please explain Noah's Arc to me?

That is WAY too many questions to answer here. We don't get that much room. I would love to answer all of them for you. There are good answers for each on of them. You are a smart person and you have good questions. But until someone explains these things out, you will have a hard time understanding them. That just the way it is. This is a tough subject! So, I will try to answer what I can here and for some more information of Noah's flood I HIGHLY recommend the book,

"In the Beginning" by Walt Brown. Get his 8th edition.

The ark had to hold 2 of every basic KIND of animals. Not every variation. Noah probably never saw a Chihuahua or any of the other hundreds of variations of the basic dog. He just had to bring 2 dogs.

Now the bible says that God brought the animals to Noah. I would assume that God selected out 2 of the animals with the very best DNA code that would provide for a lot of subsequent variation. Today we witness lots of isolated groups of variations, each nearing the shallow end of the gene pool. Further variation is more difficult and slow. But if you had the very richest and deepest gene pool, I assume that a lot of variation could occur and at a much faster rate! So if you think about basic kinds and not species and every variation. There are not that many basic kinds. It is in the low thousands. (probably around 5,000 basic kinds) He did not have to bring bugs, just land animals that breath through nostriles. (not bugs, no plants, no fish)

He brought dinosaurs. He probably brough all babies, just weaned. They are smaller and eat less and sleep a lot more. Search on the internet for blood and soft, still flexible tissue found in dinosaur fossils. Search for all the artifacts, drawings, carvings, and story accounts of dinosaurs in the ancient world. Before, they called them dragons.

But, you will see carvings and things of perfect dinosaurs!

They have been died out for well over 1500 years though.

Also, you are thinking of the "pre-flood" world so very wrong. You cannot picture this world and assume anything of the preflood world.

That would was still kind of like the paradise that God originally created. Everything was way different. I believe that there was WAY more land area than today. The climate was the same throughout the whole world. There was probably a representation of every kind of animal just about everywhere. Study what Kent Hovind says about the pre-flood world. He has some good insite. Also, check out this link

http://www.arkdiscovery.com/index.htm

Noah did not have to bring seeds for the plants. There were probably huge vegitation mats that were floating all over. Bugs and plant seeds could survive on them. The fish were not fresh water / salt water like today. They were all the same but they have adapted over time to be like that once the oceans gained more salt. There have been experiments where you can actually, over many years, take fresh water fish and gradually add more salt, and salt water fish, and take away salt from the water, and eventually you can put the fish in the same tank and they will live. There would have been rainbows before, just not in the sky and clouds. Again, the pre-flood world was way different. I think that there was a canopy above the atmosphere that diffused the light already and the atmosphere was different and it probably didn't have clouds for rain anyway. The bible says that everything was watered through springs, not rain. But after the flood, this canopy collapsed and our modern water cycle started.

Lol you crack me up! No seriously, did you even read the actual Noah story in the Bible? Well, here goes. God told Noah how to build and ark. He made sure he provided him with all the materials needed to build the ark, and had Noah go out and get them. There was absolutely no fish in the ark! Only land animals. And he probably went and got each kind two of different genders at a time. He God told him it was time to come out of the ark, after he tested the outside to make sure it was safe with two doves I believe. When it didn't come back to him that meant it was safe to go out. No antibiotics were invented then. Only natural herbs and plants. Insects did not go into the ark. No animals died. Humans came on earth after God destroyed dinosaurs. God did not speak about Noah taking any animal eggs in the ark. God did replenish the seas, he did not leave it barren. I would assume the animals ate vegetables until there was enough meat for animals to become carnivores again. Interestingly though, in the old days most living things ate plants, herbs, trees etc. Before Noah could come out of the ark. God has replaced the plants, trees etc. That's why it's a miracle! And no, Noah did not get any seeds. There was night and day, light and darkness before the flood. A lot of things happened before God destroyed the earth. He made everything God at first and Devil corrupted the earth and sadly humans followed him. That's why we die today. You should read The Holy Bible and read two chapters a day. Before you know it, you would have read the whole Bible.

We cannot be sure what the earth's geography was like prior to the Flood. Five or six generations after Noah, we can read in Genesis 10:25 that in the days of Peleg (which means "division") that "the earth was divided." Many believe that this means that God divided the earth into the continents we now see (though, I have to admit, it might instead mean that God divided people by language). If the land prior to the Flood was one big continent, this would indeed have facilitated the migration of animals to Noah's location. After the Flood it would have provided a way for the animals unique to Australia to get there.

The Ark was not big enough to hold all those animals and carry enough food for a year.

A very real possibility was that the animals Noah put in the Ark were not full grown. It would not take as much food for young samples of each species.

According to calculations in The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, page 69, the Ark could hold the equivalent of 522 standard two-decked railroad stock cars. To carry the no more than 35,000 estimated individual vertebrate animals, the average size being that of a sheep, would require no more than 146 such railroad cars.

