Ken Ham's Momunent to Stupidity

[Bronzeage]

If this is a true replica of the 'ark' then surely people would realise that two of every animal couldn't possibly fit into it.

This is a true replica of the Ark, as it appears in The Children's Big Book of Bible Stories.

 

[bilby]

If this is a true replica of the 'ark' then surely people would realise that two of every animal couldn't possibly fit into it.

This is a true replica of the Ark, as it appears in The Children's Big Book of Bible Stories.

Nah, that one had a skylight with two giraffes sticking their heads out of it. Ken Ham seems to think that Noah's giraffes spent the whole time lying down.

 

[Atheos]

Nah, I've seen Ken Ham's ark on a children's table mat. His had tyrannosaurus and brachiosaurus necks sticking out the top. Gonna be stupid might as well get there at ludicrous speed.

 

[gmbteach]

If this is a true replica of the 'ark' then surely people would realise that two of every animal couldn't possibly fit into it.

I've having this discussion with a fundy. He thins all the animals would fit. So we are going to do the calculation together. Problem is I'm not sure to start? I know others have done it, but If I were to do it from scratch how would I do it?

Start with the biggest animal and try and give it half it's body size again in extra area for it to 'move around' and see how you go, or how many you can fit in until you run out of space.

That would be my guess.

 

[NobleSavage]

I calculated the circumference of the ship, figured the area of three decks. As i recall, it came out to 18 high school basketball courts in floorspace.

Then figure a year's worth of food for an elephant would be, what, 350 tons of plant. You and fundy will have to decide if there was one or three species of elephants, and whether or not they were clean, so there could be anywhere from two elephants to fourteen to forty two, and see how much food could be crammed into a baskeball court. And that's just for elephants.... Then there's all the ungulates... Dogs and wolves and foxes.... Decide which are 'clean' and how much food they need for a year...

Ultimately, the fundy will handwave everything away by saying stupid shit like, "Well, God changed the animals' digestive systems and metabolism so they don't need as much food and water as normal. Also, God made animal farts and manure odorless, so the smell is not a problem." They have an "answer" for everything.

I think this is the way it's going to go. I started briefly with elephants and they responded by saying the elephants were babies.

 

[bilby]

Ultimately, the fundy will handwave everything away by saying stupid shit like, "Well, God changed the animals' digestive systems and metabolism so they don't need as much food and water as normal. Also, God made animal farts and manure odorless, so the smell is not a problem." They have an "answer" for everything.

I think this is the way it's going to go. I started briefly with elephants and they responded by saying the elephants were babies.

That doesn't help their cause much; An elephant removed from its mother before it is weaned will die, so it must be at least 5, and probably closer to 10 years old to stand any chance of surviving - and by that age, an elephant is easily two-thirds of its adult size.

Even a newborn Elephant is a pretty large animal; and if all the animals on the ark are infants (or even just all the large species) then Noah and his family just multiplied their workload by a large number; and their food requirements went up a fair bit too.

Basically you can't make an ark that size that can accommodate two of every animal, plus their food, for a sufficient length of time to match the story in the Bible; and you can't make an ark that size out of wood and expect it not to break up in even the most moderate swell either.

The only way to make it work is to invoke magic; and as Keith&Co. pointed out, if you are going to invoke magic, why bother with an ark at all? In fact, if you are going to invoke magic, any and all stories, no matter how wild, are all equally likely. Let's just say that the ark was 10 feet long, and that Noah had God shrink his family and all the required pairs of clean and unclean animals down until the whole lot fitted in his hat, in suspended animation so they didn't need to eat, breathe or shit, and he just rowed about on his own, with the rest of creation on top of his head, until God was done with his petulant act of genocide.

 

[NobleSavage]

If you took two of every animal and put them into a huge blender, I wonder what the volume would be?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

With the world being wiped clean, just fresh mud after the flood what did the newly disembarked animals eat? What did the tigers and tyranosauruses eat?

