“I WILL SEND RAIN ON THE
EARTH”
A Bible Student’s View of
the Genesis Flood
By Tom Couchman
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1A. About This Paper
For Christians who are concerned with the relationship of science and scripture, there are two Bible subjects which demand attention: the story of the creation in Genesis chapters one and two, and the story of the Flood in Genesis chapters six through eight. No one can give proper honor both to the plenary inspiration of God’s Word and to the findings of science about God’s creation without dealing with both of these biblical narratives.
This paper addresses one of them: viz, the Genesis Flood. I will discuss the Flood (capitalized when I am referring to the Flood) as a Bible student, and not as a scientist. I am not a scientist. Though I will refer to some of the findings of various scientific disciplines when it is appropriate to do so, anyone who reads this paper will be able to see by the generic and non-technical nature of my references how shallow my scientific knowledge is. I am a Bible student. I am convinced that one can state facts and reach conclusions, concerning which one can be reasonably confident, about the nature of the Flood and the effects of the Flood by applying common sense to statements in the Bible. “What can we learn about the Flood from scripture and plain reason?” is the main question I am trying to answer here.
I am writing this paper for
three reasons.
The first: anyone who allows the possibility that the cosmos is very ancient, and who claims to respect the authority of the Bible, must come to grips with (or at least admit that he is unable to come to grips with) the Bible story of the Flood. I am an old-earth creationist (OEC) and not a young-earth creationist (YEC); therefore, the Flood is one of the issues with which I must deal, at least to my own satisfaction.
I am an OEC, but one who has considerable sympathy for the YEC position. I insist that it is possible in principle to account for many geological phenomena in terms of the Flood and of other, unrecorded, catastrophic events. In other words, as an OEC who believes the Bible story of the Flood, I am open to non-uniformitarian interpretations of nature.
However … Here is the second reason for this paper.
A theistic scientist, a person who has received and absorbed the technical training in a scientific discipline which I have not, ought to be able to explain nature in terms of the works of God as recorded in scripture, where such explanations are theoretically possible and practical in terms of the details given in the Biblical narrative. A trained scientist who is a Bible-believer should be able to start with the Bible story of the Flood and, from that narrative, explain in considerable detail what effects that Flood ought to have produced, and then demonstrate that the hypothetical explanation he or she has given is not contradicted by any natural observation—or, even better, is supported by natural observation. A Bible-believing scientist who claims to be a “creation scientist” or a “Flood geologist” should be able to tell a detailed, Bible-based, scientific, reasonable story of the Flood.
Most popular YEC interpreters of the Flood usually do not render this basic service. Instead, they describe the Flood, in terms of explaining observed natural data, as a “magical” event. Instead of saying, “Based on the narrative found in scripture, the Flood produced this observed effect in the following manner …”; in effect, they claim, “The Flood did this … somehow.” They appear to expect their invocation of “water magic” to silence all criticism from anyone who accepts the authority of scripture, and they appear to be genuinely taken aback when a believer is dissatisfied.
Behind “the magic Flood” is, I think, a conviction among those who share my respect for the power of God and the integrity of scripture that, because the Flood was divinely triggered, because it was such a tremendous event, and—perhaps most importantly—because, as we shall see, the Bible says so little either about what the Flood did or what it didn’t do, it might have done anything. And a Flood which might have done anything might even have done everything. Thus, many people with presuppositional agendas have used the lack of information in scripture as a warrant for “proving” that the Flood produced whatever datum they want to explain. These expositors seek to make the notion that the Flood could have done anything an issue of commitment to divine revelation, and they chastise those who ask for a better explanation than “The Flood did this … somehow” for a lack of faith.
Let me be clear about what I believe. I have no doubt that the Flood was a stupendous catastrophe, perhaps the most sweeping event ever to strike the earth, undoubtedly the greatest disaster ever to befall humankind. It is not a lack of regard for the uniqueness and scope of the Flood which causes me to insist that those who claim the Flood did a particular thing explain how, reasonably, scientifically, and to a satisfactory level of detail. I should not have to suffer the charge of disrespect for the power of God or for the divine narrative when I ask someone to provide a detailed and credible explanation for some alleged Flood effect. After all, I am not putting God to the test by demanding that He cause a flood. He has already done so. But the Genesis narrative does not say that any feature of the surface of the earth either in that day or in this day was a result of the Flood. So it is no lack of faith in divine inspiration to ask that an interpretation of nature, even one which is rooted in respect for scripture, produce a “non-magical” explanation for natural phenomena.
Indeed, conscientious champions of creation-science have made this same kind of plea. In an issue of the Creation Research Society Quarterly which contained a (later discredited) article by the indefatigable, flamboyant and unreliable CRS geologist Clifford L. Burdick entitled “Discovery of Human Skeletons in Cretaceous Formation,” Dr. Walter E. Lammerts, the CRSQ editor, inserted the following cautionary note.
Admittedly this discovery [alleged human remains in a geological
formation which classical geology assigns to an age millions of years before
humans] offers as much of a problem for Flood geologists as for those of the
orthodox point of view. For it is
difficult to explain how two men could still be alive after such a depth of
strata had been deposited [referring to supposed Flood-deposited strata on top
of the cretaceous]. And if already
drowned, why were they not buried later in the Mesa Verde formation? A more detailed and clear cut concept of
just how the Flood accomplished its work is badly needed in order to be able to
see how such finds as these fit into theoretical expectations, or creationists
will be guilty of the same ad hoc explanations as evolutionary minded
colleagues.1
Lammerts was not being unreasonable, and neither am I. Anyone who elects to opt out of discussing geology on the grounds that the subject is irrelevant to salvation has my blessing. If someone wants to attempt to explain geology on catastrophist grounds, I have no problem with that stance either (whether I agree with a particular catastrophist explanation for some phenomenon is another issue, but I do respect and in fact encourage the effort). But when a person claims to have provided a “scientific” explanation for an observed fact on the basis of the Genesis Flood, that explanation has to explain. “The Flood did this … somehow” does not explain anything. “A WORLDWIDE CATASTROPHE, THE JUDGMENT OF A WRATHFUL GOD, A WORLD-CHANGING, SIN-CLEANSING, STUPENDOUS CATACLYSM, THE MOST SWEEPING UPHEAVAL IN WORLD HISTORY did this … somehow” does not explain anything either.
