Summations Only

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?

mignat, welcome to E v C!I can't speak for Dirk, but to me the question is interesting to see what kind of mental gymnastics one will be willing to engage in to justify an obviously impossible story, and one that contradicts volumes of evidence in multiple scientific disciplines.It's an example of the kind of thing that Dr. Adequate was talking about in the quote of his that I include in my signature: Emphasis in originalYou are quite right, of course, about one thing. If the flood was orchestrated by a supreme being who is capable of overcoming known laws of the universe and leaving no evidence behind, then anything is possible and the story is consistent with any and all evidence. If the religious left their response at that, most of us would have very little to say to them. Instead, they insist on trying to make the story consistent with physical evidence on earth. This they cannot do without doing great violence to the evidence, the scientific method, rational thought or all three.I hope you enjoy your time here, however long you choose to stay

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson

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We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

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It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

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...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

When we were teenagers, my brother and I used to pull that one on our more-fundy cousins. Of course there had to be whales on the ark because of salinity issues, turbidity issues, etc. Hardly anything that normally lives in water could have survived the flood if it wasn't in the ark.

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Life is like a Hot Wheels car. Sometimes it goes behind the couch and you can't find it.

If God could make the universe, then he did not need to preserve animals on an ark. He could have just make a bunch of new ones after the flood had subsided. For that matter, he would not have needed a flood - he could have just poofed all of the sinful people out of existence.This an example of why the flood story makes no sense except as a fable.

Hi mignat. I would like to clear up a few things in your post. Some of these may be more or less off-topic, and probably shouldn't be discussed further, but some may be relevant and of course should be continued in the discussion should you choose. Of course. We only get annoyed when people say stupid things or when they disrespect others for no real reason. Often there's no true malice in the comments either; as one poster includes in their signature and as I believe one thread discusses, ridicule and dickishness is a valid tactic when reasonable debate fails. I don't think you'll have that problem though Two things here:

The question is regarding what happens after the Ark has landed. However they survived onboard is not discussed, but we assume for the purpose of argument that they did. There are several other threads in the 'Geology and TGF' forum if you want to talk about the journey itself.

Whether the survival was miraculous or not, there exists no evidence for it. That is the second part of the deal; you not only need to explain how something happened, but also explain the evidence left behind. Again, much of this is covered in other threads, but specifically for this one: where are the remains of animals travelling from Mount Ararat? Others will likely move onto discussing evidences like this.

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Size? How many species? The account says two of every kind. We don't know what the words kind meant in Noah's culture ...

And this is a problem for creationism.
Today, there exist definite groupings of animals (and plants and bacteria and other stuff, but anyway); groupings like families, orders, genera, etc. These groupings are determined by large amounts of physical evidence including genetics and the fossil record. From these are derived clear chains of relation between each animal and its ancestors (however long they existed, they did exist).

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To this end, "kind" has been a panic-word for creationists. As you began describing yourself: does the word refer to the species? In that case, there was certainly not enough room on the Ark. Does it refer to the genus? In that case, where did the other species come from? There are contradictions no matter which way you choose, and hence no creationist has ever tried to define the word.

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I point out that these modern groupings are not "a different way of understanding". They (or the equivalent) are used globally by every country's biological scientists. There is no other term, because everybody uses that term.
Thus, the word either has a meaning which clearly contradicts the facts and hence cannot refer to any such grouping, and then has no relation to reality, or it is not a word with any intelligible meaning and hence indicates a lot of further problems for creationism (which are very off-topic, so moving on).

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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.

No, they didn't.
We know relatively much about their tools; we know relatively much about their methods; we know relatively much about how the pyramids were built. As for replicating the feat, the only thing stopping it is cost: labour, stone, transport, etc.
Our modern technology is actually sufficient to build a pyramid, and I think one better than the originals. Stonecutting tools, surveying equipment, heavy lifting machinery, transport vehicles, skilled and trained labourers... we have everything.

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Hence we can assume that at best, Noah had technology limited to at most equal with our own, and at worst, only the equivalent of the contemporary Egyptians. These give rise to further problems for creationism in trying to validate the Ark myth (which are off-topic, and some of are which discussed in the aforementioned forum).

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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.

That is not rapid speciation. It is rapid reproduction; the terms mean completely different things.
Again, we are not dealing with the Ark journey itself; however, the concept of using baby animals is not a new one, and runs into enormous problems for what would happen afterwards such as not knowing how to care for itself or many of the little tricks all animals pick up from their parents. Which would be on-topic if you care to discuss it, though.

