1. What did the animals eat after they disembarked from the ark? Assuming the Noachian flood was world-wide, and covered the tallest mountains (for arguments sake, we'll say Ararat at approx 17,000 was the tallest), how did the plants & seeds survive to repopulate the world? At a depth of 17,000 feet, the pressures would have utterly destroyed any normal, surface growing flora. 2. What did the animals with specific diets eat? Assuming Noah brought seeds with him, what did the animals eat for the months it took Noah to plant, grow and harvest all the various specialty foodstuffs... everything from Bamboo (which is notoriously difficult to grow) for the Pandas, to eucalyptus for the Koalas. How about spiders? Did Noah collect all of the thousands of species, and provide them with live insects to feast on? 3. After disembarking, how did the slower "kinds" survive being eaten by the predators, and not go extinct? Assuming there were at least *some* representatives from the various carnivore groups... wolves, cats, alligators, bears, komodo dragons... it makes sense that once free, these predators would have competed fiercely to kill all of the slowest, easiest prey first. So how did the 7 cows or 7 wildebeests survive (were they clean animals- I forget), especially when herd animals rely on hundreds of members to protect each other from predators? 4. Where did the waters recede TO? Even if it once existed, we know there is no "canopy" of water hovering magically over the earth today, so that means all of the water must have receded INTO the Earth? Huh? How is this possible? The volume of water necessary to cover the Earth to a depth of 17,000 feet, were it to sink into the ground, would have to go WELL past the depth of the Earth's crust, into its mantle to recede. This, of course, is impossible, since the mantle is approximately 500 degrees where it meets the crust, and we all know water boils at 212 degrees. This would mean the entire surface of the planet would have become a superheated, steamy, muddy slush, as the water vaporized and rose up through the soil, making the land quite unstable, and the atmosphere quite unbreathable. 5. What about the insects? There are nearly a million known insects on Earth. There may be as many as THREE TIMES this number of undiscovered insect species. Obviously ALL the insects could not have survived under the water. While some rare insects might be able to live at depth of 17,000 feet for a short period, the vast majority could not. That means that they had to either board the ark with Noah (clearly impossible), or they had to live on floating debris. Does the absurdity of this even need to be explained further? I appreciate any rational, non-magical/supernatural (e.g. god can do anything) explanations to these questions.

I think the fact that there are so many impossible variables in this story means 1 of 2 things. 1) It's not true; problem solved. 2) If there was truly a divine purpose for the flooding and for God's saving Noah, his family, and two of every creature, there are clearly not human ways of figuring out the details. Just getting all the creatures on the ark would be humanly impossible, not to mention all the things you listed. The same way Jesus feed thousands with enough food for five, and then had some leftover, it indeed passes all human understanding.

Five questions about Noah's Ark which I hope the literalists can help me with?

Martin S2008-10-03T18:44:49Z

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Most of your questions are answered on this page and you can do a site search to find the others.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/HOME/AREA/faq/noah.asp

Get Answers: Noah’s Ark

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the waterbourne AM2008-10-03T19:58:54Z

The utter absurdity of some of these responses is , frankly, mind-blowing. Is it really that difficult to look at such an utterly impossible story and recognize it for the religious fable that it is? This doesn't lessen the value of the story at all, but to try and rationalize its legitimacy with nonsensical hypotheses, and outright lunacy is tantamount to committing intellectual suicide. Do you people even read the responses you're giving?

Since there are absolutely no rational answers from the standpoint of someone that likely views rationality as a tool of the devil, I'll pretend like I'm someone that actually uses their brain but previously believed the story of the ark and give you 5 rational answers to your 5 questions....

1)That's a good point, hadn't thought of it that way. Even if the plants could survive such a long stretch of submersion, obviously an influx of salt water would have killed virtually everything but mangroves, coconuts, and a few sea grasses.

2)Another fine point, what would they have been eating while they were waiting for these plants to grow anyways....?

3)Good call. If there were any predators at all on the ark (and there must have been for them to exist today) I'd bet at least 90% of the herbivores would have been rendered genetically extinct within a month or so.....the predators wouldn't have to kill both moose for moose to become extinct, just one of them.

4)Hmmm, or where did they come from in the first place. The amount of water needed to flood the earth to that depth would be great indeed! The idea that it was held in a magic envelope in space doesn't work....it would block out far to much sunlight as water vapor, and isn't water vapor an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas as well? Something like 20 times worse than CO2 at trapping heat....the planet would have been somewhere between 200 and 350 degrees if that was true.

5) Insects are a good point; I've also always wondered about the freshwater fish and amphibians. For many of these even a mild influx of salt water would be almost instantly leathal....did Noah build aquariums as well? How about all of the non-motile seashore creatures? Was Noah out there for months before the ark left with a clam rake? I'm not even sure how many species of gastropods, arthropods, and crustaceans there are on the worlds' coasts; but they certainly wouldn't survive a long submersion under 17,000 feet of sea water....

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David D2008-10-03T22:55:23Z

Please consider this:

If there had been a Noah’s ark where all animals were reduced to just two individuals – one male and one female – then the genetic variability, within a species (kind), of all animals existing today would be essentially ZERO. All animals, all over the world today, would suffer the problem of a lack of genetic variability that the Cheetah does today. The genes of Cheetahs are so similar, one to another, that when skin grafts between non-related Cheetahs are made there is no rejection of the donor skin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_variability
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheetah

Yet, this is not what is found. Only a few species (kinds) have the problem of low genetic variability. Cheetahs experienced a near extinction about 10,000 years ago (down to perhaps less than ten individuals). Today they have almost no genetic variability within the species because of that near extinction.

Yet, the millions of animals around the world don't suffer from this problem. That is because they were never reduced to just two individuals. They were never on an ark. There never was a general flood that caused all life, except for two of a kind of every animal, to perish.

It is obvious that the story of Noah’s ark is a wonderful story – but just a story.

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PB Max2008-10-03T18:56:13Z

First I don't think you truly care about the answers that will be given as you have clearly made up your mind. However I will indulge you on a few points. The bible never says that every living creature survived. Neither does it say that all plant life survived. How do any insects survive long periods of time in desolate situations or frigid to make it to the next season?. I think a good reading of the book of Job would help you primarily the last 3 chapters. In that I believe God describes many creatures in detail some of which I believe to be dinosaurs. Chapter 41 contains the phrase he ranks first in the works of God pertaining to the creatures size. A tail that sways like a cedar. This is interesting because Job is know as the oldest book in the bible. Before the time of Moses. Being that the Earth is 2/3rds water and most of the water came from the sky as it says it was above the firmament some receding happened and some evaporation as well. A whole new environmental system was created by this. I believe there were many more species of insects and animals before man proliferated the Earth. We are seeing only the tip of the iceberg. On that note much of the water has also become ice at the polar caps you know the thing we fear melting because the seas will rise and reclaim land? How do you explain BTW the tropical plants and animals found in the arctic region. It's because there was a greenhouse effect on this planet at one time that kept the whole planet in a tropical state. That is also why peoples ages were drastically changed from before and after the flood. The sun limits our years on the Earth and causes extreme aging when exposed directly instead of diffused through water. This is a snippet. I hope you actually care.

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G C2008-10-03T18:54:34Z

I will answer number 4. I think that God dealt with the others and made that happen. But where did the water go.

The Bible says that God broke open the doors and the water came out, this was when there was only one land, Genesis 1 and after we see that the land was divided Genesis 10:21. Now there are the platonic plates. The firmament which God worked on a whole day was gone now and on earth. We know that there are mountains under the water, so we can see that there is much more water on the earth today than then.

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Five questions about Noah's Ark which I hope the literalists can help me with?

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