Should YEC scientific claims be summarily dismissed? Not at all! Some of these claims are carefully and thoughtfully made and deserve careful and thoughtful scrutiny even if the eventual outcome is that they are rejected as scientifically inadequate; after all, most scientific theories of all types are eventually rejected as scientifically inadequate. However, merely making a claim that favors Flood geology is not good enough: the claim must be logically and factually sound. Alas, far too many YEC scientists and apologists operate under a set of “rules of evidence” which go something like this: “If you claim you are explaining some aspect of nature in a way that is consistent with a young earth, you don’t really have to explain it at all; you just have to claim to explain it, and that’s enough.”
Let me give an example. Answers in Genesis is a popular YEC website (www.answersingenesis.org) which presents a variety of YEC arguments, some of them thought-provoking, and some them painful for a creationist to read. In an article posted at www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1137.asp (originally published in Creation Ex Nihilo), entitled “Coal Beds and Noah’s Flood,” Dr. Andrew Snelling argues that the Genesis Flood can account for all known coal reserves. Now, in the first place, I have no objection to Dr. Snelling or anyone else arguing that the Flood produced all the coal in the earth’s crust. In the second place, coal formation is not well-understood. On these two counts if not on others, it should be possible to posit a plausible hypothesis for the origin of coal based at least partly on the Flood.
Dr. Snelling begins his effort to present such a hypothesis with a citation from Holmes, Principles of Physical Geology (1965), that the average ratio of living matter to deposited coal is 12:1. He then proceeds to make the following series of assertions.
Modern
research shows that less than two meters of vegetation are needed to make one
meter of coal. Some observations made
by coal geologists working in mines (e.g. the compaction of coal around clay
“balls” included in some coal beds) suggest that the compaction ratio is
probably much less than 2:1 and more likely very close to 1:1. These observations destroy this objection to
coal bed formation during Noah’s Flood, since instead of today’s vegetation
volume only compacting down to 1-3% of known coal reserves (the usual claim of
geologists), today’s vegetation volume would compact down to at least 30% of
the known coal reserves.
There is not a single citation or reference here, even though Dr. Snelling, who as a trained geologist knows how controversial evidence ought to be presented, is making a “scientific” claim which differs by more than an order of magnitude from the accepted value. What “modern research” and “observations made by coal geologists”? He does not tell us. Even if he were right, he should not (though he obviously does) expect us to accept such assertions just because he has made them!
What about the other 70% of the coal reserves?
The evolutionists’ argument based on the volume of vegetation on today’s land surface ignores the fact that 60% of today’s land surface is covered by deserts or only sparse vegetation. In addition, there are the vast icy wastes of Antarctica beneath which are rock layers containing thick coal beds. So if all of today’s land surface was covered with the lush vegetation suggested by Antarctica’s coal beds, under the influence of a global sub-tropical greenhouse effect before Noah’s Flood … then the volume of such vegetation on today’s land surface would be sufficient to produce at least another 50% of the known coal reserves.
But this all assumes that the area of land surface available for vegetation growth has always been the same. This assumption simply is not correct. [Genesis 1:9-10] implies that, instead of land masses surrounded by seas … in the pre-Flood world there was one sea surrounded by one large land mass. The language used in Scripture also implies that that there was probably more land area then on the face of the globe than “seas.” … it is likely that there was at least twice as much land area available for vegetation growth in the pre-Flood world …
This, with no observational support whatsoever, with a dubious interpretation of scripture as his only warrant, is Dr. Snelling’s “scientific” argument for “Genesis coal”!
Wait, there is more. He quotes—with a valid citation this time, so his previous lapse cannot have been for want of knowing better—from Mary Archer, an “authority on solar energy”:
…the
amount of solar energy falling on the earth’s surface in 14 days is equal to
the known energy of the world’s supply of fossil fuels. [Archer] also said that only .03% of the
solar energy arriving at the earth’s surface is stored as chemical energy in
vegetation through photosynthetic processes.
He divides 14 days by .0003 to get 46,667 days—128 years—and claims:
So
we can conclude that only 128 years of plant growth at today’s rate and volume
is all that is required to provide the energy equivalent stored in today’s
known coal beds! There was, of course,
ample time between Creation and Noah’s Flood for such plant growth to
occur—1600 years, in fact.2
Well, yes, it would indeed take all the plants on earth 128 years to store the energy in all known coal reserves. But there are some embarrassingly obvious problems here. Dr. Snelling believes that all the coal on the earth, along with the sedimentary rock in which that coal is found, was produced not from 128 years’ plant growth or 1600 years’ plant growth but from the plants killed by the Flood—since mature “woody” growth produces very little coal, at most perhaps ten years’ growth! Furthermore, his analysis assumes that essentially all of the stored photosynthetic chemical energy (that is, all of that three percent of the sun’s energy which is captured by plants) was converted into coal. In fact, most of it must have been left on the surface of the post-diluvial earth where it simply decayed, as major volumes of plant material are postulated and required by YEC theories as “life rafts” for insect species which didn’t get into the ark, and to propagate post-Flood plant life. It appears that the advocates of Flood geology are giving the plants that were around at the time of the Flood a very ambitious set of tasks to perform: those plants must serve as “natural arks” for insects and as the progenitors of post-diluvian plant life, at the same time that they were being buried, sometimes miles underground, to begin forming all the coal which is found in the crust of the earth!
What really bothers me, as Dr. Snelling’s fellow-creationist, is that he obviously expects us to swallow his claims without question. Why else would he think that he can get away with making hearsay assertions that contradict, by a factor of more than ten, accepted values of plant-to-coal ratios, completely without attribution, and then claim these unsubstantiated assertions “destroy” the anti-Flood-geology case? Why else would he present a questionable scriptural interpretation as “science”? Why else would he claim to provide an analysis of conversion of plants to coal which proves absolutely nothing about what might have happened during the Flood?
That example is what I mean by: “You don’t really have to explain it, you just have to claim to explain it, and that’s enough.” I wish I could say Dr. Snelling’s article is atypical; but it is not. The majority—I will resist the temptation to say, “the vast majority”—of YEC “science” looks a lot like that effort: deeply unsatisfactory to any pious investigator. And one has to add the troubling thought that two major YEC sources—Answers in Genesis and Creation Ex Nihilo—published this piece of fluff without critical scrutiny.
As this negative example shows, an explanation is neither scientific nor scriptural just because the person who wrote it believes the Bible. Any attempted exposition of what the Flood did must begin with a careful study of the Flood narrative and must proceed along a track which is both logical and scientific. I find it extremely ironic that those who most loudly claim for themselves the mantle of respect for scripture have discarded what scripture itself says about the Flood and what reason might infer about the Bible story of the Flood, and have replaced scripture and reason with “the magic Flood.”
Now, on to my third reason for this writing.
