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Post by Charity on Dec 30, 2005 12:47:30 GMT -5
Noah's Flood—what about all that water? By Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland, Ed. Don Batten
First published in The Revised & Expanded Answers Book Chapter 12
Where did all the water come from for the Flood? Was there a water vapor canopy? How was Mount Everest covered with water? Where did the water go after the Flood? How could this have happened?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended Resources: The Revised and Expanded Answers Book Why Won't They Listen? The Lie: Evolution Refuting Evolution Refuting Evolution 2
In telling us about the globe-covering Flood in the days of Noah, the Bible gives us much information about where the waters came from and where they went. The sources of the water are given in Genesis 7:11 as ‘the fountains of the great deep’ and the ‘windows of heaven.’
The fountains of the great deep The ‘fountains of the great deep’ are mentioned before the ‘windows of heaven,’ indicating either relative importance or the order of events.
What are the ‘fountains of the great deep?’ This phrase is used only in Genesis 7:11. ‘Fountains of the deep’ is used in Genesis 8:2, where it clearly refers to the same thing, and Proverbs 8:28, where the precise meaning is not clear. ‘The great deep’ is used three other times: Isaiah 51:10, where it clearly refers to the ocean; Amos 7:4, where God's fire of judgment is said to dry up the great deep, probably the oceans; and Psalm 36:6, where it is used metaphorically of the depth of God's justice/judgment. ‘The deep’ is used more often, and usually refers to the oceans (e.g., Genesis 1:2; Job 38:30, 41:32; Psalm 42:7, 104:6; Isaiah 51:10, 63:13; Ezekiel 26:19; Jonah 2:3), but sometimes to subterranean sources of water (Ezekiel 31:4, 15). The Hebrew word (mayan) translated ‘fountains’ means ‘fountain, spring, well.’1
So, the ‘fountains of the great deep’ are probably oceanic or possibly subterranean sources of water. In the context of the Flood account, it could mean both.
If the fountains of the great deep were the major source of the waters, then they must have been a huge source of water. Some have suggested that when God made the dry land appear from under the waters on the third day of creation, some of the water that covered the earth became trapped underneath and within the dry land.2
Genesis 7:11 says that on the day the Flood began, there was a ‘breaking up’ of the fountains, which implies a release of the water, possibly through large fissures in the ground or in the sea floor. The waters that had been held back burst forth with catastrophic consequences.
There are many volcanic rocks interspersed between the fossil layers in the rock record—layers that were obviously deposited during Noah's Flood. So it is quite plausible that these fountains of the great deep involved a series of volcanic eruptions with prodigious amounts of water bursting up through the ground. It is interesting that up to 70 percent or more of what comes out of volcanoes today is water, often in the form of steam.
In their catastrophic plate tectonics model for the Flood (see What about continental drift?), Austin et al. have proposed that at the onset of the Flood, the ocean floor rapidly lifted up to 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) due to an increase in temperature as horizontal movement of the tectonic plates accelerated.3 This would spill the seawater onto the land and cause massive flooding—perhaps what is aptly described as the breaking up of the ‘fountains of the great deep.’
The windows of heaven The other source of the waters for Noah's Flood was ‘the windows of heaven.’ Genesis 7:12 says that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights continuously.
Genesis 2:5 tells us that there was no rain before man was created. Some have suggested that there was no rainfall anywhere on the earth until the time of the Flood. However, the Bible does not actually say this, so we should not be dogmatic.4
Some have argued that God's use of the rainbow as the sign of His covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:12-17) suggests that there were no rainbows, and therefore no clouds or rain, before the Flood. However, if rainbows (and clouds) existed before the Flood, this would not be the only time God used an existing thing as a special ‘new’ sign of a covenant (e.g., bread and wine in the Lord's Supper).
It is difficult to envisage a pre-flood water cycle without clouds and rain, as the sun's heat, even in that era, must have evaporated large volumes of surface waters which would have to have eventually condensed back into liquid water. And droplets of liquid water form clouds from which we get rain.
