Random Responses 1 of 2
So I haven't had any time recently to make a post, nor any one thing that has stuck out and demanded my attention to be written about. Most of this is my fault, I've been glued to my story and have a backlog of new articles from the last month or three sitting in my email box. But that doesn't mean I've been silent either. Here are a few random answers to questions or mini-debates that I have had recently. When appropriated the questions have been left before my answer in italitcs. But not all.
A) Amount of animals: First off, and I mean this as politely as i can :) millions of animals is a knee-jerk reaction to the millions of individual animals we have today. The Bible talks about 'kinds' which is kind of like a species but not fully. A kind is anything that can interbreed. Anything below that is variation within a kind that has happened since then. For instance all the species of wolves, cyotes, wild dogs, domesticated dogs, and possibly even foxes *people i've read go back and forth on the foxes one* are all from a single created kind, and probably represented by a single breeding pair. For the feline groups there were probably two created kinds, one for the small wild/domesticated cats and one great cat, within those groups everything can interbreed. Horses/donkeys/zebras/burrows/ponies were likely one created kind. Ect for other grouping of animals. Including extinct animals kinds there are only about 8000 different kinds of animals, making just over 1600 individual animals, clean kinds of animals, of which there are only a few, had seven pairs. The average size of an animal is about the size of a rat *the average size of the dinasours is only the size of a chicken* with about 11% of the animals over the size of a sheep. For those animal kinds, like the really big dinasaurs or even cattle there is nothing saying the animals had to be adults, probably adolecents were used, even the largest dinasaur starts out small.> So, the ark only has to hold about 1600 *btw the above quoted figures are all on the libral side on purpose*. > Space: The arks dementions were 300X50X30 cubits, or 459X75X44 feet, with gives a volume of 1.5 million cubic feet. This is the equivalent of 522 railroad box cars. You can fit 240 sheep *this is a shipping standard thing* into a box car. So if we amuse the animals were kept in close quarters like sheep in a box car they would take up less than 7 box cars out of 522! If you assume they were in cages/stables of an average size of 20X20X12 or about 3 square feet would be plenty for the average size of a rat, they would take up only 42,000 cubic feet or 14.4 stock cars. This would leave the rest of the room for food, range room for walking, and for Noah's family. This is assuming the cages were not stacked. If some of the cages were stacked, leaving room for people to walk between them for care, it frees up even more space. Food was likely dried and concentrated, like packed alphafa, grains, and dried fruits. Common calculations for total food requirements for the animals and humans use up about 15% of the total space, or 225, 000 cubic feet of space. Water would take up an additional 9.5% or so, or 142,500 cubic feet of space. Water requirment could be much less if Noah started the trip with little water and piped in rainwater as needed or to fill up space left open by food consuption. All of that could be stacked to keep as much floor space as possible open. So, if eveything is taken together, 42,000+225,000+142,500=209,500 leaving 1,290,500 cubic feet as free space that could be living quarters for Noah and his family and exercise areas for the animals, or growing space for some of the larger animals. The Arc had three floors, One floor could have been used completely for all the animals, food, and water leaving two full floors for everything else. > Upkeep:> All those cages and all those animals produced waste, but that is not a large problem. Deep bedding of sawdust, woodshavings *both of which Noah would have had in abundance* or peat moss can last a full year without being changed. Any waste that needed to be disposed of> could have been composted, which would have provided worms as a food source as an added bonus plus a great amount of heat to help keep the arc, which was probably mostly below water, warm, or could be flushed overboad by use of slanted floors and water, which could have been draw and did not need to be carried with them. Also, many animals might have been in a state of hibernation. warm close quarters with minimal day light, rich food on demand, and no need for hunting/foraging/traveling would put many animals into a lathargic or even hibernative mode. Also, its possible that God put them in a hibernation but since that's not specifically mentioned no explaination should hang on that.> Bringing the animals together: First off, nearly all of the animals that we consider indemic are only indemic NOW. Things like kangaroos were once found in many parts of the world, including the middle east. There are very few creatures who are not found in the fossil record spread all over. Specifially nearly all animals kinds are represented in the fossil records or historic records around the cresent valley, which is where Noah landed and disembarked. Since a represenative from ALL animal kinds was initially created in the garden and then spread out *God populated the whole earth but everything was created in the garden as well so it would make sense that the area surounding that would still hold a higher degree of variation that a far flung area.* Noah did not gather the animals, God did, the animals arrived at the arc without Noah or his family gathering them up. Certainly God is able to tell them where to go. As far as traveling over water or to remote areas the Bible tells us that both the waters and the dry land were gathered together. There was likely only a single continent so no need to make a long water journey to collect species indemic to a specific island, because there were no indemic species and no islands. Even if one does assume that some kinds had traveled so far out of the area as to not be readily availible to Noah's location, which is fair given 8000 different kinds. Noah had instructions to build the arc about 70 years before the animals arrived. Given that, God also had 70 years to have animals from far flung areas, if needed, to start their migration towards the arc to arrive in time to be loaded up. Once the animals were all there it only would have taken about 5 hours for them to board the arc. The same applies to food sources. If specific food items were needed then they would have been in the local area for Noah and his family to gather during their 70 years of making the arc. More to the point, however, is there was likely no need. Creatures like the koala, which only eat a single item, were almost certianly not created that way but rather lost the ability to eat other things over the years. For instance the panda is a member of the bear kind yet it eats b> amboo, which other bears would find quite unapatising. The orginal bear creature would have had the required stomach to eat the bamboo but as they gene pool thinned out from interbreeding among populations that were distanced from each other things were lost from some groups and became more frequent in others. Lets note that this is variation within a kind and only using the existing genetic material. For instance, boxers, my favorite dog breed, can't burp, they throw up instead. They lost the genetic material necessary for their bodies to do that. All bears but the Panda have lost the genetic matieral necessary to digest bamboo, on the other hand the panda has lost a huge amount of genetic material due to inbreeding amoung a fairly small group in addition to an environment that was only interested in a single trait. The likelihood that Noah would have had to pander to any dietary restriction on the arc are very low but even if he did need to, it would have been easy for him to gather and store those items needed. For the record, pretty much anything we consider carnivorous or omnivourious can actually subsist healthily on a v> egatarian diet. Given that many plants did not survive the flood probably some plants that didn't make it would have provided the nutrients now only found in meat, otherwise there really won't have been any reason for God to give permission for people to eat meat, something necessary for a fully vegatarian diet was lost which would have kept those few animals that can't currently subsist on a vegatarian diet healthy. Btw, I am unaware of any carnivor that has no documented occurances of subsiting only on a vegatarian diet.> Where did the water come from?: Where did all the water come from to cover the whole earth? First off, nearly all the mountains seen today can be traced to the flood or early post flood period. before the flood the land was much flater. If the earth was flatted out, that is the ocean beds raised and the mountains lowered till the earth was smooth we'd be coved with 1.7 miles of water. There is more than enough water on the earth to cover us during a flood. So why did it flood then but not before or after? There are a couple of theories but the key is the term 'the great deeps'. we hear a lot about plate techtonics, some of it probably, most of it unproven, and some of it clearly ridiculious, but one thing is obvious from both the mountains and current natural phenominons. The dry land of the pre-flood earth likely floated on a cushion of water. When God ripped open the fountains of the great deep water, pushed on by the weight of the dry land, rushed out and far into the atmosphere, most of it would have fallen as a torential rain, blanketing the earth very quickly, but while the waters rushed out from the rupture the earth retreated from it, caving in where the water rushed out and crashing into itself, causing some areas to lift quickly, delaying their flooding for a short period of time. As pressure releaved itself the rupture would stop driving water into the upper atmosphere and start gushing out like an undersea vent, which it would have been by that time. meanwhile the nealy ripped plate of dry land continued to buckle, shift, and run into itself, slowly causing land masses to rise and oceans to sink. Part of this buckling and shifting would have captured pockets of the water still under the earth, causing the phenomenoms we see today, such as the fact that 70% of what comes out of a valcano is actually water! and huge underground hotsprings that are still under pressure, undersea vents venting hot mineral water, and giant salt caverns underground from pockets that have dried out. I have a really good book that goes into this indepth if you want.> Where did the water go?: First off, coodos to you for thinking of this. Where did the water come from is, truthfully, not overly important as we have enough water visible on the planet to flood it. The real question is why are we still not flooded. Building on my last point, as the water retreated from underground the earth crumpled and folded, as liquid earth moved about by the flood water parts were pushed up and parts were pushed down. for every down the water ran down, for every up the waters receded futher from that point. We know that even the highest mountains were once under water because we've found marine fossils on pretty much all of them *including everest*. Eventually the waters receded enough for the arc to rest upon one and after a while longer the earth had enough valleys and mountains for there to be enough dry land for plants and trees to start their growth and the animals were let out of the arc. In actuality only the realtive tops of mountains stick up out of the water as 70% of the earths surface is covered in water.> Dispersal:> After the flood the animals were told to dispers. Since I have little time left today i'll answer this a bit abruptly. A disperal from the cresent valley to all ends of the earth has the same problems as an evolutionary desperal to all ends of the earth. Since nearly all the different kinds of animals are represented in either fossil or history around the cresent valle> y, which is considered the 'cradle of civilization' even from a secular perpective, it makes perfectly logical sense that it started from there and moved out, it also agrees with both the fossil record and the cultural history of the people groups. if you want i can expound upon this point more tomorrow/or monday, or answer any questions you have.
