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Summary: Answers every objection in scientific detail
Review: A 100-carat diamond of a book. This volume answers every conceivable objection to the physical possibility of Noah having preserved air-breathing, land-dwelling organisms in a boat during a one-year global flood. I mean EVERY objection, at least through 1995. Space, food, water, manpower, gathering of animals, specialized diets, where to fit the dinosaurs - it's all there, in painstaking detail, abundantly referenced almost entirely from the general (NOT the creationist) scientific literature. It also covers biographical distribution and genetic variation issues for the post-flood repopulation. As in the author's other books, the false accusation that young earth creationists are "unscientific" or "ignore the facts" are compellingly refuted. This book is probably the most thoroughly researched, systematically presented volume in modern creationist literature. It is well organized in short, topical chapters. Most of the material is accessible to the layperson. Well worth the investment, either to answer your own questions, or someone else's when they arise.
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Summary: A superb study of Noah's Ark
Review: As a zookeeper who has worked for years in an animal setting, I have a special and avid interest in the Noah's Ark account from Genesis. I have read and examined Woodmorappe's book for several years now, and I have found it to be a very solid work. He documents his evidence very well, and he goes into detail with his findings in each chapter, and I can tell he has done extensive research. There have been numerous atacks on the veracity of the Noah's Ark account in recent times by skeptics, hard-core evolutionists and anti-Christians, but one can now add a scientific defense of the biblical account with this book. One can discover, if there was any doubt before, that it really was practically possible to build a huge ship of wood that size, care for all those animals on the Ark with only eight people, store all that hay, feed all those animals with specialized diets, etc. Additionally, for all of you out there who teach classes in church, this would be a great book to do a study on, especially for kids in junior high and high school, since this is a favorite topic for them. To sum it up, I heartily recommend this book, and I have it in my library at work at the zoo and at home.
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Summary: A Treasure Trove of Scientifically-Researched Answers
Review: Every century has seen people reflecting on the Flood which the Bible describes. There have always been people who believed that God could do everything written in His word, just as there have always been severe critics of the Bible. It was easy to substantiate an atheistic, anti-biblical standpoint. All one had to do was ask a few critical questions, like: How could the whole of the animal kingdom fit into one wooden boat? Where did they get a supply of drinking water for such a long journey? How did they get rid of such a huge amount of faeces? Are there scientific answers to these questions? John Woodmorappe has collected all these critical questions and examines them meticulously in his 219 page book. Over a period of 20 years, he has carried out his own detailed research, evaluating a total of 1,390 publications. This book is a treasure trove of scientifically researched answers on the topic of Noah's Ark. I especially valued the many quantitative estimates of the number of animals on the ark, for example, or the amount of food and drinking water they must have taken on board, the air circulation which was necessary, or how much a crew of only 8 people would have worked (manpower studies). I have never read such a thorough and extensive scientific study on this topic in which the many biological and engineering questions are answered. I can do nothing but strongly recommend this book.
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Summary: Indespensible Reference Book
Review: I regret having postponed buying Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, for as long as I did. The truth is, I foolishly mis-judged the book by its cover. I associated the colorful depiction of Noah's Ark with Sunday school materials, and assumed the book was intended for a younger audience. I had no idea what a comprehensive spectrum of detail and thorough scholarship lay inside! I missed the point of the cover's artwork altogether. The depiction of the Ark with the inset of a horse at its feeding station relates to the subject of Chapter 8, entitled, "Manpower Studies: Eight People Care for 16,000 Animals." The book contains 29 chapters divided into five parts. The names of those five parts illustrate the categories of questions addressed within: Part I - A Complete Inventory of the Animals and Supplies on the Ark (5 chapters).
Part II - Alleged Difficulties Regarding the Ark and its Cargo (10 chapters).
Part III - The Recovery of the Earth's Biosphere After the Flood (7 chapters).
Part IV - The Adequacy of Single Pairs in the Repopulation of the World (6 chapters).
Part V - Conclusion (1 chapter). Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study, is largely a compilation of shorter works originally published to a Bible-based readership. Readers unfamiliar or unconvinced of the biblical record would do well to take note of this fact, lest they find themselves unnecessarily chafed by the author's forthright manner. John Woodmorappe takes no prisoners and shows no quarter. With forceful logic and careful documentation, Woodmorappe skillfully dispatches every lofty claim raised in opposition to the biblical account of Noah and his Ark. I highly recommend this book for for a general audience, but in particular for every teacher, professor, pastor or youth worker who might ever engage in a discussion about Noah's Ark. Believers and committed skeptics alike should familiarize themselves with its contents - believers so they are not deceived by high-sounding claims, and skeptics lest they scoff to their own embarrassment.
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Summary: Excellent Study
Review: Instead of relying solely on faith to believe in the Flood of Noah, Woodmorrappe gives the reader his tireless, detailed research into the many areas of concern for the 'hows' and 'whys' of the building of the ark; the care and feeding of the animals; recovery after the Flood, etc. He explains how 'kind' is not equal to species; storage analysis of water and food; housing for the people and animals; manpower studies for feeding and waste disposal; and he even address the question of diseases and parasites on the ark. This is a well written and well researched document that all, creationist and evolutionist, who are interested in the Genesis account of the Flood should read. I highly recommend adding this to your library.
