Survey about creationism

[tinyp3nis]

I browsed through without reading everything, so I hope this is new...

Darn. I hoped Boris would not think of this point. Should still be room for grain for the animals, considering the average size of the animals, and the size of the ark.

2 of each kind right?
I am not expert in genetics, and I cannot say for sure I recall this here correctly, anyone who knows better please correct me!!!

I remember this article in science mag, that claimed something about certain species, cant remember which one (lion maybe). They said it would not survive without enough pop, and I got the feling it was not specific to the species in question, so it would be required for any other species to maintain themselves alive and well.
As I read the population of species cant procreate indefinately if there aren't enough specimens around, say if there were only 1 male and 1 female lion, they would not be able to bring the lion population back to the current size with healthy, able members, because there aren't enough diversity in the genes. Inbreeding would bring their species to destruction by genetic faults. Same should go for Adam and Eve...? Maybe "they" (read, not us, "they" cannot be us if it happened like this) had their superior breeding equipment taken away by god at some point by god, maybe after insest practicing had population had reached 10 000 or any number that is suffisent to keep human population diverse enough. Does bible tell when this happened?

Can anyone confirm this? And does this apply to say.. every mammals? (I mean there has to be many lifeforms that above doesnt apply, because then evolution would be impossible without it.)

I apologice for any possible "make up" words here, but I didn't bother to look into the dictionary right now.

Oh yeah, and If anyone is confused where I stand, I am not a believer.

[Ben Kenobi]

Boris:
That's different from saying all scientific laws are violated by the flood. Confine your rhetoric.

Meteorite impacts. Erosion and crustal movements have erased an unknown number of impact craters on earth, but Creationists Whitcomb and DeYoung suggest that cratering to the extent seen on the Moon and Mercury occurred on earth during the year of Noah's Flood.

I'm not sure of this position, or where this is coming from. Why do the creationists need extensive cratering?

I don't believe either myself or Lincoln have resorted to some of these arguments. Rather than cutting and pasting why don't you make arguments applicable to this debate?

Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating? Tree ring records go back more than 10,000 years, with no evidence of a catastrophe during that time. [Becker & Kromer, 1993; Becker et al, 1991; Stuiver et al, 1986]

Assumes the Flood occurs less than 10K years ago. There is nothing in the account of Noah to indicate this date.

How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? For example, why weren't the Sierra Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalachians during the Flood?

Differentials in erosion rates after the Flood?
Not all of the mountains would have been eroded away by the Flood.

How are the polar ice caps even possible? Such a mass of water as the Flood would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off their beds and break them up. They wouldn't regrow quickly. In fact, the Greenland ice cap would not regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.

Again, assumes a date prior to 10 kiloyears for the account of Noah.

How were mountains and valleys formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids

Explain to me how you get sedimentary rock on the top of Everest with these fossils? That I find hard to believe.

Salinity/oxygen isotope arguments assume rainfall that is the same as normal. Perhaps the rain came down as salt water?

They thus seem to require at least two periods of deposition (more, where there is more than one unconformity) with long periods of time in between to account for the deformation, erosion, and weathering observed.

Evidence for multiple catastrophes, rather than just one?

I'll have to let Lincoln deal with the rest of the arguments since I don't know how Creationists deal with them.

Just smite those that are wicked. What was accomplished by the massive flood that destroyed everything except the Ark?

God got another start with humankind starting with Noah, as well as a confirmation of Noah's faithfulness. You have to account for both halves, not just one.

Okay, so did they stack these animals? How did they keep the insects, which would have to be in some sort of container?

Why? Noah could release them into the Ark once he knew what they were.

How many decks did it have?

If you read the biblical account, they say three.

Remember the Ark was divided into rooms, so all those partitions take up space

A room for each animal? Where does the bible say that?

The hull is going to have to be very thick if it's wooden, and there will have to be huge lateral trusses to support the ship. This eats up a lot of that cubic feet.

Iron trusses are not that large. Plus, you can fit the birds in the spaces where the trusses will be. They won't care.

Now, considering Noah and his family loaded the Ark in ONE DAY (Gen. 7:13-14), that meant loading at least 40 animals per second continuously.

"13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings."

The phrase, 'on that very day' applies to when Noah and his family entered the ark not to the actual loading of the ark.

And not just loading them, but making sure they go exactly where they are supposed to go (can't have carnivores mixing with herbivores, can we?). How was this possible?

Maybe that is why the animals were herbrivores.

I sure wish we could come up with a better estimate for the average size of an animal. I don't like all the assumptions we are making here.

