Dear Tim,
I really do not understand how or why you believe that you can make such rash, blanket statement based upon nothing more I can only presume than guesswork and disbelief of what the Bible plainly tells us in both Testaments.
How in the world do you think you know the Ark wouldn’t work and would fall apart?
The only way that I know is that I trust the Holy Bibles words to be faithful and true.
Jesus affirmed the Flood of Noah was real, the Ark was real and it did survive the flood that destroyed the Earth and drowned ALL flesh in whose nostrils was the breath of life from the land.
Well I think it is a great quote because it puts the reality into perspective.
Further more, the rush by many to adopt belief in a theory that has more questions than answers, is supported by things we have never observed that are supposedly 96% of the universe is if you ask me, more than just a tad unhinged.
But of course you are welcome to believe what you want; just don’t expect me to.
I’m content to know that God spoke and it was so,just as He did 2,000 years ago on Earth as recorded faithfully in the Gospels.
Do you Truly believe that a roughly 50:50 ratio of marginally good and bad mutations exists, where does that data come from?
Actually, the fact that it is unfalsifiable means that it does not even pass the test for a valid hypothesis.
Well first of all, I must make it abundantly clear that I accept the Bibles straightforward account that the Flood destroyed all the Earth under Heaven and extinguished all life on Earth in whose nostrils was the breath of life, thus the Flood covered the whole Earth.
But for the sake of what you believe, lets just do the simple mathematics and see what comes out of that to see if it makes more sense to spend I would expect fifty to one hundred years to build the Ark than to walk out of the Flood zone.
You assume the flood covers “a few tens of thousands of square kilometres”, so first we need to decide what’s a few tens of thousands of square kilometres" actually means in numeric terms; perhaps 30,000² kilometres but lets be generous to your theory, and say 40,000² kilometres or even say 50,000² kilometres, but no lets be really generous and make it 90,000² kilometres was covered by the Flood.
That more than qualifies as a “few tens of thousands of kilometres”.
That’s a very big flood by anyone’s standards.
At 90,000² kilometres to make the mathematics work simply, we will assume it was roughly square and the Ark was located right at the geographic centre at the intersection of both diagonals.
That would mean the flood extent was 300 kilometres by 300 kilometres as a square.
Thus if we put the Ark at the geographic centre of this area, it will be between about 150 to 212 kilometres to the edge of the flood in any direction.
How far would they travel each day walking at an average pace of 5 km/hour or (3 miles per hour)
Distance about 212 kilometres
Then it would take them the following number of days if they:
Walk for only 1 hour per day = 5km / day = 43 days
Walk for only 2 hours per day = 10km / day = 22 days
Walk for only 3 hours per day = 15km / day = about 14 days
Walk for only 4 hours per day = 20km / day = about 11 days
Walk for only 5 hours per day = 25km / day = about 9 days
Perhaps it would be reasonable to expect they walked for about 3 hours per day as an average.
Thus in just 14 days they would be out of the danger zone.
Compare walking for 14 days to spending who knows how long, 10, 20, 30, 40 or perhaps 50 years or even 100 years to build the Ark from scratch.
They lived much longer pre the flood genetic bottleneck that drastically shortened life spans.
Though I guess you probably don’t believe that either, even though the Bible is ever so clear.
14 days walk or say 50 years of extremely hard arduous work, felling trees,using an adze and a broad axe to square up timber, perhaps using bullocks to haul the logs etc, They must have amazing ingenuity.
I reckon it’s a no brainer.
There was NO Local Flood, it was as the Bible tells us, over ALL the Earth.
Obviously, the Flood was absolute and covered and destroyed the Earth as the 70 Translations of the Bible so reliably inform us.
Why do you believe that seventy Holy Bible Translations all got it so wrong by saying the Flood destroyed the Earth and killed all life on Earth except for those in the Ark, if it was only a local Flood?
I will continue to believe in faith that the Bible is trustworthy and true rather than accept all the extraneous beliefs that aren’t to be found anywhere in the seventy Holy Bible Translations that ultimately are used to accommodate ‘deeptime’ and evolution.
A real concern that I have is that when parts of the Bible are manipulated such as the creation and flood history of what happened, the precedent is set, where does it end?
Do you believe any of Genesis is history?
And so it goes all the way to Revelation, once on the slippery slope of reading into the text whatever suits the dogma of your worldview, there is no to it.
Anyway, I’ve said my bit.
I cannot afford much more time here, I have said what I have said.
The rest is out of my hands.
God bless,
jon