Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by erik112358 on January 25, 2012 at 11:43am

But if you're a fundie, you don't need to explain these things, because god is all-powerful.  If he can flood the earth with non-existent water, he can save the mummies too.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Karp on January 26, 2012 at 10:53am

Damnit I didn't think of that! You're right! YAWEH!!!!!!

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Permalink Reply by Ben on January 25, 2012 at 9:34am

If Noah had to take 2 of every species on the planet.... Well then he would still be gathering them up. Because thousands of years later with greater technology and actual scientists, we as a species are still finding new ones. Also the fresh rain water diluting the salt water would have destroyed much of marine life we know today. ;)

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on January 25, 2012 at 12:01pm

Is there something like a consensus on how to wed evolutionary science to creationist myth, like maybe a concordance model or something that every old earth creationist believes or agrees with?

Not everybody seems to agree at least that the flood was really global or that dinosaurs were still around in Noah's day and such.

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Permalink Reply by erik112358 on January 25, 2012 at 12:18pm

A consensus in religion?  Surely you jest.

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on January 25, 2012 at 3:35pm

A lack of consensus need not be a bad thing. But in order to know how to provide an answer to Old Earth Creationism it's best to first know what sort of Old Earth Creationism and what the proponents actually believe you are criticizing.

I've been trying to figure that out and it seems the sources linked to by Gretchen point to the Day-Age creationism variant of Old Earth Creationism. But within that club you have "progressive creationists" (Biblical literalists who reject evolution and posit that speciation occurred when God made a new species)  and "theistic evolutionists" (theists who finally come to their senses about evolution for a large part, but can't find Occam's razor.)

Once again I think the sources of Gretchen point to the "progressive creationist" variant of the Day-Age creationist variant of the Old Earth Creationist variant of Creationism.

That's why asked because it seems even within this select club of "progressive creationists" there are people who really do believe in "flood geology" and those who I guess fear the silliness is just too damn obvious to hang on to. There are those who believe dinosaurs were roaming the earth in Noah's time and those who hold the position that they went extinct some 65 million years before the "deluge", some saying this was a global, others think a local flood event.

In short it's a big giant contradictory mess in which to navigate even before we can decide what's the most deadly flaw, what is most crucially wrong to any particular flavor of Old-Earth creationism.

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Permalink Reply by Gretchen Becker on January 26, 2012 at 1:53am

Interesting, Albert. Thanks for the insight!

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Permalink Reply by Reg The Fronkey Farmer on January 25, 2012 at 1:26pm

Here is a rough snapshot of a conversation I have often had with YEC types at the front door. I try to keep it as humorous as possible.

Why are Lemurs only in Madagascar and nowhere else? Wasn’t Noah great the way he was able to drop them all off there before he went to Australia to drop off all the marsupials. Why did he not put any penguins in the Arctic - was it because he put all the polar bears there? He was so good to drop of all the flightless birds on all the islands around the world. That means Noah knew the world was round. Whoa!! Noah was so organised. Well I suppose he would be as god gave him over 120 years notice to get everything ready. Please come back I am being serious – I really need these answers.
He really loved the beetles – (no not the band ha ha) – the 250,000 + species that he had to collect and 2 of each!! Whoa!! I wonder if he had any Health and Safety issues with the 120 or so species of woodpecker. I mean 240 breeding pairs of woodpecker on a wooden boat – was that not a risk to whole of human and animal kind? So Turkey is the real cradle of civilisation. Please come back I am only starting with the questions. On which deck did he keep the dogs?” How come the freshwater fish survived when mixed into the seawater? What about the mole rats which live underground and were only discovered a few hundred years ago? How did the fish eaters survive as Noah kept the door closed? Come to think of it did he send someone to Australia first to bring two kangaroos back to the Ark or were they roaming free where he lived. I have a few questions on Dinosaurs......