The expression ‘windows of heaven’ is used twice in reference to the flood (Genesis 7:11, 8:2). It is used only three times elsewhere in the Old Testament: twice in 2 Kings 7:2 and 19, referring to God's miraculous intervention in sending rain, and once in Malachi 3:10, where the phrase is used again of God intervening to pour out abundant blessings on his people. Clearly, in Genesis the expression suggests the extraordinary nature of the rainfall attending the flood. It is not a term applied to ordinary rainfall.
What about ‘the waters above’? We are told in Genesis 1:6-8 that on the second day of creation God divided the waters that were on the earth from the waters that He placed above the earth when He made a ‘firmament’ (Hebrew: raqiya, meaning ‘expanse’) between those waters.5 Many have concluded that this ‘expanse’ was the atmosphere, because God placed the birds in the expanse, suggesting that the expanse includes the atmosphere where the birds fly. This would put these waters above the atmosphere.
However, Genesis 1:20, speaking of the creation of the birds, says (literally) ‘let the birds fly above the ground across the face of the expanse of the heavens.’6 This at least allows that ‘the expanse’ may include the space beyond the atmosphere.
Dr Russell Humphreys7 has argued that since Genesis 1:17 tells us that God put the sun, moon, and stars also ‘in the expanse of the heaven’ then the expanse must at least include interstellar space, and thus the waters above the expanse of Genesis 1:7 would be beyond the stars at the edge of the universe.8
However, prepositions (in, under, above, etc.) are somewhat flexible in Hebrew, as well as English. A submarine can be spoken of as both under and in the sea. Likewise, the waters could be above the expanse and in the expanse, so we should be careful no to draw too much from these expressions.
So what were these ‘waters above’? Some have said that they are simply the clouds. Others thought of them as a ‘water vapor canopy,’ implying a blanket of water vapor surrounding the earth.
A water vapor canopy? Dr Joseph Dillow did much research into the idea of a blanket of water vapor surrounding the earth before the Flood.9 In a modification of the canopy theory, Dr Larry Vardiman suggested that much of the ‘waters above’ could have been stored in small ice particles distributed in equatorial rings around the earth similar to those around Venus.10
The Genesis 7:11 reference to the windows of heaven being opened has been interpreted as the collapse of such a water vapor canopy, which somehow became unstable and fell as rain. Volcanic eruptions associated with the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep could have thrown dust into the water vapor canopy, causing the water vapor to nucleate on the dust particles and make rain.
Dillow, Vardiman and others have suggested that the vapor canopy caused a greenhouse effect before the Flood with a pleasant subtropical-to-temperate climate all around the globe, even at the poles where today there is ice. This would have caused the growth of lush vegetation on the land all around the globe. The discovery of coal seams in Antarctica containing vegetation that is not now found growing at the poles, but which obviously grew under warmer conditions, was taken as support for these ideas.11
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Post by Charity on Dec 30, 2005 12:47:53 GMT -5
A vapor canopy would also affect the global wind systems. Also, the mountains were almost certainly not as high before the Flood as they are today, as we shall see. In today's world, the major winds and high mountain ranges are a very important part of the water cycle that brings rain to the continents. Before the flood, however, these factors would have caused the weather systems to be different.
Those interested in studying this further should consult Dillow's and Vardiman's works.
A major problem with the canopy theory Vardiman12 recognized a major difficulty with the canopy theory. The best canopy model still gives an intolerably high temperature at the surface of the earth.
Rush and Vardiman have attempted a solution,13 but found that they had to drastically reduce the amount of water vapor in the canopy from a rain equivalent of 40 feet (12 meters) to only 20 inches (.5 meters). Further modeling suggested that a maximum of 2 meters (6.5 feet) of water could be held in such a canopy, even if all relevant factors were adjusted to the best possible values to maximize the amount of water stored.14 Such a reduced canopy would not significantly contribute to the 40 days and nights of rain at the beginning of the Flood.
