The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Nope, but I've heard plenty about Phelps. Multi-directional rage supported tenuously by the bible. He is a mentally ill man who will hopefully die promptly and bother us no more.

Yes, an obviously disturbed individual. What motivates I'm not sure, but of course there is the enjoyment of power as the patriarch of his cult. I do feel for his family, any of whom I saw interviewed seemed sincere and not hate-filled.

Phelps is provoking people, and will treat any violent opposition as a proof of his righteousness. The poor kids who could be on the receiving end will be his martyrs.

wolfsbane

Wicknight said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
If Darth Vader's powers depended on something the theory of evolution proved was impossible, we could conclude that Vader was not part of the real world.
That is exactly the point.

Just like with Darth Vaders powers you have no idea what the "spirit" actually is, how it works, what is made of, what are the properties of the thing it is made of, how it arises, or how it can arise, how any natural process effects the process of arising.

All you have is a vague undefined idea of what a spirit is supposed to provide (a method for eternal life) and a vague idea based on your religion that the spirit exists.

You have a lot of ifs ... if the spirit is this, if the spirit is that ... you have no idea what it actually is or how it actually operates.

Therefore trying to discuss it in terms of scientific models such as evolution and how these theories effect it is nonsense. You don't even know what it is, you certainly can't say how other things could effect it or effect how it arises.

As far as I can see, most sensible people recognise there is a spirit in man. The evidence for it is before your very eyes, just like for gravity. Because science can't identify its origins or how it works, does not mean we must be agnostic about its existence.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
This from the Wiki article on the 'soul' is a good beginning:
The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence, or consciousness, unique to a particular living being, defined as one being independent of the substance and that it survives the death of the body.
That is meaningless. It is just nice sounding waffle. "Essence" isn't defined nor is it define what the soul actually is. It simply says it isn't part of the physical body. Brilliant, where is my Nobel prize

See above.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Like gravity, the spirit is recognised by most people. They see its effects - brain activity that can be measured; self-awareness; personality in others.
"Gravity" is a description of the end result of a process, a process that is currently unknown. Science doesn't yet know what produces gravity, though there are a number of theories.

You can claim that brain activity is the end result of the process of a "soul", but that is far more unknown than the process behind gravity, so calling it "soul" as if that describes something is just silly. You have no idea what it actually is or how it operates or even if there is an unknown process behind brain activity. You simply have what your religion says, which is scientifically meaningless.

So the cause of gravity is unknown but is accepted as scientific, whereas the cause of brain activity is unknown and must be excluded from science. Don't you see the prejudice?

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
I've no idea what gravity is, but I know it exists.
As I said "gravity" is the name given to a end result of some unknown process. You can claim brain activity is the end result of some unknown process but there is little reason to say that, except that it is what your religion says.

My religion says it is a known cause - the spirit. But scientifically, we can only say that it is an unknown cause, commonly called the spirit. Your religion - scientism - says there can be no spirit, so brain activity must be the result of mere chemical processes. A pity it can't approach the subject in a more scientific manner.:D

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
You are remarkable in not knowing if the spirit exists.
You don't know it exists either. You just hope it does because of your religious convictions. That is not the same thing as knowing.

On the contrary, the only absolute knowing is that of spiritual revelation. The rest is at best informed speculation.

Of course the original point was that even if the "soul" exists you still have no idea what it is or how it operates, so exploring how it is effected by the model of darwinian evolution is impossible.

My point is that Darwinian evolution cannot account for the spirit's mere existence, not that it has to explain how it works. A most serious defect in the theory.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Seems to inhabit the brain - the brain is its interface with the physical world.
Seems to? What are you basing that on Wolfsbane? Is there a test one can do to demonstrate that the soul inhabits the brain? Or, more importantly from the point of view of science, is there a theoretical test that one can do to demonstrate that the soul doesn't inhabit the brain (falsifiability)

Or are you just making stuff up?

No, not making it up. The test would be to replace the brain of one person with that of another and interogate the person on recovery. That has so many technical problems that the closest we can come at present is a head transplant. That has been successfully accomplished in animals, and nothing prevents it from happening in humans.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Yes, they point out the inability of science to deal with the spiritual, but they do not reject science.
That is rejecting science

When science doesn't give them the answers they want they abandon it and start making stuff up, just like Creationists (like you just did with the "soul"). That is a rejection of the scientific method.

