Farmerman has, and likely again and again, will explode the contention of a world wide flood occuring as a singular event on the basis of geology. I object to the story on different bases, which i will detail here.
The member "real life" is the only biblical literalist here of whom i know who has attempted to defend the story of Noah and his Ark on a point by point basis. I will therefore, refer to objections and explanations which he has raised, and if i am incorrect in my assertions in that regard, i have no doubt that he will correct me (and i am, of course, free to quote passages in which he makes assertions, or in which i feel justified in inferences from the assertions he has made).
I object to the flood story first on a textual basis. In my remarks i will refer to the King James Version of the bible (i kinda like that old gay boy, as well as his mother, Mary Queen of Scots). Genesis, Chapter Six, verses 19 through 22 read, in their entirety:
Quote: And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
Someone here has objected that it were not necessary for Noah to have taken fodder for the animals on board, and that the animals could have survived in some sort of suspended animation. I had thought that it was the member "real life" who had made those objections, but i infer from a recent response of his that this were not necessarily the case. Therefore, without attributing this objection to that member, i will simply point out that this portion of Genesis Chapter Six clearly states that Noah was to take along all the sustenance need for the beasts and for himself, his wife, and his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth and their wives.
One immediately finds a textual contradiction of the passage above. I do mean immediately. There are twenty-two verses in Genesis Six, and therfore, Genesis Chapter Seven, verses two and three follow immediately upon the verses i have already quoted. Genesis Seven, verses Two and Three read, in their entirety:
Quote:Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
This, of course, not only represents a direct contradiction, "cheek by jowl" as it were, in the text, but also considerably increases the implausibility of the proposition. (This is also one of several examples which have lead scholars, both biblical and sceptical, to assert that Chapters Six through Nine of the Book of Genesis were written at different times by different authors--and that is stoutly denied by many biblical literalists, including those with pretentions to scholarship.) Furthermore, Genesis Seven, verse Nine again contradicts the verses at the beginning of the Chapter, reading in it's entirety:
Quote:There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.
The same contradiction appears again immediately in verse Fifteen, which reads in its entirety:
Quote:And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
Therefore, there is considerable contradiction on the subject of the number of pairs (male and female as is constantly iterated) of beasts who "went into" the Ark.
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The period of time during which the flooding occured is also the subject of a textual contradiction. Genesis Chaper Seven, verse Twelve reads, in its entirety:
Quote:And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
Shortly thereafter, Verse Seventeen of Chapter Seven confirms this, reading, in its entirety:
Quote:And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
However, Verse Twenty-four, which ends Chapter Seven, reads in its entirety:
Quote:And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.
This has been construed as a contradiction of the two passages asserting that the flood lasted for 40 days, which is the commonly stated belief. Those defending the literal truth of Genesis refute this by stating that verse Twenty-Four refers to the period after the 40 days of flood during which the waters covered the earth. The significance of this dodge will appear later. It is also worth noting that verses of Chapter Seven state that Noah and company entered the Ark, and that it came to pass that the flood waters were upon the earth seven days thereafter (we are now up to a total of 197 days on board), but that is contradicted immediately after by verses Twelve and Thirteen, which read in their entirety:
Quote: And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;
So, were Noah and crew on board for a week when the flooding began, or did they enter the same day? This is more reason to question whether Genesis in its present form were written by a singl author as a unitary text. This has lead to the current scholarly school of thought which is known as the Documentary Hypothesis, which holds that the Pentateuch was edited in the Fifth Century BCE, and which therefore further contradicts those biblical literalists who contend that the text is divinely inspired and inerrant. A divinely inspired, inerrant text would not be subject to editing at any time. Either the original was flawed and required correction, or the editing introduced flaws. In either case, considerable doubt is thrown on the topic of the validity of Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch. That is not, however, germane to the specific topic of this fairy tale.
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I will leave the questions raised by the textual contradictions now, and proceed to the vessel itself and it's construction. I am willing to avoid silliness about what "gopher wood" may have been, and for sake of discussion, stipulate that it refers to cedar wood by using a derivative of an Akkadian (commonly misnamed "Babylonian" by biblical "scholars") term for cedar. If any of the biblical literalists here want to argue that the term is a corruption of "planed wood" or any of the other dodges on this topic popular among literalists, i am happy to stipulate that Noah and company used a good quality of wood.
Which leads us to the more scientific aspect of the discussion, the nature of the vessel itself. Allowing for variances in the dimensions of a cubit, and relying upon the consensus definition of literalists of a cubit being 18 inches (they know they have to have a really big boat to accomodate the number of animals involved), this gives the Ark dimensions of 450 feet in length, 75 feet at the beam (width at mid-ship) and a height of 45 feet. This is an extremely unsound set of dimension. Stipulating other dimensions for the size of a cubit does not alter the unrealistic proportions of the vessel. The largest wood sailing vessel ever constructed,
Wyoming, was only 400 feet in length--the Ark is described, therefore, as being longer than the largest wooden ships ever built in historical times, and considerably larger that the largest wooden warships, which were always the most sturdy construction found in wooden ships. Cargo vessels were made with far less wood, and their active life was usually no more than a decade. The member "real life" has suggested that Noah had forty years to build the Ark. That introduces far more problems than it appears to solve to literalists who know nothing of naval architecture.
Ships, whether built of wood or of steel, have to be lauched before the equation of weight of materials to dimensions reaches a certain critical ratio, or the weight of materials will crush the hull. Therefore, the Ark would have had to have been launched before completion, especially in view of the radical proportions, with strakes (the upright support members to which the hull is attached) running the lenght of a 450 foot vessel, but being restricted to the dimensions implied by a vessel which was only 75 feet at the beam--the strakes would have been relatively very short, but still obliged to support an enormous weight of wood. And even if it were not completely constructed until the seven days specified in one verse of Genesis, it still would have had to have been floated before decking and superstructure could have been added, because without the bouyancy of water, the weight of the wood would have crushed the strakes and fractured the keel.
That is one of the primary reasons that cargo vessels were short and wide. They tend to "swim (or wallow) like pigs," in the popular nautical expression, but they combined the largest cargo space with the least stress to structural members. But we have more of a problem with the dimensions specified for the Ark. In their eagerness to portray a vessel large enough to have held all the creatures on board, and their fooder (any dodges about feeding the beasts is obviated by the explicit passage of Genesis in which Noah is instructed to provide food for the beasts and for himself and his family), they have given dimension which are surrealistic, and yet have not provided a plausible cargo capacity for seven pairs of all the beasts (or even two, for that matter, as the literalists are forced in the face of modern scientific discovery to stipulate all of the species found only in fossilized form as well). Ships are rated by their tonnage burthen. This does not refer to weight, it refers to spatial capacity. A ton of burthen is one hundred cubic feet. The cargo capcity of the Ark, without considering additional structural support (a crucial point i will shortly address), was only slightly more than 10,000 tons (one million cubic feet). That is not very much space for all the cargo of beasts and fodder, and even less so when one considers the structural support which would have been necessary to make a vessel of such dimensions seaworthy. The famed ore boat
Edmund Fitzgerald, which could not reasonably have been expected to hold all the beasts
and their fodder, only had a capacity of 26,000 tons. The early Pacific War aircraft carriers
Lexington and
Saratoga were orginally laid down as cruisers rated above 25,000 tons, but with the London Naval Treaty of 1930, they could not be built within the limitations, and so were converted to aircraft carriers--and those ships, with a capacity more than twice that given for the Ark, could not plausibly have held the beasts and the fodder necessary.
The member "real life" has claimed that the beasts came to Noah, and they may have been juveniles--he is attempting to suggest that the cargo capacity of the Ark needed not have been that large. But the verse earlier quoted shows that their fodder had to be taken on board, by command of the god. If they were juveniles, they still would needed to have been sufficiently mature to have journeyed to the site at which the Ark was constructed and launched (remember, it could not have survived if it were not lauched before it were completed), and they would have grown in size as they ate for at least 197 days (there are other textual problems which make the voyage from 220 days to more than a year, but i will leave those alone, and give the literalists the benefit of the doubt). I won't trouble with the problem of the
excrementa.
I have in another thread referred to the construction and dimensions of the United States frigate
Constitution, which was constructed in the 1790s. The American frigates were unique in the world, because of their size, and because of their unique construction. The United States could not yet afford a navy complete with line of battle ships, and so the frigates constucted, based on an excellent French design, were the largest frigates in the world at that time. Warships built of wood were, even the least graceful, considerably narrower and longer than wooden cargo ships. This was necessary to assure speeding and handling to a high standard, and cargo ships need lots of hold space, while warships need only carry crew, powder and shot, and rations and potable water below decks (they also usually carried the wood for repairs of masts and spars and spare sails, but so did cargo ships; they also carried spare gun tubes for the cannon, but still carried far less of a load than cargo ships did when fully laden). All wooden ships have a problem known as hogging. Hogging refers to the tendancy of the keel (the long centerpiece of the ship, referred to as it's backbone--a ship fracturing it's keel was said to have "broken her back," and would be abandoned or broken up for salvage) to bow up from the weight of wood, and of the masts and sails. The Ark is never described as having masts and sails--a bit of silliness which i will deal with later--but nevertheless, would have been subject to hogging, from the weight of wood and of the cargo. Even ships which were no longer considered seaworth and which were converted to hulks for prison ships or storage were subject to hogging--the life of a hulk, anchored in a river, was usually less than ten years, due to seepage and the rotting of the wood in water.
