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A fun project I did a while back for my kids. The challenge was to disprove something in the bible but in an original way. Well the kids decided Noah's ark as the topic and since most of the arguments I've heard have always been about Noahs age or the number of animals on the ark I decided to disprove the flood itself using just math. A few google searches got me the starting statistics and I went from there.

So I guess my question is are there any mathematicians that can double check my work? Personally I thought I did pretty good for being ten years out of high school and no college.

JohnnyMiller 6 Mar 14
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That's pretty amazing. Hope you get more responses on this one.

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Earth was younger back then.... Maybe it grew a bit lol... That would vacate all the math haha.... I'm just joking... Good job ?

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What is this supposed to disprove exactly? I just see a bunch of math.

It was supposed to prove that there is not enough water on the planet for a global flood of the magnitude described in the bible. No flood, no need for an ark.

@JohnnyMiller I get where you’re coming from, but I think a god would have no trouble making enough water to do so.

I mean, the Bible says Jesus turned water into wine. That’s not possible. No math needed.

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[nationalgeographic.com]

and

[time.com]

in no way am i attempting to detract from the idea or the project you posted. i enjoyed that immensely. thank you.

what i am wondering from the above links is... there are stories in the bible that seem to reflect actual events (disasters) that happened. i am wondering out loud if the stories aren't a collective memory from peoples prior to the invention of written language? i stole this idea from something i saw describing a flood story from an early Nile people, don't remember where i saw it though. i cannot remember if this was exactly their point, but it made me think. and not that the above link example of the paring of england by water was within the time frame that people would remember or describe, just that maybe there was cataclysmic flooding that became legend through oral history?

also, not that your math is wrong but the floods above, to the people of the time, may have seemed to cover the known world, so their legend of the flood 'covered the world' (in other words, global to them)? i guess what i am saying is let them have their flood? i am just not giving them noah and the boat.

this post is likely hair-brained. i am not qualified to pontificate on flooding, language, oral history, or the bible. i am going with it is less hair-brained than that boat, and two of each animal alive, and enough provisions for 40 days, and enough room to separate the lions from the deer...

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Just for fun.

Radius of the earth 6,378 kilometers
Height of my Everest 8.845 kilometers
Equation for volume by radius V=4/3πr^3

Earth volume: 4/3π6,378^3=
1,086,781,292,542.889

Earth volume with flood: 4/3π(6,378+8.845)^3=
1,091,309,005,339.637

Difference between the volumes:
1,091,309,005,339.637 - 1,086,781,292,542.889 =

4,527,712,796.75 km^3 (roughly)

It would be pretty difficult to estimate the volume of the ocean and the land mass above the sea level so:

[quora.com]

Volume of land mass above the ocean 125,109,600 cubic km

Subtract this from previous calculation 4,527,712,796.75-125,109,600 =
4,402,603,196.75

[livescience.com]

Current ocean volume: 1.332 billion cubic kilometers

4,402,603,196.75 > 1.332 billion

So yeah. That was fun, but ultimately pointless. I think it can be reasoned fairly easily, that there is only enough water in the ocean to fill the earth to just around... sea level.

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The Bible believers claim that there was a veil (or, very thick cloud cover) which god pierced to flood the earth. This also exposed humanity to the radiation of the sun and opened a way for the "excess" water to evaporate, creating our current atmosphere. This is their apologetics for Noah's age and the "only so much water on Earth" arguments.

Part of me is very curious about that Amusement Park in the Bible Belt that re-creates the entire ark and was created by a creationist to 'educate' (fleece) the public. [arkencounter.com] That would be a great place to be a skeptic with the full secular strength of facts.

@mojo5501 it's an hour from my house. It is hilarious.

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It would have to rain 15 feet per hour to accomplish what is in the bible about Noah's Ark. But there is also an earlier version of Noah with a man called Gilgamesh that was saved during a Great Flood.

It was not Gilgamesh who was saved in a flood though. The flood story was told to him by a man called Utnapishtim, who was the "Noah" figure in the tale.
But still, yup, the "epic of Gilgamesh was written a long time before the Noah one.
And there were other "flood tales" written even before that.

@TristanNuvo Thanks for correcting me.

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