Topic: [Split from another topic] Noah's Flood

[Gwaihir]

FMG--you have supplied the way Noah could have lived for hundreds of years.

Humans have a set lifespan due to the flaw in mitotic replication in multicellular eukaryotes.

If that flaw was not present at the time Noah lived, people would have lived much longer.

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Noah did not have to take every species onto the ark.  2 juvenile elephants were all that was needed.  After they got off the ark and began to reproduce, new species could have developed as different populations became isolated.
Taking young animals minimalizes the space required.  Taking one of every kind rather than species drastically reduces the number of animals that need to be taken.  Two large cats are taken on the ark.  After they disembark various species including lions, tigers etc develop.  Keep in mind that the classification system is an organizational tool rather than a scientific fact.  A different method of organizing is not unscientific it is different.  The Bible speaks in terms of a "kind" which has the characteristic of the ability to reproduce.  That is a legitimate organizational method, and under that method not as many animals must be taken as under the modern classification system.

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Freshwater vs. saloutrageously sexy lycra-clad pixieer fish.  What if the oceans had lower levels of salt at the time of the flood.  This is likely as the salinity of the oceans is steadily increasing.  A low level of salinity would allow freshwater species to survive.  Following the flood the isolated populations (ie the populations in streams vs. oceans) experienced different conditions.  The oceans became saltier.  The animals in the ocean adapted to the change.  The fresh water animals did not.  Conditions today are not the same as they were then.  If the flood occured today one population or the other would be destroyed.  It didn't occur today, and under the different conditions of the time, it is entirely plausible that the populations of water dwelling organisms could have survived.

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The genetic argument against a small population reproducing also fails to account for changes since that time.  Lethal mutations in the genetic code increase over time.  The genetic code at the time of noah likely had far fewer of these mutations.  The number, if small enough, would not prevent a population of 2 from producing the populations that we have today.  With a small number of genetic mutations and a short period of inbreeding a population could survive long enough to diversify and survive.

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The account of the formation of the people of Israel is an example of how a small number of people can and did form a large population in a short time.  Starting with Jacob and his 12 sons, a people numbering around 2,000,000 formed in a mere 400 years.

Lets examine how quickly a population can develop.  2 people have five children which survive to reproduce during thier lifetime.  Each of the five has 5 children and the population has risen to 25 in two generations.  The 3rd generation has 125, the 4th 500, the 5th 2,500, the 6th, 12,500, the 7th, 50,000, the 8th, 250,000, the 9th 1,250,000, the 10th, 5,000,000, the 11th 25,000,000, the 12th, 125,000,000, the 13th 500,000,000.  13 generations and the population is half a billion.  Larger than estimates of the population of the world during the Roman Empire.  Noah's family could easily have populated the world in the allotted time.

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Noah's technology.  We often don't give proper credit to ancient peoples for what they can accomplish.  A look at the chapters preceding the account of Noah shows that his society had developed cities, domesticated animals, practiced agriculture, were capable of metalugy, crafted musical instruments, and had the ability to write.  These are not the characteristics of a primitive, uncapable society.

The flood reduced the human population down to a single family which slowly began to repopulate the world.  Their decendants chose to stay together rather than disperse as God had commanded.  Noah and his family retained knowledge of many of the skills that their pre-flood civilization had mastered and the developing society would have those skills as well.  When God confused the languages at Babel the people finally dispersed.  During the time of migration, they would not have the ability to make use of the skills that required cities and knowledge of the location of resources.  The effect of Babel would have been to cause many of the people's to have a technological regression.  The strong families and those remaining near Babel would have been able to preserve their knowledge, but families which migrated long distances into areas lacking the resources necessary to form advanced civilization would have lost the skills or lived for a time as primitive stone age men.  We look at the stone age and assume that it was a starting point before advancement when the Biblical model indicates that is was actually representative of a regression.  People who had skills lost them rather than the other way around.

[The GrimSqueaker]

Another alternative is that this was a regional rather than global event and thus the animals carried within the vessel really weren't all that important in the great scheme of things.

[Full Metal Geneticist]

FMG--you have supplied the way Noah could have lived for hundreds of years.

Humans have a set lifespan due to the flaw in mitotic replication in multicellular eukaryotes.

If that flaw was not present at the time Noah lived, people would have lived much longer.

Did you even question the reason this flaw exists? Did you even bother reading up on what the flaw is? Nope...

DNA replication begins at RNA primers in eukaryotes like Noah. Eukaryotic DNA is large and filled with a lot of non coding DNA for a combination of stability and protection of genes since eukarya are a lot more fragile than prokarya and archaea. Particularly to viral and transposon attack while those don't matter to bacteria due to their more robust nature in breeding, eukarya need greaterDNA stability. DNA replication does'nt begin at one point on the chromasome but at multiple points. When each segment reaches an RNA primer, the primer is excised and DNA nucleotides attach in its place connecting these copy segments. However since DNA is only formed in one direction 5 prime sugar to 3 prime sugar, it means that the primer can only be removed succesfully if a strand is being formed "upstream" of the copy fragment.

I.e The first 3 nucleotides of DNA cannot be copied. This is'nt an error in humans. This is an error that all eukaryotes have. This is the price you pay for efficiency and our size. This error does'nt exist in prokaryotes since they have circular DNA which comes with its own set of problems. While viral infection or transposon damage is lethal to a individual bacteria we can shrug of trillions of these invaders without even breaking a fever thanks to this DNA solidity and create specialisation. We have long natural lifespans due to that.

Hence my statement that if Noah could live to 900 he would'nt be human as his DNA would have to be circular.

Noah did not have to take every species onto the ark.  2 juvenile elephants were all that was needed.  After they got off the ark and began to reproduce, new species could have developed as different populations became isolated.
Taking young animals minimalizes the space required.  Taking one of every kind rather than species drastically reduces the number of animals that need to be taken.  Two large cats are taken on the ark.  After they disembark various species including lions, tigers etc develop.  Keep in mind that the classification system is an organizational tool rather than a scientific fact.  A different method of organizing is not unscientific it is different.  The Bible speaks in terms of a "kind" which has the characteristic of the ability to reproduce.  That is a legitimate organizational method, and under that method not as many animals must be taken as under the modern classification system.

And you fail to realise that the moment you drop below a certain species number, the species goes extinct... Which was the problem with the tasmanian tiger. They killed so many that when there were a handful left they simply inbred and killed themselves off. The same fear is held for elephants, tigers, lions, cheetahs and other big cats. Cause of their large ranges low populations would resulting in inbreeding and extinction. That is the same fear for the californian condor with around 12 - 18 individuals left the gene pool is so small that inbreeding will occur. The idea is to rush out as many in the wild as possible to allow natural selection to apply and add diversity in order to save this bird. However its "living on borrowed time" because their numbers are so small the allele selection plays againt them. Two individuals = Certain death.

And I have no idea what science you use... Two Large Cats? The level of difference between the physical structure of a lion and a tiger is phenomenal. Even though they are both large cats a lion's skeleton is totally different from a bengal tiger which in turn is totally different from an cheetahs. While the tiger is an ambush hunter and so designed for as much power as possible in an animal, the lion is a group hunter and so has less power but better communication and cheetahs rely on speed so they are as fast as possible. Their evolutionary niches are so radical in the way they apply themselves to catching food. Lions and tigers have a common ancestor (the saber tooth cat) which lived 100s of thousands of years ago. They don't share the common ancestor as cheetahs... or jaguars... or leopards. They are all different.

And what would they eat? Surely they would have caused the extinction of a fair bit of their food source before going extinct themselves...

Freshwater vs. saloutrageously sexy lycra-clad pixieer fish.  What if the oceans had lower levels of salt at the time of the flood.  This is likely as the salinity of the oceans is steadily increasing.  A low level of salinity would allow freshwater species to survive.  Following the flood the isolated populations (ie the populations in streams vs. oceans) experienced different conditions.  The oceans became saltier.  The animals in the ocean adapted to the change.  The fresh water animals did not.  Conditions today are not the same as they were then.  If the flood occured today one population or the other would be destroyed.  It didn't occur today, and under the different conditions of the time, it is entirely plausible that the populations of water dwelling organisms could have survived.

Does'nt matter, salt laden water = toxic for fresh water fish and fresh water = toxic for salt fish. Changing concentrations either way does'nt quite work. You take goldfish and add salt to their water... They will dehydrate in a matter of hours... Either way you look at it a lot of fish would have died leaving us with just salmon and bullshark... (both can survive in fresh and salt water... but salmon can only do it once while bullshark are specialised mangrove hunters)

The genetic argument against a small population reproducing also fails to account for changes since that time.  Lethal mutations in the genetic code increase over time.  The genetic code at the time of noah likely had far fewer of these mutations.  The number, if small enough, would not prevent a population of 2 from producing the populations that we have today.  With a small number of genetic mutations and a short period of inbreeding a population could survive long enough to diversify and survive.

Lethal genetic mutations do not increase over time. They reduce in population unless they provide a distinct advantage in some form. Like the reason why sickle cell anaemia is so common is because if you have one copy of it, it gives you a fairly sizeable resistance to malaria. Your blood cells collapse under malarial conditions killing the parasite. However if you have two alleles then you have no real bonus since the sickling occurs during normal operation. There is reasoning behind this.

