The Ark Wouldn’t Float: and Other Famous Arguments of Ignorance

Online the other day, an evolutionist poster went into great detail describing large wooden ships of recent history. In the last couple of centuries, wooden ships have been built that measure 300-400’ – sometimes longer. It’s been our experience, however, that wooden ships this large leak terribly and require constant pumping to stay afloat.

One example of such a ship is the Wyoming: a six-masted schooner 450’ long. It was built in 1909 of 6” thick, pine planks and secured with 90 iron cross-bracings. Even so, it had to be pumped regularly to remove water and eventually foundered in heavy seas in 1924. All souls were lost.

The poster’s point was this: if modern ship builders are not able to build large, water-tight wooden ships, then how could Noah have built the Ark? The Ark was the approximate size of the Wyoming but Noah only had a crew of 8 people so could not have constantly manned pumps to remove water. How could any ancient, wooden ship the size of the Ark remain afloat 1 year? This argument is repeated over and over by critics of the Bible. It is certainly among the most often used criticisms of Genesis.

At first hearing, this sounds like a reasonably objection to the Flood account. But we should not overlook the fact that this is a textbook example of an argument from ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam). An argument from ignorance is a fallacious argument that basically states if we don’t know how something was done, then it can’t be – or couldn’t have been – done. In the case of the Ark, the poster is saying, “We can’t build a water-tight, wooden ship of this size so therefore the Ark is impossible.” The flaw is this argument is that it isn’t evidence that the Ark truly couldn’t be built – it’s only evidence that the poster didn’t know how such a boat could be built. It’s evidence of our lack of imagination or understanding. It’s simply an argument of our ignorance.

Often times, these types of arguments aren’t recognized for what they truly are. The person who makes the claim sincerely believes he has exhausted every possible scenario and found there is no possible solution. But a good way to see how ridiculous these types of arguments are, we need only look at some examples from the past:

Since the time Icarus supposedly built wings and escaped Crete, men have longed to fly. Leonardo da Vinci famously sought to build a flying machine and left us many drawings detailing his efforts. But even 400 years later, men still had not figured out how to fly. In 1895, Lord Kelvin, the President of the Royal Society of England, confidently announced, “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” Of course, a few short years later, two brothers who owned a bicycle shop in Ohio flew the first airplane at Kitty Hawk, NC.

Arguments about the Ark are of a similar fashion. We have not devised a practical way to make a 450’ long wooden-boat water-tight. But that alone is simply not evidence it can’t be done. No one who uses this argument can tell you anything about how the Ark was constructed. They cannot, for example, say how the wood was joined. They cannot say how long the planks were. They cannot say how thick the hull was. Though critics don’t know any of these things, they still feel they are able to judge the sea worthiness of the Ark. They judge it according to the only thing they do know – that it would be difficult for us to build one now.

Here are some other classic examples of arguments from ignorance:

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us," Western Union internal memo, 1876

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility," Lee DeForest, inventor.

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will," Albert Einstein, 1932.

"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives," Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.

“A wooden ship the size of the Ark cannot be built, manned, and sailed by only 8 people.” The typical claim of a modern skeptic of Genesis.

All of these statements were made from ignorance. In retrospect, most of them were shown to be absurd. The one about the Ark persists only because something like the Ark (a 450’ long wooden barge manned with a crew of only eight people) simply hasn’t been built yet. Perhaps one never will. But not knowing how it was done is not evidence that it can’t be done. It’s not even close.

How Long Were the Days in Genesis?

There are some Christians out there who believe evolution to be true yet also claim to believe the Bible. Since the Genesis account of creation contradicts evolutionary theories concerning origins, there are various methods these people use to “reconcile” the two. There are various ways people do this but one way is to claim that the “days” of the creation week weren’t ordinary days but represented long periods of time. Each day was an epoch or era in which God performed a different creative act.

To bolster their claim, they point out the undeniable fact that the word “day” can mean different things. It does not necessarily mean “24-hours.” To them, it could mean millions or billions of years. Well, it’s true that the word can mean different things, but then again, it can also mean 24-hours. So even though it could mean something other than 24-hours, that alone is not evidence that is does mean something other than 24-hours. As with any word, context should determine its meaning.

Look at the following sentence:

“Back in my grandfather’s day, people would play the banjo every day, but only during the day.”

The word “day” appears in that sentence 3 times – each time with a different meaning. Do you have any trouble determining what each occurrence means? Most second graders can figure it out. I did a quick search on Biblegateway.com and saw the word day appears in the KJV 2,263 times. Why is it that ordinary people can figure out the meaning of the word everywhere else in the Bible except Genesis?!

An ordinary reading of Genesis 1 immediately suggests that the word day means an ordinary, 24-hour day. If we pause to carefully consider if this is correct, we can find several reasons to believe the ordinary reading is the correct one.

First, I would direct you to Exodus 20:9-11:

“Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work,… For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

Here, when the LORD gave the Commandments, He gave us a formula to interpret the creation days. We are to work for six days and not work on the rest on the seventh in the same way that God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. This passage can only make sense if the days are understood to mean ordinary, 24-hour days. If the day meant “millions or billions of years,” then what are we to do? Work 6,000,000 years then rest for 1,000,000 years? The early readers would have obviously understood these to be ordinary days and we should do the same.

Furthermore, remember that Adam was created on the 6^th day. So if the 7^th day of the creation were millions or billions of years long, then Adam should have been millions or billions of years old. Yet the Genesis 5:5 says that he only lived 930 years.

A second clue that suggests these are ordinary days is because each occurrence of the word “day” in Genesis 1 is modified with the term “evening and morning.” Outside of Genesis 1, “evening and morning” appear with the word “day” three times (see list here). In all three instances, the word can only mean an ordinary day. For example, there is 1 Samuel 17:16, “And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.” How else could this verse possibly be interpreted except to mean 40, ordinary, 24-hour days?

Consider also the reverse: if the days were meant to represent long periods of time, then what would be meant by the term “evening and morning”? Would it be millions of years of darkness followed by millions of years of daylight? That could hardly be true. The presence of the term seems to demand the word “day” to mean an ordinary day to the exclusion of all other possible meanings.

Still a third clue is that the word “day” is also modified by an ordinal number (i.e. first day, second day, etc). This construction occurs many times in the Bible. In the example from 1 Samuel 17:16, Goliath presented himself for “forty days.” From Genesis alone there are many examples of this construction: Genesis 7:17 explains that the Flood was upon the earth for “forty days.” Genesis 7:24 says, “the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.” In Genesis 17:12, God commanded that Jewish boys be circumcised when they are “eight days” old. Genesis 22:4, Abraham lifted his eyes on the “third day” and saw the place where he was to sacrifice Isaac. In fact, in every occurrence, when the word day is modified with a number, it means an ordinary day.

We have seen that when “day” is modified with “evening and morning” it means an ordinary day. We have seen that when “day” is modified with a number it means an ordinary day. In Genesis 1 the word “day” is modified with BOTH the term “evening and morning” AND a number. What else then can it mean but an ordinary day?

Still, well meaning people will point to verses like 2 Peter 3:8 where Peter said, “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years” and then use that as a type of formula (i.e. One “Lord’s day” equals 1,000 years). There are a few problems with this. First, if it were meant to be a straight conversion, then the creation week would still only be 7,000 years long - not millions or billions of years. Of course, there is the same issue of Adam’s age as described above. 2 Peter 3:8 merely means that God is outside of time. The same verse continues "a thousand years as one day". There is also Psalms 90:4 which says a thousand years are like a “watch in the night” in His sight. Verses such as this are merely to demonstrate the timelessness of God. To Him, 1,000 years, a day, an hour, all have no meaning.

Since the days of Genesis 1 are so obviously ordinary days, one must wonder why people seek to find a different meaning. I believe the reason is obvious: they have trusted the finite knowledge of fallible men over the infallible Word of the infinite God. They believe scientists have “proven” the earth is much older than the Bible suggests so they project their old age beliefs onto their understanding of the Bible.

I say instead we should use the clear meaning of the Bible to help us understand His creation. The Bible says that the heavens, earth, and everything in them was made in six days. We need not look for a different meaning to what is perfectly clear.

The Obvious Answer

I was online the other day and someone said the oddest thing: He asked why people thought the joke, “Why did the chicken cross the road?,” was funny. He said it wasn’t funny to him when he heard it at the age of four and he still doesn’t think it’s funny now. He just didn’t get it.

To me it seems obvious. What makes it funny is that people search for some deep meaning and overlook the obvious one. It’s like the similar joke: Q. Why do firemen wear red suspenders? A. To keep their pants up. My daughter asked me a modern version but with the same theme: Q. What did the farmer say when he lost his tractor? A. Where’s my tractor? It's just funny when people can't answer such an obvious question.

