Leap Of Faith

Some of you may still remember my post about Noah's Ark some time ago. In it I raised several questions which I had hoped some of my readers would answer. But as I had expected, no one did. The whole story of the Ark is of course fantastic to the last degree, and it takes quite a leap of faith to actually believe it.

Over the years, I have revisited the discussion of the Ark many, many times; and with different people too, and all ended with no conclusive answers. From those discussions, the obvious conclusion I can draw is that believers are divided into 2 main groups. The first group comprises those who believe the story literally to the very last detail. The second group comprises those who believe in the story, but not in the literal sense.

The first group argues that the Ark is logical if viewed from the magical point of view, since God had a hand in it. So why would it be hard to believe that the animals, for example, could be controlled from eating up each other? I responded, if we want to bring in magic into this story, then why bother with building the Ark at all? Why not just let those animals and Noah and his family float on water throughout the flood? That would be much simpler. How did the fresh water fish survive the flood

To take the second group, they argue that the details are not to be taken literally. For example, the duration, i.e. months, days etc, are only indications to give an idea of the measurement of time, but not intended to be exact. To this, I said then why bother to be specific, .e.g. the dimensions of the boat? Why not say something like huge, or very large?

There is also no logic when thinking of the amount of water required to flood the entire world. There is just not enough water on earth to flood the world to the extent that the Ark could come to rest on Mount Ararat.

And now, some people claim to have discovered the remnants of the Ark on Mount Ararat. The exact location of the discovery is being kept a secret at the moment, but photos have been published. If at all there is any truth in the Ark, it should be about 4,800 years old by now. It is interesting to know how, in one of those photos, straws were seen in one of the compartments in the Ark. I don't believe that straws can last that long without rotting. And if those are new ones, then someone must explain how straws grew on the snowy mountain.

All in all a very hard-to-believe affair which requires a magnificent leap of faith. Maybe those who claim to have found the Ark should have done a bit more research before announcing the discovery. Now many people would want explanations. And not ridiculous ones please.