 

[bilby]

With the world being wiped clean, just fresh mud after the flood what did the newly disembarked animals eat? What did the tigers and tyranosauruses eat?

Presumably the tigers ate the tyrannosaurs - that would explain why there are no tyrannosaurs left now.

I expect that God re-embiggened the tigers first, because a full sized tyrannosaur would be a big challenge for a tiger.

 

[gmbteach]

With the world being wiped clean, just fresh mud after the flood what did the newly disembarked animals eat? What did the tigers and tyranosauruses eat?

Presumably the tigers ate the tyrannosaurs - that would explain why there are no tyrannosaurs left now.

I expect that God re-embiggened the tigers first, because a full sized tyrannosaur would be a big challenge for a tiger.

That's if the t-Rex hadn't already eaten Noah and all the other animals on boat.

 

[Keith&Co.]

With the world being wiped clean, just fresh mud after the flood what did the newly disembarked animals eat? What did the tigers and tyranosauruses eat?

Plants. THey weren't alive to the authors of the OT. PLenty of plants live under the water.... So they just sort of got water-logged for a while.

Thus the olive branch was avalable and recognizable as an olive branch when the waters receded.

 

[bilby]

With the world being wiped clean, just fresh mud after the flood what did the newly disembarked animals eat? What did the tigers and tyranosauruses eat?

Plants. THey weren't alive to the authors of the OT. PLenty of plants live under the water.... So they just sort of got water-logged for a while.

Thus the olive branch was avalable and recognizable as an olive branch when the waters receded.

This is what you get when the authors of holy books feel that talking to a lowly farm worker is beneath their dignity.

After all, probably 90% of the population at the time could have told you that most plants die if they are submerged for any length of time. But not the priests. And priests don't ask for information from agricultural workers.

I mean, they are muddy and smelly and have dirt under their fingernails. What would some illiterate know about how plants grow, just because he spends every daylight hour working with them?

The bit that's not green goes in the mud, and water is good for them. That's botany mastered; now on to more important questions, like what's the morally correct way to beat a slave...

 

[fromderinside]

There are such as seeds and spores and the like that would survive a flood that can be used to assail slaves ......

 

[Bronzeage]

I love threads like this. We start with story about a man who survives a flood because he has a boat. It's the kind of thing that is happening everyday, somewhere on this planet. In this case, the story got embellished a little. Okay, maybe a lot. Whatever really happened, this particular flood certainly left an impression on everybody in the general vicinity. The story, as it has survived is incredible on the face of it. Even the limited zoology of the middle east would quickly swamp any boat that could be built with the available time and technology. Of course, building a boat with no propulsion or steering system simplifies things. All Noah had to do was build a "carpenter's boat," which is otherwise known as a waterproof box.

I think we can concede someone survived a flood in some kind of boat. Maybe he had his family with him. Maybe a few sheep and goats. Totally plausible, but once we establish the first impossibility, any additional impossibilities are superfluous.

 

[Archimedes]

God could have had Noah saved by riding in a giant goldfish's mouth, or the snail on Dr. Doolittle, or a chariot pulled by seahorses. If you need to miracle away the impossibilities, then just do so and don't pretend the story makes sense.

Miracling away impossibilities while pretending the flood story makes sense is YECism in a nutshell. On the one hand, they like to pretend it's all sciencey and shit by talking about vapor canopies and how the animals on the Ark were genetically diverse to prevent inbreeding problems afterward, how baraminology reduces the number of species needed on board the ark etc. to simply magicking away the impossible (Noah took on board itsy bitsy little baby animals and God used his magic to keep them that way so they'd all fit onboard and wouldn't need to eat too much food).

 

[Draconis]

Perhaps the animals were put into cryogenic suspension or some sort of stasis field so they didn't need to poo or eat. In order to make them all fit, they were miniaturized.

