Everyone knows the story of Noah and the ark, few people believe it. "This is how you will construct it. The Ark's length will be 300 cubits, it's width 50 cubits and it's height 30 cubits" As a "Cubit" is roughly 18 inches, the entire Ark would be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. The Ark was divided into three decks with the humans on top the animals in the middle and waste in the lowest level. That is twice the length of the battle of Trafalgar's HMS Victory. You do not have to be a genius to calculate that the chances of getting all the animals in the world into this space is absolutely zero; or so says the Ramban.
If we further consider that the Ark was a box and had the seaworthiness of a brick and the flood was of unbelievable proportions, scepticism seems justified. Of course were it to have been the Ark which saved Noah, we could expect to find other survivors. Ship owners ( there surely were some) should have taken to their own craft as the flood began.
Obviously Noah's Ark cold not have survived a storm of such ferocity
which reduced all ships to splinters. It was not the Ark which saved
Noah...it was a miracle, it was G-d. If so, why bother with an Ark in
the first place?
In Kings 2.4. the prophet Elisha brings a dead child back to life.
He lies on top of the corpse puts his mouth to the child's mouth his
hands on his hands etc. It looks like resuscitation. Yakov goes to
sleep and has his famous dream the angels going up and down the ladder.
Before he slept he first built a wall of rocks round his head to protect
him from wild animals! What about the rest of his body? At the end of
his life Moses pleads with G-d to let him enter Israel. G-d refuses but
tells him to climb mount Navo and there shows him the whole of the land.
Can you see the whole of Israel from Mount Navo? It must therefore have
been a miracle but if so why does Moses have to climb the mountain, G-d
can let him see Israel from where he stands.
Whenever G-d performs a miracle ( With the possible exception of the
Exodus story) he always includes some feature which allows the miracle
to be overlooked. You could get all the animals into the Ark if a
miracle made them shrink. but why bother considering that if it's
easier to dismiss the whole event. A miracle could make the Ark survive
the Flood but those who don't think, will imagine it was a wooden
structure that saved Noah's family. A cynic will see Elisha's miracle
as nothing of the sort and a superficial mind will skip past Yakov's
barricade as being the thing which protected him from animals . Lastly
Moses saw the land of Israel because of his superb vantage point.
The fundamental of Judaism is freedom of choice. Miracles rob us of
freedom to disbelieve. A thinking mind would spot the flaws in the
superficial versions we have cited, what he chooses to do after that
will determine how he is using his freedom of choice. Some will say,"
This doesn't make sense" and reject the whole thing. The more profoud
thinker will conclude the same but then persevere to discover what
Judaism is really saying.