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Noah Ark and Math

JAStewart

Graduate Poster
JAStewart
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
1,521
Interesting take on Noahs Ark I found, it obviously completely refutes the fairy tale:

Anyway, that's not really the point of the post. You see, later on in Chapter 6, it starts to talk about Noah and the Ark. We all know the story, but here are some verses of it anyway..

"Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and set the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks.
For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female.
Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them." Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him." - Genesis 6:14-22

A cubit could be a number of lengths, but to be safe I'll use the largest one, which is 2.25 feet.

The length of the ark was to be 300 cubits, width 50 cubits, and height 30 cubits. Using the formula to find area ( Length x Width x Height ), it could be said that the area of the ark was about 450,000 cubits, which is 1,012,500 feet.

Now, Noah was supposed to take every kind of food and every kind of animal into the ark. There are over 6,000 species of reptiles, 9,000 birds, 1,000 amphibians, and 15,000 species of mammals. Forgetting the fact that some of those animals were big, like Elephants and whatnot, let's just average it out.. let's say every animal took up 4 square feet. If you were to take every one of those animals and their mate, it would equal to 250,000 square feet.

Assuming each pair of animals is going to eat/drink one square foot of nourishment everyday ( Of course birds won't, and of course elephants will eat more, but anyway. ) for all the days they are out there means that you would have to get all of the animals, which is approximately 31,000.. and each give them one square foot of food each day. This, assuming they were out there for 40 days, ( I know 40 days just meant "A long period of time.", but I need to work with numbers here. ) would mean that they would have had to started out with 1,240,000 square feet of food. Add that to the already 250,000 square feet of animals taking up space, and you have 1,490,000 square feet of "stuff."

That's 477,500 square feet more than the ark could handle.
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Link
 
JAStewart said:
Interesting take on Noahs Ark I found, it obviously completely refutes the fairy tale:



Link
Click to expand...

Ouch. I wouldn't refer to that again if I were you, because it's gibberish. Aside from elementary mistakes in mathematics, such as confusing area with volume (length times width time height gives you the VOLUME of the Ark, which is measured in CUBIC feet), and not taking into account the possibility that things might be stacked above the gunwales on the upper deck....

It also confuses "species" with "kind," which creationists have been using for decades or more to avoid dealing with this issue. There are, for example, three different elephant "species," but most creationists would consider all three examples of the same "kind" (baramin). Similarly, there are something like forty different cat species, but it's not clear how many kinds they comprise. And one beetle is pretty much like another if you have a creationist-level understanding of biology, which cuts your number of animals you need to carry nearly in half.
 
drkitten said:
...if you have a creationist-level understanding of biology,...
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It's what I call "kindergarten zoology". These definitive gymnastics just lead Bible literalists to other uncomfortable questions like: "Well, did the 'kinds' evolve into the current number of species?"

I still like Tricky's remark about not being able to fit two of every kind if you froze and stacked them.
 
Foster Zygote said:
It's what I call "kindergarten zoology". These definitive gymnastics just lead Bible literalists to other uncomfortable questions like: "Well, did the 'kinds' evolve into the current number of species?"

I still like Tricky's remark about not being able to fit two of every kind if you froze and stacked them.
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Well then. You would have to dehydrate them (freeze drying maybe?). After all there was lots of water around still to rehydrate them after the flood. I'll leave the calculations as to the time it would take to dehydrate and rehydrate, as an exercise for the reader. ;)
 
Noah's Ark is a weak-point in literalist defences, but math isn't the tool to use against it. The story actually describes the tiny horizons of the people that made it up, who could name a few dozen animals and birds and picture them all on a tremendous boat that was, like, two blocks long, dude! A practical story, where the only magic was in a god's message. No need to account for microbes or invertebrates

Who wants to be associated with tiny horizons these days? The idea that we're smarter than those old-time guys is easy to sell, especially to the young. Math, not so much.
 
