The Flood of Noah is one of the most legendary stories in the Bible. The story instigates with the world being “corrupt in God’s sight” and “full of violence”. God tells a man named Noah to construct an ark for himself, his three sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives. He moreover instructs Noah to fetch two of “all living creatures”, male and female, and care for all of them. (Noah did not need to walk for the animals approached him.) “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.” (Gen. 6.22) After seven days, floodwaters arose onto the earth and wiped out all existing fauna and individuals not on the ark. For forty days and forty nights, it poured. The flood sustained for a hundred and fifty days. On the seventeenth day of the seventeenth month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

Flood, ark, and Babel stories are existent in various diverse cultures. As stated by Jonathan Safarti, “even Chinese characters can be traced back to events in Genesis.” There are thousands of flood legends around worldwide. The majority of these have noticeable resemblances. This is conceivable since all hominids other than the eight who were aboard the ark were drowned or crumpled by water pressure. As God spoke to Noah in Gen. 6:13, “I am going to put an end to all people”. Obviously, over the centuries the stories have differentiated to some extent from generation to generation, the earliest source being the scripts of Moses. But for the most part, they all talk of a great deluge.

According to Mark Isaak, the ark could not have been held together exclusively by lumber. Additionally, “it must also be sturdy enough that the changing stresses don’t spur gaps in its hull.” Isaak continues that the largest modern-day wooden ships are as long as “300 feet, and these require reinforcing with iron straps and leak so badly they must be constantly pumped.” Gen. 6:15 claims “the ark [was] to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.” Today’s wooden ships are built to move throughout the water and be pilotable. The ark was assembled to be durable and to float. For that reason, an Ark constructed with a flat bottom wouldn’t droop. In addition, according to Sarfati, “teak logs, especially specially treated by being buried for a while… would have been especially seaworthy.”  According to Safety investigation of Noah’s Ark in a seaway, if the wooden walls of the ark were simply 30 cm thick, the ark could withstand waves higher than 30 m, most likely enough to withstand the initial impact of water. Plus, the wood he used must have been pretty durable to last the 4,800 years of weathering and the elements. Furthermore, God wanted Noah and the Ark’s contents to survive, so He could have held the wood together with His power.

Isaak speaks of the “runaway subduction model” by John Baumgardner “which proposes that the pre-Flood lithosphere (ocean floor), being denser than the underlying mantle, began sinking.” It continues that heat created up to 150 days of rain and magma from the mantle raised ocean levels dramatically. The ocean floor dropped again when the magma cooled. Sedimentary mountains such as the Sierras and Andes were formed after the Flood by “isostatic rebound”, the upward movement of the Earth’s crust following isostatic depression. (This is similar to when you drop a foam ball into a swimming pool.) Isaak debates that the 10^28 joules Baumgardner proposes were released from the subduction process would boil the entirety of the Earth’s oceans off. Baumgardner retorts that the atmospheric moisture capacity of the Earth is not that high and “the water quickly returned as cool fresh water to the ocean surface.” This is the reason why there are extensive halite (NaCl) and gypsum deposits in the continental sedimentary record. Isaak also claims the thermal diffusivity of the Earth is way too low and it “would have to increase 10,000 fold to get the subduction rates proposed.” Baumgardner shows that a low thermal diffusivity actually aids the runaway mechanism. Basically, Mark Isaak’s arguments were not true. Moreover, Gen. 7:11 states that “all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” The “springs” could refer to the water escalating from filling aquifers and ocean water and/or magma and the “floodgates” obviously the rain from superheated ocean water. Baumgardner also estimated the Flood to be near the end of the Cenozoic era, close to the 4,800 years ago that archaeologists have dated ark fragments found in Mt. Ararat.

The Flood was a great period of seismic activity, as established in the last paragraph. Therefore, the earth may have looked dramatically different after the old Earth was swallowed by the mantle. The runaway subduction model claims that it “pulls the Pangean supercontinent apart [and] moves the continental blocks by thousands of kilometers”. In concept maps of Pangaea, Mt. Ararat is located near the center of the Panthalassa Ocean. Noah could have started near the middle of what today is the Sahara desert, which is the middle of the Pangaean supercontinent and close to Mt. Ararat. Animals traversing over a very different supercontinent that may not have been mountainous could most likely come to Noah under God’s influence at a central point to meet Isaak’s calculated “one animal in every 38 seconds”.