There is an unsavory tactic which one sees much too often in YEC discussions of alleged Flood effects: a kind of “bait and switch.” Here is how it goes. An author claims he is going to provide a scientific explanation for how the Flood produced some observed natural phenomenon. He proceeds to attempt his explanation. So far, so good; I am very much in favor of “Flood science” as it attempts to describe how the natural energy of a supernaturally generated Flood might have produced phenomena which we can observe today. In other words, I have no objection to “Flood science” or “Flood geology” in principle.
But then along comes a party-pooper like myself, to show that the Flood cannot possibly have done what the author claims it did: because scripture does not say the Flood did it, because the floods which we observe today do not do it, and because a reasonable evaluation of the Genesis narrative does not allow one to conclude that there is any chance that the Flood did what the author claims. At that point, I will be denounced as an unbeliever: “You don’t have faith in the power of God!”
Note what has happened. The original claim was to provide a “scientific” explanation for a natural phenomenon, in terms of the “natural” effects of the Flood. But when I show the claim to be unscientific, unscriptural and unreasonable, my faith is attacked. “Faith” has been substituted for “science.” But the attackers will maintain that a valid “scientific” explanation for Flood effects has been provided. “You just can’t see it because you don’t believe.”
This tactic is nonsense. If I believe the Bible, I must accept on faith what the Bible tells me. I am not obliged to accept pseudo-scientific speculations about the nature of the pre-Flood earth, of supposed geological processes contemporaneous with the Flood, or of fanciful climatic and lithospheric phenomena subsequent to the Flood, because the Bible doesn’t record any such phenomena. I am not saying I would dismiss such claims out of hand; anyone who wants to propose a scientific explanation for a natural object in terms of the Flood or events at the time of the Flood is welcome to do so. But if scripture does not say it happened, it cannot cloak itself in the mantle of scriptural authority and demand the faithful allegiance of those who believe the Bible; it must be evaluated by the rules of science, and if it is not scientific and not reasonable I am absolutely justified in rejecting it. You can’t move a “scientific explanation” into the realm of “faith” to protect it from scientific scrutiny, then over into the realm of “science” to grab credit for valid “Flood geology.” If it’s not good science, and it’s not good exegesis, then it doesn’t stand much of a chance of being true.
Having said so much about why I am writing this paper, I need to say something about the approach I will have to take.
Any investigator of Flood effects is forced to draw conclusions and make inferences from the rather sparse statements of fact which the Genesis record provides us. As will be apparent especially in Chapters Three and Four, the Bible says almost nothing about what happened during the Flood or about what its effects were. There are statements made in the relevant texts which may be used properly and reasonably in formulating conclusions, but there is no escaping the fact that inference and, yes, even restrained speculation are essential to inferring Flood effects.
I say inference and restrained speculation are necessary. Of course, in the most general sense that statement may be held to be untrue: we don’t really have to make any inferences or engage in any speculation about what the Bible Flood story says. If we don’t, however—if we stick strictly to statements in scripture—then all the conclusions of Flood geology will have to be thrown out, for every one of those conclusions is based on inference and speculation—in too many cases wild, unreasonable and unscientific speculation. I do not object to the speculation, because anyone—OEC or YEC—who would provide a proposed compendium of Flood effects must speculate. I object to the unreasonable and unscientific nature of much of the published YEC speculation, and to its being presented not as speculation but as established fact (see the quotation from Dr. Snelling for one example).
I will therefore acknowledge that this paper contains conclusions and inferences which are based upon statements in scripture and findings of science. Unlike many published YEC authorities, however, I will clearly label my conclusions and inferences as such. When I do speculate, I will do so in accordance with scripture, consistent with what science has come to know about the effects of floods and of flowing water, and in as spare and restrained a manner as possible while still providing a reasonably complete answer to the question of what the Flood might have done. I will try, above all, to take a spiritually minded approach which honors the word of God.
Here is what the reader will find in the remaining chapters of this paper.
Chapter two briefly discusses the four major young-earth interpretations of the flood of which I am aware.
Chapter three presents what (little) scripture has to say about the antediluvian earth.
Chapter four explores the text of the Genesis Flood narrative.
Chapter five briefly examines the case for some proposed Flood-era effects.
Chapter six expands upon the scriptural statements presented in chapter three to expose the likely and the possible effects of a global flood.
Finally, chapter seven is a summary-level (as a non-scientist, that is all I am qualified to render) consideration of the geological phenomena which most YECs propose that the Flood explains, and an evaluation of the possibility that the Flood might indeed explain those phenomena.
CHAPTER TWO
YOUNG-EARTH INTERPETATIONS
OF THE FLOOD
Since the ultimate purpose of this paper is to ask the question, “Might the Flood have done this?” it will be useful to have in mind the main groupings of claims made by practitioners of “Flood geology.” YECs generally assert that most or all of the data testifying to the natural history of the earth are best explained as Flood-effects. It would be a misrepresentation, however, simply to lump all YEC views into one. There is both profound agreement and lively dispute among YECs about which interpretation of the Flood and of ancient prehistory in general is correct. In the interests of accuracy I will therefore take the time to distinguish briefly among the main YEC interpretations.
Though it may not be accurate to say “absolutely all YECs” accept the following assertions, essentially all of them do.
The Earth Is Relatively Young
As the term YEC implies, all YECs hold that the earth is relatively young—most commonly they say 6,000 to 10,000 years. However, it is arguable that anyone who holds the earth to be less than a few million years old can claim to be a YEC, since standard geology concludes the earth is between three and five billion years old, and all non-saltationist theories of macroevolution “require” at least a hundred million years. YEC computations are based on the genealogies recorded in the Bible, but not strictly so: most YECs are willing to acknowledge the presence of some gaps in the genealogical records, and will rely on inference and extra-scriptural sources to arrive at an age greater than the approximately 6,000 years that a strict genealogical summing would compute. There are also YECs who argue for a young earth within an ancient cosmos.
The Flood Was Miraculously
Caused
All YECs hold that the Flood recorded in Genesis was miraculously caused. That is, God did not providentially use a natural event to accomplish His purpose, as He did in other cases.
Flood Effects Were Natural
This assertion stands in contrast to, but not in contradiction of, the previous one. All YECs with whom I am familiar agree that though the Flood was the result of a divine miracle, once the event was underway the effects produced by the accumulating waters were natural.
It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of this point. If the effects produced by the Flood were miraculous and therefore inscrutable, then there is no way to know what those effects might be; a flood which might miraculously have done anything also might have miraculously done nothing. Therefore, there can be no “Flood geology” without “natural” Flood effects.
