Sir Buckethead
Dec 27 2003, 10:48 PM
I assume that you mean by "scientific analysis" that you wish to discuss whether or not something like Noahs ark could have occured, within biblically stated parameters. Very well.
We will interpret tha bible literally.
For starters, allow me to say that we are not debating whether Noahs ark occured, unless you have heretofor unseen evidence that could prove or disprove that. Rather, we will discuss whether or not it is possible for Noahs ark to have occured. Several things convince me that this is so:
1) The ark was big enough to carry all necessary specimens and food provided they were taken on as juveniles.
2) There has been time enough for differentiation amongst kinds after the time of the ark, further reducing necessary space.
3) There are concentrations of water at which both fresh and salt water fish can survive.
[edit: changed thread subtitle to reflect circumstances.]
Vox Canis
Jan 1 2004, 09:00 AM
The first thing that's going to be required for 1) and 2) to be answered is a definition of the word "kind". Precisely what makes a "kind" is crucial to understanding how many "kinds" there were and how much differentiation had to occur after the flood. Was there a "bug kind"? If so, there hasn't been nearly enough time to develop into all the species of arachnids, insects, and worms. Even if there's just an "insect kind", you have the same problem. But having a "flying insect kind" and a "walking insect kind" and a "jumping insect kind" and a "flying arachnid kind" and a "walking arachnid kind" require similarly specific "kinds" for the other animals and thus decrease the room avaliable in the ark. You're also going to have to consistently and concretely state your criteria for categorizing one "kind" from another.
For number 1 in particular, you're going to have to define the size of the ark and how you came by that. It's unlikely that a cubit in Noah's time converted into the same number of inches (18) as a modern cubit. Also, for number 1, you have to take into account waste disposal space, ventilation space, and space for rails and barriers to separate the different animals from each other and from the food stores. Speaking of food stores, you have to define how long the ark was afloat. Genesis is a bit sketchy there, saying 150 days (7:24), seven months (8:5) and at least ten months (8:6). So you'll need to pick a number and support your choice.
For number 2, you need to establish when the flood occured, which could open a whole 'nother kettle of fish. If the date you pick had a promenient civilzation living in it, like the Epytians or the Chinese, you'll have proven it *didn't* happen since none of their records record a flood. Unfortunately, given a literal 6 day creation and a young earth, the most common methods of dating the flood put it squarely in the middle of Egypts big pyramid-building fad. Without the 6 day creation it would work better, but why argue for the legitmacy of this story and not the other? Pick one (old earth or young earth) and we'll assume it's true for the sake of the argument. I don't want this turning into a "six day" debate, so if you pick that one we'll just accept it and move on from there.
For number three, you're again going to have to define "kind" because there are a few species of *modern* fish (primarily the more delicate tropical species) which cannot survive a salinity change of under 0.5% in either direction. How specific you get with your "kind" definition will determine whether or not argument number 3 holds water (pun intended).
To add to the third premise, I submit that the problem with creatures not taken aboard the ark is not, in fact, fish at all. The problem is plants. But that argument will, once again, rest on your definition of "kind" (does it include plants? Is there a "plant kind"?) and your interpretation of how long the waters covered the earth.
***
In short, you need to be a whole lot more specific if you want to show that the world-wide flood could have happened. Your three criteria, by themselves, are entirely too vague if you don't agree to define the terms by which they could be evaluated. Most important is "kind" definition, size of the ark, and length of the flood.
Sir Buckethead
Jan 1 2004, 10:09 PM
I figured i'd specififed Young earth when I said we'd take the bible literally.
And once you accept the existence of a flood, it drastically changes the timetables anyway. Those egyptians will just have to pick it up a bit.
I don't know if what I'm looking for is a kind. Whazt I'm looking for is whatever can evolve from what to what in the 4000 or so years they've got to do it. Likewise, when it comes to fish and salinity, for all we know they were not at all as sensitive back then. Or twice as much.
If we don't know what a cubit is, then the entire "is the ark big enough" argument is pointless. I hadn't thought that it would have changed.
My personal theory on plants is that its no problem. Entire trees don't have to survive, just seed pods (though we do know that at least some trees did survive) Also, floating masses of vegetation could insulate and support plants on the inside, or at least cuttings or seeds.
Vox Canis
Jan 1 2004, 11:42 PM
| QUOTE |
| I figured i'd specififed Young earth when I said we'd take the bible literally. |
Ok, six days, check. Now, when in the earth's timeline did the flood occur?
| QUOTE |
| Those egyptians will just have to pick it up a bit. |
I'm sure they'll be happy to backdate all their records for you. One thing you have to remember - Egyptians are not gods. They are incapable making a young civilization "look old".
| QUOTE |
| I don't know if what I'm looking for is a kind. Whazt I'm looking for is whatever can evolve from what to what in the 4000 or so years they've got to do it. |
In order to know what can evolve, we have to know what we're starting out with! Are we starting out with a pair of Bill's Generic Airbreathing Critters, or are we starting out with a pair of Feathered Critters, a pair of Fuzzy Critters, a pair of Hard Critters, a pair of Tiny Critters, a pair of NonFuzzy Critters with Horns... or are we going even more specific?
We CANNOT tell whether or not the current species diversity could have evolved in 4000 years without at least guessing at what the species diversity was like 4000 years ago. Had the placental mammals diverged from the marsupials yet? Did we have both lizards and snakes, or just lizards? Generic Amphibian Critter, or frogs and salamanders, or frogs and toads and salamanders?
| QUOTE |
| Likewise, when it comes to fish and salinity, for all we know they were not at all as sensitive back then. Or twice as much. |
So rampant unsupported speculation is going to be the order of the day? Fine. But we still have to know what we're starting with. In any case, I don't know how you could win this one, since the earliest, most primative fish we know of are saltwater species, and enough rain to cover the earth, even if there were no mountains AT ALL, would dilute the seas to a salinity of almost 0%. If you're going to claim there was no salt water before the flood, you're going to have to back it up - because one thing we DO know, and can prove, is that salt water has around for a VERY long time.
| QUOTE |
| If we don't know what a cubit is, then the entire "is the ark big enough" argument is pointless. I hadn't thought that it would have changed. |
A cubit is the distance between your fingertip and your elbow. It was only standardized to be 18 inches at the same time the foot (the length of your foot) was standardized to be 12 inches and the yard (the distance from your outstretched fingertip to your turned-away nose) was standardized to be 36 inches. So unless God had instructed Noah to use a "metric cubit", you're going to have to know how big Noah is in order to find out how big the ark is.
Of course, if you want to go ahead and use 18 inches for the sake of argument, I'll be ok with that. We simply don't know, and have no way of knowing, how big a Biblical cubit was. I *could* play your speculation game and say "Well, for all we know, a cubit was six inches, and the ark was a toy boat, so it couldn't have happened", but I'd like to stick to facts rather than pulling off-the-wall scenarios out of my ass.
| QUOTE |
| Entire trees don't have to survive, just seed pods (though we do know that at least some trees did survive) |
Not possible without a miracle. Whether the flood was 150 days, 7 months, or >10 months, an olive tree would not survive underwater. Olive trees are a species evolved to live in an area of low rainfall. It doesn't take much to drown an olive tree - covering it entirely with water, assuming the force of the flood didn't uproot it and the pressure of the water didn't crush it, will kill it. Further, the water over it would deprive it of specific wavelengths of light. Plants don't live for 150 days without the red part of the spectrum (the first to go), and that only requires the water to be about 10 feet deep.
Similarly, seeds don't live in an aquatic enviroment for 150 days (or seven months, or >10 months) without trying to germinate. Seeds have a seed coat, the purpose of which is to absorb water for the seed. When enough water has been absorbed, the seed sprouts roots. Ever seen a hydroponic garden? It doesn't take the better part of a year to grow those plants! For that matter, ever had a potato sprout roots in your cabinet? But you can't grow a potato plant in your cabinet, and hydroponics requires some pretty specific setups... a germinated seed in the roiling ocean (even if it is entirely freshwater by that point) will die very quickly due to its inability to keep leaves (the photosynthesis source and where respiration occurs) in the air consistently, and the lack of nutrients (particularly nitrogen, which can only be absorbed through the roots). That's a really easy thing to confim on your own. Drop a couple bean seeds in a glass of water, and be sure to shake the glass every time you wander by. Record the results at 150 days, 7 months, and 10 months, then at the end of your personal definition of how long the flood lasted, dump the whole setup on the ground outside. Watch the plant not survive.
Another problem that just occured to me about the length of the flood.. some insect species have a lifespan shorter than any of the given flood lengths. Mayflies, for instance, complete their entire reproductive cycle in 18 days, and can be very difficult to get to mate (a friend of mine had to do just that for a biology class. She started out with about two dozen mayflies in male/female pairs, and was down to her last three before she got a male and a female to mate. And that was in ideal lab conditions - I'd love to know how Noah could even tell male from female).
But again, every single bit of this hinges on your definition of "kind". The debate CANNOT continue without that definition at the very least.
Sir Buckethead
Jan 2 2004, 12:50 AM
| QUOTE |
| Ok, six days, check. Now, when in the earth's timeline did the flood occur? |
Lets say 2K years in.
| QUOTE |
| I'm sure they'll be happy to backdate all their records for you. One thing you have to remember - Egyptians are not gods. They are incapable making a young civilization "look old". |
no, but hte flood can.
| QUOTE |
| In order to know what can evolve, we have to know what we're starting out with! Are we starting out with a pair of Bill's Generic Airbreathing Critters, |
no.
| QUOTE |
| or are we starting out with a pair of Feathered Critters, a pair of Fuzzy Critters, a pair of Hard Critters, a pair of Tiny Critters, a pair of NonFuzzy Critters with Horns... |
no.
| QUOTE |
| or are we going even more specific? |
yes. We have to. You can't evolve that much in 4K years.
| QUOTE |
| We CANNOT tell whether or not the current species diversity could have evolved in 4000 years without at least guessing at what the species diversity was like 4000 years ago. Had the placental mammals diverged from the marsupials yet? Did we have both lizards and snakes, or just lizards? Generic Amphibian Critter, or frogs and salamanders, or frogs and toads and salamanders? |
there were lizards and snakes, frogs and toads and salamanders, placental and marsupial mammals. I'm pretty much going to ok whatever you come up with.
| QUOTE |
| So rampant unsupported speculation is going to be the order of the day? |
Definitely.
| QUOTE |
| Fine. But we still have to know what we're starting with. In any case, I don't know how you could win this one, since the earliest, most primative fish we know of are saltwater species, and enough rain to cover the earth, even if there were no mountains AT ALL, would dilute the seas to a salinity of almost 0%. If you're going to claim there was no salt water before the flood, you're going to have to back it up - because one thing we DO know, and can prove, is that salt water has around for a VERY long time. |
Not all the floodwaters were rain. An uknown percentage was from the "fountains of the deep" something that apparently only God can open.
| QUOTE |
| A cubit is the distance between your fingertip and your elbow. It was only standardized to be 18 inches at the same time the foot (the length of your foot) was standardized to be 12 inches and the yard (the distance from your outstretched fingertip to your turned-away nose) was standardized to be 36 inches. So unless God had instructed Noah to use a "metric cubit", you're going to have to know how big Noah is in order to find out how big the ark is. |
That's fascinating. Yes, for the sake of simplicity lets call 'er 18 inches.
| QUOTE |
| Of course, if you want to go ahead and use 18 inches for the sake of argument, I'll be ok with that. We simply don't know, and have no way of knowing, how big a Biblical cubit was. I *could* play your speculation game and say "Well, for all we know, a cubit was six inches, and the ark was a toy boat, so it couldn't have happened", but I'd like to stick to facts rather than pulling off-the-wall scenarios out of my ass. |
Then why, oh fact-finder, are you bothering with kinds and whatnot if you know there's no way to tell our limitations here?
| QUOTE |
| Not possible without a miracle. Whether the flood was 150 days, 7 months, or >10 months, an olive tree would not survive underwater. Olive trees are a species evolved to live in an area of low rainfall. It doesn't take much to drown an olive tree - covering it entirely with water, assuming the force of the flood didn't uproot it and the pressure of the water didn't crush it, will kill it. Further, the water over it would deprive it of specific wavelengths of light. Plants don't live for 150 days without the red part of the spectrum (the first to go), and that only requires the water to be about 10 feet deep |
The tree did not have to be submerged for as long as Noah was afloat. In fact, since it was in an elevated area it almost certainly was not. Also, again we run into not knowing how tough an olive tree was.
| QUOTE |
| Similarly, seeds don't live in an aquatic enviroment for 150 days (or seven months, or >10 months) without trying to germinate. Seeds have a seed coat, the purpose of which is to absorb water for the seed. When enough water has been absorbed, the seed sprouts roots. Ever seen a hydroponic garden? It doesn't take the better part of a year to grow those plants! For that matter, ever had a potato sprout roots in your cabinet? But you can't grow a potato plant in your cabinet, and hydroponics requires some pretty specific setups... a germinated seed in the roiling ocean (even if it is entirely freshwater by that point) will die very quickly due to its inability to keep leaves (the photosynthesis source and where respiration occurs) in the air consistently, and the lack of nutrients (particularly nitrogen, which can only be absorbed through the roots). That's a really easy thing to confim on your own. Drop a couple bean seeds in a glass of water, and be sure to shake the glass every time you wander by. Record the results at 150 days, 7 months, and 10 months, then at the end of your personal definition of how long the flood lasted, dump the whole setup on the ground outside. Watch the plant not survive. |
But the seed need not be alone in the ocean. It could be buried or frozen or, my personal theory, encased in a floating mass of vegetation.
| QUOTE |
| Another problem that just occured to me about the length of the flood.. some insect species have a lifespan shorter than any of the given flood lengths. Mayflies, for instance, complete their entire reproductive cycle in 18 days, and can be very difficult to get to mate (a friend of mine had to do just that for a biology class. She started out with about two dozen mayflies in male/female pairs, and was down to her last three before she got a male and a female to mate. And that was in ideal lab conditions - I'd love to know how Noah could even tell male from female). |
Don't make me trot out another floating mass of vegetation theory, because I'm getting tired of the term.
| QUOTE |
| But again, every single bit of this hinges on your definition of "kind". The debate CANNOT continue without that definition at the very least. |
Why is that necessary when I'm not running on kinds? I'm running on whatever can be evolved from whatever in 4000 years.
Vox Canis
Jan 2 2004, 01:56 AM
| QUOTE |
| Why is that necessary when I'm not running on kinds? I'm running on whatever can be evolved from whatever in 4000 years. |
And we can't know what can evolve in 4000 years if we don't know what we had to start with!
If we're going to work backwards based on fossil records, you have far too many animals to fit into your ark. A pair of non-clean animals and a septet of clean ones for very nearly every animal species we have in modern times. Subtracting the things that hadn't shown up yet (a very small list by current biology standards), and adding the things we've made extinct since then (tasmanian tigers, aurochs, giant lemurs, carrier pigeons, galapagos tortises, dodo birds, coypu, and a list of things longer than my arm), and plus the things we know existed at one time but don't anymore (wooly mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers, dinosaurs, etc.) God said take EVERY animal onto the ark, right? So if woolies and dinos existed, and they hadn't had time to exist and die out in the 2000 years before then, they'd be represented on the ark. We can assume they didn't survive the trip, or died shortly after the trip was over, but if the Bible is literal then they had to have been involved somehow.
On the other hand, if you can define "kind", you have a much better chance at getting all your critters on the ark. There are 4,000 to 5,000 living species of mammals alone, which is somewhere in between 8,000 (4k pairs) and 35,000 (5k by sevens) individual animals (depending on how many species are "clean")! Then there are 6,000 species of reptiles (assuming all reptiles are unclean, that's another 12k individuals), 9,000 species of birds (all unclean, 18k more individuals)... In total, world-wide, there are ~1.4 MILLION living species in the kingdom animalia. Even removing the fish (18,000 species), even assuming all the animals were miniturized by God's Hand, even assuming prehistoric critters don't count, even assuming a "cubit" meant a "yard", they're not going to fit!
The only way you can get them to fit is by dividing them into "kinds". But that division must be defined, because once we're done with "kinds" they need to be able to reproduce and adapt into the 1 million plus species we have around today.
You MUST tell me how many "kinds" Noah had to worry about before we can decide if there was enough space in the ark, and you must define "kind" before we can determine whether or not they could have produced the diversity we see today!
| QUOTE |
| Not all the floodwaters were rain. An uknown percentage was from the "fountains of the deep" something that apparently only God can open. |
The existence of such would be a miracle in and of itself.
| QUOTE |
| Also, again we run into not knowing how tough an olive tree was. |
By what mechanism do you propose olive trees became more fragile in the last 2,000 years?
| QUOTE |
| But the seed need not be alone in the ocean. It could be buried or frozen or, my personal theory, encased in a floating mass of vegetation. |
All three of those plants (buried, frozen, floating) are dead.
Buried: Most seeds are buried anyway. Water absorbs easily into the soil. Seed germinates, plops down roots, pushes up leaves, can't breathe. Dies.
Frozen: Water in the cells expands upon freezing, fracturing the cell walls. Upon thawing, the cell walls fail to hold in the cytoplasm and organelles. Plant dies.
Floating: Seed absorbs water, plant germinates. Roots pop out, find negligible minerals created by decaying plant matter but no nitrogen-fixing bacteria or other detritivores to convert those minerals to useable form. Leaves pop up, plant breathes. Roots exhaust meager mineral supply. Plant dies of nitrogen starvation within two months.
Regardless of what you may think, soil and soil-borne bacteria are VERY important to plant survival. And no, you can't have soil-borne bacteria survive very long without any soil.
Sir Buckethead
Jan 2 2004, 03:50 AM
"(a very small list by current biology standards)"
Which I'm prepared to buck.
"On the other hand, if you can define "kind", you have a much better chance at getting all your critters on the ark. There are 4,000 to 5,000 living species of mammals alone, which is somewhere in between 8,000 (4k pairs) and 35,000 (5k by sevens) individual animals (depending on how many species are "clean")! Then there are 6,000 species of reptiles (assuming all reptiles are unclean, that's another 12k individuals), 9,000 species of birds (all unclean, 18k more individuals)... In total, world-wide, there are ~1.4 MILLION living species in the kingdom animalia. Even removing the fish (18,000 species), even assuming all the animals were miniturized by God's Hand, even assuming prehistoric critters don't count, even assuming a "cubit" meant a "yard", they're not going to fit!"
1) Calm down. I never proposed we go by species. I just never proposed we go by kind either. Primarily because I don't know what one is. (and, it would seem, neither do you). What my proposal is that we go by the minimum unit we can and still have them evolve into the current array of diversity. If that's what a kind is, OK. If it's not, then I don't see how anything, including this "kind" business, can be more useful to my case.
