Noah's Ark Debunked? Creation Science Evidence

SPEAKER A Skeptics love to joke about Noah's Ark. Where did he put the dinosaurs? How could he fit all those animals? How did they spread all over the world afterwards? We are going to walk through the numbers, the kinds vs. species issue, migration routes, and even people groups after Babel. In this episode, we'll test the Ark account against basic science and history and see if it holds up. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Joining me to discuss this is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again. SPEAKER B Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER A Dr. John has written a book called The Big Argument: Does God Exist? And in today's program, we're drawing from some insights from chapter 9, which has been contributed by Andrew Snelling. Now, this chapter talks about the distinction between kinds and species. And how does understanding this help us understand the realistic number of animals needed to go inside the ark? SPEAKER B Yeah, sure. So it greatly reduces the number of animals to go in the ark. And as you mentioned in your introduction, yeah, it's certainly a topic of a joke. And, you know, most scientists possibly don't take it very seriously. And of course we also have the caricatures that are in the children's book of this, you know, little bathtub type shaped vessel. It's very cute, I think. You know, as opposed to a very large vessel at certain specific dimensions that we know are closer to sort of an ocean-going kayak type of vessel or a naval vessel with very good stability. And so that's quite fascinating that the dimensions of the ark itself actually, in terms of naval engineering and naval architecture, make perfect sense. They're brilliant. SPEAKER A Yeah. SPEAKER B In actual fact. So this is, this is one, one thing. The ark wasn't a joke vessel. It was very big and it was perfectly designed to withstand violent ocean conditions. Yeah, it was just situation definitely needed. Now, when we come to the size is what you mentioned earlier. And the number of animals, we need to understand that this was after creation. Within the genetic code, we understand on the basis of creation, there would've been a lot of genetic diversity. In other words, the code was very complex. And since that time, we've been losing code. And that's what all the evolutionists talk about, the natural selection. What does natural selection do? It removes code. Okay, it removes the number of species. There are less species. So what we understand from the biblical account talks about the different kinds. Now, first of all, all the marine creatures would've stayed in the water. Insects and a lot of little creepy crawlies, again, weren't necessarily taken onto the ark. They would survive, they'd float, they'd cling to bits of vegetation, and they survived very well. Many of them produced, you know, thousands of eggs, this sort of thing. So very easily multiply. So the main animals that were taken onto the ark were land-breathing sort of animals. And the other thing that we need to remember is that it was a supernatural event. So we don't have to explain it using known current scientific terms. And I think this is important to understand. This was, according to the biblical account, an act of God's judgment. Now, for people who don't want to accept that, that this wasn't a miraculous account, and that's fair enough, who want to explain everything in terms of, natural events, how the animals all came to get onto the ark would be a major problem. SPEAKER A Yes, very difficult. SPEAKER B And we need to acknowledge that, that it was a supernatural event. God brought the animals to the ark. He only brought two, a male and a female, of most of them. There are a few animals that he allowed more for that could then later be used for food because there wouldn't be much vegetation after the flood for food. But when we look at, the Bible talks about kinds, we need to understand, for example, that horses, zebras, and donkeys can all interbreed. You know, lions and tigers, these sort of things. So all different types of cats can interbreed, all different types of dogs, these sort of things. So you only need one type of horse animal, one type of dog, all those other associated types of animals. SPEAKER A But as you said, it has to be one that has a robust genetic diversity built in order for now to have all of these different variants that can, are basically the same kind that could have been created. SPEAKER B Right, and we understand that that was after creation, that there was a lot of variation there. And the same within humans, within the human family that were on there, there was a lot of genetic variation that came on. So when we then look at the number of different types of, say, genera, so really it would correspond to genera going onto the boat. There's a much smaller number of genera, and people, Dr. Snelling in his chapter looks at some of the other studies that people have done of this, of the number of genera that they estimate, included genera that are now extinct, like dinosaurs and so forth. But if we'd say, look at saber-toothed tigers and these sort of things, they would've been included in the cat genera. So there was certainly more than enough room on the ark to carry all those because we would've taken juveniles They possibly hibernated. You know, there's a lot of things that we can look at if we want to try and explain it in terms of basic science that we understand today. But we also know from the geological evidence of the magnitude of the global flood event that it had to be a supernatural survival for humans and land, most land-dwelling animals to have survived. So that I think becomes very clear as well. There's a lot of fascinating things associated with that. Like for example, mitochondrial DNA is passed on from our mothers. We understand that there were only 3 fertile females on the ark, and there are 3 types of mitochondrial DNA. So there's little fascinating tidbits of information like this that come out that again fit the biblical account. Not to mention that Globally, there are flood accounts of people surviving supernaturally in a boat. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER B In a vessel. You know, we look Central America, China, and obviously the different flood accounts and so forth. SPEAKER A And this is all independent from the Bible record. SPEAKER B Yeah, totally independent. These are all— Traditional tales. Yes, yes. Preserved in cultures around the world. And there's a lot of studies that have been done on this by secular historians and anthropologists and so forth. SPEAKER A Interesting background and explanation there for how this could have been possible. So another question, kind of related, is this idea of animal migration. 