God may, by miraculous (i.e., direct) means, trigger any number of catastrophic or non-catastrophic events the results of which may be discernable years or centuries later. Scripture asserts that a volcanic catastrophe destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and that a seismic (probably non-catastrophic) event was used to kill rebellious Israelites during the time of Moses. But once the event has been “triggered,” nature takes over. What we subsequently expect to see are entirely natural effects of a supernaturally triggered event. Thus, the rain which fell during the Flood made things wet, and the rising waters caused the ark to float in accord with Archimedes’ principle, and creatures caught outside the ark drowned or were battered to death by the force of the water.
Anyone who doubts the importance of this point should consider the following statement by the esteemed Dr. John C. Whitcomb, co-author of The Genesis Flood.
God maintains a definite economy of miracles. Otherwise, miracles would become commonplace
and would thus lose their uniqueness and significance … Apart from the specific
miracles mentioned in Scripture, which were necessary to begin and to terminate
this period of global judgment, the Flood accomplished its work of destruction
by purely natural processes that are capable of being studied to a
certain extent in hydraulics laboratories and in local flood situations today.3
That supernaturally caused events produce natural results is what allows us to distinguish between conclusions about the Flood which are reasonable and conclusions which are fanciful. Alleged Flood effects must be the same as those we observe when we see phenomena we know (or strongly suspect) were produced by accumulating water. This principle is the reason that the plea, “The Flood did this … somehow,” is unacceptable. When someone points to the Flood to explain natural data, we ought to see data which we know might have been produced by the Flood described in Genesis. When someone says, “The Flood did this,” of an effect which science or reason tell us the Genesis Flood could not produce, we are entitled to reject the explanation. And we have a responsibility to examine the scripture to see what effects the Genesis Flood might have wrought—which indeed is the design of this paper.
The Genesis Account Is
Reliable
All YECs with whom I am familiar stand by the reliability of the Genesis account of the Flood in all its particulars insofar as we can understand them. I hedge on their behalf because there are some statements about the Flood that we have no way of interpreting dogmatically: for example, we can draw a conclusion based on restrained and reasonable speculation, but we have no way of knowing beyond a reasonable doubt what “the springs of the great deep” were.
In terms of alleged effects of the Flood, I am aware of four major groups of YECs. I believe all YEC explanations of the Flood fit into one of these four groups.
Minimalist
A “minimalist” YEC Flood interpretation would hold that there are few or no geological and anthropological remnants of the Flood, on the grounds that a one-year flood would have produced very few effects which could be discerned thousands of years later. Minimalist YECs must find some explanation other than the Flood for geological data to be produced in a geologically short time. There are several potential explanations available. One is to say that God created the earth a few thousand years ago pretty much as we see it, with canyons which appear to have been cut by water but were not, and with fossils which appear to be the remnants of once-living organisms but are not. Another is to say that the earth is several millions of years old but not the billions of years that classical geology requires, and that multiple catastrophes over these millions of years produced both the geological record and the fossil record. A minimalist YEC interpretation is consistent with any reasonable reading of the Genesis record of the Flood. Most minimalists would probably hold that the Flood was global, but since they do not claim to be able to explain all of geology from the Flood they do not have as much at stake in a global Flood as other YECs.
Conservative
What I call the “conservative” YEC interpretation holds that Flood effects were confined to the outermost layer of the earth’s crust and the troposphere. A contrasting view is found in the next section. The conservative interpretation explains most or all data relating to the sedimentary rock and the fossils which are embedded in it as diluvial effects. According to the most popular versions of this view, there was no rain at all prior to the Flood, and in the process of generating the Flood God changed earth weather so that the atmospherics were different during and after the flood from what they had been before (however, I would hasten to add, not all adherents to the conservative position believe in the “water vapor canopy” hypothesis which I will explore presently, and one does not have to believe in a dramatic change in earth weather in order to believe that most or all of the sedimentary rock and fossils are Flood effects). Though there are variants of the conservative interpretation, in general those who hold this position would explain that the “basement” igneous and metamorphic rocks were original “creation rocks,” and that most or all of the rest should be regarded as Flood depositions.
As far as I am aware, essentially all “conservative Flood” advocates assert that the Flood was global—that the waters of the Flood covered the highest mountains on the entire planet. Only a global Flood, of course, could have produced sediments and fossils on all continents. On the other hand, “conservative Flood” proponents do not generally believe that the mountains themselves (except, of course, for those which are composed entirely of sedimentary rock) were a result of the Flood or events in the Flood year. They would hold that granitic mountains were probably created as we see them, and that cinder cones were produced by volcanoes, as they indeed appear to have been. This interpretation represents classic YEC “Flood geology” as originated by George McCready Price in the early 20th century, and as popularized in Whitcomb and Morris’ 1961 book The Genesis Flood.
Cosmic
What I call the “cosmic” YEC interpretation posits dramatic changes in every aspect of the earth and indeed in many features of the universe, all at about the same time as the Flood. On earth, the Flood-era was allegedly accompanied by rapid tectonic plate movement which produced the continental land masses and mountains which we see today. Most sedimentary rocks were laid during the Flood, as were “igneous intrusions” which are observable among the sedimentary rocks. According to many versions of this view, the Flood-era was associated with changes in universal constants such as the speed of light and the rate of radioactive decay, which are believed to have been many orders of magnitude greater in pre-Flood than in post-Flood times.
There is not much point in proposing a cosmic Flood which is not actually global. One of the advantages of this view is that it envisions an antediluvian earth which lacked any geological features other than low hills, thus reducing the amount of water required to cover the entire earth. Not all cosmic Flood advocates, however, claim that the earth had no antediluvian mountains.
Besides allowing the whole surface of the earth to be covered with a sea level rise of only a few hundred feet, the cosmic Flood seeks to overcome objections of insufficiency lodged against the conservative Flood by explaining essentially everything in terms of Flood-era events. However, there are advocates of changes in “cosmic constants” who do not subscribe to the theory that all geological data must be explained by a single Flood.
Many Catastrophes
Last but in my estimation certainly not least among YEC positions is what I call the “many catastrophes” interpretation, which views the Flood as only one among a (possibly great) number of catastrophes which supposedly took place in ancient times, each of which changed the globe in a significant way. According to this view we don’t have to depend on the Flood to account for all geological data. There can be as many great catastrophes as one wants to posit. The only difference between these other events and the Flood would have been that they did not happen in the region of Mesopotamia where the initial portions of the Bible story are set, and since they were not theologically significant the Bible writers simply did not record them.
