sloth Snapping Turtle Swine Tiger Water Buffalo Water Shrew Weasels Wildebeest Wolf Unclean (UC) Each UC UC UC UC C UC UC UC UC C UC UC C UC 2 2 2 2 14 2 2 2 2 14 2 2 14 2 Each Lbs 26.46 0.88 7,000 22.05 141.09 19.84 440.92 661.38 2,094 0.04 0.13 440.92 176.37 C C C UC C UC UC UC UC UC UC UC UC C UC UC C C 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 14 17.6 5.1 1.7 9.9 6.2 6.6 6.0 2.2 0.3 9.9 3.3 3.3 0.1 1.1 1.1 0.3 11.0 1.5 Total LBs 53 1.76 13,999 44 1,975 0 40 882 1,323 29,321 0.09 0.26 6,173 353 Each Gallons 0.246 0.013 74.733 0.209 2.906 247 71 23 139 86 93 83 30.86 4.63 139 46 46 1.39 15 15.43 4.32 154 22 Lbs. 1 375 0.063 0.085 0.013 0.042 0.034 0.033 0.030 0.016 0.009 0.042 0.020 0.018 0.001 0.013 0.013 0.004 0.124 0.012 0.000 4.491 7.061 22.361 0.001 0.002 4.708 1.189 Total Gallons 3.44 0.18 1,046.26 2.92 40.68 0.00 0.00 62.87 98.86 313.05 0.01 0.03 65.91 16.64 Each Lbs 1.168 0.053 395.277 1.764 3.748 0.89 1.18 0.18 0.59 0.48 0.46 0.43 0.22 0.13 0.59 0.28 0.26 0.01 0.18 0.18 0.06 1.74 0.17 Gallons 7,052 2,644,585 0.496 0.298 0.110 1.984 0.331 1.323 0.243 0.441 0.165 3.307 0.661 0.661 0.018 0.110 0.110 0.617 0.507 0.099 1.984 9.259 37.349 118.272 0.007 0.015 24.899 5.071 Total Lbs 16.36 0.74 5,534 24.69 52.47 0.00 27.78 129.63 522.89 1,656 0.09 0.22 348.59 70.99 BIRDS Canada Goose Chicken Duck Eagle Geese Great Blue Herron Great Cormorant Herring Gull Kingfisher Loon Merganser Osprey Parakeet Pigeons Raven Tern Turkey Wood Duck Animals Total for 375 Days 468 Day Days This is the amount of food and water that would be needed by 468 animals for 375 days. Over 2 ½ million gallons of water and over 6,500 tons of feed. Now multiply these amounts by the 5,500 species times an average of 2 of each and Noah would require the feeding and watering of 11,000 animals or 23.5 times as much food & water; that is: Water – 259,200 Tons of water or over 62,000,000 gallons. Food -- 154,000 Tons of food. Noah obviously would have to have provide far more feed than he could produce as a subsistence farmer and conceived of a means of storing the massive amount of required water. Noah would require a far larger ship/ 17 6.94 4.17 1.54 27.78 4.63 18.52 3.40 6.17 2.31 46.30 9.26 9.26 0.25 1.54 1.54 8.64 7.10 1.39 Lbs. 34,959 13,109,637 Noah would have to board and care for he would have to travel all over the world and collected 360,000 species11 of trees and plants and in addition around a million insect species11 in lands unknown in his age. Then there is the matter of the amount of food and water that would be required to feed the animals12 as well as the man-hours required to feed and water the animals and plants. Any major zoo can provide information on the number of animals they have and the number of people that are directly involved in their care. The International Zoo Year Book lists nearly 100 zoos, the animals housed and the employees required caring for the animals. Simple math will show that the manhours each of the eight humans aboard the ark would have to work to feed, water and care for the animals, trees, plants and insects far outstrips the hours in a day by a very large factor. Compare the above with what Answers in Genesis claims13, 14. Summary - Moses, the presumed author of Genesis, was not an eye witness to the flood of Noah, an event that happened at minimum a thousand years before his time. Moses was committed to writing a story that had been verbally passed down for centuries from an age of gross ignorance of nature. - If one insists on interpreting the scriptures literally then they must accept the belief that God has engaged in genocide and must reconcile that with the nonviolent nature of Jesus. - It should be obvious that there was no world-wide flood and the story is based on a terrifying local flood, a family that rode out the flood with their farm animals on a craft constructed of reeds and a tale that over the centuries acquired a religious spin. 18 ****Estimates of the total number plant and animal species on earth. Category Species Totals Vertebrate Animals Mammals 5,500 Birds 10,000 Reptiles 10,000 Amphibians 15,000 Fishes 40,000 Total Vertebrates 80,500 Invertebrate Animals Insects 5,000,0 00 Arachnids 600,000 Mollusks 200,000 Crustaceans 150,000 Echinoderms 14,000 Others 791,830 Total Invertebrates 6,755,830 Plants Flowering plants (angiosperms) 352,000 Conifers (gymnosperms) 1,050 Ferns and horsetails 15,000 Mosses 22,750 Total Plants 390,800 7,227,130 TOTAL 19