The story just fails to add up when put under scrutiny.
Of the many ways that the story has been tested for authenticity, the one in which it clearly fails to make the test applies specifically to the number of animals that can fit into a vessel the size of the ark in question. You see, it just isn't possible to load as many animals as there are species of them, multiplied by two, into an ark the size Noah built, and still leave room for the rest that the animals require to survive on for a whole year, such as food. Simply stated, the ark was too small to accommodate 2 of all the animal species that existed on earth at the time, period.
According to National Geographic's atlas, and Wikipedia, researchers have been able to document around 1.2 - 1.5 million animal species in existence. However, the total number of species that are in existence is estimated to be somewhere from 7 to 8.7 million.
Given the Bible insists on a creation myth in which creatures great and small have a single creation period, if we take the a-priori assumption that God hasn't surreptitiously been engaging in the creation of new species now and then, we can assume that the documented number of species today is the same as it was in Noah's time, minus extinctions. In fact, knowing that species do go extinct, we can confidently say there were more species of animal at the time Noah lived than there are now.
To see whether all these animals fit into the ark that Noah built, we have to know it's exact dimensions. The Bible actually provides the measurements of the ark and, fortunately, thanks to decades of archaeological digs, scholars have been able to determine the approximate size of most of the measurements given in the Bible, such as cubits, according to contemporary standards.
For example, in Genesis 6:14-15, God tells Noah to build the ark 300 cubits long, 30 cubits high and 50 cubits wide. By comparing various ancient artifacts, a cubit has been found to be equal to about 18 inches, according to National Geographic's atlas, so let's do the math:
- 300 X 18 = 5,400 inches, which amounts to 450 feet or a little more than 137 meters in length
- 30 X 18 = 540 inches, or 37.5 feet or just under 11.5 meters in height
- 50 X 18 = 900 inches, or 75 feet or slightly less than 23 meters
So, by converting biblical measurements, we end up with an ark that's 540 feet long (137 meters), 37.5 feet high (11.5 meters) and 75 feet wide (23 meters).
Noah placed within his ark 2 of each species on earth, apparently with the help of God given the task is beyond what a human can do if we consider the modes of transportation those days and the regions of the earth accessible to a man with Noah's means ... and if we multiply the estimate of the total number of species above by 2, we find that he would have had to load his ark with a minimum of 16 million creatures to save them all.
If we overlook the impossible procedure of collecting so many animals in one place from every region on this globe, or attracting them to hike up to the so called "middle east", which entails going to the four corners of the globe to spread the message, but focus instead on the space available in the ark, we quickly find that 16 million animals couldn't possibly have fit into a space that's a mere 123 by 23 by 11.5 meters with room left over for food and other necessities, even if it had different floors to it. That's too much flesh and bone to fit into this space even if it was just insects that got saved.
Let's take out our calculators to show why this is so.
At an average of a centimeter each (a rough estimate of the total length of the average insect), 16 million insects would stretch for a good 160 kilometers. It takes some elementary mathematics to see that the volume of so many insects wouldn't fit into an ark the dimensions of Noah's.
One way of doing this elementary math would be to calculate the total volume of the insects and see if this fits into the volume of the ark.
Volume is easiest to calculate by multiplying length, width and height, and if the average sized insect was roughly 1 cm long, 0.5 cm wide and high (which is much smaller than the average size of a fully grown cockroach), the total would have a volume of 40000 meters squared, which is just above the volume of the ark itself at 32533.5 meters squared.
These calculations are done using only estimated insect average sizes. Remember here that we are excluding larger animals that would push the average volume of flesh and bone much higher.
This conclusion doesn't change if the number of creatures saved is reduced to the documented species only, which would mean Noah would have had to load 2.4 million animals into the ark as opposed to 16 million. The mathematics of it says it also doesn't work. They wouldn't fit in there and leave space for their food as well.
Also, given the food chain that exists today is the same that existed at the time, Noah would have had to take care that some pairs he brought on board were not consumed into extinction on the ark, which would have meant keeping them in isolation from predators while using some of their kind to prevent the animals that feed on them from going extinct themselves from starvation.
It would take a year before they got back on land to forage for themselves, remember? At which point all animal life would be long gone.
Which is well and fine for plant eaters aka herbivores, because plants survive a deluge. But this requires that animals that eat other animals to stay alive (aka carnivores) have a starter pack of feed that sustains them until their food source is replenished enough to survive their predatory instincts. It wouldn't make sense to save animals just to have them go extinct at the paws and canines of starving predators.
It's not a lot of stored food that's needed given there are only 2 boa constrictors, 2 mambas, 2 lions, 2 hyenas, 2 alligators, 2 crocodiles, 2 leopards, 2 cheetahs, 2 wolves, 2 dogs of each dog species, 2 mountain cats, 2 tigers, and so on and so forth. But that stored food is crucial to their survival given all the meat out there is rotten or locked up in pairs of two by two.
I suppose God provides them with a kind of manna from heaven as they waited for the first rat colonies to populate the earth.
Good thing fish didn't need to be saved because there are species of whale that grow larger than the ark. But even with land animals alone did you know there are easily around 5 species of elephant, and tens, if not hundreds of snake species?
Clearly, the people who wrote this particular biblical story with the intention of selling it for the history of the world had never been to the real wild, such as the Amazon forest in South America, or the Ituri forest in Africa, to document the species that live on earth, otherwise they would have written a different story, maybe changed the dimensions of the ship from a mere 100 meters to a kilometer, two, or even ten. In terms of animals, the writers were probably only acquainted with camels, dogs and cats, small snakes, chickens and ducks, goats and sheep, maybe gazelles and elephants, and the rest of the creapy crawlies that infested their middle eastern desert abodes, not the actual world and its actual real-life animal life beyond those confines.
We can be sure from their successes to date that their target audience was non the wiser, and remains the same today, but a new, more informed world has emerged to judge the truth in their texts, and place the Bible "for good" in the fiction category where it truly belongs.
All else considered, only the ignorant and gullible can believe stories in the Bible to be factual, and I guess this is what its deceitful, albeit shallow minded writers banked on.
Ignorance and gullibility.
