Noah's Arc...let's pretend....

Great Debates
1

Was watching a fascinating show in the hotel room the other night that posited that Noah’s Arc was actually not on Mt Ararat, but in a near by valley instead. According to the show, Noah’s Arc actually fossilized after coming to rest due to some improbable series of supposed natural events (including a volcano…don’t ask).

At any rate, after getting my laughter under control, this got me to thinking…let’s suppose that there actually WAS an Arc. I know, I know…there wasn’t. But, let’s say there was…just for fun. And let’s also suppose that, unlike the fossilized version sitting in a valley near by, the Arc actually did come to rest on top of Mt Ararat. And let’s assume it was made out of the materials in and the fashion described in the bible, down to the dimensions.

Finally, let’s pretend there really was a flood (or something that got this big ass boat on top of Mt Ararat), and that, presumably when the Arc landed Mt Ararat wasn’t covered in snow as it is today, and finally, let’s say we knew the exact spot where it landed and could go and take a look…well, what, if anything would be left of the Arc today? Would there even be anything remaining to look at? Would any of it be recognizable?

-XT

2

It’s an ark. With a k.

3

Probably not.

As an aside, I dated a girl once who told me that Noah’s Ark was actually a space ship piloted by aliens.

4

Thanks.

-XT

5

Well, looking at the Wiki page on Mount Ararat, I see that it’s snow capped. So I suppose it’s vaguely possible that remains could be preserved, Ötzi the Iceman style. Although it may not be cold or solid enough, the article says “snow” not “glacier”.

On the other hand, the volcano was apparently active around 3000 BC which could preserve it like artifacts at Pompeii, if it was the right kind of eruption I suppose. The article does say that bronze age articles & remains have been recovered “under the pyroclastic flows”.

6

Wood doesn’t preserve very well except in very cold, very dry or very anoxic waterlogged conditions. But the top of ararat sounds cold enough, so I think it possible we’d still have the whole damn thing.

7

While we are pretending, we’d have to pretend some:

Dates
Current location
Previous locations
Buried or not
Intervening locations and weathering circumstances.

So, for instance, if the sucker was on a freezing cold mountain top of a volcano which eventually erupted and Pompei’d it in a bunch of ash and then it got eroded free and then the remains slid down the mountain and got buried…yep; we got 'er.

On the other hand, if she came to rest on the mountain and got exposed to the elements and never got buried as she slowly slid down…why all that might be left is a splinter Relic.

The great thing about pretending is that you can come up with any scenario you like, depending on what you are hoping to find.

8

Ararat, East of Java.

9

It couldn’t have stayed on top of the mountain. The ice would have pushed it down. Then it would have rotted.

10

Looking at the wiki, it’s an ice-field on top of the mountain not a glacier. So if we take the assumption in the OP that it wasn’t ice covered when Noah parked the ark there, and that the ice field subsequently grew around it, I don’t see any reason why the ark wouldn’t have survived being buried in ice all these years. It’s not like a glacier where it would get crushed by the force of the moving ice and eventually swept downhill.

It sounds to me like the recent volcanic activity was from side vents, so the ice field may not have melted at this point, so who knows. Maybe with climate change and all we’ll get a surprise soon! You know, the lack of an actual Ark has always been my biggest problem with the story.:rolleyes:

11

It’s a glacier. The whole mountain is cover with glaciers.

12

Height of Mount Everest (8,848 m) + 15 cubits (6.9 m) = 8857.6 m asl
Earth’s Reference Ellipsoid volume = 1.083207317×10[sup]12[/sup] km[sup]3[/sup]
Expanded Reference Ellipsoid volume = 1.087731351×10[sup]12[/sup] km[sup]3[/sup]

Rainfall volume required = 4.524×10[sup]9[/sup] km[sup]3[/sup]
Current total volume of water on Earth = 1.386×10[sup]9[/sup] km[sup]3[/sup]

The meteorological feasibility study appears to face some project challenges from the outset.

13

If god pissed 4.524×10[sup]9[/sup] km[sup]3[/sup] of water in a mere 40 days, how heavy would this rainfall be exactly? I mean, would it be like a garden hose, a firehose coming down or what? Lets ‘pretend’ all that extra water subsequently left via a giant drinking straw used by Mick the archangle.

14

4.524×10[sup]21[/sup] kg (9.974×10[sup]21[/sup] lbs).

or 4.524[sup]18[/sup] tonnes (e.g. 4,524,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes, pronounced 4 quintillion 524 quadrillion, 6/10ths of the estimate of the number of grains of sand on the planet),
or 9.048[sup]12[/sup] of the largest supertanker, 9,048,000,000,000 falling from the sky… in rain,
or a cube with dimensions of 1654 km (1028 miles).

15

But that rain would be spread out over 40 days - 3,456,000 seconds. If I thought of it this way. I am floating in a square tube, 1 m by 1 m that goes from sea level up to the top of Mt. Everest. How heavy is the rainfall for the water to fill it in exactly 40 days? How heavy would the ‘rain’ be on my head?

Let me try:
If Mt. Everest is 8,848 m and it needs to get covered up. Then every 390.6 seconds (6.5 minutes) the water needs to rise a meter. This seems like a pretty heavy rainfall that my garden hose wouldn’t come close to being able to handle in the 1 meter square tube (judging from how long it takes to fill the kiddie pool).

So how heavy would the rain feel, and could a wooden built boat withstand that kind of prolonged heavy rainfall?

16

The water didn’t come from rain. Yes, it rained, but Jehova opened up “the fountains of the deep”, whatever they may be. So even with the most literal reading of the text it’s possible that only one millionth of the water came from rain.

What happened to the water afterwards is a bigger mystery.

17

Hahaha. The water came from the fountains of the deep. You’re right of course, I just have never read the text before. What rubbish the bible is.

I can just see some poor ignorant midieval peasant (or even a modern educated Christian) saying - Oh, the fountains of the deep, that explains everything. :rolleyes:

Not that any explanation is going to cut it - but the ‘fountains of the deep’ is really over the top BS.

18

A lot fundies, when pressed on it, will just say that God made the water appear and disappear miraculously, which makes me wonder why he didn’t just make all the people disappear miraculously in the first place.

And why did he have Noah save the animals if he (God) could have just instantly created them all over over again?

19

I’ve seen a speculative date of 4900 BC (give or take a few centuries) for the purported building of the Ar(k) and the Great Flood. That seems as good an arbitrary date as any, I suppose.

So, the thing would have sat up there (or whatever) for approximately 7k years.

I assume by this you mean where it landed. As per the OP, this is known…and you are free to speculate where YOU think it came to rest.

Again, assume we know where it is today and can go and take a look…and speculate freely on where that might have been. For my part I think the current location (in a universe where such a thing was actually built) would be…scattered about in a million pieces of drift wood all down the mountain.

Up to you, but my guess is it would have been covered in ice and snow at some point.

This is my thought as well, except I think it would have rotted first, then been covered by ice and snow, then the action of the glacier would have been to tear the structure apart, crush it and fragment it…and then, whatever got spit out at the bottom would have rotted away.
I’m a bit weak on my bible these days (it’s been a few years since I’ve read it), but when the Ar(k) came to rest on Mt Ararat, did they describe the current glacier conditions? My memories is that the bible didn’t talk about how cold it was, or the ice and snow. Couple that with the fact that Noah built this big ass boat out of green wood (with holes drilled through them) lashed together with some kind of fibrous rope (which was how boats were built during this time period), and then taken it on a sea voyage of several months (full of wet straw, animal waste, rotting food stuffs, fresh water, etc etc), and I’d guess the Ar(k) would have been just about ready to give up the ghost by the time it made land fall. The structure was big…REALLY big. And it would have leaked. All boats leak of course, but this big motha would have leaked a LOT.

Then, assuming Ararat wasn’t the glacier we see today, the Ark would have spent some non-zero time in a less cold climate, water logged, full of animal shit and waste…and only lashed together by essentially ropes. I think the whole thing would have begun falling apart almost immediately. Then, once it was covered in snow and ice, whatever was left would have been ground down to almost nothing by the action of the glacier.

No…that much rain would kill everything on earth from the atmospheric pressure alone. However, I’m not asking people to disprove the Noah’s Ark story in THIS thread. If we go into every implausible aspect of this story then there are numerous side tracks we can go off on. The entire story is implausible!

What I am asking HERE is…setting aside all the other implausible stuff, and saying that a boat built to the dimensions of the Ark and using the technology of the day, and further assuming that this thing took a sea voyage (however the water got there), survived said voyage and landed on Mt Ararat around 7000 years ago, what, if anything, would be left today.

-XT

20

It doesn’t say anything about ice and snow. It says that the had to wait a couple of months in the boat while the earth dried up, and then when Noah looked outside, the “ground was completely dry.”

He and all the animals are then able to exit the ark, he lights a fire, and plants a vinyard, so nothing to indicate the authors would have any clue about real mountaintop conditions.