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If God could make the universe and all life in it , I doubt he'd have trouble dealing with a boatload of animals.

very well then. If your explanation is "Goddidit" then what evidence supports this action happening?

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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.

I'm not aware of the question you refer to, but your point seems to not work the way you want it to. If you care to explain it for me? PM would suffice so as to not clutter the thread.

I believe that the Ark was real. The account of it is in the Bible. I believe the Bible to be the true word of God.I do not believe that the flood was a global one. The point of the flood was to destroy wicked humans, not to wipe out the earth's flora and fauna and ecologial systems. I don't believe the language of the Bible is always literal, I believe the flood occurred only in the then-known world.Which animals would populate the earth? Well, all the ones that God had Noah put in the ark. We are not told exactly what they were, except that they were birds, animals and creeping things of every sort/kind. 7 pairs each of clean animals (male & female), 2 pairs each of unclean animals (male & female), 7 pairs each of birds (male & female); Genesis 7:2-3.God was orchestrating all this and I don't believe that the animals would have behaved themselves in the ark, only for the carnivores to start eating up the herbivores as soon as they came out of the ark. They were to be fruitful and multiply...... I'm sure it was no major feat for our Creator to ensure that happened.I believe that the dinosaurs had already been extinct for millions of years at the time of the Great Flood. (I am not a Young Earth Creationist, nor an Evolutionist. I believe the bible and believe that the earth, etc. is as old as the scientists say it is.)Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Add blank lines between paragraphs.

Ok - seems reasonable. Ok - a local flood to wipe out wicked humans.Humans had populated the entire planet.
Could you explain how a local flood wiped out a global species? Since it is only a local flood: why put animals on the ark? If god is happy to use his powers to ensure that the animals reproduced abnormally quickly, then why put them on the ark?
Why not just 'teleport' them into the future (after the waters have receded) ?Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

Known by who?the eskimos, africans, native americans, indians, arabs, chinese, europeans, slavs, norse,......if by all of them then its a global flood, if just by some then no need for an ark

Hi Maryanne, welcome to EvC. That's not what this sounds like to me:

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Gen 6:
5 The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the LORD said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have createdand with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the groundfor I regret that I have made them.

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quote:

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Gen 6:
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.

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Whadaya think? But where does the literal-ness start and stop? If you can turn the flood into a non-global one, then why not just read the whole thing as not literally happening, like, as if it was a parable or something?

Hi Maryanne,Welcome to EvC! So the flood was intended to destroy wicked humans, but it was not global. That must mean that there were no wicked humans in those part of the world that were not flooded, otherwise God would have flooded those parts too. That's interesting, given that people in all those parts of the world believed in all kinds of gods (precursors of Zeus, Thor, Vishnu), but not God. Apparently, that didn't really bother him, then. So God prevented the animals from eating each other when they came from the ark. At what point in time then did they start eating each other? And why did God suddenly decide that that was a good idea?

if the Ark was real then the post flood world would be populated by the creatures off the ark.
The bible says there were seven pairs of the clean and two of the unclean. It doesn't say what clean/unclean were.
it follows the clean would dominate over the unclean.
I believe this is why the post flood world was different in fauna over the pre flood one.
the pre flood seems by the fossil record to have been a unclean dominance.The post flood world would be quickly populated by all the creatures.
yet today or in historical memory not all the creatures were everywhere.
so one must look into the fossil record. post flood, to see if all creatures were everywhere.
this is what is found.
So we must conclude post flood disasters destroyed creatures in many lands leaving only what they left.We live today in a poverty world regarding fauna.
only the fossil record shows the great diversity after the flood.

Hi Robert, Makes sense if the ark were real (which was the assumption in this thread). But... Uh, no? If cows are clean, and tigers are unclean, the cows still get eaten and would definitely not dominate. And since it is likely that either the cows got eaten or starved to death on Mt Ararat, something else must have happened.On the other hand, if the clean dominate over the unclean, that would mean that some sort of bacteria is probably the cleanest of all, since their kind is probably among the most successful and most dominant creatures ever and are very likely to survive god's own supposed favourites (namely, us) by many millions of years. It would, if it also showed evidence for the flood. But it doesn't.

spam deletedEdited by AdminPhat, : spammer

I think the problem with the lack of genetic diversity would mean that NO animals would populate the earth after the flood.

Leviticus 11:2,3 defines clean animals as those that chew the cud AND have a divided hoof, which also seems to be all the horned ones.
The problem of what the predators ate when they got off the Ark extends to the insectivores. I wonder what the anteaters would do after they had eaten the two off the Ark! For that matter, was Noah allowed to take more than two ants on to the Ark to feed them on the voyage?!