lpetrich

"Gopher wood" is a translation -- the King James translation. We must remember that the Bible's writers had not spoken King James English.

Sandslice

Yeah, but the fundies that still cling to arkology like the KJV. And like I said, even if the YEC'ers themselves don't like it, they plagiarise each other so often that I can safely use Hovind (who insists the KJV is the most inerrant of all biblical translations) to represent them as a general statement.

"The Bible versions of today come from two basic families of manuscripts. The King James was translated for the Textus Receptus of which about 5000 copies or parts of copies exist today. Most other modern versions are good translations of the corrupt manuscripts often called the Alexandrian manuscripts." (K. Hovind, from FAQ 14 "Why do you recommend the King James Version?" at his website drdino.com)

Hence, gopher wood.

Oolon Colluphid

That sounds like one of my own back-of-the-envelope calculations. I think that's the headline figure for Mt Arrarat, assuming it is taken as the highest mountain at the time. But if we take the 'all the high hills' bit literally (and why not? ), then the simple version is:

Call Mount Everest 29,000 feet (it’s more than that).

The flooding lasted forty days and nights. 40 x 24 = 960 hours.

29,000 / 960 = 30.2 feet per hour. That’s nominally how fast the flood waters had to rise at.

Now, cretinists argue two things about this. They say the mountains were not so high (remember the hypersonic continental drift that you need to get South America across the Atlantic ), and that not all the water was rain: the mysterious fountains of the deep did some too.

Okay. Say the highest mountain was only half of Everest now. 14,500 feet is still a decent mountain. And say that the FotD accounted for half the water. Chop that mountain in half again: 7,250 feet.

To cover the tops of the highest hill, it still has to rain at a constant 7.5 feet (90 inches) per hour. That is well into world record territory, and has to be maintained not for the few minutes of the world records, but a continuous forty days. It pisses all over (so to speak) the average Indian monsoon.

I think that calculation is more than generous in the cretinists’ favour. And remember, Noah and co were attempting to float a fully laden wooden boat in it.

But then again, god could have just miracled it.

DT

Amen-Moses

Could I just correct that to is.

Amen-Moses

Duvenoy

Yeah, I figger that's what happened. With the rising waters, keeping Noah Ltd. afloat, feeding animals and shoveling slops, getting everything properly scattered aftward, the Big Kahuna must have been miracling like mad 24/7 for a LONG time.

Could this be why we see no genuine miracles today? The Big K shot his wad in the flood?

doov

scigirl

So why does any ark discussion remind me of that ridiculous debate in the movie Stand by Me:

Boy #1: Ok who would win in a fight - Superman or Mighty Mouse?

Boy #2: Well I think...

(debate ensues for a while)

Boy #3 hears what the debate is about, and says, "You guys are stupid to debate that, after all Mighty Mouse isn't real."

hahaha

scigirl

[ November 28, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

Boro Nut

Oh yeah? They said the same about dolphins and whales once. Look how wrong they were.

Boro Nut

crocodile deathroll

Termites ate them all.

Doubting Didymus

And idiot Noah had the opportunity to wipe the bastards out, and he takes two little termites with him.

Just out of interest, how do creationists wave away the salt/fresh water problem?

Albion

Well, some of them say that the sea was just salty enough to support both sorts of fish without too much stress. Others go on about layers of salinity. All of which rather ignores the fact that with warp-speed plate tectonics going on, there'd be a lot of other dissolved subastances in the water, playing merry hell with the pH and salinity, and there'd be so much turbulence that layering would be out of the question. Basically you have two different floods going on simultaneously - the nice friendly flood of the children's picture books with fluffy clouds, a calm sea, a pretty rainbow, and a medium-sized ship with giraffes and kangaroos standing on deck, and the sort of flood that completely redraws the map of the planet in the space of a few weeks. Simultaneously. And they say theBible is scientifically accurate. Go figure.