Did the Flood Really Take Place? Is it Feasible?
Adapted from
Answer of Yair Davidiy to:
What is the best scientific proof to debunk Noah's Ark myth?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-scientific-proof-to-debunk-Noahs-Ark-myth/answer/Yair-Davidiy
This article is a short answer replying to criticisms against the Biblical account of the Flood.
It is claimed that the world is billions of years old and somehow this makes the Flood story less credible?
Supposing it was so.
The Bible may be understood to be centered on MANKIND. History begins from the first man. Human Beings as we know them came into being ca. 3760 BCE.
At first the world was different, people lived longer, giants existed, etc. Then came The Flood in ca. 2105 BCE.
We do not claim that the scientists who are occupied with Chronology are always in error. They do however not take account of changes in the atmosphere, etc. They also cannot say other than what they do say and still keep the jobs, status, and self-esteem they now have. They cannot explain how dinosaurs could have existed if the atmosphere and environment were the same then as they are now!
The Size of the Ark
The size of the Ark is one point that they say lacks credibility.
It is too big.
"No wooden ship could be that large!"
The Bible however tells us: The Ark was not so much a boat but rather a floating receptacle. It did not have to go anywhere but rather just stay afloat. As for its size similar ships of comparable size to that given are apparently known to history.
Chinese records speak of great treasure ships. A Wikipedia article records this but rejects it.
# Chinese treasure ship - Wikipedia According to British scientist, historian and sinologist Joseph Needham, the purported dimensions of the largest of these ships were 135 metres (440 ft) by 55 metres (180 ft), which would make them at least twice as long as the largest European ships at the end of the sixteenth century. In fact, such dimensions would make the treasure ships larger than the largest wooden boats ever built, even 19th century steel-reinforced ones.[citation needed] These dimensions have thus been challenged, on engineering grounds by experts and on the reliability of their sources...
Nevertheless, remains of Carthaginian ships have been found of about half the size given. Ancient records speak of the Carthaginians having had ships that were very much larger than those so far uncovered. It would merely require the Carthaginians and others to have possessed engineering skill and techniques that have since been forgotten to resolve this question.
Feeding the Animals?
How could Noah have fed the animals and keep them alive for at least half a year?
Put them into hibernation! Small and large animals (such as bears) hibernate for months on end. Why not find a way to do it for 40 days?
Room for all the Creatures?
There are about 8 million different species of animal. How could they all fit on the Ark?
Do Scientist ask such questions? Do they lack belief in their own doctrines? Animals are born with inbuilt adaptation potentials. There are 100s or 1000s of known examples. Darwin quoted the case of finches changing the hardness of their bird-beaks according to the type of seeds (for eating) available. This however is NOT evolution. It is inbuilt adaptation that can be switched on or off. So too, with types of animals. We only need one canine couple, one equid pair, etc.
How many major types of animals are there? We do not need 8 million plus places on the Ark but only major types. Compare marsupials to other mammals. Marsupials carry their young in a pouch. Well-known marsupials include kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, possums, opossums, wombats, and Tasmanian devils. Fossil findings show that there were types of large cat-like marsupials, marsupials that looked and acted like dogs, like rats, like giant bears, like hippopotamii, etc. In fact there were numerous kinds of marsupials that filled ecological niches that elsewhere are taken by regular mammals. Assumedly all marsupials according to Evolution evolved from the one forefather.
Alternatively perhaps the features that distinguish marsupials from other animals were themselves an adaptation that could coevally affect different animals that were not necessarily from the same family?
Intercontinental Connections?
After the Flood it is claimed that we find the same kinds of plants and animals in different continents. How could they have gotten there if the Flood took them all away?
This is not a problem but the Scientists make it sound like one.
The Flood lasted for 40 days plus waters covering the earth for another 150 in different places. Most plants could survive that somehow or other.
Source: Pangaea - Wikipedia
Creationists sometimes raise the possibility of Pangea occurring after the Flood. there may be something to this. Pangaea, or Pangea, was a supercontinent that assembled from earlier continental units. After this it broke apart again. The present different Continents are the separate pieces of what was once one large mass. The idea is that the different parts of the Continents merged together and then afterwards separated out again. One of their proofs is the continental masses seeming to be able to fit together as if once they were all part of one whole interlocking body. If this did happen it would explain many phenomena. Whatever caused it to happen may also have caused the Flood or contributed towards it.
