Study Questions Based Upon "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study"

The Following is a Study Guide, using FAQ’s for the book Noah’s Ark:A Feasibility Study by John Woodmorappe, published by the Institute for Creation Research).  In parentheses are the page number(s) in the book where the answer can be located.

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1). Was EVERY TYPE of animal life on the Ark? (p. 4).

2). Was each SPECIES of animal on the Ark? (p. 6-7).

3). Doesn’t belief in rapid origin of new species mean that Creationists are giving in to organic evolution? (p. 7).

4). Were insects and other invertebrates on the Ark? (p. 4).

5). How could dinosaurs (including the largest sauropods) have all fit on the Ark? (p. 4, pp. 67-68).

6). Was the median size of animals on the Ark sheep-sized, or much smaller? (p. 13).

7). Based on actual laboratory-animal housing standards, how much Ark floor space was necessary to house the 16,000 animals? (p. 16).

8). Must the diets of captive wild animals, for the most part, closely resemble their diets in nature? (p. 17).

9). As the Ark moved, wouldn’t the water have splashed out of the drinking containers? (p. 21).

10). Is it possible to have designed an arrangement in which the 12 tons of daily animal waste was not handled by the 8-person crew at all? (pp. 25-30, 34-5).

11). What prevented vermin from being a serious problem on the Ark? (p. 30).

12). Wouldn’t the methane emanating from the decomposing manure have caused an explosion, destroying the Ark? (p. 32).

13). Isn’t the slotted Ark window an extremely poor design for ventilation? (p. 38-9).

14). Considering all of the animals, provender, etc., wasn’t the Ark overloaded? (p. 47).

15). Weren’t the ancient peoples capable of building only boats and small ships? (pp. 48-50).

16). Isn’t it physically impossible to build a WOODEN ship of Ark dimensions? (p. 50-1).

17). If petroleum was used as the pitch to seal the Ark, from where did it originate on the antediluvian earth? (p. 51).

18). What kinds of experience did the ancients have in managing large numbers of wild animals simultaneously? (p. 58).

19). How could Noah have dealt with fearful or recalcitrant animals, especially the large ones? (pp. 60-3).

20). How could Noah have distinguished males from females in the case of animals whose genders appear identical? (p. 63-4).

21). Isn’t the taking of young on the Ark, of large animals, impractical because of the high death rate of juvenile animals? (p. 64).

22). Based on realistic situations, how many animals can be cared for by one person? (p. 71-2).

23). Do actual animal-care labor studies substantiate the conclusion that 8 people could care for 16,000 animals? (pp. 72-81).

24). How could exercise be provided for large numbers of animals in a short period of time? (p. 81).

25). When compared with modern animal housing, wasn’t the Ark extremely overcrowded? (pp. 83-6).

26). Would not the floors have caused fatal hoof injuries? (p. 87).

27). Were bathing and burrowing facilities necessary on the Ark? (p. 88-9).

28). If the Ark got wet inside, wouldn’t the food have gotten ruined? (p. 91).

29). Is there any vegetable which can stay fresh for a year, without refrigeration or preservatives? (p. 92).

30). Was there not an impossibly large volume of hay on the Ark? (pp. 95-8).

31). How could meat-eaters and fish-eaters have been expeditiously fed on the Ark? (pp. 99-103).

32). Were fresh flowers on the Ark necessary for the nectar-eating birds and bats? (p. 103).

33). Were fresh fruits on the Ark necessary for primates, as well as for frugivorous bats and birds? (pp. 103-5).

34). How could snakes have been maintained on the Ark without the need for laboriously raising live foods (e. g. mice)? (p. 105-6).

35). Were live insects necessary on the Ark for those birds and bats which only eat live insects in nature? (pp. 106-110).

36). How could certain highly-specialized eaters (leaf-eating monkeys, 3-toed sloth, panda, and koala) be maintained on the Ark? (pp. 111-117).

37). Must the tropical animals on the Ark have been supplied with a source of heat? (p. 119-120).

38). Must the polar animals on the Ark have been supplied with refrigerated enclosures? (pp. 120-3).

39). If the pre Flood earth had been warm, how could the strongly cold-adapted and heat-adapted animals have survived upon it? (pp. 119-123).

40). If there were no deserts in the pre Flood world, where did the desert-adapted creatures live then? (p. 123-4).

