Читать книгу IN THE BEGINNING - Welby Thomas Cox Jr. - Страница 29

As mentioned above, both the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum are operated by Answers in Genesis, which is committed to a highly literal reading of the biblical Noah-flood episode. How realistic is this approach in light of modern scholarship and science? Let us count the difficulties:

1 According to creationists and AIG, Noah's flood occurred in approximately 2500 BCE, and all fossil layers were deposited in the flood. However, as is well known, extremely reliable radiometric measurements of various fossil layers give ages typically millions of years old and agree to remarkable precision with measurements of the same layers in other locations around the world.

2 Along this line, why are the fossils sorted so precisely in the geological record? Why did no dinosaurs make it to high ground? Why were no humans (infant, elderly, handicapped, etc.) buried at the bottom? Why were no human tools found at the bottom? "Flood geology" is utterly inconsistent with the geological record.

3 A large percentage of the world's fauna, including, for example, dodos, sloths, penguins, kangaroos, koalas, and many other species, are not native to the Middle East. How did they travel there to board the ark?

4 Island species are particularly vulnerable to predators -- when predators have been introduced to an island, they often drive indigenous species to extinction (as has happened in Australia, Hawaii, the Galapagos, and numerous other islands). Thus, such species would not have been able to survive in the Middle East, away from their naturally protected habitats.

5 The total mass of on-board animals would have been some 400,000 kg, if only yearlings were taken, or some 5 million kg, if adults were taken. Either figure is far more than could be accommodated in the ark as described in the Bible and reconstructed in Kentucky.

6 The figures in the previous item do not include food and water for a one-year sojourn, which would multiply the weight by at least 10 times if not more. Further, many animals require special diets -- silkworms require mulberry leaves, Pandas require bamboo, and snakes, for example, require fresh food. How could fresh food be provided for a full year?

7 How could large numbers of animals be protected from the many on-board predators, such as lions and tigers?

8 Creationists have suggested that an atmospheric vapor canopy provided the water for the flood. But even assuming that the global flood depth was 40 feet (far lower than Everest), the canopy would have raised the atmospheric pressure, blocked light, and heated the Earth's surface when it fell, killing any remaining life, including Noah. Other theories proposed for the source of water have similar difficulties.

9 Where are the huge layers of silt and rounded rocks that should have been produced in a major flood? Also, why is there no evidence of a massive global flood in tree ring data, or in coral reefs, or in 40,000-year-old ice cores, or in 52,000-year-old Japanese lake sediments, or on the sea floor?

10 Why is there no hint of a recent near extinction of all plant and animal species in DNA data?

11 How did animals travel back to their current habitats after the flood, with little or no interbreeding?

Many other difficulties could be listed -- see articles by Lorence Collins, Mark Isaak and Duane Jeffery, from which several of the above points were adapted.