adler5

This post was a literal transcription of a site by Alan Feuerbacher. Please try to at least acknowledge your sources!

Vicar Philip

Good questions, adler5.

However, some theists simply wave their hand and say "Goddidit."

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

You ought to try posting this on apologetics.com or christianforums.com.

Wizardry

As this thread pertains specifically to a subject area covered by one of the other II Philosophical Forums, I'm going to send it over there.

This thread has been moved from General Religious Discussions to Evolution/Creation.

Valentine Pontifex

The oceans are shallow???????????????????????????????

And there is life in the extreme depths.

Azathoth

It's a creationist apologetic.The shallow oceans were to accomidate less rain,or something,because they kept running into huge problems in explaining a flood that inundated the globe,with just rainfall.It's a long,convoluted,and silly argument,as adler just poined out.

The Society's claims are nonsense.

Amergin

Good points in your post.

The fact is that certain animals are found only in certain isolated locations. 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 some 3000 species of delicate fresh water tropical fish back to the Amazon Basin across thousands of miles of salt sea? 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 well as a million species of South American insects? (A fourth of all species live in the Amazon Basin.) How did they get the 9 types of Lemur back to Madagascar?

The amount of water needed to flood the Earths highest mountains would have to be enough to cover Mt. Everest at 29,000 plus feet or over 5 miles higher than present sea level. Can we even begin to imagine the immense quantity of water that would require? If Earth had been covered over 5 miles deep it would require 980 million cubic miles of water or 2.55 billion cubic kilometres of water. That water would have to be obtained and then carted away somehow. There are no empty spaces within the Earth for all of that water.

So, you see, it is a scientific, or really a physical impossibility that Noah’s Legend could be true. The size of the boat is far too small for the number of animals and their food supply. The gathering of the animals from all over the world and delivering them back to their places of origin would have taken many years and hundreds of ocean going vessels to accomplish that task. The obtaining and disposing of many hundred thousand or millions of cubic miles of water is impossible without divine magic, which I don’t accept.

If you postulate miracle, i.e. magic, you must show me proof that magic exists. You must prove that magic ever occurred in any time or place. Other than magic, the Noah’s Fable was not physically possible.

Amergin

Amergin

There is no evidence that the oceans were ever shallow except perhaps when it was still molten hot and the crust had not yet formed.

However we know that since the Cambrian 500 million years ago there have been tectonic plate movements and continental drift. Geologists know this quite well. One of the consequences of tectonic plate movement is that while at rifts there are new plate material forming, and pushing the plates apart, at other places plates muct collide. Those places often make oceanic trenches that are extremely deep, over 5 miles. These trenches are all over the world not just near continental margins like the US west coast. They are in oceanic regions of the Pacific ocean far from land. They occur because one plate subducts as it collides with the other one and it is pushed down and under the advancing plate. We know that after the breakup of Pangaea about 240 million years ago, the present continents soon separated. And life evolved in divergent directions on them. This is incompatible with the superstition of Noah's Flood.

Amergin

dangin

There is a comeback to this. If goddidit, then why didn't he wave his magic harry potter wand, and just do it. If Noah had a chance of failure, and god interceded on Noah's behalf to save him and the ark, then the entire exercise was masturbation. Or another example of god's cruelty.

The whole ark thing had to be a gamble and an example of man achieving great things for god. If god helped in the least little bit, then god should have just made all the wicked disappear and left only the eight human's he sent on the ark to start things over again.

OH, and let's not forget that the entire ark had one 3 foot by 3 foot window for ventilation, and nothing else. How can we describe the air on the lower decks after 40 days and nights?

Yummy and asphixalicious.

Ganymede

Don't forget the humble Kiwi - a small flightless bird that can't swim, found only in New Zealand, which is some 10 000 miles from Mt Ararat.

G

Doubting Didymus

Explainations I have heard: they floated there, and nowhere else, on huge mats of floating dead vegetation. Alternatively: there was a global ice age, the ocans froze over, and they walked.

(I'm not joking)