A vapor canopy holding more than 7 feet (two meters) of rain would cause the earth's surface to be intolerably hot, so a vapor canopy could not have been a significant source of the floodwaters. Many creation scientists are now either abandoning the water vapor canopy model15 or no longer see any need for such a concept, particularly if other reasonable mechanisms could have supplied the rain.16 In the catastrophic plate tectonics model for the Flood,17 volcanic activity associated with the breaking up of the pre-Flood ocean floor would have created a linear geyser (like a wall) of superheated steam from the ocean, causing intense global rain.
Nevertheless, whatever the source or mechanism, the scriptural statement about the windows of heaven opening is an apt description of global torrential rain.
Where did the waters go? The whole earth was covered with the floodwaters (see Chapter 10, Was the Flood global?), and the world that then existed was destroyed by the very waters out of which the land had originally emerged at God’s command (Gen. 1:9, 2 Pet. 3:5–6). But where did those waters go after the Flood?
There are a number of Scripture passages that identify the floodwaters with the present-day seas (Amos 9:6 and Job 38:8–11, note ‘waves’). If the waters are still here, why are the highest mountains not still covered with water, as they were in Noah’s day? Psalm 104 suggests an answer. After the waters covered the mountains (verse 6), God rebuked them and they fled (verse 7); the mountains rose, the valleys sank down (verse 8) and God set a boundary so that they will never again cover the earth (verse 9).18 They are the same waters!
Isaiah gives this same statement that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth (Isaiah 54:9). Clearly, what the Bible is telling us is that God altered the earth’s topography. New continental land-masses bearing new mountain chains of folded rock strata were uplifted from below the globe-encircling waters that had eroded and leveled the pre-Flood topography, while large deep ocean basins were formed to receive and accommodate the Flood waters that then drained off the emerging continents.
Without mountains or seabasins, water would cover the whole earth to a depth of 2.7 km, or 1.7 miles (not to scale). That is why the oceans are so deep, and why there are folded mountain ranges. Indeed, if the entire earth’s surface were leveled by smoothing out the topography of not only the land surface but also the rock surface on the ocean floor, the waters of the ocean would cover the earth’s surface to a depth of 2.7 kilometers (1.7 miles). We need to remember that about 70% of the earth’s surface is still covered by water. Quite clearly, then, the waters of Noah’s Flood are in today’s ocean basins.
A mechanism? The catastrophic plate tectonics model (What about continental drift?) gives a mechanism for the deepening of the oceans and the rising of mountains at the end of the Flood.
As the new ocean floors cooled, they would have become denser and sunk, allowing water to flow off the continents. Movement of the water off the continents and into the oceans would have weighed down the ocean floor and lightened the continents, resulting in the further sinking of the ocean floor, as well as upward movement of the continents.19 The deepening of the ocean basins and the rising of the continents would have resulted in more water running off the land.
The collision of the tectonic plates would have pushed up mountain ranges also, especially towards the end of the Flood.
Could the water have covered Mount Everest? Mt Everest is almost 9 km (5.5 miles) high. How, then, could the Flood have covered ‘all the high hills under the whole heaven’?
The Bible refers only to ‘high hills,’ and the mountains today were formed only towards the end of, and after, the Flood by collision of the tectonic plates and the associated upthrusting. In support of this, the layers that form the uppermost parts of Mt Everest are themselves composed of fossil-bearing, water-deposited layers.
This uplift of the new continental land-masses from under the Flood waters would have meant that, as the mountains rose and the valleys sank, the waters would have rapidly drained off the newly emerging land surfaces. The collapse of natural dams holding back the floodwaters on the land would also have caused catastrophic flooding. Such rapid movement of large volumes of water would have caused extensive erosion and shaped the basic features of today’s Earth surface.
Kata Tjuta in central Australia is composed of material which must have been deposited quickly by water. Thus it is not hard to envisage the rapid carving of the landscape features that we see on the earth today, including places such as the Grand Canyon of the USA. The present shape of Uluru (Ayers Rock), a sandstone monolith in central Australia, is the result of erosion, following tilting and uplift, of previously horizontal beds of water-laid sand. The feldspar-rich sand that makes up Uluru must have been deposited very quickly and recently. Long-distance transport of the sand would have caused the grains to be rounded and sorted, whereas they are jagged and unsorted. If they had sat accumulating slowly in a lake bed drying in the sun over eons of time, which is the story told in the geological display at the park center, the feldspar would have weathered into clay. Likewise, if Uluru had sat in the once-humid area of central Australia for millions of years, it would have weathered to clay.20 Similarly, the nearby Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) are composed of an unsorted mixture of large boulders, sand and mud, indicating that the material must have been transported and deposited very rapidly.