Of course, the “many catastrophes” explanation may be worked into harmony with any of the other three interpretations, which is only one of what I consider to be many advantages it has. It does not require that each catastrophe be miraculous: a providential event such as a meteor strike could accomplish the required chaos. This interpretation does not even need a global Genesis Flood; geological phenomena in other parts of the world may be accounted for by some of the other catastrophes. Indeed, the “many catastrophes” view makes the Flood not unique but “just another catastrophe,” which may count against it in the minds of some YECs.
I mention the “many catastrophes” explanation here for the sake of the completeness of this chapter. The purpose of this paper is to study the Bible testimony about the Flood catastrophe, not to search for evidence that many catastrophes have happened during the course of pre-history and history. I am not going to say much about the possibility of multiple catastrophes in the rest of this paper, because this paper is about the Flood.
CHAPTER THREE
THE ANTEDILUVIAN EARTH
What was the nature of the antediluvian earth? If we can obtain a plausible answer to that question, we will have some means of estimating Flood effects, because—assuming the lapse of only a few thousand years since the Flood—the difference between the pre-Flood and the post-Flood earth (the earth we see today) would have been the effects of the Flood. As we examine relevant scriptures, I will warn you in advance, we shall find very few plain statements of fact about the pre-Flood earth. The Bible student will have to decide what suppositions are required, and separate legitimate suppositions from those which are gratuitous or even spurious.
Here are the texts from scripture which say something about the nature of the antediluvian earth (all quotations are from the NIV unless otherwise noted).
2Peter 3:4-7
They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes
on as it has since the beginning of creation.”
But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens
existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time
was deluged and destroyed. By the same
word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the
day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
What does this text tell us about the earth before the Flood? Not much. There are some statements here that allow speculation, but scripture does not point that speculation into any particular direction.
Peter’s intent is to show the folly of those who scoff at the promise of Jesus’ return. “Everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation,” they claim. Peter demurs: everything does not go on as it has since the beginning, for “the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.”
What is “the world of that time” which was destroyed? The Greek word kosmos can refer to: the universe, planet earth, the inhabited lands, the people living in the earth, materialism, the order of things, a vast collection (“the tongue is … a world of iniquity”—James 3:6). There are perhaps other shades of meaning. The most common way the term is used in the New Testament is in connection—direct or inferential—with people. Thus, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world (kosmos), but to save the world through him”—John 3:17. Christ did not come to save this planet. It is the population of the planet that He has come to save.
There is no other Greek word which Peter might have used to mean specifically the globe as opposed to the cosmic order, the social order or the people on the globe, so we simply cannot know whether he is attempting to tell us that the surface of the earth was completely erased and reconstituted, that the whole cosmic order was changed dramatically, that the social order was wiped out and reconstituted, or that the earth’s population was killed. Any of those meanings is completely consistent with Peter’s statement.
Likewise, the word for “destroyed”—apoleto—does not tell us anything beyond the fact that the world (order, earth, people on the earth?) of that time was destroyed. A form of the same word, used in John 3:16, is there translated “perish.”
Is there any difference between the pre- and post-Flood worlds given in the statement that “the earth was formed out of water and by water?” The King James text reads, “the earth standing out of the water and in the water,” which may point back to Genesis 1:9: “And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’” The only thing of which we can be certain with regard to Peter’s statement is that dry land existed among the waters by God’s pleasure, and at His word the same water destroyed much of the life upon that land.
In the same context, at 3:10, we find:
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the
elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be
laid bare.
This text would lead us to suppose that it was the physical world which was destroyed in the time of Noah, because it is the physical world which will be “laid bare” when Jesus returns. But notice the statement at verse 13:
But in keeping with his promise we are looking
forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.
The problem with supposing that the physical world was destroyed in the time of Noah is that, in order to be consistent, we must suppose that in connection with the second coming of Jesus we are looking for a new physical world (as well as a new physical sky and associated objects within that sky); however, most of us would aver that we intend to be living in Heaven itself, not on a reconstructed earth under a reconstructed sky, after Jesus’ return. The only consistent definition of kosmos which occurs to me is “order or arrangement of things.” The antediluvian “order and arrangement of things” was destroyed by water in the time of Noah. There was a different “order and arrangement of things” which was brought into operation in connection with the coming of Christ (Isaiah 65:17). But this new order/arrangement will be the last which the physical globe on which we live will see. When He returns, Jesus will bring still another order/arrangement with Him.
What, then, can we infer from this text about how the world before the Flood was different from the world after the flood? Essentially nothing, except that the population of that world, less the cargo of the ark, was no longer alive. Certainly, the text allows speculation about significant changes in the natural order, but just as certainly it does not require such changes. Such speculations, in order to deserve serious attention, would have to be bolstered by scientific evidence.
Genesis 1:6-8
And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to
separate water from water.” So God made
the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above
it. And it was so. God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was
morning—the second day.
Genesis 2:4-6
This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they
were created. When the Lord God made the earth and the
heavens—and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and there was
no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the
whole surface of the ground—
Genesis 9:12-13
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making
between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all
generations to come: I have set my
rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and
the earth.
I grouped these three texts because they are the basis of the famous “water-vapor canopy” thesis originated by George McCready Price and popularized by Whitcomb and Morris in The Genesis Flood. Briefly, the idea is this. Before the Flood there was no rain, because the atmosphere was different in pre-Flood days from the way it is today. There was a vast amount of water diffused uniformly in the upper elevations of the atmosphere. All the moisture needed for plant life either issued from subterranean sources or condensed out of the air (other versions render “streams came up from the earth” as “a mist came up from the earth”). The earth was much warmer then, a fact which accounts for fossilized plants such as giant ferns which would have required warmer and wetter quarters than the earth provides today. The canopy also shielded the earth from certain forms of radiation which today work to limit human life-spans, allowing people to live much longer then than they do now. After the Flood the elimination of the canopy and the institution of the atmospherics with which we are familiar resulted in the rainbow, a phenomenon which had never been observed before.
There is certainly no way to
disprove the “water-vapor canopy” hypothesis conclusively. On the other hand, scriptural support for it
is essentially nonexistent. An obvious
reading of the “the water above the expanse” is that this phrase refers to
clouds. Notice Psalm 104:2-3:
He wraps himself in light as with
a garment;
He stretches out the heavens like
a tent
And lays the beams of his upper
chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot,
and rides on the wings of the wind.
