All_Around_Brown

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/21106.html


Science strikes again to combat the junk science that is intelligent design.

600 million years: now is that enough time for the camera eye to evolve?

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Lifer

so is Pluto a planet this week, or was that last week?

Fogbuster

This only proves that God made simpler creatures before He made more complicated ones.

Next question.



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PatsFanInVa

No, actually it points toward a gradual evolutionary development of life, consistent with evolution, and inconsistent with the "intelligent design" model.

As to creationism proper:

Dimensions of Noah's Ark:

300 cubits x 50 cubits x 30 cubits. A cubit is approximately 18 inches.

So thats 450 feet x 75 feet x 45 feet.

Even though it's structurally impossible, let's say all that space is available to house the various species of the earth. No pathways in between, no ventillation, nothing. Just little enclosures for animals of all sizes which could not survive a flood (i.e, no whales need fit.)

We therefore have an ark of approximately 1.5 million cubic feet (1,518,750 to be exact.) Most scientists estimate the number of animal species on earth at about 1 million. Noah supposedly took one male and one female of each species, so that's 2 million critters.

So, stacking the perfectly wrough enclosures continously from the floor of the ark to the top, using every cubit of enclosed space, and zero cubic feet wasted on any kind of divider vertically or horizontally, the ark would be crammed full of critters with less than one cubic foot per animal.

Of course, this makes no provision for the processes of life. No room for any sort of food. No way to circulate air, remove CO2, or provide sanitation for the poop and pee.

An elephant eats about 500 pounds of food, and drinks about 35-50 gallons of fresh water a day. ONE elephant. You have a 375-day enclosure period in the bible, for two elephants. You really need room for about 375,000 pounds of vegetation, and 37,000 gallons of water. That's for a pair of elephants. I'll not bother with the math, converting those quantities to volume (space) from weight. Point is, these processes would take up in excess of the physical space accorded to the various species.

Yet, "creation science" believers continue to blather that fossils of extinct forms are merely the "monsters" who perished in the flood. All the life we see around us today survived on Noah's Ark.

Demonstrably bogus.

Do you two still believe that particular fairy tale, or do you accept that the forms that are dated as older than the biblical age of the earth (6,000 years, according to Bishop Berkeley), are in fact simply older than the biblical age of the earth?

PFnV

Fogbuster

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The Noah's ark account in Genesis is obviously filled with symbolic representation of the animals, the ark itself, and so forth, but it does have a number of factual pieces, one of which regarding the 2nd son, Ham, and his faithlessness toward his father, Noah; but the ark itself has little to do with God's creation of the cosmos, which remains obvious to anyone who opens his or her eyes to see that all things of creation follow the same principle of life: all beings exist by two absolutes: one is that everything is composed of internal character and external form; second is that all things are composed of dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity, often referred to as "yang" and "yin".

The reality of God's hand in creation is seen when observing the constant of these two principles in all aspects of the visible physical and invisible spiritual worlds. God's hand is seen everywhere, and God's invisible existence is as real as the fact that no one can visibly show their mind, yet everyone knows that they have one. So, God's invisible existence is completely natural, and even preferable, since if God were visible He would be inundated by all things, and life would be untenable. Because God is invisible, it gives Him the chance to be the internal "mind" behind all, and also the internal mind which can reside inside the hearts and minds of humans, whom he created as his children.

God is clever and smart, in addition to being good.


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PatsFanInVa

So basically there is no need to trumpet literal biblical accuracy.

Well, that should dispense with about 90% of the more ridiculous conversations we've all had to have regarding religion. The bible is not literally true; so it is all about the interpretation.

I do like, however, how you've asserted that the record of a family squabble from one night many years before the story was recorded, is a "fact" (i.e., Ham "uncovering the nakedness" of Noah while Noah was sleeping off a drunk.)

By contrast, recorded physical dimensions of the ark are put down as "symbolic."

I think the reverse is more likely to be true; the fact is, that was a darn big boat, just not big enough to load in all the species on earth.

By the way, some things are symbolic - fair enough. Something tells me that the "literal" biblical account of creation is one of those things. Especially since you can measure the age of things all around you, and find them older than the "created" universe.

PFnV

ulsterkw

Interestingly, the measurements of the ark, as mentioned in the bible, have a very good height/length ratio which is in very common use in modern ships today. Also, please find something in the bible where it says the earth was made 6,000 years ago. I would be interested in finding that verse

reflexblue

There is no verse,and I agree with you on the dimensions. I've seen model test done in tanks that prove the design was feasable,and would have been sea worthy. That being said I'm not a creationist.Really what does it matter if it was 6,000 yrs ago or 3,000,000,000 years ago for evolution to take place.

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PatsFanInVa

Of course there is no such verse.

There is, however, an underlying tradition of thought coddled by the creationists, asserting that Noah preserved all the animals in the ark, and the ones he didn't get, died in the flood.

Noah did no such thing. That is obvious.

It is worth noting, however, that Bishop Berkeley, the great-grandfather of all the biblicist earth-daters, did painstaking work based on the passages that are in the bible: so and so lived this many years, then spawned such-and-such, then lived this many more years, then died. Then such-and-such begat so-and-so, etc. etc.

All Berkeley (and his intellectual kin) did was count up begats as best they could. They're all within a few hundred years of each other, in the 5500 - 6500 range. And it is all derived from biblical "math."

Trouble is, it's a lie.

It's one of the lies that separate biblical literalists from modern man.

PFnV

PatsFanInVa

Hey dum dums!

Nobody ever argued that the ark wasn't seaworthy.

So although it demonstrates quite convincingly that ancient semites could make a boat float, it has absolutely no bearing on whether the ark could have done what the bible says it did -- i.e., preserve some million or so living animal species.

The math does not work. Not the math on whether those dimensions would float, the math on whether that ship would carry all presently extent species.

I mean, what you're doing here is like marveling that mirrors can indeed focus and reflect sunlight, in support of an argument that the ancient Greeks fought invaders from space with solar powered laser beams. Two different things.

PFnV

PS, the dum-dums! is meant lightheartedly. But come on guys. It's hardly a slam dunk to say "HEY! I've proven the ark would float!!!" We know seafaring vessels had existed for thousands of years prior to the biblical story, or for that matter the Gilgamesh epic it recapitulates. So it's hard to be impressed by the boat floating... it's carrying all animal life on earth that's the key here.