Okay. According to the Bible, which is ineffable and inerrant, (wink-wink) The ark measured 300 cubits long by 50 wide by 30 tall. (assuming a boxlike Ark, but more on this later.)

Now, utilizing the measurement that most scholars agree upon for the 'cubit' (18 inches to the cubit, given a man 6'0" tall, despite that most men were probably considerably shorter at the time), gives us roughly 1,518,750 cubic feet in the Ark.

Now, we must count every species of land-dwelling animal, or animal which requires land to survive (like an amphibian). we must count every one, as species simply do not 'come' into existence, and evolution is a fraud. (wink-wink) This gives us:
Land snails:--------------19,000 known species
Centepedes:----------------3,000 known species
Millipedes:----------------8,000 known species
Insects:-----------------728,466 known species
Amphibians:----------------2,983 known species
Reptiles:------------------5,924 known species
Birds:---------------------8,580 known species
Mammals:-------------------4,417 known species
Others(Arachnids, etc.):---4,700 known species

Altogether, roughly 780,370 species, not counting many animals which had existed, but had gone extinct by the time my reference book was written (the auk, the dodo, the tazmanian wolf). Multiplying this by two, (the required number, Genetics and recessive traits notwithstanding Biblical pronouncements, (wink-wink) we arrive at 1,570,000 animals, or roughly .97 cubic feet per animal.

Sound cramped? We're not done yet, as this analysis fails to take into consideration:

1. Dinosaurs, Mammoths, Saber-tooth tigers, Megatherium, and other mammals extinct long before my reference book was written Thousands of species, if current numbers are accurate. If, as some folks maintain, Dinosaurs and these other animals were also welcomed on the Ark, the decrease in available space would have been precipitous, as your average Saurian takes up a LOT more than .97 cubic meter.

2. The Bible clearly states that in several cases, more than 2 animals were required, as in the case of cattle. Plus, with the breeding rates of some animals, several generations of offspring might have been born ON the Ark.

3. 8 healthy human beings require considerable living space.

4. Walls, floors, the required 'cages' for each animal, food storage, and the space taken for running of the ship also decreases the available space significantly.

5. Since a boat cannot be a box and be stable, we must take the earlier measurements to be the MAXIMUM dimensions of the ark, tapering down into the keel and from the fore and aft. This also lowers the internal dimensions considerably.

Enjoy your weekend!

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

However, I believe that while there might be some truth to the flood, I do not think it happened as it is told in the Bible. Don't forget, there is no geological proof that shows the entire Earth was covered by water less than 5000 years ago.

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"You must give in to tock." - The First One
 

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"...[They've] been so completely dumbed down by the media, by tabloid scumbags, by the Christian "right", by politicians in general, the school, parents who are dumber than their parents were, who are dumber than their parents were, and all of whom think that they can bring up a child just because they got down in bed and had a little sex...well, frankly, here is an audience that knows more and more about less and less as the years go by...We are talking about a constituency...that knows nothing. This is pandemic; terrifyingly, paralyzingly pandemic. They know absolutely nothing."
- Harlan Ellison, on the Media Consumer of today.

I've seen computer simulations showing that a properly designed ark of the given dimentions would be literally impossible to tip over.

you'd need two of every member of different Human ethnicity

Why? You go live around the equator for twenty generations and see what your decendents look like. Chances are, they'd end up with dark skin, due to simple process of natural selection. People with dark skin are more likely to survive near the equator, due to skin cancer rates. Conversley, people with light skin are more likely to survive near the poles, due to vitamin D production. Races are simply familial groups taken to the extreme, with some natural selection thrown in.

As for your numbers of species, Rob, I wonder this: have any experiments been done to see if the, say, 19,000 different kinds of snails are REALLY different species? Do they just look somewhat different, or are they really incapable of reproducing with each other? Looking at different breeds of dogs, an uninformed observer would likely think that they were different species of a similar life form. However, this is not the case, since they can all reproduce with each other, and are thus by definition the same species. I submit that the number of truely different species on the planet may be far lower than has been estimated, and that our clasification system is rather screwed up.

Take donkeys and horses. They can reproduce with each other, and in some cases can produce fertile offspring. According to my knowledgable source on such things, there are breeds of mule that can reproduce. Thus, would horses and donkeys not technically be considered the same species? And yet they are classified differently. Same with your typical housepet dog and the wild wolf (canus domesticus and canus lupus, IIRC). They're classified as different species, even though they are in fact the same, by virtue of reproduction. In fact, the only canid that can't reproduce with other canids is the fox. Thus, are there not only two true species of canines? And thus, could not only either eight, eighteen, or twenty-eight (depending on whether they were considered clean or not) canines been the only ones carried aboard the ark?

I reject your numbers, due to my belief that the counting process is flawed.

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson

[This message has been edited by Omega (edited January 13, 2001).]
 

An offshoot of this is how long was the time limit given to Noah? It would take awhile for a guy to get a panther, or something from Australia, to put in his boat.

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking"

*raises eyebrow*

And yet the theory of evolution is a made-up thing of evil, respsonible for everything that's wrong with the world?

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"And Mojo was hurt and I would have kissed his little boo boo but then I realized he was a BAD monkey so I KICKED HIM IN HIS FACE!"
-Bubbles
 

Was that blasphemy? *ponders*

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Here lies a toppled god,
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

-Tleilaxu Epigram

Compairing the differences in races to the differences in species? Some would call that racism. They'd be wrong, and be overreacting to an extreme, of course, but they WOULD say it.

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

In other words, God didn't look down in His (supposed) infinite wisdom and decide to put people with round eyes in Asia, black skin in Africa, and white skins in Europe. People migrated across the Earth from the "cradle of civilization" somewhere down in the Med/Africa, isn't it? And evolved into how we look today.

But you don't believe in evolution, do you? So, if you don't believe in evolution, how is it you believe that mankind has adopted to the enviornments of the world? In other words, without believing in evolution, how do you reject UM's statement that you'd need two of every member of different Human ethnicity?

Now, in another thread (abortion, I believe was the topic), you said that evolution could not be proven through childbirth, which was a "viewable process" or something along those lines. People adopting in the way we're talking here takes a lot longer than nine-months, and isn't a "viewable" process ... so how do you justify this statement:

You go live around the equator for twenty generations and see what you decendents look like. Chances are, they'd end up with dark skin, due to simple process of natural selection.

Isn't natural selection a Darwinian idea?

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000

[This message has been edited by JeffKardde (edited January 14, 2001).]
 

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My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
 

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Here lies a toppled god,
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

-Tleilaxu Epigram

Remember, snails are an entire CLASS of organisms (Gastropoda, I believe), while Primates are simply a FAMILY, and we can't interbreed with lemurs and gorillas, King Kong's Fay Wray implications notwithstanding, and Canines are simply a GENUS.

Now, if you want me to move up a step and count only the varying GENUS's of the world, I could get to work on that... but the number would still be pretty huge.

Still, the space problem is there. Especially if you're bringing all the sauropods on board...

I'd have to do the math, but I'd wager that the varying Sauropods' dimensions (let's see, the combined sizes of two of each Ultrasaur, Brachiosaur, Apatosaur, Diplodocus, Camarasaurus, Argentinosaurus, couple dozen others... *whew!*) are quite possibly greater than the dimensions of the Ark would have been, WITHOUT any other animals being added. Assuming, of course, that Noah did his job adequately, except for the Unicorn (oops, that's an apocryphal story).

And they probably weigh enough to make displacement moot.

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

[This message has been edited by First of Two (edited January 14, 2001).]
 

First Of Two: I don't understand, dinos were already extinct by the time of the flood, weren't they? Why count them in?

------------------
Here lies a toppled god,
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

-Tleilaxu Epigram

------------------
"You must give in to tock." - The First One
 

------------------
"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking"

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"And Mojo was hurt and I would have kissed his little boo boo but then I realized he was a BAD monkey so I KICKED HIM IN HIS FACE!"
-Bubbles
 

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000

 

WA it's not.

------------------
Here lies a toppled god,
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.

-Tleilaxu Epigram

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Death before Dishonor!
However Dishonor has
quite a disputed defintion.

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking"

[This message has been edited by Ritten (edited January 15, 2001).]
 

And evolved into how we look today.

You don't seem to know that there's a difference between traits being shared among family groups and actual "evolution." It's called "microevolution", as opposed to "macroevolution". Look it up.

Isn't natural selection a Darwinian idea?

Yes. Darwin DID have some decent ideas. Different species arising through evolution just wasn't one of them, nor was it a logical outgrowth of them.

