Scott J wrote,
You said that Genesis cannot be literal because the THEORIES of men say so. Actually, you said that the facts disprove it... which is categorically false. It is the naturalistic explanation of the facts that contradict the literal reading... not the facts themselves.
Perhaps your memory needs to be refreshed a bit. Here are some of the basic, undeniable FACTS (not theories) that I have posted in this thread,
• The ark as literally described in Genesis was much too small because the amount of water that it would be capable of displacing would weigh less that the animals on board making it impossible for the ark to float.
• The floor space on the ark was too small to hold any more than a tiny fraction of the cages that would be necessary to keep the animals in place (and from eating each other).
• The amount of food required for the animals would weigh nearly as much as the animals and would require a vast amount of storage space.
• Many of the animals aboard the ark would have required specific FRESH fruits, vegetables, leaves, grass, bark, roots, etc.
• Most of the genetically discrete populations of fish (including many VERY large fish) would have to be taken aboard the ark and kept in tanks of water that met their very specific water chemistry needs in order to survive.
• The weight of the water on the earth would have crushed to death any of the land plants that did not drown in the water.
• After 150 days when the water abated, there would be no vegetation on the earth for the herbivores to eat, and no meat for the carnivores to eat, therefore a vast mount of food would necessarily have been kept on the ark to sustain the animals AFTER the flood.
• Many of the herbivores would have had very specific dietary needs, including fresh fruits and berries that are produced only on MATURE plants. Therefore these mature plants would necessarily have been kept and maintained on the ark and subsequently planted in the ground after the flood.
• The Animals could not all be released at once or in the same place because they would eat each other.
• Collecting the animals from all over the earth would have been a physical impossibility no less impossible than Santa Clause delivering presents to every boy and girl on the night before Christmas. The polar bears and penguins, not to mention all of the unique kinds of animals in Australia, would have posed a few special difficulties.
• After the flood, the animals could not be returned to their original habitat because all habitats would have been destroyed by the flood.
• Many of the necessary habitats would take 50 years or more to be reestablished and their reestablishment would have required the effort of many thousands of persons.
• Until all the necessary habitats could be reestablished, the animals requiring these habitats would have to be kept and cared for by Noah and his family.
• There was not enough water to cover the entire earth, and even if there was, where did it go after the flood.
• If the reported sightings of the Ark are correct, the Ark came to rest on a VERY high mountain on VERY rugged terrain from which the vast majority of the animals would not have been able descend.
Any rational man or woman can see at once that the story of Noah’s Ark can NOT be a literal account of an historic event. Indescribably huge miracles would have been necessary, and a literal interpretation of Genesis does not allow for these miracles because the whole point of the narrative is that through the natural means of an ark built by Noah and his family, mankind and all the kinds of animals were saved from the water.
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