Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!bellcore!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Re: Re: Isolation and Unique Species Message-ID: <543@cybvax0.UUCP> Date: Thu, 23-May-85 14:43:06 EDT Article-I.D.: cybvax0.543 Posted: Thu May 23 14:43:06 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 3-Jun-85 13:02:34 EDT References: <217@ihnet.UUCP> <3570013@csd2.UUCP> <964@uwmacc.UUCP> Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 118 Summary: In article <317@scgvaxd.UUCP> dan@scgvaxd.UUCP (Dan Boskovich) writes: > >Would someone calculate how > >big the ship has to be to hold all the animals, > >and how long it would take to construct such a vessel, given the technology > >of the day? Of course I haven't mentioned the other problems... > > ...about 18,000 species on the Ark. > > Reports of stock cars and railroads show that the average number of meat > animals to the carload is for cattle about 25, hogs in a single deck > car about 75, and sheep about 120 per deck. At least 240 animals of the > size of sheep could be accommodated in a standard two-decked car. Two > trains hauling 73 cars would be ample to carry 35,000 animals. The Ark > had a carrying capacity of 522 stock cars of these size. Your computation of carrying capacity was based on volume, not floor space. By floor space, the result is close to exactly what you estimate as needed. But in real life, you cannot pack other animals as closely as sheep. Even if you sort them to size. Looks like you need another miracle. Of course, that's accepting on face value the claim of 300 cubits for the ark. If the ark existed, that claim would be probably as exaggerated as the ages of Noah and his ilk. The size stated in the Bible is about half the size of modern super tankers. It's likely bigger than any wooden ships ever built, let alone several times bigger than ships of that period. And we are expected to believe that Noah and family built it by themselves? Looks like you need another miracle. > Hibernation may have been the way Noah was able to care for the animals. > "Hibernation and estivation occur in every group of vertibrates except > birds, and its pre-disposing causes, immediate and remote, are by no > means uniform." Encyclopedia Britannica, W. P. Pycraft, 1956, Vol 11 p 539 Trips in cattle-cars are brief, so that the animals need little care. Even if all the natural hibernators and estivators did their thing, the ark wouldn't have room for 40 days food for the remaining thousands of animals. Not to mention all the different kinds of food. Not to mention the labor involved in feeding several thousand animals. Looks like you need another miracle. > Gen. 6:20 Two of every sort SHALL COME UNTO THEE! > (The animals came to Noah) Looks like another miracle. > >where did the water come from, where did it go, how did the animals reach > >their geographically distant isolated regions, did Noah take plants as well, > >how did he collect all the species, how can an animal travel half way around > >the world without leaving a trace or offspring, etc etc etc. > > On the second day of creation, the waters covering the surface of the > earth were divided by an expanse or firmament. In other words there > was a great reservoir of water surrounding the earth as well as the > great seas below the dry land. Geophysical evidense leads us to recognize > that there must have been a worldwide warm climate. The Miocene, Ogliocene, > Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous, era's all > boast of universal warm climate as predicted by the "canopy of vapors" > advocates. For every thirty feet of water the "canopy" held, it would have increased pressure on the surface of the earth by another atmosphere. How many thousand feet of water were there in your "vapor canopy"? And what about transmission of light through it? The sun must have looked pretty dim after shining through all that liquid or vapor. Sounds like you need more miracles. > Genesis 7:11 All the fountains of the great deep were broken up. > (This did not stop until the 150th day.) Gen 8:2 > Gen 7:4 and 7:12 - The rains came upon the earth forty days and nights. > > The topography of the continental shelves, the irregularity of coastlines, > the great submarine canyons, seamounts, and many other factors seem to > indicate that they were formed at least in part at a time when the sea > level was relatively lower by several hundred feet than at present. > The continental shelves themselves are evidence of a former lower sea > level, since their edges mark the true boundaries between ocean basins > and continental blocks. But if the waters covered all the surfaces of the earth, what happened to the water that covered the numerous areas that are now above water? Looks like you need another miracle. > As for the animals leaving the Ark, many animals have been known to > migrate over very long distances. "The Migration of Animals", Mathews. > I would suggest that after leaving the Ark, many animals migrated into > different parts of the world into places that were better suited for them > to live. Or, many animals may have migrated because of an over abundance But why would only marsupials migrate to Australia? It sounds as if more miracles are required to direct ONLY certain animals to certain localities. We're talking more than a hundred marsupial species, and no placental species (except bats.) > I realize even now before posting this that most of you will not even > consider these as possibilities. Why? Because the supernatural is > involved and science can not tolerate the supernatural. However, science > seems to be incredibly tolerable of all the many inconsistencies of > uniformitarianism. Geological evidences of the Flood will be ignored > on the basis of the theory's origin. For science to be truly objective, > prejudice such as this must be eliminated. Science has spent the last few hundreds of years shedding the very superstitious prejudices you are trying to reinstate. Show us the geological evidences that gradulism cannot explain, and "flood theory" can. The fact is, that with enough miracles, you can explain anything in the bible, and make it consistant with the evidence we have today. "Oh, god pushed up mountains after the flood." "Oh, god planted evidence in the fossil record." But adding on miracle after miracle, you gradually build a tottery ediface of epicycles pushed by angels that eventually will topple under its own clumsy artifice and by supplanted by a scientific explanation. That's what happened to flood geology more than a hundred years ago, just as the Ptolomeic universe was displaced by the Copernican several hundred years earlier. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh