Have an encounter with the Ark
Written on Mon, 18 July 2016The Ark, subject of many controversy, finally has a life-sized version exhibition located America. It's a grand museum highlighting Noah and his family aboard the Ark during the global flood, along with all the animals. The team sure has built a fantastic exhibition.
But why?
Why go through such lengths to built such a grand exhibition for just 1 story? Isn't the story of Jesus far more important than any other story mentioned in the Bible? It would seem like a great waste of resources to feature a life-size Ark when you can depict a story in pictures easily, and the message will still get across. It's a bedtime story about an event that happened too long ago.
To understand the lengths the team behind ArkEncounter go through, it is important to know that no part of the bible is less important than any other. The bible is important from the first word, to the last "Amen". To better organise the Bible, we have segmented the bible into chapters and verses, like how we segment our textbooks in school. The segmentation is not a division of importance, merely organisational purpose.
Genesis Challenged
In the recent century, the first book of the bible has been heavily intellectually challenged, and rightfully so. After all, we have been taught that all living creatures roaming Earth today can be traced to a single-cell organism. Through many millions of years of mutation and natural selection, we have all the variety of species today. This is in contrast with the idea that God created the Earth and everything in it in 6 days.
Genesis is the foundation of the bible. Remove the book of Genesis and the purpose of Jesus on the cross is lost.
Thus the team behind ArkEncounter has gone through great lengths to defend the book of Genesis. The ArkEncounter is merely 1 of the many things they've done to defend the word of God.
Frequently challenged ideas of the Ark
How do you fit 8 million species into the small Ark?
We are taught during science class that there are many species of creatures. When we look at our common household pet dog, we have chihuahua, golden retriever, rottweiler, boxer, husky, and many others. It does seem indeed that Noah would have to figure out how to keep that many dogs in the Ark, on top of so many other animals.
But the bible says that Noah has to gather every kind. Gen 6:20 It is important to know what "kind" refers to. God isn't commanding Noah to bring every different variety of dogs onboard the Ark, but instead bring 1 kind of dog. Strictly speaking, it's actually a wolf, because dogs descended from wolf species. When it comes to elephant, not the many varieties of elephant, but 1 kind of elephant. And so on and so forth.
God also didn't common Noah to bring every kind of living thing on Earth into the Ark, only living creatures. (Genesis 6:19–20; 7:2–3) That excludes plants, bacteria, and fungi. The only plants Noah brought onboard were mostly for food for his family and the living creatures he brought along. The rest are presumbly left outside. Fishes are not brought along as Noah was not commanded to build an aquarium. Logically speaking, fishes wouldn't have any problem surviving a flood. Insects are quite possibly onboard the Ark, and they probably don't need so much space. The spider just need to make its home at the corner of the room.
All in, there is probably only about 1000 kinds of animals that need to bring in. The rest of the variety of species we have today are derived from the genetic mutation and natural selection over the years after the flood.
How did Noah keep that many massive animals on the Ark?
Noah didn't have to. He can bring in only younglings of every kind of animal, which in most cases, are significantly smaller than their adult. Remember that the Ark's goal is to allow Earth to be repopulated after the flood. The choice of taking younglings would be logical, as they have better reproductive value than their aging adult.
Were there dinosaurs on the Ark?
Yes. About 1000 years have passed since creation. A few kinds of dinosaurs would likely still survive and they would be brought into the Ark. They don't exist anymore, likely due to the condition of the Earth after the flood. The climate has gone through a massive change that many animals, including the dinosuars, would have died out due to the inability to adapt. As humans, we are also likely to kill an animal that would harm us as form of protection. That would have withered the population of dangerous animals.
It's also worth noting that after the flood, humans finally have permission to eat meat. (Genesis 9:3) Therefore, animal killings for food could also wither certain animal populations to extinction.
Did Noah bring 2 animals of each kind or 7 animals of each kind?
A shallow reading of the 2 chapters would seem like there is a contradiction in the bible.
you shall bring two of every sort...male and female Genesis 6:19
You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. (Genesis 7:2-3)
Noah did both. In Chapter six, God is commanding Noah something very logical, you can't properly repopulate earth with only 1 gender. You need 2 gender, male and female.
Biologically speaking, all it takes is 1 male to impregnate many females of its kind. So when God commanded Noah to bring a male and his female, it would mean 1 male and 6 other females of every kind of clean animal. That makes better sense to quickly repopulate Earth.
Bill Nye visited Ark Encounter
It's really good to see a brilliant scientist such as Bill Nye in the Ark Encounter Exhibition. I would imagine that the conversation would be intense at some points, given that Ken and Bill have very different worldviews.
I would certainly want to visit this exhibition one day.