Just because members of a certain species that have a certain trait are more likely to survive in a certain environment doesn't mean that they're also more likely to become incapable of reproducing with other specimines, and thus forming a new species.

Tim:

"Natural selection", "evolution", "survival of the fittest"... They're all pretty much the same thing.

No, they're not. See above.

Rob:

Still, the space problem is there. Especially if you're bringing all the sauropods on board...

Unless, of course, you bring young, or even unhatched eggs. No need to feed them, eh?

There's also the question of exactly what would happen to all the species once they were in a completely enclosed environment, with no external time signatures. Have any experiments been done to that effect?

Nimrod:

I don't understand, dinos were already extinct by the time of the flood, weren't they?

Not necessarily. They could have been extinct, or they could have been brought as eggs, and later died out. Either way...

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

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20th century, go to sleep.
--
R.E.M.
****
Read chapters one and two of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! Show no patience, tolerance, or restraint.

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"Life end when you die. But imagination share with others, live forever."
--Quan, Final Fantasy IX
 

"Just because members of a certain species that have a certain trait are more likely to survive in a certain environment doesn't mean that they're also more likely to become incapable of reproducing with other specimines, and thus forming a new species."

As many words as you used, this basically amounts to saying "You're wrong.". Well, my response to that is, "No, you're wrong.".

Besides, what makes you think you get to define "species". If the biologists classify horses and donkeys as different species, despite their ability to reproduce, who are you to refute it? They are the ones who decide the definition of "species" and, if they say two creatures who can procreate together are separate species, they're separate species. That's how it works.

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My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
 

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

Oh, and they were on the ark for more like a year, BTW.

Tim:

Besides, what makes you think you get to define "species".

Who says I need to? You want to use the definition from the screwed-up classification system, fine, but my definition is what is aplicable to the argument at hand. Noah wouldn't have needed to pick up every scientifically classified species on the planet. He would just have needed to pick up every legitimately different species on the planet. As I've shown, there is a great difference.

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000

 

You want to show him his error, Rob?

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

"Oh, and they were on the ark for more like a year, BTW."

I hereby officially bestow upon Omega the distinguished title of "Smeghead".

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My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
 

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I looked at my son, and said, "My god, he's hung like a bear."
"That's the umbillical cord, Mr. Williams."

-Robin Williams, "A Night at the Met" 1986
 

BZZZZZT!

Thy data is outdated.
Increasing evidence suggests that Saurians were warm-blooded, more like birds (who need incubation) than reptiles (some of whom need incubation or a steadily maintained temperature, [some snakes, some crocidilians, some turtles] as well.)

And they would hatch after considerably less than a year, and require prodigious amounts of food to grow healthily. Especially the sauropods.

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

[This message has been edited by First of Two (edited January 16, 2001).]
 

OK, we'll figure fourty days, since you seem to like that number better. Thanks, Tim, that makes my job a little easier.

SB:

Genesis 7:11-13

"In the six hundretdth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month--on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth for fourty days and fourty nights. On that very day, Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark."

Genesis 8:13-15

"By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was completely dry. Then God said to Noah, "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives."

Thus they were in the ark for the period between the seventeenth day of the second month of Noah's 600th year, and the twenty-seventh day of the second month of Noah's 601st year. This works out to around 375 days, or a little over a year.

Rob:

Increasing evidence suggests that Saurians were warm-blooded

I would be interested in knowing upon what evidence you base this.

And they would hatch after considerably less than a year

Again, on what do you base this?

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

If you couldn't recongize that as sarcasm, maybe you need to get out more.

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000

 

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My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
 

This is, of course, simply your opinion, which I do not share.

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

How about a 4-chambered heart, for starters...

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

I got tired of this so I moved on, but there were others to post....

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking"

[This message has been edited by Ritten (edited January 16, 2001).]
 

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"Still one thing more fellow-citizens--A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government..."
-Thomas Jefferson
 

Saying science is wrong and religion is right when neither has absolute proof is totally biased towards religion. Unless God himself came down and said "this is so" then the Bible can't be anymore trusted than Darwinism, right? Both are man made and therefore fallible, correct? The bible was written by man, even if the words were said to be God's, does this mean a errorable human would be exact in writing?
Oh and let's not forget how much fun Hebrew and translating it is either. How many words have several meanings again?

[This message has been edited by TLE (edited January 17, 2001).]
 

How long is a God's day to us?

Since some were not arrogant enough to say 24 hours I asked them that if God had made all the beasts before he made man was there a chance of evolution happening to those things He created? A few were arrogant enough to say that God would create them all without being flexible and adaptive in anyway.

Arrogance seems to run thickly in the religious world, as far as knowing excatly what time standards are used by God.

So, taken in the proper perspective, both work, creationism for the beginning, and evolution as God takes his day of rest.

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking"

And the messenger of the Lord came down from above and touched me with the Pinky of God, and my ears were opened, and I heard the voice of the Lord say "Behold! I say unto thee... Noah's real name was Fred, and he made up that ark story himself one day when he was caught in a flash flood and managed to float away in his canoe. Ol' Chuckie Darwin got it right with the evolution thing, of course. You think I have time to keep track of what everything on Earth looks like? I just tossed some slime into the ocean and let it go from there."
And I rejoiced at being chosen to receive this message from God, and I asked the Lord what might I do as restitution for the honor I had received. And the Lord did grin, saying "Yeah, could you smite that Omega git for me? I'm a little busy up here, so I don't have time to prepare a proper smiting."
And Bartholomew begat James, and James begat James, and James begat William, and William begat Robert, and Robert begat Timothy, who heard the vibrations of the Vocal Chords of God on the seventeenth day of the first month of the first year of the third millennium, by the reckoning of the calendar of Gregory.

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My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
 

Well, not really. Let's see if I can explain this properly.

God created Earth. Humans came to be. God decided to talk to humans. He was going to tell them the Truth, but decided that mankind at the time didn't need to know they came from monkeys, so He told them a-sort-of lie. He told them He created the world in six days and on the seventh He rested. He told them this because humans at the time would laugh in His face if He tried to tell them they evolved from monkey. He knew that someday mankind would figure it out for themselves.

Anyway, the point is:

Did God magically wave his fingers and shit just appeared?

Or (assuming He exists) did He cause the Big Bang and work His wonders through natural evolution?

Part of the problem with Creationism, IMHO, is that how does anyone know God spoke the truth with regards to how He created the world? Or how does anyone know that one of God's days isn't one million of our years?

Anyway ...

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000

 

Contains the saurian four-chambered heart information.

And just for fun, more Archie, detailing the many ways in which the Archaeopteryx is close to dinos and birds. http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/archie.htm

As to how long dino eggs would take to hatch, one can derive an estimatory range from the eggs of other animals:

Chicken ---- 21 days
Snowy Owl--- 32 days
Skink ------ 40-60 days
Land Turtle- 45-90 days

(all considerably lower than six months)

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

The Platypus.

What a sense of humor on this guy, huh?

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000

 

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"And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye."
-Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

 

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"...[They've] been so completely dumbed down by the media, by tabloid scumbags, by the Christian "right", by politicians in general, the school, parents who are dumber than their parents were, who are dumber than their parents were, and all of whom think that they can bring up a child just because they got down in bed and had a little sex...well, frankly, here is an audience that knows more and more about less and less as the years go by...We are talking about a constituency...that knows nothing. This is pandemic; terrifyingly, paralyzingly pandemic. They know absolutely nothing."
- Harlan Ellison, on the Media Consumer of today.

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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking"

Erm..

*thinks*

Er...

*thought apears*

Hang on. Omega's going by the date's and time's in the bible being accurate, right? Sooo...

*thinks a bit more*

Does anyone else see a teensy problem with Noah being 600 years old?

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"And Mojo was hurt and I would have kissed his little boo boo but then I realized he was a BAD monkey so I KICKED HIM IN HIS FACE!"
-Bubbles
 

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My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
 

except when it obviously isn't, in which case it's metaphor and interpretation."

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"Ed Gruberman, you fail to grasp Ty Kwan Leap. Approach me, that you might see." -- The Master

Or something like that. Also, the one where Rev. Lovejoy holds up a bible and says "Have you ever actually read this thing? Technically, we can't even go to the bathroom..."

And there was a recent one where Homer became smart and proved that there's no god. He showed his proof to Flanders who looked it over, determined that it was right, and immediately burned it.

Actually, I can imagine Omega doing that last one...

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My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
 

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Star Trek Gamma Quadrant
Average Rated 6.83 out of 10 Smileys by Fabrux
***
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier ... just as long as I'm the dictator." - George "Dubya" Bush, Dec 18, 2000