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Noah's Ark

Teenage Mutant Ninja Dinosaurs


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Raphaelaptor​
 
Noah's Ark is ludicrous and impossible. There are any number of scientific impossibilities associated with the story.

Believers, in order to cram very single species of animal on the boat, have invented the idea of the so-called "kind" or "baramin", a kind of generic animal from which sub-groups later "micro"-evolved. EG the horse "baramin" -- of which there were only two specimens on the Ark -- survived, thanks to that naked wino prophet Noah, to develop over the ensuing centuries into donkeys, zebras, and horses.

Yet given the realities of genetics, each "baramin" would have needed a fantastically huge set of giant chromosomes, with alleles for every trait that would someday be manifest in all of the many related species, genera, and/or families. This is of course a biological impossibility.

Whatever horse "kind" was supposedly on the Ark, it would have required massive chromosomes that would not have realistically fit inside the cells of its body, by dint of the gene loci being overloaded with alleles accounting for every possible variation in all of its offspring, which would have gone on to become zebras, horses, onagers, donkeys, quaggas, etc. The theory of kinds is incoherent and contradictory to all known facts of genetics and taxonomy. There are no fossil baramins, no ideal creatures, no specimens with inexplicably large chromosomal complements.

And this is just one of dozens if not hundreds of specific, logical and scientific problems with the story of the Ark. I could go on for pages.
 
Vortigern99 said:
Noah's Ark is ludicrous and impossible. There are any number of scientific impossibilities associated with the story.

Believers, in order to cram very single species of animal on the boat, have invented the idea of the so-called "kind" or "baramin", a kind of generic animal from which sub-groups later "micro"-evolved. EG the horse "baramin" -- of which there were only two specimens on the Ark -- survived, thanks to that naked wino prophet Noah, to develop over the ensuing centuries into donkeys, zebras, and horses.

Yet given the realities of genetics, each "baramin" would have needed a fantastically huge set of giant chromosomes, with alleles for every trait that would someday be manifest in all of the many related species, genera, and/or families. This is of course a biological impossibility.

Whatever horse "kind" was supposedly on the Ark, it would have required massive chromosomes that would not have realistically fit inside the cells of its body, by dint of the gene loci being overloaded with alleles accounting for every possible variation in all of its offspring, which would have gone on to become zebras, horses, onagers, donkeys, quaggas, etc. The theory of kinds is incoherent and contradictory to all known facts of genetics and taxonomy. There are no fossil baramins, no ideal creatures, no specimens with inexplicably large chromosomal complements.

And this is just one of dozens if not hundreds of specific, logical and scientific problems with the story of the Ark. I could go on for pages.
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Why has it taken so long to get to Noah's drunken nakedness in this thread? While the quality of this Noah's ark thread compared to the other JREF Noah's arks thread has been good, not getting to the drunk and naked Noah until page four has to be seen as a mark against it.

And we're four pages in and nobody has mentioned the floating mats that brought the animals to Madagascar? Jeez.

Perhaps driven by the search for food or by curiosity, some intrepid species could have wandered onto floating tree mats and sailed to Madagascar, helped along by ocean currents.
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From: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v5/n3/madagascar
 
AiG said:
Perhaps driven by the search for food or by curiosity, some intrepid species could have wandered onto floating tree mats and sailed to Madagascar, helped along by ocean currents.
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I hope no one in AiG ever looks into crinoids...

The theory of kinds is incoherent and contradictory to all known facts of genetics and taxonomy.
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You're talking front-loading here, a concept which apparently has quite adament supporters today. :boggled:

survived, thanks to that naked wino prophet Noah, to develop over the ensuing centuries into donkeys, zebras, and horses.
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Yeah....I don't get that. Baramin can evolve into various species in a few centuries, but 4.5 billion years isn't enough time to divide the phyla and kingdoms. Some people completely lack a sense of scale when dealing with the deep past.
 
