Documentary About The Flood and Noah's Ark

by Blue Grass 121 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  villabolo

  Billy; Genesis 7:2 actually says 7 pairs of 'clean' animals and a single pair of 'unclean' animals.

  Now let me play Devil's advocate:

  You may be acquainted with the "baramin"(Hebrew for kind) theory of creationists which states that there is a certain, limited degree of variation in the genepool allowing, for example, the felines in our present day to have descended from one "Cat Kind". This amounts to an acceptance of microevolution (and I'm surprised to have heard that very word from Creationists) and also substantially reduces the number of representative animals in the ark. According to Creationists baramins are roughly correspondent to the scientific classification of Genus or Family.

  As far as not having time to evolve or speciate that is most probably true taking a 4,000 year time span. However, Sociobiologists like Edward Wilson have stated that if the conditions are right, substantial evolution is possible, within 50 generations. Whether that is sufficient time for Lions, Cougars, Hyenas and your pet cat to vary from the original 'Baramin' or 'Kind' I do not know. Therefore the only way to dispute these arguments is to do some pretty heavy duty math and calculations of migratory patterns etc that no one without a University level of education would be able to understand.

  It would also take a very patient soul, minus the University degree, to calculate the square footage of the ark and try to stuff 7 pairs of clean and 1 pair of unclean 'kinds' ("baramin"). It was a pretty large Ark though my intuition tells me it was not big enough.

  What we are left with is an intuitive feeling that there is something wrong with the whole story but beware, a smart Creationist can talk circles around us especially if he takes his stuff seriously. There are of course counter arguments against them but a few of them are immune to the "Noah's Ark can't fit them all" debate. That is why we would have to calculate square footage divide by the amount that an inactive animal would need and then compare that number to what exists on earth today and existed yesteryear on the Genus or Family level.

  Saying that we need to do more homework should not discourage us or be taken as a sign of ignorance or weakness on the part of evolutionists. Creationists are simply sloppy to say the least. There are a plethora of fact based arguments at our disposal.

  For anyone who is interested in the subject I highly recommend the book Science and Earth History by Arthur Strahler. It is devoted to responding to virtually every Creationist claim and with five hundred large fine print pages of material it is very much worth the price.

  villabolo
• 

  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  villabolo,

  Excellent post. So creationists would say that just one pair of generic marsupials produced both:

  big Aussie Kangaroos and the small, hideous American possum?

  

  Yeah, the creationists better start hunting for evolutionary fossils. That's more than microevolution.

  It's one thing to say all the varied domestic dogs, wolves, foxes, and coyotes are closely related, they can interbreed (that's a stretch, but just play along). Ignore the facts of a required diverse gene pool, and one could claim they all evolved from one Noachian pair still marked with compatible genetics.

  The cat family is completely different. Check out liger and tigon with their hybrid growth disorders and sterility. The similarity of lions and tigers as "big cats" stops at their ability to mate in captivity. Others of the same cat family are not compatible. Domestic cats and tigers are as incompatible as the kangaroo and the possum. This isn't just genepool variation. The genetic differences would argue "unique creation", but the Noah legend requires substantial evolution asap after the flood... over a very, very short period of time. Not 4000 years. It would have to be less than 2000 years, unless creatio-flood-ists are going to argue that animals have been evolving since the time of Jesus. Lions, leopards, dogs, and wolves are mentioned by Isaiah. They were different by that time, over 700 years BC.

  Anyway, villa, thanks for playing "Devil's Advocate". Care to comment on "land bridges" while you're at it?

  B the X
• 

  Joshnaz

  I like the part when it says diffrent civilizations also recorded a global flood in earths history. That means they were there to record it. Right???? I thought the Bible said Noah and his family were the ONLY survivers and GOD flooded the entire earth....Hmmmmm.
• 

  darkl1ght3r

  Billy and villalobo,

  I'm fairly certain that the work to evaluate the validity of the "kinds" theory has been done. I know I've read it somewhere. Anyway, like Billy said, for the ark thing to work and then for us to end up with the biodiversity we see today would take like extreme-hyper-warp-speed evolution of the kind that even the most hard-core evolutionist wouldn't advocate.

  But also the creationists have no definition of what a "kind" is. Is a "kind" a group that share reproductive capability? No that doesn't work... because there are lots of animals species that should be of the same "kind" yet they can bear no offspring (this is due to genetic drift, reproductive isolation, and leads to "speciation", which has been observed, look it up).

  Also consider... where does archaeopteryx go? Is it a bird "kind" or is it a reptile "kind"? What about velociraptor? It's only slightly more dinosaur-like than archaeopteryx. Sinornithosaurus? Meilong? And what about Tiktaalik? Ichthyosaur? And what about all the synapsids (mammel-like-reptiles)? Ophiacodon, Dimetrodon, and Thrinaxodon.

  Simply stated... the actual scientists no longer think those last few are EITHER reptiles or mammels, because they share so many common features of both. Which is kinda why they had to give them their own class. This is exactly a prediction of evolution: that the fossil record should show no clear distinction between the various recognized groups of phylum. In fact there have been so many "in-between" forms found that biologists had to completely redesign their classification system. This has given rise to "cladistics". There are no gaps anymore. Or at least none that would give cause to doubt the fact that evolution occurs.

  And that brings up an interesting question: Perry... why, if after everything God created was deemed "good", did he proceed to destroy 99% of all species that have lived on the earth? 99% of all the variety he supposedly created? Isn't that a waste???? Sounds like poor design to me. This is a mystery to creationists... but it's a PREDICTION of evolution.

  PERRY, PLEASE RESPOND TO THE ISSUES I RAISED IN THIS POST. Since you seem to have a tendency to duck my questions.
• 

  parakeet

  Billy: ... the small, hideous American possum

  Hey! Don't diss the possum. They may have tails like rats, have razor-sharp teeth, hiss like snakes, and slink around at night, but that doesn't make them hideous. But I'll bet they gave Noah a lot of trouble on the ark. They're small marsupials, but they've got attitude.

  And those "cute" kangaroos? They can kick you from here to Sunday. It's a wonder they didn't kick a hole in the ark and sink it.
• 

  Billy the Ex-Bethelite

  darklighter,

  OH SNAP!! More proof is now in the hands of creatio-flood-recent-dinosaurists!!!

  

  Dinosaurs walked with God's son.
• 

  darkl1ght3r

  Billy... zOMG! Are those actual photos? Wow... I was completely wrong. I wonder if even Perry is aware of this evidence. That's even more convincing than his dino artifacts. Praise Jaws.

  Singing: "Jesus loves the little diiiiinos. All the dinos of the wooooorrrld."
• 

  villabolo

  Billy the Ex Bethelite, sorry for not getting to you sooner I was falling asleep at my monitor and had to hit the sack. As far as your example of different marsupials I'm sure Creationists would give the American Possum the privelege of being its own kind. I'm sure that there are many examples that would imply too much variance. In fact, I recall (hope my memory isn't fooling me) in the evolution book of the 1970s that the WBTS printed the argument that dinosaurs did not have to be represented in Noahs ark because birds were there and they supposedly belonged to the same kind* because scientists(!!!) had said that birds and dinosaurs are related. Of course, scientists were not referring to Genesis "kinds" when they said that and furthermore, since when do scientists have credibility in Creationists eyes?

  *footnote: If this is true then try to imagine a T. Rex mating with a pigeon.

  villabolo
• 

  TD

  villabolo

  I realize you were only playing 'Devils advocate' so I'm not arguing. (This is just a fun game)

  You may be acquainted with the "baramin"(Hebrew for kind) theory of creationists which states that there is a certain, limited degree of variation in the genepool allowing, for example, the felines in our present day to have descended from one "Cat Kind". This amounts to an acceptance of microevolution (and I'm surprised to have heard that very word from Creationists) and also substantially reduces the number of representative animals in the ark. According to Creationists baramins are roughly correspondent to the scientific classification of Genus or Family.

  Three observations here:

  You mentioned diversity within gene pools. That is a viable concept. But the problem is, when you take 2 (Or 7) breeding pairs out of millions in any species and kill all the others off, most of that diversity is gone. Within just a few generations we're stuck with a breeding population where every member is as closely related to each other as siblings are. (Cousin doubling) The supposed mechanism for rapid postdiluvian speciation has been crippled.

  A second obervation involves differences between species. It's more than microevolution. If we assume they came from a common ancestor, the difference between the Sumatran tiger and the Bengal tiger is microevolution. But the difference between the Sumatran tiger and the African lion is macroevolution. (i.e Any change to a breeding population at or above the level of species.)

  To make matters worse, even within a single genus, species drift to the point where true reproductive isolation occurs. (e.g. A cross is not possible even by artificial insemination) At that point, you have a new 'Kind' by the biblical definition of the term, since the it is used very much in the context of reproduction.

  Billy mentioned the dog family. Some members of this family can hybridize and some can't The domestic dog, the wolf, the coyote and the jackal all have 78 chromosomes and can usually interbreed. But the Gray Fox only has 66, the Fennec Fox, 64, the Maned wolf 76, the Red Fox 34, and the Racoon dog 56. These species are reproductively isolated from all other members of the dog family.

  It's far better for the creationist to let the flood story go, than to try and insist that all the members of family Canidae or Felidae descended from a hypothetical single pair because that amounts to an embracement of evolution with open arms.

  A third observation involves what makes a viable breeding population with higher mammals. We've driven enough species to extinction and brought them back via captive breeding programs to have a lot of hard data. With large mammals, a viable breeding program requires far more than 1 (Or 7) breeding pairs. It is more on the order of 25 to 50 pairs.

  Even then, this will produce a genetic bottleneck that will be dectectable for many thousands of years. Take the Cheetah for example: We know this species went through a severe genetic bottleneck (Although not nearly as severe as would have occured in the flood story) at some point in the past. This is detectable not only be gene sequencing but by the observation that skin grafts can be taken and applied from any donor/recipient combination and not rejected.
• 

  villabolo

  TD, I agree with every point in your three observations. I've heard rebuttals to your third observation by creationists that go somewhat like this.

  1. Before the flood there was a water canopy that shielded the earth from cosmic rays.

  2. Cosmic rays cause mutations much of which are lethal.

  3. Animals before the flood had perfect genes and you could breed them from a single pair.

  4. It has taken this long (4,000 years) for all animals and humanity to accumulate bad genes to the point were you need a greater number fo avoid inbreeding.

  I know that this argument can be torn apart but the typical JW won't even get this far.

  villabolo