NOAH AND HIS ARK - PART 2

In PART 1 of Noah And His Ark it was size that mattered, now we explore what we can do with it, if anything.

  Among other questions people have about the ark is; would the ark have been sea worthy? I'm not a ship builder but my Grandfather was and if he was alive today he would probably give me a great run down but as he has long since left us I'll have to investigate this one myself. To start with we have a football sized ship built of wood and was filled with animals and their food. For now lets just take the animals off and try to float this thing...

I'm only going to address the affirmative side of this debate, as the claim that it is seaworthy is the topic. The first stop in this journey is to take a look at AiG (Answers in Genesis). This was something of a hit and miss as after a short search I could only find rebuttals to skeptical blogs, and one in particular called "Feedback: Could Noah's Ark Float Without A Problem?" featuring an attempted debunking by "Froggie" who writes a blog called "A Bushy Tree" and one entry in particular called "More Lies From Ken Ham". I waded through the ad hominem attacks from both sides and, in the beginning at least, AiG seemed to have the information on their side with references for all the claims they made.

That changed quickly after breaking it down. One of the comments made was:

If the ancients couldn't handle big things, what will you do about Stonehenge, Easter Island, Egyptian pyramids, and huge obelisks? Surely, you are not suggesting aliens?

This is coming from a group of people claiming a supernatural god exists and they are poo pooing aliens. For me aliens seem to be a more believable explanation in the portrayal of a "god" than a supernatural answer. Either way this argument is a strawman as AiG has made an assumption on Froggies point. AiG also makes a strawman argument with this statement...

We are not discussing the myths of Noah’s Ark - though there are hundreds of them represented in Flood legends across the globe. Instead we are talking about the real Ark, as discussed in the Scriptures. By the way, you forgot to mention the distortions and obfuscation behind the myth of human evolution.

Even if human evolution is a myth (although evolution is seen throughout the bible) this has nothing to do with the question of the Ark. The argument from authority is also being used here suggesting that all other stories of floods and arks are wrong except for the Biblical Ark because it's part of the scriptures. A case of using the bible to prove the bible.

AiG cites the description of an unidentified ship with Kauri planks of up to forty-five feet in length...

Some of the kauri planks measured forty five feet in length by two feet in width, and the vessel appeared to be double planked suggesting that the vessel may have been built for navigation through the ice.

This is a great example of cherry picked information - the original text reads:

Unidentified. Pre-1800. The bow and portion of the starboard side of a ship more than 100 feet long was discovered by bushwalkers at South-East Cape, west from the Wilsons Promontory lighthouse in 1960. Analysis of her kauri timbers suggested they came from Queensland, Indonesia or New Zealand, whilst the iron recovered could have been manufactured in Birmingham, England before 1800. Some of the kauri planks measured forty five feet in length by two feet in width, and the vessel appeared to be double planked suggesting that the vessel may have been built for navigation through the ice.

That says to me this ship was built with both wood and iron... a big point conveniently missed by Tim Lovett, the author of this rebuttle, who cleverly omits this information to support his argument which is very misleading. The Iron Age started around 1200 B.C.E. Also, there is an assumption here to believe the Ark was double planked. One more point while I'm on this... the unidentified ship sank. Nobody can say whether it was it's maiden voyage or if it had been sailing for many, many years and the suggestion the vessel may have been built for navagation through ice also suggests it was not built for rough weather or major swells which could be the reason for it's demise.

The original blog from Tim Chaffey on AiG is "Feedback: Why are you building the Ark on Land?" which scoots around the question quite convincingly by refocusing on Jesus' sacrifice which has no baring on the Ark. I take exception to:

However, several scientific studies have shown that Noah’s Ark was built to optimal proportions to provide a perfect blend of comfort, strength, and stability.

I could only find one "scientific" study supporting the seaworthiness of the Ark which was tacked on the blog entry "Thinking Outside The Box", the link to which is another page by Tim Lovett. On this page there are links to the original study which don't work so I used my powers of Google to track down the organisations named including KACR, CRISO, MOERI and the scientist Dr Seon Won Hong. To his credit he did link to both KACR and CRISO and mentioned one was a new name of the other and now it's MOERI but neither of the links worked. The only thing I could find was the MOERI website which had no information on this study and the only information I could find on the good Dr was on creationist web sites. The experiment, from the photo, seems to be done with a scale model in a wave tank not a life sized one. The model would easily hold together but when you scale it up the pressures put on it would turn the whole thing to kindling. Perhaps somebody could prove me hypothesis.

I also did a search for any other scientific studies which prove the seaworthiness of the Ark and found... nothing.

I personally do not believe that the Ark, filled with animals, would be very seaworthy at all but I'm not sure about the evidence either way.  I'd be happy to look at any evidence that it existed let alone being seaworthy and for the sake of the next argument lets just assume that it was a real boat and could handle whatever god threw at the world.

Part 3 to come.

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way even I learn some cool stuff but it takes a lot of time and energy to write this blog.  If you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin