Coming from Somerset, England, a large swath of which is
currently under water (including the house I spent my tweenage years), floods
have been on my mind. So my blog entry to day is about probably the most famous
“flood”.
The infamous creation museum - where dinosaurs walk
peaceably with humans in the Garden of Eden and visitors are told that the
world is just a little over 6000 years old (for a review by a scientist see) is
planning to build a Noah’s Ark exhibit (http://arkencounter.com/).
Although the story of a great flood pre-dates the bible and
is referred to in Mesopotamian tablets dating back as far as 1800BC (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/11/noahs-ark-round-ancient-british-museum-mesopotamian-clay-tablets-flood),
biblical literalists (for example http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/caring-for-the-animals
and http://icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=2465
for just a couple of examples) including the above mentioned creation museum treat
the Noah story as historical fact (based on Genesis 6-8), that all the species
of animals in the world were carried in the Ark, and that this is a valid and
equal explanation for the existence of current biodiversity as evolution by
natural selection.
Let’s for the moment overlook that fact that biblical scriptures
does not agree on the exact story of Noah’s Ark, for example in one version of
the story of the flood, it lasted 40 days whereas a second says 150 days, and
likewise in one version version Noah sent out a dove three times to look for
dry land, and the other a raven is sent out once, yet Christian fundamentalists
are adamant about the version that appears in Genesis is the literal truth. Let’s
look at the nature of the Ark.
The ship was six times as long as it was wide, with three
decks and an opening in the side 450 ft long X 50 by 30 ‘ high or 521 ‘ x 87’ by 52’ high, depending on what version of
cubit you use for determining the size.
The largest wooden ship built to date was the six masted schooner Wyoming, which was built in 1909, and
which was 450’ long. This ship sank, because at that size wood is not an effective
building material, and it twists and warps. Bear in mind that Noah and his sons
were building a vessel that was actually slightly larger, with bronze age
tools, and were not experienced boat builders with university trained engineers
structurally designing the vessel.
Now, inside this vessel all the creatures of the earth would
be placed two by two. Genesis 7, mentions that 7 pairs of birds and “clean”
species were put upon the ark, with one pair of each ”unclean” species (there are
currently 10,000 bird species, which would mean 140,000 animals, which would be
a tight squeeze as the generally given dimensions of the ark would allow as average 1 ¾ foot cube per individual bird) and
so conditions would have been pretty cramped. At the moment there are an
estimated 8.7 million species, not including bacteria etc (Mora et al. 2011; http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001127).
The biblical literalists talk about the Ark holding 7,000 to 16,000 species,
including dinosaurs, and to get around the issue of size, it has been posited that
the animals were all babies, in order to fit. In order for those species to
have <I can see biblical literalists shudder at the thought> evolved into
the number of species recorded today, approximately 6 species of animal would
have had to have spontaneously arisen every 24 hours since the flood. Don’t get
me started on the genetic bottlenecks involved.
Logistics of space and species diversity aside, Noah must
have spent a long time travelling post flood, to, for example, taxi kangaroos from
the middle east to Australia, kiwi’s to
New Zealand, and must also have repopulated North America with wildlife.
So to biblical literalists I say – WTF guys?!
Now if you wanted to take the biblical stories as folk history,
the Mediterranean region has had a history of earthquakes and volcanic
activity, and a tsunami or other geological event that may have led to a
regional flood (hey perhaps there were minor earthquakes and Noah in his wisdom
preempted an upcoming biggie on its way), and Noah built a preemptive boat to carry
a diversity of agricultural livestock, and perhaps some local wildlife, well
maybe that makes logical and scientific sense. But increasingly biblical fundamentalists
are trying to crow bar a literal interpretation of Genesis 6-8 into science
classes (for example see http://ict.aiias.edu/vol_26A/26Acc_057-077.htm
, http://noahsdinosaurs.wordpress.com/,
http://christiananswers.net/kids/lesson-plans.html#noah,
and for what to do if you encounter this issue see http://ncse.com/rncse/20/1-2/search-noahs-ark-science-curriculum
for starters). It a literal interpretation of the Noah’s Ark story is to be
included side by side with evolution in terms of validity you would have to
disregard our current understanding of not only biology, but geology, paleontology,
geography and quite frankly engineering and mathematics to boot.