Totally illogical. They hold to the scientific consensus on all matters science is currently involved with, but attempt to deal with the supernatural by their own means.

According to you, being involved with religion or any type of spiritual enterprise means one has abandoned science. That's pure dogma from the cult of Scientism. I admire your faith, but despise your religion.:D

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Again, I admire your honesty. Wickie beleives we are just sophisticated chemical reactions - now that is a bold world-view!
Not really. Being a sophisticated chemical reaction is pretty neat.

See previous.:D

No, here are your actual word (already quoted)


Evolution teaches we came from inorganic matter, and that our organic state is just a variation of that and no more. No room for a spirit, just very complicated chemical reactions.

My original comments were modified by my later qualification:
What I should have said was that I cannot see how our present biosphere on Earth and evolutionary theory can account for the spirit world. It must be something evolved elsewhere or be a fundamentally different from this material universe.

Hope that is a bit clearer.
See the fuller statement in my post 11759.

__________________

wolfsbane

Galvasean said:

Brain activity isn't directly synonymous with the soul. Neither is self-awareness or personality. Animals have all these things but lack the human soul (assuming it is real).

They do have a soul, just not a human one. They are not vegetables.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Wickie beleives we are just sophisticated chemical reactions - now that is a bold world-view!
Not really. It's no more bold than saying someone like God created us.

I find both bold, but Wickie's is by far the most unusual.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
Here's my actual words:
What I should have said was that I cannot see how our present biosphere on Earth and evolutionary theory can account for the spirit world.
It cant as far as I'm concerned. The spirit world (again assuming that it exists) is not a natural phenomenon. It is in the real of the supernatural which is not tested in the same way as say the biosphere or evolutionary theory.

What I'm getting at is the inability of biological evolution and its underlying cosmological evolution to account for the existence of the spirit. Granted the spirit can't be tested as a body can, but its existence needs explaining if one holds to the materialistic explanation of the universe.

wolfsbane

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Actually, working from the beginning assumption that the spirit exists, I think this is the most reasonable position to take.

If the spirit or soul exists, I don't see why it should be human-exclusive, and if it is not, then it seems perfectly reasonable to believe that it evolved alongside the rest of the living.

Way too much 'if' there Wolfsbane, I know, but remember we're starting from a speculative position regarding the existence of the soul.

The spirit/soul is not human exclusive, and I'm asking for an evolutionary explanation for its existence. I can't think of one.

Wickie at least faces that and says it is not a separate entity from our body, just a complicated chemical reaction.

Galvasean

wolfsbane wrote: »

Galvasean said:

They do have a soul, just not a human one. They are not vegetables.

Is there a Bible verse that says animals have souls? I'm actually curious about this.

wolfsbane wrote: »

I find both bold, but Wickie's is by far the most unusual.

Yes, believing life came to be naturally is much more unusual than saying a super powerful mega-being did it.

wolfsbane wrote: »

[
What I'm getting at is the inability of biological evolution and its underlying cosmological evolution to account for the existence of the spirit. Granted the spirit can't be tested as a body can, but its existence needs explaining if one holds to the materialistic explanation of the universe.

Um.. why?

Galvasean

wolfsbane wrote: »

The spirit/soul is not human exclusive, and I'm asking for an evolutionary explanation for its existence. I can't think of one.

I'm sure if someone could prove the existence of the soul there would be a much greater willingness to find an explaination for said existence.

Tim_Murphy

What I'm getting at is the inability of biological evolution and its underlying cosmological evolution to account for the existence of the spirit.

I don't know what "cosmological evolution" is but trying to explain the existance of 'the spirit' in scientific terms would surely be the best example possible of the fallacy of misplaced raionalism. Before proposing an explanation for something one should be sure that there is something there that needs explaining. I can understand that people find the idea appealing, and that’s fine, but asking anybody to explain something as intangible and undefined as ‘spirit’ in scientific or indeed any other terms is nonsense.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

As far as I can see, most sensible people recognise there is a spirit in man. The evidence for it is before your very eyes, just like for gravity. Because science can't identify its origins or how it works, does not mean we must be agnostic about its existence.

What people (sensible or otherwise) "recognize" is irrelevant Wolfsbane. Through out the thousands of different human religions people have recognize all manner of supernatural imaginings and nonsense.

What matters is what they can demonstrate. Otherwise they are just guessing with their imagination.

