Here is the script for the 2 part video series I did about Noah's Ark. Here, I list 47 reasons why the story simply does not stand up to a single moment of critical thinking.
Watch the videos at the bottom of this blog entry, or here:
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYKJw8zc_uk
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5o7VEvfAVM
Script
Voices: Ryan, Heather (PC voice programs)
The Intellectual Suicide of Creationists: Ark Impossible, Part 1.
This material is protected under Fair Use law, section 107. False DMCA claims are a crime.
Don’t forget about Exodus 20:16.
Ancient proverb: “The road to Hell is paved with good intensions.”
This video is a general rebuttal to people who call themselves literalists and use the Christian Bible, namely the book of Genesis, to promote a Creationist world view. If you treat Genesis and other early Hebrew books in this multi-cultural anthology as metaphor, this isn’t directed at you.
Paraphrasing for expediency.
The Bible: Book of Genesis:
Most everyone knows the story. 600 year old man builds a boat, gets two of every kind, then it rains a lot.
Oh, and for whatever reason, there are seven pairs of every kind of bird as well (7:3).
Asexual organisms were just out of luck.
Everyone else, except for his wife, three sons and their wives, dies a horrible death by drowning.
Every alligator, kitten, kangaroo, centipede, and parrot not one of the lucky pairs on the boat, die a horrible death, as well.
The boat was made of gopher (cypress?) and sits at exactly 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high, with three decks (6:14-15).
Month 2, day 17: all the springs of the deep burst forth, and the giant door in the firmament opens, letting the rain fall down (7:11).
Then, after every last polar bear, panda, and (according to some) Allosaurus, were secure, God himself closes the door to the Ark.
It rains for 40 days. As the waters rise the Ark floats and rises with it.
There was so much water it covered even Mount Everest by about 20 feet, which would be around 30,000 feet of water on a global scale (7:19).
For one hundred and fifty days, the waters flooded the entire planet with 30,000 feet of water (7:24).
Now, thankfully, the all knowing being suddenly remembered Noah. With a little wind, the waters began to recede (8:1).
The springs in the deep were corked, and God closed the door in the glass firmament above the world.
Month 7, day 17: the Ark hits ground on the Ararat mountains (8:4).
Month 10, day 1: the tops of the mountains poked out from under the sea.
Noah sent out a Raven to look for a place to land, but it couldn’t yet. So it kept flying around until the water finally dried up.
Then he tried sending a dove, but it didn’t have any luck either. After seven days, he tried again and it returned with a fresh olive leaf.
He waited another week and sent the dove again, which did not return. He waited another week.
Month 1, day 1: Noah was now 601 years old, he removed the cover of the ark (8:13).
Month 2, day 27: The earth was dry again, well, where it should be dry at least.
Noah finally gets a message from God to leave the Ark so that he and the animals can get a little frisky and multiply like bunnies in heat (8:16).
In his excitement, Noah takes a few of the “clean” animals and birds, and slits their throats on the alter he built as an offering of thanks (8:20).
And you wondered what happened to the Unicorn, Manticore, Mermaid, and Chupacabra? There you go… they were a sacrifice.
God was beside himself with that pleasing aroma of the fresh butchery (8:21).
The pleasing smells of the burning flesh and sounds of the gushing blood made God promise himself he would never do that again.
…despite that he even knew every child is evil from birth (8:21).
With a decree that every animal and fish is now property of man to eat and do with as man pleases, he makes another:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” (9:6).
God makes the Covenant and promises that there will never again be a flood to destroy the world (9:11).
Then God says that the rainbow will be the sign of the Covenant (9:16).
Now the story goes on to the incestuous acts which populated the rest of the world.
*time spent: 4:20
Okay, that is pretty much it. Here are the facts according to that story:
F-A) Noah was 600 years old before the flood.
F-B) The Ark was 450 x 75 x 45 feet, with 3 levels.
F-C) It rained for 40 days, and ended in the night of the last day.
F-D) The 30,000 feet of water remains constant for 150 days.
F-E) The tops of the mountains were visible after 8 months.
F-F) The entire planet was flooded for 1 year and 10 days total.
F-G) Some of the clean animals and birds were sacrificed as burnt offerings.
F-H) Only 8 humans survived, all four males were from the same immediate family.
Proponent (Christian Creationist) Speculation:
S-A) There were anywhere from 16,000 to 50,000 animals on the Ark.
S-B) Some say their math shows only 30% or so of the Ark’s space being used, leaving the rest for supplies.
S-C) Carnivores might have chosen a vegetarian life style to cope with food issues.
S-D) Animals might have all developed and shared hibernation techniques to deal with the long period of time in a boat.
