Originally posted by NPRLover:
From another site:
Regarding the Ark
(Source - mythofjesus.org.uk)
A conservative estimate of the lifeforms that Noah would have had to collect is:
Insects: 1,000,000
Mammals: 4,008
Birds: 8,600
Reptiles: 6,252
Amphibians: 2,000
TOTAL SPECIES - 1,020,860
TOTAL IF IN PAIRS - 2,041,720
According to the Bible, Noah's sons existed before he began collecting the species. One of his sons, Shem, was born 1,558 years after creation and the flood took place 1,656 years after creation. Therefore, Noah had about 98 years to collect all two million life forms. In order for Noah to do this he would have to collect 20,832 species a year, or 57 species a day. Taking into account the travel time required to gather all the life forms on earth Noah's task would have been even more difficult.
Additionally, Noah would have had to feed and care for all these animals during the time that he collected them all, and during the flood itself; therefore he would also have to collect many times more species simply for feed stock. There is also the fact that in addition to doing all this, there would have been several tons of animal excrement to remove every day.
Additionally, there is the fact that many species on this planet cannot exist outside their ecosystems (For example, how did Noah keep the polar bear alive in the middle east climate?).
This is omitting the fact that there is no indisputable evidence of a global flood and other problems such as how the animals survived after they got back on dry land, and also how they were able to migrate to other land masses surrounded by oceans.
Regarding the Flood
(Source - Talk.Origins Archive)
A global flood would have produced evidence contrary to the evidence we see:
- How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?
- Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores from Greenland have been dated back more than 40,000 years by counting annual layers. A worldwide flood would be expected to leave a layer of sediments, noticeable changes in salinity and oxygen isotope ratios, fractures from buoyancy and thermal stresses, a hiatus in trapped air bubbles, and probably other evidence. Why doesn't such evidence show up?
- How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern climatic conditions.
- Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time.
- Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (2) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (3) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?