The Irony of Believing in Noah’s Ark and Not Evolution

Today we’re sailing (pun intended) into the delightful fairy tale known as Noah's Ark & The Flood. The story, for those who managed to escape Sunday school, goes like this: God gets mad at humans for wearing mixed fabrics too often, and decides to wipe the slate clean with a global flood. He picks Noah, a righteous man, to build a massive boat, and commands him to gather two of every kind of animal. The floodwaters come, everyone else drowns, and Noah's floating zoo repopulates the earth. Charming, right?

Now, let's switch gears to something grounded in reality: evolution. This process, which has been studied and observed by scientists for centuries, explains how species change over time through natural selection. Evolution isn't a quickie; it takes thousands to millions of years for significant changes to occur, leading to the development of new species. For instance, it took around 6 million years for humans to evolve from our common ancestor with chimpanzees. We’re not talking overnight miracles here.

Enter the Christians who believe in the literal occurrence of Noah's Ark. Despite the glaring lack of geological evidence for a worldwide flood, they hold onto this narrative with the same fervor as a child clutching their favorite bedtime story. No fossil record supports a mass extinction event around the time this flood supposedly happened, yet the tale persists, defying all scientific reasoning.

Let’s talk numbers. The Bible mentions that Noah took two of every kind of animal. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say this means species. Currently, scientists estimate there are about 8.7 million species on Earth, with around 1.2 million of those being animals. Now, if we assume Noah's Ark carried around 10,000 species of animals (a generous underestimate to keep things light), we need to figure out how we got from 10,000 to 1.2 million.

Noah's flood supposedly happened about 4,000 years ago. That’s 1,460,000 days. To reach today’s number of species, 1,190,000 new species would have needed to form since then. Simple math tells us that roughly 815 new species would have had to pop into existence every single day. And yet, we don’t observe new species forming daily. In fact, speciation is so slow that we rarely witness it in real-time.

So, here’s the kicker: you either believe in Noah's Ark and the process of evolution working at an impossibly accelerated rate, or you believe in something else, you know, like the Noah’s Flood not happening and evolution being real. You can't have your Ark and float it too. The current biodiversity simply couldn't have sprung up overnight or even over a few thousand years.

But hey, if you still prefer to cling to the idea of Noah’s Ark, that's your prerogative. In the end, believing in fairy tales while ignoring established science is a choice of the negative IQ netizens. As for the rest of us, we’ll be here, grounded in reality, chuckling at the irony and enjoying the slow, steady march of evolutionary progress. Happy sailing!