I thought someplace specifically referred to cypress wood? People like that because it is a relatively resilient wood. But given 100 years exposure to the elements, cypress would still rot enough to make the Ark unseaworthy.

Well, those qualities are why the translators suppose cypress, but they do not know for sure. They all note that passage with "we are unsure of the exact translation for this word."

BTW how do you know that it took 100 years? I'm not sure of the timeline.

Iron was not used in shipbuilding until very recently. We have archeological remains of ships going back many thousands of years, and they don't use iron to reinforce the hulls.

In all fairness, we don't know much about the civilisations prior to the flood, or even the date of the flood if we interpret this passage as a worldwide flood.
This is the same criticism to the treatment argument. What about shellac? It has been proposed as a treatment agent for the ark.

I doubt any such book (and who purports it to exist? Wishful creationists?)

Jewish scholars have speculated the existence of a 'Book of Noah' recording the events of the Flood in greater detail than the account in Genesis.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Assumes the Flood occurs less than 10K years ago. There is nothing in the account of Noah to indicate this date.

Yes, there is. According to the Biblical genealogies (the ages of Biblical characters, and the age at which each fathered the next), the Flood occurred in 2500 BC or thereabouts, and the Tower of Babel about 200 years later.

Of course, this contradicts the records of several ancient civilizations.

How were mountains and valleys formed? Many very tall mountains are composed of sedimentary rocks. (The summit of Everest is composed of deep-marine limestone, with fossils of ocean-bottom dwelling crinoids

Explain to me how you get sedimentary rock on the top of Everest with these fossils? That I find hard to believe.

Plate tectonics. The Himalayas were formed when India crashed into Asia, and are still rising. That rock was originally the north coast of India.

Jewish scholars have speculated the existence of a 'Book of Noah' recording the events of the Flood in greater detail than the account in Genesis.

The book they're looking for is the Epic of Gilgamesh. That's where the Jews got their Flood story from.

But there was no global Flood. There has been no worldwide mass-extinction event since the appearance of humans, and there is no trace of the massive geological evidence that should exist.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by obiwan18
I'll accept 1500 metres as the size of the largest mountain. Using this number we get about 7x10^8 cubic kilometres of water.

I don't get your pressure argument. Why would the people on Earth be crushed by the water above them? Does this depend on the distance between the water and the Earth, as well as the distribution of the water in the Atmosphere?

You know where atmospheric pressure comes from, it is the weight of a column of air above you pushing down (it's more complicated that this, but this simplistic explanation is sufficient for our purposes). If you add water to the air, the weight of water is added to that of water, increasing the pressure. Normally, water vapour is only a small part of air, so nothing much changes. However, if you add a column of 1500 metres on top of the atmospheric column, you will increase the atmospheric pressue by the weight of that water column.

So, how big a pressure is that? As I stated in a previous post, pressure increases by 1 ATM as you dive for 10 metres. So a 1500 m water column will increase the pressure on top of you by a staggering 150 ATM.

Are you crushed yet?

Originally posted by obiwan18
That's the sad thing about this argument. All you can show is the scientific plausibility of a local flood interpretation over a global flood interpretation. Nothing more and nothing less.

On the contrary, obiwan, YEC's insist in a literal, global flood interpretation.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
Can anyone confirm this? And does this apply to say.. every mammals? (I mean there has to be many lifeforms that above doesnt apply, because then evolution would be impossible without it.)

Yes, most species do require a minimal number of individuals (in a group) to stay viable. The reason for this is genetic diversity will enable the species to withstand any suddern external pressure such as a sweeping disease.

[Ben Kenobi]

UR:

I found some stuff that wrecks one of our assumptions.

Genesis 8:2

"Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky,"

Genesis 7:11

"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month-on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened."

Implies two sources of water, underground springs, and from the sky. No suggestion as to what portion each source contributes.

Also, what about fish? Were all the fish and ocean dwelling creatures destroyed? If not, this provides a source of food for some of the animals, to eat the fish Noah's family can catch.

[-=Vagrant=-]

Post-Flood Ice Age is something most YEC's postulate. That there has been only one Ice Age. No more, no less. All the traces of million year old Ica Ages are interpreted wrong. They are only a few thousand years old.

However, the traces of Ice Ages in Africa, Brazil and India pose serious trouble for this kind of thinking. Can anyone think why?
Hint: it has something to do with reflection, heat and the time it takes for glaciers to melt.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Implies two sources of water, underground springs, and from the sky. No suggestion as to what portion each source contributes.

That still doesn't work. Since water almost cannot be compressed, if you want to store water underground, you'll need that much more room. That means increase the mean radius of the earth by a bit more than 1.5km.

If you have 1/10 the amount of water, you'll still increase the air pressure by 15 ATM. Besides, that much water will completely screw up all the climatic and weather systems - water vapour retains heat quite well.

Originally posted by obiwan18
Also, what about fish? Were all the fish and ocean dwelling creatures destroyed? If not, this provides a source of food for some of the animals, to eat the fish Noah's family can catch.

All creatures in salt and brickish water habitats would be all dead. Probably all fresh water creatures too due to a lack of food and other nasty changes in living conditions.

[tinyp3nis]

Did you allready cover what they would drink? I mean they would need a water desalinate plant on the ship, assuming it's salt water they are sailing in. Also they have to be pretty darn good fishermen, if they are even going to feed an elefant.
Or maybe there is a new theory how the dinosaur died? Maybe they were originally on the ship, but had to be eaten because it was only way to others to survive. Of course they covered it all up afterwards, nothing bad happened on the ship.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Another problem is the "food pyramid". After leaving the Ark, even if the herbivores managed to find vegetation that survived the immersion: what did the carnivores eat? They'd die of starvation waiting for the herbivores to build up a sufficient population to survive predation.

I still find it almost impossible to believe that any adult could seriously believe the Noah's Ark story. Even as a Christian kid, I never believed it.

[Frogman]

Yes, its hard to believe thinking adults take the Noah account literally. Another thing to ponder, was the water salty or not? What happened then to the fresh water fish or salt water fish?

No wonder they say the devil is in the details.

[Ben Kenobi]

Everybody:

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-273.htm

I'll look into this site some more, see what other answers they have for the flood questions.

tinyp3nis:

Also they have to be pretty darn good fishermen, if they are even going to feed an elefant.

Fishing won't account for all of the food, just some of the food.

Did you allready cover what they would drink? I mean they would need a water desalinate plant on the ship, assuming it's salt water they are sailing in.

Depends on the salinity of the water falling from the sky. If the water raining is fresh water, they can slough off some of that water for their own purposes, even when sailing in a saline environment.

UR:

Please walk me through the pressure calculation. What formula are you using to calculate the pressure?

Supprose you reduce the height needed to 1500m, that is 1/9 off the top right there.

Then if you reduce the number to 1/10 of 1/9 you have 1/90 the amount of water in the sky.

What would the pressure increase be then?

that much water will completely screw up all the climatic and weather systems - water vapour retains heat quite well.

Would this cool the earth or warm the earth?

What about the albedo changes? Would water absorb more heat then the earth does normally?

Jack:

Another problem is the "food pyramid". After leaving the Ark, even if the herbivores managed to find vegetation that survived the immersion: what did the carnivores eat? They'd die of starvation waiting for the herbivores to build up a sufficient population to survive predation.

Go here.

http://www.carm.org/evo_questions/speciedevelopment.htm

[Frogman]

After reading the links from Obiwan, I am convinced that you cannot change the beliefs of someone based on scientific arguments. It is quite helpful to me since our Sunday School class is getting ready to study the Noah account. I now know that I can just save my breath on the 5 literalists we have in there. After all, they have a "scientific" book that says its possible, so what further proof do they need?

[Ben Kenobi]

Frogman:

Well, then tell me what dogmatic beliefs I have about the flood? What is the position that I will not be moved away from.

Care to discuss the scientific merit of the sources listed? Are their arguments plausible or unplausible?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Boris:
That's different from saying all scientific laws are violated by the flood. Confine your rhetoric.

Pot/kettle, Mr. One-or-Two Miracles!

I'm not sure of this position, or where this is coming from. Why do the creationists need extensive cratering?

If the geologic record was deposited in a year (as one must believe to believe the literal Flood story), then the events it records must also have occurred within a year. Some of these events release significant amounts of heat. Included in that is the meteorite evidence in the geologic record. The number of meteors needed to hit the Earth within that time period would be enough to heat up the earth's atmosphere to unlivable conditions.

I don't believe either myself or Lincoln have resorted to some of these arguments. Rather than cutting and pasting why don't you make arguments applicable to this debate?

I wish you could pay attention from one post to the next. Those were provided as examples of the miracles of nature God needed to work to accomplish the Flood and erase its evidence from the geologic record. Keep up!

Assumes the Flood occurs less than 10K years ago. There is nothing in the account of Noah to indicate this date.

As Jack pointed out, we can easily use Geneaologies to estimate a more or less precise date of the flood. There's not much wiggle room here. Creationist "experts" consistently put the date around 2250 BCE.

Differentials in erosion rates after the Flood?
Not all of the mountains would have been eroded away by the Flood.

The speed with which the waters receded would make any difference of erosion rates negligible in this regard.

Explain to me how you get sedimentary rock on the top of Everest with these fossils? That I find hard to believe.

Done by Jack. Come on, most people know mountain chains are the result of landmasses smashing together over millions of years.

Salinity/oxygen isotope arguments assume rainfall that is the same as normal. Perhaps the rain came down as salt water?

If it's salt water, all the freshwater fish/life dies. If it's freshwater, all the saltwater fish/life dies. If it's salt water, it also destroys your argument about Noah & Co. being able to get fresh drinking water.

Evidence for multiple catastrophes, rather than just one?

No such other catastrophes are detailed in the Bible. Why would they be omitted? Couldn't be after, since God promised not to ever do such a thing again.

God got another start with humankind starting with Noah, as well as a confirmation of Noah's faithfulness. You have to account for both halves, not just one.

And again, why do this with a Flood that requires such massive violations of the laws of physics and nature? Why not a plague? Surely he could kill all the evil people with a plague, and still have a test for Noah's faith...after all, he tested Job without resorting to world-altering calamities. Sure, he murdered a lot of people and animals, but that's nothing compared to the Flood's destruction!

Why? Noah could release them into the Ark once he knew what they were.

Ok, so 500,000 different species of beetles alone, running free around the Ark, and that wouldn't be a problem? What about the parasites? Mosquitos? How about them getting stepped on or eaten? Aardvarks would have had a field day, as would frogs and all the other insect-eating animals.

Hey, why don't zoos just let their insects roam free?

If you read the biblical account, they say three.

That's even worse. So the area calculations have to make way for 3 decks. Three decks at 450X75 = c. 102,000 sq ft. Assuming, generously, that there are only 30,000 animals on the Ark (and this is actually a really ridiculously low number), that means there is about 3.4 square feet of space per animal. That is not including storage space for food/water, nor living space for Noah & family. Now I ask you...doesn't that seem a wee bit cramped?

And you still didn't explain how three decks chock full of animals and insects somehow managed to breathe for 10 months through ONE small window.

A room for each animal? Where does the bible say that?

I didn't say a room for each animal, but just pointed out that there were many room divisions, which take up more of the space on the ship.

Iron trusses are not that large. Plus, you can fit the birds in the spaces where the trusses will be. They won't care.

We have no evidence whatsoever that iron trusses were used in shipbuilding at that time, or at all. If ships had been made with iron, we would have found their remains. The oldest remains we have are from 750 BCE, and no iron is involved. Iron use of this kind is a relatively modern technology.

And I think those birds would get antsy if they were expected to remains there for a year.

"13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings."

My mistake...It was seven days:

"And Jehovah said to Noah, Go into the ark, thou and all thy house; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. 2 Of all clean beasts thou shalt take to thee by sevens, a male and its female; but of the beasts that are not clean two, a male and its female. 3 Also of the fowl of the heavens by sevens, male and female; to keep seed alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For in yet seven days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living being which I have made will I destroy from the ground. 5 And Noah did according to all that Jehovah had commanded him."

That still represents quite a feat.

Maybe that is why the animals were herbrivores.

There is ample fossil evidence of the species in question that predate the flood showing they had the same diets as they do today. So for some reason, all the animals would have to go to being herbivores (grain-eating ones, too, since fresh vegetation isn't an option), and then go right back to their previous diets afterwards.

I sure wish we could come up with a better estimate for the average size of an animal. I don't like all the assumptions we are making here.

Aren't all the "could have" arguments just assumptions anyway?

BTW how do you know that it took 100 years? I'm not sure of the timeline.

I believe the estimates given by Creationists range from 80-120 years.

In all fairness, we don't know much about the civilisations prior to the flood, or even the date of the flood if we interpret this passage as a worldwide flood.
This is the same criticism to the treatment argument. What about shellac? It has been proposed as a treatment agent for the ark.

But, as stated before, we can date the Flood based on the Bible's own words. And therefore we know a good deal about the civilizations during that time...Egypt, China, Sumeria, etc. And we know they didn't have this kind of shipbuilding technology. To this day, a 450-foot long vessel as described would be very unseaworthy, and it is doubtful it could sustain the mass of the animals while also surviving the force of a 40-day deluge that covers even the tallest mountains.

Out of curiosity, on what basis do you assert the tallest mountain at the time was only 1500m? Seems rather arbitrary to me. At any rate, it is absurd, since Mr. Everest was not formed by cataclysm or erosion, but by the slow continental collision, and it certainly wasn't formed in the last 4,200 years.