A question about the flood myth, baraminology, and Pangaea

[RobbyPants]

Anyone who knows anything about the flood myth in Genesis knows that the story is impossible for a huge number of reasons. One of them being that the story gives us the dimensions of the ark. So, given how many animals Noah was told to gather, we can figure out how much volume on average each creature would have. Not only is there not enough space for them to survive until the water abated, they wouldn't have even fit.

This is where baraminology enters in. Baraminology is basically what you get when you take a sixth-grade understanding of evolution and combine it with a literal reading of Genesis and a very rules-lawyery interpretation of its use of the word "kind". Noah had to get two (or seven) of every kind of animal. So, rather than worrying about getting two lions, tigers, lynxes, pumas, panthers, cheetahs, ocelots, and house cats (and a shit-ton of other cats I'm not thinking about off the top of my head), he'd just get to cats and call it a day. Then, after they all get off the ark, the idea is that these cats would then evolve into every other type of "cat kind" we see in the world today, 5,000 years later. Also, given how old the stories in the Bible are, this evolution would have had to occur in less than a thousand years. Seriously.

So, we start with a bastardized version of evolution that flirts with the contentious boundaries of microevolution and macroevolution (there is no difference, except in creationist's heads) that involves hyper-fast speciation, and run into a problem of "how did everything get from Mount Ararat to where it is today?". Enter in a very weird notion of how fast continental drift happened. Basically, we take a sixth-grade understanding of geology and the notion that we used to have one "super continent" (Pangaea) that eventually spread into the seven continents we have today, and assume it happened really fast. I mean, we obviously have a problem if the ark opens up on Mount Ararat, and the world is void of all animal life other than right there. Sure, they could migrate across Asia to Europe and Africa, but how are they getting to the other four continents? I've been told numerous times that the flood caused the shift in the plate tectonics to cause the continental drift, and that everyone just went for a wild ride.

So, here's my question I promised in my thread title: When did this shift happen? Did it start before or after the waters abated?

If it started before, how did anyone get to those other four continents?

If it started after, how was it "caused" by the flood?

Now, I supposed you could weasel your way into the first answer by saying that it started first, but the plates were still close enough that the water between was really shallow. You could also weasel that it started after, but was caused by the waters receding (where did they go?). Either way, the continents couldn't have gone very far by the time the ark emptied, and they would have had to clear over 99% of the total distance after the fact. Can you imagine the earthquakes the entire planet would have been experiencing during this wild ride? This whole thing is incredibly stupid. The stated belief of baraminologists is that:

• The flood happened, as stated in Genesis.
  
• The animals emptied off and started fucking like rabbits (also, the carnivores weren't eating all the other animals, somehow).
  
• The animals spread all over Pangaea during this relatively brief period.
  
• The current seven continents flew apart at catastrophic speeds, and no one noticed or recorded these centuries long earthquakes!
  
• The animals evolved at a rate no one has ever seen!
  
• This evolution suddenly fucking stopped, and has since only been observed in controlled populations of gnats and bacteria, but it otherwise just doesn't happen.
  

Does this really help the creationist sleep better at night?

[LadyForCamus]

I dunno about the creationists, but sure gives ME a headache...

[Minimalist]

Creatards probably knock down a couple of bottles of moonshine every night and sleep like babies.

[downbeatplumb]

They just try to get the facts to fit their beliefs when they should be having beliefs that fit the facts.

[Minimalist]

This remains the best observation on the willingness of theists to accept absolute bullshit.

Bible-believers are full of clever (and some not so clever) rationalizations. The crucial question, however, is not whether "answers" can be generated in response to Bible difficulties but whether credible answers can be produced. What is the best explanation? Bible-believers seem to think that any loophole, however improbable, that gets the Bible off the hook has solved the problem. Thus, it is not surprising that different, conflicting answers are often presented side by side. It never seems to occur to these people that such logic will also support the story of Goldilocks and the three bears! Or the Koran. Or, anything else. Once we abandon the probable in favor of the improbable--or even the less probable--we have abandoned objectivity. Without objectivity, there is not much hope of finding the truth; we only succeed in confirming our own prejudiced views--even as a group of flat-Earth folks in California did for years in their newsletters.

They don't give a flying fuck about facts.  All they want is for someone - anyone - to tell them that their fairy tales are true.

[Expired]

I just wonder how many animals survived at an altitude of 29000 feet, the flood waters covered the highest mountain apparently.
I bet Noah was freezing the poor old fellow. All that work creating all that lovely scenery wasted on a temper tantrum.

[Drich]

I just wonder how many animals survived at an altitude of 29000 feet, the flood waters covered the highest mountain apparently.
I bet Noah was freezing the poor old fellow. All that work creating all that lovely scenery wasted on a temper tantrum.

 

seriously?!?!?

