Genesis 7

Welcome back! Time for a quick post or two before the football games today, so we're off to see the promised flood!

God gives Noah further instruction about the ark. He tells him now to not only bring a pair of every kind of animal, but seven pairs of all the clean animals! And I thought that ark was gonna be crowded before. It seems like God is trying to skew the animal population post-flood towards the "clean" animals. Seems a bit unnecessary, no? I mean, God is the one who created these animals, and created them unclean (animals didn't sin in Eden!). So he either wants them or he doesn't, and why doesn't he just make them multiply less? I mean, micromanaging and all, but I've certainly been led to believe that God micromanages each and every one of our lives, so surely in his omnipotence he could make the unclean animals less fruitful? Hm.

So Noah (at the ripe old age of 600) goes into the ark with his family and all the animals, and a week later, the flood came. It doesn't say why they went into the ark a week early. I mean, it can't be that much fun in there, and surely God can just start the flood as soon as they're all safe without the week lag...perhaps that was a grace period for the dinosaurs? Heh. Anyway, this isn't an issue if you just read the next few verses. Why? Because they completely restate everything, with a slight twist.

According to verse 12 and 13, the rain fell and "on the very same day" Noah and all the animals entered the ark. If they entered the ark on the same day the rains started to fall, why did verse 10 claim that the waters of the flood didn't come for seven days later? I mean, if the writers were specific enough to know that this happened when Noah was 600 years, 2 months, and 17 days old, it can't be too much of a stretch to know whether or not they waited around in the ark for a week before the flood started. Even if they didn't know, they could at least decide on one version to put here!

As far as the actual flood, that they agree lasted 40 days and 40 nights. During this time "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth" in addition to all the rain. What's that supposed to mean? Geysers? Underground reservoirs coming forth to add to all the rain? What's preventing those empty spaces from now getting filled up with rain water? Hm. Perhaps God was plugging all the holes. However it happened, we know that the waters covered "all the high mountains under the whole heaven." Wow. That's a lot of water.

Given Mt. Everest is 8,848 meters tall, and the average elevation of the continents is 840 meters. So the water made a layer about 8000 meters deep. The radius of the earth is about 6400 kilometers. Doing a quick bit of math, this means there needed to be an additional 3,449,676,768,158,891,767,700 cubic meters of water. That's 3.4E24 cubic meters, aka 3.4 quadrillion. Where did all that water come from? Where did it go? There are all sorts of creationist "scientific" theories regarding this, but not one of them sounds in any way logical. So one must resort to "Well, God did it," which leads me to wonder why God would try to make it look like a natural phenomenon. Why not just strike dead all mankind at once? It's truly bizarre.

The cheerful ending of this chapter tells how every single living thing was "blotted out from the earth." Except for the ark. All those animals must have been the righteous ones. Or else God couldn't care less about animals. I'm thinking it's the latter. Very reassuring for anyone with a pet or a conscience, no? It must have been a lot of fun on that ark, as the waters of the flood stayed around for 150 days. So, a week beforehand, 40 days of flood, and then 150 days of floating...I can only imagine how snippy everyone was getting! Not to mention that everyone and everything they had known was gone. Like I said last time, I wouldn't accept such an offer from God. I'd rather die with everyone else.

The story of the flood is often touted as a children's story, with all the animals and the ark and everything. But I think it's incredibly morbid and gruesome. Luckily, it doesn't seem like it has any basis in truth, but that's only reassuring for those of us that can turn an objective eye towards this myth. Which isn't exactly an original myth (check out this Wikipedia page to see a list), so it's truly mindboggling that one can pick a story that sounds exactly like all the rest and say it is the true one. The more likely conclusion is that none of them are true.

Until next time!