Good questions all... But you missed a couple of good ones. Noah offered sacrifice after the ark landed. What happened to that species of animal?

Reread Genesis, he took 7 pairs of the "clean" animals, but how'd he know which were clean since Moses hadn't received the 613 Mizvot at Sinai (or was it Horeb?) yet?

Oh, and if all of the humans except Noah's family died in the flood, how the heck did the Kenites (children of Cain) end up in Caanan after the flood?

My personal opinion is that the flood story is adapted from an earlier account of a localized flood in Mesopotamia that did not cover the entire earth. Probably between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Check out the "Epic of Gilgamesh." Nevertheless, it makes a great allegory.

after reading that story for myself in genesis

also consulting with various creationist experts (see websites)

genesis 6 says that noah was to take FOOD with him also to feed himself (and family) as well as enough for all the animals.

most plants did not need preserving - seeds can remain dormant for years at a time if need be until the right conditions are found to favour gemination - noah was only in the ark for a year. the animals would have been in fairly dark conditions so they would have been far less active and needed less food than they would usually have been consuming.

also certain animals (genesis 7 v 2) noah took 7 of on the ark not just one mating pair of animals that had breath (not fish because they were in the sea and didnt need rescuing. hence the carnivores would have been taken care of - animals that are good to eat tend to be quite prolific when breeding anyways (how many rabbits would have gotten OFF the ark after a year for example?)

if the animals died on the ark then yes that would have led to extinction - hence the importance of having younger healthy animals at the get go. some of the enormous animals were not always that way - getting the young of that particular species when they were smaller (and ate less) could have been the way to go. hence dinosaurs were rescued too.

your last question about the light rays - i cant know for sure but enough to say that judging by the change of conditions and the sudden reduction of life spans subsequently that it was significantly more harmful to life than previously

Here watch this should clear things up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz-W6nsBJPQ

And actually the Bible says the land was all in one place before the flood. And that the land divided in the days of Peleg shortly after the flood. Believe it or not.

http://creation.com/in-pelegs-days-the-earth-was-d...

Take a look at the ocean floor from google earth. You'll notice the earth division marks all across the sea floor. You'll also notice they look just as fresh in the center where the continents connected and haven't worn down anymore than right next the continents. So whenever it happened it was over a relatively short period of time. Certainly not billions or even millions of years. The erosion just isn't there and the marks are still fresh and very even from center to edges.

As far as I'm concerned God has a proved to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that He is real. I do not understand the same things that you are in contention with but I know this, that God can do anything He wants. For me it's easy to have faith in the Bible as Absolute truth because I can trust God, He's real to me. What you need to do is to stop looking for doubt but look at the many, many things that have been confirmed by history using the Bible, there is even a verse that says that the stones will speak for themselves. It is logic that can not fathom the mysteries of God, this is why He gave some of us a GIFT which is faith. Never forget that we who believe were once in the same place you are at now and that the Bible is "non-sense" that thousands have traded their lives for. People who believe this "non-sense" are different in the respects that it takes an inner depth to embrace things that are by their own nature contrary to our logic but you could never admit to being shallow or believe that you and all non-believers just don't have the profound inner depth that is needed to be secure that this "non-sense" we believe in is truth.

I can't answer all of your questions, but I know Gilligan and the Skipper helped out a lot with feeding and such. The Professor helped with logistics and boat repairs. Maryanne and Ginger kept the ark clean. Well, mostly Maryanne. Ginger didn't want to soil her gown. And the Howell's... well they didn't contribute much to be honest.

Oh, and that story about Jonah living inside a big fish for 3 days and 3 nights and surviving? Totally true. It says so in the bible so it has to be true.

Ooh..that last bit about the rainbow, that's interesting. From my deep, deep studies of all the ark type stories from all the oldest religions known to man, many long before the bible but including the bible, it seems that Noah or whatever his name may be according to which religion you're studying, took the seed of all animals into the ark.

Now, even the bible say's this (i don't know where you got your land bridges bit from) but the bible says he took two of all clean and two all unclean animals, he also took their seed. I propose that this was the interpretation of the translators who at that time would have no conception of laboratory babies!

But that rainbow bit is something i never thought about before....now let's see..infra red is below the visible spectrum then we have red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo, violet, then ultra violet.

Now i'm just wondering what that tells us about the conditions on earth before the flood. There are various layers to the earths atmosphere which protect us from radiation etc and i'm wondering now if there were other filters or less filters than there are now, before the flood. Let me think about this one.

Science proved a great flood happened. And as for the rest, you can look it up and see it is possible. And God created all things you see and things you do not see. So why could he not have them survive without food. This is well within God's capabilities, though Noah took food.

:You can seek and find out all this yourself. Information is available.

take care.