Assuming that Noah’s Ark is true, and that the entire world was covered in water (ie up to the height of Mt. Everest), and that all the land masses were the same as they are to day (ie a 30/70% land/ocean mix), wouldn’t the salt oceans be horribly diluted by the rain, and thus wouldn’t all of the saltwater sea creatures die?
Of course.
And that is why we no longer have any salt water sea creatures.
Oh, wait…
Eh, I don’t see how you can “assume Noah’s ark” is true, even for the sake of argument, 'cause it simply beggars logic. The mind boggles, you know?
It’s just for the point of the question.
The mixing probably would not have been perfect, so that the fresh water would have remained more or less on top. Of course, that’s six or seven miles worth of fresh water, so any saltwater fish that lived anywhere other than the deepest depths of the real ocean would have been screwed–they would be forced to remain near the surface, where it was all freshwater. This also explains why there are no coral reefs in existence today, despite any pictures you may see on my office walls.
I’d give decent odds to the possible survival of three kinds of fish. Freshwater fish wouldn’t be poisoned by fresh water, so they could just rise with the water level. Inhabitants of brackish water–the zone between fresh and saltwater–can typically survive okay in either type of water, so they’d have been fine as well. The only saltwater species that would have had a chance would be those that live at extreme depths. They probably couldn’t have withstood the extra pressure that would result from all those extra miles of water dumped on top of them, but I’ll be generous and say that some of them could have moved up to levels where they were okay with the pressure, but were still below where the fresh water would kill them.
Of course, they’d all croak as their ecosystems collapsed, but I don’t think young-earth creationists believe in ecosystems anyway.
Forget Everest, since back then who would have known about a mountain out in the middle of nowhere. In order for the water to have risen to cover Mt. Ararat where so many experts think the ark rests, it would have had to have rained at a rate of over 3 inches per minute for all the 40 days and 40 nights. For anyone that has been in a hard rain that measured up to be at an intensity of 1" per hour, this says that the flood is a delusion that in fact is totally impossible.
then where do all the non-white folks come from? and kangaroos. and etc etc etc…
Hmmm, I wonder if there is even enough water on the planet to have completly submerged the highest mountains of today. I’m pretty much just pulling numbers out of the air (which may be wrong), but I think the mean ocean depth is around 3.7km. Everest is something like 8.5km high, so is there enough water in the atmosphere to more than double the ocean’s depth? I don’t count the ice caps or lakes/rivers since they’d all be submerged anyways.
Stop poking fun at the Young Earth Creationists, would you, even though they are hoplessly deluded…
salt water flows nicely under the fresh water of the Cape Fear River. The two even flow in opposite directions a little.
It seems possible that the salt water, with it different density, could stay right where it is and the fresh water could stay on top. Just ignore convection currents and it all makes sense.
You guys are forgetting that God doesn’t give a damn about your “science.” He can do what He wants. He felt bad about the flood and separated the fresh water from the salt water, duh. Otherwise Jesus would’ve had to make salty wine!
And Tapioca Dextrin, how do you know Noah was white?
This subject was examined last year, along with important issues like “was Eve male?” and questions of biblical incest. See
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=70624&highlight=noahs
Yeah, it’s only a ‘theory’, after all
Little things like facts are not going to dissuade or discourage the Biblical literalists. The book of Genesis does describe that God opens the floodgates of the upper waters and the lower waters: it is not just rain coming down, but the oceans lifting up.
The view of the universe after all, is that there is are upper waters (in the heavens) and lower waters (in the netherworld.)
I wish it were this easy, but you’re not going to convert any biblical literalists this way.
Huh?
How did the lower waters come out?
Well Lawdy, Lawdy me !
Could it be that those Christians maybe got their story another way ?
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-285.htm
Hey, where I come from, stealin’ reppertayshuns from another’s kind’a needs an answering to.
Go for yur legend sucker!
One of us is history’n it ain’t gonna be the bible son.
This issue is discussed in detail in last years thread that I referred to above. There are numerous, and a few humorous, cites on it.
Without trying to start a “Great Debate”, I understand that “40 days and 40 nights” is just an ancient idiom for “a really long time”, not necessarily 960 hours.
Today: Man, I stood in that line forever.
Then: Man, I stood in that line for 40 days and 40 nights
-B
well, the easy response from a creationist would be: well god can do anything he wants.
so touché
Perhaps, but more specifically
Now if we substitute the Straits of Bosporus for springs, we might find some correlations that have scientific corroboration. It appear now that the rising ocean due to meltdown from the previous ice age burst through a portal at this location flooding a large inhabited lowland that is now known as the Black Sea. This immence cataclysm occured around 5650 BCE.
See http://www.sciam.com/1999/0299issue/0299wonders.html
Forget the salt. What about the silt?
As the “theory” goes, all modern landforms were built up by the deposition of sediments suspended in the Flood. The mountains you see today were not present before the Flood, because you can see in them the strata formed during that time. (Don’t ask about non-sedimentary landforms, please.)
Anyway, that means that the entire mass of earth now contained in the continents was, during the year of the Flood, mixed in with the water. But it didn’t kill the fish or the whales, see.