No one has demonstrated what the soul is, how it operates, or even if it exists in the the first place. Therefore trying to discuss how a proper scientific theory such as evolution effects such a concept is nonsense.

wolfsbane wrote: »

So the cause of gravity is unknown but is accepted as scientific

No the cause of gravity is unknown and it is accepted as unknown. That is being scientific. Science recognizes when we don't know something.

It is possible to model the effects of this unknown force using science. But that is modeling the effect not the cause. The cause is unknown.

And before you say you can do the same with the soul by modeling humans, the point you are missing is that what you call the "soul" is in fact unknown. It is unknown what it is, how it works or (again) even if it exists in the first place. So stop calling it "the soul". That term has no proper meaning since you have no idea about the details of the thing it is supposed to be describing.

wolfsbane wrote: »

whereas the cause of brain activity is unknown and must be excluded from science.

The cause of brain activity is not unknown. Brain activity is caused by a series of complicated chemical and physical reactions. This is well modeled biological activity.

You, with absolutely nothing to back this up, are saying that your religious concept that you call the soul causes brain activity. There is no reason to believe that other than the ramblings of your religion.

You could equally say an invisible duck that lives in the centre of the world cause brain activity, and you could demonstrate that as well as you could demonstrating that the soul does.

But even if there is some force that is critical to producing brain activity, that like the cause of gravity, is an unknown force. So stop calling it "the soul", because you in fact have no idea what it is, assuming that it does in fact exist which you have no reason to do.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Don't you see the prejudice?

I see you still don't understand the difference between science and someone just looking at something and going "I think this is ..."

wolfsbane wrote: »

My religion says it is a known cause - the spirit.

Your religion is guessing. They should stop that as it is rather pointless.

wolfsbane wrote: »

But scientifically, we can only say that it is an unknown cause, commonly called the spirit.

No, scientifically we can say that as far as we can tell we have modeled the cause of brain activity but there may be further unknown factors of this model that we do not know about. This is true of all scientific models.

As for your "commonly called the spirit" nonsense, that has nothing to do with science at all.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Your religion - scientism - says there can be no spirit, so brain activity must be the result of mere chemical processes.

No, science say that brain activity has been modeled, this model doesn't include a supernatural spirit, the model works fine without the supernatural spirit, so why would someone include one.

Like a lot of religious people you betray your motivation here Wolfsbane.

You want science to include a soul not because that matches reality, but because you have a strong desire that the soul actually exists. The soul may exist but this has yet to be demonstrated and the biological functions can be modeled without it.

Science does not include concepts that have not been demonstrated simple to make religious people feel better.

wolfsbane wrote: »

On the contrary, the only absolute knowing is that of spiritual revelation.

That is not absolute knowing. You could, for example, be insane. Your "spiritual revelation" would be far from absolute knowing then, wouldn't it. You have no way of demonstrating the difference, nor does anyone external to you.

wolfsbane wrote: »

My point is that Darwinian evolution cannot account for the spirit's mere existence, not that it has to explain how it works.

You have no method of reaching that conclusion since you don't know in the first place what the soul is and therefore what can or cannot account for its existence.

You are simply making stuff up.

wolfsbane wrote: »

No, not making it up. The test would be to replace the brain of one person with that of another and interogate the person on recovery.

Well considering you haven't done that test you seem to have come to a number of conclusions without first doing any experiments. Which is a bit silly. I wouldn't really have to explain to you that that isn't how science works. :rolleyes:

Secondly, even if you did that, replaced a human brain with that of another person, since you still don't have any idea what a soul is supposed to be, or how it supposed to operate, you have no way of testing the soul either before or after the operation.

You don't know what the soul is like before the operation, or even if it exists in the first place.

You can't tell what the soul is like after the operation, or even if it still exists.

So please explain Wolfsbane what exactly you think this experiment would tell you about the soul.

wolfsbane wrote: »

According to you, being involved with religion or any type of spiritual enterprise means one has abandoned science.

It does if one abandons science and starts letting religion fill in the gaps of what we don't know with nonsense, guessing and conjecture that cannot be demonstrated, tested, or assessed, as you seem to happy to do. That is certainly abandoning science.

wolfsbane wrote: »

My original comments were modified by my later qualification:

Your personal assessment, what you can or cannot see, is largely irrelevant.

You could simply be wrong.

AtomicHorror

Carrying something over from the Water On Mars thread.

Wolfsbane, why do you believe there is a barrier between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" and what is the nature of that barrier?

Zombrex

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Carrying something over from the Water On Mars thread.

Wolfsbane, why do you believe there is a barrier between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" and what is the nature of that barrier?

Can he first define what macro-evolution is, because originally on this thread the Creationists where defining it as evolution between species.

Now all of a sudden, that is seemingly out the window, since evolution between species needs to take place hundreds of thousands of times every few years for the Noah model to work (which makes Wolfsbanes comments that it is still E. Coli even more bizarre)

And it is evolution between "kinds", can Wolfsbane first define what a kind is and how would one know if a species evolved from one kind to another (ie how is this testable).

thebaldsoprano

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Carrying something over from the Water On Mars thread.

Wolfsbane, why do you believe there is a barrier between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" and what is the nature of that barrier?

Is this like micro gravity and macro gravity?

Galvasean

Just taught I'd say, scientism LOL.

robindch

thebaldsoprano wrote: »

Is this like micro gravity and macro gravity?

Nobody's ever seen macro-gravity -- ergo, it doesn't exist!

A strange position to take, you'd think, for a group who believe in a deity who's never been seen either. But there you go. Takes all types.

The Mad Hatter

wolfsbane wrote: »

The spirit/soul is not human exclusive, and I'm asking for an evolutionary explanation for its existence. I can't think of one.

I don't think there is one. But you must remember that evolution doesn't explain the fact of the existence of life - merely the diversity of life now. I still don't see why it couldn't do likewise for the existence of the soul, assuming such a think did exist.

Wickie at least faces that and says it is not a separate entity from our body, just a complicated chemical reaction.

I don't think that's quite what he said. I think he rejects the idea of a soul outright (though correct me if I'm wrong, Wicknight). Personally, I don't know whether or not the soul exists, and I don't think it's really worth thinking about. I merely made the point as I don't really see how it's a stumbling block to belief in evolution.

In fact, now you've said that animals have souls, so why couldn't they have evolved?

AtomicHorror

I hope J C is okay, I don't think I've ever seen him away from his home for so long...

Flamed Diving

AtomicHorror wrote: »

I hope J C is okay, I don't think I've ever seen him away from his home for so long...

His real username is probably too busy.

AtomicHorror

Flamed Diving wrote: »

His real username is probably too busy.

Interesting...

wolfsbane

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

I don't think there is one. But you must remember that evolution doesn't explain the fact of the existence of life - merely the diversity of life now. I still don't see why it couldn't do likewise for the existence of the soul, assuming such a think did exist.



I don't think that's quite what he said. I think he rejects the idea of a soul outright (though correct me if I'm wrong, Wicknight). Personally, I don't know whether or not the soul exists, and I don't think it's really worth thinking about. I merely made the point as I don't really see how it's a stumbling block to belief in evolution.

In fact, now you've said that animals have souls, so why couldn't they have evolved?

My point is not that biological evolution itself has account for the spirit, but that any supposed reality that includes evolution must account for the spirit. Materialistic evolution hasn't done that, other than suggesting it is only a matter of complex chemical reactions - which most people find patently absurd.

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Carrying something over from the Water On Mars thread.

Wolfsbane, why do you believe there is a barrier between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" and what is the nature of that barrier?

I believe this because:
1. God reveals it to be so.
2. We do not observe any such large scale 'evolution' - all we observe is changes within an organism, but it remaining substantially a fly, a bacteria, a frog, whatever. No frogs into princes; no flies into butterflies.:D

The nature of the barrier seems to be the inability of an organism to move outside its genetic programming, ie, it will vary only within the limits of its genetic parameters. Such variation will enable horses/zebras, but not horses/pigs.

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

I believe this because:
2. We do not observe any such large scale 'evolution' - all we observe is changes within an organism, but it remaining substantially a fly, a bacteria, a frog, whatever. No frogs into princes; no flies into butterflies.:D

The chances of a current species of common fly evolving into a current species of butterfly are negligible. If it occurred it would disprove evolution as we currently understand it. What you are asking of evolution in this case is not something it claims to predict.

It is possible that a current species of common fly could develop a longer body and coloured wings. Would that satisfy?

wolfsbane wrote: »

The nature of the barrier seems to be the inability of an organism to move outside its genetic programming, ie, it will vary only within the limits of its genetic parameters.

