Noah

Noah

I see there's a new biblical epic movie out about Noah.  I don't intend to see it, because I am pre-judging it.  I can assume that because it was made in America, it will not dare to present the story as an exciting fairy tale, but will pander to the evangelical Christians and include all the divine miracles.

Normally I abhor prejudice and try to avoid it, but with this film I feel safe in assuming that I would hate it.  This is because it is about the Noah story, and of all the biblical fables, it is the most absurd and demonstrably false.  Let me count the ways:

First, God caused the flood because every single person - man, woman, child, and infant, except Noah's immediate family - had offended Him and fell short of His requirements and therefore deserved death.  Well, He created them complete with all their desires, strengths, and weaknesses, so all their actions and failures are by definition His fault.  Also, He is omniscient, so He knew before He created them exactly what they would do.  So why should He be surprised, much less offended?  And if He wanted to punish all those millions of people, why not just kill them?  Why have a flood?  Knock them on the head and be done with it.

Second, except for the animals saved in the ark, the flood presumably killed every terrestrial animal on Earth, plus all the birds and insects (they could not stay aloft for the six or twelve months the flood endured).  These billions of creatures were presumably blameless, but God destroyed them as well.  He is omnipotent - why didn't He just strike down those who offended Him?

Third, Genesis 7:19-20 says: "All the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered.  Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail and the mountains were covered."  Fifteen cubits is about 23 feet - so clearly 23 feet of water wouldn't have covered even the smallest hill.  The only way to make sense of this is if the water covered the highest mountain by 23 feet.  The highest mountain is Mount Everest at 29,029 feet, so we have an accurate figure for the depth of the water - 29,052 feet, or five and a half miles above normal sea level.  This is an increase of a billion cubic miles of water - immensely more water than exists on the whole Earth, but never mind - He can do anything.  It rained for forty days, so that's 726 feet of rain a day, or an inch of rain landing every two seconds, over the whole surface of the Earth, non-stop for forty days.  Never mind that a rainfall that hard would have pounded the ark and its crew to jelly.

Fourth, raising sea level by five and a half miles would kill all marine plants and animals that depend on the shore or the bottom.  Even the incredibly hardy animals that live at the bottom of the trenches would have been crushed by nearly doubling the pressure.  Also, all that fresh water would have diluted the sea to the point that it would be essentially a brackish world.  All the animals in the ocean would have died in days, as would the freshwater species.  Too bad He didn't suggest a few saltwater tanks in the ark to hold all the whale sharks, blue whales, and giant squid.

Fifth, the ark itself.  It is to be built of gopher wood.  There is not now, nor was there in ancient times, any tree by that name.  Gophers are North American animals and were not known to the Jews.  When Noah took his shopping list down to his local Home Depot, he must have had some trouble filling the order.  Supposedly he substituted some other wood and hoped God wouldn't notice.  Whatever he used, there must have been a lot of it, because the ark was huge - 450' long by 75' wide by 45' deep - larger than any other ship built until around 1900.  It would have rated a cargo tonnage of about 12,000.  A lot of work for one guy and his kids.  A hull of that size would require vast engineering knowledge, unlikely for a goatherd.

Sixth, those animals.  Even a 12,000-ton ship could never hold two of every kind of animal known to the Jews - elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, lions, tigers, snakes, etc.  Then there are all the animals they didn't know about but must have somehow rounded up anyway (because they survived the flood) - water buffaloes, bison, kangaroos, wallabies, grizzly bears, platypi, gorillas, condors, yaks, etc. etc.  Then there are ten to twenty million species of insects - over 350,000 species just of beetles.  The beetles alone would have buried the ark in a huge mound.  As for bacteria and viruses, no one has even estimated their number of species.  Still, Noah and his boys must have rounded up a couple of every single one.

Seventh, the plants.  Being submerged under five miles of brackish water for half a year would have killed all the land plants.  The Bible simply ignores their problems and what the survivors would have eaten after the flood.  Did they have two of every plant in there as well - redwood trees and all?

Eighth, Genesis 8:3-4 states: "And the waters returned from off the earth continually; and after the end of one hundred and fifty days the waters decreased.  And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month upon the mountains of Ararat."  Now Ararat is 16,854' high, so the water had receded from 29,209' to 16,854', or 12,355' in that time - about 82' a day, or 77 cubic miles of water every second.  Where did all those billion cubic miles of water go?  It can't have run off anywhere because it was already covering the ocean.  It can't have evaporated because the atmosphere can't hold that amount of water,

So, for all the above reasons and hundreds more, the story of Noah's flood cannot be true, even allowing for miracles, blind faith, and an omnipotent God.  There are scores of similar examples in the Bible.  If there is a grain of truth in it, some village was probably devastated by a flood and many people died.  The old tale was used by the authors of the Bible to keep people in line - if you don't do what God wants, he can kill you, so be good for goodness' sake.  Like Paul Bunyan and Little Red Riding Hood, this is a fairy tale.  It was made up by ignorant camel herders, just like the tall tales and creation myths of every other culture in the world,  Anyone who thinks it is factual does not live in the real world.

Trust me.  Skip the movie.