What most Latter-day Saints have been taught in church and
believe as truth.
Significant details and
problems which some Latter-day Saints may not have thought about.
The Sun Gets Its Light from Kolob.
Adam and Eve Were the First Humans.
Responses to these issues by faithful Latter-day
Saints.
What
most Latter-day Saints have been taught in church and believe as truth.
The leaders of the church, as well as gospel doctrine teachers the world over, have taught that many Biblical events and beliefs that people have had for centuries are indeed true, historical events. Joseph Smith and other prophets have made statements that indicated that certain Biblical events were indeed historical and not merely parables. Many of these Biblical traditions were believed as literal events by most of the general population in the 1800s as well. These include:
1) Flood of Noah.
2)
3) Adam and Eve were the first humans.
4) Dinosaurs were never alive on this earth, because there was no death before Adam.
5) Age of the Earth is thousands instead of billions of years old.
6) Evolution did not happen.
7) Sun gets its light from Kolob.
8) Other
Bible stories such as the Exodus, Jonah and the whale, Joshua stopping the sun
or tumbling the walls of
________________________________________________________________________
Significant details and
problems which some Latter-day Saints may not have thought about.
Many of the things which were commonly believed in the 1800s and even in the early part of the 1900s, by both LDS and non LDS people, are now being thought of as fables by many people. Of course, there are still many people that believe in the literal interpretation of these events. However, more people are questioning their historical accuracy due to scientific reasoning, testing, and discovery.
If some of the events taught as unquestionably true, literal, historical events by the LDS prophets and the Church in general can be shown to be much more likely to be fables or parables, then this presents a problem for those that claim with authority that they are literally true, historical events. In addition to the claims and teachings of the leaders of the Church, many LDS-specific scriptures verify that many of these things are literal events. If scriptures such as the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham, which were translated accurately in the 1800s, show that events they reference as true events never really happened then this creates a serious problem in establishing the credibility of those LDS scriptures.
The LDS church teaches that the flood of Noah was a literal global and worldwide event, and that the flood was the Earth’s baptism.
“There was the great
Flood, when waters covered the earth and when, as Peter says, only ‘eight souls
were saved’” – Gordon B. Hinckley, If We Are Prepared Ye Shall Not Fear, 175th
Semi-Annual General Priesthood Meeting http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-559-20,00.html
“During Noah’s time the earth was completely covered with water. This was the baptism of the earth and symbolized a cleansing (1 Pet. 3: 20-21).” http://scriptures.lds.org/gs/f/21
"In the days of Noah the Lord sent a universal
flood which completely immersed the whole earth and destroyed all flesh except
that preserved on the ark. (Gen. 6; 7; 8; 9; Moses 7:38-45;
8; Ether 13.2.) "Noah was born to save seed of everything, when the
earth was washed of its wickedness by the flood." (Teachings, p. 12) This
flood was the baptism of the earth; before it occurred the land was all in one
place, a condition that will again prevail during the millennial era. (D&C
133:23-24)". (Mormon Doctrine, Bruce R. McConkie, p. 289)
“The Garden of Eden was in
FLOOD WAS BAPTISM OF EARTH. Now a word as to the reason for the flood. It was the baptism of the earth, and that had to be by immersion. If the water did not cover the entire earth, then it was not baptized, for the baptism of the Lord is not pouring or sprinkling. (capitalization and emphasis his) (Smith, Joseph Fielding, Jr., Doctrines of Salvation (Salt Lake City: BookCraft, 1955), Vol.2, p.320)
In the January 1998 Ensign, page 35, Donald W. Parry writes,
“In spite of the world’s arguments against the historicity of the Flood, and despite the supposed lack of geologic evidence, we Latter-day Saints believe that Noah was an actual man, a prophet of God, who preached repentance and raised a voice of warning, built an ark, gathered his family and a host of animals onto the ark, and floated safely away as waters covered the entire earth. We are assured that these events actually occurred by the multiple testimonies of God’s prophets.