I don't know what this means. What are "genetic parameters"? Do you mean that whilst the genes themselves may vary (producing variation with a species) that no new extra genes may arise in an organism?

Mark Hamill

wolfsbane wrote: »

My point is not that biological evolution itself has account for the spirit, but that any supposed reality that includes evolution must account for the spirit.

Seeing as there is no evidence for the existence of the spirit, why then should reality account for it?

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

My point is not that biological evolution itself has account for the spirit, but that any supposed reality that includes evolution must account for the spirit.

Why?

Given that the spirit is supposed to be a supernatural thing that you insist exists based on your deity based religion, is the most logical explanation not "God did it" rather than evolution.

Why are you looking to explain how evolution, a natural process, created your supernatural thing, the spirit. Why do you even assume they are connected.

Equally if your god doesn't exist and therefore didn't do anything, then their is little reason to suppose that the spirit is real either, so looking for evolution to explain it is nonsensical.

Either way there is no way of judging the spirit in terms of evolution, nor do you even know if this is required at all.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

2. We do not observe any such large scale 'evolution' - all we observe is changes within an organism, but it remaining substantially a fly, a bacteria, a frog, whatever. No frogs into princes; no flies into butterflies.:D

The nature of the barrier seems to be the inability of an organism to move outside its genetic programming, ie, it will vary only within the limits of its genetic parameters. Such variation will enable horses/zebras, but not horses/pigs.

But then that cannot account for the diversity of life on Earth from the 8,000 or so species Creationists claim were on the Ark, so how do you reconcile this idea that a fly cannot evolve to be anything other than a fly, a pig cannot evolve to be anything other than a pig etc etc?

Also given that you put so much weight in observation, do you not find it strange that no one has ever observed the kind of macro-evolution required for the Ark story to be true. In fact given that this is a claim leveled at darwinian evolution, that the changes that evolution say take hundreds of thousands of generations have never been observed so how can we say for certain they even happen. Yet the Ark myth requires that these changes happen in tens of generations, not hundreds of thousands, so this should be easy to observe. But it isn't. It has never been observed, ever.

The whole ironic thing about all this is that if macro-evolution happened at the pace and speed that Creationists claim it must have happened for the Ark story to be true, biologists would be jumping for joy because they could observe macro-evolution within the time period of human study (years or decades) rather than having to go over the fossils of the past.

Yet this isn't what we find. We find that evolution happens but very very slowly. There is no observations of the massive and rapid macro-evolution that Creationists claim happens on Earth and can move 8,000 species of land animal into hundreds of thousands within a thousand years.

JimiTime

Wicknight wrote: »

But then that cannot account for the diversity of life on Earth from the 8,000 or so species Creationists claim were on the Ark, so how do you reconcile this idea that a fly cannot evolve to be anything other than a fly, a pig cannot evolve to be anything other than a pig etc etc?

Also given that you put so much weight in observation, do you not find it strange that no one has ever observed the kind of macro-evolution required for the Ark story to be true. In fact given that this is a claim leveled at darwinian evolution, that the changes that evolution say take hundreds of thousands of generations have never been observed so how can we say for certain they even happen. Yet the Ark myth requires that these changes happen in tens of generations, not hundreds of thousands, so this should be easy to observe. But it isn't. It has never been observed, ever.

The whole ironic thing about all this is that if macro-evolution happened at the pace and speed that Creationists claim it must have happened for the Ark story to be true, biologists would be jumping for joy because they could observe macro-evolution within the time period of human study (years or decades) rather than having to go over the fossils of the past.

Yet this isn't what we find. We find that evolution happens but very very slowly. There is no observations of the massive and rapid macro-evolution that Creationists claim happens on Earth and can move 8,000 species of land animal into hundreds of thousands within a thousand years.

Genuine question here, but is it a fact that all the species of animal about today could not have fit on the ark? I'm not talking about any issues with species eating other species problems etc, just curious if all the species would have fit?

pH

JimiTime wrote: »

Genuine question here, but is it a fact that all the species of animal about today could not have fit on the ark? I'm not talking about any issues with species eating other species problems etc, just curious if all the species would have fit?

In a naturalistic sense no they couldn't have, however seeing as this is God we're dealing with here then anything is possible, heck he could even have miniaturised them all and made them all not eat anything for a year, and give them perfect health so that not one animal died on that boat.