The whole Noah's Ark thing always strikes me as a lazy god story more than anything else. People are broken, I'm not going to fix them, so I'm going to kill them all. Oh, except you 10 there. And the animals. I like them. I have all the power in the universe so I could just kill all the people without the flood... Or just save all the animals with my mighty powers... But, no, I think you should toil and work and build a boat! Sounds like a plan to me... All I have to do is make it rain.
 
Literalists are planning another expedition to look for it, so I'm sure they'll have this little mystery solved any time now.

No more need to debate. Ark found. Just a few "details" to work out really. :rolleyes:

(Like, I heard the US CIA had satellite pictures of it from the 1960s but they covered it up as the government is a bunch of athiest free masons!)
 
drkitten said:
Similarly, there are something like forty different cat species, but it's not clear how many kinds they comprise.
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Ironically, though, that if you call them all one "kind" then the rate of evolution and speciation that would have to occur (sorry, "adaptation") since the time of the supposed flood to get all the species of cats that we now have would have to be much faster than the typical rates of evolution that biologists postulate and the creationists claim are impossible.

On one hand, we have creationists claiming "give one example of speciation that has been observed." Yet, on the other hand, if there is a single cat kind brought on the ark, then there would have had to been 40 speciation events just among cats in 4000 years.
 
pgwenthold said:
On one hand, we have creationists claiming "give one example of speciation that has been observed." Yet, on the other hand, if there is a single cat kind brought on the ark, then there would have had to been 40 speciation events just among cats in 4000 years.
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Work out the same math but with beetles... or ants... or are we just going with one "bug" kind?
 
Foster Zygote said:
It's what I call "kindergarten zoology". These definitive gymnastics just lead Bible literalists to other uncomfortable questions like: "Well, did the 'kinds' evolve into the current number of species?"

I still like Tricky's remark about not being able to fit two of every kind if you froze and stacked them.
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Ah, but if Noah were an embryologist with an incubator? Now we're talkin'..........Noah, the inventor of wine and stem cell research.
 
The Noah story is taken directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Once one realizes that - then it is a moot point to talk about the size of the boat and the food needed. It's just a fartin'-around-the-campfire story. Of course it never happened. Anyone who believes it did is an idiot.
 
triadboy said:
The Noah story is taken directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Once one realizes that - then it is a moot point to talk about the size of the boat and the food needed. It's just a fartin'-around-the-campfire story. Of course it never happened. Anyone who believes it did is an idiot.
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Boy that is quit the statement, so what, I think that anyone who looks around and thinks that this whole world is like it is by chance is mistaken\(notice how I left the name calling out)
Now on to Noah's ark. Oh never mind it's not like any of you would even listen anyway.
 
jesus_freak said:
Boy that is quit the statement, so what, I think that anyone who looks around and thinks that this whole world is like it is by chance is mistaken\(notice how I left the name calling out)
Now on to Noah's ark. Oh never mind it's not like any of you would even listen anyway.
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Actually, anyone who looks at the range of species on this earth, and thinks that Noah could have loaded them two by two and dropped them all into the absolutely correct environments all over the world is quite mistaken.
 
I'm listening. The fact is that the Epic of Gilgamesh told the story of a flood, a man named Utnapishtim, that gathered up the world's animals and saved them and was rewarded with immortality by the gods. The Epic of Gilgamesh predates Judaism by nearly a thousand years.

The flood story originates in the Epic of Atrahasis, which is older still than the Epic of Gilgamesh. It is also interesting the the Sumerian 'Genesis' tale mirrors the Judeo-Christian 'Genesis'.

It looks like god plagiarized?
 
there are over 250 flood stories so whats your point? I think that means that there was a flood. And I am sure that you think they are all mistaken.
 
I wasn't there I don't know. I am just saying that if you take the Biblical flood account as fact, then you must take the Sumerian flood account as fact.
 
jesus_freak said:
there are over 250 flood stories so whats your point? I think that means that there was a flood. And I am sure that you think they are all mistaken.
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There was a flood in my town two months ago. Thus the bible is true. The Sumerians and Babylonians invented the wheel, learned to brew beer and make glue many, many millenia before the YEC'ers claim god created the world. Thus the bible is true?
 
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