Super Evolution and the Flood

I'm guessing your goal is to present a scenario as favorable to creationists as possible in order to remove possible objections. In that case you should merge "kinds" as often as seems to make sense.I think lions and tigers should just be cats.Squirrels and mice should just be rodents.Platypus should probably be monotremes, which would include the echidna.--Percy

Give 'em a break and drop the interbreeding requirement. "Kind" has never really been defined, so why should you be the one to do it?--Percy

I'm not a lumper. The goal isn't to devise a rational classification system - we already have one that works pretty well, it's just that creationists prefer the undefined "kind". Superevolution is the creationist proposal for addressing the space problem on the ark, so you have to balance the "fitting and maintaining all the kinds on the ark" problem with the "just how fast can evolution go" problem.So your points about which lumping might create bigger problems for superevolution than they save in space are good ones.Commenting on another decision Taz made, I disagree with removing aquatic mammals from the list, and later when we get to fish I'll even more strongly disagree with leaving them off the list, because global flooding including over the land would disrupt salinity/mineral levels everywhere. There's no way to know what level of salinity would be the result, and probably aquatic mammals would be better off than fish and other ocean/lake/pond life, but huge numbers of species of aquatic creatures would be doomed.--Percy

Actually, I've never heard it put this way before. Do you have a link to a webpage where this is clearly stated? It would be helpful to read a complete presentation of the idea, especially if it included a definition of "kind".But just to make sure I understand, you're saying that the YEC claim is that there are very few "kinds", that therefore the ark didn't need to carry very many different "kinds" of animals, that after the flood the "kinds" quickly evolved into the many species we see today, and that they also quickly evolved barriers to inter-species fertility. Do I have that right?--Percy

Oh, is that your point.No one is saying that YECs deny the possibility of "kinds" quickly evolving into mutually infertile species. If anything we're lamenting the YEC lack of scientific specificity of any kind regarding post-flood repopulation. I'm sure that if YECs have been specific about this that we're completely unaware of it, and if you know places where they have been specific then please help us out by providing links.The near term goal in this thread is to frame the problem in a way as favorable to the YEC position as possible, and this means minimizing the amount of evolution necessary, which means grouping species into "kinds" based upon their degree of interfertility.--Percy

This scenario is sufficiently detailed as to be obviously impossible. Let's say on average that each animal cage had to be serviced by cleaning and adding food only once per week, and that it only took 10 minutes for each cage, and each person on the ark worked 16 hours per day at this task. Does that seem reasonable to anyone? Certainly doesn't seem reasonable to me, but even that leaves 10,000 animals per week unfed.Naturally its much worse than that. Anyone who has ever worked on a small family farm knows how long it really takes to feed just the hens, the pigs, the horses, and while cows and goats just graze, this wouldn't have been an option on the ark. And anyone who has ever raised hamsters and gerbils knows how long it really takes to service the cage, even the modern ones with all the accoutrements. Then there's all the time that has to spent going back and forth to the stores for more food and to the deck to dump more waste. There's just no way.--Percy

But I think this thread addresses the YEC contention that the story of the ark is scientifically possible and doesn't require miracles. In other words, their contention is that the earth is young and you can teach that in science class, the flood happened and you can teach that in science class, and Noah saved all the animals on the ark and you can teach that in science class.Any YEC scenario that invokes miracles isn't really of interest because it is obviously unscientific and so is no threat to science education.--Percy

Hi ICANT and Graft2vine,You both argue that the tales of Genesis couldn't have taken place without miracles, but that's the claim of creationism, more specifically, creation science, that a young earth and a global flood responsible for world geology have scientific legitimacy. Claims that this is science were what the trials in Dayton, Little Rock and Louisiana and at the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. were all about.This thread is a response to just one of the specific claims, that it is scientifically possible for the animals to be saved on Noah's ark during the flood and to repopulate the world afterward. If you believe that this couldn't possibly be science and would require miracles I can only agree with you, and in their hearts I'm sure the creationists understand this also, but it isn't claims of religion but of science that they bring to school boards and state legislatures.--Percy

I can only agree with what you say, but my original point was that I understand this thread, in its second breath as revitalized by Taz, to be considering non-miraculous ways for the proper selection of animals to fit on the ark along with enough food and water and manpower to survive through the flood for purposes of repopulation through super-evolution. If you allow acts of God then there's no problem since God can do anything.--Percy