2) Nobody's suggesting we start filling in nonbiblical miracles to account for discrepancies, so you can throw that miniturized by God bunk out hte window. Interestingly enough, there is a natural space-saving measure available. It's called youth.
3) What's this clean/unclean business?
"The existence of such would be a miracle in and of itself."
Make the subject of that sentence "The Flood".
"By what mechanism do you propose olive trees became more fragile in the last 2,000 years?"
By existing in more and more arid environments. Naturally, it is only "fragile" in this context. From another viewpoint you could call it becoming hardier. And I said 4000.
"Floating: Seed absorbs water, plant germinates. Roots pop out, find negligible minerals created by decaying plant matter but no nitrogen-fixing bacteria or other detritivores to convert those minerals to useable form. Leaves pop up, plant breathes. Roots exhaust meager mineral supply. Plant dies of nitrogen starvation within two months."
Are you honestly telling me you arent imaginative enough to come up with any nitrogen sources short of being implanted in the earth? I mean, you're the one who started talking about hydroponics, and then you hit me with this one:
"Regardless of what you may think, soil and soil-borne bacteria are VERY important to plant survival. And no, you can't have soil-borne bacteria survive very long without any soil"
For starters, a mass of vegetation would have to contain some soil.
Vox Canis
Jan 2 2004, 06:38 AM
| QUOTE |
| 1) Calm down. I never proposed we go by species. I just never proposed we go by kind either. Primarily because I don't know what one is. (and, it would seem, neither do you). |
The thing is, nobody does. No definition of "kind" has ever managed to stand up to consistency testing - one of AiG's recent definitions of "kind" inadvertantly ended up putting humans and chimps in the same "kind!" Your argument number (1) fails before it even gets off the ground if you can't even begin to venture a guess as to how many creatures were on the ark. "I just know there was enough room" is a meaningless claim if you don't even have the slightest idea how much room there needed to be.
And, as a result, argument (2) fails because without knowing the genetic material we started out with (number of different individuals, and how far we have to go from "kind" to modern-day "species"), we can't compute what it should be like today. 4000 years is the blink of an eye in evolutionary time. If you can name a single species that we have no evidence for the existence of in 2000B.C., but that exists today, I'll mail you a ten dollar check. I'm purposely *overlooking* that for the sake of this argument, but we can't overlook that and still work backwards like you want to. Working backwards, there were MORE species alive in 2000B.C. than there are today.*
If we used your method, the ark would have had to hold 1,015,000 different SPECIES. Assume there was a single pair of each species (i'll explain the clean/unclean problem in a bit), and each species took up a single cubic foot of space for food and moving-around room and barrier space between it and other animals (an absurdly low number), that would be 2,030,000 cubic feet.
In Genesis 6:15, the ark is described as being 300 cubits by 30 cubits by 50 cubits. Using the "cubit = 18 inches" standard, that means the ark is 450ft by 45ft by 75ft. This is a total volume of 1,518,750 cubic feet - about half as much as would be required even using an insanely small unit for each animal. Even rhinocerous beetles need more than 1 cubic foot of living space and food space for 5, 7, or 10 months (you never did say which flood length you wanted to use).
So as you can clearly see, YOU MUST SPECIFY A NUMBER OF ANIMALS TO GO INTO THE ARK, and therefore YOU MUST DEFINE A "KIND". Otherwise, simple math kicks you in the ass.
| QUOTE |
| Nobody's suggesting we start filling in nonbiblical miracles to account for discrepancies |
Good, so explain how are 8 people going to clean out the shit of 2 million animals? Zoos have dozens of people working that job, and they only have a hundred animals at most.
| QUOTE |
| What's this clean/unclean business? |
You obviously haven't read your Bible. I'm disappointed.
Genesis 7:2 - "Of every clean beast thou shalt take thee by sevens, the male and his female."
So you don't know Biology, you don't know math, and you don't know the Bible. Is there anything relevant to this discussion that you *do* know?
| QUOTE |
| By existing in more and more arid environments. |
Can you show that the north Africa region experienced significantly more rainfall 2000 years ago than today? If not, I may as well say the ark couldn't have floated because gopher wood was Biblical styrfoam for all we know. Right?
| QUOTE |
Are you honestly telling me you arent imaginative enough to come up with any nitrogen sources short of being implanted in the earth?
|
Short of non-Biblical miracles or the ocean suddenly randomly becoming a hydroponics lab? No. Do you honestly think that all there is to hydroponics is dropping plants in a bucket of slightly-salty rainwater?
| QUOTE |
| For starters, a mass of vegetation would have to contain some soil. |
Enough soil for every known tree species to survive for... how long? I'm not going to pick a number for you - you have three perfectly Biblical options available, and it's rather important that we know how long these plants had to live. There's a huge difference between 5 months and 10 months.
