The Ark wouldn't work – and other famous arguments of ignorance

In an effort to discredit the plausibility of the Flood account in Genesis, many skeptics attack the mechanics/logistics of Noah's Ark. How could Noah have built such a large, wooden ship? How could he fit all the animals on it? How could 8 people feed and water all the animals? What did they do with the animals' waste? Blah, blah, blah.

The point in asking these types of questions isn't to gain a better understanding. Rather, it's an attempt to sow doubt in the minds of believers. The critic hopes that by simply asking these questions and others like them, believers would see there were many difficulties Noah would have had to overcome, and maybe even conclude Noah couldn't have done it! This isn't a discussion on the scientific feasibility of the Ark. It's a tactic.

Of course, Noah would have faced these problems as well as many others. I've read various speculations about how he might have addressed these issues. The problem with any solution is two fold:

First, we don't have critical information like, how many animals were on the Ark? Noah didn't have 2 of every species; he had 2 of every kind (7 of every clean animal). Some people believe Noah may have had only as few as 3,500 animals on the Ark. Certainly, it would be easier to care of 3K animals than 15K animals.  If we don't know the actual number, how can we judge how difficult it would be?

Second, any solution we invent to overcome some particular problem, could never be definitive anyway. Even if we devised some ingenious way to quickly remove the waste of 15K animals, for example, we still couldn't say that's how Noah did it. He might have used a completely different method. The Bible doesn't say. Such solutions can only demonstrate it could be done, even if they don't prove how it was done.

I always encourage discussion in every area of apologetics and considering how Noah might have handled these challenges is a worthwhile pursuit. I welcome sincere questions that provoke conversation. The problem the skeptics have is that, by suggesting these hurdles were impossible to overcome, they are committing a gross fallacy of logic. It is known as an Appeal to Ignorance (ad ignorantiam). They are essentially saying, “I don't know how this could be possible, so it must not be possible.”

Skeptics don't like it when I describe their position as an appeal to ignorance but that's exactly what they're doing. In the example of Noah, they are saying, “I don't know how 8 people could feed/water 10,000 animals every day so Noah and his family couldn't have done it.” Keep in mind that, just as we don't know how many animals had to care for, neither do the skeptics know. While they might think it's impossible to feed 10,000 animals per day, they're not considering if it might be possible if there were only 5,000. Regardless, even if there were 10,000, the critic's inability to devise a method to care for so many animals is not – by itself – evidence that there is no method.

Since the time Icarus supposedly built wings and escaped Crete, men had 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. Can you see how such an argument is flawed? Kelvin didn't know how it could be done but, obviously, it could be done.

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.

“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's,” Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, 1977.

All of these statements were made from ignorance. There were things these “experts” didn't know or didn't understand about the subjects on which they commented and it was the things they didn't know that would later reveal their ignorant comments as absurd. Believers should never allow their faith to waver because of arguments made in ignorance. Skeptics not knowing how Noah did something is not evidence that it couldn't be done. It's not even close.