Receding floodwaters eroded the land, creating river valleys. This explains why rivers are often so much smaller than the valleys they flow in today—they did not carve the valleys. The water flow that carved out the river valleys must have been far greater than the volume of water we see flowing in the rivers today. This is consistent with voluminous Flood waters draining off the emerging land surfaces at the close of Noah’s Flood, and flowing into the rapidly sinking, newly prepared, deep ocean basins.
Our understanding of how the Flood could have occurred is continually developing. Ideas come and go, but the fact of the Flood remains. Genesis clearly testifies to it, Jesus and the Apostles confirmed it, and there is abundant global geological evidence for a global watery cataclysm.
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Post by Charity on Dec 30, 2005 12:48:12 GMT -5
References and notes Strong's Concordance. Evidence is mounting that there is still a huge amount of water stored deep in the earth in the crystal lattices of minerals, which is possible because of the immense pressure. See L. Bergeron, Deep waters, New Scientist 155(2097):22–26, 1997. ‘You have oceans and oceans of water stored in the transition zone. It's sopping wet.’ S.A. Austin, J.R. Baumgardner, D.R. Humphreys, A.A. Snelling, L. Vardiman, and K.P. Wise, Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A global Flood model of Earth history, Proc. Third ICC, pp. 609–621, 1994. Some have claimed that because the people scoffed at Noah's warnings of a coming flood, that they must not have seen rain. But people today have seen lots of rain and floods, and many still scoff at the global Flood. Genesis 2:5 says there was no rain yet upon the earth, but whether or not it rained after that in the pre-Flood world is not stated. In trying to disparage the Bible, some skeptics claim that the raqiya describes a solid dome and that the ancient Hebrews believed in a flat earth with a slotted dome over it. Such ideas are not in the Bible or in the Hebrew understanding of raqiya. See J.P. Holding, Is the raqiya a solid dome? Equivocal language in the cosmology of Genesis 1 and the Old Testament: a response to Paul H. Seely, CEN Technical Journal 13(2):44–51, 1999. H.C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis, Vol. 1, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, p. 78, 1942. D.R. Humphreys, A Biblical basis for creationist cosmology, Proc. Third ICC, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 255–266, 1994. This could help explain the background microwave radiation seen in the Universe. See Chapter 5, How can we see distant stars in a young universe? and Humphreys, Ref. 7. J.C. Dillow, The Waters Above, Moody Press, Chicago, IL, 1981. L. Vardiman, The sky has fallen, Proc. First ICC, 1:113–119, 1986. Movement of tectonic plates could also explain the polar occurrence of such warm-climate plant remains (see Chapter 11). Vardiman, Ref. 10, pp. 116, 119. D.E. Rush and L. Vardiman, Pre-flood vapor canopy radiative temperature profiles, Proc. Second ICC, Pittsburgh, PA, 2:231–245, 1990. L. Vardiman and K. Bousselot, Sensitivity studies on vapor canopy temperature profiles, Proc. Fourth ICC, pp. 607–618, 1998. Psalm 148:4 seems to speak against the canopy theory. Written after the Flood, this refers to ‘waters above the heavens’ still existing, so this cannot mean a vapor canopy that collapsed at the flood. Calvin, Leupold and Keil and Delitzsch all wrote of ‘the waters above’ as merely being clouds. Of course, we may never arrive at a correct understanding of exactly how the Flood occurred, but that does not change the fact that it did occur. Austin et al., Ref. 3. The most natural translation of Psalm 104:8a is ‘The mountains rose up; the valleys sank down’. See Chapter 11, reference 27. The geological principle involved is isostasy, where the plates are ‘floating’ on the mantle. The ocean basins are composed of denser rock than the continents, so the ocean basins sit lower in the mantle than the less dense continents with their mountains. Snelling, A.A., Uluru and Kata Tjuta: Testimony to the Flood, Creation 20(2):36–40, 1998.