*Add a six-day creation into that, and you have to account for pre-historic critters on the ark as well. They DID exist, and some of their contemporaries are still alive today (snakes and crocodiles), so they had to have been on the ark somewhere. Again, I'm overlooking that for your benefit, and you again repay me by refusing to make a cohesive argument.
Vox Canis
Jan 2 2004, 06:45 AM
Oh, and just because I forgot to mention it:
| QUOTE |
| [in reference to the Egyptians making their civilzation look old] no, but hte flood can. |
The flood can change heiroglyphs in such a way as to make it look like a long line of Pharoas reigned for a much greater period of time than they actually did? I thought we weren't assuming non-Biblical miracles?
gsaneli
Jan 2 2004, 05:37 PM
Sorry I was never here, I wont be able to join in the debate though. my house burned down, but its good to see one fo these start up.. ocne I have a more perminent establishment, I'll get one started.
Sir Buckethead
Jan 3 2004, 11:00 PM
| QUOTE |
| The flood can change heiroglyphs in such a way as to make it look like a long line of Pharoas reigned for a much greater period of time than they actually did? I thought we weren't assuming non-Biblical miracles? |
I was unaware of this. Obviously if you would make your case you will have one the argument.
| QUOTE |
| The thing is, nobody does. No definition of "kind" has ever managed to stand up to consistency testing - one of AiG's recent definitions of "kind" inadvertantly ended up putting humans and chimps in the same "kind!" Your argument number (1) fails before it even gets off the ground if you can't even begin to venture a guess as to how many creatures were on the ark. "I just know there was enough room" is a meaningless claim if you don't even have the slightest idea how much room there needed to be. |
I do have the slightest idea, just not an exact idea. Look
| QUOTE |
| And, as a result, argument (2) fails because without knowing the genetic material we started out with (number of different individuals, and how far we have to go from "kind" to modern-day "species"), we can't compute what it should be like today. 4000 years is the blink of an eye in evolutionary time. If you can name a single species that we have no evidence for the existence of in 2000B.C., but that exists today, I'll mail you a ten dollar check. I'm purposely *overlooking* that for the sake of this argument, but we can't overlook that and still work backwards like you want to. Working backwards, there were MORE species alive in 2000B.C. than there are today.* |
You really would lose a lot of ten dollar bills wouldnt you. COnsidering new species have been discovered all the time, there are thousands of examples of creatures with no records of existing in 2000 B.C. the amazonian dust pecker, of which only four sightings have ever been made would qualify.
| QUOTE |
| If we used your method, the ark would have had to hold 1,015,000 different SPECIES. Assume there was a single pair of each species (i'll explain the clean/unclean problem in a bit), and each species took up a single cubic foot of space for food and moving-around room and barrier space between it and other animals (an absurdly low number), that would be 2,030,000 cubic feet. |
How can you possibly say that's my method? There's no way in hell I'm going by species. That's impossible. Your brain is just so hardwired for species/kind that you can't understand that I'm using something else.
| QUOTE |
| In Genesis 6:15, the ark is described as being 300 cubits by 30 cubits by 50 cubits. Using the "cubit = 18 inches" standard, that means the ark is 450ft by 45ft by 75ft. This is a total volume of 1,518,750 cubic feet - about half as much as would be required even using an insanely small unit for each animal. Even rhinocerous beetles need more than 1 cubic foot of living space and food space for 5, 7, or 10 months (you never did say which flood length you wanted to use). |
Well 150 days would obviously be the nicest, but why are you diddling around with teh 1 million species number for? I was convinced before you said anything we can't go by species, that's why I suggested something else. Put down the calculator and take a deep breath, your figurings don't have any relevance.
| QUOTE |
| So as you can clearly see, YOU MUST SPECIFY A NUMBER OF ANIMALS TO GO INTO THE ARK, and therefore YOU MUST DEFINE A "KIND". Otherwise, simple math kicks you in the ass." |
You are correct. I must.
But, sadly, I cannot.
To do so, I would have to take every land animal species, all (apparently) 1 million, and classify each according to it's closest relatives, and then based upon a largely arbitrary and of course outrageous to your eyes evolutionary constant I would have to determine which could be combined into a kind. Then I would have to accept some sort of even more arbitrary unit for a cubit, work out necessary space and juvenile sizes and growth times, and of course briung it all back together into the scenario.
And I got cats to feed, buddy.
| QUOTE |
| Good, so explain how are 8 people going to clean out the shit of 2 million animals? Zoos have dozens of people working that job, and they only have a hundred animals at most. |
Explain why you are so monumentally incapable of grasping that I'm not going by species and therefore 2 million is bunk.
| QUOTE |
You obviously haven't read your Bible. I'm disappointed.
Genesis 7:2 - "Of every clean beast thou shalt take thee by sevens, the male and his female." |
what does that mean?
| QUOTE |
| So you don't know Biology, |
Jumping the gun a bit, aren't we? The time for gloating is a few posts down the line.
| QUOTE |
| you don't know math, |
Rather haughty a statement, don't you think? Did the fact that you aren't using hte same numbers as me ever assault the walls of arrogance encasing your mind?
| QUOTE |
| and you don't know the Bible. Is there anything relevant to this discussion that you *do* know? |
I like to think myself a quick study. I'm not asking you to educate me. Merely to challenge me. Make your case, don't blandly critique mine. If my argument is indeed as pathetic as you make it, this duel should last four more posts at the most.
| QUOTE |
| Can you show that the north Africa region experienced significantly more rainfall 2000 years ago than today? If not, I may as well say the ark couldn't have floated because gopher wood was Biblical styrfoam for all we know. Right? |
No, because you are at the troublesome position of having to show that it couldn't have happened, wheras I only have to figure out some cracked out situation where it possibly could have happened naturally. Luckily the story is fantastical enough to balance out hte two sides.
But, again, to answer your question, no.
Oh, and I was under the impression that the saharan desert formed and expanded in the last 2000 years. So yes the north african environment has become more arid.
But I think it is worth noting that we are talking less arid in 4000 years, not 2000.
| QUOTE |
| Short of non-Biblical miracles or the ocean suddenly randomly becoming a hydroponics lab? No. Do you honestly think that all there is to hydroponics is dropping plants in a bucket of slightly-salty rainwater? |
No, I do not. We arent talking about a rich environment where plants thrive, just a decaying one where plants can survive until the flood is over, a mass of floating vegetation, including hte soil and bacteria contained within, would do the trick.
| QUOTE |
| Enough soil for every known tree species to survive for... how long? I'm not going to pick a number for you - you have three perfectly Biblical options available, and it's rather important that we know how long these plants had to live. There's a huge difference between 5 months and 10 months. |
lets call it 150 days. The soil is not what is sustaining ht etree, merely providing trace nutrients.
| QUOTE |
| *Add a six-day creation into that, and you have to account for pre-historic critters on the ark as well. They DID exist, and some of their contemporaries are still alive today (snakes and crocodiles), so they had to have been on the ark somewhere. Again, I'm overlooking that for your benefit, and you again repay me by refusing to make a cohesive argument. |
i don't see how a cohesive argument is possible. Why not just take it issue by issue until we find an irreconcilable discrepancy? This is an act of generosity on my part.
Sir Buckethead
Jan 3 2004, 11:01 PM
gsaneli: Awfully sorry. You got my email, right? Vox waited a respectful time before jumping in, don't worry.
Vox Canis
Jan 4 2004, 01:37 AM
| QUOTE |
| How can you possibly say that's my method? There's no way in hell I'm going by species. That's impossible. |
I stopped reading right here.
You have no debate if you refuse to tell us WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE GOING BY.
You may as well say "I just know X number of glarps can live in a floogle for Y days." How many glarps? "Dunno." What's a glarp? "Dunno." How big is a floogle? "Dunno." How many days? "Dunno." But I can't refute it, therefore you must be right!
Vox Canis
Jan 4 2004, 01:40 AM
| QUOTE |
You are correct. I must.
But, sadly, I cannot. |
Then you lose.
If you don't know how many animals have to fit in the ark, how the fuck can you still say this with a straight face:
| QUOTE |
| The ark was big enough to carry all necessary specimens and food provided they were taken on as juveniles. |
And if you don't know how different species were then than they are now, how the fuck can you say this with a straight face:
| QUOTE |
| There has been time enough for differentiation amongst kinds after the time of the ark, further reducing necessary space. |
| QUOTE |
| what does that mean? |
*sigh*
How the hell can you go through life believing in a book you've never read and can't understand when it's spoon-fed to you??
It means he took 7 of all the "clean" animals!
| QUOTE |
| i don't see how a cohesive argument is possible. Why not just take it issue by issue until we find an irreconcilable discrepancy? This is an act of generosity on my part. |
Act of generosity? How about "act of wasting my time"?? The irreconcilable discrepency is that you have no fucking clue how many animals had to be in the ark. You expect ME to give you a number, then bitch when I give you the only number available. If you don't like my number, either give me your own or admit you're just pulling shit out of your ass because your mommy told you it was true. I'm sick of dancing around in circles with you. Either put up something more debatable than gratuitously undefined terms or go back to the Land of Cognitive Dissonance you came from.
I'm going to now say to you exactly what I should have said in the first post, but instead used the principle of charity to ignore:
1) Prove it
2) Prove it
3) Prove it
Sir Buckethead
Jan 6 2004, 12:13 AM
| QUOTE |
Then you lose.
If you don't know how many animals have to fit in the ark, how the fuck can you still say this with a straight face: And if you don't know how different species were then than they are now, how the fuck can you say this with a straight face: |
I already told you I can't, ok? I already told you that you have shown me the enormity of the task and I lack the wherewithall to complete it. I can specify my terms but not compute them. I already said this. The three pillars of my "argument" which was really just a opinionated statement to get a debate going, are not capable of being clearly defined without enough assumptions to make the result worthless. The basic idea was : Can you provide evidence disproving any of these? And If not, or if you'd rather not, can you provide any stumbling blocks to the credibility of the Ark? Here and there you have done so, and I thought we were getting on nicely, I was unaware how frustrated you were getting about my opening post.
| QUOTE |
*sigh*
How the hell can you go through life believing in a book you've never read and can't understand when it's spoon-fed to you??
It means he took 7 of all the "clean" animals! |
I meant what does the "male and his female" part mean.
| QUOTE |
| Act of generosity? How about "act of wasting my time"?? The irreconcilable discrepency is that you have no fucking clue how many animals had to be in the ark. |
This was said by me several times already.
| QUOTE |
| You expect ME to give you a number, then bitch when I give you the only number available. |
I don't expect you to give me a number, I expect you to argue against he existence of an ark. If in the process of doing so you give me numbers that do not fit he scenario, I am not being hypocritical in telling you so without providing numbers of my own. I am being realistic about my own ability to classify every land dwelling organism on the earth.
| QUOTE |
| If you don't like my number, either give me your own or admit you're just pulling shit out of your ass |
Actually, pulling shit out of my ass would be giving you a number of my own without the ability to do so. What I'm doing now is admitting that.
| QUOTE |
| because your mommy told you it was true. I'm sick of dancing around in circles with you. Either put up something more debatable than gratuitously undefined terms or go back to the Land of Cognitive Dissonance you came from. |
I have put up something debatable. The possibility of an ark. Will you accept my apology and argue about it?
Vox Canis
Jan 6 2004, 01:13 AM
Fine, we'll take your opening remarks as GIVENS rather than disputed points.
A few questions to make sure I don't end up attacking a straw man at any point:
1) Where did the water go?
2) Were there mountains or seas before the Flood or not?
3) What do we do about dinosaurs?
Sir Buckethead
Jan 6 2004, 02:20 AM
1) Back into the fountains of the deep.
2) There were both.
3) I'd like to kill 'em off in the flood, but I worry that's just because it's convenient. Nonetheless I'm going to say we let them bite it. Before or during the flood, I dunno.
Vox Canis
Jan 6 2004, 07:53 PM
| QUOTE |
| 1) Back into the fountains of the deep. |
So you're saying that, right now, there's 4.5135 x 10^9 cubic KILOMETERS(1) of water somewhere underneath the earth's crust?
Keep in mind, the total volume of the earth's oceans is only
1.3 x 10^9 km^3!(2)
If all the water went back into the "fountains of the deep", there's currently an ocean underneath the crust of the earth that's 3.4 times the size of all the other bodies of water on the planet put together, and that exceeds the total volume of the earth's crust by 2 orders of magintude!(3)
I'd like to think that if it were there, we'd know it. Assuming, of course, that temperature and pressure would even /allow/ it to be there given what we know of hydrophysics (specifically, water becomes a supercritical fluid at a temperature and pressure combination much lower than that found beneath the earth's crust).
So no. That solution is impossible. Please come up with somewhere else for the water to have gone.
Footnotes:
(1) 4,513,500,000 km^3.
Surface area of the earth (10^15 × 0.510 m^2) times the hight of Mt. Everest from sea level (8850m).
http://www.vendian.org/envelope/dir1/earth_jupiter_sun.htmlhttp://www.mnteverest.net/history.html(2) 1,300,000,000 km^3.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/SyedQadri.shtml(3) 38,250,000 km^3.
Surface area of the earth times 75km (the thickest part of the earth's crust).
http://www.vendian.org/envelope/dir1/earth_jupiter_sun.htmlhttp://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/glossary_2.html (scroll down to "crust")
Sir Buckethead
Jan 12 2004, 04:43 AM
Time out, by the way.
Vox Canis
Jan 12 2004, 05:34 PM
No sweat. Stuff happens. Take your time.
Vox Canis
Jan 18 2004, 08:40 PM
So, um... well then.
Commercial break over yet?
Vox Canis
Jan 22 2004, 05:58 AM
I'm confused. Did you say "Time out" or "Game over"?
Sir Buckethead
Jan 22 2004, 06:05 AM
Time out. I was hoping you'd wait indefinitely until I wanted to play again.
But I suppose that day's not going to come. I concede. *extends hand*
Vox Canis
Jan 22 2004, 06:58 AM
No, no, I'm not looking for any sort of concession, I was just concerned other problems had caused this to slip your mind. If you still want to go at some indefinite time in the future, that's fine by me. Just send me a PM, so I don't have to worry about missing it. I usually bypass this forum entirely.
Sir Buckethead
Jan 22 2004, 06:11 PM
cool.