Noah's ark & microscopic life.?

Question

How did Noah know about millions of species of unicellular animals? How did he collect them? How did he feed them? How did he maintain an appropriate environment? How did he know they were still alive when the flood subsided?

Answer 1

Utnapishtim sneezed in his face! (Epic of Gilgamesh)

I think there is one older than Gilgamesh called the Atrahasis. Noah's ark is NOT original.

Answer 2

Magic.

Answer 3

First, if we are to believe that God lead the animals to the ark, we might conclude that He was in control and anything was possible. Second, the bible says that land and air animals were brought it. Microscopic organisms weren't included.

Why?

First, many live just fun under water and didn't need to be saved aside. Second, many others would have lived in the animals themselves.

Additionally, Noah was to bring representatives of each "kind" of animal, not every breed. This is where the true parts of evolution come into play. For example, he didn't need to bring foxes, wolves, hyenas, and every breed of dog. These all evolved from each other. It is the claims of evolution across "kinds" that is refuted by creationists.

www.answersingenesis.org is a great place to start. If we believe that God really did flood the whole world and command animals onto an ark He had Noah build, it isn't much of a stretch to believe that God had provisions for everything along the way.

Answer 4

Unicellular animals don't have lungs so they can live in the sea or air. Those that needed to live in fresh water died. But they were no doubt judged evil at the time as they had evolved rather than being zapped into existence. Besides, he didn't have a microscope he couldn't check they were there or not. So apart from a few fungal/bacterial infections Noah didn't take have a direct role in saving microorganisms from the flood.

Edit: I don't think Noah was around for interviews when the text was written. I forgive you for your ignorance Robert D I just hope that God does.

Dear trepsis.

God would not have given Noah a microscope, that's not his style. (He could have given Noah a floating continent, an underwater lair or even a modern cuise liner to escape the deluge in relative comfort but these would have been far too showy.) Instead he would more likley have provided Noah with the requisite eysight to view single celled organisms or X-ray vision to solve mysteries. But because there is no mention of these skills in in the Bible it's unlikley he provided them to Noah, Samson, Eve, Jacob, any of the Marys or anyone else. I hear on very good authority that the paramecia (amongst other vile ones) escaped God's wrath and so maintain a guilty silence. Oh and try and get out and find some friends higher up the food chain, preferably ones who will make it into Heaven.

Answer 5

Why believe a book that was written by human sacrificing primitives who believe that every animal species in the world was within walking distance of Noah's house?

Seriously. lol

Answer 6

In the original Hebrew, the word for ‘beast’ and ‘cattle’ in these passages is the same: behemah, and it refers to land vertebrate animals in general. The word for ‘creeping things’ is remes, which has a number of different meanings in Scripture, but here it probably refers to reptiles.

Noah did not need to take sea creatures because they would not necessarily be threatened with extinction by a flood. However, turbulent water would cause massive carnage, as seen in the fossil record, and many oceanic species probably did become extinct because of the Flood.

Noah did not need to take plants either—many could have survived as seeds, and others could have survived on floating mats of vegetation. Many insects and other invertebrates were small enough to have survived on these mats as well. The Flood wiped out all land animals which breathed through nostrils except those on the Ark (Genesis 7:22). Insects do not breathe through nostrils but through tiny tubes in their exterior skeleton.

God created a number of different types of animals with much capacity for variation within limits.

For example, horses, zebras and donkeys are probably descended from an equine (horse-like) kind. Dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals are probably from a canine (dog-like) kind. All different types of domestic cattle (which are clean animals) are descended from the Aurochs, so there were probably at most seven (or fourteen) domestic cattle aboard. The Aurochs itself may have been descended from a cattle kind including bisons and water buffaloes. We know that tigers and lions can produce hybrids called tigons and ligers, so it is likely that they are descended from the same original kind. (This is not evolution but variations within kinds.)