Lucian said:
Well, according to one Creationist argument, dragons (including the ones in the Bible) are actually dinosaurs. Works like Beowulf, which is a true story, prove that dinosaurs co-existed with humans into the Middle Ages at least. And that proves the world is around 6000 years old. Somehow.
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Yes. I was citing that Creationist argument in point four. I wasn't trying to be a smart ass - I was pointing out that there really are U.S. citizens (perhaps even with voter registration cards) that believe that dinosaur bones are really dragon bones.
 
davefoc said:
Why has it taken so long to get to Noah's drunken nakedness in this thread? While the quality of this Noah's ark thread compared to the other JREF Noah's arks thread has been good, not getting to the drunk and naked Noah until page four has to be seen as a mark against it.
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Well, this is after all the -ahem- science forum. I was angling for a, you know, scientific debate on the subject, but that's probably asking too much. ;)
 
Ladewig said:
Yes. I was citing that Creationist argument in point four. I wasn't trying to be a smart ass - I was pointing out that there really are U.S. citizens (perhaps even with voter registration cards) that believe that dinosaur bones are really dragon bones.
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Ah, as I understood it, you were saying that, according to YECs, dinosaur bones are dragons; I was saying dragons are dinosaurs, so that YECs don't believe in dragons per se, but they believe in dragon stories. Amounts to the same thing, I guess.
 
dasmiller said:
Make it "Ninjasaur"

I'd watch it.
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I think I'll keep it with dinosaurs and ninjas, not ninja dinosaurs. It'll have a shock ending that will lead into the equally-epic "Dinosaurs and Ninjas and Pirates".

I'd like it to be set in old-time Japan. The only challenge will be figuring out how to work Tiffany (and her boobs) into the plot...she (and they) were the only reason to watch "Mega Python vs Gatoroid"...
 
Vortigern99 said:
Well, this is after all the -ahem- science forum. I was angling for a, you know, scientific debate on the subject, but that's probably asking too much. ;)
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The outstanding feature of this particular Noah's ark thread, IMHO, was the discussion on the maximum size of a wood boat. The issue has come up in most of the Noah's ark threads but this thread provided some interesting insights that I enjoyed.

I liked my theory that tying together smaller boats might have been a better approach for Noah. It is technically easier to make seaworthy smaller boats and using lots of smaller boats would eliminate the hogging problem caused by a large boat needing to span a large wave. I just realized that it also could be a solution to the Madagascar problem. Maybe some of the small boats broke free of the main group and floated down to Madagascar.

And on another science issue, does anybody have any insight into the nature of the wind on an earth covered in water? Is the maximum wind speed less or more on a smooth planet?
 
Vortigern99 said:
Well, this is after all the -ahem- science forum. I was angling for a, you know, scientific debate on the subject, but that's probably asking too much. ;)
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That's akin to asking for a scientific debate about whether an apple dropped from a tree will fall down.

And on another science issue, does anybody have any insight into the nature of the wind on an earth covered in water? Is the maximum wind speed less or more on a smooth planet?
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Chaos was originally devised to answer such questions. The answer is "We don't know". Even on a relatively smooth planet, such as one covered in water, weather is chaotic.
 
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davefoc said:
I liked my theory that tying together smaller boats might have been a better approach for Noah. It is technically easier to make seaworthy smaller boats and using lots of smaller boats would eliminate the hogging problem caused by a large boat needing to span a large wave. I just realized that it also could be a solution to the Madagascar problem. Maybe some of the small boats broke free of the main group and floated down to Madagascar.?
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If we are going to postulate explanations to the Ark story that flatly contradict the text of the story, why not reject the story altogether? We might postulate that instead of one massive boat Noah used dozens or hundreds, which he then tied together, but this does not agree with the Genesis account. It also raises a whole host of other problems, such as who manned those smaller boats when the text clearly states there were only 8 people on the Ark.

Further, with regard to scientific questions, it ignores the problems of feeding, sanitation, and other maintenance requirements specific to each species (or even "kind") of animal, genetic problems inherent in the idea of "kinds", the means of gathering and then distributing each animal before and after the Flood event, etc. etc. etc.
 
Vortigern99 said:
If we are going to postulate explanations to the Ark story that flatly contradict the text of the story, why not reject the story altogether? We might postulate that instead of one massive boat Noah used dozens or hundreds, which he then tied together, but this does not agree with the Genesis account. It also raises a whole host of other problems, such as who manned those smaller boats when the text clearly states there were only 8 people on the Ark.