S-E) To account for insects and snails, they could have floated on driftwood.
S-F) There was one supercontinent before the flood, which explains how all the animals got to the Ark.
S-G) Rising magma temperatures boiled away a significant amount of the ocean, which later provided the rain.
S-H) After the flood, the supercontinent broke apart and separated, carrying the animals to their new and distant homes, also pushing up mountains all over the world.
S-I) The Grand Canyon could have been made in a week, or a few days, or five minutes.
S-J) The Ice Age was after the flood.
S-K) Dinosaurs were on the Ark because Genesis says all land animals boarded the boat, and this includes them as well.
S-L) Dinosaurs might have been carried as eggs or very young, not necessarily fully grown.
S-M) Variation in humans, like different skin color or skeletal structure, is a result of one of Noah’s sons being “cursed” by Noah himself.
*time used: 6:30
Opponent (Non-Christian Creationist) Arguments:
O-1) No geologist will state that the world was flooded for a full year and ten days.
O-2) A global flood would not leave the fossil record or geologic column as we find it today.
O-3) No archeologist, anthropologist or historian will say there were 8 people alive 4500 years ago.
O-4) It is impossible for four couples who are related by blood to spawn our entire genetically diverse civilization.
O-5) Scholars and Creationist groups (like Answers In Genesis) agree that this flood was about 4500 years ago (2500 BC). Other cultures around the world survived as normal through this time and didn't drown. How can those older cultures be unaware of a global flood?
O-6) Neolithic Chinese cultures (Hongshan, Fuhe, Machang, Henan-Longshan, Shandong-Longshan, Liangzhu, Shijiahe, Hubei-Longshan, Baodun, Tanishan, Shixia, Nianyuzhuan, Qinglongquan, Hedang, Baiyangcun, Qijia) did not cease to exist 4500 years ago, but instead continued before, during, and after the supposed global flood.
O-7) How can Mesopotamia be united under the Akkadian empire in 2300 BC if there are all dead? Empires do not rise suddenly and inexplicably after only 8 people were alive a hundred years previous.
O-8) The Early Bronze Age is well documented and could not have been propagated by four couples of humans just a hundred or two years before.
O-9) No land plant would survive being crushed under 30,000 feet of water suddenly, much less for a whole year.
O-10) In order for it to rain for 40 days, the air pressure from the water vapor in the atmosphere would create around 13,000 psi (pressure per square inch), which is lethal, instead of the planet’s normal 14.5 psi at sea level.
O-11) The worst rainfall in recorded human history is 3.8 cm (or 1.5 inches) in one minute, from Barot, Guadeloups. Mt. Waialeale, on the island Kauai, Hawaii, gets an average of 474 inches per YEAR, with a record of 683 inches (or 57 feet) in 1982. In order to reach 30,000 feet (or 360,000 inches) in 40 DAYS, it would have to rain at a rate of 750 feet (or 9000 inches) per day, 31.25 feet (or 375 inches) per hour, .52 feet (or 6.24 inches) per minute.
O-12) Given the daily food requirement of a zoo, feeding 16,000 animals, much less 50,000, for an entire year is quite impossible. One Penguin would need a little over a ton of food for a year. Elephants eat 300 to 500 pounds of food per day, making it around 91 tons of food for one elephant for just one year.
O-13) It is physically impossible for 8 people to tend to the supposed numbers of animal on the ark, even if that were one minute a day to feed and clean them. With six hours of that day per person to sleep, eat, and clean themselves, that leaves 18 hours to tend to the animals. 1 animal per minute, 60 per hour, 1080 per 18 hours per person (of which there are 8).
O-14) How long would it take a kangaroo, polar bear, komodo dragon, or capybara to get to Turkey?
O-15) Dinosaurs. A single Brontosaurus, much less two, would have destroyed the Ark simply by walking on it with all of its 35 metric tons of weight onto the cypress wood planks. Some dinosaurs are up to 100 or even 134 feet long. Some are 40 to 60 feet tall. Others, like the Ultrasaurus are estimated to be as much as 180 tons in weight.
O-16) There are about 527 genera of Dinosaur, with 10 to 20 being discovered each year. Estimates are around 1800 in total genera that we could possibly find in the next century or two. Some we will never find.
O-17) Dinosaurs did not live with humans. The Flinstones cartoon was not a documentary. There are no books or reports in any cultures history that refer to town defenses against roaming groups of Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus.
O-18) Mixing the worlds fresh and salt waters would have destroyed marine ecosystems. There is no mechanism for the waters to have divided into fresh and salt water bodies 4500 years ago.
O-19) There is no mechanism to dispose of 30,000 feet of water on the surface of the entire planet, nor producing it in the first place.