'Cause obviously if they all came from one boat, that's only one place in the world. How did we get all the animals around the world and different ones only found in different locations? Like Australia's a classic, you know, all the marsupials that are pretty much only found here. SPEAKER B Monotremes. SPEAKER A Yeah, yeah, that's it. So how do we explain that in terms of this global flood catastrophe and the effects it had? How do we explain? SPEAKER B Look, I think it is very difficult. You know, my wife and I lived in Tasmania for a while and you only find Huon pine down in southwestern Tasmania. This amazing, you know, boat building and furniture building timber. But there's lots of examples of that, of unique animals that are only found different places. Look, it is a difficult area to explain, but I think one of the fascinating things that can account for this is the whole concept of the ice age. Now, ice ages. Now again, just as the Bible talks about one global flood, the biblical creationist view has in particular one ice age. Now we need to understand that there's actually no known really viable explanation for ice ages. And yet we know that massive ice ages have occurred in the past. We've got the evidences of glaciation and so forth, and we've got animals that have been preserved in the permafrost and so forth. The flood account gives an amazing account of how ice ages would form because it talks about this hot water being released from under the Earth into the surface of the Earth, which would raise ocean temperatures, which would then cause massive evaporation, which would then produce our ice age. So it actually fits amazingly. And it's interesting just noticing some headlines, you know, fairly recently that they're massive, they've discovered massive amount of water appears to be discovered below the Earth's mantle, larger than all the oceans of the Earth. So the fact, the biblical account of water, underground water coming out, the fountains of the deep opening, actually is fitting recent now scientific discoveries that there's more down there that that could happen. Now, this is really fascinating evidence. And these ice ages, as the water froze then, would cause the ocean levels to drop, producing the land bridges— SPEAKER A Right. SPEAKER B —that we now know existed between Asia and North America, between Southeast Asia and Australia. SPEAKER A And this would allow animals, people to cross and colonize these different areas at a specific period of time. Yes. SPEAKER B And the creationist model has these land bridges forming probably about 500 years, or the main ice age about 500 years. After the flood. Okay. And then sea levels rising back again over the next 200 years. And this brilliantly explains the phenomena that we have of migration around the world, the different groups. And the fact that we have ziggurats built like the Tower of Babel that were built, you know, in Samaria in the Middle East there. In South America and other parts of the world, Africa. SPEAKER A Yeah. The pattern is replicated. SPEAKER B Yeah, a lot of patterns, a lot of language. The whole concept of language. So we have different languages, very hard to explain the origin of language. But again, the biblical account of it coming from Babel fits beautifully this. And one of the fascinating things, for example, is the use of the expression, the head of something, right? So the head of a tribe. You're talking about the word meaning a head, right? So there might be different word in different languages, but it all has the same meaning. In other words, they use the same expressions, but in their own languages around the world. So wherever you go around the world, the head of something means the most important part or the top of something, this sort of thing, even though they'll be using different words. Now, there's a lot more examples that I could go into, but we don't have time for that. So there's a lot of fascinating things like this that again fit the biblical position that originally there was one language, but then God confused it and they became different languages, another supernatural event that led them to spread away. Because really there's no, I haven't, Looking at the language situation, doing some research in this recently, there's no known current explanation for the origin of language. And the diversity. That really fits the data. You know, people come up with different theories, but it doesn't really fit the data. But the biblical account does. SPEAKER A So this event with the Babel where there was obviously the change of language, does the timing of that event correlate well with the predicted or expected calculated timing for the Ice Age to allow, because if the Babel event was after the land bridges, if you know what I mean, then it doesn't make sense that people could cross over. But if it was at the right timing, is that what we expect? Like, is the Babel event when the people spread, does that match up in the timing of the land bridges with the Ice Age to allow people to cross over? SPEAKER B [Speaker] It certainly would've occurred during the Ice Age 'cause the flood lasted for about, a year. Yeah. The hot water coming out. And so there would've been the start of evaporation. So the Earth would've cooled very rapidly after that, forming the ice. We would've expected that to have occurred. It probably reached a peak a little later. But we know when we look at ancient chronologies that as they moved out, they all seem to move out after the biblical date for Babylon. And they moved successively. So the first civilization was Egypt, then we have Europe. Yes. Then we have China. And we have, you know, sort of historical records of those timelines that actually corroborate the Bible timeline. And also there's the population growth. If humans were really around for hundreds of thousands of years, where are all their graves? Where are all their artifacts? The Earth's population fits only about, you know, 4,500, 5,000 years of population. There's so much data that fits the biblical timeline and biblical account. Mm, very, very interesting. SPEAKER A Thank you for highlighting all of those little snippets of thought that really put more evidence towards this story and the validity that it holds. So thank you so much for sharing. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has? What helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments because your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers.