The Origin of Specious Nonsense. Twelve years on. Still going. Answer soon.

Steven Pinker stumped by creationist question. More evidence JC is correct.

bumper234 wrote: »

Nothing weird about it ... each woman will go where they wish to go.

... and Jesus has paid the price for the sins of both the cocaine user and the prostitute

Obliq wrote: »

That's disgusting, what you've implied there JC. The sex worker wishes to go to hell? Where in the cartoon does it say that then? Why would the sex worker wish to go to hell? What makes you think she wishes to go to hell any more than the cocaine user?

Where did I say anything about Hell and either of the women?

I simply said that the women would go "where they wished to go" ... and where they will end up, will be where each of them wishes to be.

If a person who sells their body for sex wants to be Saved ... all they need to do is to ask Jesus Christ to Save them ... and He will do so.

Ditto with a cocaine user ... and if you have any disgust to discharge about the implications of the cartoon ... please discharge it against the cartoon poster, as I bear no responsibility for it.:(

J C wrote: »

You do realise that you are insulting over 90% of people in Ireland, who declared themselves to be Christian in the most recent Census, with your remarks about everyone ... who respects the Holy Bible as the Word of God ... which is every Christian and indeed every Jew?
... and after this, presumably you guys still expect them to hand over their children to be taught in schools operating to your standards?:(

Argumentum ad populum aside, I very much doubt that 90% of the people in Ireland actually beleive even a fraction of the bible, or have even read any significant portion of it.

And even if that isn't the case, meh, I still think my discription a fair representation of that thing you have lost touch with, you know, reality.

J C wrote: »

If you wish to just insult Creationists, please confine your Adhominem to Creationists ... or better still just stick to criticising my ideas rather than personalising your criticism to practically all of your neighbours.

I am insulting creationism and religion (on this partiuclar occasion), because they are ridiculous and worthy of critisim and ridicule. It is not my fault if you can't separate yourself form that.

MrP

J C wrote: »

Noah could keep a pair of every animal in the British Isles in one railroad car ... and the capacity of Noahs Ark was equivalent to 569 railroad cars.
http://christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c013.html

Oh dear, another couple of 1000 posts on and here you are spouting the same crap. You know if you even made the effort to come up with your own arguments rather than copy-paste links like the one above you might come across as marginally less pathetic. Marginally.

The link you cite is so fundamentally wrong on so many levels that I'm surprised even you think it makes for good evidence.

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

Most Hebrew scholars believe the cubit to have been no less than 18 inches long [45.72 centimeters]. This means that the Ark would have been at least 450 feet long [137.16 meters], 75 feet wide [22.86 meters] and 45 feet high [13.716000000000001 meters].

This seems like a promising start and yet they go on to state:

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

The total cubic volume would have been 1,518,000 cubic feet [462,686.4 cubic meters]

If they can't even get basic maths correct it doesn't bode well for the rest of their claims.
For clarification, the volume in cubic feet is approximately correct, 1,518,750 ft³. However the authors have then multiplied the measurement in cu. ft. by 0.3048 to give them their answer in m³. The correct factor should be 0.0283 (0.3048 x 0.3048 x 0.3048). So their cubic volume in metres is overstated by a factor of 10. The correct volume in metres is 43,006 m³.

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

The total available floor space on the Ark would have been over 100,000 square feet, which would be more floor space than in 20 standard-sized basketball courts.

Well, no. The theoretical maximum floor space allowing for a perfectly rectangular structure and two interior decks is approximately 100,000 sq. ft. as stated, 101,250 sq. ft. to be precise. However, firstly, the bottom deck would not have been perfectly rectangular due to the encroachment from a curved hull. Secondly, this measurement also doesn't take into account the restrictions from reinforcing structures necessary in an all-wood vessel. Finally, this figure assumes that all the animals are stored in one large pile with no walkways, pens, feeding areas etc.

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

According to Ernest Mayr, America’s leading taxonomist (deceased), there are over 1 million species of animals in the world.

I'm not sure why the authors chose to quote Mayr. Firstly, he's been dead for eight years which means there are better estimates in the literature than relying on his work. Secondly, and somewhat irrelevantly, I think its funny that the authors would rush to use Mayr as an authority given that he was one of those evil atheist evolutionists.
In any case, they're wrong. Our current best estimate (How Many Species Are There on Earth and in the Ocean? ) suggests that there are about 8.7 million eukaryotic species. This breaks down to about 2.2 million marine species and 6.5 million land species. Of the land species about 5.8 million are animals. This is 5.8 million species after fish, tunicates, molluscs and all the other spurious crap that the authors decide to list. Oh and while we're on the subject:

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

or the 30,000 protozoans, the microscopic single-celled creatures.

Protozoa or more commonly referred to as protista are not a subset of the kingdom Animalia. They are a polyphyletic group which remains within the broad description of Eukarya in that they are unicellular eukaryote organisms. So you can't really count them as exceptions to Mayr's figure.

Oh, and another thing:

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

Noah need make no provision for the 21,000 species of fish

Why is that? To be pedantic (or as I prefer, correct) there are 27,977 species of fish. Of these 42.7% or 11,952 species are freshwater fish. So which group did Noah bring on board the ark? Was it the 12,000 species of freshwater fish or the 16,000 species of saltwater fish, because they both could not have survived in the mostly freshwater flood waters. Noah would have to have brought all of the saltwater fish on board the ark. This is mainly due to assuming that the flood waters would have been fresh water. Of course, had the flood waters been salty then all the freshwater fish would have to have been saved not to mention all the clean water that would have to be stored on the ark for the animals to drink. So you're screwed either way.

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

Doctors Morris and Whitcomb in their classic book,The Genesis Flood state that no more than 35,000 individual animals needed to go on the ark. In his well documented book, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, John Woodmorappe suggests that far fewer animals would have been transported upon the ark. By pointing out that the word “specie” is not equivalent to the “created kinds” of the Genesis account, Woodmorappe credibly demonstrates that as few as 2,000 animals may have been required on the ark. To pad this number for error, he continues his study by showing that the ark could easily accommodate 16,000 animals.

OK, let's for the sake of argument take Woodmorappe's "padded" figure of just 16,000 animals

How exactly do 8 people water, feed, clean, provide veterinary care and sanitise 16,000 animals?
Let's take food for example. I'll be a bit more generous than most and allow a combined 30 seconds for food and water to be distributed to each animal per day. That's 133 hours of labour per day or approximately 16hrs 40mins per day spent by each person on the ark just to feed the animals.
While we're on the subject of food, how exactly did the ark carry all the food necessary to sustain 16,000 animals for a 376-day journey. As previously mentioned the ark was 43006m³ in volume. The ark was also constructed exclusively from gopher wood which most scholars associate with cypress. Cypress has a density of 510 kg/m³. Assuming a hull thickness of thickness of 10 inches and two decks with a thickness of 0.5m, the unladen weight of the ark is 8,769,211.69 kg. This means that the theoretical maximum cargo the ship could take is 34,236,999.07 kg. If we assume as Woodmorappe does that the average animal is about the size of the sheep, then the mass of the animals alone is 720,000 kg (16,000 x 45). This leaves 33,516,999.07 kg for feed. This of course assumes that the weight of the humans, their baggage, feed and all bedding materials are negligible. So the amount of food per animal per day is just 5.57 kg.

ChristianAnswers.Net wrote:

Assuming the average animal to be about the size of a sheep and using a railroad car for comparison, we note that the average double-deck stock car can accommodate 240 sheep. Thus, three trains hauling 69 cars each would have ample space to carry the 50,000 animals, filling only 37% of the ark.

OK, well let's take a look at this idea then.

Firstly, it should be pointed out that there are strict regulations in place regarding the transport of livestock by rail. For every 28 hours of travel the animals are required to have 5 hours of rest. The reason for these strict regulations is so that the animals reach the destination in a healthy and thus valuable condition. The lack of space on the ark presents real problems for the longevity of the animals onboard:

Live Fast Die Young - The life of a meat chicken

(Note: The link above is a YT video of battery chickens. I don't know about it being NSFW but it can certainly be distressing)

16,000 animals stuck on a boat with only one window (Genesis 6:16) means that the animals would suffer from severe sedentary muscular dystrophy as well as effects caused by the lack of sunlight. It's unlikely that any of the animals on the ark would have lived long enough to produce offspring if the Noah's ark story were correct.

All I have covered here are the facts that the authors of this article have actually got wrong. I haven't even touched the wild, speculative claims they've made, like this:

However, a number of scientists have suggested that the animals may have gone into a type of dormancy.

or this:

In fact, modern shipbuilders say it would have been almost impossible to turn over.

or even this:

Also, many of the 35,000 species of worms as well as many of the insects could have survived outside the Ark.

Come on JC, can't you at least provide arguments that have a remote semblance of plausibility.

J C wrote: »

... looks more like a 70 year old one to me!!!:)

I'm sure it could look like Darth Vader to you if that's what you wanted it to be ... after all, why let anything like facts get in the way?