B) *continuation of above.*Since I haven't written my debate on time yet the majority of your objections are fairly reasonable, and I will do my best to answer them fully, as they are answerable. Since i've got to change computers at 9 I am just sending the first part of this. I will answer each question, or objection. but since that will take time I'll sent them in sections. But first, back to the arc...Wood: First off, while 20th century ships *1900s*, which were/are much smaller *althought larger do exist*, had metal framewook 19th century ships, 1800s, were made entirely out of wood. there is a famous poem 'clipperships and captains' that contain one of my favorite lines in a poem, "when the ships were wooden ships, but the men were iron men" Its mostly bemoaning the shift from wooden ships to iron ships. More to the point, the Romans and Greeks made huge vessels, capable of holding hundreds of men intirely out of wood. Pliny, an ancient historian, acounts of ships with up to 40 tiers of oars! In Ussher's account of the Aegean Sea battle in 280 b.c. he has this to say about the larger ships used in that battle "In his navy, ships were sent from Heraclea in Pontus, some of six, some of five tiers of oars. These kinds of ships were called 'Aphracta'. The largest ship of all had eight tiers of oars and was called the Leontifera. She was admired by all for her large size and exquisite construction. In her were a hundred oars per tier, so that on each side there were eight hundred rowers which made 1600 in all. On the upper deck or hatches there were 1200 fighting men who were under two special commanders. When the battle began, Ceraunus won and Antigonus was forced to flee with all his navy. In this fight, the ships from Heraclea performed the best and among them the Leontifera did the best of all" Given what we know about smaller galleys a ship to hold that many would have been 400-500 feet long and capable of carrying not only its 3000 men but supplies for several days at sea! Plutarch discribes a fleet build about 294 b.c. that each had 15 or 16 tiers of rowers! But, the largest we have a decent discription of is from Athenaeus built by Ptolemy Philopater * 244-205 b.c* it was 420 feet long, 57 feet wide, and 72 feet high to the top of her gunwale. From the top of its sternpost to the water line was 79.5 feet. It had four steering oars 45 feet long. It had 40 tiers of oars. The oars on the uppermost tier were 57 feet long. The oars were counter-balanced with lead to make them easier to handle. It had a double bow and a double stern and carried seven rams, of which one was the leader and the others were of gradually reducing size. It had 12 under-girders 900 feet long. The ship was manned by 400 sailors to handle the rigging and the sails, 4,000 rowers and 2,850 men in arms for a total of 7,250 men. (it should be noted at this is thought to be an ordament for his fleet and too big to be of much help in a fight) Think of how huge that was! And all made out of wood.That being said, yes, a standard ship of that size holding that kind of cargo on those seas, certainly VERY choppy, would probably capsize if not break up. But the arc wasn't a sailing ship. It never had to be launched, or dry docked, or worry about navigating up channels, or even being loaded or unloaded while afloat. Check out this http://www.answersingenesis.com/creation/v21/i1/ark.asp picture about a paragraph down for a very likely model of the arc and http://www.answersingenesis.com/tj/v8/i1/noah.asp if you want a semi-technical expose on how it would have worked just fine in the flood waters. Since it never had to be dry docked or launched the arc would need no keel, but could have been build flat and simply floated as the flood waters rose. What we call the first submarines were similar. In the civil war iron submarines were made with flat bottoms and just their tops, with the cannon ports, floated above the water, the arc would have worked likewise. The arc, in all its box-like glory would have faired quite well and was quiet within the size paramaters, if at the large end, of historically undisputed ships. Evidence: Of course a global flood would leave huge evidence! And we have it in abundance. Secular science CAN NOT acknowledge it because
evolution and an old earth CAN NOT accept a worldwide flood. Many things that evolutionists either can't explain or explain extremely poorly are beautiful evidence of a worldwide flood, and many scientists and geologists do see exactly that. Other than natural structures such as canyons *think Grand Canyon*, mountains *I'll talk about them later*, huge reservoirs, and tectonics, the strongest evidence for a global flood is the fossil record. Fossils, almost by definition, require very fast burial. While whole books have been written about the fossil evidence for the flood I'll list some of my favorites.
1) Jellyfish: These soft-bodied animals with no bones do not fossilize even in 'normal' fast burial situations. Yet in a Wisconsin sandstone quarry we find hundreds of perfectly fossilized jellyfish incased in about 12 feet (vertical) of rock! These jellyfish were quickly buried in multiple layers and sealed in sand, which normally is not a good agent for fossilization due to how porous it is. While I have the article at home with very nice pictures I'll try to give you the highlights here.
The jellyfish were not beached but underwater when this happened. Ripples from the sand they were buried in are preserved by what covered them, which wouldn't happen in a normal storm or in just random sea swells. This is because they have to be covered by a completely different
substance, in this case by finer sand mixed with red oxidized mud. There are about 7 layers of jellyfish, each with distinctive ripples where they were covered by different sediment. Reasonably the only thing that could cause that would be a huge flood that was carrying sediment from elsewhere, and not just a normal local flood or the sediments would have quickly dispersed when the floodwaters hit the ocean waters. No this must have been a cataclysmic flood with enough force to make literal rivers of mud and silt that were born through waters, and swirled and tossed to and fro repeatedly. The jellyfish were not beached by a high
tide and then covered, say by river sediment, as jellyfish inflate their bells when they are beached and these fossils do not have that trait. There were no scavenger marks on the jellyfish, so they could not have lay exposed after being washed up already dead and wait for a local,
'normal' flood to cover them in sediment. There is no evidence of burrowing, such as earthworms in the sediment, either between the 7 layers of jellyfish or in the whole block of sediment, so the entire thing must not only have been laid down A) while under conditions to keep worms away, such as underwater B) all at one time or regardless of where it was
burrowing would have been evidenced and C) the whole thing buried by even further sediment to seal out air to form the fossils and to keep it trapped from burrowing after it all solidified. It is hard to imagine a localized event with the ability to sustain enough flood sediment to
bury and preserve this bed of fossils, in fact, the best answer evolutionists give is several huge tropical storms that buried each of the seven layers over a span of about 1 million years, but they can not account for how the ripples were preserved, why the bell wasn't expanded, and
the lack of burrowing evidence. In addition to all of this evolutions date the lowest of these fossils at the Lower Cambrian, supposedly 510 million years old. Yet these are the largest jellyfish fossils every found, starkly contrasting evolutionists 'little to big' hypothesis, as the huge jellyfish would have to have formed before the smaller, read less complex to an evolutionists, did. In conclusion, I've got a great article on this that I'd be happy to bring in if you want more or this
one. By the way, this is not the only such deposit of jellyfish, but simply the most remarkable.
2)Birth Fossils: While evolutionists are slowly admitting that fossils not only take a short time to form but must be buried either at death or very shortly thereafter to create a fossil any fossil evidence of living animals captured in time like a photograph prove cataclysmic burial
with no time for scavengers, rot, or further disruption. While single fossils could be part of a local deviating event they also fit, even better, with a single worldwide event. My favorite fossils are those that catch animals in the process of birth. I have seen several, perhaps the most vivid of which is of an ichthyosaur giving birth. The infant is part in and part out of the mother! Nearly the entirety of the baby has emerged, with only its beak and part of its head still in the birth
canal. This is a live birth, and if the mother had simply died giving birth the infant wouldn't have had difficulty pulling itself free from the mother and escaping. Only an extremely rapid, heavy burial would not only kill both but also keep them preserved without the baby falling
out as it settled. There is another one, same species, which show the mother with several babies still in her womb and one infant already fully birthed just outside the body. Unfortunately I could find no pictures easily accessibly, but could probably dig some up if you are
interested. 3) Fighting fossils: My second favorite class of fossils are those where predator/prey have been caught in the middle of battle. There is a fish fossil I've seen (pictures of not the actual fossil) from the Green River Formation from Wyoming where the fish is in the middle of eating another, as in one fish is half way out/ half way in the other fishes mouth! There is a dinosaur fossil, I'm afraid I don't remember the particulars, of a predator, raptor of some sort, on the back of its prey biting its neck. 4) Fossil Graveyards: While rapid fossilization is proof of at least local cataclysmic events huge fossil graveyards are proof of a more than local, but rather a near global or global event. These are found both as vegetation, for instance the huge permafrost peat bogs in Russia that contain all kinds of different woods and vegetation preserved from a massive flood by the cold, and as animal fossils, for instance the mass
burial of both whales and land animals in Africa. Here are some specific ones: In the Vyatka River valley near Kotelnich Russia a herd of 300 tetrapods were buried and fossilized while standing with their heads erect! Not only that but the herd was buried while standing on a steep
hill, so any attempt to explain it away due to the animals getting stuck in a swamp, the usual explanation when standing fossils are found, is completely invalid. There are two well-known mass fossil graveyards in the US, one found in Utah, The Dinosaur National Monument, and a less well-known one, (its newer) in Como Bluff Wyoming. There is a huge fossil graveyard in South Africa called the Karroo Formation. There is a whale fossil graveyard in what is now the desert of Peru. A whole herd of mammoths have been found frozen in place while crossing a river! (While not a fossil quickly frozen animals, particularly in such a circumstance, also cannot be explained away by a slow and gradual process. Even an ice age under evolutionary standards could not accomplish this, only the super cooled air, water, and sediment that would result from
the beginnings of a sudden worldwide flood) In Russia fossil graveyards that include tropical, subtropical, temperate, and tundra creatures have been found, my favorite list includes foxes, oxen, mammoths, rabbits, and tigers! Huge mats of vegetable matter, which include tropical
trees, deciduous trees, and even fruit trees with the fruit still on them, have been found in the Artic. In fact, coal veins are nothing more than huge mats of vegetation that was quickly buried and placed under pressure and heat. There is a petrified forest where a whole forest of trees
have been uprooted and fossilized in place, cutting through many different layers of rock. Obviously all those layers of rock were mud at the same time as the trees were uprooted and stuck in them, then they hardened together in place. Fossil conclusion: This could continue for pages and pages. The real question is, since a rapid burial followed by an equally rapid sealing
of the surrounding ground is required for any fossil, where is the fossil evidence for all this slow and gradual that is required for long ages. Realize that either nearly every fossil in existence would be created either directly by a global flood or right after it by the upheaval
caused by it, OR they were nearly all created slowly over millions of years. Both can't be true, there aren't enough fossils for both a global flood, or even multiple near global floods, and long ages. Next
up... Mountains! *the debate ended at this time*
A) Amount of animals: First off, and I mean this as politely as i can :) millions of animals is a knee-jerk reaction to the millions of individual animals we have today. The Bible talks about 'kinds' which is kind of like a species but not fully. A kind is anything that can interbreed. Anything below that is variation within a kind that has happened since then. For instance all the species of wolves, cyotes, wild dogs, domesticated dogs, and possibly even foxes *people i've read go back and forth on the foxes one* are all from a single created kind, and probably represented by a single breeding pair. For the feline groups there were probably two created kinds, one for the small wild/domesticated cats and one great cat, within those groups everything can interbreed. Horses/donkeys/zebras/burrows/ponies were likely one created kind. Ect for other grouping of animals. Including extinct animals kinds there are only about 8000 different kinds of animals, making just over 1600 individual animals, clean kinds of animals, of which there are only a few, had seven pairs. The average size of an animal is about the size of a rat *the average size of the dinasours is only the size of a chicken* with about 11% of the animals over the size of a sheep. For those animal kinds, like the really big dinasaurs or even cattle there is nothing saying the animals had to be adults, probably adolecents were used, even the largest dinasaur starts out small.> So, the ark only has to hold about 1600 *btw the above quoted figures are all on the libral side on purpose*. > Space: The arks dementions were 300X50X30 cubits, or 459X75X44 feet, with gives a volume of 1.5 million cubic feet. This is the equivalent of 522 railroad box cars. You can fit 240 sheep *this is a shipping standard thing* into a box car. So if we amuse the animals were kept in close quarters like sheep in a box car they would take up less than 7 box cars out of 522! If you assume they were in cages/stables of an average size of 20X20X12 or about 3 square feet would be plenty for the average size of a rat, they would take up only 42,000 cubic feet or 14.4 stock cars. This would leave the rest of the room for food, range room for walking, and for Noah's family. This is assuming the cages were not stacked. If some of the cages were stacked, leaving room for people to walk between them for care, it frees up even more space. Food was likely dried and concentrated, like packed alphafa, grains, and dried fruits. Common calculations for total food requirements for the animals and humans use up about 15% of the total space, or 225, 000 cubic feet of space. Water would take up an additional 9.5% or so, or 142,500 cubic feet of space. Water requirment could be much less if Noah started the trip with little water and piped in rainwater as needed or to fill up space left open by food consuption. All of that could be stacked to keep as much floor space as possible open. So, if eveything is taken together, 42,000+225,000+142,500=209,500 leaving 1,290,500 cubic feet as free space that could be living quarters for Noah and his family and exercise areas for the animals, or growing space for some of the larger animals. The Arc had three floors, One floor could have been used completely for all the animals, food, and water leaving two full floors for everything else. > Upkeep:> All those cages and all those animals produced waste, but that is not a large problem. Deep bedding of sawdust, woodshavings *both of which Noah would have had in abundance* or peat moss can last a full year without being changed. Any waste that needed to be disposed of> could have been composted, which would have provided worms as a food source as an added bonus plus a great amount of heat to help keep the arc, which was probably mostly below water, warm, or could be flushed overboad by use of slanted floors and water, which could have been draw and did not need to be carried with them. Also, many animals might have been in a state of hibernation. warm close quarters with minimal day light, rich food on demand, and no need for hunting/foraging/traveling would put many animals into a lathargic or even hibernative mode. Also, its possible that God put them in a hibernation but since that's not specifically mentioned no explaination should hang on that.> Bringing the animals together: First off, nearly all of the animals that we consider indemic are only indemic NOW. Things like kangaroos were once found in many parts of the world, including the middle east. There are very few creatures who are not found in the fossil record spread all over. Specifially nearly all animals kinds are represented in the fossil records or historic records around the cresent valley, which is where Noah landed and disembarked. Since a represenative from ALL animal kinds was initially created in the garden and then spread out *God populated the whole earth but everything was created in the garden as well so it would make sense that the area surounding that would still hold a higher degree of variation that a far flung area.* Noah did not gather the animals, God did, the animals arrived at the arc without Noah or his family gathering them up. Certainly God is able to tell them where to go. As far as traveling over water or to remote areas the Bible tells us that both the waters and the dry land were gathered together. There was likely only a single continent so no need to make a long water journey to collect species indemic to a specific island, because there were no indemic species and no islands. Even if one does assume that some kinds had traveled so far out of the area as to not be readily availible to Noah's location, which is fair given 8000 different kinds. Noah had instructions to build the arc about 70 years before the animals arrived. Given that, God also had 70 years to have animals from far flung areas, if needed, to start their migration towards the arc to arrive in time to be loaded up. Once the animals were all there it only would have taken about 5 hours for them to board the arc. The same applies to food sources. If specific food items were needed then they would have been in the local area for Noah and his family to gather during their 70 years of making the arc. More to the point, however, is there was likely no need. Creatures like the koala, which only eat a single item, were almost certianly not created that way but rather lost the ability to eat other things over the years. For instance the panda is a member of the bear kind yet it eats b> amboo, which other bears would find quite unapatising. The orginal bear creature would have had the required stomach to eat the bamboo but as they gene pool thinned out from interbreeding among populations that were distanced from each other things were lost from some groups and became more frequent in others. Lets note that this is variation within a kind and only using the existing genetic material. For instance, boxers, my favorite dog breed, can't burp, they throw up instead. They lost the genetic material necessary for their bodies to do that. All bears but the Panda have lost the genetic matieral necessary to digest bamboo, on the other hand the panda has lost a huge amount of genetic material due to inbreeding amoung a fairly small group in addition to an environment that was only interested in a single trait. The likelihood that Noah would have had to pander to any dietary restriction on the arc are very low but even if he did need to, it would have been easy for him to gather and store those items needed. For the record, pretty much anything we consider carnivorous or omnivourious can actually subsist healthily on a v> egatarian diet. Given that many plants did not survive the flood probably some plants that didn't make it would have provided the nutrients now only found in meat, otherwise there really won't have been any reason for God to give permission for people to eat meat, something necessary for a fully vegatarian diet was lost which would have kept those few animals that can't currently subsist on a vegatarian diet healthy. Btw, I am unaware of any carnivor that has no documented occurances of subsiting only on a vegatarian diet.> Where did the water come from?: Where did all the water come from to cover the whole earth? First off, nearly all the mountains seen today can be traced to the flood or early post flood period. before the flood the land was much flater. If the earth was flatted out, that is the ocean beds raised and the mountains lowered till the earth was smooth we'd be coved with 1.7 miles of water. There is more than enough water on the earth to cover us during a flood. So why did it flood then but not before or after? There are a couple of theories but the key is the term 'the great deeps'. we hear a lot about plate techtonics, some of it probably, most of it unproven, and some of it clearly ridiculious, but one thing is obvious from both the mountains and current natural phenominons. The dry land of the pre-flood earth likely floated on a cushion of water. When God ripped open the fountains of the great deep water, pushed on by the weight of the dry land, rushed out and far into the atmosphere, most of it would have fallen as a torential rain, blanketing the earth very quickly, but while the waters rushed out from the rupture the earth retreated from it, caving in where the water rushed out and crashing into itself, causing some areas to lift quickly, delaying their flooding for a short period of time. As pressure releaved itself the rupture would stop driving water into the upper atmosphere and start gushing out like an undersea vent, which it would have been by that time. meanwhile the nealy ripped plate of dry land continued to buckle, shift, and run into itself, slowly causing land masses to rise and oceans to sink. Part of this buckling and shifting would have captured pockets of the water still under the earth, causing the phenomenoms we see today, such as the fact that 70% of what comes out of a valcano is actually water! and huge underground hotsprings that are still under pressure, undersea vents venting hot mineral water, and giant salt caverns underground from pockets that have dried out. I have a really good book that goes into this indepth if you want.> Where did the water go?: First off, coodos to you for thinking of this. Where did the water come from is, truthfully, not overly important as we have enough water visible on the planet to flood it. The real question is why are we still not flooded. Building on my last point, as the water retreated from underground the earth crumpled and folded, as liquid earth moved about by the flood water parts were pushed up and parts were pushed down. for every down the water ran down, for every up the waters receded futher from that point. We know that even the highest mountains were once under water because we've found marine fossils on pretty much all of them *including everest*. Eventually the waters receded enough for the arc to rest upon one and after a while longer the earth had enough valleys and mountains for there to be enough dry land for plants and trees to start their growth and the animals were let out of the arc. In actuality only the realtive tops of mountains stick up out of the water as 70% of the earths surface is covered in water.> Dispersal:> After the flood the animals were told to dispers. Since I have little time left today i'll answer this a bit abruptly. A disperal from the cresent valley to all ends of the earth has the same problems as an evolutionary desperal to all ends of the earth. Since nearly all the different kinds of animals are represented in either fossil or history around the cresent valle> y, which is considered the 'cradle of civilization' even from a secular perpective, it makes perfectly logical sense that it started from there and moved out, it also agrees with both the fossil record and the cultural history of the people groups. if you want i can expound upon this point more tomorrow/or monday, or answer any questions you have.
B) *continuation of above.*Since I haven't written my debate on time yet the majority of your objections are fairly reasonable, and I will do my best to answer them fully, as they are answerable. Since i've got to change computers at 9 I am just sending the first part of this. I will answer each question, or objection. but since that will take time I'll sent them in sections. But first, back to the arc...Wood: First off, while 20th century ships *1900s*, which were/are much smaller *althought larger do exist*, had metal framewook 19th century ships, 1800s, were made entirely out of wood. there is a famous poem 'clipperships and captains' that contain one of my favorite lines in a poem, "when the ships were wooden ships, but the men were iron men" Its mostly bemoaning the shift from wooden ships to iron ships. More to the point, the Romans and Greeks made huge vessels, capable of holding hundreds of men intirely out of wood. Pliny, an ancient historian, acounts of ships with up to 40 tiers of oars! In Ussher's account of the Aegean Sea battle in 280 b.c. he has this to say about the larger ships used in that battle "In his navy, ships were sent from Heraclea in Pontus, some of six, some of five tiers of oars. These kinds of ships were called 'Aphracta'. The largest ship of all had eight tiers of oars and was called the Leontifera. She was admired by all for her large size and exquisite construction. In her were a hundred oars per tier, so that on each side there were eight hundred rowers which made 1600 in all. On the upper deck or hatches there were 1200 fighting men who were under two special commanders. When the battle began, Ceraunus won and Antigonus was forced to flee with all his navy. In this fight, the ships from Heraclea performed the best and among them the Leontifera did the best of all" Given what we know about smaller galleys a ship to hold that many would have been 400-500 feet long and capable of carrying not only its 3000 men but supplies for several days at sea! Plutarch discribes a fleet build about 294 b.c. that each had 15 or 16 tiers of rowers! But, the largest we have a decent discription of is from Athenaeus built by Ptolemy Philopater * 244-205 b.c* it was 420 feet long, 57 feet wide, and 72 feet high to the top of her gunwale. From the top of its sternpost to the water line was 79.5 feet. It had four steering oars 45 feet long. It had 40 tiers of oars. The oars on the uppermost tier were 57 feet long. The oars were counter-balanced with lead to make them easier to handle. It had a double bow and a double stern and carried seven rams, of which one was the leader and the others were of gradually reducing size. It had 12 under-girders 900 feet long. The ship was manned by 400 sailors to handle the rigging and the sails, 4,000 rowers and 2,850 men in arms for a total of 7,250 men. (it should be noted at this is thought to be an ordament for his fleet and too big to be of much help in a fight) Think of how huge that was! And all made out of wood.That being said, yes, a standard ship of that size holding that kind of cargo on those seas, certainly VERY choppy, would probably capsize if not break up. But the arc wasn't a sailing ship. It never had to be launched, or dry docked, or worry about navigating up channels, or even being loaded or unloaded while afloat. Check out this http://www.answersingenesis.com/creation/v21/i1/ark.asp picture about a paragraph down for a very likely model of the arc and http://www.answersingenesis.com/tj/v8/i1/noah.asp if you want a semi-technical expose on how it would have worked just fine in the flood waters. Since it never had to be dry docked or launched the arc would need no keel, but could have been build flat and simply floated as the flood waters rose. What we call the first submarines were similar. In the civil war iron submarines were made with flat bottoms and just their tops, with the cannon ports, floated above the water, the arc would have worked likewise. The arc, in all its box-like glory would have faired quite well and was quiet within the size paramaters, if at the large end, of historically undisputed ships. Evidence: Of course a global flood would leave huge evidence! And we have it in abundance. Secular science CAN NOT acknowledge it because
evolution and an old earth CAN NOT accept a worldwide flood. Many things that evolutionists either can't explain or explain extremely poorly are beautiful evidence of a worldwide flood, and many scientists and geologists do see exactly that. Other than natural structures such as canyons *think Grand Canyon*, mountains *I'll talk about them later*, huge reservoirs, and tectonics, the strongest evidence for a global flood is the fossil record. Fossils, almost by definition, require very fast burial. While whole books have been written about the fossil evidence for the flood I'll list some of my favorites.
1) Jellyfish: These soft-bodied animals with no bones do not fossilize even in 'normal' fast burial situations. Yet in a Wisconsin sandstone quarry we find hundreds of perfectly fossilized jellyfish incased in about 12 feet (vertical) of rock! These jellyfish were quickly buried in multiple layers and sealed in sand, which normally is not a good agent for fossilization due to how porous it is. While I have the article at home with very nice pictures I'll try to give you the highlights here.
The jellyfish were not beached but underwater when this happened. Ripples from the sand they were buried in are preserved by what covered them, which wouldn't happen in a normal storm or in just random sea swells. This is because they have to be covered by a completely different
substance, in this case by finer sand mixed with red oxidized mud. There are about 7 layers of jellyfish, each with distinctive ripples where they were covered by different sediment. Reasonably the only thing that could cause that would be a huge flood that was carrying sediment from elsewhere, and not just a normal local flood or the sediments would have quickly dispersed when the floodwaters hit the ocean waters. No this must have been a cataclysmic flood with enough force to make literal rivers of mud and silt that were born through waters, and swirled and tossed to and fro repeatedly. The jellyfish were not beached by a high
tide and then covered, say by river sediment, as jellyfish inflate their bells when they are beached and these fossils do not have that trait. There were no scavenger marks on the jellyfish, so they could not have lay exposed after being washed up already dead and wait for a local,
'normal' flood to cover them in sediment. There is no evidence of burrowing, such as earthworms in the sediment, either between the 7 layers of jellyfish or in the whole block of sediment, so the entire thing must not only have been laid down A) while under conditions to keep worms away, such as underwater B) all at one time or regardless of where it was
burrowing would have been evidenced and C) the whole thing buried by even further sediment to seal out air to form the fossils and to keep it trapped from burrowing after it all solidified. It is hard to imagine a localized event with the ability to sustain enough flood sediment to
bury and preserve this bed of fossils, in fact, the best answer evolutionists give is several huge tropical storms that buried each of the seven layers over a span of about 1 million years, but they can not account for how the ripples were preserved, why the bell wasn't expanded, and
the lack of burrowing evidence. In addition to all of this evolutions date the lowest of these fossils at the Lower Cambrian, supposedly 510 million years old. Yet these are the largest jellyfish fossils every found, starkly contrasting evolutionists 'little to big' hypothesis, as the huge jellyfish would have to have formed before the smaller, read less complex to an evolutionists, did. In conclusion, I've got a great article on this that I'd be happy to bring in if you want more or this
one. By the way, this is not the only such deposit of jellyfish, but simply the most remarkable.
2)Birth Fossils: While evolutionists are slowly admitting that fossils not only take a short time to form but must be buried either at death or very shortly thereafter to create a fossil any fossil evidence of living animals captured in time like a photograph prove cataclysmic burial
with no time for scavengers, rot, or further disruption. While single fossils could be part of a local deviating event they also fit, even better, with a single worldwide event. My favorite fossils are those that catch animals in the process of birth. I have seen several, perhaps the most vivid of which is of an ichthyosaur giving birth. The infant is part in and part out of the mother! Nearly the entirety of the baby has emerged, with only its beak and part of its head still in the birth
canal. This is a live birth, and if the mother had simply died giving birth the infant wouldn't have had difficulty pulling itself free from the mother and escaping. Only an extremely rapid, heavy burial would not only kill both but also keep them preserved without the baby falling
out as it settled. There is another one, same species, which show the mother with several babies still in her womb and one infant already fully birthed just outside the body. Unfortunately I could find no pictures easily accessibly, but could probably dig some up if you are
interested. 3) Fighting fossils: My second favorite class of fossils are those where predator/prey have been caught in the middle of battle. There is a fish fossil I've seen (pictures of not the actual fossil) from the Green River Formation from Wyoming where the fish is in the middle of eating another, as in one fish is half way out/ half way in the other fishes mouth! There is a dinosaur fossil, I'm afraid I don't remember the particulars, of a predator, raptor of some sort, on the back of its prey biting its neck. 4) Fossil Graveyards: While rapid fossilization is proof of at least local cataclysmic events huge fossil graveyards are proof of a more than local, but rather a near global or global event. These are found both as vegetation, for instance the huge permafrost peat bogs in Russia that contain all kinds of different woods and vegetation preserved from a massive flood by the cold, and as animal fossils, for instance the mass
burial of both whales and land animals in Africa. Here are some specific ones: In the Vyatka River valley near Kotelnich Russia a herd of 300 tetrapods were buried and fossilized while standing with their heads erect! Not only that but the herd was buried while standing on a steep
hill, so any attempt to explain it away due to the animals getting stuck in a swamp, the usual explanation when standing fossils are found, is completely invalid. There are two well-known mass fossil graveyards in the US, one found in Utah, The Dinosaur National Monument, and a less well-known one, (its newer) in Como Bluff Wyoming. There is a huge fossil graveyard in South Africa called the Karroo Formation. There is a whale fossil graveyard in what is now the desert of Peru. A whole herd of mammoths have been found frozen in place while crossing a river! (While not a fossil quickly frozen animals, particularly in such a circumstance, also cannot be explained away by a slow and gradual process. Even an ice age under evolutionary standards could not accomplish this, only the super cooled air, water, and sediment that would result from
the beginnings of a sudden worldwide flood) In Russia fossil graveyards that include tropical, subtropical, temperate, and tundra creatures have been found, my favorite list includes foxes, oxen, mammoths, rabbits, and tigers! Huge mats of vegetable matter, which include tropical
trees, deciduous trees, and even fruit trees with the fruit still on them, have been found in the Artic. In fact, coal veins are nothing more than huge mats of vegetation that was quickly buried and placed under pressure and heat. There is a petrified forest where a whole forest of trees
have been uprooted and fossilized in place, cutting through many different layers of rock. Obviously all those layers of rock were mud at the same time as the trees were uprooted and stuck in them, then they hardened together in place. Fossil conclusion: This could continue for pages and pages. The real question is, since a rapid burial followed by an equally rapid sealing
of the surrounding ground is required for any fossil, where is the fossil evidence for all this slow and gradual that is required for long ages. Realize that either nearly every fossil in existence would be created either directly by a global flood or right after it by the upheaval
caused by it, OR they were nearly all created slowly over millions of years. Both can't be true, there aren't enough fossils for both a global flood, or even multiple near global floods, and long ages. Next
up... Mountains! *the debate ended at this time*
posted by Jespren at 11:59 PM
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