41). How could the narrow temperature tolerances of many bats and reptiles have been met on the Ark? (p. 124-5).

42). Can animals go into hibernation only under highly exacting conditions? (pp. 128-130).

43). Wouldn’t the constant motion of the Ark have prevented the Ark animals from hibernating? (p. 131).

44). If awakened during hibernation, wouldn’t the Ark animals die, especially if awakened from it repeatedly? (p. 135).

45). Must hibernation of animals have been highly effective in order to have significantly reduced the time necessary to care for them on the Ark? (p. 135).

46). Wouldn’t the oceans have gotten intolerably hot for marine life as a result of volcanic action during the Flood? (p. 139-140).

47). Weren’t the waters on earth much too muddy during the Flood for anything to have survived in them? (p. 141-2).

48). Since most freshwater fish don’t tolerate saltwater, and most marine fish don’t tolerate freshwater, how could both kinds of fish have survived the Flood? (pp. 143-9).

49). Since amphibians are very fragile creatures, how could they have survived the Flood? (p. 151-2).

50). Would any salt left behind on land (after the Floodwaters had drained off) have posed a problem for plant growth? (p. 153).

51). Since most seeds don’t float, how could plants have survived the Flood? (pp. 153-6).

52). Since seeds got soaked during the Flood, would not the plants all have germinated prematurely, and suffocated? (p. 156-7).

53). How could plants that have specialized pollinators reproduce after the Flood? (pp. 159-162).

54). Since the roof covering of the Ark had been removed by Noah, were the animals exposed to the hostile elements? (p. 163).

55). What is one obvious reason for God having re-instilled the fear of man in animals (Genesis 9:2-3)? (p. 164).

56). What are some advantages of the Ark having landed in a mountainous region instead of on a plain? (p. 164-5).

57). What was there for animals to eat (besides each other) once they got off the Ark? (pp. 167-170).

58). How long did it take for the first food chains to re-establish themselves after the Flood? (p. 171-2).

59). How could animals that breed only when in flocks have reproduced themselves from single-pair founders released from the Ark? (p. 175-6).

60). Can single-pair founders give rise to lasting populations? (pp. 176-179).

61). Isn’t the “Created Kind” an arbitrary concept? (p. 179-180).

62). Can it be substantiated that the genera of animals released from the Ark could have given rise to new species in only a few thousand years? (pp. 180-2).

63). Since Noah’s surviving family consisted of only 8 people, would not inbreeding among Noah’s immediate descendants have caused serious problems? (pp. 183-5).

64). Doesn’t the “50-500 RULE” of conservation biology rule out single-pair founders having sufficient genetic diversity for their descendants to survive? (pp. 187-189).

65). What role did supergenes play in postFlood genetics? (p. 189-190).

66). Wasn’t a miracle necessary to restore genetic diversity among the post Flood populations? (p. 191-2).

67). Could those Ark animals have been selected which bore an unusually-high genetic diversity? (pp. 193-5).

68). Is it possible for animal populations to regain heritable genetic variance in only a few thousand years? (p. 197).

69). If certain animals lost most of their genetic diversity because of the Flood, were they necessarily doomed to extinction? (p. 197-8).

70). Do the frequencies of alleles in modern animals show any hallmarks of a recent Ark release? (p. 198-9).

71). What is the significance of “jumping genes” in the rapid restoration of genetic diversity among living things? (p. 201-2).

72). How can so-called pseudogenes be easily explained in a Creationist context? (p. 202).

73). Are there any lines of evidence which point to the existence of build-in mechanisms, in organisms, for the rapid recovery of lost genetic diversity? (p. 202).

74). Doesn’t the close similarity between the human and chimp HLA complex demonstrate that neither humans nor chimps could have undergone a recent drastic reduction in population size? (pp. 202-206).

75). How rapidly could HLA diversity have been recovered after the Flood? (pp. 207-9).

76). How can the mitochondrial-DNA “clock” (which includes the “African Eve”) be compressed to less than 5000 years? (p. 211-212).

77). Did Noah’s family have to carry the entire load of parasites and pathogens which humans can be afflicted with? (p. 215-216).

78). Could host-specific parasites and pathogens have been carried ONLY by their current hosts while on the Ark? (p. 215-216).