Skepticism of the new Noah's ark claim extends to at least one scholar who interprets the Bible literally. As a creationist, Wood believes God created Earth and its various life-forms out of nothing roughly 6, years ago.
Radiocarbon dating estimates the ages of organic objects by measuring the radioisotope carbon 14, which is known to decay at a set rate over time. The method is generally thought to reach its limit with objects about 60, years old.
Earth is generally thought to be about four and a half billion years old. Across the board, radiocarbon dates need to be recalibrated, Wood believes, to reflect shorter time frames.
Given this perceived overestimation in radiocarbon dating, the wood the Noah's Ark Ministries International team found should have a "traditional" radiocarbon date of several tens of thousands of years if the wood is truly 4, years old, Wood said. The wood date is "way, way, way too young. Wood thinks Noah's ark will never be found, because "it would have been prime timber after the flood," he said.
You've got a huge boat made of wood, so let's use that," he said. Related: National Geographic's search for Noah's flood. Another reason scholars are skeptical of the latest Noah's ark discovery claim is that Genesis—the first book of the Bible—never specifies which peak the vessel supposedly landed on in Turkey. Stony Brook's Zimansky agreed. The Noah's Ark Ministries International explorers are "playing in a very different ballpark than the rest of us," Zimansky said.
Even if the Noah's Ark Ministries International team did find a wooden structure or even a boat on Mount Ararat, there are other explanations for what the structure might be. What remarkable creatures they must have been; in order to ensure their survival they ha, d to be the strongest, healthiest, most fertile pair possible, while at the same time they had to carry a full set of debilitating parasites so as to guarante, , e their survival.
How was Noah assured that the proper complement of viable tapeworms was present in each rodent and each lizard waiting to come aboard? How could he confirm the presence of microscopic fauna in their tiny stalls? If a prospective passenger was lacking an essential flea, what could be done? Was there opportunity to correct any errors? If just one of the teeming hoard of animals turned out to be sterile, that species would become extinct. Could Noah verify everyone's fertility?
For that matter, could he even verify that the couple on the gangplank were male and female, when a great many animals, including 30 percent of the birds and even some mammals, are sexually monomorphic and cannot be distinguished without modern veterinary techniques or even hormonal analysis?
Most fish are indeterminant as juveniles and will only become male or female when mature Bond, pp. No wonder Segraves proposes a miracle here p. Creationists insist on a strictly literal interpretation of Genesis; so when those animals which reproduce by asexual budding, or the over one thousand thelytokous all-female species from insects to lizards, converged toward the ark, another special miracle would have been called for to fulfill the explicit command to take both male and female aboard.
By the time Noah encountered the sea star, Asterina gibbosa, which begins life as a male and eventually becomes female, he must have been ready to throw in the towel in frustration.
The journey of the animals presents other remarkable facets. They traveled over hill, over dale, through the dense jungles, and across the mighty Edenic rivers without a single accident. No limbs were broken, no drownings occurred. Amazingly, not one perished at the paws of a predator; from the tastiest earthworm to the freshest frog, all marched past the hungry inhabitants of the forest with impunity.
Orr stresses that "migration is hazardous. For species that engage in long migrations it may be a great strain on the bodies of the participants. There may be extended periods without food as well as long hours of travel. Attrition through predation may be higher during migration" p. He also notes that getting lost can be a problem, especially for those traveling singly as opposed to flocks and herds pp.
But if the divine instinct often fails today's travelers, what chance did such unlikely wayfarers as eyeless cave fish, giant sloths, and sea urchins have of locating a specific acre in Asia? Christopher was clearly in his finest hour, performing literally thousands of miracles every day. Perhaps with a vivid imagination we can picture this divine Pied Piper saga in action; but no such excuse can save Noah from his responsibility for gathering the seeds of the nearly half million plants that survived the flood.
No premonition, however urgent, could cause a pine cone to commence rolling toward the ark; someone would have to go get it. Our biblical botanists would have to be able to identify fertile seeds and spores, find them at the proper season, and make sure that the storage area aboard ship would be suitable.
In the damp depths of the ark, most seeds would either rot or sprout and then die for lack of nutrients and light. How did Noah prepare and maintain the special low-humidity containers necessary to ensure their dormancy? How did he control insects, rodents, and fungi? Seed storage is a complex technology and, without proper techniques, "no seed can maintain its viability for long" Thomson, p.
