More flood questions...

The ark must have been an amazing example of pre-civilization engineering.

Large herbivores, like elephants, eat about 350 pounds of vegetation a day. Large carnivores, like lions, eat about 75 pounds of meat a week. Not only must Noah make enough room on his boat to store all of this food, but he must have some way to keep it fresh and consumable for over a year--without refrigeration. (That's about 120 tons of food, for one year, for one pair of elephants. How many "kinds" of elephants where there on the ark? Perhaps five might cover it, that's 600 tons of food.)


Genesis 7:13
"In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;
They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort."

All of the animals boarded the ark "in the selfsame day." Since there were several million kinds of species, they would need to board at a rate of at least 100 per second. How did poor Noah and his family make sure that the correct number of each species entered through the door and then get them all settled into their proper living quarters so efficiently?

How could he tell the male and female beetles (there are more than 400,000 species) apart?



Genesis 8:20
"And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar."

Noah kills the "clean beasts" and burns their dead bodies for God. This would have caused the extinction of all "clean" animals since only two of each were taken onto the ark.
 
Are you sure you have all the facts correct? Are you sure you understand what you are reading correctly?


Genesis 7:2 You shall take seven pairs of every clean animal with you, the male and his female. Of the animals that are not clean, take two, the male and his female.

Genesis Chapters 1-11 are likely the re-telling of an oral tradition. In other words, the stories had to be easy enough to understand so that they could be re-told again and again. They are true stories but the details may not be perfectly accurate.

The creation story is a good example. How would God explain quantum mechanics to stone age people? It is like trying to tell a 3-year old how an internal combustion engine works and expecting them to be able to explain it to someone else.
 
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I usually do not like to get into word games with people, but this is a clear case of reading what you want to into the text. The passage reads:

took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl.

of - used as a function word to indicate the whole that includes the part denoted by the preceding word <most of the army> b -- used as a function word to indicate a whole or quantity from which a part is removed or expended <gave of his time>


I will not reply anymore to this thread.
 
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I'll give you that one in this context. My mistake. I've discussed that passage with others in the past, and you're the first to point that out. Thank you.

What about the other two issues? (The volume of food required, and the time it would take to load every kind of animal and insect within one day.)
 
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My understanding of Genesis 1-11 is a re-telling of an oral tradition. See my earlier post (#2) for an analogy of what it must be like for God to explain how he created the world to stone age man. The Bible contains all types of literature including literal history, figurative allegory, apocalyptic. An excellent primer on that is "How to read the bible for all its worth" by Fee and Stuart.

Frankly, if one must accept Genesis chapters 1-11 as literal, I will quickly join the non-believers.
 
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Originally posted by Mephibosheth
Evolution and creation are not mutually exclusive

I think that depends on what you mean by "creation". Clearly evolution (actually all of science) is incompatible with the young-earth-everything-at-once-global-flood theory of creation derived from a literal reading of Genesis.

You must have something else in mind.
 
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Originally posted by Mephibosheth
Evolution and creation are not mutually exclusive ideas.

Indeed. While being athiest, I see nothing wrong with the basic concept that, if there is a God, he used evolution as a tool.

The global flood catastrophe, where "every living substance" is destroyed, is another story.
 
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Originally posted by LiveFreeOrDie


I think that depends on what you mean by &quot;creation&quot;. Clearly evolution (actually all of science) is incompatible with the young-earth-everything-at-once-global-flood theory of creation derived from a literal reading of Genesis.

You must have something else in mind.

Agree with your post. I think Theyre Here (nice Poltergeist reference BTW) is on the right track. The "First Cause" is nothing beyond the theoretical in any realm at this point.

I would say that evolution does have its problems in explaining the "why" part of species change. One specific example is lobe-finned fish and their change into pedestrian animals. The current theory of pedestrian, terrestrial animals is that they developed legs before emerging from the water. Why would they do that? What advantage do legs give an aquatic animal? Just a curiousity that I would like answered some day.
 
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Originally posted by Mephibosheth
What advantage do legs give an aquatic animal? Just a curiousity that I would like answered some day.

One reasonably accepted hypothesis is that an early pre-land fish/amphibian had an advantage with strong fins jumping ashore to grab surprised, unsuspecting insects. With these skills, they would have become well fed and likely to pass their traits to offspring. Who then would further develop their skills to surprise those tasty insects and grubs on the shore… and so on. Collar bones and shoulders evolved slowly in response for the need to get the bigger, faster insects and grubs.