Scriptural Evidence for a Worldwide Flood
Many prophets from two different continents and different eras have identified Noah as a historical, not a mythical, character. These include Enoch (see Moses 7:42–43), Abraham (see Abr. 1:19), Amulek (see Alma 10:22), Moroni (see Ether 6:7), Matthew (see JS—M 1:41–42), Peter (see 2 Pet. 2:5), Joseph Smith (see D&C 84:14–15; D&C 133:54), and Joseph F. Smith (see D&C 138:9, 41). The Lord Jesus Christ himself spoke to the Nephites of the “waters of Noah” (3 Ne. 22:9). Recent latter-day prophets and apostles have similarly spoken of Noah. For example, Elder Howard W. Hunter, then of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, asked, “Because modernists now declare the story of the flood is unreasonable and impossible, should we disbelieve the account of Noah and the flood as related in the Old Testament?”
The most voluminous scriptural witness to Noah and the Flood is recorded in the writings of Moses, who dedicated a total of 57 verses in the King James Version to the account (Gen. 6:9–8:19). It is instructive to note that some of Noah’s actual words are preserved in the book of Moses, which introduces them with “And it came to pass that Noah continued his preaching unto the people, saying”—followed by his words: “Hearken, and give heed unto my words; Believe and repent of your sins and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, even as our fathers, and ye shall receive the Holy Ghost, that ye may have all things made manifest; and if ye do not this, the floods will come in upon you” (Moses 8:23–24). This text is significant in that it confirms that Noah, like his predecessors, understood the gospel covenant, including the baptismal ordinance and Jesus Christ’s role as Savior.
Moses may have received his information about Noah through direct revelation, or perhaps he used ancient records that were written by one of the eyewitnesses to the Flood, such as Noah himself or one of his sons. Such records, presuming they once existed, are now lost to the world. In the book of Genesis, Moses clearly states that a flood occurred, and the terminology definitely refers to a worldwide flood, as opposed to a localized flood. The Joseph Smith Translation backs up the Genesis account, modifying the wording only slightly.
Said the Lord, “I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die” (Gen. 6:17; emphasis added in this and other scriptures in this article). The phrases “all flesh … from under heaven” and “every thing that is in the earth” indicate a worldwide destruction of all creatures that lived on land. Note that the Inspired Version, translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith, changes “in the earth” to “on the earth” (JST, Gen. 8:22).
Genesis 7:19–20 [Gen. 7:19–20] states, “All the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered … ; and the mountains were covered.” These verses explicitly state that all of earth’s high mountains (“hills” should read “mountains” here; Hebrew harim) were covered by the waters. Lest one believe that the statement “under the whole heaven” is figurative and can be read or interpreted in different ways, a scriptural search through the entire Old Testament reveals that the phrase is used elsewhere only in a universal sense, as it is here; the phrase does not refer to a geographically restricted area (see Deut. 2:25; Deut. 4:19; Job 28:24; Job 37:3; Dan. 9:12). For instance, Job 28:24 also uses the phrase when referring to God’s omniscience, which is certainly not restricted to a specific geographical region on the earth.
Genesis 7:21 [Gen. 7:21] states, “All flesh died that moved upon the earth, … every creeping thing … every man.” The phrase “all flesh” refers to all land animals, creeping things, and fowls and all of humanity, with the exception of those in the ark (see Gen. 7:23). The entry every in the Oxford American Dictionary reads: “each single one, without exception.” Moses is clearly trying to let us understand that the Flood was universal.
Verse 22 [Gen. 7:22] states, “All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.” Again the term “all” expresses a sum total. The term “dry land” should be read literally here, having reference to the land masses of our planet.
Verse 23 [Gen. 7:23] states, “Every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl.” Moses’ list of those destroyed by the Flood is inclusive; only Noah “remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”
Genesis 8:5 [Gen. 8:5] states, “In the tenth month … were the tops of the mountains seen.” After the flood, the “waters decreased” until Noah and his group were able to once again see mountaintops.
Verse 9 states, “The waters were on the face of the whole earth.” The phrase “on the face of the whole earth” refers to a worldwide flood (see Gen. 1:29; Gen. 11:4, 8, 9).
Taken altogether, these statements should convince every believer in the Bible that the great Deluge was a worldwide event, 4 not a localized flood that filled only the Mesopotamian or some other region.
[And then further down Parry states]
...4. Latter-day prophets teach that the Flood or the total immersion of the earth in water represents the earth’s required baptism. Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained: “Latter-day Saints look upon the earth as a living organism, one which is gloriously filling ‘the measure of its creation.’ They look upon the flood as a baptism of the earth, symbolizing a cleansing of the impurities of the past, and the beginning of a new life. This has been repeatedly taught by the leaders of the Church. The deluge was an immersion of the earth in water.” He writes that the removal of earth’s wicked inhabitants in the Flood represents that which occurs in our own baptism for the remission of sins.
13. Evidences and Reconciliations (1960), 127–28; see also Doctrines of Salvation, 2:320–21.”
Noah was the Angel Gabriel
Additionally, LDS believe that Noah was the Arch
Angel Gabriel as taught by the early prophets.
While speaking in 1839 to members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and some Seventies prior to their leaving for missionary service, the Prophet Joseph Smith said: “Noah, who is Gabriel, … stands next in authority to Adam in the Priesthood; he was called of God to this office, and was the father of all living in his day, and to him was given the dominion. These men held keys first on earth, and then in heaven.” 1
(Joseph B. Romney, “Noah, The Great Preacher of Righteousness,” Ensign, Feb. 1998, 22)
Implausibility
of a Global Flood
The biblical account of Noah states that God informed Noah that he intended to flood the earth to destroy the wicked people. God instructed Noah, who was some 600 years old at the time, to build a massive ark with dimensions that equate to about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet deep. Noah and his family took two of each unclean creature and seven of every clean creature and all the food and fresh water that would be needed on board the ark for over six months. After the flood waters subsided, Noah and his family released the animals and they, along with Noah’s family of eight, repopulated the earth. (Genesis chapters 6-9.)
Two of every kind or species?
Scientists say that it would take a supertanker just to carry every species of insect. Taking every species of animal would require fleets of arks. Faithful people say that Noah took every ‘kind’ of animal, not species. Two obvious problems with this theory:
1) It takes thousands of years or animals to evolve into different species. If Noah’s flood happened between 2400 BC and 3000 B.C., there wouldn’t be enough years since the time of Noa,h until the time of accurate recorded history, for all the species to generate from two of every kind of animal.
2) Even just two of every ‘kind’ of animal, and the food and water necessary to sustain them for over six months, would require a ship larger than the Ark as described in the Bible. The only way that would be possible is if you lumped in every form of animal that is remotely related such as having tigers represent all big cats. A tiger would then have to give birth to a lion, cheetah, cougar, Siamese cat, etc.
Reference: http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/noahs_ark.html
Other Problems
Even if that basic implausibility is accepted, there are still many, many problems associated with a global flood happening in Noah’s time.
Excerpts from: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html by Mark Isaak.
“Wood is simply
not strong enough to prevent separation between the joints, especially in the
heavy seas that the
Could animals have traveled from elsewhere? If the animals traveled from other parts of the world, many of them would have faced extreme difficulties.
Some, like sloths and penguins, can't travel over land very well at all.
Some, like koalas and many insects, require a special diet. How did they bring it along?
Some cave-dwelling arthropods can't survive in less than 100% relative humidity.
Some, like dodos, must have lived on islands. If they didn't, they would have been easy prey for other animals. When mainland species like rats or pigs are introduced to islands, they drive many indigenous species to extinction. Those species would not have been able to survive such competition if they lived where mainland species could get at them before the Flood.
How
was the
Were dinosaurs and other extinct animals on the ark? According to the Bible, Noah took samples of all animals alive at the time of the Flood. If, as creationists claim, all fossil-bearing strata were deposited by the Flood, then all the animals which became fossils were alive then. Therefore all extinct land animals had representatives aboard the ark.
It is also worth pointing out that the number of extinct species is undoubtedly greater than the number of known extinct species. New genera of dinosaurs have been discovered at a nearly constant rate for more than a century, and there's no indication that the rate of discovery will fall off in the near future.
An ark of the size specified in the Bible would not be large enough to carry a cargo of animals and food sufficient to repopulate the earth, especially if animals that are now extinct were required to be aboard.
Special diets. Many animals, especially insects, require special diets. Koalas, for example, require eucalyptus leaves, and silkworms eat nothing but mulberry leaves. For thousands of plant species (perhaps even most plants), there is at least one animal that eats only that one kind of plant. How did Noah gather all those plants aboard, and where did he put them?
Other animals are strict carnivores, and some of those specialize on certain kinds of foods, such as small mammals, insects, fish, or aquatic invertebrates. How did Noah determine and provide for all those special diets?
Fresh foods. Many animals require their food to be fresh. Many snakes, for example, will eat only live foods (or at least warm and moving). Parasitoid wasps only attack living prey. Most spiders locate their prey by the vibrations it produces. [Foelix, 1996] Most herbivorous insects require fresh food. Aphids, in fact, are physically incapable of sucking from wilted leaves. How did Noah keep all these food supplies fresh?
Food preservation/Pest control. Food
spoilage is a major concern on long voyages; it was especially thus before the
inventions of canning and refrigeration. The large quantities of food aboard
would have invited infestations of any of hundreds of stored product pests
(especially since all of those pests would have been aboard), and the humidity
one would expect aboard the
Ventilation. The ark would need to be well ventilated to disperse the heat, humidity, and waste products (including methane, carbon dioxide, and ammonia) from the many thousands of animals which were crowded aboard. Woodmorappe (pp. 37-42) interprets Genesis 6:16 to mean there was an 18-inch opening all around the top, and says that this, with slight breezes, would have been enough to provide adequate ventilation. However, the ark was divided into separate rooms and decks (Gen. 6:14,16). How was fresh air circulated throughout the structure?
Sanitation. The ungulates alone would have produced tons of manure a day. The waste on the lowest deck at least (and possibly the middle deck) could not simply be pushed overboard, since the deck was below the water line; the waste would have to be carried up a deck or two. Vermicomposting could reduce the rate of waste accumulation, but it requires maintenance of its own. How did such a small crew dispose of so much waste?
Exercise/Animal handling. The animals aboard the ark would have been in very poor shape unless they got regular exercise. (Imagine if you had to stay in an area the size of a closet for a year.) How were several thousand diverse kinds of animals exercised regularly?
Manpower for feeding, watering, etc. How did a crew of eight manage a menagerie larger and more diverse than that found in zoos requiring many times that many employees? Woodmorappe claims that eight people could care for 16000 animals, but he makes many unrealistic and invalid assumptions. Here are a few things he didn't take into account:
¨ Feeding the animals would take much longer if the food was in containers to protect it from pests.
¨ Many animals would have to be hand-fed.
¨ Watering several animals at once via troughs would not work aboard a ship. The water would be sloshed out by the ship's roll.
¨ Many animals, in such an artificial environment, would have required additional special care. For example, all of the hoofed animals would need to have their hooves trimmed several times during the year. [Batten, 1976, pp. 39-42]
¨ Not all manure could be simply pushed overboard; a third of it at least would have to be carried up at least one deck.
¨ Corpses of the dead animals would have to be removed regularly.
¨ Animals can't be expected to run laps and return to their cages without a lot of human supervision.
Where did the Flood water come from, and
where did it go?
How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why
weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the
Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series? Ice cores
from
How are the [Antarctic and
Why did the Flood not leave traces on the sea floors? A year long flood should be recognizable in sea bottom cores by (1) an uncharacteristic amount of terrestrial detritus, (2) different grain size distributions in the sediment, (3) a shift in oxygen isotope ratios (rain has a different isotopic composition from seawater), (4) a massive extinction, and (n) other characters. Why do none of these show up?
Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]
How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution? Ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape fail to explain:
How do surface features appear far from the surface? Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have originated only on the surface, such as:
How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?
How does a global flood explain angular unconformities? These are where one set of layers of sediments have been extensively modified (e.g., tilted) and eroded before a second set of layers were deposited on top. They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.
How were mountains and valleys formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids [Gansser, 1964].) If these were formed during the Flood, how did they reach their present height, and when were the valleys between them eroded away? Keep in mind that many valleys were clearly carved by glacial erosion, which is a slow process.
When did granite batholiths form? Some of these are intruded into older sediments and have younger sediments on their eroded top surfaces. It takes a long time for magma to cool into granite, nor does granite erode very quickly. [For example, see Donohoe & Grantham, 1989, for locations of contact between the South Mountain Batholith and the Meugma Group of sediments, as well as some angular unconformities.]
How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed
layering? One formation in
How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation
in
How could a flood deposit layered fossil
forests? Stratigraphic sections showing a dozen or more mature forests
layered atop each other--all with upright trunks, in-place roots, and
well-developed soil--appear in many locations. One example, the Joggins section
along the Bay of Fundy, shows a continuous section 2750 meters thick (along a
48-km sea cliff) with multiple in-place forests, some separated by hundreds of
feet of strata, some even showing evidence of forest fires. [Ferguson,
1988. For other examples, see Dawson, 1868;
Cristie &
McMillan, 1991; Gastaldo,
1990; Yuretich,
1994.] Creationists point to logs sinking in a lake below
Where did all the heat go? If the geologic record was deposited in a year, then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat.
5.6 x 1026 joules is enough to heat the oceans to boiling. 3.7 x 1027 joules will vaporize them completely. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth.
Aside from losing its atmosphere, Earth can only get rid of heat by radiating it to space, and it can't radiate significantly more heat than it gets from the sun unless it is a great deal hotter than it is now. (It is very nearly at thermal equilibrium now.) If there weren't many millions of years to radiate the heat from the above processes, the earth would still be unlivably hot.
As shown in section 5, all the mechanisms proposed for causing the Flood already provide more than enough energy to vaporize it as well. These additional factors only make the heat problem worse.
How were limestone deposits formed? Much limestone is made of the skeletons of zillions of microscopic sea animals. Some deposits are thousands of meters thick. Were all those animals alive when the Flood started? If not, how do you explain the well-ordered sequence of fossils in the deposits? Roughly 1.5 x 1015 grams of calcium carbonate are deposited on the ocean floor each year. [Poldervaart, 1955] A deposition rate ten times as high for 5000 years before the Flood would still only account for less than 0.02% of limestone deposits.
How could a flood have deposited chalk? Chalk is largely made up of the bodies of plankton 700 to 1000 angstroms in diameter [Bignot, 1985]. Objects this small settle at a rate of .0000154 mm/sec. [Twenhofel, 1961] In a year of the Flood, they could have settled about half a meter.
How could the Flood deposit layers of solid salt? Such layers are
sometimes meters in width, interbedded with sediments containing marine
fossils. This apparently occurs when a body of salt water has its fresh-water
intake cut off, and then evaporates. These layers can occur more or less at
random times in the geological history, and have characteristic fossils on
either side. Therefore, if the fossils were themselves laid down during a
catastrophic flood, there are, it seems, only two choices:
(1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time, during the
heavy rains that began the flooding, or
(2) the salt is a later intrusion. I suspect that both will prove insuperable
difficulties for a theory of flood deposition of the geologic column and its
fossils. [Jackson et
al, 1990]
How were sedimentary deposits recrystallized and plastically deformed in the short time since the Flood? The stretched pebble conglomerate in Death Valley National Monument (Wildrose Canyon Rd., 15 mi. south of Hwy. 190), for example, contains streambed pebbles metamorphosed to quartzite and stretched to 3 or more times their original length. Plastically deformed stone is also common around salt diapirs [Jackson et al, 1990].
