mindaika

According to biblical legend, at some point Noah packed up his giant ark with a bunch of animals, his wife, his three sons, and their wives. After that, the rains came, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, flooding presumable the entire earth and destroying all non-arkived life.

What race was Noah? Assuming he was Jewish, then his 3 sons would be Jewish as well. But even if he wasn't, amongst the 4 couples on the ark, how did they come up with the large number of ethnic groups now present in the world?

The Evil One

Tradition says that Noah's sons were black African (Ham), Middle Eastern (Shem) and white-Mediterranean (Japheth) and that the races of the world descend from them.

What that makes their Dad, I wouldn't like to say.

Family Man

In that case, I wonder where the Asians came from.

mindaika

Also the Indians and Native Americans. Which also brings up the question of how the Native Americans and the American animals got here in the first place. I guess one could believe the Natives kayaked across the Beiring Strait, but has anyone ever tried kayaking with a herd of elk? It's hard...

Magus55

Noah wasn't Jewish. Judaism began with Abraham. And the races came about through adaptation.

Weltall

Uh huh, suuuure. 6000 years to go from eight people to six billion? Thanks, but I'll cheerily ignore a story full of many such laughable claims.

mindaika

Adaptation would mean theistic evolution though. And less than 4000 years, which is what most Christian 'scientists' put the earth's age at, doesn't seem to be enough time for that level of adaption to occur.

Matrioshka_Brain

What about Imbreeding?

In bibiblical mythology, the human gene pool must be pretty fucked up by then.

First you got Adam and Eve - who's offspring would eventually go sterile.

Then there's Lot and his two daughters - ewww! Same probelm.

Then there's Noah and the flood.

And another thing: how were there multiple mitochondron strains floating around prior to bottlenecking, if everyone came from one woman, then 2 women from the same woman?

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About the races:

Where do the Pigmes fit in? Or the Alstralian Aborigionies? Or all the little Ethnic groups of the world (tribes)? Or Easter Island? Or the Chineese? Japaneese?

Why weren't the Neandrethals on board the Arc?

How did all these people get around the world and make it look as though they'd been there for thousands of years, within such a short period of time (especially the Chineese, Aborigionies, Meritime Archaic {who were around Canada for 7500 years} and South American tribes?

How'd they replenish the world in such a short period of time?

And how come the Egyptians were so rude as to not take note of Noah's flood - and keep right on going with their civilization?

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Well, you know what to expect from Bronze age Mythology.

Matrioshka_Brain

This statement kind of obliterates the "no new information" 'argument' against evolution.

mindaika

That's actually another biblical oversight. After Cain murders Abel, he goes off to "the land of Nod" and takes a wife there. Which would be fine, except there's no mention of where the land of Nod is, of where the people there came from.