The account of the formation of the people of Israel is an example of how a small number of people can and did form a large population in a short time.  Starting with Jacob and his 12 sons, a people numbering around 2,000,000 formed in a mere 400 years.

Lets examine how quickly a population can develop.  2 people have five children which survive to reproduce during thier lifetime.  Each of the five has 5 children and the population has risen to 25 in two generations.  The 3rd generation has 125, the 4th 500, the 5th 2,500, the 6th, 12,500, the 7th, 50,000, the 8th, 250,000, the 9th 1,250,000, the 10th, 5,000,000, the 11th 25,000,000, the 12th, 125,000,000, the 13th 500,000,000.  13 generations and the population is half a billion.  Larger than estimates of the population of the world during the Roman Empire.  Noah's family could easily have populated the world in the allotted time.

This is assuming we are like bacteria and have zero mortality (one bacteria becomes two bacteria... becomes 4 bacteria... there is no mortality rate here...). More like Jacob had 9 offspring and his wife would die in child birth, of those 9 offspring 5 would'nt see the age of 3, then another 2 would die growing up... The remainder may die during war. If life worked like that the earth would be screwed by us 1000 years ago, luckily its only got to this stage now... It took the combined effects of Crimea, WW1 and WW2 to get cheap pharmaceuticals onto the market to reduce the age of mortality from 40 to 60 and drop infant mortality. Yet you have some magic numbers there since you assume zero deaths from a time period where it was quite common for a woman to die during childbirth and to lose a good few children to common diseases. Remember fever would have been lethal to anyone due to the lack of simple things like paracetemol (fever can kill people if not controlled, flu was a major killer and now is merely a large inconvenience) diarrhoea would kill most people it affected (lack of knowledge on how the disorder worked... Remember that as far as WW1 diarrhoea killed more men in the trenches than bullets and poison gas and is still the biggest killer of children) All these put together produce a very very grim view for the veracity of your figures.

And it does'nt solve the problem of them being inbred.

Noah's technology.  We often don't give proper credit to ancient peoples for what they can accomplish.  A look at the chapters preceding the account of Noah shows that his society had developed cities, domesticated animals, practiced agriculture, were capable of metalugy, crafted musical instruments, and had the ability to write.  These are not the characteristics of a primitive, uncapable society.

Metallurgy is'nt the sign of advanced society since the mayan mathematics could calculate the world was round by maths (Only indians due to their decimal numeral system could match) and had astronomy that boggled the mind. Also read how deadly their obsidian blades were...

Wait... Developed cities are dated to 6000 BC at Indus, Nile, Babylon and Yanghtzee. Therefore noah existed during this period. Or you are just claiming that a magical mystical undiscovered city existed that predated this. Which would screw over the israelites since no such city exists to that date anywhere there.

And the ability to write is'nt so great. Neither is crafting musical instruments. And if you give stone age dates you have stone age technology. The argument of Gaara is "generation skipping" which obviously is false if they are "metallurgists" indicating bronze age. Therefore we are talking about 6000 BC timeframe. Not 15,000 BC due to archaeological evidence...

The flood reduced the human population down to a single family which slowly began to repopulate the world.  Their decendants chose to stay together rather than disperse as God had commanded.  Noah and his family retained knowledge of many of the skills that their pre-flood civilization had mastered and the developing society would have those skills as well.  When God confused the languages at Babel the people finally dispersed.  During the time of migration, they would not have the ability to make use of the skills that required cities and knowledge of the location of resources.  The effect of Babel would have been to cause many of the people's to have a technological regression.  The strong families and those remaining near Babel would have been able to preserve their knowledge, but families which migrated long distances into areas lacking the resources necessary to form advanced civilization would have lost the skills or lived for a time as primitive stone age men.  We look at the stone age and assume that it was a starting point before advancement when the Biblical model indicates that is was actually representative of a regression.  People who had skills lost them rather than the other way around.

Not necessarily true and this is utilising the fact that you assume languages are a unique thing to human when most animals have a language of sorts to the point of creatures like lions and chimpanzees able to utilise language to coordinate hunts and battle attacks as do mammals such as cetacea which have very complex language systems. Added to which is their ability to learn other languages. Chimps can understand human commands and communicate desires as can orangutans (gorillas are too dangerous to test...) Cetacea are known for personality behaviour. So I would'nt say language is all that special.

So Noah in addition to being a boat builder is an all round rennaisance man... The bible fails to mention that ability... Or quite possibly you are merely assuming without reason. Technological wha??? Oh dear god oh dear oh dear god...
What happens when two cultures with different languages get together? They TRY to understand each other. Not run away... Most people are curious about new things and so want to understand... Not go crazy and run away... So not only do humans behave like morons they also break every single observed tennent of human behaviour and act like lunatics... Yes so totally logic... Again what a bastard God is to do such a thing...

And the stone age is a big big problem to the bible due to the existance of the species of man. Homo Neandrathalis, Homo Cromagnon, Homo Florensis and the "Hobbit" all lived in roughly the same time space as your "magic men" who left no tower of babel and not one piece of evidence while these guys atleast left their corpses. Until you start giving us evidence of 300 year old men we are'nt going to believe a word of such a controvertial claim.

So far its all "well it could be this way" stretching the absolute boundaries of both magic and common sense to explain it instead of the simpler more sensible explanation. In the words of scrubs... "If it looks like a horse and sounds like a horse and makes clip clop noises when it moves... Its unlikely to be a giraffe.."

And remember this... Sanskrit, Egyptian and Chinese outdate Hebrew, Latin and Greek. There is also "indus script" which is found before hebrew. Care to name the magic language your "theory" spoke. And provide us with archaeological evidence for their existance?

There is more proof that human evolution is linked from our ability to throw stuff than there is for your model of human history...

[Gwaihir]

So far its all "well it could be this way" stretching the absolute boundaries of both magic and common sense to explain it instead of the simpler more sensible explanation.

What is common sense to one person is an absurdity to another.  That is a very relative term.  Secondly, I don't really feel the need to prove that the flood actually happened, only that it could have happened.  How did life come about? We don't know based on any proofs or irrefutable evidence since we have been unable to replicate the process that produced the first life.  That doesn't stop people from believing that life evolved from nonlife.  Possibilities of how it could have happened are all we are given while being told that we must accept and believe.  Why is that standard ok for the origin of life but not ok for the possibility of the flood, particularly the explanations that I have offered to this point?

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Thank you for your concise description of the genetic flaw which limits our age.  I have a few questions relating to it. 

What causes the difference in life-span between a dog and a tortoise, both eukaryotic organisms with dramatically different lifespans?

Secondly, you refer to "non coding DNA".  I assume that this refers to DNA which isn't actually used by the organism for manufacture of anything, rather performs a role of meat shield against attacks on the vital portions of DNA, ie viral and transposon attacks usually muck up the non coding rather than coding DNA.  Am I correct in my understanding of this?

Thirdly, you say that first three nucleotides cannot be replicated.  Would this be a problem if there were place holding nucleotides before the first three important nucleotides?

Finally, how does the problem of being unable to reproduce those three nucleotides shorten life spans?

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Inbreeding. 

Why is inbreeding lethal?  It gives recessive traits a higher liklihood of expressing themselves.  The longer the inbreeding continues and the more closely related the inbreeding subjects are related, the higher the liklihood that those traits will be expressed or purebred into the organism's offspring.  Recessive traits can be bred out of an organism's offspring eventually producing a generation lacking the trait.

I suspect that there were far fewer dangerous recessive traits in the genetic code of every organism at the time of the flood.  This would minimize the impact of inbreeding in the short term.  The more corrupt the code, the more problems when it is replicated.  A relatively pure code is less susceptible to the dangers of inbreeding.

Under the right conditions 2 organisms are capable of reproducing and establishing a stable population and are not guaranteed to die.  You assume that today's conditions were yesterday's.  This assumption is not verifiable and should not be relied on to the exclusion of other possibilities.

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Increase in lethal mutations in a genetic code.

A lethal mutation need not express in an organism; it may be recessive.  The trait can be carried and passed with no benefit or detriment to the organism carrying it.  When an organism does not suffer or benefit from a change to its code, evolution will not act on that change.  In this way a defect can be carried and passed down from generation to generation without being noticed.  Over time new mutations occur and passively wait in the genetic code for a time to express themselves.  The result is an increase in the number of mutation in a code over time.

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Lions and Tigers and Jaguars oh my!

You tell me that lions and tigers are incredibly different then go on to say that they have a common ancestor.  Which is it, they can or cannot come from the same thing?  Then you say that while lions and tigers have the same ancestor, they don't share an ancestor with leopards.  I suspect that you haven't gone far enough back down the phylogenic tree.  Trace it back and you will find one and I bet it was a cat of some sort.

Further, evolution claims that man evolved from a rock, yet you tell me that tigers and jaguars can't have come from a standard template construct cat?

What I propose is exactly what evolution describes, but in a much more limited context.

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Salty fish.

Is any level of salt lethal to fresh water fish?  No.  The issue is the concentration of salt in the solution.  Fresh water does in fact contain salt, but in much more limited concentrations than the ocean.

Now, if I took a goldfish and put it in a bowl of water from the ocean it would die quickly.  The same would be true in the opposite situation involving a salt water fish in fresh water.  But, what would happen if I were to take that goldfish and its offspring for hundreds of generations, and each generation steadily increased the amount of salt in the environment?  With the increase in salinity would come an increase in the ability to cope with the salinity according to the basic principles of evolution.  After a large number of generations the result would be a goldfish that cannot live in fresh water and can only live in salt water.  The process could work the other way as well, ie salt water fish bred to be a fresh water fish.

