The Trouble with Story Time

July 15, 2018

 

 

 

If you ever wondered why so many people feel strongly opposed to Betsy DeVos and her education philosophy, allow me to clarify the issue. Her campaign to allow private schools to use public money – in the form of vouchers – allows them to skirt any sort of regulation or minimum curriculum for competence. There are many who feel this isn’t an issue because students from private schools generally score higher on standardized testing than kids from public schools. Of course, those statistics are greatly skewed by the fact that private schools get to cherry-pick their students, so private populations almost never have kids from broken homes, kids with learning disabilities, kids from lower-income families, kids for whom English is a second language, kids with behavioral issues or any kind of impediment to learning. In fact, many are culled from the best students from public schools. This is like holding a race between a college sprinter and Usain Bolt, only with Bolt (representing the private schools) starting at the half-way point of the race. Gee, who do you think is going to win that race?

 

As with almost every public service that the private sector claims it can do better and cheaper, they are almost always wrong on both counts. But then again, I’m only looking at building roads, providing security, doing scientific research, providing mail service, training pilots and developing technology as my data sets. There are clearly some things that the private sector does much better… like causing environmental disasters.

 

But I digress...

 

This is the other problem with allowing private schools to use public money: They are teaching the Noah’s ark story not only as actual history, but as science as well.

 

Seriously. So let’s look at the merits of Noah as history and/or science.

 

Let’s start with the most obvious. There are 8.7 million species on Earth, roughly 6.5 million are land-based, 1-2 million of which are animals. That means if you put two of every animal on Earth, you need space for between 2 and 3 million animals on a wooden boat. Even if you dump all the insects - three quarters of all animal species - that still leaves roughly half a million to three quarters of million mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians to fit in a craft roughly the size of a modern US Navy destroyer. If you’ve ever been on a destroyer (I have) you know that they aren’t exactly roomy. What is interesting is that students from Department of Physics and Astronomy at Leicester University did a thought experiment and figured out that the ark as described in the Bible could handle about 70,000 animals. But that’s only 35,000 species. What about the other half million plus? Did Noah make enough life jackets? Just the weight of half a million animals would most certainly have sent the ark right straight to the bottom of the ocean.

 

OK, so let’s say that Noah only had to take types of animals rather than species of animals. So rather than having to board with every type of gazelle (19 species) or bear (8 species) or finch (228 species), they only had to take two of each type. If you believe that, then you have to also believe that after the boat ride they had to evolve into the all the current species in less than 5000 years. That’s problematic on two levels for biblical literalists (people who believe the bible is the literal truth as both a historical document and as the scientific instrument of God): 1) you have to acknowledge that evolution is real (which many biblical literalists don’t) and 2) that it has to happen so fast that it can utterly mutate a new species within a couple of generations. I’m not sure what the population standard is for proclaiming that a creature is a completely new species (as opposed to simply a mutant), but I’m pretty sure that number has to be greater than four or five individuals. But assuming that God mysteriously intervened after the ark landed and caused significant mutations instantly, how long would it take to repopulate the planet?

 

Let’s use gazelles as our model. Two gazelles would not only have to repopulate the Earth, but also subdivide into 19 different species. The animals typically live 10-12 years, producing one or two offspring every year. Some of those are going to die from disease or predation. Females become reproductive in about 18 months, males it takes up to three years to reach maturity. So assuming the first couple started reproducing as soon as they got off the ark, and that all of subsequent offspring were female except for one male who was born three years before the alpha male died so that he could carry on the legacy in order to maximize the population potential, the number of gazelles that existed in the world by the time the first couple died would be 114, assuming they lived until the age of 12 and that all of their predators (cheetahs, lions, leopards, African hunting dogs, jackals and hyenas) were satisfied with one kill per coupling per year. That would produce some extremely skinny lions but let’s play it out anyway… Then assuming that one new male was capable of carrying on and that all subsequent offspring were female, even after two complete generations the total number of gazelles would be only 34, 529. And that’s with that one male servicing more than 13,000 females in his final year. The actual ratio of male to female in gazelles is closer to four males for every five females so the growth of population rate would be MUCH slower. And again, this assumes that ALL of their predators would be content with just one kill per coupling per year. I’m pretty sure a 500-pound lion eats more than one gazelle a year.

 

The current population of Thomson’s gazelles is roughly 550, 000. Of course, the population used to be much greater as human activity has reduced their number by 60% since 1975. So if we’re trying to do an accurate accounting, they would need to produce nearly a million and a half animals plus 18 other species (probably a total of eight to ten million animals) in under 5000 years. At our maximum efficiency rate (1 male, all others female), it would take three complete generations to populate the Earth with as many gazelles as there are. Of course, that last male would be servicing 1.58 million females in his final year of life. Do they make Viagra for gazelles? If the current male/female ratio were applied to the original generation born after leaving the ark, and the death rate due to disease, predators and other causes were as they currently are, it would take tens of thousands of years to produce the millions of gazelles that inhabit the Earth. Remember, the human population didn’t reach one million until about 10,000 BC and that’s with the genetic bottleneck at 70,000 BC (where only about a thousand humans survived). Humans were also at or near the top of the food chain, with longer lifespans and have much longer fertility spans. Gazelles enjoy no such advantages and with only two coming off the ark they would be hard-pressed to repopulate so quickly. So mathematically it’s possible only if God intervened in both keeping them out of the mouths of predators, changing the way they reproduce and keeping them free of disease and other causes of death. Other than that, no problem.  

 

OK, how about the caretaking of the animals?  The amount of food they would need for 40 days would sink several arks. That food would of course produce a commensurate amount of poop. The average elephant produces 300 pounds of poop every day. The average cow poops 15 times and produces 65 pounds of it every day. With even only 70,000 animals on a boat (again, we are forsaking the actual number of more than half a million), we are talking about multiple tons of poop having to be scooped out every day. And the only people on board doing it were Noah, his wife and six of his family. As for the food, it’s hard to imagine what they could feed animals that only feed on other animals. Manna, perhaps?

 

What about when they got off the boat? Assuming predators started eating prey as soon as it was available, why didn’t the lions just eat the gazelles as soon as they got off the boat? Forty days without a real meal would make many species a little cranky. And some species specifically and particularly prey on one and only one other species. Did they give them a pass for a few more days to give them a head start? I’m sorry, but we talking about nature here. Have you ever seen any National Geographic or Richard Attenborough documentaries? Good sportsmanship is a uniquely human characteristic when it comes to predator/prey, and even then it is quite limited.

 

Then there’s the problem of species from other continents getting there for the ride. How were the kangaroos supposed to get there? Wombats? Koalas? Have you ever seen a koala walk on the ground? They are slow, awkward and wobbly. I can’t imagine they’d be too much more graceful swimming across the Indian Ocean in order to trek across Asia to hitch a ride on a boat. They can walk at a top speed of eight kph. It is 12,434 kilometers from Australia to where Noah supposedly built his ark. So it would only take 64 days of walking non-stop 24/7 for a koala to walk the distance. Of course, they’d have to swim half of it so it would probably take a little longer. Did I mention they normally sleep 20 hours a day? So we must have two very ambitious and supernaturally energetic koalas make the trip. But that’s not the real problem. Eucalyptus leaves comprise most of their diet. There are only 15 species of those trees found naturally outside of Australia and none of them grow west of Thailand. So if they made the trip, they certainly didn’t pack light because they had to bring all of their food with them.

 

Maybe God airlifted all the foreign animals there. If you’ve ever flown with a pet, you already know how terrified they get, and that’s with walls surrounding them. But maybe he could give them a holy sedative. Of course, transporting them requires that they obey the laws of physics. Otherwise they could fall apart, suffocate from the altitude or be severely damaged by the buffeting en route. And if the trip takes a long time, God has to figure out how to feed them while they are in the air. But if He could simply transport them there, then why did Noah have to build a boat? God could have just suspended everything He wanted to save above the clouds giving them manna snacks until the flood subsided. I mean, if you’re going to suspend all reality, why not go all the way? Or why not transport them to heaven and then transport them back after the ruckus is over? In fact, why didn’t He do that in the first place – just transport Noah and his family to heaven for a few days, blow up Earth and build a new one. After all, the first Earth only took six days to make. Actually, it was the entire universe He built in six days. Earth just took one. So He just wasted 39 days with a stupid flood.

