How did Noah get all the animals on one boat?

[Bread_of_Life]

Cellshade,

Bread of Life, weren't you christian, changed to atheism, back to Christ, and now shall I say back to Atheism?

No. I was an atheist. Now I'm a Christian. The story is that simple.

[DaniJ87]

Don't forget the ones that could fly.

Umm... Must I remind you that ravens and doves were on the ark?

Oh, they may have been able to get 14,000 onto the ark (although they'd have to be very ill, because they will have carried a lot of host-specific diseases with them, and the ones with funny diets would have been hard to cater for etc). It's how they then evolved into over 10 million species in 4,000 years that I'm worried about. Little fast, don't you think? And how did they get home ::

Oh, and those freshwater fish, they're still bothering me....

It just didn't happen guys..!

God can do anything. He kept Noah and his family from dying from diseases, too....

Just as in the Garden of Eden there were no meat-eating animals, those on the ark probably ate grain, too... so there wouldn't have been all of those problems with diets...

How did they evolve... hmm.... well... first of all.. .when do you think that this flood was? I was thinking it was about 6-8,000 years ago.... maybe I am wrong....

but if the animals have many offspring at once(not all do... but some), and each could be genetically different from its parents... and so it wouldn't have to take too long.... How did our earth's population grow to be in the billions since the flood?

"how did they get home"... DID they "get home"? they got off of the mountain, of course... but DID they have to necessarily get "back" to where they started out? Could it have been that their descendants were the ones that moved? (I am not looking at my Bible right now... so forgive me if I am missing something important here)

Hey, Nikolai, Nikolai, if Noah's Ark story was fable, how come RUSSIAN navigators in WW 2 - and a shepherd boy in 1905 - were among the first to sight remnants of the ship encased in ice on top of the Mount Ararat Range of mountains? A ship ON TOP OF a MOUNTAIN yet!! And FISH skeletons ON TOP TOO!! Explorer Ferdinand Navarro has actually brought down pieces of gopher wood from the general area - and gopher wood is foreign to Ararat. Noah only took pairs of each KIND (Genesis 6:20), but he took seven of the KINDS of clean animals which could be eaten or sacrificed...average size being that of a sheep. The total animal population would not have exceeded 35,000 vertibrates. We do know the Ark had a capacity of approx. 520 railroad stock cars. Hibernation was a real possibility requiring much less space, food & care. Many were probably young animals requiring less space & food. And after the animals left the Ark they probably migrated over land bridges connecting the continents. Bottom line: literally hundreds upon hundreds of research scientists & archeologists - headed by Dr. John Warwick Montgomery of Chicago with three earned doctorates, a PhD, a ThD and a JD - are of the considered opinion that a universal flood actually occurred as stated in the Book of Genesis. To boot, the literal Table Of Nations owes it origin to the three sons of Noah after the Flood, Shem, Ham & Japheth from which we all spring! Finally I must remind you that the recent Tsunami tragedy clearly displayed how our earth & its features can be immeasurably altered in a very short timeframe. No, the biblical account of Noah's Ark is not silly in any way. What is silly is to dismiss it out of hand thoughtlessly as though there were no Creator-God and that the religion of "atheism," self-concocted as it is, was society's found money. The "atheist-agnostic" view of Noah's Flood is a bit like the story of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn't bark! Remember please above all else: The Titanic was built by professionals; the Ark of Noah by amateurs!

http://arthurdurnan.freeyellow.com

Umm... Arthur.... I have to say that I don't have a lot of faith in the "ararat ark".... but that is mostly because I cannot imagine why Noah and his family would leave the thing sitting there, rather than take it apart and use it as resources.

It's just a fossil type thing, anyway, isn't it? I may be wrong... but is there any 100% proof that it was actually a boat? And how can we be sure, especially now that Turkey isn't letting people come see it?

The fish on top of a mountain thing is more dynamic to me than the supposed ark. Fish on a mountain cannot happen unless there is a world-wide flood. No- I do NOT believe that geologic changes could push the fossil up there... Not happening.

Yes, I believe in a world-wide flood... in the exact manner that the Bible states.

Cellshade,

Bread of Life, weren't you christian, changed to atheism, back to Christ, and now shall I say back to Atheism?

No. I was an atheist. Now I'm a Christian. The story is that simple.

Amen, Bread_of_life........

That is a great thing to happen.... I thank God that you have found Him.

[Guest Godless Heathen]

God can do anything. He kept Noah and his family from dying from diseases, too....

If what you say is true, that God can do anything, then why all the fan fare with Noah in the first place? Seems to me God could just have had Noah build a smaller vessel for just the people and let ALL of the animals die and then just recreate all the animals that got killed. I'm not God but even I can come up with a better way to do things...

Just as in the Garden of Eden there were no meat-eating animals, those on the ark probably ate grain, too... so there wouldn't have been all of those problems with diets...

Where does it say that in the Genesis accounts?

How did they evolve... hmm.... well... first of all.. .when do you think that this flood was? I was thinking it was about 6-8,000 years ago.... maybe I am wrong....

but if the animals have many offspring at once(not all do... but some), and each could be genetically different from its parents... and so it wouldn't have to take too long.... How did our earth's population grow to be in the billions since the flood?

Evolution of this type on this scale would take much longer than 6-8000 years. THAT is scientific fact.

"how did they get home"... DID they "get home"? they got off of the mountain, of course... but DID they have to necessarily get "back" to where they started out? Could it have been that their descendants were the ones that moved? (I am not looking at my Bible right now... so forgive me if I am missing something important here)

Yeah, I think you are missing something. Like Kangaroos can't swim from the mideast to Australia.