In addition, God told Noah to gather food for the various animals Genesis , many of whom, as we shall see, have highly specialized diets.
Hence, even if the animals could reach the ark unaided, an overwhelming burden would be placed upon our heroes with regard to the plant kingdom.
At last this remarkable menagerie gathered before the gaping door of the great ship. Still the protective aura hovered over them, for natural enemies stood side by side without conflict: the mighty carnivores ignored countless opportunities to fill their stomachs; the panicky impulses of animals in strange surroundings were subdued; even the centipedes and beetles escaped extinction from the chance misstep of the elephant.
This surreal tranquility extended to animals that were not among the elect—for the sounds and smells of the teeming throng undoubtedly piqued the interest of the denizens of the surrounding jungle, yet none of them took advantage of having a meal spread out before them on a silver platter. The peaceful scene was about to come to an abrupt end, however. All at once the command went forth to board the ark, and pandemonium erupted. The Bible emphasizes that all the animals and human passengers entered the ark on the same day Genesis Simple division of our grand total shows that Even if we grant that the parasites could hitch a ride with their hosts and many insects could go through at once, and if we simply count the vertebrates including the seven pairs of birds , this still averages out to two per second.
This was not merely a mad scramble for the door but involved weaving through the intricate maze of corridors until the correct cage—that one specific stall exactly designed to meet that animal's needs—was located, entered, and secured. It includes Noah's unenviable task of getting clams and piranhas, barely visible mites, and killer whales, into their quarters. How did our overworked crewmen wrestle all the huge aquatic creatures from the river to their aquaria in half a second, especially when improper handling can severely injure such animals?
How did the "migratory instinct" guide the panicky porcupine to the right stall in the twinkling of an eye? Looking back over this entire wonderful journey, from the flicker of illumination that separated two grazing gazelles from their herd to the frantic stampede to their stalls, one can only conclude that Jehovah should have had access to a Star Trek script and simply beamed the animals aboard, saving everyone a whole heap of trouble and conserving a substantial supply of his own mirific energy.
No sooner had the last snail slithered aboard than the Lord accommodated Noah once again by supernaturally shutting the enormous door of the ark Genesis From this moment on, the die was cast, and everyone outside the ark was doomed. Sinful man and all his works were to be washed away. It is worthwhile to pause here and wonder what became of this lost world, especially when we learn that it may have had as many as twenty-five billion inhabitants and a fairly high cultural level Henry Morris, , p.
Yet aside from some supposedly human footprints in early strata and two insignificant artifacts Balsiger and Sellier, pp. All of the hominid fossils that have been found—from Olduvai Gorge to the caves of France—represent degenerate post diluvian tribes Kofahl and Segraves, pp. Henry Morris , p. What remarkable tenacity these prediluvians had, clinging to the mountain tops even though they were submerged for five months as the waters surged "to and fro"!
And their cities wouldn't have been buried any deeper than the ocean floor dwellers whose fossils are exposed abundantly. With Nelson, we are forced once again to the deus ex machina: "It was God's deliberate purpose to leave no vestige of prediluvian man remaining" p. The flood not only destroyed wicked humanity. All of the innocent creatures on earth suffered and died in this God-ordained cataclysm Genesis Whitcomb and Morris reveal that "sub-human creatures" which have been used as instruments of sin are punished p.
But surely every animal on earth, many of which had never even seen a human, didn't deserve to be summarily drowned. What cruel hand of fate selected the two of each species to board the ark, leaving all the others behind without hope? These issues are beyond the scope of this article, but we merely mention them to indicate some of the many additional quandaries a literal acceptance of the flood story entails.
We have alluded to the immensity of the deluge already, but to really appreciate it we should savor some of the remarks of the experts:. The Flood was accompanied by violent movements of the earth's crust and by volcanic activity of momentous proportions. Tremendous tidal waves and rushing currents scoured and deeply eroded the continental surface.
Entire forests were ripped up and transported large distances to be dumped where the currents slowed. Kofahl and Segraves, p. Even after the first forty days, when the greatest of the rains and upheavals diminished, the Scriptures say that the waters "prevailed" upon the earth for one hundred and ten days longer. This statement. The only way in which land could now appear again would be for a tremendous orogeny to take place.
Mountains must arise and new basins must form to receive the great overburden of water imposed upon the earth. Yielding of the crust at even one point, with resultant escape of magmas and water or steam, would then lead to earth movements causing further fractures until, as the Scriptures portray so graphically, "the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up" Genesis Truly this was a gigantic catastrophe, beside which the explosion of the largest hydrogen bomb, or of hundreds of such bombs, becomes insignificant!