The “waters” of the “heavens” in this text are strongly identified with the clouds which are God’s chariot. This identification is confirmed in verse 13:
He waters the mountains from His upper chambers …
“Canopy” champions argue that the waters described in Genesis 1 cannot be clouds, for the waters in question are “above the expanse.” But consider Psalm 148:4:
Praise him you
highest heavens and you waters above the skies.
The “vapor canopy” theory says that the canopy was gone after the flood, that it was destroyed when “the floodgates of the heavens were opened”—Genesis 7:11. But there were “waters above the skies” in the days in which Psalm 148 was written—long after the Flood. Furthermore, this expression “the floodgates of the heavens” is used of contemporary possibilities in 2Kings 7:2, Isaiah 24:18 and Malachi 3:10. The notion that either of these expressions refers to a vapor canopy is raw speculation completely without scriptural basis.
Furthermore, the text in Genesis chapter two does not teach that thousands of years passed from the Creation to the Flood in which no rain fell. This statement refers only to the span of time between the provision of dry ground and the introduction of “shrubs of the field,” and it is arguable that it refers only to the Garden to be inhabited by Adam and Eve.
Another problem with the vapor canopy: how did people see the stars, which according to Genesis chapter one were visible for the tracking of seasons, through it? A thin layer of high cirrus clouds which would produce essentially no moisture if it fell as rain will block light from all but the brightest heavenly objects; enough frozen water to generate a significant amount of rainfall (see calculation to follow) would certainly prevent use of the stars for their divinely intended purpose.
Finally, there is no warrant in these texts for concluding that there had never been a rainbow before the Flood. On several occasions God invested covenant significance into already-existing practices or items: the seventh day and tithing are two obvious examples.
As problematical as is the vapor canopy idea scripturally, it fares no better scientifically. The canopy cannot have contained all atmospheric moisture; if all water were sucked out of the lower troposphere, plants and animals could not survive. There must have been at least as much water vapor disbursed in the air under the canopy as the air holds now, so the canopy must have contained water which is not observed in the atmosphere today. Significant amounts of water in a vapor canopy would raise the atmospheric pressure and, correspondingly, the air temperature at the earth’s surface.
According to canopy advocate Dr. Joseph Dillow, enough additional water to elevate sea level 40 feet would raise sea level atmospheric pressure to about 32 psi, with a corresponding increase in temperature. That increment might be tolerable for life, assuming the canopy spread the sun’s heat evenly around the earth (an assumption not easily supported by meteorology, but waive that difficulty for now). Increase the amount of water in the vapor canopy any more, and life on earth becomes impossible; thus, Dillow concluded, a canopy which would raise sea level about 40 feet if completely condensed into rain is the upper limit on what would allow life on earth to continue.4 Even so much water spread across the upper atmosphere would block very little cosmic radiation, so it isn’t much use accounting for longer life-spans.5
There is simply no way to explain how on an earth rotating on an inclined axis, with differential heating which must produce atmospheric convection, such a vapor canopy would have persisted intact for more than a few hours. In the final analysis, there does not seem to be any accounting for a persistent water vapor canopy without supposing continuous miraculous intervention. That supposition would be acceptable if we had a text in scripture mandating it, but we have no such text. We are left with a theory with a very dubious scriptural basis and absolutely no scientific standing.
Genesis 10:25
Two sons were born to Eber: one
was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided …
I have included this post-diluvian reference because some YECs postulate that it refers to the alleged fact that the “Pangea” of the pre-Flood earth was separated into today’s continental configuration during the life of Peleg (instead of just the single year of the Flood).
Plate tectonics is a well-established geological phenomenon which is accepted by many if not most YECs. The question is whether this text is describing it, and if so whether the current placement of the continents might have been reached in something like the 209 years in which Peleg lived. This speculation has some considerable advantages over the notion that all tectonic movement took place in a single year. However, it is still scientifically problematical. The floor of the Atlantic Ocean, which covers roughly 32 million square miles, with an average thickness of four miles, has been produced by movement of the crustal plates. Allowing 200 years for this rapid movement of the continents, 160,000 square miles—640,000 cubic miles—of new crust per year (1750 cubic miles per day) must be laid down as lava and cooled by the oceans. Not being a scientist I cannot be sure, but I doubt it is even possible for that much crust to be cooled so quickly, and even if it is theoretically possible that is a tremendous amount of heat for the earth’s oceans to absorb year after year for 200 years without profound damage to the marine ecosystem. Furthermore, there would have been a two-centuries-long earthquake catastrophe, starting near the Bible lands, yet no such catastrophe is recorded, nor is evidence for it found. If continental drift happened this way there ought to be some geological and anthropological data: at the very least, we ought to see the remains of cities which were frequently being reduced to rubble. There is no such evidence, no reason to posit two hundred years of the kind of “continuous catastrophe” which the creation of the Atlantic Ocean floor and all the great mountain ranges of earth would have produced if compressed into such a brief geological instant.
Does this scripture teach that the “division” of the earth means separation of the continents? The Hebrew word here translated “earth” is the generic word for that purpose: erets. It can refer to the entire globe, to a geographical region or to the people who live in a region. The word for “divided” is palag, and it occurs only here and in the same genealogy given in 1Chronicles. There is thus no way to specify the meaning of the word further.
In the context of this verse we find the story of the Tower of Babel and the division of the people by language. While we cannot be certain, it is reasonable to interpret this text as a reference to that event. The text does not suggest, and certainly does not require, the conclusion that all the continents were formed in the days of Peleg.
A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it
was separated into four headwaters. The
name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah,
where there is gold. (The gold of that
land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon;
it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east
side of Asshur. And the fourth river is
the Euphrates.
Of the four rivers named here, in the post-diluvian days when this statement was presumably written, the Tigris and Euphrates were well-known. The other two—the Havilah and the Gihon—may no longer have existed, or may have been called by other names, but the lands described would have been familiar. There is no indication from the text that the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers which are named in the text were different from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with which the people were later familiar. Thus, Mesopotamia in pre-Flood days must have been very similar topographically to what it was after the Flood, else the rivers and regions would have been different. The Great Rift Valley through which the Jordan River flows is a tectonic subduction zone. Certainly, if tectonic activity during or after the flood had dramatically altered the entire surface of the earth, one would not expect Mesopotamia, so near the Great Rift Valley, to emerge almost unscathed.
How different was the antediluvian earth from the earth today?
Scripture does not state that it was very different at all. Every inference from Bible texts which proposes significant changes in geology, topology or natural law in the Flood-era is highly speculative. We cannot say for this reason that any of these proposed changes is impossible, but it is binding something that God has not bound to assert that faith in God or confidence in the inspiration of scripture requires us to accept these speculations. And if neither faith in God nor confidence in the inspiration of scripture requires us to accept them, then neither faith in God nor confidence in the inspiration of scripture requires us to accept any theories of the Flood based on them.
