On Facebook, Bill Nye issued the following challenge to Ken Ham:
I would challenge him to build a real ark. Instead of trying to fund an ark park, Ken, why not build a real one and take it to sea for a full year? And Ken, if you're too busy with your flock there in Petersburg, KY, have your most competent parishioners take a shot. Send 8 of your toughest, smartest people to, say, Norfolk, have them design and build a 500 foot wooden boat, load it up with 17,000 pretty good-sized animals, and show us how straightforward it would be to have it remain seaworthy for a year. They have to gather all the food needed locally before they set sail, of course. It's one more thought experiment that would illustrate how unbelievable the literal story of Noah is, as translated into modern English. Also, we'd have to stipulate that all humans and animals come ashore alive …
i) The Genesis flood account doesn't say there were "17,000 pretty good-sized animals" on the ark. It doesn't specify the number of animals.
ii) Likewise, it doesn't specify what sorts of animals were on the ark.
iii) Apropos (ii), why assume a sample of current species will correspond to the ark's original cargo?
iv) Assuming the conventional length of a cubit (which is disputable), the ark was 450 feet long, not 500 feet long.
v) Why would they have to gather all the food ahead of time? Can't Ham's parishioners fish while they are at sea? Can't they take fishing poles or fishing nets with them?
Likewise, couldn't Noah and his family collect rainwater while they were at sea?
vi) In what sense does Bill Nye think a wooden ship can't be seaworthy for a year?
vii) Why would all the animals have to come ashore alive? Why assume no animals died on the ark? To begin with, there were extra unclean animals.
And even if some clean animals perished on the ark, so what? Even if that meant some animals became extinct, the flood account doesn't preclude that possibility.
viii) Nye is tacitly assuming and attacking a global flood interpretation. There are, however, Christians who construe the account in local terms (e.g. Arthur Custance, Carol Hill, John Walton, Ronald Youngblood). Nye needs to show "how unbelievable" the literal account is on a local as well as global interpretation.