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Summary: Taking on Noah's Job
Review: John Woodmorappe placed himself in Noah's shoes, so to speak, and considered all the hundreds of details that Noah would have had to deal with in preparing a year-long home on a ship for his family and for several hundred or thousand animals. This was no easy task. It took Noah about 120 years to prepare for the adventure. It took Woodmorappe quite some time to research all the details. It takes the reader some thoughtful time to consider the immensity of the task that faced Noah. After the initial reading, the reader is left with a fantastic reference book, full of documentation from both modern and ancient sources. There is an answer for any question about life on board the Ark. How much and what kind of food had to be stored? How did everyone get along together? etc. Of course, some tasks could have been handled with alternative ways. Woodmorappe suggests several, where appropriate. Moreover, he purposely tries to imagine the most difficult scenarios that Noah might have faced and shows that even those cases were surmountable. It is awesome to think of what our eight ancestors went through to bring about all of the present human race, as well as the land animals and birds that we share the globe with.
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Summary: Woodmorappe covers every base
Review: One incredible book! It answers every question I've ever heard about Noah's Ark, and then some I've never heard. It covers every objection, from the size of the boat, how it could have been constructed, its seaworthiness, to feeding, ventillation, waste disposal, and the genetics of postflood populations, and much more. Woodmorappe makes a generous estimate of the number of animals on the Ark, based on a detailed analysis of what a kind is and how the concept relates to modern taxonomy. Using the genus as a kind surely overstates the number of animals on the Ark (many genera interbreed), as the author makes clear. Nevertheless, he shows that, even with this inflated number, the Ark was plenty big enough for the animals, their food, water, and even exercise areas! The material is very well referenced, with about 1300 citations. The book does not have an index, but the detailed table of contents almost makes up for that. A must read!
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Summary: An amazing amount of data.
Review: The amount of work going into compiling the data for this book was amazing. The author took great care in developing a compelling argument for his thesis!
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Summary: A tour de force
Review: The story of the human race and all terrestrial animals surviving a worldwide Cataclysm has long fascinated mankind. Oral and written traditions of this momentous event in human history are found in hundreds of cultures around the globe. Nevertheless, despite a landslide of geologic evidence for the Cataclysm the story of Noah and the Ark is still treated with ridicule by humanistic scoffers. (Just as prophesied by II Peter 3 of the Bible.) What veteran origins scientist John Woodmorappe has done is collect dozens of skeptical attacks against the record of the Ark and then painstakingly researched each one in the scientific literature. The result is a landmark work demonstrating that the concept of the Ark as presented in Genesis feasible. Moreover, based solely on the peer-reviewed, modern scientific literature, low-technology solutions to each problem facing the occupants of the Ark have already been established and proven. The result is a very readable work, capped with almost eighty pages of references. Readers will be amazed at the folly of Ark critics, many with science doctorates, seemingly in competition to make the most absurd claims. Darwinian fundamentalists have insisted that the Ark had to carry everything from all plant species to carrying fish and whales ? despite the plain testimony of Genesis which negates such nonsense. Fact-free claims of the critics are met with calculations and hard data to show that critics of the Ark account have invariably failed to do their homework. The result is a book that belongs on the shelf of every student of the Bible, as well as being a useful tool for homeschoolers, students of animal husbandry and related disciplines.
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Summary: Thorough demolition of anti-Christian attacks on Noah¿s Ark
Review: This book is a vital tool for anyone who genuinely follows Christ, who taught that Noah's Flood and Ark were real events (Luke 17:26-27). It will enable them to refute the anti-Flood/Ark arguments by the atheists and their allies in Christendom, namely the theistic evolutionists and other billions-of-years advocates, the so-called 'progressive creationists'. However, many of them still continue to use arguments thoroughly discredited by Woodmorappe, which says something for the level of atheistic scholarship. And even those who try to give the impression of counteracting Woodmorappe's arguments have treated them dishonestly. For example, some sceptical reviews have claimed that Woodmorappe claims that Noah must have trained some animals to excrete into hand-held buckets. In reality, Woodmorappe mentioned training animals *in passing*, and into gutters at that. And even a cursory perusal of the book would show that JW's solutions to the alleged problem of animal waste didn't rely on such a thing. He concentrated on simple devices like slatted and slanting floors, where waste would naturally be separated from the animals and possibly be composted by earthworms. And JW shows that it's quite common in farms not even to need to resort to this, but rely on very deep bedding which absorbs moisture and can go for over a year without needing a change. Sometimes the old canard is raised about creationists not having a consistent definition of 'kind'. Fact: JW gives both biblical and scientific reasons for identifying the 'kinds' on board the Ark with modern genera, and points out that many kinds might even correspond to families. If there is any inconsistency, it's with the man-made classification system. After all, JW gives several examples where animals officially classified into different genera can in fact interbreed, making them a single 'biological species' by definition. On the topic of speciation, it is nonsense to claim this is 'macroevolution'. Speciation can involve splitting a large population into small, isolated groups, each of which has a fraction of the genetic variation of the parent population. But this has nothing to do with the production of new, more complex features, which would require new genetic information. And there are a number of examples of rapid, non-evolutive speciation, e.g. a mosquito species in the London Underground. And it's quite laughable for an Australian like me to see Bible-haters make silly mistakes about koalas. Note, it is NOT necessary to feed them eucalyptus leaves. Their usual diet is most likely an addiction to the chemicals found in the leaves, which are even transmitted in the mother's milk, so they are hooked at a young age. However, JW, although not an Australian, is a careful researcher and documents that they can be fed even on non-Australian plants like the Monterrey pine. Note also, creationists generally believe there was one land mass before the Flood, and its topography was vastly rearranged by the Flood. So the anti-biblical claim about koalas having to migrate to the modern Euphrates delta from modern Australia is a non-issue - neither of these places existed as such before the Flood. In conclusion: this book will withstand the strongest anti-Christian arguments.
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