Also to the point, if such changes happened, and happened so rapidly—in one year or within two hundred years—we should see in the geological record, or in the artifacts of the people who were alive at that time, evidence for these rapid catastrophic changes. We do not see it. Maybe a more imaginative look at the facts will permit a different interpretation which allows us to recognize this kind of evidence. For now, we have to say that the notion that the earth was vastly different in pre-Flood times from the way it is today is unsupported by any relevant science: geology, anthropology or hermeneutics.
Yet, this supposition of dramatic changes in the earth during the Flood-era is so strongly held as an article of faith among most YECs that they use it ubiquitously in their writings without either showing embarrassment or offering evidence. Considering that there is no scientific and no scriptural support for their speculations, that’s probably a good strategy: why call attention to such a glaring weakness in your position? What bothers me, as an OEC who is sympathetic to the aims of catastrophism, is that its practitioners have maneuvered young-earth science into a position in which it cannot survive unless evaluators allow the claim that the surface of the entire globe was destroyed during the Flood in a geological cataclysm. But why should even a sympathetic evaluator like me allow that claim? What evidence can they offer from the sciences that it is true? There is none; in fact, the sciences claim otherwise. What evidence can they offer from scripture? Only that some texts leave open the possibility. In the end, their real reason is this one: “The results of the Flood that we claim, and therefore the young-earth position that we espouse, cannot be maintained without it.”
Indeed, it is an irony that I find most sad that this notion of the catastrophic annihilation of the physical surface of the globe, and not the story of the Flood told in Genesis, has become the indispensable foundation of most “Flood geology” and YEC “science.”
And this substitution of a speculative, pseudo-scientific “foundation” for the Biblical foundation is the very reason that, when pressed to explain how the cataclysmic upheavals they postulate are reflected in the scientific record, YECs have absolutely no choice except to appeal to “the magic Flood.” “The world was so different before the Flood,” they plead, “that there is no explanation for the effects of the Flood.”
Sorry, but “magic” is not an acceptable replacement for scripture, reason or science. Anyone who wants to claim that the Flood produced miraculous effects may do so. But miraculous Flood effects, by definition, are not subject to scientific investigation, and miraculous Flood effects which are not documented in scripture—and none of the effects these self-proclaimed practitioners of “Flood science” claims is mentioned in scripture—are not provable from the only reliable source of information about the Flood. Therefore, no one who believes in miraculous Flood effects can claim to explain any feature of the earth’s surface today on the basis of “Flood geology,” because neither science nor scripture supports any such explanation. Indeed, for all anyone knows the “miracle” in the miraculous Flood might have been the concealment of all Flood effects. As a result, no one can claim the right to brand those who reject “the magic Flood” as heretics!
CHAPTER FOUR
WHAT SCRIPTURE SAYS ABOUT
THE FLOOD
Genesis chapters six through eight tell the story of the Flood. In this section of our discussion we seek to determine what specific historical claims scripture makes about the Flood, so that when we begin to consider possible Flood effects we will know what we ought to find.
I want at this point to issue a warning to the reader. In the discussion that follows I am going to be presenting evidence from scripture that the Flood story may legitimately be interpreted as the description of a local flood, not a global flood. I want to stress this point: I take no position on this issue. No conclusion in this paper about Flood effects requires a local Flood position; in fact, in Chapter Six I will assume for the sake of a speculative description of Flood effects that the Flood was global. I can live with either interpretation, and I don’t think the evidence points conclusively in either direction. I do want to insist that, as far as I am concerned, a conclusion that the Flood was local rather than global must be based on the testimony of scripture and the direct conclusions of plain reason, not on “external” science.
What does scripture say about the Flood? There are probably several logical approaches to deciding the order in which we might consider the statements made in scripture, but in this case I am simply going to take them in the order in which we find them in the Genesis text.
Genesis 6:5-7
The Lord saw
how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord
was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with
pain. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from
the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the
ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”
What was the reason for the Flood? The text tells us: God was sorry he had made humankind, because there was nothing but evil in the hearts of all people on the earth. Whatever mechanism God employed to assuage His regret, it would only work if every human being (with the exception of Noah and his family) were killed.
Did some animals also have to die? Note God’s language from the text: “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air…” Regarding animals as morally responsible for their actions is both metaphysically problematical and beyond the scope of this paper to investigate. I take it that most readers will concede that the animals of Noah’s time were not in themselves sinful. However, they were under the influence of sinful people, and there are texts in scripture which can reasonably be interpreted to teach that the sins of people can “infect” nature around them (cf. Romans 8:18-21). In other cases God directed that the animals associated with a sinful place be destroyed (Joshua 6:21). I can appreciate that some readers will have reservations about this point, but clearly God’s purpose required the removal of some animals along with sinful man.
What was the extent of the remedy? In other words, what did God have to do to accomplish His purpose? Noah and his family were selected to survive the Flood, and I think all readers will agree that this family was not composed of sinless people. It is the degree of moral depravity which is at issue. Likewise, there were animals which Noah was to take into the ark which would have been influenced by contact with the sinners around Noah, yet these animals were permitted to survive. We may thus see that God’s purpose here was not to create an environment from which the stain of sin had been completely eradicated—which is the redemptive work of Jesus Christ—but to remove from the earth the worst sinful influence. By the same token, the purpose of the Flood was not to erase all the effects of human sin. Some interpreters hold that entropy (the second law of thermodynamics) is a direct result of sin. That assertion is dubious, but allow it for the sake of this point: the Flood did not reverse the second law of thermodynamics. We can see therefore that God’s remedy is sufficient to accomplish His purpose, but not excessive in design or effect.
Genesis 6:19-21
You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures,
male and female, to keep them alive with you.
Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of
creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is
to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.
Genesis 7:1-4
The Lord then
said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found
you righteous in this generation. Take
with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of
every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind
of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the
earth. Seven days from now I will send
rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the
face of the earth every living creature I have made.”
How many animals did Noah and his family take into the ark? This question is tied to the question of the extent of the Flood—was it global or local? If the flood was global and covered the highest mountains on the earth, then most creatures not on the ark perished (water-dwellers, certain birds which are fish-eating and can rest on top of water, and probably insects would have been able to survive). If, on the other hand, the Flood affected only Mesopotamia, then the only creatures directly impacted by the Flood were the animals of the Tigris-Euphrates basin. I don’t know any way to answer this question definitively, but I will indicate why scripture may telling us that the only animals Noah needed to save were those native to that region.