The worldwide ocean of the Genesis flood was swept by wind storms that would make modern tornadoes seem like a zephyr. Schmich, p. There are perhaps five hundred active volcanoes in the world, and possibly three times that many extinct volcanoes. But nothing ever seen by man in the present era can compare with whatever the phenomena were which caused the formation of these tremendous structures. Whitcomb, , p. For once we can agree that creationist rhetoric has not been exaggerated.
A cataclysm that could accomplish the largest percentage of the geological activity in earth's history in one year—events that uniformitarians assign to billions of years—would be so overwhelming that we cannot begin to imagine what it would be like.
Yet into the jaws of destruction sailed a rickety wooden boat—oversized, leaky and unsound, carrying a cargo whose safety and protection was all important! It is utterly inconceivable that it could have survived even a few days of this maelstrom without being blasted to splinters—unless it was protected by the unceasing intervention of the deity. Curiously, when the talk turns to the fate of the ark, diluviologists suddenly paint a much rosier picture.
Whitcomb, for example, has read that tsunamis so-called tidal waves in the open sea are of such low amplitude as to be hardly noticeable and would "thus have had very little effect on Noah's Ark" , p. But why mention these and omit wind-driven waves, which have been known to exceed one hundred feet in an ordinary hurricane?
The winds that would make tornadoes "seem like a zephyr," blowing over the unlimited, unobstructed fetch of the entire globe, would have generated waves many times higher; arkeologist Meyer suggests a height of several miles p. And what sorts of waves would be produced by the breakup of the "fountains of the great deep," the splitting of the continents, and the worldwide orogeny?
The shock waves from present-day submarine earthquakes have been known to damage or destroy vessels far from land Thrower, pp. Furthermore, there were at least two occasions when the ark was not in the open sea. As she sat on the Plains of Shinar, her first encounter with the deluge would most likely have been a mountainous tidal wave or flash flood or both, smashing her to pieces just as easily as it uprooted "entire forests. Ararat and battered a few more days by the violently receding waters.
There were other hazards as well. Volcanic ash and molten boulders filled the air, while at least in the early stages of the storm vegetation rafts and the debris of civilization shot through the water like torpedoes. For most of the time, the ark was the only object projecting above the sea's surface, and, as such, it must have been subject to a continuous barrage of lightning, producing fires, splitting beams, and electrocuting soaked animals. Then we have the puzzling currents of the flood, which flowed hither and yon, burying some places one week and uncovering them the next.
For example, creationists tell us that the Llano Uplift of Texas remained a haven for men and dinosaurs while eight thousand feet of sediment was being deposited nearby John Morris, , pp. Hence the ark should have also encountered swift-moving, riverlike currents and whirlpools, with frequent collisions against the outcrops that broke the surface. Noah neglected putting any kind of steering mechanism on the ship, leaving it completely at the mercy of the savage storm Segraves, p. In what must be a first, creationists Balsiger and Sellier actually conducted an experiment pp.
They had a scale model of the ark tested in a hydraulics lab and concluded from this that it could have withstood waves of over two hundred feet before capsizing. But even higher seas must have been commonplace in that fateful gale, quickly sending the boat to the bottom. It's a moot issue, however, since the entire test is vitiated by overlooking the ship's excessive size, which would have rendered it unsound in any weather. Arkeologists cannot have their cake and eat it; they can't have a cataclysm of the magnitude of the biblical flood and still expect the ark to survive.
Each year approximately two thousand ships succumb to the forces of the sea, in conditions that are like the horse latitudes compared to the deluge. These include structurally sound steel freighters larger than the ark, some of which have vanished so fast in a "mere" hurricane that people have even suggested a paranormal force behind their destruction cf.
Kusche, pp. Who can forget the , ton supertanker, Amoco Cadiz, which ran aground off Brittany in March and was quickly broken in two by swells that were calm compared to those lashing Mt.
Yet the ark was adrift, without rudder or sail, for days Genesis in a storm that would make "hundreds of hydrogen bombs" seem insignificant! But mere survival is hardly the proper criterion of the voyage's success. The animals, many of them so sensitive that they have never yet been kept in zoos, had to make it through in good enough condition to reproduce and to spread over the earth.
Hirst tells us that "wild animals should be subjected to a minimum of jolting and rolling during transport.