The fish on top of a mountain thing is more dynamic to me than the supposed ark. Fish on a mountain cannot happen unless there is a world-wide flood. No- I do NOT believe that geologic changes could push the fossil up there... Not happening.

Well, unfortunately whether you believe it or not it is a scientific fact that geologic events can, have and do push fossils into places that SEEM unlikely.

[CellShade]

God can do anything. He kept Noah and his family from dying from diseases, too....

but if the animals have many offspring at once(not all do... but some), and each could be genetically different from its parents... and so it wouldn't have to take too long.... How did our earth's population grow to be in the billions since the flood?

Evolution of this type on this scale would take much longer than 6-8000 years. THAT is scientific fact.

[Bread_of_Life]

And evolutionists have been around for 6-8k years to test this HYPOTHESIS? No, they haven't.

No, but they don't have to be. Evolution occurs through changes occuring from generation to generation. Therefore the fastest it can possibly occur is over generational timescales.

We also know mutational timescales, and how fast mutations occur. Therefore animals who breed faster, and whose DNA mutates faster, can evolve faster. That's why we see Bacteria, who breed every 20 minutes or so, and whose mechanisms to prevent errors in DNA copying arn't so advanced, evolve very quickly to the demands of their environment, and indeed to the drugs we release.

We also know that evolution depends on the strength of a selection pressure, and therefore how quickly mutations will become commonplace within a population. A mutation becoming fixed can take many many generations, for it to spread throughout a population of any size. If a selection pressure is too strong of course - an animal population becomes extinct - clearly therefore there is an upper limit to natural selection fixing mutations in a population.

To a bacteria, 6000 years is about 157 million generations. To a human being, 6000 years is about 300 generations. Even at high rates of mutation, with high selection pressures, hundreds of generations is insufficient, even in theory, to produce significant evolutionary change within a population. It is certainly insufficient for 15000 species to evolve into 10 million or more.

This is not hypothetical, it is observed fact. We don't have to be around 6000 years to know about it. Many people it would seem, including yourself whysoblind, seem to lack the imagination and knowledge it takes to understand how past processes can be discovered and tested from the present - without actually having personally witnessed them. This is just one example of this deficiency in your learning, and your imagination.

[Guest Annatar: Bringer of Gifts]

Okay guys, first off, let me say that I believe that our God is infinitely powerful and that if the Bible says that Noah had all the animals on the Ark, then he must have had all the animals on the Ark, period. But...

If the story really did happen exactly as the Bible describes, it must have taken one of the greatest batches of miracles that this world has ever seen, and one of the only ones mentioned in the Bible is that God led the animals to the boat. For one thing (and this is all based on the Biblically sound assumption that the flood was worldwide), what about the plant life? Do you think that all the trees, grasses, and various foliage that we find around the world today could have survived more than a half year of being deeply submerged in freezing salt water?

Another problem is that most Christians (myself included) do not believe that entirely new species can arise through the process of evolution, so Noah would have had to bring every species in the world aboard his Ark (including many that have gone extinct since ancient times). Could penguins have really made such a huge trek from the Anarctic to the middle-east without some kind of heavenly teleportation miracle? What were the temperatures in the Ark? The heat necessary to keep some of the more sensitive tropical animals alive would have killed the penguins, and the temperatures best suited for the arctic animals couldn't have sustained the tropical animals.

Noah would also need to take aboard every species of bird (including the dodo) because there is no way that any bird could have stayed aloft for such a great length of time. Perhaps a sea bird could have done it (because, of course, it can rest on the water without drowning), but even then there is the problem of starvation in a vast, tempestuous ocean without any land or shallow waters to find food in.

Also, there is the problem of the aquatic animals. Obviously no fresh water fish could have survived in the ocean for such a long time, that isn

[traveller]

Actually, I've never had a problem with the flood as told in the Bible. None of it. I figure the Creator of all can easily pull off something as simple as that. C'mon - compared to creating man, and the universe - this was nothing.

Look - we don't know for sure what the atmospheric conditions were at that time. Or the temps, or the density of salt in the water, or anything else. We do know that man had a longer life span before the flood and immediately after, and from there it started dwindling. Why is that? Could it be because everything changed then?

I certainly don't know, but I find it curious that it had not rained before that time. When it did, it flooded the earth. Maybe we were like a biosphere?

It's fun thinking about it.

[Guest Annatar: Bringer of Gifts]

Actually, I've never had a problem with the flood as told in the Bible. None of it. I figure the Creator of all can easily pull off something as simple as that. C'mon - compared to creating man, and the universe - this was nothing.

Look - we don't know for sure what the atmospheric conditions were at that time. Or the temps, or the density of salt in the water, or anything else. We do know that man had a longer life span before the flood and immediately after, and from there it started dwindling. Why is that? Could it be because everything changed then?

I certainly don't know, but I find it curious that it had not rained before that time. When it did, it flooded the earth. Maybe we were like a biosphere?

It's fun thinking about it.

Actually, we do know for sure that the conditions were the same as they are now, or at least very similar, because Noah had the same species of animals on his Ark that are here today, and we know that many of those animals can only exist in very specific environments. If these environments were not the same during Noah's time, the animals could never have survived. Got it?

[Giaour]

If God can take a couple of fish and feed thousands and still have baskets of leftovers, I'm sure God wouldn't have a problem making space where there is none.

It's called a "miracle".

[Fiosh]

There are sea fossils in the mountains of n. PA. Some archaeologists working on bridge project identified them ( I long since forgot the name, sorry) and told me they were over a million years old, from when the earth was covered by water.

Personally, I don't agonize over Noah's Ark, but it is a challenging puzzle.

What do you guys think of the sea fossils in the mountains? What about the fact that the scientists date them at "over a million years old" ?

Found this in a quick Google search. Can't attest to its reliability:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c013.html