With extinct genera, there is a tendency among some paleontologists to give each of their new finds a new genus name. But this is arbitrary, so the number of extinct genera is probably highly overstated. Consider the sauropods, which were the largest dinosaurs—the group of huge plant-eaters like Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, etc. There are 87 sauropod genera commonly cited, but only 12 are ‘firmly established’ and another 12 are considered ‘fairly well established’.

The Bible does not say that the animals had to be fully grown. The largest animals were probably represented by ‘teenage’ or even younger specimens.

How did disease germs survive the flood? This is a leading question—it presumes that germs were as specialized and infectious as they are now, so all the Ark’s inhabitants must have been infected with every disease on earth. But germs were probably more robust in the past, and have only fairly recently lost the ability to survive in different hosts or independently of a host. In fact, even now many germs can survive in insect vectors or corpses, or in the dried or frozen state, or be carried by a host without causing disease.

The Ark measured 300x50x30 cubits (Genesis 6:15), which is about 140x23x13.5 metres or 459x75x44 feet, so its volume was 43,500 m3 (cubic metres) or 1.54 million cubic feet. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent volume of 522 standard American railroad stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep.

If the animals were kept in cages with an average size of 50x50x30 centimetres (20x20x12 inches), that is 75,000 cm3 (cubic centimetres) or 4800 cubic inches, the 16,000 animals would only occupy 1200 m3 (42,000 cubic feet) or 14.4 stock cars. Even if a million insect species had to be on board, it would not be a problem, because they require little space. If each pair was kept in cages of 10 cm (four inches) per side, or 1000 cm3, all the insect species would occupy a total volume of only 1000 m3, or another 12 cars. This would leave room for five trains of 99 cars each for food, Noah’s family and ‘range’ for the animals.

  

Answer 7

He wasn't too worried about the microscopic life when he was up to his neck in poo.

Answer 8

Fundies, please stop trying to justify Noah's Ark. It's cringe-worthy.

On second thoughts, keep up the good work. I love a good laugh.

Answer 9

http://godisimaginary.com/i45.htm

he did not, it is a myth and gruesome at that

Answer 10

The bible says that God brought the animals to Noah, not that Noah had to go and round up the animals himself.

Also, unicellular creatures are not animals, both in a biblical sense and a taxonomy definition. All animals are multicellular.

Answer 11

Very good question.  Which of the animals was carrying the AIDS virus?   Or was it Noah himself?

I say it was the purple dinosaurs.

Answer 12

he didnt because its just a nice bedtime story..and people should never have based their lives on a storybook

added: well said Isobel

Answer 13

Noah did NOT collect any critter, God brought them to Noah. Please folks do some research.. Unicellular animals do NOT have lungs or gills so they can live in the sea or air.

God did not take EVERY animal. He only needed one of each SPECIES.. Remember evolution, They evolved.. There was no need to take the sea critters. No need to the flying critters. He took the best, youngest, healthiest critters. Thus finding a spot for goat sized elephants and giraffes and such, wasn`t that hard.

Here are a couple of safe sites that really will help you to understand. Even with your vast knowledge..

Peace and Blessings from, Texas <><

Answer 14

When the ark landed and the family disembarked Noah's wife expressed concern about it cluttering up the landscape for generations.

"Don't worry" said Noah,"I left two termites on board"

Answer 15

Obviously, the magical sky-man fixed everything. Dur.

Answer 16

Nice question. Trouble is there are too many unanswerable questions for Noah.

I like the Koala question: How did those little Koalas find their way back to Australia from Mount Ararat when there never have been any Eucalyptus trees any where near there. And how long did it take those poor little starving critters?

Not to mention Polar bears, Penguins, Pangolins, Sloths and a million other species whose distributions make no sense in the light of such a flood.

Edit: Derke! The people who wrote it didn't know the details? But they didn't bother to ask or question this rubbish? And you believe what they wrote nonetheless? Pah.

God is always found to be lacking in the details. The more details science uncovers, the fewer the places for god to hide.