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Permalink Reply by Dale Headley on January 25, 2012 at 2:11pm

   Why are you even bothering to argue?  There is simply NO evidence that would ever impress biblical literalists.  For them, it's not about evidence; or truth; or logic; it's all about blind faith.  They are convinced that their salvation rests solely on this unquestioning acceptance of "The Word" as it is written, and nothing you say will dissuade them lest they go to Hell.  The Noah's Ark story is so riddled with absurdities that it CAN'T be defended on a rational basis.  I simply point out to believers that the ark story amuses me, and I leave it to them to decide whether or not to defend it.  They rarely do, though, since they don't believe that they should be expected to; anyhow, they sense that it can't be done.

     My favorite arguments focus on the building of the ark itself.  This old man and his sons are supposed to have built, in a few days, out of "gopher wood,"  the largest ship ever constructed, by far - a vessel so hunongous that it would have to house all those animals for months.  Aside from the fact that modern day engineers have calculated that a ship that size simply would not even float without breaking apart, there is the awareness that, even if it only held the different "kinds" of animals on earth, Noah must have had to deal with incalculable problems of food and waste, not to mention the urges of the creatures aboard to prey, to flee, to fight, and to procreate on a scale so massive that it boggles the mind.  Can the dinosaur "kind" and the ant "kind" manage to cohabitate without one squashing the other?   Do they freely mingle (you know, "Christian mingle"), or does each "kind" have its own stateroom, like in the Marx Bros. movie, "Night at the Opera"?  The one thing I find most amusing is that the Bible says the ark had only one small window.  You don't need much of an imagination to see that the  implications of that are hilarious; just how much air freshener might they have needed?  I wonder which of Noah's sons had to wield the pooper scooper?  Of course, perhaps none of the animals ever  urinated or defecated; but if that's the case...oh, never mind!  

    Finally, in reference to your alluding to "micro-evolution," here is an interesting question: if all "felines," for instance, were represented by one species, which species would it have been?  If it were, say, a pair of lions, would they have subsequently RE-evolved the tigers, and cheetahs, and housecats, etc. that had presumably perished in the flood?  That might seem conceivable to a creationist, I suppose, but a biological evolutionist would be dumbstruck.  Keep in mind, that for a creationist to posit this scenario is a de facto acceptance of evolution as a fact - "micro" or otherwise.  One of the most basic tenets of evolution is that it NEVER reinvents a species that has gone extinct.  A pair of lions might well be the founders of future generations of "feline" species; but the chances of them evolving AGAIN into any of the other feline species that we know, if only from drawings on prehistoric walls and Egyptian tombs, existed before the flood, are vanishingly small.  There has NEVER been a fossil discovered of a life form that reappeared long after it had gone extinct; if the Noah's Ark story is true, we should have found thousands of them, by now.  No matter how many times the evolutionary process is restarted, it will never take the exact same course or direction.  But that, in essence, is what the creationists who allude to "kinds" would have you believe.  Creationists are firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place on this issue.      

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Permalink Reply by Gretchen Becker on January 26, 2012 at 1:56am

Wonderful addition, and something I should keep reminding myself of. The "kind" language frustrates me of course, and what you say is so true. Thank you!

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Permalink Reply by Rev. Benjamin Duncan on January 25, 2012 at 3:22pm

I would simply say "the counter arguments come really cheap when magic is part of your claim."

Pretend someone claimed: the world is a big giant lizard egg.

You rebutted with "but there's no evidence of this and the earth is not made of organic material"

"that's because it's a galactic lizard egg! What we call "inorganic material" IS it's organic material!"

When magic is part of the equation, you can make up anything.

I'd also say that if god deliberately made an earth which "appeared old" to trick us into not believing in him, why are we supposed to believe in him?

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Permalink Reply by Brad Snowder on January 25, 2012 at 9:42pm

For what it's worth, I just posted my Noah's Ark episode in my satire of the Bible: http://www.thinkatheist.com/profiles/blogs/we-re-gonna-need-a-bigge...

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