The next step is to consider the oceans at the time of the flood.  If the flood was universal, then there were no streams; all the world's water was ocean water.  This water would have a lower salinity than today's oceans.  Certain organisms would live in the water.  As the flood waters ran off and evaporated, the world spanning ocean would divide into separate bodies of water.  The salinity of the oceans would increase slowly and the animals in the ocean would adapt to that increase.  These animals would be isolated from the animal living in fresh water and would specialize as required by the challenges of their environment.  Isolated populations evolve different characteristics based on their environment.  It is unsuprising that today's fish have specialized to live in their very different environments.  It is simple, basic evolution at work.

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Population increase over time.

I did take into account which is why I limited the number of children per family to 5.  Families much larger than that were common at the time of Noah and afterward.  Jacob had 12 sons.  I suspect there were a few daughters in there as well.  The number of five was intended as conservative average taking into accound children which did not reach an age where they could reproduce or died before producing five children on there own.  At the rate of 5 children added per generation a population of 1,000,000 could easily be reached in a mere 1,000 years.  Noah and his decendants had much more than 1,000 years to produce the world population at the time of the Roman Empire.

I chose the number five becase it allowed for easy math.  You could half that number and still be able to produce the actual world population in the allotted time.  The main point is that it is plausible that Noah and his decendants could have populated the earth in a few thousand years.  You contend that they can't, a contention that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

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Technology of Noah's day.

You say metallugy isn't a marker of civilization, yet common classification of the development begins with stone age civilization moving to bronze and iron ages.  How do you have bronze and iron ages?  Metallugy.  I didn't say that metallurgy was the one standard of civilization, merely that it is a marker or indication that the society is fairly advanced in its technological acumen.  You casually dismiss writing as a marker of civilization, but I am unaware of any society which would be classified as a civilization which lacks the ability to write.  (Writing is not just alphabets, but hieroglyphics and other pictoral based systems).  All of the things I mentioned are offered to suggest that Noah and the civilization in which he lived wasn't the barbaric stupid bunch of stone age morons you envision.  The mayans that you mention were a stone age people, yet were quite impressive in the scope of their accomplishments.

As for Noah's civilization.  Assuming a world wide flood, one wouldn't expect archaeological excavations unearthing it.  A global flood would have done an effective job of burrying it or destroying it to the extent that there is no evidence remaining of its existence.  Following the flood a civilization quickly began in mesopotamia.  The tower of babel incident spread these people throughout the world including India, China and Egypt where people bringing their skills from Babel quickly established flourishing civilizations.

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Different languages.

According to the Biblical description, the people at Babel all had the same language.  The idea of anoter language was completely foreign.  It was something they had absolutely no way of conceptualizing mentally.  Suddenly people all around them are speaking gibberish.  There are no teachers to instruct them in learning the language.  The people speaking gibberish probably appeared to be insane.  What other conclusion would one draw?  Yesterday this guy spoke normally, today he is blabbering nonsensically.  So you have a large city filled with people who think that everyone else is a luntic.  How do you resolve disuputes when you have absolutely no idea what the other guy is saying.  In many cases with violence.  Weaker families would be forced to move away or be killed.  The result is that people spread out and populate the world.

[Emo robots, psycho ninjas, evil princes, and sadistic babies.]

Thanks for the help Gwaihir!

This is good. This means Gaara is willing to consider it from a scientist's standpoint. Theories are not meant to be sacrosanct. They are meant to be altered or discarded if evidence proves them wrong. Like the mountain of facts we have.

The entire book of Genesis is quite sparse on details. "And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him." (Genesis 4:8b)
With what? A stone? A wooden club? Did he stick him through the heart or bash him over the head? Where did he hide the body?
To sum up, there's not enough to be sacrosanct about. And with the mountain of facts, it would be wrong to stick canonically to the superliteral version.

[Full Metal Geneticist]

What is common sense to one person is an absurdity to another.  That is a very relative term.  Secondly, I don't really feel the need to prove that the flood actually happened, only that it could have happened.  How did life come about? We don't know based on any proofs or irrefutable evidence since we have been unable to replicate the process that produced the first life.  That doesn't stop people from believing that life evolved from nonlife.  Possibilities of how it could have happened are all we are given while being told that we must accept and believe.  Why is that standard ok for the origin of life but not ok for the possibility of the flood, particularly the explanations that I have offered to this point?

Not really, common sense by definition means "sense that is common". If i stood out in the rain, common sense dictates i seek shelter. Common sense does'nt dictate I strip naked and dance around in the rain.

Actually we have a fair idea via an experiment done by Miller Urey to replicate data from ice strata and rock about possible conditions and with a couple of days they started getting proteins. Given the surface area of the earth its plausible that life could come from this.

Its also equally possible that ninja aliens related to elvis created us if we go by your logic. Science works by the laws of the universe. Your idea relies on a magical entity existing to break laws of nature. Thus ours is kind of more probable. When you hear hoofbeats and see a equine shape you go "horsey" or "pony" not "zebra" and "definitely not unicorn".

Thank you for your concise description of the genetic flaw which limits our age.  I have a few questions relating to it.  

What causes the difference in life-span between a dog and a tortoise, both eukaryotic organisms with dramatically different lifespans?

Secondly, you refer to "non coding DNA".  I assume that this refers to DNA which isn't actually used by the organism for manufacture of anything, rather performs a role of meat shield against attacks on the vital portions of DNA, ie viral and transposon attacks usually muck up the non coding rather than coding DNA.  Am I correct in my understanding of this?

Thirdly, you say that first three nucleotides cannot be replicated.  Would this be a problem if there were place holding nucleotides before the first three important nucleotides?

Finally, how does the problem of being unable to reproduce those three nucleotides shorten life spans?

The different lifespans of tortoise and dog are due to the different lifestyle niches they fit. Tortoise is slow, well armoured and eats grass... Dog is fast, powerful and eats other fast moving animals. The little strains in life take their toll more readily and also the tortoise is cold blooded so uses "less energy" than the dog. Also most tortoises hibernate increasing their lifespan as their body systems slow down.

The second point is that these non coding DNA are important in how the DNA folds up and how bits of DNA are expressed due to the structure they give. They also form extra protection from viral and transposon movement. They also form the ends of chromasomes in tandem repeats called telomeres.

Thirdly there are place holding nucleotides and they are present in the form of telomeres.

Fourthly as you get older key cells start running out of ablative plating and begin to acquire mutations. Hence the increase in cancers as you get older. Also your telomeres run out and you start losing bits of vital genome. Telomeres have to be fixed since they are a way to control cell division, if you increased the amount of telomeres the cell becomes cancerous since cancer cells are immortal they cannot die to old age by telomere loss.

Inbreeding.  

Why is inbreeding lethal?  It gives recessive traits a higher liklihood of expressing themselves.  The longer the inbreeding continues and the more closely related the inbreeding subjects are related, the higher the liklihood that those traits will be expressed or purebred into the organism's offspring.  Recessive traits can be bred out of an organism's offspring eventually producing a generation lacking the trait.

Er... no... thats not the only reason why inbreeding is "so dangerous". Inbreds also have greater chance of dying and susceptibility to disease due to lack of allele interaction. They are also going to suffer from drop in IQ (it is genetic) in addition to producing extremely weak offspring. Its not just recessive alleles there are codominance as well. Like eye colour does'nt work by dominance and recessiveness... And unless you can DNA test people breeding recessive traits out of a population is very difficult. If that were so easy, great danes would live till they were 16... not die horribly at the age of 8.

I suspect that there were far fewer dangerous recessive traits in the genetic code of every organism at the time of the flood.  This would minimize the impact of inbreeding in the short term.  The more corrupt the code, the more problems when it is replicated.  A relatively pure code is less susceptible to the dangers of inbreeding.

No it is'nt for the reasons of not all recessive alleles provide a disadvantage. And the dangers of inbreeding are there for all to see in pure bred dogs and the European royal families.

Under the right conditions 2 organisms are capable of reproducing and establishing a stable population and are not guaranteed to die.  You assume that today's conditions were yesterday's.  This assumption is not verifiable and should not be relied on to the exclusion of other possibilities.

No we know what conditions are like without medical care... So we can kind of extrapolate. Under the right conditions of magic perhaps. Thats not how genetics and indeed life works. For start all those animals would have run out of food due to the law of biomass. Only 10% of each animals food is converted into mass... So those lions would have run out of food very quickly considering how often they kill another animal. You are assuming two animals in a place where they are given food, water, shelter and find each other mateable... And added to the fact all the plants would have died. A lot of magic is needed to make that work...

If your idea is true pandas would'nt be so endangered now would they? If two pandas of opposite gender were put in the same cage, baby panda would occur right? Thats not quite how life works.

Increase in lethal mutations in a genetic code.

A lethal mutation need not express in an organism; it may be recessive.  The trait can be carried and passed with no benefit or detriment to the organism carrying it.  When an organism does not suffer or benefit from a change to its code, evolution will not act on that change.  In this way a defect can be carried and passed down from generation to generation without being noticed.  Over time new mutations occur and passively wait in the genetic code for a time to express themselves.  The result is an increase in the number of mutation in a code over time.

Er... a lethal mutation expresses itself during inbreeding. For instance if you and your wife carry Huntingdons then there is a 3 in 4 chance of your child having the disease. However if you add disease like CF, you would create entire generations of CF positive people. Your mortality rate would be collosal. You are looking at each effect as a single entity. And lethal mutations do express themselves quite often. Its called cancer.

You tell me that lions and tigers are incredibly different then go on to say that they have a common ancestor.  Which is it, they can or cannot come from the same thing?  Then you say that while lions and tigers have the same ancestor, they don't share an ancestor with leopards.  I suspect that you haven't gone far enough back down the phylogenic tree.  Trace it back and you will find one and I bet it was a cat of some sort.

Further, evolution claims that man evolved from a rock, yet you tell me that tigers and jaguars can't have come from a standard template construct cat?

What I propose is exactly what evolution describes, but in a much more limited context.

Well then you are going to have to then accept that we came from a ape at some point, and the story of Adam and Eve is totally wrong. Its just as likely as your "breeding theory". Cause if we go back far enough, we are all practically the same animal really. If we accept your cat argument you have to accept the monkey argument.

Is any level of salt lethal to fresh water fish?  No.  The issue is the concentration of salt in the solution.  Fresh water does in fact contain salt, but in much more limited concentrations than the ocean.

Now, if I took a goldfish and put it in a bowl of water from the ocean it would die quickly.  The same would be true in the opposite situation involving a salt water fish in fresh water.  But, what would happen if I were to take that goldfish and its offspring for hundreds of generations, and each generation steadily increased the amount of salt in the environment?  With the increase in salinity would come an increase in the ability to cope with the salinity according to the basic principles of evolution.  After a large number of generations the result would be a goldfish that cannot live in fresh water and can only live in salt water.  The process could work the other way as well, ie salt water fish bred to be a fresh water fish.

The next step is to consider the oceans at the time of the flood.  If the flood was universal, then there were no streams; all the world's water was ocean water.  This water would have a lower salinity than today's oceans.  Certain organisms would live in the water.  As the flood waters ran off and evaporated, the world spanning ocean would divide into separate bodies of water.  The salinity of the oceans would increase slowly and the animals in the ocean would adapt to that increase.  These animals would be isolated from the animal living in fresh water and would specialize as required by the challenges of their environment.  Isolated populations evolve different characteristics based on their environment.  It is unsuprising that today's fish have specialized to live in their very different environments.  It is simple, basic evolution at work.

And this is assuming a double mutation. For starters the requirements to live in both sides are radically different. And you are hypothesising a non proveable event. Its just as likely elvis is the cause of evolution. BUT you fail to realise that the earth due to strata dating is over a billion years old... The water has had enough time to go salty... You are ignoring multiple theories to ensure yours works. This is assuming that the world was created only a few hundred thousand years ago and that an entire previous world of dinosauria and a world of fish did'nt exist... Salt levels are the same since there is a process called sedimentation. World salt content rises according to global warming since warm water carries more salt. Salt from water is lost on beaches during tides and at places such as salt flats and marshes so the level only changes by carrying capacity of water. There are other reasons for such occurences besides that. Its only in the dead sea which is really a lake where the water can't escape as fast as sediment is brought in that such saltyness is seen.

Population increase over time.

I did take into account which is why I limited the number of children per family to 5.  Families much larger than that were common at the time of Noah and afterward.  Jacob had 12 sons.  I suspect there were a few daughters in there as well.  The number of five was intended as conservative average taking into accound children which did not reach an age where they could reproduce or died before producing five children on there own.  At the rate of 5 children added per generation a population of 1,000,000 could easily be reached in a mere 1,000 years.  Noah and his decendants had much more than 1,000 years to produce the world population at the time of the Roman Empire.

I chose the number five becase it allowed for easy math.  You could half that number and still be able to produce the actual world population in the allotted time.  The main point is that it is plausible that Noah and his decendants could have populated the earth in a few thousand years.  You contend that they can't, a contention that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

This is assuming that scientists have screwed up right? Cause we can keep telling you that when we had mordern convenience in the 40s the irish were still dying at the age of 30 and yet you manage to totally ignore all evidence for a totally implausible story.

Technology of Noah's day.

You say metallugy isn't a marker of civilization, yet common classification of the development begins with stone age civilization moving to bronze and iron ages.  How do you have bronze and iron ages?  Metallugy.  I didn't say that metallurgy was the one standard of civilization, merely that it is a marker or indication that the society is fairly advanced in its technological acumen.  You casually dismiss writing as a marker of civilization, but I am unaware of any society which would be classified as a civilization which lacks the ability to write.  (Writing is not just alphabets, but hieroglyphics and other pictoral based systems).  All of the things I mentioned are offered to suggest that Noah and the civilization in which he lived wasn't the barbaric stupid bunch of stone age morons you envision.  The mayans that you mention were a stone age people, yet were quite impressive in the scope of their accomplishments.

As for Noah's civilization.  Assuming a world wide flood, one wouldn't expect archaeological excavations unearthing it.  A global flood would have done an effective job of burrying it or destroying it to the extent that there is no evidence remaining of its existence.  Following the flood a civilization quickly began in mesopotamia.  The tower of babel incident spread these people throughout the world including India, China and Egypt where people bringing their skills from Babel quickly established flourishing civilizations.

If you date your civilisation to a time of stone age and then don't give proof of metallurgy then we will assume you are making it up. If you say they had metallurgy then we will date them to around 6000 BC when bronze age began. Thats how it is. You can't make claims that you can't prove. The mayans themselves had no mode of writing and relied on the Quippu which is a memorial aid. The Huns were'nt writers and neither were the mongols... One had rome by the scruff of its neck the other had the biggest empire in the world till until the brits came along. And remember proof of his technology is needed. Its all well and good saying you have a cloned human, but you actually need proof to prove that you cloned one... Likewise here we need proof. What you have done is dated the civilisation to the stone age, then claimed they had metal working by "magic".

And remember we have humanoid fossils from 100,000 years ago and Fossils of Dinosaurs from 65 million years ago. Yet we have none of what you claimed from Noah's time. Quite odd that. Despite the sheer amount of digging going on around the region of the middle east nothing has been found. So until this allegedly massive advanced civilisation throws up a 300 year old aged corpse with metal worked ornaments dating from your dates, we would say "fanciful flight of fiction" due to zero proof beyond a cobbled up theory based on faith and "magical occurances" which break laws of life.

Different languages.

According to the Biblical description, the people at Babel all had the same language.  The idea of anoter language was completely foreign.  It was something they had absolutely no way of conceptualizing mentally.  Suddenly people all around them are speaking gibberish.  There are no teachers to instruct them in learning the language.  The people speaking gibberish probably appeared to be insane.  What other conclusion would one draw?  Yesterday this guy spoke normally, today he is blabbering nonsensically.  So you have a large city filled with people who think that everyone else is a luntic.  How do you resolve disuputes when you have absolutely no idea what the other guy is saying.  In many cases with violence.  Weaker families would be forced to move away or be killed.  The result is that people spread out and populate the world.

All humans would want to find out. Its why we are so badass on the food chain. Because we are naturally inquisitive and want to learn. Yeah Cortez had no "indian teachers" but managed to learn enough just fine to take hostages and ask for a room of gold for ransom... IF a spaniard could do it so could they if they existed. And how do you teach each other languages in the first place? What happens when you see something you have'nt seen before? You go poke it, you don't run screaming... Atleast the more successful humans don't.

And speak for yourself... Resolving disputes with violence? Check out buddhists and Hindus. When strange people came to their land not speaking their language they tried to learn their language and integrated them when they did'nt speak the same language or script. Sign language is pretty good you know. No one can not understand pointing to your lips... They did'nt wail on them for speaking a different language no matter how strange they looked. And considering how much effort they put into this tower as you claim no human would have left it behind... More than likely should it all go wrong, they would have killed each other perpetually over this stupid tower... Not buggered off and left.

Mountain of facts?
All you have is a book that was translated from Latin to German to English... You don't have any facts... You have the same amount of facts as any other non sourced book...

[Emo robots, psycho ninjas, evil princes, and sadistic babies.]

Mountain of facts?
All you have is a book that was translated from Latin to German to English... You don't have any facts... You have the same amount of facts as any other non sourced book...

I was referencing to your mountain of facts, taking the words from UVR.

[tryanotherone - smurfernating]

All you have is a book that was translated from Latin to German to English...

Even at the risk of being called a smartass, it was translated from greek to latin to german to english. The thora and later the bible were both written in greek as it was the lingua franca of its time.

[Emo robots, psycho ninjas, evil princes, and sadistic babies.]

Even at the risk of being called a smartass, it was translated from greek to latin to german to english. The thora and later the bible were both written in greek as it was the lingua franca of its time.

I know that already.

People who wish to study the Bible in its entire accuracy study it in its original Greek. Heck, my dad did that, and my mom even took Biblical Hebrew.

But for common folk, it's better to have a Bible they can understand.

[Mr.Peanut (Turtleproof)]

What is common sense to one person is an absurdity to another.  That is a very relative term.  Secondly, I don't really feel the need to prove that the flood actually happened, only that it could have happened.  How did life come about? We don't know based on any proofs or irrefutable evidence since we have been unable to replicate the process that produced the first life.  That doesn't stop people from believing that life evolved from nonlife.  Possibilities of how it could have happened are all we are given while being told that we must accept and believe.  Why is that standard ok for the origin of life but not ok for the possibility of the flood, particularly the explanations that I have offered to this point?

If even logical ideas are subject to being compared to the possibility of the Flying Spaghetti Monster engulfing our forum, there's no point in discussion.  The Ark story, however, is not credible by almost any measure (except Barr'el's idea that it could be a localized event, but 'every creature on the Earth' puts that into doubt). 
After all possibilities of equivocating the story into something believable have failed, it is relegated to the category of alegory or metaphore.  Even the metaphore fails because those who choose to turn away from God choose to do so, the people killed in the flood were forsaken, butchered, drowned.  That there are two of every animal and only two humans has little meaning in that metaphore, also.

[Gwaihir]

If even logical ideas are subject to being compared to the possibility of the Flying Spaghetti Monster engulfing our forum, there's no point in discussion.  The Ark story, however, is not credible by almost any measure (except Barr'el's idea that it could be a localized event, but 'every creature on the Earth' puts that into doubt). 
After all possibilities of equivocating the story into something believable have failed, it is relegated to the category of alegory or metaphore.

You are neatly skirting the question by labeling the idea you prefer as logical and comparing the idea you don't prefer to the "flying spaghetti monster".  Labeling ideas, rather than discussing them is not logical; it is a logical fallacy.  It is useful for distracting, confusing and convincing those who are unable to spot such a fallacy, but anyone with a bit of training will easily spot and mentally discard flawed argumentation such as that quoted above.

I have been accused of using "ultra-simplified slogan-arguments", yet that is precisely what the above statement is.

When you say "logical [idea]", I assume you are referring to a rock evolving into a microbe of some sort.  I must again question whether that is truely logical.  Has this ever been observed?  No.  In fact is is a rather fundamental scientific principle that this does not occur.  Louis Pasteur demonstrated this with his experiments, and disproved the widely held belief in spontaneous generation.  People thought dead meat spawned live flies.  Scientists have managed to produce some of the basic building blocks of life in labratories, but building blocks are not life any more than a screw is a space shuttle.  We are left with a situation where we are told to believe something happened which has never been observed to have happened.  This is grossly unscientific as science is firmly rooted in what can be observed and repeated.  It is illogical because it directly contradicts everything we have observed. The only way it makes sense is if one starts with the unprovable assumption that there is no god which could have created that first life.  If nothing could have created it, and there is life, then life must have spontaneously generated.  Assuming the assumption of no god is true, then the idea has merit.  The problem though is that an idea based on a unverifiable assumption is no more valid than any other idea based on an unverifiable assumption.

What is the point of discussing this in a thread about Noah's ark?  Well, a different standard is applied to the validity of Noah's ark than is applied to allegedly scientific ideas.  Those who believe contrary to all precedent that life came from non-life demand that those who believe the Biblical account of Noah present absolute proof that it happened.  Suggesting plausible ways the flood could have occured is not enough in their eyes.  They want proof, though they themselves believe something uterly devoid of proof.  If a consistent standard is applied to the Noah's ark story, proof is not required--only plausible explanations of how the event could have occured are necessary.

The flying spaghetti monster is a flawed analogy because no one seriously believes in one, and is a striking example of erroneous logic.  Lets see, I don't believe what he is saying, I'll compare his idea to some fantastically abusurd idea, then I can dismiss both without further discussion.  I think we are smater than to use such an argument.  Aren't we?

--

From what I remember, Urey's experiments produced amino acids rather than proteins.  Could you source material indicating that he produced proteins?  Those experiments were something like fifty years ago.  Why is it that, if we had proteins, we still don't have life?  They already had the building blocks, shouldn't they have been able to produce life in the time that has passed?

Er... no... thats not the only reason why inbreeding is "so dangerous". Inbreds also have greater chance of dying and susceptibility to disease due to lack of allele interaction. They are also going to suffer from drop in IQ (it is genetic) in addition to producing extremely weak offspring. Its not just recessive alleles there are codominance as well. Like eye colour does'nt work by dominance and recessiveness... And unless you can DNA test people breeding recessive traits out of a population is very difficult. If that were so easy, great danes would live till they were 16... not die horribly at the age of 8.

What you are describing is only a problem if the genes are flawed.  If they aren't flawed, there won't be a problem.  You say IQ is genetic ie it is based on the genes you are passed by your parents.  If the parent's genes don't have a problem, then the offspring won't.  Inbreeding doesn't produce flawed genes, it gives the flaws more opportunity to express themselves.  If one of the four genes for a given trait your parents could pass to you has a flaw, you have a fifty percent chance of getting that flaw.  If the flaw is recessive, it won't express.  If both you and your sister have the the flaw in one but not both of your genes for the trait, only one in four of your children will see that trait express.  Another one won't have it at all, the other two fall in the middle.  It is more likly that one of you won't inherit the flaw and your children will have the same genetic opportunities as you had.  When gene pools are diverse, several generations of inbreeding are needed before the recessive traits are magnified in the population.

Only 10% of each animals food is converted into mass... So those lions would have run out of food very quickly considering how often they kill another animal. You are assuming two animals in a place where they are given food, water, shelter and find each other mateable... And added to the fact all the plants would have died. A lot of magic is needed to make that work...

There are far more prey species than predator species.  Noah took seven of many of the prey species onto the boat.  If six were female and one male (or 2 males to allow for greater genetic diversity) and they mated while on the ark, they could have produced the next generation shortly after disembarking.  Having more females than males would allow rapid increase in the population.  Noah and the animals did not leave the ark immediately.  They stayed on it for a period of time after the land began to dry.  Grass grows quickly and would have been able to feed the relatively small number of creatures leaving the ark.  The ark had an available food supply to support the organisms while they waited to leave.

World salt content rises according to global warming since warm water carries more salt.

The oceans are no where near the saturation point.  They can hold much higher concentrations of salt.  The temperature change of a degree or two has little impact on how much salt the water may hold.

This is assuming that scientists have screwed up right? Cause we can keep telling you that when we had mordern convenience in the 40s the irish were still dying at the age of 30 and yet you manage to totally ignore all evidence for a totally implausible story.

So you are saying that no one before the development of modern technology lived longer than 30 years?  Go back and read some history books.  You won't have trouble finding societies where life spans were much longer.  A 30 year life span indicates a society that has some severe problems.  Many ancient societies lived much longer than that even without modern conveniences.

All humans would want to find out. Its why we are so badass on the food chain. Because we are naturally inquisitive and want to learn. Yeah Cortez had no "indian teachers" but managed to learn enough just fine to take hostages and ask for a room of gold for ransom... IF a spaniard could do it so could they if they existed.

Universal statements are rather dangerous when they crop up in an argument as they are almost always wrong.  (Note the qualifier "almost" making the last something short of being a universal statement)  Try to suspend your disbelief for a bit and imagine the circumstances the people faced.  They had no precedent for the confusion of language.  What would you think if your neighbor who you understood yesterday comes to you today and says "beols wiltac telat masalb".  You would probably think he lost his mind.  There is a good chance that he would be considered insane in the eyes of most.  He will think the same of you because the same thing has occured from his perspective.  This wouldn't be much of a problem if the encounter occured during a casual walk in the country.  There would be time to sit down and try to understand what the other is trying to say.  A large city would be thrown into utter chaos if the people couldn't understand each other.  It would take years before effective communication could be established.  A city would have tremendous difficulty functioning when no one can communicate.  Many would just give up and leave.  The world was empty and it wouldn't be that difficult to hunt and gather to find what was needed to survive.  Back in the city tensions would be high and conflict would be inevitable.  We have many misunderstandings when we speak the same language.  Imagine the increase when people don't.  Conflict would drive others from the city.  It would require a miracle for a city to hold together under the circumstances and the most likly result would be what the Bible describes.  The people left to start new lives where they could understand each other.

[Mr.Peanut (Turtleproof)]

You are neatly skirting the question by labeling the idea you prefer as logical and comparing the idea you don't prefer to the "flying spaghetti monster".  Labeling ideas, rather than discussing them is not logical; it is a logical fallacy.  It is useful for distracting, confusing and convincing those who are unable to spot such a fallacy, but anyone with a bit of training will easily spot and mentally discard flawed argumentation such as that quoted above.

Incorrect, I was generalizing when I referred to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, as someone, also generalizing, said that what is absurd to one person is illogical to another.  The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a great example of something that is agreeably absurd.  The many fold reasons why the Ark story isn't possible have been discussed previously and have not been arbitrarily dismissed. 

To latch onto the weakest part of an argument and ignore all else is truly a fallacy.

[Full Metal Geneticist]

The flying spaggheti monster does have as much veracity as any other diety. I prefer the laserous penguin in my examples as he has the ability to smite people and can give sight to the blind and right his name in steel.

What you are describing is only a problem if the genes are flawed.  If they aren't flawed, there won't be a problem.  You say IQ is genetic ie it is based on the genes you are passed by your parents.  If the parent's genes don't have a problem, then the offspring won't.  Inbreeding doesn't produce flawed genes, it gives the flaws more opportunity to express themselves.  If one of the four genes for a given trait your parents could pass to you has a flaw, you have a fifty percent chance of getting that flaw.  If the flaw is recessive, it won't express.  If both you and your sister have the the flaw in one but not both of your genes for the trait, only one in four of your children will see that trait express.  Another one won't have it at all, the other two fall in the middle.  It is more likly that one of you won't inherit the flaw and your children will have the same genetic opportunities as you had.  When gene pools are diverse, several generations of inbreeding are needed before the recessive traits are magnified in the population.

And so you are claiming Noah was the "PERFECT MAN" (booming voice) because you have no proof of how he would have avoided inbreeding and so have to rely on magic DNA technology... So Noah was'nt picked just cause he was pious. He was picked cause he had the best genes... Nice... What are the coincidences?

IQ has a strong link to genetic populations with chinese and indians netting high IQs. Due to their large amount of outbreeding... Since their arranged marraiges often occur between towns and on trade routes, unlike european ones. So there is less chance of marrying even a distant relative.

Inbreeding does'nt produce flawed genes if you don't count inbred towns in rural south of america where distance and small populations ensured that such inbreeding occured. Likewise in certain communities such as Jews who lived in ghettoes and Pharsees their inbreeding resulted in large amounts of genetic disorders. They did'nt start off from one 4 family groups. They started off from thousands of people and the ended up this way. Likewise in purebred dogs, a pure bred bulldog dies at the age of 6... A mongrel can happily live to 16 years. 10 years increase in lifespan is a huge amount even to our standards.

Lets see... Inbreeding is'nt just mutations. Its also antibodies... And in your description, you have just killed 3 of the 4 kids by inbreeding. Only one getting the disease does'nt mean reduced viability. Sickle cell anaemia carriers can't do exercise since high oxygen demands cause a flare up of the disorder. Likewise CF carriers tend to get asthma and suffer from pneumonia. Which even now is a deadly disease. And there is also antibodies to consider. Indians have a genetic immunity to cattle borne diseases. So smallpox is "less likely" to kill them (hence their ability to variolate, while europeans had to use cowpox since variolation would kill europeans while it would merely scar and make indians and chinese ill...) likewise many indians carry TB with no noticeable effects since their immune system can suppress what to a european is a deadly disease. These are genetic. And reliant on selective pressures. And IQ drops with generation unless you outbreed. You may as well say Noah had such a High IQ that he solved the relation between space and time and created the TARDIS and used that to transport all the animals using help from Santa Clause and Elvis since there is just as much logic in your use of genetics. You are considering each part of genetics on its own without the other. You are looking at existing disorders, cancer, antibodies, mutation and the effects of shacking up with your cousin. All of which are bad bad things, we counteract this by outbreeding, not by inbreeding. The sheer idiocy of what you are suggesting makes me cringe. You may as well play russian roulette...

If life were so simple as you have put it up, then we have nothing to fear about the extinction of the californian condor... The world's geneticists have spent a decade working out ways to increase the genetic health of the remaining condors which you have rubbished in 10 minutes. Cause on paper things rarely work out in real life.

Hey you have given the scientologists a theory too. That man was created by genetic engineering aliens. That holds up with your argument too you know. Oh the probability of your thing occuring is dropping by the minute...

And your entire argument hinges on the lack of fossil record for man which sadly exists. Men have existed for long before Noah and even Adam and Eve were date to exist. The earth has existed for man for only a blink of an eye. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for longer than we have walked on it in our recognisable form. In the scheme of things we are nothing but an arrogant intelligent chimpanzee.

There are far more prey species than predator species.  Noah took seven of many of the prey species onto the boat.  If six were female and one male (or 2 males to allow for greater genetic diversity) and they mated while on the ark, they could have produced the next generation shortly after disembarking.  Having more females than males would allow rapid increase in the population.  Noah and the animals did not leave the ark immediately.  They stayed on it for a period of time after the land began to dry.  Grass grows quickly and would have been able to feed the relatively small number of creatures leaving the ark.  The ark had an available food supply to support the organisms while they waited to leave.

What if the one male got eaten? And how many "prey species" do you know for lions? Lets use lions as a example. You would need to take 6 lioness and one lion because lions are pack hunters and male lions very very rarely hunt due to their size. They are well known scavengers and ironically more likely to scavenge from hyena than vice versa.

In order to feed a pack of lions for a year you need 52, LARGE horse sized animals. This is assuming they eat once every week. They try to eat once every DAY cause its not guaranteed they catch their prey. Consider that their main prey is bufallo, zebra and wildebeest (the whipping boy of the savannah cause its got nothing really to defend itself...) they would run out of those species in a week. The only reason those animals survive is due to size and herd mentality. When a whole bunch of pregnant wildebeest run its more likely to survive than 6 pregnant wildebeest running for it as slow easy prey... And you have to add competitors for the lions in the form of Hyena, Cheetah, Leopards, Hunting Dogs, Tigers... The lions alone would have wiped out the major herbiovores single handedly. The efficiency of transfer is you need a 100 prey animals to support one lion. So a pride would need access to huge quantities of prey. Hence you only get large predators such as lions and tigers in places with large game... Primarily buffalo and zebra that weigh as much as the lion or many times more. In addition to that the female lions are also feeding the male lion since male lions don't hunt and are there for scaring of other scavengers. The male lion also has another problem which is the problem of incest. Its son will depose it and a pride of lions is essentailly a group of females... yadda yadda...

This is just one animal.. There are millions of species of animals whose behaviour would need to be magiced to make your logic work.

The oceans are no where near the saturation point.  They can hold much higher concentrations of salt.  The temperature change of a degree or two has little impact on how much salt the water may hold.

You would be surprised how much difference it makes when you scale it up. If i took a cent from every dollar you made and if you were a millionaire... I would have 10,000 Dollars. Its only a little money but it adds up.

Oh and you ignore the second problem of global warming which is polar ice melting... That would ensure that the water is never saturated. Also there is a loss of salt on beaches and addition of relatively "fresh water" during rain storms over ocean. You once again are looking at one part of a system and saying it can't work on its own. An arm does'nt function on its own, however when attached to the body it works... There are lot of factors such as ocean currents and deposition of salt by alternating warm and cold currents to deal with. A warm current carries more salt but when the stream cools it deposits it. If it does it in a hot place, salt is lost. Evaporation too has a part in marshlands and salt flats as stated. Its not a constant increase without loss... The net concentration is in equilibrium for conditions, when the conditions change the equilibrium changes.

So you are saying that no one before the development of modern technology lived longer than 30 years?  Go back and read some history books.  You won't have trouble finding societies where life spans were much longer.  A 30 year life span indicates a society that has some severe problems.  Many ancient societies lived much longer than that even without modern conveniences.

That was the average lifespan of most civilised societies except Rome, Egyptian, Muslim, Indian and Chinese civilisations as they had the idea of "cleanliness" and had dedicated bathing facilities and standardised medicine based on science not magic. They had fairly decent lifespans and the average age was around 40 to 50 years.

The average lifespan in Ireland after WW2 was 35.... Its also the average lifespan for a large amount of Africa. The industrial revolution actually dropped the lifespan from 35 to around 30. Most people if you remember would marry early, and the age of 13 or 14 was the norm for childbirth. A 30 year lifespan today indicates that civilisation has some problems but when you come from a place where a single dose of diarrhoea could kill you then you realise how a 30 year old lifespan comes about. And we are'nt talking about princes and rich people. We are talking about PEOPLE the actualy people. They had low lifespans due to their environment, their lack of cleanliness, and lack of attention to olden civilisations ideas of hygiene. Roman lavatories ensured that the streets were relatively clean. Indian houses had sewage piping made of clay to carry away sewage. They all had the idea of daily or atleast weekly baths and cleanliness while most people after them had no clue about those things. Hence the age of death dropped. High mortality

Universal statements are rather dangerous when they crop up in an argument as they are almost always wrong.  (Note the qualifier "almost" making the last something short of being a universal statement)  Try to suspend your disbelief for a bit and imagine the circumstances the people faced.  They had no precedent for the confusion of language.  What would you think if your neighbor who you understood yesterday comes to you today and says "beols wiltac telat masalb".  You would probably think he lost his mind.  There is a good chance that he would be considered insane in the eyes of most.  He will think the same of you because the same thing has occured from his perspective.  This wouldn't be much of a problem if the encounter occured during a casual walk in the country.  There would be time to sit down and try to understand what the other is trying to say.  A large city would be thrown into utter chaos if the people couldn't understand each other.  It would take years before effective communication could be established.  A city would have tremendous difficulty functioning when no one can communicate.  Many would just give up and leave.  The world was empty and it wouldn't be that difficult to hunt and gather to find what was needed to survive.  Back in the city tensions would be high and conflict would be inevitable.  We have many misunderstandings when we speak the same language.  Imagine the increase when people don't.  Conflict would drive others from the city.  It would require a miracle for a city to hold together under the circumstances and the most likly result would be what the Bible describes.  The people left to start new lives where they could understand each other.

Actually I would say pardon, and attempt to find out why he is acting so wierd. Most of us would. Thats what makes us human. And thats why we have science. So when we find something unexplainable or wierd, we go out and figure out how it works.

Put it this way, In Delhi there is a iron pillar, 8 metres tall weighing a couple of tonnes. Not that difficult to move considering use of elephants in India. However its dated to 200 AD. There is not a single particle of rust on it despite it being exposed to the elements. Is it a miracle?

Or do you actually shave a small piece of metal of the "iron" pillar and test it out finding out that it is'nt iron, its steel and so would'nt rust due to chemical composition of the alloy.

Not everything is as it seems. Likewise did we assume lightning was just angry god or did we experiment to find out how it worked?

And any argument that starts with "assume magic exists" does'nt exactly fly since it requires not only dispelling of belief but also dispelling of laws of reality. You are trying to explain something totally impossible by assuming that the impossible occured using another non verifiable thing.

Its one thing to say assume this for logical reasons to work to a conclusion. Its another thing to say assume elvis still lives.

[Paladin-Jut]

1st of all let me say that I am sorry for jumping into this a bit late, but taking a quick skim, there are a few points that I think have been missed and that need to be brought up.

Local Flood vs. Global Flood:

Why build an Ark if you could just walk over the next mountain range to a safer place? God gave Noah a 100 year head start to walk somewhere that was not flooded.

The Ark is HUGE (1.52 Million cubic feet or 43,200 M cubed) thats equal to 522 rail road stock cars, each one being able to hold 240 sheep. So why so big a boat to only hold "local" animals?

Birds. The fact that there were birds around should tell us something! I am not sure of other Flood accounts, but do they include brids among any animals listed? If they do, then we probably have a global flood. Why wouldn't the birds just fly to dry land? (oh thats right there is none!)

The Bible does say that the waters rose above the mountains. (Gen 7:20) and we have found aquatic fossils on Mt. Everest have we not? Now how did they get there?

The Flood lasted for over a year. What local flood ever lasts that long? They don't.

Jesus in the NT speaks of the Flood: "taking them ALL away" (Matt. 24:39 and Luke 17:27

Peter speaks of it in his writings. 1 Peter 3:20 and 2 Peter 2:5.

And Paul writes about it too: Hebrews 11:7

Our world is mostly covered by water and yet we reject the idea of it being flooded. NOw what I find funny is that there are many modern day Evos who say that the Earth never flooded, but put forth the idea that Mars was globaly flooded at one time. How can you say a planet with no visible water was once flooded, but deny that our world, that is mostly made of water, was never globably flooded? That makes no sense at all!

So in conclusion, Noah's Flood was a global flood.


Okay, now on to the Ark its self:

Like I said it was HUGE. Did you know that all major war ships have been built to the size and or ratio of Noah's Ark? You know why? It is a virtually unsinkable design. Interesting, no? (buts its just a fairy tale . . .  ya right)

As I said before, we are dealing with a vessel that has the volume of 522 stock rail road cars. So just how many animals are we talking about? One researcher names Woodmorappe, tallied that there was 8,000 different genara, this is including some that are now extinct, putting the number around 16,000 individual animals.

What about Dinos? There are only 668 supposed Dino genara and of those, only 106 weighed more than 10 tons when fully grown. Which leads to some of the most comon snese things, if you were going to do something like Noah did:

You take baby animals! The eat less, poop less, take up less space and make this whole scenario very likely!

Woodmorappe also tabulated that the median size of all the animials would have been the size of a rat, with 11% being much larger than a sheep.

So, do we have enough room for all of these animals?

If the animals would be kept in cages with an average size of 4,800 cubic inches. (yes some would be larger and some smaller, this is an AVERAGE) then multiplying that by 16,000 would give us 42,000 cubic feet or only 14.4 of our Rail Road Stock cars, there is PLEANTY of room left for Dinos, people, food and "roaming" room aboard the Ark.

Woodmorappe also tabulated that food would have taken up around 15% of the room on the Ark and water about 10%.

So you see, the Ark is big enough, there was a global flood. Now to the matter of genetics. I am currently in corispondance with an Uncle of mine, who is a University Professor of Genetics and see what he has to say about Noah and the animals.



Just throwing my 2 cents your way,

Jut

[Killing Time]

The Bible does say that the waters rose above the mountains. (Gen 7:20) and we have found aquatic fossils on Mt. Everest have we not? Now how did they get there?

Jut

I'm not going to answer the whole post because it's pointless to cover old ground.
But I have to have a go at this bit, cos I'm a geologist and I feel honour bound.

Do you know how plate tectonics works? Specifically, the continental collision and mountain building parts of the mechanism?
The fossils at the top of Mt Everest were put there when the Indian sub-continent rammed into the Asian plate and buckled up huge chunks of the intervening ocean floor up and onto the continent.
The Indian plate began moving North about 80 million years ago (the age of the oldest fossils) and the Himalayas started to form about 20 million years ago, which is when the fossils were scraped off the ocean floor and thrust up into the mountain belt.
Very simple process. Very long time of formation.

Dizzy

[Paladin-Jut]

Dizzy,

Yes, I understand how plate techtonics and continental drift work. Now you do have to admit, that as a geologist, your worst nightmare is a global flood, is it not? Have you even seen Baumgartner's computer sim of a pangea type setting, having it globaly flooded, all that water pressure for over a year, causes continenats to dift at a very fast rate, and because of all the water pressure causes nearly instant pretrification of trees, dinos and other animals.

I say your mountain ranges formed a lot faster than your 20-80 million year range (what are you basing this on, just what you/we have always been taught?) We like to talk millions of years, because we have only been taught millions of years.

A global flood for over a year, gives you a COMPLETLEY different globe!



Jut

[Killing Time]

Yes, I understand how plate techtonics and continental drift work. Now you do have to admit, that as a geologist, your worst nightmare is a global flood, is it not?

Nope. My worst nightmare is a continental flood basalt event or a magnetic reversal, since there simply isn't enough water to maintain a realistic complete global flood without some serious realteration of the highlands.

I say your mountain ranges formed a lot faster than your 20-80 million year range (your not still basing this on Carbon Dating are you?)We like to talk millions of years, because we have only been taught millions of years.

Why are creationists so fixated with Carbon dating?
You do know that C14 dating only has a range of 10s of thousands of years, right?

But there are other radioactive clocks that work in the millions (and billions) of years range.
Argon/Argon
Uranium/Lead
Potassium/Argon
Rubidium/Strontium
to name but a few.
And these can be correlated with the gradual changes in fossil assemblages that maintain a constant relative age no matter where they're found.

Why do you want the Earth to be so young?
Just to fit the Bible? Because that's a pretty closed minded way of looking at what is a "creation" of awe inspiring grandeur and beauty.

Dizzy

[Full Metal Geneticist]

Local Flood vs. Global Flood:

Why build an Ark if you could just walk over the next mountain range to a safer place? God gave Noah a 100 year head start to walk somewhere that was not flooded.

I... I just don't know how much you have read but... I gave a reason why Noah could'nt have had a 100 years (He would'nt be classed as human anymore... And it ignores the whole breeds of man plus we would all be idiots from the collosal inbreeding as would most animals and a fair proportion of animals would be missing due to predators)

The Ark is HUGE (1.52 Million cubic feet or 43,200 M cubed) thats equal to 522 rail road stock cars, each one being able to hold 240 sheep. So why so big a boat to only hold "local" animals?

Okay... Your proof is "the bible" which varies so greatly that as a source I may as well quote local gossip from Mavis, the sweet lady who cuts my hair. We can go down the route of the logic of one man working a 100 years to build a boat that will be a "perpetual" job. A boat is made of wood. Wood rots no matter how well you seal it. Eventually that wood will go. And 100 years is plenty of time for that to occur... Also I seriously doubt that a man can build without the use of power tools that much of a boat considering it was from a time that a single arrow would take a hour or so if intense labout to make. A ship is just way way too complex for one man. Also check out the engineering of building a boat with such "size" in wood. There is a flaw with wooden boat sizes that mordern boats could avoid. Integrity. Wood while strong in compression is terrifyingly weak in flexion. Cue the skin of the boat shattering under its own weight. Added to the total lack of attention paid to warp and weft... What you have described will not work on account of said reasons. You are invoking a deus ex machina to get this story to work in real life.

Birds. The fact that there were birds around should tell us something! I am not sure of other Flood accounts, but do they include brids among any animals listed? If they do, then we probably have a global flood. Why wouldn't the birds just fly to dry land? (oh thats right there is none!)

What biology have you read? Birds fly under muscle power. During long distance flying birds rely on reserved stores to fly. (they can't eat during flight) However many birds can't fly long distance. They have'nt the design for it. How many birds have eaglesque ranges? Not many and even the eagles range is poor compared to geese which can continentaly but the vast majority of birds fly slowly and at close to ground level. And all these birds fly with set distances and cannot fly during the rain. Also birds need to know where to fly to fly there. They don't just hare off towards land by magic. They need to be shown the way first either via exploration or by teaching from their flock. This would have meant mass extinction.

The Flood lasted for over a year. What local flood ever lasts that long? They don't.

Prove it... Unless biblically you have started warping days into eons and weeks into months and years into days... I say its analogy and the rain just lasted a few days but it seemed like a YEAR! More Deus Ex. And read point on total fish death.

Jesus in the NT speaks of the Flood: "taking them ALL away" (Matt. 24:39 and Luke 17:27

Peter speaks of it in his writings. 1 Peter 3:20 and 2 Peter 2:5.

And Paul writes about it too: Hebrews 11:7

Ever heard of hansel and gretel? You do! Then it must be fact since we both know about them. Damn those forests with their gingerbready witches.

Our world is mostly covered by water and yet we reject the idea of it being flooded. NOw what I find funny is that there are many modern day Evos who say that the Earth never flooded, but put forth the idea that Mars was globaly flooded at one time. How can you say a planet with no visible water was once flooded, but deny that our world, that is mostly made of water, was never globably flooded? That makes no sense at all!

There is no theory that mars was globally flooded. The theory is that mars once had water. And prior to volcanic eruption there was an extinction event called snowball earth which killed of almost all of life. However this was during the cambrian and was a billion years ago. (Life on earth started around 2 billion years ago) If you validate this event you are validating the evolution of man and then you go down a very sticky route in fundamentalism. And earth's water at the time was sufficient to freeze the earth over. This was due to lack of continents. Over time as the earths crust solidified and volcanic events and plate tectonics began to occur due to the magmal spin. This pushed up continents. We live on giant mountains.

So in conclusion, Noah's Flood was a global flood.

Non sequiteur. You are using a series of improbable events to prove a improbable event. By saying that since Elvis was known as the king and that Burgers were his favourite food... That BURGER KING! Must be run by elvis!

Like I said it was HUGE. Did you know that all major war ships have been built to the size and or ratio of Noah's Ark? You know why? It is a virtually unsinkable design. Interesting, no? (buts its just a fairy tale . . .  ya right)

Tell that to the Bismark, the Hood and other "warships". Do you know how quickly the titanic sank? And why no ship of its size has ever been seen since? Because the titanic SNAPPED in half. Wooden ships actually sink slower than their "non wooden counterparts" due to their buyoncy. And most warships size is based of their hull integrity. Steel gives high hull integrity due to it being strong at everything in its composite form. Unlike wood. Hence the size discrepancy. Wooden ships are actually safer since unladen even a holed ship would float. However should the ship become beached then it will break up and sink. Example Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard's flag ship sank in such a manner. The whole point was that beaching was deadly to a wooden ship due to poor hull integrity. Ships were usually half built, floated then the rest assembled around it in water since on land the timbers would give under the structures weight. Much like a whale is capable of swimming in the sea but will die on land.

As I said before, we are dealing with a vessel that has the volume of 522 stock rail road cars. So just how many animals are we talking about? One researcher names Woodmorappe, tallied that there was 8,000 different genara, this is including some that are now extinct, putting the number around 16,000 individual animals.

And I say Woodmorappe is speaking out of his arse due to such wonderful ideas as inbreeding, minimum species number before extinction and others such as predation. And that there genera statement is so retarded. Thats like saying Hey life is nothing great since there are only 5 Kingdoms! Thats like 10 individuals! The diversity in Genera is above 8000 in large animals. And you are ignoring the main "mass of the earths life". "The meek do not inherit the earth, they merely rent it out from insects." (Attenborough) 1 out of every 5 mammals is a bat. But 80% of all animals are insects. And rising.

What about Dinos? There are only 668 supposed Dino genara and of those, only 106 weighed more than 10 tons when fully grown. Which leads to some of the most comon snese things, if you were going to do something like Noah did:

You take baby animals! The eat less, poop less, take up less space and make this whole scenario very likely!

Do you know how long it takes from baby piggy to full grown badass animal? (Pigs normally weigh in at around 200 to 300 pounds) 6 months... Elephant? A year. Blue whale (now now its a mammal and it can't survive in freshwater flood conditions. No cetacean bar river dolphins can survive in such environments due to the fact that no seaborne cetacea drinks water. They can't drink salt water so purify it from the food they eat. In freshwater conditions whales would die. And since cetacea is an order, in the words of jaws "WE are going to need a bigger boat." Cause you need to add fish to there as well since freshwater fish can't surive in salt water and saloutrageously sexy lycra-clad pixieer fish in fresh... Unless you invoke miracle which is a tad like me invoking elvis.

Woodmorappe also tabulated that the median size of all the animials would have been the size of a rat, with 11% being much larger than a sheep.

Woodmorappe has no idea about ecology. We are talking about animals that screw like rabbits. We are talking about animals that eat other animals. Do you know how many zebra go to supporting just one lioness? Around a 100... 90% of energy eaten is lost in maintaining body function. With all the predators on the ark its a wonder noah survived. And ever seen what an elephant in close quarters can do? Its not pretty. You think they are slow but they can easily outrun us and then rip our limbs off and show it to us. And you are saying he had 7 of them on board including a bull elephant whose tempers were phenomenal. Added to their ability to eat forests.

So, do we have enough room for all of these animals?

If the animals would be kept in cages with an average size of 4,800 cubic inches. (yes some would be larger and some smaller, this is an AVERAGE) then multiplying that by 16,000 would give us 42,000 cubic feet or only 14.4 of our Rail Road Stock cars, there is PLEANTY of room left for Dinos, people, food and "roaming" room aboard the Ark.

Using magic perhaps... You are totally forgetting what happens when you put a tiger in a cage. It goes crazy. Do you know why tiger cubs are so rare in zoos? Cause tigers are loaded to full capacity. While in real life tigers range over 10s of Kms of jungle in captivity they are kept in a giant box. A captive tiger is more likely to kill a human than a wild one as wild ones are'nt under such stress. I expect death for the tiger. And yeah a 3 tonne elephant which eats wood is going to be pacified by a wooden ship... Add DINOSAURS which were bigger and a lot more powerful and your calculations start to skew. And you fail to account for inbreeding which would have killed of anything non insecta.

Woodmorappe also tabulated that food would have taken up around 15% of the room on the Ark and water about 10%.

Woodmorappe is talking "in scientific terms" cow patties. I wish for proof not just numbers. Don't make me fish out the laserous penguin...

So you see, the Ark is big enough, there was a global flood. Now to the matter of genetics. I am currently in corispondance with an Uncle of mine, who is a University Professor of Genetics and see what he has to say about Noah and the animals.

The ark was big enough IF THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AND SCHIENCE were ignored in those days. Gravity is a harsh mistress. And genetics is the evil gimp who beats you with frozen salmon. There is a set amount of animals in a group who if you go below that number make the group destined to fail. Two humans cannot repopulate the earth due to the same reason why you should'nt sleep with your sister or any blood relation.

And we talk millions of years since we can use things such as radioactive dating to label rocks such as uranium presence. The oldest life on earth is dated to around 1.8 Billion Years Ago. Millions be damned! You must realise that we have been around for a blink of an eye. The cockroach and shark have been around longer than our 20000 year history.

[The GrimSqueaker]

I am sure many have already dismissed the discussion as circular (it happened the way it said as that's the way they said it happened) but we might as well look at a few points.

The Ark is HUGE (1.52 Million cubic feet or 43,200 M cubed) thats equal to 522 rail road stock cars, each one being able to hold 240 sheep. So why so big a boat to only hold "local" animals?

I would be most interested in the construction techniques and materials used to construct this vessel you speak of. I would also remind you that a vessel is not just a hollow shell that floats. Quoting a supposed internal volume is relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Birds. The fact that there were birds around should tell us something! I am not sure of other Flood accounts, but do they include brids among any animals listed? If they do, then we probably have a global flood. Why wouldn't the birds just fly to dry land? (oh thats right there is none!)

Or, Birds are still around as it wasn't a global flood in any of the ancient stories and merely a local event. Which reminds me of the Eddie Izzard skit concerning Noah's Flood and ducks.

The Bible does say that the waters rose above the mountains. (Gen 7:20) and we have found aquatic fossils on Mt. Everest have we not? Now how did they get there?

Dizz covered that one. That's a relatively senseless claim often repeated on bad creationism websites.

Our world is mostly covered by water and yet we reject the idea of it being flooded. NOw what I find funny is that there are many modern day Evos who say that the Earth never flooded, but put forth the idea that Mars was globaly flooded at one time. How can you say a planet with no visible water was once flooded, but deny that our world, that is mostly made of water, was never globably flooded? That makes no sense at all!

The problem comes when someone tries to claim that a global flood event happened at the same time as we "modern" humans were tinkering around building seemingly enormous ships of the line. Now, millions of years ago when the earth was still forming perhaps there may have been a global flood condition. Thousands of years ago? Very doubtful.

So in conclusion, Noah's Flood was a global flood.

If by global you mean "the land areas known at the time" even then you are at a stretch.

Like I said it was HUGE. Did you know that all major war ships have been built to the size and or ratio of Noah's Ark? You know why? It is a virtually unsinkable design. Interesting, no? (buts its just a fairy tale . . .  ya right)

I would love to know where this one comes from. The use of the word "unsinkable" should have told you something already. Perhaps you meant "such ratios have advantageous buoyancy characteristics?" You'll also be pleased to note that scale up on a fixed ratio comes to a very bad end with shipping.

One researcher names Woodmorappe, tallied that there was 8,000 different genara, this is including some that are now extinct, putting the number around 16,000 individual animals.

Ah yes, Woodmorappe. Quite the writer but not so great the statistician. I suggest you look here.

Woodmorappe also tabulated that the median size of all the animials would have been the size of a rat, with 11% being much larger than a sheep.

That was one of the problems. He used the median when he should have used the mean size. Makes a big difference.

Over all you may find this link useful for covering some of your questions.

[Paladin-Jut]

FMG, Dizzy and Yog,

How foolish of me! You are all right. What was I thinking? Trying to prove God through science. Your right it can't be done; because if it could be done . . . then you know what?

We wouldn't need God!

Noah, his Ark, all the animals, the Flood. Its all a miricale and of God's doing. Thank you for proving to me that God exists!




Jut