 

Some species have subsequently gone extinct in the last 5000 years due to many causes, but primarily man. Since God supposedly knows the future, why didn’t he just eliminate those before the flood (or with the flood) in order to conserve space? I would much rather have had unicorns around than dodo birds. What was He thinking?!

 

Did Noah also put aquatic species on the ark? Turtles? Otters? Seals and sea lions? They require both water and land. How did that work? Were aquatic animals exempted from the pairing down? Did Noah also have to fit two dolphins and two orcas and two blue whales on board? Did he have Scotty beam some transparent aluminum onto the ark to build enclosures for his sea-born refugees? 

 

There is no archeological evidence to support a world-wide flood within the last billion or so years. There is one guy (Robert Ballard) who claims that there is underwater evidence for a flood in the Middle East perhaps 5000 years ago, but it was localized around the Black Sea, not worldwide. So, bible literalists, are you going to believe science or not? The Ballard theory is that it wasn’t even rain: it was caused by melting ice from the Ice Age.

 

But even if it were due to the mother of all rainstorms, meteorologically speaking how would that even work? Supposedly, the flood lasted for 40 days and 40 nights but newer translations imply that the word was actually one that meant “a really long time”. Highest recorded annual rainfall in a year is 467 inches (39 feet) over a year. But that wouldn’t be enough to reach the tallest trees, some of which live on mountains which happen to be 10,000+ feet high. I imagine smart people would take the cue to move up there once the waters got reasonably high. Oh, and by they way, what did the trees do to deserve getting wiped out by a flood? There is no way grass and trees could survive a global flood because they need lots of sunlight and carbon dioxide, neither of which are found in abundance in sea water deep enough to cover the Earth. They would have all suffocated. There would be no plant life after such a flood. Did the gazelle’s suddenly develop an appetite for mud, then evolve back into grass-eaters? There we go again with evolution. So did God also rain down organic nutrition bars for everyone to eat for the next six months afterward while the grass and trees grew back?

 

Anyway, the heaviest rainfall in 24 hours was 71.8 inches, roughly six feet of rain in 1966. But that was only in one place on an island in the Indian Ocean. The clouds would have to be world-wide to do cover everything in water meaning the globe would likewise have to be covered in clouds. Clouds require moisture to form, and the oceans are the only source large enough to supply the water. Storm clouds typically reach about 50,000 feet, which means several hundred feet of ocean – perhaps even thousands - has to evaporate to cover the world with storm clouds. But if that happened, the salinity would spike, killing all the fish in the ocean. All the fresh water fish would be dead too because the evaporation needed for the clouds to form would have dried up almost all of the lakes and rivers.  

 

Also, since olive trees can’t grow in cold weather climates, the branch that the dove brought back had to come from a tree that grew at a lower elevation than Mount Davamand (18,406 feet). That’s the tallest peak in the Middle East. Which means if the flood covered the Earth, more than 10,000 feet of water had to evaporate in order to uncover the peak. The olive trees were likely several thousand feet below that. Evaporation of two miles of water (Mount Everest is 29,000+ feet) would take quite a bit longer than a few weeks. And olive trees would have to survive under water. (hint: they don’t)

 

Couldn’t God have been more precise with his punishment? He’s got lightning already, or is that only Greek, Roman and Norse gods? He can turn bad people into pillars of salt. Wouldn’t that be more efficient and more dramatic? I mean, he wouldn’t even have to kill all the people, just the most wicked. Wasn’t that the whole point of the flood? That would also send a much clearer message. Mobsters and villains would be publicly crispified/saltified while bakers, farmers and weavers would be spared. Just another thought – its hard to teach people the lesson you want them to learn when they are dead. Just saying. And did all those killed by the flood go to Hell? If some of them managed to sneak into Heaven, there again, the whole point of the flood has been lost. 