Rapid acceleration, sharp cornering, and sudden deceleration are to be avoided at all times" p. Broken legs and necks, bruises, and cuts are important considerations in even short hauls by truck, not to mention the panic most of the overcrowded creatures would experience. Even fish in tanks are severely affected by sloshing and jolting Van den Sande. If indeed the ship avoided being reduced to toothpicks, anything on board larger than a grasshopper would have been pounded into a bloody, shapeless mass long before the last tidal wave crashed against the creaking hull.
Assuming that the chaos outside could somehow be drastically reduced, what special problems did the cargo pose? According to the time periods given in Genesis and , based on the Hebrew Lunar Year of days, the inhabitants of the ark remained there days. How did Noah and his family take care of their charges during this long stay? Our Bible-believing biologists have devised a clever mechanism for easing Noah's task: hibernation. LaHaye and Morris tell us that the ability to hibernate is an "almost universal tendency" among animals and that, faced with "adverse conditions" and "extreme stress" they would slip into this state and hence be easily manageable p.
Henry Morris agrees, attributing this behavior to "divinely ordered genetic mutations," and asserts that this is the best explanation available for these abilities today , p. This "solution" is apparently an ad hoc idea into which none of its advocates even bothered to delve.
If they had, they would have found that hibernation is far from "universal. These are all small creatures; larger animals, including bears, are too big for true hibernation Mount, p. Most fish, birds, and invertebrates do not become dormant in any sense, and other forms of torpor, such as reptilian estivation, are physiologically dissimilar to winter sleep and could not occur in the same environment.
Furthermore, animals respond to "extreme stress" with panic and flight—not hibernation, which is a response to lack of food or cold temperatures. Crowded into the ark like sardines with every other species all about, tossed and slammed against their cages with the ear-splitting roar of the upheaval outside, quiet inactivity is the last thing one would expect to happen.
Many animals are so nervous that they are difficult to keep in an ordinary zoo; if even true hibernators like bats are aroused by touching, what chance is there that any specimen would quietly curl up for a year-long nap? Hibernation is not a simple siesta. Rather, "during the period prior to hibernation, an animal must make a considerable number of gradual physiological and metabolic adjustments" Mayer, p.
These include an increase of fat deposition, gradual readjustment of body temperature, heart rate, and metabolism, preparation of the den and storage of food, and so on.
Frogs and salamanders frequently overwinter in large aggregates; other amphibians sleep only under forest litter or in a few inches of icy water; lungfishes construct a mud cocoon. Timing is also vital, for, if exposed to cold at the wrong time of year, a hibernator will increase its activity in order to keep warm.
What opportunities did the migrating hoards have to prepare themselves and their cages for the long rest? Were the ark's spartan stalls provided with cozy dens and burrows? Newly arrived from near and far, the animals were stampeded, still exhausted from their march, into strange, frightening cells and, only a week later, were violently jolted onto their wild ride Genesis , Finally, hibernation is a risky affair, rather than the refreshing nap portrayed by creationists.
The animal loses about 40 percent of its body weight during the winter; prorated into the days on board the ark, each would have been reduced to little more than a skeleton by the time the door opened. Even bones and teeth deteriorate, and the young frequently starve Yalden and Morris, pp. In snakes, the mortality rate may be as high as 30 to 50 percent Shaw and Campbell, p. On page , W.
Mayer concludes:. The hibernator apparently is balanced on a very narrow line between the maintenance of life at a level that makes recovery from hibernation possible and a reduction of metabolism to a level that will lead to death. Evidence obtained from tissues indicates that the process of hibernation is a precarious method of survival at best and one from which many animals do not awaken. As a mechanism of species survival, hibernation seems effective; for the survival of the individual, however, it is an uncertain and dangerous process.
Yet on the ark, there were only individuals, hibernating in extremely adverse conditions for more than double the time that any animal normally is dormant. We must conclude that the animals on the ark did not experience any type of dormancy in any way resembling these phenomena in nature; the "divine mutations" produced a state closer to suspended animation, a sort of celestial cryonics Segraves, pp.
This supernatural quiescence has a curious twist, however, for the Bible plainly informs us that Noah was to take food on the voyage for the animals Genesis Hibernators do awaken from time to time to eat, and apparently these supersleepers did so also.
If the Lord was going to perform such a substantial modification of natural physiology as this impossible hibernation involved, why not make the miracle complete and dispense with the storage space for the food and the inconvenience to the crew of the feedings?