In order that Noah got every species possible, God gave him a big book about zoology with pictures of all the animals, even the species that mimic each other. Maybe he would need samples of their DNA to be sure some animals weren't pretending to be something else in order to get a free ride. As for what do the carnivores eat while prey animals build up a sufficient population after leaving the ark? Maybe some sort of temporary predator-friendly fast food establishments? Or God just magics them so they are happy to eat soggy plants for a while?

Plausible?

 

[bilby]

Perhaps the animals were put into cryogenic suspension or some sort of stasis field so they didn't need to poo or eat. In order to make them all fit, they were miniaturized.

In order that Noah got every species possible, God gave him a big book about zoology with pictures of all the animals, even the species that mimic each other. Maybe he would need samples of their DNA to be sure some animals weren't pretending to be something else in order to get a free ride. As for what do the carnivores eat while prey animals build up a sufficient population after leaving the ark? Maybe some sort of temporary predator-friendly fast food establishments? Or God just magics them so they are happy to eat soggy plants for a while?

Plausible?

With God, all things are possible.

(Thereby rendering 'God' a valueless hypothesis in all cases; but nobody said you needed to understand epistemology to be a theist).

 

[Bronzeage]

Perhaps the animals were put into cryogenic suspension or some sort of stasis field so they didn't need to poo or eat. In order to make them all fit, they were miniaturized.

In order that Noah got every species possible, God gave him a big book about zoology with pictures of all the animals, even the species that mimic each other. Maybe he would need samples of their DNA to be sure some animals weren't pretending to be something else in order to get a free ride. As for what do the carnivores eat while prey animals build up a sufficient population after leaving the ark? Maybe some sort of temporary predator-friendly fast food establishments? Or God just magics them so they are happy to eat soggy plants for a while?

Plausible?

As plausible as "turtles all the way down."

 

[Keith&Co.]

Perhaps the animals were put into cryogenic suspension or some sort of stasis field so they didn't need to poo or eat. In order to make them all fit, they were miniaturized.

In order that Noah got every species possible, God gave him a big book about zoology with pictures of all the animals, even the species that mimic each other. Maybe he would need samples of their DNA to be sure some animals weren't pretending to be something else in order to get a free ride. As for what do the carnivores eat while prey animals build up a sufficient population after leaving the ark? Maybe some sort of temporary predator-friendly fast food establishments? Or God just magics them so they are happy to eat soggy plants for a while?

Plausible?

I had a wizard in AD&D who had a spell to allow him to absorb the traits of every animal and plant alive, reissuing them as necessary. Trees that grew and fermented fruits inside the trunk, so every autumn you tapped a living keg.

Cattle that had dragon skins so you could produce cheap leather armor that would shrug off a storm giant's blast....

A wizard who could spit on frog eggs and make any animal he wanted pop outta the things....

So, sure, God could just pack the DNA into an ant queen. In January she laid rabbit eggs, in February moles, in March frogs, in April foxes and in May some coyotes... Soon the whole earth was repopulated....
And the Rocky Mountains are what's left of the anthills....

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I love threads like this. We start with story about a man who survives a flood because he has a boat. It's the kind of thing that is happening everyday, somewhere on this planet. In this case, the story got embellished a little. Okay, maybe a lot. Whatever really happened, this particular flood certainly left an impression on everybody in the general vicinity. The story, as it has survived is incredible on the face of it. Even the limited zoology of the middle east would quickly swamp any boat that could be built with the available time and technology. Of course, building a boat with no propulsion or steering system simplifies things. All Noah had to do was build a "carpenter's boat," which is otherwise known as a waterproof box.

I think we can concede someone survived a flood in some kind of boat. Maybe he had his family with him. Maybe a few sheep and goats. Totally plausible, but once we establish the first impossibility, any additional impossibilities are superfluous.

Its more like ancient men noticed fossilized sea creatures on hills and mountains and some oriental tall tale tellers made up tall tales inspired by this fairly common observance. The tales were passed on and modified, changed and grew and grew. People like bizarre tales, witness all the myths of Greek monster killing heros and their monsters and the like.