It occurred to me that this is often the case for evolutionists. They overlook an obvious answer in search for a natural (yet far more unlikely) explanation. Darwin, for example, said in his book:

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

Question: how was something as complex as the eye created? One obvious theory is that God created it. Ah, but Darwin didn’t get it. He went on to say:

“Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.”

Wow. That’s the long way around a simple question. I wonder how he might have answered the chicken crossing the road question.

Consider also these quotes:

Aldous Huxley said, “Organisms are built as if purposefully designed, and work as if in purposeful pursuit of a conscious aim. But the truth lies in those two words 'as if.' As the genius of Darwin showed, the purpose is only an apparent one.”

Might I paraphrase? “Things really look like they’ve been designed but I know they aren’t!”

But perhaps the most brazen denier is Francis Crick (the co-discoverer of the DNA molecule). In his book, What Mad Pursuit, Crick wrote, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved.”

That’s a hoot. Biologists see design everywhere. The evidence for design is so overwhelming that Crick advises they should constantly remind themselves that things are evolved – not designed!

Question: Why does everything appear designed?
Answer: Because it was designed!

Watching these evolutionists groping around for answers while overlooking the most obvious one always makes me chuckle. It’s the funniest thing since, “Why did the chicken cross the road?”!

Maybe Birds Aren’t Dinos After All!

This is big. I mean, this is huge! As far as I’m concerned this is the story of the year – maybe even of the decade. Physorg.com reports, “Discovery raises new doubts about dinosaur-bird links.” From the article: “Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight - and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.”

The transition of dino-to-bird has been a basic tenet of evolutionary dogma for decades. As an example of an evolutionary series, I’d say the dino-to-bird series is way ahead of the horse or whale series and is second only to ape-to-man evolution. In most evolutionists’ minds, bird from dinosaur evolution is settled. National Geographic once reported that we can say that birds are dinosaurs with as much confidence as we say humans are mammals. Of course, they later had to retract that statement with much red-facedness but we won’t go there now.

The confidence of evolutionists in the dino-to-bird theory can be seen in the way they present their theories to the public. Does anyone remember the velociraptors from the movie, Jurassic Park? In that movie, velociraptors were very dino-like. Lately, however, artistic renderings of velociraptors make them appear much more bird-like. It seems like dino-to-bird evolution truly has occurred in the minds of artists. This is what they believe and they’ve been selling it to the public as a done deal.

This new research could change all that. Again from the article, “The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say.”

What insightful new facts did the OSU researchers uncover that led them to this about face? Here’s a quote from the article:

"For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from," Ruben said. "That's a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories.

Duh!! You think? I’m not a scientist or anything but even I could have told that you can’t have descendants older than their ancestors. And evolutionists are just now figuring it out? That should have been their first clue! But as they say, “love is blind” and if you have a theory you love, you can’t let facts get in the way!

Even though the reverse daughter/parent relationship should have sunk the whole dino-to-bird idea, what really did it for the OSU researchers involved the avian respiratory system and the characteristics of the femur (thigh) bone. According to the article, warm-blooded birds use about 20 times more oxygen than cold-blooded reptiles (I guess they’re assuming dinos are cold-blooded reptiles). By the way, this has been brought up many times before by creationists: how likely it is that animals having perhaps the lowest metabolic rate (reptiles) would directly evolve into animals having perhaps the highest metabolic rate (birds)? Because of their complex respiratory system, birds have a fixed femur that keeps their air-sac lung from collapsing as it breathes. Dinosaurs, as well as every other walking land animal, lack this critical feature and, instead, have a moving femur. A moving femur in dinos means they could not have had a respiratory system like birds.

What really made me laugh as I read the article are these two candid quotes:

"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology….

"This is fundamental to bird physiology," said Devon Quick, an OSU instructor of zoology who completed this work as part of her doctoral studies. "It's really strange that no one realized this before.

No, it’s not really strange or amazing. When you’re committed to a theory, you project your theory onto the evidence. The theory becomes a paradigm through which all new data is viewed. If you go looking for evolution, you will see evolution where there is none. It’s like the saying, “when you’re a hammer, everything else looks like a nail.”

Now don’t get me wrong. The scientists at OSU aren’t becoming creationists. They’re not rejecting evolution over this flap – not even close. I’m sure they’re still 100% committed to evolution. I consider this to be another example of the Constanza Tactic which I’ve blogged about in the past. Evolutionists will push some highly touted evidence as “proof” of their theory, they will convince the public evolution is true, later they will quietly discard the evidence when they discover they were all wrong about it, and the public will continue believing in evolution.