The time of Pangea is given as about 175 million years ago. What if it took palace within the last three thousands years?
The scientists are the ones who suggested the idea of Pangea. They are the ones who say that similar animals and plants etc., got to the ends of the earth by walking or sailing there. The difference between Evolutionists and Creationists is that the Evolutionists ascribe billions of years for a process to take place whereas the Creationists do not.
Every people on earth from the most primitive to the most sophisticated has had some version of the Flood story. It is a universal human tradition. it must therefore reflect an actual happening at the beginning of human existence as it now is.
It is claimed that there would not be enough water for the Flood to take place, that it could not cover every mountain, etc.
Genesis (NASB) 7:
4 For after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made. 5 Noah did according to all that the LORD had commanded him.
6 Now Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of water [g]came upon the earth. 7 Then Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him entered the ark because of the water of the flood. 8 Of clean animals and animals that are not clean and birds and everything that creeps on the ground, 9 there went into the ark to Noah by twos, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. 10 It came about after the seven days, that the water of the flood came upon the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. 12 The rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.
The Flood was caused by the floodgates in the sky opening up as well the fountains of the great deep bursting open. There may have existed underground Seas under the Continental Masses. These imploded as the waters burst forth, the earth sank and the waters covered it.
In order to accept the literal truth of the Bible it could be enough to say that the Flood covered all parts of the inhabited earth at that time.
Nevertheless, if we are looking to apply the Biblical verses in an all-encompassing manner then a little physics might be appropriate.
Water from the Ocean
There is more water in the Oceans then there is dry land mass on the Continents. The height of the Oceans is probably higher than the land mass! The viscosity of water is less than that of earth and so centrifugal forces and gravitational pull have different effects on water than on landmasses. Viewed from a cross section the oceans bulge out.
At present water from the Oceans covers most surface area of the earth BUT the Continental Land Masses are interspersed from one sea to another. This reduces the mass of water in one area. If Pangea ever existed it would mean that most of the water on earth would have been concentrated in one body. This would have increased bulging water effect. In fact, theoretically Pangea breaking up and moving from one collected mass of land to individual continents could have caused the Deluge! Less water in one uninterrupted continuum would mean a lowered ability to tolerate the previously existing water bulge. The excess water would have had to go somewhere until a new equilibrium established itself.
How could the flood have covered all the mountains?
For water to cover all the earth everywhere it does not mean we have to have water at the same height in every place. The earth is not flat!
We just need the water level to be higher than the land where land is. Changes in the gravitational pull of the moon or other planetary influences could effect this.
The Rainbow
The Rainbow was placed in the sky as a sign of Covenant that a Flood will not take place again.
Genesis (NASB) 9:
12 God said, This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; 13 I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. 14 It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, 15 and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
It is objected that the rainbow comes about due to the refraction of sunlight in raindrops or mist. It must therefore, they argue, have always been that way.
Rainbows are both a physical phenomenon and an optical illusion. If the physical reality changed after the Flood, possibly due to the Flood, then the manifestation of rainbows may have been facilitated by the changed physical environment.
Sargon the Great
Another argument against the Flood is the claimed existence of ancient civilizations at the time on question
For instance, Sargon the Great of Akkad (Assyria) "founded the Old Akkadian Dynasty, which continued for a few hundred years after his death, until the Akkadian Empire was conquered by the Gutian Dynasty (Sumerians) around 2100 BCE."
And so on.
They assert that written records of various civilizations existed before the time given for the Flood and continued to be in existence all the way through it.
If such was the case then the Flood could not have occurred.
This objection however is only valid if we accept the Chronology as given.
If the known facts are examined in the Light of the Bible and other evidence we may find that Sargon the Great is the same monarch otherwise identified as Sargon-2 of Assyria who reigned according to conventional reckoning in 722-705 BCE. He therefore existed after the Flood and not before or in the course of it.