O-20) Global population at around 3000 BC was about 20-25 million. In 2000 BC, estimates place global population at 35 million.
O-21) Exodus is placed at 3500 years ago. Bible says over 600,000 males over 20 years of age left Egypt, making it nearly one MILLION people including women and children. Four couples cannot reproduce into one million in under 1000 years, from 2500 to 1500 BC, much less 35 million.
O-22) If you believe in Noah's Ark you believe in SUPER Evolution. The rate of speciation of those limited pairs of animal would require an impossible speed to make up for the known and unknown level of diversity on this planet in such a limited amount of time.
O-23) The excuse of "fossils on mountains" doesn't work. Identifying those fossils will reveal that they are simpler forms of marine life that havn't been around for a very long time. There are no elephant or human fossils along with those marine fossils on mountain tops.
O-24) Admitting the world wasn't flooded for a year and 10 days invalidates the story as factual.
O-25) Admitting the world was not covered in 30,000 feet of water invalidates the story as factual.
O-26) A single Norway Spruce tree has a root system that has been growing for 9950 years. Sitting under 3000 feet in altitude, it obviously didn't suffer a global flood for a year.
O-27) Additional trees in Sweden have been shown to have survived for 5000 to 6000 years.
O-28) California White Mountains has a 5000 year old tree.
O-29) The Arizona Meteor Crater was not formed in the last 4500 years, as a global flood would have erased or filled in much of it.
O-30) The Ark itself has not been found, and the claims by Ron Wyatt have been refuted by multiple governments and agencies who have examined that specific Ark claim site near Dogubayazit with multiple tests.
O-31) Others of Wyatt's team have retracted their support for this claim, realizing they were mistaken. David Fasold is among them.
O-32) Lorence G. Collins, retired professor of geology from California State University, Northridge, published a paper co-authored by Fasold who was heading the last team permitted into the now military zone in Turkey.
"Bogus Noah's Ark from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure", published in Journal of Geosciences Education, v. 44, 1996, p. 439-444.
O-33) Multiple cultural references to their own versions of a flood story when those cultures are supposed to be dead doesn’t exactly stand on a firm foundation of logic.
O-34) If different versions in other cultures for a religious event in a specific faith is some kind of proof, what about virgin births?
O-35) European Project for Ice Coring (EPICA) in Dome C at Antarctica has a three kilometer ice core sample that shows the last 740,000 years of snowfall. This sample describes 8 separate ice ages.
O-36) The Genographic Project, and the data on Mitochondrial Eve, refutes the suggestion that the entire human population came from four couples 4500 years ago.
O-37) Human migration around the world did not start 4500 years ago with one family.
O-38) If the Grand Canyon was formed as a result of a single massive flood, there would be similar geologic formations around the world.
O-39) The Grand Canyon shares no traits or formations in common with any kind of flood, and in fact the meandering of the canyon, along with about a dozen other items, is evidence against such a suggestion.
O-40) Hawaii is a land mass created by a hot spot under the Pacific Plate. The Emperor Seamount chain, the history of this hot spot for the last 80 some million years, is impossible to form in 4500 years.
O-41) The suggestion of the water supply for the flood coming from an extraterrestrial location, like comets, is absurd. They would disintegrate in the atmosphere or explode on impact, vaporizing the water and incinerating much of the surrounding area.
O-42) If fissures opened and released as much water as would be needed to cover the planet, the entire crust of the planet would have collapsed in on itself, destroying the geologic column. This would also eliminate an escape method for all of that water as there would be no place for it to drain.
O-43) If magma boiled off significant portions of the ocean, every single fish and ocean dwelling animal would die instantly, obliterating every marine ecosystem. This would also present serious thermal issues for the rest of the world, not to mention making the atmosphere too wet and thick to breathe.
O-44) There are physical limitations to a strictly wooden boat, regardless of overall design, which would make the Ark itself impossible.
O-45) The excuse of a “super continent” doesn’t work. Continents don’t move, the Tectonic Plates do, and slowly at that (50 to 100 mm a year). A super continent would take several hundred million years to spread apart, not 4500 years.
O-46) Plain water freezes at 32° Fahrenheit (0° Celsius). Ocean water does freeze, but it depends on the salt content. At 30,000 feet, the temperature gets to about -50° F. The surface water would have frozen, entombing Noah and all the animals to a slow death by freezing.
O-47) There is 1/4th the amount of oxygen at 30,000 feet than at sea level. Normal humans cannot reach 5 miles in altitude without assisted breathing tanks (1980 -Reinhold Messner is just amazing), much less survive for 150 days while tending to tens of thousands of animals.