Do God’s instructions give us information about the number of animals? They certainly do. It was God Who told Noah how big to make the ark. God knew how many animals Noah would have to preserve; in fact, it was apparently God who sent the animals which were to be saved to Noah: “Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.” One YEC has written that it was God’s decision which animals were to be placed into the ark, and that if God decided to exclude a species it was none of Noah’s business.6 Amen! However many animals would fit into an ark the size that God prescribed, that’s the number that God sent to Noah to be saved. If the ark was big enough to hold all the animals on the earth, then that’s how many God sent. If it was only big enough to hold the animals of Mesopotamia, then those are the ones God sent!
What are the volume limits of the number of animals on the ark? The ark had about 2 ¼ acres of floor space, if conventional estimates of the measure of a cubit are correct. However, about two-thirds of the space must have been used for food and water: God’s specific instruction is, “You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten.” It would seem very spare to ration, for the average animal, for an entire year, twice the volume of the animal’s body for food and water (the dog in my house, on a human-enforced diet, consumes his body volume in food in less than six months; the guinea pigs we used to have did the same in about four months). Even if the food took only one-third the volume inside the ark, water must have required another third of the volume. Rainwater could have been collected during the 40 days of rain, but it must be stored somewhere inside for the duration, as outside water would have been contaminated by seawater and decaying organic material. That leaves about 34,000 square feet of floor space to people and animals.
Some commentators have suggested that the animals were kept in cages and that the cages were stacked on top of one another.7 While stacking cages might be practical for very small animals, it seems to me that suggestion runs counter to the specific instruction that there were to be three decks on the ark, and that it would create serious hygienic problems as animals fouled the cages below them. Sheep are shipped in stacked cages in railroad boxcars, but boxcar cages are used for a few days at most; we are talking about housing animals for an entire year! If we exclude most insects from the animals to be kept on the ark (a very reasonable suggestion—insects could have survived on floating vegetation, which they would also have eaten), we can conclude that the average size of all the animals on the ark was about the size of a fox.
We could, without doing violence to reason, allow cages (lined to reduce fouling) and stacking of cages for beasts the size of rodents and smaller. We can’t stack too many cages, though, because the only way such a large number of animals can be fed and watered regularly is if food and water are placed so that many of the animals are free to reach them. If cages were stacked two-deep for roughly half the animals, and if the rest of the animals were kept in pens adjacent to food and water, and allowing for space for walking and working among the animals, we can probably cut the average floor space per animal to about four square feet. Taking an average floor space per animal of four square feet would allow 8,500 animals, roughly 4,200 different types of animals (seven pairs each of the clean animals).
How many animals needed to be saved? Species and sub-species of animals which we have on earth today can all have descended from a single ancestral general pair, so the number of different types of animals on the ark need not have equaled the number of species. Is 4,200 enough animal types to save all the genera of animals on the earth? In his book Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study John Woodmorappe has estimated that about 8,000 breeding pairs would be needed to save all genera except for fish and insects. Woodmorappe believes there was room on the ark for about 16,000 animals, but his estimates assume that cages containing animals would be stacked to fill each 15-foot deck, an assumption which is not impossible but which I find literally unbelievable for a year-long voyage.8
Is there a practical limit on the number of animals for which the people could have cared? God provided eight people to take care of the animals. I think it is reasonable to argue that the practical limit on the number of animals in the ark was the number for which eight people could care.9 If there were about 8,500 animals in the ark, if every animal received attention on average every fourth day, and if all the humans on the ark worked at this task, each human would have had to attend to an average 266 animals daily. Food and water could have been placed so that the animals fed themselves, if few were caged, but the people would have had to feed and water the caged animals and to get rid of all the waste in order for the ark to be habitable for a year. To suppose that each human on the ark attended on average 266 animals every day for over a year is a stretch, but it seems to me to be possible. However, if Woodmorappe is right, and there were 16,000 animals, each person would have had to attend to an average of 500 animals a day: clearly impossible. About 8,500 animals seems to me to be the maximum number which eight people could manage.
What would Jewish readers of this story have supposed? We have no way to know, but remember that the Jews were, as a people, animal-keepers, and would have known how many animals Noah and his family could host for a year. It would be interesting to hear what they would have said about a person caring for an average of 500 or even 266 animals per day!
Were there dinosaurs on the ark? If there were dinosaurs around in Noah’s day, and if God intended them to survive the flood, then He caused them to go to Noah, and they were on the ark. Many conservative Bible students maintain that God sent to Noah only the animals that He chose to survive the Flood, and that God did not choose the dinosaurs to survive.
Did some of the animals on the ark eat meat? Scripture gives us no reason to conclude that animals on the ark which were meat-eaters before the Flood and meat-eaters after the Flood were not meat-eaters for the year they were on the ark. It is not necessary for meat-eating animals to have freshly killed meat, but their meat would have had to be stored for over a year. It is difficult to imagine how storage of a large amount of meat would have been accomplished within the dank and humid ark without the meat spoiling. On the other hand, if the Flood was not global and the number of “survivor” animals on the ark were 8,000 or fewer, several hundred live animals could have been included not to survive the voyage but to serve as food for the meat-eaters.
If the Flood was global, would animals have had to travel vast distances to reach the ark? It is difficult to escape the conclusion they would have had to do so, and in some cases impossible to see how they would have managed. For example, kangaroos, koalas and platypuses are confined to Australia and New Zealand, and there is not a scintilla of evidence that they have ever lived anywhere else. Hundreds of miles of ocean separate them from the nearest land route to Mesopotamia. How did they make it to the ark? These animals are not swimmers! Did they “evolve,” post-Flood, from some family progenitor that was on the ark? (Marsupial evolution is a real problem for Darwinists, one for which no satisfactory solution has been suggested. Are we prepared to help the Darwinists explain marsupial evolution?) There is even a problem relating to animals from relatively nearby: for example, herd animals such as antelopes indigenous to the savannah of Africa. These animals are certainly physically capable of traveling from central Africa to Mesopotamia, but they never do so because almost all their waking hours are spent eating; they don’t have time for tourism! Polar bears might have survived if some polar ice had persisted atop the elevated sea level. But what about penguins? Did God miraculously transport these animals to Noah? Certainly He could have done so, but if He were going to do that, why not simply protect them from harm where they were?
Could not God have made the “impractical” possible? If God caused the Flood, could He not have taken care of the animals on the ark, making the resolution of practical issues such as the size of the ark, the amount of food, the presence of carnivores, etc., unnecessary?