How to feed and keep the animals on the Ark?

Not that quickly. And especially not if your maintaining a worldview that specifically precludes evolution. After all if organisms could speciate this quickly, then they should be giving rise to new kinds all the time - or else, running headlong into whatever "Barrier" you claim prevents new kinds. Either way we'd see it happen. Then there's no way fish and whales could have survived. Floodwaters dirty enough to deposit the geologic column would have been mud, not a flood. Fish can't breathe mud. If the fish can't survive then the whales can't survive, especially the baleen whales.That fish and whales survive to this day is indicative of one of two things: Noah took aquariums on the Ark; or the Flood is a fairy tale.

Uh-huh, fascinating. Of course the potential for one or two species of fish to survive a change in salinity is totally irrelevant to the question of all known fish species surviving not a change in salinity, but rather, a change from clear water to mud. On the other hand, they are dependant on clean water to eat. AIG convieniently forgets to mention that.

What's the relevance here? Especially to whales? (Also there's that little forum guideline about links with no discussion. This suggests to me that you don't really understand the article.)[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 08-31-2003]

No, I'd say he had at most a few weeks to pack literally tons of food. After all, food doesn't keep for long. If he'd started packing the food 120 years early, it would have been dust by the time the flood came. For that matter the food wouldn't have kept for even the 150 days with shipboard conditions (high humidity, temperature, and darkness - set up the same conditions and see how long a bread loaf lasts.)Noah's not an astronaut, after all. No freeze-dried, vacumn-sealed ice cream for him. No food preservation techniques of any kind, largely.

Not so. The Speciation FAQ at Observed Instances of Speciation defines "species" as a reproductive community. Of course the question is how do you determine the limits of a given reproductive community, especially from the fossil record.What a species is, however, is very well-defined. Determining what belongs to what species is not entirely an exact science, though.There's at least 4 techniques for determining species on that page alone. There's never been, to my knowledge, a way to determine between different "kinds".

Maybe because it's more fun to talk to a person than to try to argue at a book? Just a thought.Out of curiosity - since you present this book as evidence, are you prepared to debate and support whatever the book says? If not, aren't you just ducking out of a debate? That seems hardly polite...

They have spiricles along their body through which they breathe. But if we're talking about "openings in the body that allow air in and out" then they're the same as nostrils. All in all it just shows that the Bible authors lacked proper grounding in entomology.

A tricky feat for a dude who didn't exist, don't you think? (Especially since there's stuff in Genesis that happens way after Noah and his family are dead...) Skepticism, by definition, can't ever be wrong, as it's merely the position that all statements must be supported by evidence. Skeptics, in a spiritual sense, are all from Missouri - the "Show Me" state.

Not to mention that it also has to work on plants, which display as much sorting as anything in the animal kingdom...

Well, reasonable people have a natural distrust of authority. That's the basis of democracy, in fact.I mean, what are you advocating here? Immediate, automatic submission to authority?