I hope you read this with the same respect and calmness I'm feeling as I type. No sarcasm, no anger, no need to control your thoughts. I keep saying assume because I don't want to exaggerate your hypothesis into anything to suit my own wants. It's your question; I want to stay within your rules. I take it that you want to understand. I would like to help. If I'm wrong and you're trying to get someone to see the problems and abandon any biblical faith we may or may not have, that's your free choice.
It says animals with breath in their nostrils. That means mammals, birds and reptiles. That cuts out a lot of unnostrilled life. Noah wasn't a dork, so he wouldn't have tried making space for the whales, we could possibly assume, especially as they don't have nostrils Nostrils are holes in a nose (literally 'nose drills') and nostril is the word that the Hebrew one has been consistantly translated into.
If the account is assumed correct, we're talking about a God that lives in a plane above all laws of physics (some big band theorists talk of the pre-bang being above those laws). The bible refers to the One who 'inhabits eternity'. Not lives FOR eternity. Inhabits (lives IN) it. I know. We who live in finiteness and inside time can't grasp life outside it. No earthbound creator is limited to living within his creation. Why should an unlimited-powered God?
Add into that the feeding of thousands with one boy's lunch, miracles of dead coming back to life. That means it's possible that all those animals to be still alive at the end of the flood.
Size? How many species? The account says two of every kind. We don't know what the words kind meant in Noah's culture. I bet we could get more than one description of 'kind of animal' in any setting. Is 'mouse' a 'kind'? Is rodent a more accurate idea of 'kind'? No, maybe 'kind' means 'furry animals'. No, I think it means mammal. Don't be silly. It means harvest mouse, house mouse, field vole, water vole etc. In that case does it mean every species of shrew individually or does mouse shrews? No way, it means . See? Only westerners think the way weterners do. I speak with a few Filipines. They don't think the same as we do. You and I don't think the same way in everything. Don't assume the thought processes God used would match yours - assuming He were real.
Noah lived at about the time of Egypt's height, in our assumption. Those Egyptians had a technology we know nothing about. We don't know how they built the pyramids. We can't build them with our technology. Don't assume Noah's resources were limited to what we know about.
What was the waether like on Ararat at that time? I dunno. Do you? Was it cold enough to freeze to death. We don't know. Obviously not, or they would have done. Maybe the same miraculous God that kept them alive without food kept them warm.
If, like me at one time, you're bothered about the number of species we have and how they all fitted in, look up the reports of rapid speciation. Two mice might have been able to give rise to many, many submice in the last XXX years. Think of yourself being told to take an elephant somewhere on the back of a pickup. How could you even fit an elephant on one? Easy: use initiative. The order didn't specify size, so take a baby one.
If God could make the universe and all life in it , I doubt he'd have trouble dealing with a boatload of animals.
As to some of your questions, I might ask you why Henry Ford named his son Edsil. Would your inability to answer it prove Ford to have been a myth? Of course not.
One last thought that's come to me right now: life is never limited to our personal experiences or ideas. To reword an overused phrase, think outside your ark. Is that two thoughts or one thought with two subthoughts? Would that count as just one thought, though?
™ Version 4.2