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Post by Charity on Dec 30, 2005 12:48:58 GMT -5
How did all the animals fit on Noah’s Ark?
by Jonathan Sarfati
First published in: Creation 19(2):16–19, March–May 1997
Many skeptics assert that the Bible must be wrong, because they claim that the Ark could not possibly have carried all the different types of animals. This has persuaded some Christians to deny the Genesis Flood, or believe that it was only a local flood involving comparatively few local animals. But they usually have not actually performed the calculations. On the other hand, the classic creationist book The Genesis Flood contained a detailed analysis as far back as 1961.1 A more detailed and updated technical study of this and many other questions is John Woodmorappe’s book Noah’s Ark: a Feasibility Study. This article is based on material in these books plus some independent calculations. There are two questions to ask:
How many types of animals did Noah need to take? Was the ark large enough to hold all the required animals? How many types of animals did Noah need to take? The relevant passages are Genesis 6:19–20 and Genesis 7:2–3.
Genesis 6:19–20: ‘And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.’
Genesis 7:2–3: ‘Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.’
In the original Hebrew, the word for ‘beast’ and ‘cattle’ in these passages is the same: behemah, and it refers to land vertebrate animals in general. The word for ‘creeping things’ is remes, which has a number of different meanings in Scripture, but here it probably refers to reptiles.2 Noah did not need to take sea creatures3 because they would not necessarily be threatened with extinction by a flood. However, turbulent water would cause massive carnage, as seen in the fossil record, and many oceanic species probably did become extinct because of the Flood.
However, if God in His wisdom had decided not to preserve some ocean creatures, this was none of Noah’s business. Noah did not need to take plants either—many could have survived as seeds, and others could have survived on floating mats of vegetation. Many insects and other invertebrates were small enough to have survived on these mats as well. The Flood wiped out all land animals which breathed through nostrils except those on the Ark (Genesis 7:22). Insects do not breathe through nostrils but through tiny tubes in their exterior skeleton.
Clean animals: Bible commentators are evenly divided about whether the Hebrew means ‘seven’ or ‘seven pairs’ of each type of clean animal. Woodmorappe takes the latter just to concede as much to the biblioskeptics as possible. But the vast majority of animals are not clean, and were represented by only two specimens each. The term ‘clean animal’ was not defined until the Mosaic Law. But since Moses was also the compiler of Genesis, if we follow the principle that ‘Scripture interprets Scripture’, the Mosaic Law definitions can be applied to the Noahic situation. There are actually very few ‘clean’ land animals listed in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14.
What is a ‘kind’? God created a number of different types of animals with much capacity for variation within limits.4 The descendants of each of these different kinds, apart from humans, would today mostly be represented by a larger grouping than what is called a species. In most cases, those species descended from a particular original kind would be grouped today within what modern taxonomists (biologists who classify living things) call a genus (plural genera).
One common definition of a species is a group of organisms which can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, and cannot mate with other species. However, most of the so-called species (obviously all the extinct ones) have not been tested to see what they can or cannot mate with. In fact, not only are there known crosses between so-called species, but there are many instances of trans-generic matings, so the ‘kind’ may in some cases be as high as the family. Identifying the ‘kind’ with the genus is also consistent with Scripture, which spoke of kinds in a way that the Israelites could easily recognize without the need for tests of reproductive isolation.
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Post by Charity on Dec 30, 2005 12:49:17 GMT -5
For example, horses, zebras and donkeys are probably descended from an equine (horse-like) kind, since they can interbreed, although the offspring are sterile. Dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals are probably from a canine (dog-like) kind. All different types of domestic cattle (which are clean animals) are descended from the Aurochs, so there were probably at most seven (or fourteen) domestic cattle aboard. The Aurochs itself may have been descended from a cattle kind including bisons and water buffaloes. We know that tigers and lions can produce hybrids called tigons and ligers, so it is likely that they are descended from the same original kind.