Constitution, when laden for active crusing, drew twenty-two feet of water, was 204 feet in length and 42.5 feet at the beam. The dimensions given for the Ark is for a vessel which is almost two and half times as long, but which is considerably less than twice as wide, and which, even if fully laden, could not possibly have drawn even twice as much water--it is described as being only 45 feet in height, and fully laden, to be seaworthy, could not have drawn more than two thirds of that dimension, or 30 feet. Therefore, the description of the Ark is of a vessel far more slim and shallow than is
Constitution (which still "swims," being moored in Boston Harbor, and occasionally taken out for the tourists).
Constitution and all the frigates of her generation were a radical departure in design because of the interior diagonal bracing which dramatically reduced hogging--those diagonal bracing members, laid over the strakes and communicating form the base of the main deck to the keel, were constructed by joined 26" blocks of heart of oak. This drastically reduced cargo capacity, for obvious reasons, and
Constitution's displacement is only 2,200 tons. Once again, that was no problem for a warship, which is a gun platform, and does not need to carry large amounts of cargo, like say . . . oh, i don't know . . .
seven pairs of every clean beast and two pairs of every unclean beast!
Ordinary exposure to water causes the planking of the hull of a wooden ship to "start," which means that the planks separate at the joints, and begin to seep. With hogging, the bowing up of the keel, the planks "start" even more dramatically, and seepage turns into a steady pouring in of water into the hold. In
Wyoming, to which i referred earlier, the largest known wooden ship (our darling Ark excepted), hogging was reduced by the use of steel support members in the hold (once again, significantly reducing cargo capacity), and carried on board steam-powered pumps to constantly pump out the water which inevitably seeped in, and actually poured in while sailing in heavy seas. The story of the Ark is believed by reputable scholars to have been written in the eight century BCE (the "Priestly" version of the Pentateuch), when steel was unknown. Iron was in use then, but was probably
not used by the Hebrews (note that i'm not visiting the absurdity of the contention that the Ark was constructed thousands of years before that)--and even if it were, iron can only be made into large structures by casting, and cast iron is notoriously fissile, which means that it will shatter under prolonged stress. So let's look at a real example of a wooden sailing vessel which starts its hull.
One of the most famous sailing vessels ever built was Donald McKay's clipper ship
Flying Cloud. In 1854,
Flying Cloud made a world record run from New York to San Francisco of 89 days, 9 hours, and that record stood for over one hundred thrity years--modern sailing vessels have never truly beaten the record, because they do not rely exclusively on sail, and have sonar and GPS navigational instruments.
The significance of
Flying Cloud is this: After arrival at San Franciso, she unshipped her cargo, re-laded, and turned around in under nine days--a tribue to the efficiency of the captain, Josiah Cressey. Cressey then sailed to the China coast, and unloading, took on a cargo worth at least one million US dollars, an enormous sum in 1854. Leaving the China coast, he ran her aground in the South China Sea, severely starting the hull (the bow was almost four feet out of the water). Cressey now faced a choice. He could put into port for repairs, which he estimated would have taken forty days out his voyage (ironic coincidence there), or he could try to effect some repairs at sea, man the pumps and make for New York. Being the bold and successful ship's master that he was, he decided on the later course. He instructed his navigator, his wife Eleanor Cressey, to plot the fastest course she could across the Indian Ocean (some of the heaviest seas routinely encountered by ships at sea) around Cape Horn and up the South Atlantic to the American coast and back to New York. Displaying the navigational talent which had allowed her to set the best, the second and third best runs from New York to San Francisco, Eleanor Cressey plotted and held to a course which not only got them safely back to New York, but was a record run in the top ten. Cressey arrived in New York ahead of schedule (more than 30 days ahead of schedule for a planned circumnavigation of the earth), and the cargo came in with a gross value above one million dollars, because he beat most of the China fleet to New York with a cargo which was largely tea. Had he stopped for repairs, he'd have arrived later with a less valuable cargo, and would have lost a lot to spoilage.
What has that to do with the Ark, one might ask. Cressey finished the run from the South China Sea to New York by manning the pumps twenty-four hours a day. He had a crew of more than 90 men. Half of those who were off watch were sent to the pumps, and his crew (for however much they might have grumbled) pumped 24 hours a day, for ninety-nine days! Now, the dimensions of the Ark are for a ship much, much longer and proportionately much narrower than
Constitution, nevermind
Flying Cloud. Even under the best of circumstances, it would have routinely shipped water, necessitating pumping (this is true of all wooden ships under the best of circumstances). But Noah had a crew of only four men (and four women), and every one of them was a geezer. One of the niggling contradictions of Genesis is Noah's age. I have routine referred to a man of over one hundred years of age, because it has been more than forty years since i read Genesis through (for the second time), but i was really off the mark. Genesis 7:6 states:
And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.. Shortly thereafter, it states (Genesis 7:11):
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. In his six hundredth year? Which was it? Was he 600, or 599 going on 600? How old were his sons supposed to have been? Over 500 years of age, or are we expected to believe that Noah and his wife suddenly got busy when they were past the half-millenium mark?
Constitution required 2000 trees to be felled for her construction. At even a conservative estimate, the Ark would have required 4000 or more. So Noah and the boys, geezers everyone, were going to go out and fell that many trees, work them, shape them, and build them into one of the most ridiculously unseaworthy ships ever described? My leg feels like it is being outrageously pulled.
Finally, the issue of how well the Ark would have swum. Hogging was a problem which had to be solved for
Constitution and her sister ships to be viable not simply because of the weight of wood in the hull and superstructure, but because of the three tall masts which were stepped in her, and the weight of the spars and sails and rigging, which were enormous by the standards of the day, and which exacerbated hogging. Now no mention is made of masts and sails for the Ark. Nevertheless, the Ark was carrying the weight of all those beasts, even if they were juveniles, and their fodder (i intend to stipulate for the passage which states that the fodder was taken on board, and contradiction of that throws the veracity of the tale into question anyway). This meant that the Ark was to have carried more weight of cargo and structure, in a much narrower hull proportionately for the length, and drawing (once again, proportionately) much less water. But putting the Ark out to sea without sails, or sweeps, is a prescription for diaster. In Herman Wouk's excellent novel
The Caine Mutiny, he begins the chapter describing the critical event on board, the typhoon, by describing how any ship at sea must be able to either run before or drive into the waves of a heavy sea, in a storm. This is true, however, whether or not there is a storm. A ship must always either be able to run before the waves, drive into them, or cut across them at a high enough speed so that she will not broach. To broach means to turn broadside to, to be parallel to the waves which strike her. If she broaches, she'll roll over in a heartbeat, capsize and sink like a stone. In powered vessels (the point Wouk makes in his novel), this means that they are best advised to drive into the wind, and cut through the waves. Sailing vessels, however, cannot do this, and must run before the wind. If a sailing vessel broaches, not only does she begin to roll, but even if she is brought about and does not capsize, she starts her planking ferociously, and begins to take on water in a fatal degree. Sailing vessels which broach and which are brought under control have to pump like the very Devil to stay alive and continue to float.
Therefore, either the Ark had sails or sweeps (long oars used in large wooden vessels) to power her and keep her stern to the wind and waves, or she would have gone down within a matter of days, nevermind months. Yet the only crew available to man sails and rigging, or sweeps, were four old geezers and their geezer wives. That was, of course, in between shovelling the **** overboard and feeding all of those ravenous juvenile beasts.
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Scientists with a wry wit refer to the Santa Claus proposition. This holds that it is not necessary to investigate reindeer propulsion systems or polar, elven sweatshops to make the entire Santa Claus proposition look ridiculous on the face of it. A little math can destroy it all--even if Santa were instantaneously transported from one house to the next, and only spent one second at each house, he wouldn't have enough time from sundown on Christmas Eve to sunrise on Christmas Day to visit every Christian home in the Northern Hemisphere. The point of the Santa Claus proposition is that you don't need to defeat in detail every assertion of those proposing preposterous ideas in order to demonstrate the implausibility of the thesis.
Therefore, if i were willing to stipulate that the Ark could have held all the beasts required (which i don't), even if i were willing to stipulate that it could have held all the necessary food (which i don't), even if i were willing to stipulate that the beasts might have been in suspended animation for nearly or over a year (which i am not), even if i were willing to stipulate that this geezer lived for six hundred years, along with his geezer sons (which i am not)--i would still point out that the Ark story is a fairy tale, because no such ship (given the stipulated dimensions) could be built and be expected to swim with even a reasonably sized crew, never mind four old geezers and their wives. No appeal to special shipbuilding techniques can overcome the
fact that a vessel of those dimensions could not have survived a week at sea, let alone a year. The dimensions given for the Ark are for a vessel, no matter how well built, which will be fatally defeated by hydraulic physics.