How were hematite layers laid down? Standard theory is that they were laid down before Earth's atmosphere contained much oxygen. In an oxygen-rich regime, they would almost certainly be impossible.
How do you explain fossil mineralization? Mineralization is the replacement of the original material with a different mineral.
How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of remains in a single episode of global flooding?
How does a flood explain the accuracy of "coral clocks"? The moon is slowly sapping the earth's rotational energy. The earth should have rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would have been less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days per year. Corals can be dated by the number of "daily" growth layers per "annual" growth layer. Devonian corals, for example, show nearly 400 days per year. There is an exceedingly strong correlation between the "supposed age" of a wide range of fossils (corals, stromatolites, and a few others -- collected from geologic formations throughout the column and from locations all over the world) and the number of days per year that their growth pattern shows. The agreement between these clocks, and radiometric dating, and the theory of superposition is a little hard to explain away as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences in a 300-day-long flood. [Rosenberg & Runcorn, 1975; Scrutton, 1965; Wells, 1963]
Where were all the fossilized animals when they were alive? Schadewald [1982] writes:
"Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth's
rocks as the remains of animals that perished in the Noachian Deluge.
Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in 'fossil graveyards'
as evidence for the Flood. In particular, creationists seem enamored by the
Karroo Formation in
"Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the
A thousand kilometers' length of arctic coastal plain, according to experts
in
Even if there was room physically for all the large animals which now exist
only as fossils, how could they have all coexisted in a stable ecology before
the Flood?
Where did all the organic material in the fossil record come from? There are 1.16 x 1013 metric tons of coal reserves, and at least 100 times that much unrecoverable organic matter in sediments. A typical forest, even if it covered the entire earth, would supply only 1.9 x 1013 metric tons. [Ricklefs, 1993, p. 149]
How do you explain the relative commonness of aquatic fossils? A flood would have washed over everything equally, so terrestrial organisms should be roughly as abundant as aquatic ones (or more abundant, since Creationists hypothesize greater land area before the Flood) in the fossil record. Yet shallow marine environments account for by far the most fossils.
How did all the modern plant species survive?
How did all the fish survive? Some require cool clear water, some need brackish water, some need ocean water, some need water even saltier. A flood would have destroyed at least some of these habitats.
How did sensitive marine life such as coral survive? Since most coral are found in shallow water, the turbidity created by the runoff from the land would effectively cut them off from the sun. The silt covering the reef after the rains were over would kill all the coral. By the way, the rates at which coral deposits calcium are well known, and some highly mature reefs (such a the great barrier) have been around for millions of years to be deposited to their observed thickness.
How did diseases survive? Many diseases can't survive in hosts other
than humans. Many others can only survive in humans and in short-lived
arthropod vectors. The list includes typhus, measles, smallpox, polio,
gonorrhea, syphilis. For these diseases to have survived the Flood, they must
all have infected one or more of the eight people aboard the
Other animals aboard the ark must have suffered from multiple diseases, too, since there are other diseases specific to other animals, and the nonspecific diseases must have been somewhere.
Host-specific diseases which don't kill their host generally can't survive long, since the host's immune system eliminates them. (This doesn't apply to diseases such as HIV and malaria which can hide from the immune system.) For example, measles can't last for more than a few weeks in a community of less than 250,000 [Keeling & Grenfell, 1997] because it needs nonresistant hosts to infect. Since the human population aboard the ark was somewhat less than 250,000, measles and many other infectious diseases would have gone extinct during the Flood.
Some diseases that can affect a wide range of species would have found
conditions on the
How did short-lived species survive? Adult mayflies on the ark would have died in a few days, and the larvae of many mayflies require shallow fresh running water. Many other insects would face similar problems.
How could more than a handful of species survive in a devastated habitat? The Flood would have destroyed the food and shelter which most species need to survive.
How did predators survive? How could more than a handful of the predator species on the ark have survived (both on the ark and in the months after the voyage), with only two individuals of their prey to eat? All of the predators at the top of the food pyramid require larger numbers of food animals beneath them on the pyramid, which in turn require large numbers of the animals they prey on, and so on, down to the primary producers (plants etc.) at the bottom. And if the predators survived, how did the other animals survive being preyed on? For that matter, what would the herbivores eat after the flood subsided?