Even creationists admit that 2 individuals of each species (we see today) couldn't have fitted in the ark, and then are reduced to inventing a 'kind' followed by some very rapid evolution for 1,500 years to attempt to explain what we see today.

The problem with the 'no' answer is that creationists just respond with "Well couldn't God just have done ...." and seeing as God can do anything ...

Zombrex

JimiTime wrote: »

Genuine question here, but is it a fact that all the species of animal about today could not have fit on the ark? I'm not talking about any issues with species eating other species problems etc, just curious if all the species would have fit?

There are currently 1.8 million named species (ie species humans have identified and classified by humans), but estimates of how many there actually are range from 5 to 30 million and possibly far more than even that.

The majority of named species are insects. Creationists, bizarrely, insist that insects didn't need to be on the Ark because they could survive for a year on floating wood. Despite this being ridiculous (what would they eat? how much wood was floating on the Earth after a world wide flood capable of forming the Alps and the Grand Canon?) it also contradicts the Bible itself. But they themselves limit the Ark to just holding land mammals and reptiles.

But even that lands them in trouble because there are approx 4,200 species of mammal, 7,000 species of reptile, 9700 species of birds and 44000 species of arachnids (spiders) etc

Getting 88,000 thousand spiders to survive on a wooden ark surrounded by 8,400 mammals and 19,000 birds without being eaten would be impossible, even if one assumed that a group of stone age humans could build a boat large enough to hold them (the dimensions in the Bible would not be large enough and the Biblical boat itself would not survive the journey)

And all these numbers are simply species around today. This is before you get into dealing with all the species in the fossil record including the dinosaurs some of which would have been taller than the Ark itself.

So how do Creationists get around this? Well quite simply really, they just make stuff up.

Creationists suppose that the actual number of species in the time of Noah was far less that there are today. How do they justify this given that there is no evidence of this in the fossil record? Well easy, its the only way one can make the Bible story work if taken literally, so it must be true.

The suppose that there were only 8,000 or so species on the Ark, and that all these species were small. They take the Biblical passage of Gen 6:20

Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

and suppose that "kind" there is an actual biological classification, not simply common English. So they put forward the idea that in Biology there is the (as yet undefined) classification of a "kind", and that this classification may have included multiple species. So Noah didn't have to get every species on his boat, he just had to get one of each "kind" on the boat, and all other species in that "kind" could have perished in the flood.

When the flood was over the species that came off the boat grew and multiplied and as they multiplied and spread over the Earth they when through massive macro-evolution change, growing from the 8000 or so species to the hundreds of thousand you find today (or millions if you include insects and plants) within a few hundred years. That is on average a new species every 20 or 30 years. But always within their "kind". This is how Creationists say that this massive macro-evolutionary change cannot be used to explain "muck to man" as they put it, species can change in huge amount of details, even losing or gaining chromosomes and jumping the species barrier within a very short period of time, but they can never become a different "kind"

If through all this you are wondering what the heck a "kind" actually is and how it is classified, welcome to the club. Creationists have never defined what a "kind" actually is, they simply point back to the Bible passages to say that it is how God classifies animals.

AtomicHorror

I did a rough calculation about 1000 pages ago and estimated that the Ark would need to be sized on the order of the largest ships currently buildable by 21st century technology. Somewhere between an aircraft carrier and an oil tanker. Except made using neolithic tools and mostly of wood.

Zombrex

AtomicHorror wrote: »

I did a rough calculation about 1000 pages ago and estimated that the Ark would need to be sized on the order of the largest ships currently buildable by 21st century technology. Somewhere between an aircraft carrier and an oil tanker. Except made using neolithic tools and mostly of wood.

Is that before or after one factors in the food required to feed all the animals?

robindch

AtomicHorror wrote: »

I did a rough calculation about 1000 pages ago and estimated that the Ark would need to be sized on the order of the largest ships currently buildable by 21st century technology. Somewhere between an aircraft carrier and an oil tanker. Except made using neolithic tools and mostly of wood.

Entertainingly, that weird Korean thing that JC (or was it wolfie?) pointed to seems -- as far as I can make out -- to have assumed that the ark was built with wood, but using construction techniques applicable to plate steel.

Unfortunately, their study was too short to go into the fine detail of how Noah managed to weld sheets of wood together.

Zombrex

robindch wrote: »

Unfortunately, their study was too short to go into the fine detail of how Noah managed to weld sheets of wood together.

lol :pac: