Does The Flood Add up?

What you call species is not necessarily a Kind. Representatives of the Kinds were on the ark, but that could mean dozens or even hundreds of varieties of that same Kind were NOT on the ark. Some that were on the ark possibly didn't survive the drastically changed climate and other conditions after the Flood.I would have thought this very standard explanation would have been better known around here by now.

Rapid geographic and reproductive isolation of migrating offspring. I don't know why this is problematic. You can breed in very dramatic changes in some animals -- dogs -- in a very few generations. All it takes is reproductive isolation.

I've hardly even looked in on this thread. What good questions that haven't been answered a hundred times over already? A lot of silly stuff on this last page or so.Never mind, I'm reading the thing now, so if I find these "good questions" and answer them that should take care of it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The OP basically takes scientific dates as truth, and YECs challenge those dates so what really is there for us to answer here?Hinduism is one of the pagan religions that arose among Noah's descendants. Native Americans are a group of Noah's descendants that migrated across the landbridge way less than 10,000 years ago.Yes, there is really no problem with the idea that human populations grew very quickly. A little basic math can show how many in a short time, and when groups get isolated they develop their own unique characteristics in not-so-many generations -- 20 generations is quite a few for that purpose. Nothing too mysterious about any of this really. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

An absence of mention does not prove they didn't exist and weren't noticed. However, why is this such a problem? It is possible they (micro)evolved from an earlier parent type that was on the ark, after locating themselves in a particular geographic environment that then split from the original unified land mass and became Australia. Or maybe both were on the ark and migrated to that portion of the land mass. It's all a guess. There is no reason to assume that insects were taken on the ark the way the animals were. I would suppose it likely that koalas did not exist at the time of the ark but (micro)evolved from a parent type that was on the ark, becoming reproductively isolated at some point, and specialized as noted.

Why is this a problem? From the Bible believing point of view, ALL human beings living today are descendants of Noah and his sons. that includes the Aborigines. We assume that the time spans attributed to various human groups that predate Noah are simply erroneous exaggerations.

This is no doubt simply the usual straw man misrepresentation based on today's count of species. Certainly there are who-knows-how-many more species living today than were taken on the ark, "species" being variations on the original that naturally (micro)evolved in many many directions after the flood from the original pair of each kind saved on the ark.

It took merely Jacob and his family of twelve sons and their families to grow to more than a million Israelites in Egypt in 400 years starting around 1850 BC or so. It is mathematically possible. So we'd assume that the Egyptians had multiplied on a similar scale after the Flood a few hundred years earlier, and that pyramid-building was what the Israelites were doing there. Yes, we just assume different dates.

What's silly is this imposition of today's knowledge on the past.
The Flood story didn't require any particular knowledge about the extent of the earth by the people of the time. It was God who told Noah it would cover the whole earth. Revelation. Not human imagination or experience.The Americas did not exist before the Flood. The continents split some time after the flood. Then the Americas were apparently populated by migration across the Bering strait landbridge.

If you really assume that the ark story is true, none of this should pose a problem for you. How long do you think it would take to form an ethnic group or any genetically sharply defined group? Hardly any time at all. A few generations of geographic and reproductive isolation will do it just fine. Both natural selection and migration of people into regions where their genetic capacities could handle the environment can explain all of this. Give it all a mere few hundred years and you'll have genetically and ethnically very distinct groups. By creationist assumptions there was far greater genetic richness the farther back you go. Many repeated splittings and migrations, all processes of selection and migration and reproductive isolation and so on, reduce this richness a great deal over many incidents of same, and that is what makes in-breeding a problem. NOW if you separated out say a dozen people at random to live in isolation you would breed in a horrible number of diseases in a few generations.

Yes.

Assume great genetic potential in the originals of all living things, that is gradually reduced over the generations, and especially reduced by population splits and reproductive isolation of many groups that migrate off into their own geographic locations. We assume great genetic potential still existed in Noah and his family -- they were still living hundreds of years in those days, demonstrating great health and vigor still strong in the human race. So that the beginning of all human beings from that point, from those few people, was not a problem. It becomes a problem hundreds of years later though, and is very much a problem now, as diseases have multiplied greatly since then.

You don't have to assume great differences among the sons of Noah and their wives, though there could have been, since genetic diversity in any couple would have been much greater in those days, leading to much more variety in offspring. We assume far greater genetic potential so that all those varieties would have been expressed simply in the processes of migration and reproductive/genetic isolation of the different groups.

SO cute that all the mountains just HAPPENED to be sea beds and there is all this limestone everywhere but somehow none of that is even remotely possibly evidence for a worldwide flood. So cute.

The Bible does NOT say they were on the ark. It says two representatives of each Kind were on the ark. That would mean that many species/varieties of the Kind were not on the ark and died in the flood.