How could more than a handful of species survive random influences that affect populations? Isolated populations with fewer than 20 members are usually doomed even when extraordinary measures are taken to protect them. [Simberloff, 1988]
How did animals get to their present ranges? How did koalas get from
Ararat to
How were ecological interdependencies preserved as animals migrated from
Ararat? Did the yucca and the yucca moth migrate together across the
Why are so many animals found only in limited ranges? Why are so many marsupials limited to
Why is inbreeding depression not a problem in most species? Harmful recessive alleles occur in significant numbers in most species. (Humans have, on average, 3 to 4 lethal recessive alleles each.) When close relatives breed, the offspring are more likely to be homozygous for these harmful alleles, to the detriment of the offspring. Such inbreeding depression still shows up in cheetahs; they have about 1/6th the number of motile spermatozoa as domestic cats, and of those, almost 80% show morphological abnormalities. [O'Brien et al, 1987] How could more than a handful of species survive the inbreeding depression that comes with establishing a population from a single mating pair?
Why is there no mention of the Flood in the records of Egyptian or
Mesopotamian civilizations which existed at the time? Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1,
Gal 3:17,
various generation lengths given in Genesis) place the Flood 1300 years before
Solomon began the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near
Eastern history, particularly for
How did the human population rebound so fast? Genealogies in Genesis
put the
Why do other flood myths vary so greatly from the Genesis account? Flood myths are fairly common worldwide, and if they came from a common source, we should expect similarities in most of them. Instead, the myths show great diversity. [Bailey, 1989, pp. 5-10; Isaak, 1997] For example, people survive on high land or trees in the myths about as often as on boats or rafts, and no other flood myth includes a covenant not to destroy all life again.
Why should we expect Genesis to be accurate? We know that other people's sacred stories change over time [Baaren, 1972] and that changes to the Genesis Flood story have occurred in later traditions [Ginzberg, 1909; Utley, 1961]. Is it not reasonable to assume that changes occurred between the story's origin and its being written down in its present form?
Why stop with the Flood story? If your style of Biblical interpretation makes you take the Flood literally, then shouldn't you also believe in a flat and stationary earth? [Dan. 4:10-11, Matt. 4:8, 1 Chron. 16:30, Psalms 93:1, ...]
In fact, is there any reason at all why the Flood story should be taken literally? Jesus used parables; why wouldn't God do so, too?”
Excerpts from: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html by Mark Isaak.
Questions to ponder: How did the altar at Adam-ondi-Ahman survive the flood waters and remain standing?
The Bible states that the Tower of Babel was constructed 110 to 150 years after the flood. How could the 3 fertile female human survivors of the flood (Noah's daughters-in-law) produce such a large number of descendants within 6 generations?
Critic’s comment: The idea of a universal flood simply does not stand up to any sort of scrutiny. How can an honest person deny his/her God-given intelligence and seriously believe in such an obvious myth?
Additional References
¨ The perspective of a Mormon scientist is here: http://www.sunstoneonline.com/magazine/issues/134/134-27-45.pdf
¨ http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
¨ http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/noahs_ark.html
¨ http://www.skepticreport.com/creationism/sillyflood.htm
The LDS church teaches that the
Book of Mormon
“33. Which Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families, from the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth; and according to the word of the Lord the people were scattered.” (Ether 1:33)
The Ensign - “The
The account of the
The
The Akkadian or Babylonian word babel means “gate of God.”
The word translates from Hebrew into English as “confusion” or “confound”—hence
Moses’ text, “Therefore is the name of it called
For some in the modern world, the historicity of the
The stories of the
1. Every time we hear foreign tongues (including English), we
can be reminded that at one time “the whole earth was of one language, and of
one speech” (Gen. 11:1). The hundreds of
languages on the earth today stand as a witness that there existed long ago a
Yet in spite of the confusion of tongues so long ago, the gospe