When a story or claim from religious texts is shown to be too out of this world to be believable, believers usually go for the option of claiming the story wasn't meant to be taken literally, but taken as an allegory or just something symbolic.
I've seen believers do this about many Bible stories, but I haven't seen them do this to the story of Noah. That is because, at face value the story of Noah doesn't sound that unbelievable, but on closer look, guys...
The Mind Blowing Factors
• The Ark Can't Fit All the Land Animals: The size/dimensions of the Ark was clearly stated in the Bible, about 45 feet tall and 75 feet wide, 450 feet long.
The number of species of land animals that would have died in a flood are over 6 million. Even if they were just 1 million it still would contain two of each.
For this to be possible, God would have to work some miracle to make it contain all the animals even though the space was small, kinda like he did with sharing 5 loaves of bread and two fishes with 5000 people.
• Some Species only Exist in One Continent and Would have to Travel through Continents to Make it to the Boat: Simple like that. Australian kangaroos, for example, would have had to travel all the way from Australia to join the ark. How many years of hopping would that have taken?
The only way this would have worked is if God worked another miracle to bring them quickly all the way from their different corners of the Earth.
• It Would Have Taken Too Much to Feed them for that Long: God would have had to work the miracle to provide space for all the food on the Ark too. And then work another miracle to make the food enough to last them for about 200 days or so. Because the rain fell for 40 days and it took 150 days for the water to start receding.
• A Miracle would Have to Stop the Carnivores from Eating Meat on the Ark.
• Transporting the Animals Back to their Locations after the Flood: It would have taken another miracle to spread them all over again, back to where they're coming from.
• Keeping the Animals alive Long Enough to Reproduce After the Flood: All the animals would have to not die until years after the Flood or else the specie would be lost. They would have to stay alive long enough to have descendants before they can die.
Which means the carnivores among them would have had to be vegetarians for some years.
Because if they don't go vegan, they'll end a lot of species by eating them, it was too easy to end a specie when they're only one small family left.
Conclusion
All of these are huge miracles that would have had to happen for this to be possible. It would have been way easier for God to just make them stay back in their various locations but just have heightened swimming abilities and the ability to breathe under water for the duration of the flood. LOL.
And then, God knows the future without testing, doesn't he? He knew all the guys that would have accepted to get on the Ark or not, he could just give the same abilities to the good ones and let the bad ones drown.
Or if God didn't want it so covert because maybe the exercise of joining the Ark would teach the lesson of belief, acceptance, and repentance, then Noah should have only had to convince humans to join the Ark and the temporal aquatic abilities be left for the land animals.
This was fun, at least now those who didn't know now know that the story of Noah couldn't have been as straightforward as they previously thought.
The End
[Cover Image Created ny Myself]
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