(BTW -- The chosen handle "Theyre Here" is indeed a ploy on the movie, but with a twist. I've been semi-active on conspiracy boards for some time -- since CompuServe -- but as a skeptic debunker mostly. The handle "Theyre Here" catches the paranoic conspiracists off-guard he he he)
 
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Your hypothesis is certainly possible, but not as complete an answer as I hope will be put forth some day. There is evidence (I will dig it up and post) that shoulders and hips were developing in open-ocean, lobe-finned fish before the "need" was obvious.

Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks to not knowing every detail and the zeal to fill in the blanks sometimes leads to conjecture. This has been done countless times using evolutionary theory to explain something, like you have done here. While it is reasonable conjecture (since no one can currently prove otherwise), I think it is why some religious folk have slapped the "religion" label on "Evolutionists".

If you take a step back for a moment, you can see that making conjecture in hypotheses can look like blind advocacy and can look like an odd type of "faith", if you will, to believe the hypothesis. It is one reason I am not afraid to say "I don't know" when it comes to things like this.
 
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That's why I used "Hypothesis". In scientific terms, "Theory" is the highest state of a scientific principal (something creationists either don’t understand, or purposefully ignore).

It’s one idea on how the process might have happened. It’s been a long time since I studied biology… having most of my real formal education in physics and cosmology… but working in advertising… life is funny.
 
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LewisWildermuth

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My guess, and I say guess not hypothesis because I made this up without looking at much and I'm half asleep) would be as follows...

A typ of fish that lived in shallow water in an area that was prone to seasonal dry spells found that a genetic defect that caused excess muscle and fin mass that usualy was a hinderence in a stable aquatic environ helped it flip and move to another puddle of water when the one it was in dried up. Since more of the ones with that once defective gene survived the defect was now benificial and became stronger and stronger in the gene pool.

One bad thing about evolution is that we as humans are stepping beyond many of the driving changes and our body may never fully loose some of the things it was trying to get rid of. Wisedom teeth being one of those. Since we cut them out if they become a problem we are not allowing natural selection to remove them by stoping the people with that gene still overly active from reproducing due to the bad things that happen when they smash into the other teeth. If we want to get rid of them now at a genetic level we'll probably have to do it ourselves.
 
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seebs

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Originally posted by LewisWildermuth
My guess, and I say guess not hypothesis because I made this up without looking at much and I'm half asleep) would be as follows...

A typ of fish that lived in shallow water in an area that was prone to seasonal dry spells found that a genetic defect that caused excess muscle and fin mass that usualy was a hinderence in a stable aquatic environ helped it flip and move to another puddle of water when the one it was in dried up. Since more of the ones with that once defective gene survived the defect was now benificial and became stronger and stronger in the gene pool.

One bad thing about evolution is that we as humans are stepping beyond many of the driving changes and our body may never fully loose some of the things it was trying to get rid of. Wisedom teeth being one of those. Since we cut them out if they become a problem we are not allowing natural selection to remove them by stoping the people with that gene still overly active from reproducing due to the bad things that happen when they smash into the other teeth. If we want to get rid of them now at a genetic level we'll probably have to do it ourselves.

Which can come perilously close to the idiot I ran into on another forum who advocated sterilizing all the "stupid" people.

It's not the same thing, and indeed, genetic treatment might be a good thing... but think how dumb we'd feel if we carefully eliminated tonsils and appendixes from our species, and *THEN* found out about their role in the immune system!
 
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Originally posted by LewisWildermuth
A typ of fish that lived in shallow water in an area that was prone to seasonal dry spells found that a genetic defect that caused excess muscle and fin mass that usualy was a hinderence in a stable aquatic environ helped it flip and move to another puddle of water when the one it was in dried up. Since more of the ones with that once defective gene survived the defect was now benificial and became stronger and stronger in the gene pool.

The "mud-skipper" hypothesis was abandoned about 10 years ago. The following link and some of its links will explain what I am trying to say a bit better. Acanthostega (sp?) was an aquatic tetrapod which could not have lived on land. Maybe a backward dead-end, but who knows?

http://www.mdgekko.com/devonian/Order/new-order.html
 
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