This is especially pertinent when the magnitude of the task is examined. For the total number of creatures on the ark, if each one received but one feeding during the voyage, and if all eight of the crew worked sixteen hours per day at the chore, each animal would wind up with just Some would have their meal on the first day, while others waited until they were nearly starved.
The poor attendants would have to carry out their chores in the violently pitching vessel and in inky darkness since lanterns could easily drop and start a fire. They would have to find the correct food and somehow locate the right cage in the mind-numbing maze. When they found it, they would have to arouse an animal that could sleep through the raging chaos; the food could not be left in the troughs for it would spoil or spill.
Then it's back down the slippery corridor to the storage bins for the next meal—on a perfect schedule, without duplicated efforts or mistakes—all in less than a minute! Unfortunately, many animals are not physiologically capable of surviving on an occasional meal, however large, and a meal once a year—or once a week—would mean death.
Some birds eat continuously during daylight and suffer when taken to regions with short winter days National Research Council, , p. Rodents, cud chewers, and insectivores are others in the "continuous feeder" class Gersh, p.
Thus it appears that the "hibernation model," cleverly concocted to relieve Noah of an unmanageable work load, is vitiated by the simple scriptural requirement of providing food for the voyage. There are many other problems associated with the feeding.
The first concerns the carnivores: where did Noah get the huge quantities of fresh meat required by these animals? The creationist response is that God miraculously altered them so that they could thrive on a vegetarian diet during the voyage. Although some aver that the eating of meat never occurred anywhere until after the flood, Whitcomb and Morris discuss at length the change from herbivorous to carnivorous physiology, which they date to the Fall of Adam pp.
Thus these animals were originally vegetarian, then became meat-eaters after the Fall, vegetarians again for the year of the flood, finally returning to their carnivorous ways afterwards. Three times the Lord magically changed the physiology and anatomy of a substantial proportion of the animal kingdom. And if this is true of carnivorous mammals, it must also be so for insect-eating birds, amphibians, reptiles, for the multitudes that live on fresh fish and other aquatic creatures, and for arthropods which eat other invertebrates.
Were the slender, sticky tongues of tamanduas, pangolins, and other anteaters, so difficult to feed in zoos, altered to eat hay? Were vampire bats and mosquitos able to substitute tomato juice for fresh blood? Did the whales adapt to kelp instead of krill? And what of our ever-troublesome parasites? Were tapeworms and leeches content to spend a year sucking on an old log?
God was remodeling digestive systems right and left! Even if everyone ate only plants, there were still enormous obstacles. Many animals have highly specialized diets: koalas eat only certain types of Eucalyptus leaves; the giant panda eats bamboo shoots; three-toed sloths so prefer Cecropia leaves that they are almost impossible to keep in captivity. Primates need fresh fruit; many birds develop cramps and spasms if they don't get sufficient calcium; desert rodents are poisoned by excessive protein; and the list goes on cf.
Wallach and Flieg; Fiennes. How did Noah know what foods to get, how much and where to get them? How were the stores kept from rotting during the lengthy voyage? Even hay rapidly becomes moldy and unusable.
Young insists that feeding troughs be cleaned daily and uneaten food removed to prevent decay p. Giraffes and moose must have their troughs high or they can't reach them, while animals with large antlers can't get their mouths into a basket placed against a wall.
Carnivores deprived of bones to chew develop peridontal disease Bush and Gray ; rodents, too, need to gnaw or their teeth will overgrow Orlans, p. Log out. US Markets Loading H M S In the news.
Science Contributors. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Stay up to date with what you want to know. The biblical story of Noah tells us that God judged the people of the earth with a Flood, killing everyone and everything not on board the Ark.
Only eight people survived: Noah, his wife, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. According to the Bible, God gave humans years before unleashing the most serious environmental catastrophe in human history, as punishment for the misbehavior and excesses of humankind.
God chose Noah as a messenger, instructing him to build the Ark as a sign to the people that the flood would come unless they changed their actions. The judgment was sealed because of the sin of lawlessness, robbery, or wrongdoing chamas. Just as the people took one bean and then another, without looking at the consequences of their combined actions, so God punished them drop by drop.
After years, the Flood came. In , Swedish Nobel chemist Svante Arrhenius was recognized for his theory of climate change. Even concerned nations struggle to significantly change the actions of their governments and populations.
Floods today cause devastating harm in many ways.
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