How many keepers does the Philadelphia Zoo need to look after the few-hundred resident species? How many keepers would it need if *everything* had to be done by hand? No fresh water in pipes. No automatic removal of waste. No trucks to drive food around. No vetinerary servies on call. No artificial lighting. Just the 20,000,000 species aboard (try packing that into 6 acres, or even 600 acres. IIRC the bible specifies 3 decks not 6. And your space figure doesn't allow for storage space for fresh food and water, and for the internal bracing in such a craft that would probably require about 30% of the internal volume. The 8 people would get a few seconds per species in the entire year to look after them. Numerous species have special dietary requirements, temperature requirements, humidity requirements... And since you brought fish up did Noah carry the freshwater fish on the ark or the saltwater fish? He had to carry one or the other. Some of the saltwater fish require enormous pressures to survive, so maybe the flood was salty and Noah carried the freshwater fish, but in that case how long would it have been until the land was fertile after the water receded? Why did God hide all the physical evidence that this event ever happened, yet permit a book describing it to continue to exist? Once the animals landed every predation event for the first few months would represent an extinction, and carnivores need lots of prey to eat. The list of rational objections just goes on and on; all I've done there is summarise a small number of the most obvious. And all this so that God (an infinitely powerful being) could kill everyone-8 in the world in a moronic way that required millions of miracles, a way that just happens to match exactly the myths that you'd expect early hydraulic civilisations to tell. How can people take this stuff seriously?
Dolt! There were no living plants left, so the herbivorous dinosaurs died rather soon (yes, they went extinct), and the carnivorous beasts (lions, etc.) fed off their carcasses. The horses, cows and such continued to live off of what was stored on the ark. That kept them alive until plants returned, and then all went back to normal. Why can't you satanic science guys understand?
</creationism mode>
Because it is true and accurate. How can people take seriously the notion that we are all descended from primeval slime by way of the monkeys?
Beats me, but they don't spend all day caring for them.
How many keepers would it need if *everything* had to be done by hand?
Um, just about everything is done by hand.
No fresh water in pipes. No automatic removal of waste.
Why not? It was raining, so the ark could have a plumbing system fed by rains to bring in fresh water and swab the decks.
No trucks to drive food around. Dumb waiters to bring up straw and such from the hold would work, along with hand carts.
Just the 20,000,000 species aboard
Not every species in the world was aboard, only those that could not survive a temporarily aquatic environment - land animals and birds.
And your space figure doesn't allow for storage space for fresh food
Would have been in the hold below the decks.
and water
It was raining. All the water needed was readily available.
And since you brought fish up did Noah carry the freshwater fish on the ark or the saltwater fish?
The Bible does not include any fish upon the ark. It might be readily supposed that the freshwater fish at that time could live in either environment, as Salmon do today.
but in that case how long would it have been until the land was fertile after the water receded
The land was apparently fertile soon after, as the dove came back with an olive branch.
Why did God hide all the physical evidence that this event ever happened
The sedimentary rock layers around the world, which evolutionists say were laid down at high elevations by shallow seas, seem like pretty good evidence to me of widespread flooding. Similarly, the congregations of animal bones in caves at high elevations are pretty good evidence to me.
Once the animals landed every predation event for the first few months would represent an extinction, and carnivores need lots of prey to eat.
The fast breeding animals would have provided enough meat for the relatively few species of carnivores. However, perhaps what you say is a good explanation for why the carnivores like sabertooth tigers and the like went extinct at that time.
And all this so that God (an infinitely powerful being) could kill everyone-8 in the world in a moronic way that required millions of miracles,
There is nothing moronic about it. The event was not only to wipe out a sinful world, but to teach a symbol of the salvation now available by Baptism (the flood) in the one Church (the ark), where humanity is guided by the Dove (the Holy Spirit).
a way that just happens to match exactly the myths that you'd expect early hydraulic civilisations to tell.
So what sort of civilization then predicts the final destruction of the world as a conflagaration by fire?
How can people take this stuff seriously?
Because every people all the way around the world tells the same story??? Did they all make it up and coordinate it via telepathy? No, they clearly all experienced the trauma of the event.