[LottiFurmann]

problems with the Bible flood story

1) the story of noah in the bible is based on an earlier legend. the epic of gilgamesh was written by the sumerians long before genesis was written down. we have tablets dating as far back as 2000 BCE which contain portions of the gilgamesh story, with the earliest surviving record of the flood dating to 1900 BCE. the Old Testament of the bible was not pulled together until about 600 BCE from primarily oral tradition, and the oldest surviving versions of the old testament are even more recent than that.

there is little question that the hebrew story is based on the sumerian/babylonian story, as the hebrews, even according to the bible, came from this region and their language is descended from akadian, spoken by the ancient babylonians and in which the most complete existing version of the gilgamesh legend is written.

instead of noah, we have utnapishtim. instead of a single god, we have " many " " gods ". but the basic story of building a boat, taking the animals on, letting birds out to find land, and even the rainbow are all elements captured in this earlier book.

the point being, the hebrews probably took this story into their oral tradition, over many years it was change, and it wound up in genesis. We see no reason to believe that the story in the bible is any more true than any other story in any other of the countless religiouss and mythological texts.

2) there is no evidence of a worldwide flood of the proportions described in any of the stories. if such a flood were to have taken place in the past 6,000 years, there would be a vast amount of geological evidence of such a flood. so far, there is no verifiable evidence in support of such a flood. the geologic evidence simply does not exist.

3) the story in the bible is impossible.

3a) for noah and his sons to build such a boat, even given several hundred years, without modern manufacturing equipment would be impossible.

3b) collecting two of each animal would be an equally impossible task (did noah travel to australia to pick up some kangaroos, or to antarctica to grab some penguins?)

3c) the combined weight of the animals and the food to keep them all alive for over 100 days would cause such a wooden ship to collapse under its own weight.

3d) there wouldn’t even be enough time for noah and his family to feed and shovel all the dung out of all the stalls of these tens of thousands of animals.

3e) there is the problem of the fresh-water fish surviving in the salt water (or the salt-water fish surviving in the fresh water, depending upon your definition of the flood)

3d) when the flood receded, how did the kangaroos get all the way back to Australia?

4) if you claim two of each species around today, the boat isn’t big enough. if you claim that there were certain “types” of animals, then there isn’t enough time for these “types” to speciate into the vast variety of species we see today.

5) a single pair of any animals is not enough to develop a significant population due to the inbreeding problem. take a couple of hamsters and try this. after a couple dozen generations, the offspring will be sick and malformed due to this inbreeding.