Sometimes I wonder how many sub theories of evolution must be proven wrong before people begin to suspect the overall theory might not be true. Indeed, it doesn’t matter at all to many people that their “cherished theories” were wrong because they just come up with a new theory to explain the new evidence. If the new theory is later shown to be wrong as well, then it will be on to the next theory. But THE theory - the theory of evolution - can never be wrong.

Ignorance on Display at the Creation Museum

There was ignorance on display at the Creation Museum. No, I’m not talking about my good friends at Answers in Genesis. I’m talking about a group that visited there recently. There was a nerd… I mean “paleontologist”… convention held at the University of Cincinnati and a group of 80 of the nerds… I mean paleontologists… decided to take a fieldtrip and tour the museum. OK, I know I should be nicer because, after all, the museum’s tour guide greeted the group graciously saying, “Praise God, we are excited to have you here.”

So, what was their impression of the museum? The Courier Journal characterized their responses this way, “some were skeptical, some were amused, some were offended.” That’s typical. Professional evolutionists like these are militant about their beliefs. They don’t just disagree with creationists – they loathe them! Weren’t any of them curious? Weren’t any of them surprised? Didn’t any of them learn anything? No, I guess that’s expecting too much.

But even though their snobby attitudes are typical, I continued to be annoyed by them. Here are a few of their quotes for your consideration:

“I think it’s a very professional outfit and they put on a good show,” said Jason Rosenhouse, a math professor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., and manager of a blog on evolution. “If you can sort of suspend disbelief, you can see why people get caught up in it.”

Do you see what I mean? The Mr. Rosenhouse’s not-so-subtle implication is that the museum is merely “a good show” but only those people who “suspend disbelief” [sic] could “get caught up in it.” And he didn’t stop there. He went on to say this:

“I hate the fact that this exists,” he added. “But given that it exists, I can see why people would find it compelling.”

Can you believe that? He hates the fact that the museum exists!! I’ve said before that if it were in their power, there would be a pad lock on the museum right now. It’s a textbook example of the attitudes exposed in Ben Stein’s “Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed”.

Arnie Miller, a geology professor at UC, echoed Rosenhouse’s sentiments during the tour:

“From a pure audio-visual standpoint, it’s spectacular,” he said. “Part of it I find offensive as a scientist. It’s more than just a different point of view. They contend that if you don’t accept their view of the story in Genesis, you’re responsible for the ills of society.”

Mr. Miller has misrepresented AiG’s position. Here are AiG’s true thoughts on the matter:

The concepts of right and wrong must have an ultimate basis from which to appeal, or else they become simply relative to the culture. This is what we see happening in today‘s Western world. The Bible teaches that God the Creator made men and women for each other, and experience confirms that we are made for each other physically. This was the Creator’s intention and plan. And any deviation from this is outside the created order. So it has been until very recent times, when, backed up by evolutionary ‘science’, the concept of homosexual acts being ‘wrong’ has been changed. Now they are promoted as neither right nor wrong, but a ‘choice’. And, unless one appeals to a Creator who sets the absolute laws for life, who can say this is incorrect? If there is no Creator who has made us and set the rules, then all our morals and ideas of what is right or wrong are simply subjective—what we ourselves decide.

The Courier Journal article concludes:

Julia Sankey, a geology professor at California State University at Stanislaus, said she wanted to know more about the attitudes some of her students are bringing to class.

“I’m not offended, just annoyed,” Sankey said. “Why are we wasting our time on this (evolution debate)? It’s not science, and we’re wasting our time.”

I suppose I should acknowledge that at least she sought to know more about her students’ attitudes but I’m sorry that Ms. Sankey feels she is wasting her time with this. After all, according to various polls, up to ½ of the US population believes in creation. I predict that one day her “it’s already settled” attitude is going to be the undoing of evolution.

Here’s what I predict. One weakness in creation science is the lack of enough practicing scientists. However, thanks to the efforts of creation ministries like AiG, more and more students will become interested in science, they will then study science in college, and eventually become practicing scientists. They will begin doing research, publishing papers, and making contributions to their field. The difference will be that they will be doing it from a creation perspective. When that happens, scientists will be forced to argue the science and can no longer argue by consensus (argumentum ad populum).

I say, let the nerds scoff. They have no idea what’s really going on at the museum!