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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"...[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

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?

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.

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

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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

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

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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

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