When looking at the Grand Canyon, what does one see? A energized, fast-paced river with unconformities in steep canyon walls? Of course not. One sees straight, flat layers of sediments and a slow, easy-going river. According to Dr. Henry Morris, “the earth’s crust… was eroded, transported, and re-deposited. It was destroyed in its original form and a new world emerged after the flood.” All over the earth, sedimentary rocks are found in great thicknesses. There is also no deformity or worldwide unconformity in the layer. This indicates that there was a worldwide, sedimentary event: the Flood. Isaak claims the varves of the Grand Canyon would “have required over a month to settle” each to make such detailed and separated layers. Sarfati retorts that it’s “simply nonsense that the layers would have to form slowly, and/or one at a time.” Layers can form simultaneously by a self-sorting mechanism as differently-sized particles roll over and sort each other. As an example, Mt. St. Helens laid down 25 feet of sediments in a few hours. Sedimentary layers do not have to form slowly. The Grand Canyon could not have been formed in the toughness of rock today by the weak Colorado – not “even in a trillion years,” as Dr. Morris puts it. Therefore, the majority of the Grand Canyon was likely to be cut when the sediments were still soft, possibly only taking a century. Furthermore, the same rocks are found all over the earth in the sedimentary layer: Antarctica included.

Noah did not have to gather two of every species; he merely had to gather two of every animal back in his time. Evolution suggests that possible two bears could have formed all species of bears after it or two birds formed the hawks, pigeons and hummingbirds we have today. Noah could have gathered two of every class or order. He could have gathered two doves but not two passenger pigeons. He may though have gathered two hawks. According to Michael S. Cole, the Ark could “hold an equivalent of 522 standard two-decked railroad cars.” This is more than enough space to house 35,000 animals with an average size of a sheep, food, and Noah and his family. Therefore, God could have chosen to keep the smaller breeds which evolved into larger breeds.

In addition to all of this data, an amazing miracle was unfolded to me during a night of research. On the night of Tuesday, April 27, I looked everywhere for more research that would make my argument of the Flood of Noah being a true miracle solid to no avail. Therefore, I prayed that God would give me more research so I could make the story seem even more real. The next day, news came out about Noah’s Ark being found in Turkey. According to one article, “Chinese and Turkish explorers… are ’99.9%’ sure” that this was the ark. The article continued that “pieces of wood [were] found at above 12,000-feet elevation and [were] dated as 4,800 years old”, which is approximately the time scholars interpret from the Bible it took place. (Baumgardner claims that isostatic rebound took place over a long period of time, so this is how a lower elevation of Mt. Ararat back when Noah landed is possible. Psalm 104:8: “The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them.”) Although this alone is spectacular evidence as it is, the fact that it came a day after I prayed that I would have good research to read while at TAKS is what makes me believe that God wanted me to share this with you and prove it was true. A global flood is easily possible through science and more. The miracle of the Flood is how God made everything so logical and so precise that when He made the Earth, He had the Earth’s matter arranged so that thousands of years into the future, a flood would happen. Deducing from this evidence presented to me, I firmly believe that the Flood of Noah was true and not just a myth.

Works Cited

Zondervan NIV Study Bible.  Fully rev. ed.  Kenneth L. Barker, gen. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002.  Print

Isaak, Mark. “Problems with a Global Flood.” The Talk.Origins Archive. Talk.Orgins, 16 Nov. 1998. Web. 27 April 2010. <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html>.

Cole, Michael S. “Noah’s Ark – Truth or Myth?” West-Ark Church of Christ. West-Ark Church of Christ. Web. 27 Apr. 2010. <http://www.westarkchurchofchrist.org/library/noahsark.htm>.

Sarfati, Jonathan. “Problems with a Global Flood?” The True.Origin Archive. TrueOrigin Archive, 1998. Web. 01 May 2010. <http://www.trueorigin.org/arkdefen.asp>.

Baumgardner, John R. “COMPUTER MODELING OF THE LARGE-SCALE TECTONICS ASSOCIATED WITH THE GENESIS FLOOD.” The Institute for Creation Research. Institute for Creation Research, 18 July 1994. Web. 01 May 2010. <http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_jb_largescaletectonics/>.

Baumgardner, John R. “RUNAWAY SUBDUCTION AS THE DRIVING MECHANISM FOR THE GENESIS FLOOD.” The Institute for Creation Research. Institute for Creation Research, 18 July 1994. Web. 01 May 2010. <http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_jb_runawaysubduction/>.

S.W. Hong et al., “Safety investigation of Noah’s Ark in a Seaway”, CEN Technical Journal 8(1):26–36, 1994.  All the co-authors are on the staff of the Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering, Taijon.

Kurczy, Stephen. “Doubt Cast on Noah’s Ark Found in Turkey – CSMonitor.com.”CSMonitor.com. The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Apr. 2010. Web. 28 Apr. 2010. <http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2010/0428/Doubt-cast-on-Noah-s-ark-found-in-Turkey>.

Paul, Lee. “Noah’s Flood.” Old West Legends. Web. 02 May 2010. <http://www.theoutlaws.com/unexplained10.htm>.

Liked my post? Feel free to share your post with people using one of the links below! Also, subscribe to my feed or follow me on Twitter! Thanks!