Coragyps

Though I think the explanation DD presented is by far the best cretinist explanation I've yet heard for biogeography, it's incomplete. It leaves out the mechanism for this big freeze. I've been told, and I think Walt Brown even maintains, that the Ice Age was due to all the steam from the "Fountains of the Deep" cooling off. This may be an odd form of "to every action there is an equal but opposite...." A very odd form.

Zee

OK, Don't laugh!

1) By what process did Noah gather all of his animals in the first place? For example, how did he first find the Elephants, then subdue them, then transport them back to his Ark? Did the tigers and crocodiles give him any problems? How long was this animal-gathering phase thought to have taken?
Noah has a teleportation machine, as well as a gun that put the crocodile to sleep, or maybe, God did it

2) What steps did Noah take to save the plants and fish?
God made some new ones after the flood

3) What did Noah and the animals eat while aboard the Ark?
God dropped food from heaven

4) What did the animals eat in the months and years immediately following the recession of the floodwaters?
God dropped food for them, ah, that should be a very nice time to live

5) What percentage of the "kinds" Noah saved are thought to have gone extinct due to their inability to bounce back from such severe population depletion?
None of them. God protected them from extinction

6) How did the animals get redistributed around the world? Did Noah take them all back? How long was this thought to have taken?
God did it

7)
a. At what point in our history did Noah's descendants go to Africa and turn black? What caused them to forget all about Noah's God?
b. At what point in our history did Noah's descendants go to Asia and turn Asian? Why did they forget about Noah's God?
c. At what point in our history did Noah's descendants make it to the Americas? How did they get there?
They are mutants, oh, wait... mutation is a fake theory, ... arghhh.. how dare you ask that question unsaved man? In God everything is possible! Repent!!!"

8) What was the point of the great flood? Given the current state of the world, can it be said that the flood actually accomplished anything beyond lots of gratuitous killing?
The world back then was much more corrupt than the world today, err, I'm building an ark

Conchobar

The fact is that certain animals are found only in certain isolated location. For example, Kangaroos have never been found outside of Australia and New Guinea. Certain species of fresh water fish have been found nowhere outside of the Amazon Basin. Lemurs are only on the Island of Madascar in the last 20 million years. Emus, Koalas, Marsupial wolves, wombats, and marsupial lions are found only in Australia. Many other animals while on the Eurasian mainland are found only at great distances from Palestine, Mt. Ararat, and Mesopotamia. These include: polar bears, tapirs, aardvarks, Meercats, Irish Elk, Reindeer/Caribou, Moose, the Ice loving Macaques of Northern Japan. There are a few thousand other animals found far from Mesopotamia.

These represent animals never found in Mesopotamia/Ararat. How did Noah and his sons gather all of these animals from the far reaches of the left and right hemispheres and polar areas? How did they fit in the approximately 3.8 million species into the Ark if it was the wee little boat described in Genesis? How could they store enough food for the entire long journey aboard the tiny boat? When it landed on Mt. Ararat how did they return all of these animals back to their places of origin?

How did they transport the Koalas, Wallabies, Kangaroos, Wombats, Marsupial wolves, Emus, and Marsupial lions back to the island continent of Australia? How did they get South American Tapirs back to South America along with Jaguars, sloths, prehensile tailed New World Monkeys, Armadillos, Alpacas, Llamas, as South American Rheas (flightless birds)? In the vicinity of Sydney, Aus: The blind snakes (Family Typhlopidae), 2 species; Pythons (Boidae), 1 species; Colubrid snakes (Colubridae), 2 species; Elapid snakes (Elapidae), 15 species; Sea snakes (Hydrophiidae), 1 species.

The Anilioidea and booids are intermediate in phylogenetic position. Some have considered Booidea to be monophyletic (Rieppel, 1988), but we follow Kluge (1991), whose unpublished data support the paraphyly of the group.

The Caenophidia are considered the most "advanced" snakes.

Within the colubroids, the Viperidae and Elapidae are two generally accepted, well-supported groups. Relationships with the Colubridae are a mess. Many characters used at family/subfamily level are derived from maxilla and hemipenis. A recent molecular study does support the scolecophidians as most basal; booids intermediately placed but paraphyletic; colubroids monophyletic except that Acrochordus is within booids; Atractaspis is within Elapidae; colubrids not obviously monophyletic. (Heise et al., 1995).

The following are reptiles, mostly snakes not able to be transported to Iraq and returned to their home territories, a daunting chore.

Scolecophidia
Anomalepidae.--(Central and South America) Liotyphlops albirostris

Typhlopidae.--(Europe, Africa, Madagascar, Southern Asia, Australian region, Central and South America). Ramphotyphlops braminhae, Typhlops rostellatus
Leptotyphlopidae.--(Africa, Southern Asia, North, Central, and South America) Leptotyphlops dulcis

Alethinophidia
Aniliidae.--(South America) Anilius scytale
Uropeltidae.--(Southern Asia) Shield-tail snakes, including Cylindrophis. Pseudotyphlops philippinus

Macrostomata
Elongation of the mandible, posterior elongation of the supratemporal, posteroventrally directed quadrate, enlarged ventral scutes.

Xenopeltidae.--(Southern Asia) Xenopeltis unicolor
Loxocemidae.--(Mexico and Central America) Loxocemus bicolor
Pythonidae.--(Africa, Southern Asia, Australian region) Aspidites ramsayi, Morelia spilota, Chondropython viridis
Boidae.--(Neotropical, Antilles, Madagascar, Pacific region, New Guinea) Corallus caninus, Epicrates cenchria, Eunectes murinus, Boa constrictor

Erycidae.--(W North America, Continental Africa and Eurasia) Eryx conicus, Lichanura trivirgata, Charina bottae
Tropidophiidae.--(Central and South America, West Indes) Tropidophis melanurus
Bolyeriidae.--(Mascarene Islands)
Caenophidia (Acrochordidae + Colubroidea)
Acrochordidae.--(India to Australia) Acrochordus arafurae

Review the material on venom delivery systems:
• Opisthoglyphs
• Proteroglyphs
• Solenoglyphs

Atractaspididae.--(Mole Vipers; Africa, middle east)
Elapidae.--(including Hydrophiidae) (Non marine forms: Africa, Southern Asia; North, Central, and South America. Marine forms: all continents except Europe) Micrurus fulvius, Micrurus spixii, Micrurus sp., Acanthophis antarticus (Common Death Adder), Pseudechis guttatus (Spotted Black snake), Pseudonaja inframacula (Peninsula Brown Snake), Naja oxiana (Central Asian Cobra), Hydrophis klossi

Viperidae
• Viperinae (Non-pit vipers) (Europe, Africa, East Asia, Southern Asia) Bitis gabonica
• Crotalinae (Pit vipers) (East Asia, Southern Asia, North, Central, and South America) Agkistrodon contortrix, Bothrops nasuta, Bothrops lateralis, Sistrurus catenatus, Crotalus atrox
Colubridae.--(Worldwide; Colubrinae and Natricinae most widespread, but neither in Madagascar)
• Natricinae (In US: Clonophis, Nerodia, Regina, Seminatrix, Storeria, Thamnophis, Tropidoclonion, Virginia.) Nerodia erythrogaster, Nerodia harteri, Thamnophis proximus, Thamnophis marcianus, Storeria dekayi
• Xenodontinae (in US: Carphophis, Contia, Diadophis, Farancia, Heterodon, Hypsiglena, Coniophanes, Rhadinaea, Tantilla, Trimorphodon) Heterodon platyrhinos, Diadophis punctatus, Tantilla gracilis, Hypsiglena torquata, Leimadophis epinephalus, Ninia psephota, Leptodeira annulata, Imantodes inornatus
• Colubrinae (in US: Arizona, Coluber, Drymarchon, Drymobius, Elaphe, Masticophis, Opheodrys, Pituophis, Salvadora, Cemophora, Lampropeltis, Rhinocheilus, Stilosoma, Chilomeniscus, Chionactis, Conopsis, Ficimia, Gyalopion, Sonora, Stenorrhina) Arizona elegans, Rhinocheilus lecontei, Elaphe guttata, Elaphe obsoleta, Pituophis melanoleucus, Lampropeltis triangulum, Lampropeltis getulus, Coluber mentovarius, Masticophis flagellum, Salvadora grahamiae, Ficimia streckeri, Sonora semiannulata, Chrysopelea paradisi,
• Homalopsinae (Rear-fanged watersnakes; Asia) Enhydris polylepis
• Lycodontinae (Africa, Asia) Psammophis sp.


How did they get the 9 types of Lemur back to Madagascar? I could go on listing some 3 million animals but I think I have made my point debunking the faerie tale Noah’s Flood.

The answer is that there is no rational explanation for a world wide Magical flood that utilised 2.3 billion cubic kilometres of water to be deposited then removed, and to transport animals that never lived in Mesopotamia from distant lands before the flood and back again after it. To even consider the possiblility of Noah's flood is a sure sign of mental illness in my opinion.

Conchobar

ps418

That's the easy part. All you have to do is ignore all of that geochronological evidence, and make up the dates to suit your needs. For instance, the evidence that the Bering platform was last emergent about 10k years ago, well ignore that, and the evidence that humans have been in the americas for 12k+ years, just ignore that too, and the evidence that the earth is billions of years old, well. . . you get the picture. As far as YEC absurdities go, tossing an inconvenient 10k or so years out the window is pretty minor.

Yes, most YECs accept that there was some kind of ice age. Opinions vary of course on how to shoehorn it into the geomythology (since they cannot appeal to real evidence to settle such disputes), but the 'theory' Ive heard most is that the "ice age" lasted a couple of hundred years and occurred immediately after the flood, about 4500 years ago.

Patrick

Jack the Bodiless

...But of course! The ancient Egypians didn't wrap bandages around their dead, they did that while they were alive to protect themselves from the cold!

Godless Dave

Funny how the Genesis flood story doesn't mention it though.

Jayjay

How about those ancient carvings and statues of bug-eyed people that some UFO nuts suggest are extraterrestial aliens? Nope, they've got it wrong... they're just regular people in diving suits during the flood when they made those carvings.

ps418

Also funny that Genesis doesn't mention meteorite impacts, catastrophic plate tectonics, formation of mountain ranges, massive volcanism, vapor canopies, mass extinctions, and all the other stuff YECs try to associate with the Flood.

Yet at the same time Genesis does describe the exact construction materials, design and dimensions of the ark (300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high), the exact number of days the flood lasted, how many cubits worth of water covered the "high hills", how old Noah was when the flood began (600 years old), where (the Mountains of Ararat) and what day (the seventeenth day of the seventh month ) the ark landed, the sort of birds (ravens and doves) Noah released from the boat and the type of branch (an olive branch) that the bird brought back, and sundry other details .

Lobstrosity

Man, God is a fucking sadist. First he kills off virtually all life on Earth and then he subjects the survivors to a few hundred years of severe cold? On top of this, wouldn't such severe climactic trauma be a bit difficult to survive if your species--er, sorry, kind--consists of only two animals?

Lobstrosity

Yeah, you'd think something like that would get noticed. It's not every day the Earth severely freezes for a few hundred years.