Physical Impossibilities in Christian Mythology: Noah's Ark

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 Let's talk one of the funniest stories found in Genesis: The one about Noah's ark. 

(We will be allowing for "seven pairs of the clean and two each of the unclean" as stated in Genesis 7:2-3. We will also assume a 50/50 split between the two.)

The given dimensions for the boat are 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall. Assuming two stories, that gives us 67,500 square feet of floor space. 

Now, first let's see how many animals we can fit in there. The recommended amount of space to allow for an elephant to move around freely and not be under constant stress is one acre. That would take more than one full floor. If you squeeze two to fourteen elephants into a tiny, confined space, they will become violent. Two lions need about 450 square feet. It becomes quickly apparent that there is no way you can cram specimens of every landfaring animal into a vessel of the given dimensions. Even if you had single ten-foot by ten-foot square enclosures for every creature, you could only fit 670 out of 6400 mammal species in that boat. And that's just mammals: If 3200 of mammal species are "clean," that means almost 45,000 individual creatures, plus 6400 individual "unclean" animals. All on a boat only 450 feet long. 

Now let's talk about food. Even if Noah managed the trick of piling everyone in the boat because of God or whatever, they are in the ark for 371 days. What did everyone eat? Air and prayer? Cats and some other predators are obligate carnivores. They have to have meat or they die. What did Noah feed them?

There's another problem: All the water in the world would not flood the entire planet. There is only so much water on Earth, and even if the polar ice caps completely melted the entire world would not be under water. It just isn't possible.

Even worse, though, is that such a flood, even if it were possible, would end all life on Earth. All of it: plants, animals, sea life. The few survivors would be let loose on a dead planet to starve because all the food would be gone. 

Say somehow god breaks all the laws of physics and this whole thing works. Two of each animal is not enough to form a stable population; the inbreeding would lead to deformities and eventual extinction.

One more question that christians can't answer: How did penguins and platypuses and kangaroos and polar bears get all the way back to their native homes without anyone seeing them?

It has been pointed out that many civilizations, including the ancient Babylonians, have a flood story somewhere in their mythology. Here is my hypothesis to explain this phenomenon: Humanity originated in North Africa, with settlements near rivers for fresh water, access to fish, and plentiful game. 
Now, as we know, all rivers will flood eventually. Say there was a weather event that caused the rivers to flood to the point that it drowned all those settlements. To them, that was the whole world. Maybe a few smart people built boats to save their loved ones and at least the goats. Maybe they all got together and built one boat for everyone. So the whole story is genetic memory, passed down ever since and subject to local cultural belief systems. 

In other words, just another fairy tale.

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