Abstract
Skeptics claim that a wooden ship the size of Noah's Ark couldn't possibly stay afloat. Did God perform a miracle to keep it from sinking? "People in the early 1900s built an extraordinarily large wooden ship, the Wyoming. It was a six-masted schooner, the largest ever built...[but] it would twist in the sea...and leaked like crazy. The crew could not keep the ship dry, and indeed it eventually foundered and sank; loss of all 14 hands. So there were 14 crewmen aboard a ship built by very, very skilled shipwrights in New England. These guys were the best in the world at wooden shipbuilding, and they couldn't build a boat as big as the ark...Is it possible that the best shipbuilders in the world couldn't do what 8 unskilled people, men and their wives, were able to do?" -Bill Nye, the Science Guy. In his widely publicized 2014 debate with Answers in Genesis president, Ken Ham, Bill Nye the Science Guy cited the sinking of the Wyoming as proof that the biblical account of Noah's Ark is impossible. He was simply repeating one of skeptics' most common challenges against the Ark's seaworthiness. To answer this challenge, some Christians have appealed to God's miraculous intervention. But is this really necessary?