User:Filll/Noah

Notes about History of Noachian flood analysis

by ANDREW DICKSON WHITE LL.D. (Yale), L.H.D. (Columbia), PH.DR. (Jena) Late President and Professor of History at Cornell University Two Volumes Combined New York D. Appleton and Company 1898
 * A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
 * http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/White/#geol-3

http://www.amazon.com/Noahs-Flood-Genesis-Western-Thought/dp/0300076487
 * Noah's Flood: The Genesis Story in Western Thought (Paperback) Norm Cohn,

Science of Noah’s Ark
As referenced in this article, most of the information about the ark and the flood is based on Genesis stories. Little evidence is available that either Noah’s Ark or a Global flood ever existed. However, scientists have focused on these points to refute the possibility of this myth:

The Ark

According to Genesis 6:15, the ark was approximately 450 feet long which would make it one of the largest wood ships ever built. In 1909, the schooner Wyoming was built by the Percy & Small shipyard in Bath, Maine. Utilizing state-of-the-art shipbuilding technology, which would not have been available to Noah, she was the longest ship with a wood keel and hull ever built. And at 329 feet, the ship was approximately 120 feet shorter than Noah’s Ark. Percy & Small built six other schooners of 300 ft or more. Seagoing ships, by their nature, are subject to significant stress, and wood is not strong enough to prevent separation at each joint, thereby allowing for water to enter the hull. The Wyoming had 90 steel crossbraces to support the frame of the ship in the hope of reducing leakage.. Even while she was yet on the drawing boards the marine engineers who designed and built her knew from experience with shorter ships that the length of the Wyoming would exceed the structural limits of wood. Even utilizing the best marine engineering principles of the day, the steel bracing could not prevent the flexing and twisting that resulted in the separation of the hull planking. The Wyoming required constant pumping, as did her sister ships. The boat had leaked every day that it was in the water until it sank 14 years later during a storm when it foundered. It was reported that the Wyoming would snake (movement of the bow and stern from side to side in relation to the amidships) and hog (movement of the bow and stern up and down in relation to the amidships) while underway. The action of the waves, in even calm seas, caused the planking to be sprung beyond the capabilities of any caulking that could be devised.

Few other wood sailing ships were built greater than 300 feet in length. One ship, the Great Republic, built in 1853, was reported to be the longest wooden ship ever built with a length of 325 to 334 feet. This ship also had 90 steel or iron cross braces, each four inches wide, one inch thick and 36 feet long. Unfortunately, she sprung her hull in a storm off of Bermuda and was abandoned when the water in the hold reached 15 feet.

Given that relatively advanced shipbuilding techniques were able to build only marginally seaworthy ships, and ironworking sufficient to build cross braces was not available to Noah, there is little scientific evidence available that an Ark of that size is available..

The animals

According to Wilson and Perlman, 2000, 1.6 million species have been described to date. They estimate that there are probably 30-100 million total species of all organisms on the planet. Given that the belief in Noah’s Ark presumes a belief in all of Genesis, all of those animals must have been in existence at that time, and for them to exist today, Noah would have need to “saved” them, according to the myth. Even eliminating sea-dwelling organisms, plants, and other non “air-breathing” animals, 50-100 thousand species would have had to been collected. Some biblical scholars insist that the interpretation of the accounts should be that only a representative of the genus of air-breathing animals were taken (using the word, “kind” of animals, as stated in Genesis), that would be anywhere from 5-15 thousand genera. However, the rate of speciation of complex organisms, such as vertebrates, is anywhere from 10 to 100 thousand years, which indicates that it would be nearly impossible for 15,000 genera to evolve into 50-100 thousand species air-breathing species in just a few thousand years.

Moreover, the people living at that time gave names to each “kind” of animal which is roughly at the level of species Furthermore, the Creationist assumptions then mean that most of the species were left off the Ark (over 30-100 million). According to Genesis, "He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground". It becomes difficult to imagine how we have so many species so soon after a catastrophic flood. It would have also been nearly impossible for Noah, in seven days, to collect even a small portion of these species. Some species existed in polar regions (penguins and polar bears), some species on isolated islands in oceanic areas, and some species are only endemic to certain locations (such as Australian marsupials). Within the seven days time allocated to Noah according to the Genesis myth, there would not have been sufficient time to travel the earth to find all of the animals.

Additionally, only a small portion could fit on the Ark, no matter how it was constructed. The weight of the animals would have unbalanced the ship, causing it to founder in rough seas. Predators and prey would have to be separated and fed; therefore, additional weight would have to be supported in the ship. Finally, some creationists and biblical literalists accept fossils as being the remnants of organisms that perished in the flood. This belies the fact that dinosaurs and other extinct animals do not exist, so were not brought aboard the mythological ark.

The Flood

Analysis of the possibility of the flood can be broken into three sections:


 * 1) Where did all the water come from and where did it all go? Setting aside the possibility of sufficient water to cover 10,000 meter mountains, where presumably fossilized sea life would have been deposited by a global food, raising the water level of the world by only a few meters would have raised atmospheric pressures sufficiently high to raise oxygen and nitrogen concentrations to toxic levels.  In addition, a “canopy” of water vapor, sufficient to induce rain for 40 days, would have superheated the water, raising it to the boiling point and thereby killing everything in the world (sterilizing it in effect).  Water that would have come from beneath the ground (another proposal from Creationists) would also have been superheated by the earth’s core, which would have sterilized the earth also.  In effect, most commonly cited methods for the water to come and go depend upon miracles that are not proven by geologic record, cannot happen as a result of physics, and have been dismissed by verifiable science.  Therefore, a worldwide catastrophic flood requires reliance upon pseudoscience.
 * 2) Why is there no evidence of a flood? Simple problems such as the difference in substantial erosion of the Appalachian mountains versus the relatively minimal (geologically speaking) erosion of the Himalayans.  There is a lack of flood evidence in Greenland ice cores.  Polar ice caps would have floated in a flood; in fact, some of the ice caps, such as over Greenland and Antarctica could not have reformed in the past 10,000 years because climatic conditions would not have allowed it.  Other areas of analysis, tree ring, deep sea sediments, terrestrial sediments and soils, and other geological features lack any data that would show evidence of a global flood.
 * 3) Why did plants survive? Assuming that Genesis ignores plants, there are currently over 300-500 thousand plant species on earth today.  Most plants would be destroyed by submersion for even a few days.  The several meters of sediment deposited by such a flood would have smothered any seeds or other plants.  Salt water intrusion would also destroy most plants.  It is conceivable that Noah collected seeds from plants, but as with collecting animals, plant species range all over the world, not ever plant would have seeds available on the seven days allowed to collect them, and most plants require the right environmental conditions to germinate.