Noah and the Ark Reality or Mythology

Did the great flood in the Bible story of Noah and the Ark actually happen?

The short answer is, nope, never happened. The story can't be supported by either science or mythology. Even if you believe God is all powerful and can do anything it still doesn't make sense. It only makes sense if you are going to believe the Bible no matter what. In that case everything makes sense. "The Bible says it, I believe it, and that's that." If this is what you believe you should stop reading now because what I'm about to say will only piss you off. I can't change your mind and you won't learn anything. For the rest of you, here's an interesting point of view on an old story.

Let's look at the math. It amazes me that I've never seen anyone look at it this way before. As the story goes, God made it rain for 40 days and 40 nights and created a great flood that covered the entire earth. Enough to drowned everything except fish. Our tallest mountains are 27,000 feet tall, so if you're going to flood everything, that's 27,000 feet of water. For round numbers, let's just say 24,000 is enough.

If you divide 24,000 feet by 40 days, that's 600 feet of rain a day, over the entire planet. There's 24 hours in a day so that would be 25 feet of rain per hour, or 300 inches per hour. 7200 inches per day. 5 inches of rain a minute. That's one hell of a rain!

This is also hundreds of times as much water as what's in the oceans and the atmosphere. Where did all this water come from? Where did all this water go to? It's hardly going to run down the storm sewers. It can't evaporate because the air would be totally saturated once just a few feet evaporated. That much water isn't going to sink into the ground. There isn't that much ground. And there's no geological evidence that the entire planet was ever covered with water.

I haven't gone into the problems with gathering two of every species and fitting them all into a small boat. I'm not going to talk about the DNA problems of deriving species from only two individuals. Not going to talk about where dinosaur bones came from. Not going to bring up the possibility of animals, reptiles, and insects surviving on floating debris. We're just talking about the flood itself.

Of course, God can do anything. He could have created the water, made it disappear, and then covered up all geological evidence of the flood so as to fool those faithless scientists. A flood like that would have carved up the entire planet big time. But God must have erased all the erosion and recreated a landscape that looks as if it had been here for billions of years. If you believe in Noah and the Ark, then you have to believe that God concealed all evidence of the flood and intended to fool scientists.

Why would God do that? If God wanted to waste the planet he could have just struck them all dead instead of doing the flood thing. Looks like he went to a lot of trouble that he didn't need to. God works in mysterious ways, and we mortals can't comprehend the ways of God. We are to accept it on faith because the math and science sure don't add up.

An Alternative Theory

The alternative theory to Noah and the Ark is that it never happened. It's just a story that just isn't true. 4000 years ago people believed the world was flat and that the sky and the clouds went up forever. They didn't know how high mountains were and how much water it took to cover them. They thought that a big flood could cover the Earth and the water would evaporate or run off somewhere. They were wrong.

The alternative theory is that it's just a story and has no more basis in truth than any other fairy tale. No reasonable person could believe this is true.