"The Origin of Specious Nonsense"

J C wrote: »

If they are true rock-bound fossils then they probably were killed by the Flood ... but if they are found as bones in caves, then they are likely to be post-diluvian (and possibly quite recent) in origin.

Wait, you actually believe a Flood covered the whole planet, and oddly enough, nobody seemed to have noticed?

I mean, surely some Asians, North Americans, South Americans, Scandinavians, Europeans, Africans, Aboriginals or someone may have noticed this world wide flood.

C'mon JC, I thought you said you were educated.

Sarky wrote: »

But that robust Mathematical definition of cfsi still hasn't been presented. You should probably do that first.

2 + 2 = God

Sonics2k wrote: »

Wait, you actually believe a Flood covered the whole planet, and oddly enough, nobody seemed to have noticed?

I mean, surely some Asians, North Americans, South Americans, Scandinavians, Europeans, Africans, Aboriginals or someone may have noticed this world wide flood.

C'mon JC, I thought you said you were educated.

There are over 500 stories/myths (amongst peoples all over the World) that recall a worldwide flood disaster. It is thought that they are all a common 'folk memory' of Noahs Flood with accounts of varying corruption of the real account due to the passage of time and repeated telling.

http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

2 + 2 = God

It's actually 1 + 1 +1 = God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).

J C wrote: »

It is thought that Kangaroos migrated over a number of years to Australia ... crossing the land-bridges that existed during the Ice Age that followed in the immediate aftermath of the Flood. Equally, Human introduction of Kangaroo to Australia ... and their protection until establishment cannot be ruled out.

Does the image of kangaroos and koala bears crossing frozen oceans during an Ice Age not strike you as a bit odd though?

J C wrote: »

Firstly, it was only land animals that were on the Ark ... and only a pair of each Kind ... and probably juveniles ... which would greatly reduce the numbers and the space and feed requirements. It is thought that there was a period of rapid speciation, following the Flood, during which our modern species developed. For example, the Large Cat Kind Pair gave rise to all of the large cat species like Lions, Tigers, Panthers, etc.

I'm a bit confused about this part. I thought that creationists believed that two monkey mates could only ever produce another monkey. I think you use the analogy of a stamp in one of your videos saying no matter how manner times you stamp it, it will still produce the same image. Doesn't a large cat pair producing every other type of large cat species eventually not fly in the face of all that?

Last question for now, I'm genuinely intrigued by this. I was looking on some websites regarding Noah's Ark after you mentioned it and noticed that a lot of them say Dinosaurs were also on the Ark. Is this the general consensus among creationists or are those websites in the tiny minority?

Thanks again for your answers. It's interesting hearing an alternative viewpoint on some of these issues.

J C wrote: »

Firstly, it was only land animals that were on the Ark ... and only a pair of each Kind ... and probably juveniles ... which would greatly reduce the numbers and the space and feed requirements.

JC I am disappointed in you, rookie mistake you made there giving away the fact that you have no idea whats in the bible.

Genesis 7:2-3 - Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

This is where you got your facts from I believe, you should have read past the first few lines.

http://www.poppyfields.net/poppy/songs/twobytwo.html


I know you make up most of the stuff in your posts on the fly but try to stay in character and get the bible stuff right.

MrPudding wrote: »

It is like having a discussion with a 9 year old, though I think most 9 year old kids would laugh at the ark stuff.

MrP

I know a 5 year old who laughs at the Ark idea.

She insists it's just a story as they would need a lot of 'grass and stuff' for the not meat eating animals most of whom would be eaten by the meat eating animals anyway unless there were really big strong cages and all those animals would make sooo much pooh that all of the people would get very, very sicky and might even die and how did they keep the elephants calm and stop them charging around and making the boat sink specially when there were two different kinds of elephants on the boat? Wouldn't the four elephants have been very scared to have lions and tigers and pumas and cheetahs so close to them so they would panic and then the horses would panic - have you ever seen a horse panic? There is no stopping them, they just totally freak out!

Edit: Just seen clever_name's timely reminder re: Genesis 7:2-3 - Assuming elephants are 'clean' - I shall have to tell the 5 year old there were apparently up to 28 elephants on the boat (but only 2 pigs...?) . Somehow I think that nugget is not going to challenge her insistence it's just a story.

J C wrote: »

There are over 500 stories/myths (amongst peoples all over the World) that recall a worldwide flood disaster. It is thought that they are all a common 'folk memory' of Noahs Flood with accounts of varying corruption of the real account due to the passage of time and repeated telling.

http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html

Did you also know that virtually every civilization across the world, from South America, to Europe, to Africa and as far as a Japan also had stories/myths about Vampires?

In each one they are essentially the same, undead Humans who feed on Human blood, the only real variations being the positioning of the teeth used to draw blood, and what animals they could turn into, such as Bats, Wolves, Hyenas and even Tigers.

By your own logic, I can claim that Vampires are as real as the Flood that you believe swept over the world, all based on stories and myths.

OK, I think it's time to cut this "Flood Hypothesis" bull**** down to size.


What the Bible Says

It's important first of all to detail what the bible actually details so as to outline the constraints involved.

The dimensions of the ark are outlined in Genesis 6:15-16

"This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks."

So the external dimensions are approx. 135m long, 23m wide and 14m high.

The loading of the ark is described in Genesis 6:19-21

"You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them."


The effect of the flood is described in Genesis 7:17-24

"For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days."


Problem 1 - The Self-Contradictory Nature of the Bible

The first and one of the more significant problems (from JC's POV) is that once the author of Genesis goes about outlining the basic story in Genesis 6, he immediately begins to contradict it in Genesis 7. Genesis 7 begins with the following commentary:

"The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.” "

This immediately creates two entirely different stories, one of gathering an innumerable amount of species and the other involving less than 300. Staying with the second one for a moment, the story differentiates between clean and unclean animals. This isn't a vague distinction, however. The "clean" animals are listed in Deuteronomy 14:4-5:

"These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the wild goat, the ibex, the antelope and the mountain sheep."

Similarly, the unclean animals are also listed, in Leviticus 11:4-19 and Deuteronomy 14:7-18:

“‘There are some that only chew the cud or only have a divided hoof, but you must not eat them. The camel, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is ceremonially unclean for you. The hyrax, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. The rabbit, though it chews the cud, does not have a divided hoof; it is unclean for you. And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you. “‘Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams you may eat any that have fins and scales. But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales—whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water—you are to regard as unclean. And since you are to regard them as unclean, you must not eat their meat; you must regard their carcasses as unclean. Anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales is to be regarded as unclean by you. “‘These are the birds you are to regard as unclean and not eat because they are unclean: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat."

"However, of those that chew the cud or that have a divided hoof you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the hyrax. Although they chew the cud, they do not have a divided hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you. The pig is also unclean; although it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses. Of all the creatures living in the water, you may eat any that has fins and scales. But anything that does not have fins and scales you may not eat; for you it is unclean. You may eat any clean bird. But these you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, the black kite, any kind of falcon, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the cormorant, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat."

So according to the second story, there were 10 pairs of clean animals and 30 pairs of unclean animals. In addition there were 7 pairs of each of the 5 species of clean bird giving 70 birds. Allowing for 12 sq. ft. per large animal and 4 sq. ft. per small animal and bird, this would require 2200 sq. ft. of deck area for the 270 animals, allowing plenty of space given the dimensions in Genesis 6 as well as cabin space for Noah and his family and food for all of them and the animals.

And there's the problem. The second story is perfectly reasonable in terms of workload, payload and logistics. It doesn't even begin, however, to address the repopulation of the earth or explain the biodiversity that we see today, supposedly 4000 years later (give or take). The first story due to its more ambiguous language allows for the possibility of taking the necessary animals for repopulation and alleged rapid speciation (although I'd love JC to show that) but is contradicted not only by the second story but also by the constraints imposed in the first story (i.e. the size of the ark). Either way, the combination is fatally flawed. So which is it to be, JC, Genesis 6 or 7?


Problem 2 - The Flood Hypothesis: Scientific Inferences

The next major problem is what the implications of the flood story being true are. These are the ones that JC seems to be banging on about the most, flood fossil record and such. So for the purposes of this section I'm sticking with the flood story as JC is using it.


2a - Flood Climatology

The first and most obvious problem when someone mentions global flood is where the water came from.

We know from extensive work done by the US Geological Survey that the current best estimate for the total volume of water on earth today is about 400 million cubic kilometres or about 400 million trillion litres. [Source]

Now, given a mean height above sea level of approx. 840m, the total volume of landmass above sea level is approx. 128.5 million cubic kilometres.

Since, according to the bible story above, the water reached over the tops of the mountains by 15 cubits, then we can calculate that the increase in water volume due to the flood is approx. 3.8 billion cubic kilometres or 3.8 billion trillion litres.

So, JC where did the extra 3.8 billion cubic kilometres of water come from, and more importantly, where did it go?

There are, obviously, several different "ideas" suggested by creationists to explain this such as vapour canopy (i.e. suspended in the atmosphere), hydroplate (i.e. trapped underground), cometary impact, runaway subduction (i.e. the pre-flood lithosphere was denser than the mantle), topographical restructuring (i.e. flood caused changes to crust density and created oceans as they presently are). None of these ideas stand up to even the most basic scientific scrutiny, though, so how do you explain it JC?

Secondly, the idea of a global flood means that we should expect to see certain evidence and changes in something, like say, ice cores which go back tens of thousands of years. Changes in salinity from all this extra fresh water or layers of sediment or thermal stress cracks. We don't see any of this, however, as you can see here:

Climate and atmospheric history ofthe past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica

Irregular glacial interstadials recorded in a new Greenland ice core

Abrupt increase in Greenland snow accumulation at the end of the Younger Dryas event

Dust-climate couplings over the past 800,000 years from the EPICA Dome C ice core


I'm afraid I'm going to have to return to this in a little while. I'll be back soon to finish off JC this post.

oldrnwisr wrote: »

I'm afraid I'm going to have to return to this in a little while. I'll be back soon to finish off JC this post.

Good post, I would not waste time trying to further educate J C about this, he will realize that opening the floodgates (insert rimshot FX) was a booboo and move on.

my guess will be he will post something along the lines of "the numbers do not matter... what matters is that God created glory... and men for muck is still a fairytale

then he will get back into character and make sure to leave the flood out of his copy & paste routine for a bit.