The Nature of the Story
When one reads the story of the great flood in the book of Genesis, one is struck by the matter-of-fact style of the narrative. While it definitely has the larger-than-life flavor typical of legends, the reader would not suspect that he or she is dealing with the bizarre impossibilities we have detailed above. After all, the ancient Hebrews lived on a small, disc-shaped world with a dome overhead and waters above and below. There were only a few hundred known animals, and subjects such as ecology, genetics, and stratigraphy were not even imagined. The deluge was a mighty act of God, to be sure, but nothing that the ancient Hebrews would have found too extraordinary.
When, however, this same story is brought into the twentieth century and insisted upon as a literal account of historical events, a considerable change is observed. No longer a simple folk tale, it has become a surrealistic saga of fantastic improbabilities. Events which seem relatively straightforward at first glance—building a boat, gathering animals, releasing them afterwards—become a caricature of real life. The animals themselves are so unlike any others that they may as well have come from another planet; genetic Frankensteins with completely unnatural social, reproductive, and dietary behavior, they survived incredible hazards yet remained amazingly hardy and fecund.
In fact, these sixty-eight verses of Scripture, when interpreted literally, are crammed with more miracles than any comparable piece of literature anywhere on earth—miracles that are often pointlessly complicated and unedifying. Building one large ship of wood rather than many small ones, landing it on a volcano instead of a plain, preserving all five varieties of venereal disease while permitting thousands of species to become extinct—these examples plus more add up to a thoroughly senseless level of supernaturalism. If there was ever a situation in which Hume's distinction between the credibility of miracles and the credibility of miracle-tellers applies, this is it.
How can we account for this transformation? Put simply, the tale of the ark grows taller in inverse proportion to the advance of science. Two centuries ago, when biology and geology were in their infancy, the theory of a worldwide flood as a major event in the earth's physical history seemed perfectly plausible and, in fact, was advocated by various scientists.
But as geology progressed and as evolution gradually achieved a position of fundamental importance, the concepts of biblical literalists were shown to be untenable and were falsified. At the same time, the disciplines of biblical criticism, comparative religion, and archaeology uncovered the true origins of these stories and myths and showed that they were a natural part of the religious development of the Near East.
The Nature of Creation-Science
Most people, including most Christians, have been able to accommodate themselves quite satisfactorily to these changes. But there are others who cannot and who, with a flush of bravado, have clung tighter to their beliefs the more impossible they have become.
We would ask the creationists if they would consider simpler alternatives to their present ark theory. Since one ship is far too small, how about several? Since eight people are far too few, why not crew the ark with eighty? For that matter, what is wrong with having a flood of many years, long enough to accomplish everything diluviologists demand, during which righteous Noah and his family were whisked to safety aboard a fiery chariot, Elijah-style, with the animals and plants simply being re-created afterwards? These or any number of additional hypotheses would simplify the story and would require substantially fewer miracles. Even re-creating all life would expend far less divine energy than the complicated manipulations needed to preserve it.
But merely to pose such questions is to answer them, for the creationists already "know" what occurred and seek only to confirm it. As Henry Morris concludes, "But the main reason for insisting on the universal flood as a fact of history and as the primary vehicle for geological interpretation is that God's word plainly teaches it! No geologic difficulties, real or imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and necessary inference of Scripture" (1970, p. 33).
It is within this framework that creation "science" sets about its task, with the predictable result being nothing more than old-fashioned apologetics—just enough rhetoric to assuage the doubts of those who are ready to believe anyway. Most of the difficulties, from ancient shipbuilding skills through the destructiveness of the storm to the landing on an active volcano, are swept aside with one or two irrelevant comments. What little research is done, such as on the hardiness of seeds or the capacity of freight trains, is vitiated by considerations so simple they seem hard to overlook. Ad hoc hypotheses, such as the theory of kinds or the hibernation model, are cooked up to suit the occasion, reminding one of historian W. E. H. Lecky's remark about "the tendency . . . to invent, without a shadow of foundation, the most elaborate theories of explanation rather than recognize the smallest force in an objection" (1:345). By the time we read of fish adapting to the "gradual" change in salinities or of dinosaurs "somehow surviving" outside, we begin to wonder if the creationists can take themselves seriously.
When even these nonsensical suggestions fail, the apologists have no qualms about resorting to the interpretive wastebasket: miracles. Had there been any scenario for the gathering of the animals and for their care aboard the ark which had any semblance of plausibility, we can be sure that it would be highly touted as "proof" of the scientific accuracy of Genesis. As it is, a virtue is made of necessity and we are told that the supernatural is an essential element demonstrating the divine character of the catastrophe (Whitcomb, 1973, pp. 17-42).
But since miracles are by definition violations of the laws of nature and hence beyond experimental scrutiny, any theory that must employ them loses its status as science. As Mueller has recently written, "Science . . . became a unique attempt to explain the observed world in its own terms—that is, without introducing supernatural forces. In all history, science has never been forced to resort to a supernatural or miraculous hypothesis to explain a phenomenon" (p. 17). Yet for creationism, the deluge, with its miraculous rescue of the animals, is not a minor incidental but a key feature. Without it there is no creationist explanation for sedimentation, orogeny, large-scale erosion, fossils, coal and oil, glaciation—or even the phenomena of migration and hibernation. The universal flood is a part of all "scientific" creation models and of most draft creationism legislation being pushed across the nation. Yet by its proponents' own canons, it is not scientific and consequently has no more business in the science classroom than a ghost story.
The Failure of the Effort
It has by now become abundantly clear that the case for the ark utterly and completely fails. Despite the clever ingenuity of its proponents, nothing, from the trickiest problems to the tiniest details, can be salvaged without an unending resort to the supernatural. This includes so many pointless prodigies, so many inane interventions for no reason other than to save a literalistic Bible, that religion itself is cheapened in the process, not to mention the total abandonment of any semblance of science. No doubt in days to come some erstwhile arkeologists will concoct "solutions" to some of the difficulties we have raised, but no intellectually honest person can any longer pretend that the legend of Noah can possibly represent a historical occurrence.
It is also quite obvious that the creationists are not engaged in any meaningful search for the truth concerning origins. They are committed in advance to a particular creed, and the facts exist only to be explained away. Apparently they are not even sincerely curious about prehistory, since they maintain that Genesis contains all the information on this subject that we need to know. As Henry Morris writes, "If we are to know anything about the creation—when it was, what methods were used, what order of events occurred, or anything else—we must depend completely on divine revelation" (1977, p. 14).
In fact, the real raison d'etre for the entire creationist movement has nothing to do with science at all; it is evangelism pure and simple. Kofahl candidly confesses that
"supposedly scientific theories such as evolution which contradict the Bible can cause some people to doubt the Bible and thus hinder them from coming in humble faith to Jesus Christ for salvation" (p. 141).
In the specific instance of Noah's ark, its "confirmed discovery . . . would open the door for witnessing to many people who may before have been indifferent"
(John Morris, 1973, p. 109)
and "our attention should then be focused on . . . our present day Ark of Salvation, Jesus Christ"
(Ikenberry, p. 69).
Before our eyes, creationism—complete with seminars, debates, institutes, "technical" journals, and major campaigns to sabotage public education and scientific autonomy—dissolves into nothing more than a scheme to proselytize conversion to fundamentalism.
Our study of the epic of Noah has two results: we have shown beyond any reasonable question that such a voyage never took place and could not possibly have ever occurred. And we have demonstrated that those who accept this tale are using not knowledge but faith—faith of that irrational variety expressed in the old quip as "believing something that you know isn't true."
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