 

And there’s yet another problem with the story: decay. Killing everything would leave a lot of dead bodies which would probably become diseased. That begs another question: did only two types of each bacteria survive too? In which case, how did they break down all those bodies? It would have taken hundreds of years for them to replicate enough world-wide in order to break down the bodies of the dead from the flood. And if they only used the bacteria already inside, then disease surely would have become a problem. So God either gave everyone immunity to disease (which makes me wonder who was the wise-ass who blew that deal for the rest of us) or He started making tougher diseases. Either way, the moral mathematics doesn’t quite add up.

 

OK, so maybe there are other possibilities that might explain the story. What if Noah had a shrink ray? Or a freeze ray so he could just stack the animals like boxes for 40 days? Or maybe he had embryos or babies of every species that he and his family nursed to adulthood. Of course, he destroyed the tech afterward because what possible application could there be for a shrink ray or a freeze ray or incubating equipment? Pshh.

 

And only now are we getting to the part that is most absurd. That’s the part where these private schools are teaching that Noah had baby dinosaurs on board. Take a moment. And now understand that they are also including the Loch Ness monster in that group, which they acknowledge was probably a plesiosaur. Just so we’re clear, evidence of dinosaurs wasn’t discovered until the 19th century. Yet Noah had them on board and no one in the Bible thought it was noteworthy that there should be 20-foot tall meat-eaters roaming about the Earth. Even in the modern age we live in, lions, hippos and crocodiles kill hundreds of people every year. Gustav, a giant Nile crocodile that is estimated to weigh nearly a ton, is said to have killed more than 300 people. Crocodiles and lions are mentioned in the Bible, but no mention of Tyrannosaurus Rex because presumably the greatest meat-eating land predator in the history of Earth gave man a pass on its diet. And not only did Noah have them on board but he had the ones – like the plesiosaur - that could only live in the water and ate meat. He had those, but not krill-eating whales. And again, he carried the ones that went extinct. If God is doing the directing of this cruise, he has to be the most incompetent divine being in the history of the universe. He’s evidently commanded Noah to pack large animals that are going to be extinct anyway - that also only eat other animals – on a boat that can only carry about 10% of the varieties of animals on Earth.  

 

One last flourish on the topic: The flood happens pretty early in the bible so it’s possible that Noah remembered everything important that had happened before. And maybe that’s why there’s not much story about what happened after Cain slew Abel although they did mention Adam and Eve had another son, Seth, but no mention of any daughters. Not sure how that carried on. There’s also a mention of Nephalim, a race of giants or fallen angels, depending on the translation that were the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men… where the daughters came from, there is no indication. Regardless, there has never been a fossil finding of men who were so large they made others look like grasshoppers (not my words: the Bible’s - Numbers, Chapter 13). Anyways, Noah would have had to either memorize all this and write it down after the trip, or carry the records of everything that had happened before his was born on board. Otherwise, it would have been destroyed by the flood. That includes both creation myths. Both, you may ask? Oh yes. In one, Elohim (God) creates Earth and the universe in six days, with the creation of Adam and Eve on the sixth. In the other story, God has a new name (Yahweh) and he creates Adam and Eve (on the fourth day), then places them on Earth in the Garden of Eden. Throughout the first five books the stories often come with two versions. Moses and the commandments, for example. In one, his brother Aaron is responsible for the creation of the golden calf, in the other he’s just a helpless onlooker. But I digress…

 

The point is that taking anything about the ark story as history or as scientific is not only wrong-headed, but dangerous. If people start believing such utter nonsense as factual, they might also be subject to believing the lies and mis-directions of a feckless conman, and mistakenly vote him into a position of power. Oh wait…    

 

I am not saying people shouldn’t believe in religion. There is much value in a spiritual life. What I am saying, however, is that people should use what is known as a tool to analyze the stories of religion and parse which ones are allegory and which ones are an attempt by ancient people to explain things they didn’t understand. Some of these, maybe even a lot of these, we do understand now. Anyone who tries to make these stories something more than that undermines the wisdom contained within. Don’t believe me? Ok. If I were to say to you that a truly enlightened person treats others the way they themselves would like to be treated, you might say, hey, that sounds pretty good. That’s pretty profound. But if I follow it up by saying that I command an army of flying monkeys that take refuge inside my butt, then you will probably dismiss the first thing I said, seeing as it came from someone who is clearly insane. Maybe I am. But it hasn’t been proven. These other things… have been.