You just introduce more problems for yourself with that one--you retorted that Noah could have had as much as forty years to build the Ark. Then you have introduced a host of other problems. Large vessels cannot be constructed complete without launching--if the hull is not launched past a certain point, it will be crushed through the weight of its own wood--that is why the hulls of ships, even steel ships, are launched before the superstructure is built and before the decking is put on--to prevent the warping or crushing of support structures from the weight of the materials of which it is constructed.
So, now you want us to believe that a man who was over 100 years of age spent forty years cutting down trees and hauling them to a building site, to construct a vessel which would have collapsed of its own weight if it were not launched immediately after the hull planking was attached to the strakes. So, either you need to dredge up another miracle (to complement that of a centagenerian building this nautical abortion), or you need to have the hull sitting in water for decades while the decking is added and the superstructure built on. Wooden ships literally rot in the water if they are not constantly refitted, and even then, their active life on the water is very limited. For example,
Essex was an American frigate the keel of which was laid down late in 1797. Completed early in 1799, it was commissioned into the United States Navy in 1800. It was taken at Valparaiso in 1814 by
HMS Phoebe, and was re-commissioned in the Royal Navy as
HMS Essex, and remained in active service until 1833, when it was used as a prison ship--a hulk. It was sold at public auction in 1837 and broken up for salvage of wood and fittings. That's an active life of under 40 years--and no one ever suggested that she carry the weight of more than 50,000 species of animals other than insects, and more than 1,000,000 species of insect. Warships, in fact, carried far less weight of cargo than merchant ships--they only had to carry rations for their crews and powder and shot. In fact, they usually had large weight of rocks put into the bilge to provide sufficient balast so that they would "swim" properly. Cargo vessels typically had even less of an active service life because their support members were subjected to a proportionately greater stress due to the weight of cargo. Your "Ark" was more than twice as long as
Essex, and proportionately much narrower, meaning that all support members were subject to greater stress than was the case with
Essex.
Your "objection" about my "false assumption" actually introduces far more problems with the construction and preservation of the vessel before its active service life. You're making the story more implausible.
Quote:You assumed that the Bible stated that the animals brought on board had to be 'rounded up'. A false assumption.
Yes, i was being charitable. Because, of course, the alternative is another miracle--that two of every "unclean beast" and seven of every "clean beast" showed up on their own. Given that you have speculated that they were juveniles in order to account for the lack of cargo space in a vessel of the stipulated dimensions, you have introduced even more implausibility. Once again, you have to lean on miracles, because the story won't stand up on its own.
Quote:You assumed that the Bible stated that each pair of animals Noah brought on the ark had to fit the definition of a 'species' as the term is used today. A false assumption.
It is not a false assumption, and there is nothing in scripture to contradict it. The only contradiction comes in the form of the crazy dance you are trying to do to salvage this pre-eminently ridiculous fairy tale.
Quote:And to the main point, you assumed that the Bible stated that Noah had no choice but to construct a wooden ship in the manner that Europeans and Americans did a few centuries ago. A false assumption.
But other than that, a very good post.
The naval architecture of "a few centuries" ago by American and European ship builders was the very height of the expression of sailing ship design. If your boys in Palestine did not follow the basic rules of construction built up over several centuries, your story becomes even more implausible. To assume that there were some "superior" design which was known to some old geezer in Palestine millenia ago which was lost and which has never been rediscovered leads to the height of your absurdity. That gives you the opportunity to sit atop K2 and contemplate the rising waters.
You display your ignorance of naval architecture and of science--which is
à propos given that the title of this thread is the Bobble versus Science; and the Bobble loses. Your only dodge about the number of species which would have had to have been packed into that woefully inadequate hull is to claim that "new species" would have arisen through "interbreeding." You can't sustain that scientifically, just as you can't make the story of the vessel itself plausible; in the first case because of your ignorance of science and in the second because of your ignorance of naval architecture.
Essex and
Constitution (the latter having been the example i used in my original post on this topic) were very durable ships because they used heavy timbers and extraordinary bracing in the hull which would not have been plausible in cargo ships, which could not have afforded the loss of hull space. As it was, the effective life of
Essex was less than 40 years--she spent her last years as a prison hulk.
Constitution has survived for over 200 years only because literally tens of millions of dollars have been poured into refitting the ship on several occasions in order to preserve her as a national treasure.
Modern sailing vessels are only superior to the vessels of the age of sail because of the innovations in materials and computer design which are possible today and which were not possible then. Even so, they are only slightly superior in speed and are kept "alive" only by constant maintenance which is possible because they are the toys of rich men and syndicates which can pour millions into them. They have special hull materials, and the design of the hulls has been
slightly tweaked with computer design programs which increase their hydrodynamic efficiency--but the basic hull designs and rigging patterns remain unchanged over a period of more than a century.
The America's Cup is so called because the racing sloop
America went to England in 1851, defeated all comers and took Prince Albert's cup at the great exposition which was held in England in that year. It was taken back to the United States, and bolted down at the New York Yacht Club, which might have seemed like hubris, were it not for the fact that we managed to hold on to it for more than 130 years. Now you may rightfully argue that this does not say anything about the qualities of sailing vessels then as compared to now. But something else happened in 1851 which demonstrates just how good ship design was in those days. In East Boston, Donald McKay built a clipper ship, which was named
Flying Cloud. In 1851,
Flying Cloud picked up her pilot at the Golden Gate 89 days and 21 hours after she had dropped her pilot at Sandy Hook. That set a record for the New York to San Francisco run. In 1854,
Flying Cloud picked up her pilot at the Golden Gate 89 days and nine hours after dropping her pilot at Sandy Hook, setting the new record for the run from New York to San Francisco. That record stood for over 130 years. The modern racing sloop which beat her record in 1987 is usually discounted for the honor, because it had an inboard engine to enter and leave port, and had sonar and GPS navigational instruments.
Yet you wish to suggest to us that this old geezer in Palestine thousands of years ago knew more about ship building (with no known prior experience) than the people who built
Essex and
Constitution, or Donald McKay, who not only built
Flying Cloud, but literally dozens of clipper ships of equivalent performance.
As the title of this thread is the Bobble versus Science, i'll stop here, and simply point out that neither the authors of this fairy tale, nor you, know anything about naval architecture in wooden ships.