Further, with regard to scientific questions, it ignores the problems of feeding, sanitation, and other maintenance requirements specific to each species (or even "kind") of animal, genetic problems inherent in the idea of "kinds", the means of gathering and then distributing each animal before and after the Flood event, etc. etc. etc.
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:)
Ah yea of little faith.

You mean you don't believe that some guy 6,000 years ago (4,000 years ago?) built the largest wood boat ever constructed, one which seems to be larger than is even possible to construct, to survive a gigantic flood that inundated the entire earth above the tallest mountain and carved the Grand Canyon as it was rising, that the boat housed two to seven of every animal that lived on the earth at the time including apparently the dinosaurs and that the water receded leaving the isolated continents when before the continents had connected into one giant continent 6000 years ago? Cripes.

OK, looking past your skepticism, the Old Testament was written down about 2500 years ago and maybe the part about there being lots of little boats was just lost over the time between when Noah was floating around and the time the bible was written or maybe God just forgot that detail when he was inspiring the OT authors. Personally, I think my lots-of-little-boats theory should be up there with the floating-vegetation-rafts-bringing-the-animals-to-Madagascar theory as to its plausibility.
 
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As it turns out, skeptics debating with skeptics over which aspect of an ancient religious text to reject and insert their own "I like my idea better" plot element is pretty boring and fairly pointless.

We can all fabricate alternate "what if" scenarios to various degrees of plausibility. Maybe "Noah" was really a dozen people, each of his family members were 16 people (except Ham, he was only two people) and they all had their own rowboat in which they each rescued hapless animals from a tidal flood along the banks of the Tigris in the year 6800 BCE.

How this is in any way helpful, didactic, or pursuant to scientific inquiry is beyond me. But if it please you, pray carry on.
 
Vortigern99 said:
As it turns out, skeptics debating with skeptics over which aspect of an ancient religious text to reject and insert their own "I like my idea better" plot element is pretty boring and fairly pointless.

We can all fabricate alternate "what if" scenarios to various degrees of plausibility. Maybe "Noah" was really a dozen people, each of his family members were 16 people (except Ham, he was only two people) and they all had their own rowboat in which they each rescued hapless animals from a tidal flood along the banks of the Tigris in the year 6800 BCE.

How this is in any way helpful, didactic, or pursuant to scientific inquiry is beyond me. But if it please you, pray carry on.
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While we are in almost complete agreement, I just don't think Noah's ark threads would be nearly as entertaining if everybody limited their posts to what was plausible (for sure the threads would be much shorter).

Given your sober view about all this perhaps you would enjoy this article about Noah's ark, bristlecone pines and carbon 14 dating:

http://ncse.com/cej/3/2/answers-to-creationist-attacks-carbon-14-dating

The Bristlecone pine forest in California is one of my favorite places. Alas it used to have one of my favorite visitors centers but it was burned down by a crazy arsonist that drove up from Big Pine a few years ago.

ETA: On the serious note that you prefer (although I think you were the first to mention the naked and drunk Noah) I agree completely about the issue of attempting to shoe horn some actual fellow into the Noah's ark theory. When the Noah's ark is stripped of the implausible elements all that is left is a boat, some animals on a boat, a flood and a guy that got drunk and naked. There is no reason to believe that any of that was sufficiently unique to suggest that any particular person or incident lies at the heart of this myth and trying to find one is pointless (assuming that one is being serious). Still, it seems that there is an outside chance that something like the Black Sea deluge might have created a long term cultural memory of a gigantic flood that morphed into various flood myths. Whether something like that is true or not is completely unknowable at this point in time and it isn't even that interesting a question I think.

ETA: Thanks for using the word, didactic. I've heard it many times especially 30 years ago or so when it seems like it was more common, but I didn't know what it meant. The dictionary definitions suggest that it carries some of the connotations of pedantic, but it also seems like it doesn't always carry this connotation. Apparently it describes something that teaches something or perhaps provides evidence for a theory (similar to probative?). So, might one say, the orientation of the magnetic lines in the rock were didactic with regard to the history of the earth's magnetic fields? Or the didactic bristlecone pine rings were used to calibrate the C14 age determination process?
 
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