Woodmorappe totals about 8000 genera, including extinct genera, thus about 16,000 individual animals which had to be aboard. With extinct genera, there is a tendency among some paleontologists to give each of their new finds a new genus name. But this is arbitrary, so the number of extinct genera is probably highly overstated. Consider the sauropods, which were the largest dinosaurs—the group of huge plant-eaters like Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, etc. There are 87 sauropod genera commonly cited, but only 12 are ‘firmly established’ and another 12 are considered ‘fairly well established’.5
One commonly raised problem is ‘How could you fit all those huge dinosaurs on the Ark?’ First, of the 668 supposed dinosaur genera, only 106 weighed more than ten tons when fully grown. Second, as said above, the number of dinosaur genera is probably greatly exaggerated. But these numbers are granted by Woodmorappe to be generous to skeptics. Third, the Bible does not say that the animals had to be fully grown. The largest animals were probably represented by ‘teenage’ or even younger specimens. The median size of all animals on the ark would actually have been that of a small rat, according to Woodmorappe‘s up-to-date tabulations, while only about 11 % would have been much larger than a sheep.
Another problem often raised by atheists and theistic evolutionists is ‘how did disease germs survive the flood?’ This is a leading question—it presumes that germs were as specialized and infectious as they are now, so all the Ark’s inhabitants must have been infected with every disease on earth. But germs were probably more robust in the past, and have only fairly recently lost the ability to survive in different hosts or independently of a host. In fact, even now many germs can survive in insect vectors or corpses, or in the dried or frozen state, or be carried by a host without causing disease. Finally, loss of resistance to disease is consistent with the general degeneration of life since the Fall.6
Was the ark large enough to hold all the required animals? The Ark measured 300x50x30 cubits (Genesis 6:15) which is about 140x23x13.5 metres or 459x75x44 feet, so its volume was 43,500 m3 (cubic metres) or 1.54 million cubic feet. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent volume of 522 standard American railroad stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep.
If the animals were kept in cages with an average size of 50x50x30 centimetres (20x20x12 inches), that is 75,000 cm3 (cubic centimetres) or 4800 cubic inches, the 16,000 animals would only occupy 1200 m3 (42,000 cubic feet) or 14.4 stock cars. Even if a million insect species had to be on board, it would not be a problem, because they require little space. If each pair was kept in cages of 10 cm (four inches) per side, or 1000 cm3, all the insect species would occupy a total volume of only 1000 m3, or another 12 cars. This would leave room for five trains of 99 cars each for food, Noah’s family and ‘range’ for the animals. However, insects are not included in the meaning of behemah or remes in Genesis 6:19-20, so Noah probably would not have taken them on board as passengers anyway.
Tabulating the total volume is fair enough, since this shows that there would be plenty of room on the Ark for the animals with plenty left over for food, range etc. It would be possible to stack cages, with food on top or nearby (to minimize the amount of food carrying the humans had to do), to fill up more of the Ark space, while still allowing plenty of room for gaps for air circulation. We are discussing an emergency situation, not necessarily luxury accommodation. Although there is plenty of room for exercise, skeptics have overstated animals’ needs for exercise anyway.
Even if we don’t allow stacking one cage on top of another to save floor space, there would be no problem. Woodmorappe shows from standard recommended floor space requirements for animals that all of them together would have needed less than half the available floor space of the Ark’s three decks. This arrangement allows for the maximum amount of food and water storage on top of the cages close to the animals.
Food requirements The Ark would probably have carried compressed and dried foodstuffs, and probably a lot of concentrated food. Perhaps Noah fed the cattle mainly on grain, plus some hay for fibre. Woodmorappe calculated that the volume of foodstuffs would have been only about 15 % of the Ark’s total volume. Drinking water would only have taken up 9.4 % of the volume. This volume would be reduced further if rainwater was collected and piped into troughs.
Excretory requirements It is doubtful whether the humans had to clean the cages every morning. Possibly they had sloped floors or slatted cages, where the manure could fall away from the animals and be flushed away (plenty of water around!) or destroyed by vermicomposting (composting by worms) which would also provide earthworms as a food source. Very deep bedding can sometimes last for a year without needing a change. Absorbent material (e.g. sawdust, softwood wood shavings and especially peat moss) would reduce the moisture content and hence the odour.
Hibernation The space, feeding and excretory requirements were adequate even if the animals had normal day/night sleeping cycles. But hibernation is a possibility which would reduce these requirements even more. It is true that the Bible does not mention it, but it does not rule it out either. Some creationists suggest that God created the hibernation instinct for the animals on the Ark, but we should not be dogmatic either way.
Some skeptics argue that food taken on board rules out hibernation, but this is not so. Hibernating animals do not sleep all winter, despite popular portrayals, so they would still need food occasionally.
Conclusion This article has shown that the Bible can be trusted on testable matters like Noah’s Ark. Many Christians believe that the Bible can only be trusted on matters of faith and morals, not scientific matters. But we should consider what Jesus Christ Himself told Nicodemus (John 3:12): ‘If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?’
Similarly, if the Scriptures can be wrong on testable matters such as geography, history and science, why should they be trusted on matters like the nature of God and life after death, which are not open to empirical testing? Hence Christians should ‘be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you’ (1 Peter 3:15), when skeptics claim that the Bible conflicts with known ‘scientific facts’.
Christians would be able to follow this command and answer skeptics’ anti–Ark arguments effectively, if they read John Woodmorappe’s book Noah’s Ark: a Feasibility Study. This remarkable book is the most complete analysis ever published regarding the gathering of animals to the Ark, provisions for their care and feeding, and the subsequent dispersion. For example, some skeptics have claimed that the post-Flood ground would be too salty for plants to grow. Woodmorappe points out that salt can be readily leached out by rainwater.
Woodmorappe has devoted seven years to this scholarly, systematic answer to virtually all the anti–Ark arguments, alleged difficulties with the Biblical account, and other relevant questions. Nothing else like this has ever been written before—a powerful vindication of the Genesis Ark account.
‘It has just the sort of facts and details that kids find fascinating, and would make an excellent source of information for enhancing Bible study projects and class lessons on the Ark and Flood. Anyone interested in answering the many questions about the ark, especially from skeptics, would be advised to read Noah’s Ark.’7
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Post by Charity on Dec 30, 2005 12:49:36 GMT -5
References J.C. Whitcomb, and H.M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, USA, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1961.
A.J. Jones, ‘How many animals on the Ark?’ Creation Research Society Quarterly 10(2):16–18, 1973.
It is high time that certain atheistic skeptics showed some intellectual integrity and actually read the Bible. Then they would stop making ridiculous comments about whales flopping up gang–planks and fish–tanks on the Ark.
One common fallacy brought up by evolutionists is that variation within a kind somehow proves particles-to-people evolution. The examples commonly cited, e.g. peppered moths and antibiotic resistance in bacteria, are indeed examples of natural selection. But this is not evolution. Evolution requires the generation of new information, while natural selection sorts and can remove information due to loss of genetic diversity. Natural selection can account for variations, but cannot account for the origin of bacteria or moths. With the moths, natural selection merely changed the ratios of black and peppered forms. Both types were already present in the population, so nothing new was produced. [Since this article was published, new evidence shows that all the moth pictures were staged, further undermining this ‘evidence’ — see Goodbye, peppered moths: A classic evolutionary story comes unstuck.]The same applies to different breeds of dogs. By selecting individuals which are very large or very small, Great Danes and Chihuahuas were bred. But these breeds have lost the information contained in genes for certain sizes. See Creation 18(2):20–23. [See also What is Evolution?.]
J.S. McIntosh, Sauropoda, in Wieshampel, D.B. et al., The Dinosauria, University of California Press, Berkeley, p. 345, 1992.
C. Wieland, ‘Diseases on the Ark’, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 8(1):16–18, 1994 (see online version). Viruses often become much more infectious by random mutations causing changes in their protein coats. This makes it harder for the antibodies to recognize them, but there is no increase in information content, so no real evolution.
Reason and Revelation, May 1996.
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