Maybe you can ask one of you more intelligent peers to explain this to you, if you don't want to take my word for it.. but if this did happen then the water would push the atmosphere up with it. So what you count now 30K feet, is 30,000 feet from is sea level. Now add enough water to encompass the earth to what we now call 30,000 ft, and... it becomes the new SEA LEVEL! so the new 30K feet would be what we call 60K feet. So what would the conditions at the new sea level/30k feet? the same as they are now at our current sea level.

We do not measure altitude from the lowest part of the sea floor. Otherwise we at sea level would be 7 miles up.

I kills me when a poo poo-er doesn't understand the fundamentals he is trying to use to discredit God. This person/you heard this somewhere and just lemming-ed it here with out any thought or vetting. You just assumed it was true because that is what someone else in the group said... Good thing you weren't born when the earth was flat huh???

[FebruaryOfReason]

I just wonder how many animals survived at an altitude of 29000 feet, the flood waters covered the highest mountain apparently.
I bet Noah was freezing the poor old fellow. All that work creating all that lovely scenery wasted on a temper tantrum.

...  
Maybe you can ask one of you more intelligent peers to explain this to you, if you don't want to take my word for it.. but if this did happen then the water would push the atmosphere up with it. So what you count now 30K feet, is 30,000 feet from is sea level. Now add enough water to encompass the earth to what we now call 30,000 ft, and... it becomes the new SEA LEVEL! so the new 30K feet would be what we call 60K feet. So what would the conditions at the new sea level/30k feet? the same as they are now at our current sea level.
...

Where did all that water come from?
And where has it gone?

[Drich]

Anyone who knows anything about the flood myth in Genesis knows that the story is impossible for a huge number of reasons. One of them being that the story gives us the dimensions of the ark. So, given how many animals Noah was told to gather, we can figure out how much volume on average each creature would have. Not only is there not enough space for them to survive until the water abated, they wouldn't have even fit.

This is where baraminology enters in. Baraminology is basically what you get when you take a sixth-grade understanding of evolution and combine it with a literal reading of Genesis and a very rules-lawyery interpretation of its use of the word "kind". Noah had to get two (or seven) of every kind of animal. So, rather than worrying about getting two lions, tigers, lynxes, pumas, panthers, cheetahs, ocelots, and house cats (and a shit-ton of other cats I'm not thinking about off the top of my head), he'd just get to cats and call it a day. Then, after they all get off the ark, the idea is that these cats would then evolve into every other type of "cat kind" we see in the world today, 5,000 years later. Also, given how old the stories in the Bible are, this evolution would have had to occur in less than a thousand years. Seriously.

So, we start with a bastardized version of evolution that flirts with the contentious boundaries of microevolution and macroevolution (there is no difference, except in creationist's heads) that involves hyper-fast speciation, and run into a problem of "how did everything get from Mount Ararat to where it is today?". Enter in a very weird notion of how fast continental drift happened. Basically, we take a sixth-grade understanding of geology and the notion that we used to have one "super continent" (Pangaea) that eventually spread into the seven continents we have today, and assume it happened really fast. I mean, we obviously have a problem if the ark opens up on Mount Ararat, and the world is void of all animal life other than right there. Sure, they could migrate across Asia to Europe and Africa, but how are they getting to the other four continents? I've been told numerous times that the flood caused the shift in the plate tectonics to cause the continental drift, and that everyone just went for a wild ride.

So, here's my question I promised in my thread title: When did this shift happen? Did it start before or after the waters abated?

If it started before, how did anyone get to those other four continents?

If it started after, how was it "caused" by the flood?

Now, I supposed you could weasel your way into the first answer by saying that it started first, but the plates were still close enough that the water between was really shallow. You could also weasel that it started after, but was caused by the waters receding (where did they go?). Either way, the continents couldn't have gone very far by the time the ark emptied, and they would have had to clear over 99% of the total distance after the fact. Can you imagine the earthquakes the entire planet would have been experiencing during this wild ride? This whole thing is incredibly stupid. The stated belief of baraminologists is that:

• The flood happened, as stated in Genesis.
  
• The animals emptied off and started fucking like rabbits (also, the carnivores weren't eating all the other animals, somehow).
  
• The animals spread all over Pangaea during this relatively brief period.
  
• The current seven continents flew apart at catastrophic speeds, and no one noticed or recorded these centuries long earthquakes!
  
• The animals evolved at a rate no one has ever seen!
  
• This evolution suddenly fucking stopped, and has since only been observed in controlled populations of gnats and bacteria, but it otherwise just doesn't happen.
  

Does this really help the creationist sleep better at night?

wow.. you sure added alot to the flood story.. Tectonic shift, barminology, and pangea...

I don't recall reading any of this in the Genesis accounts...

I'm not saying people don't believe these things or christian don't use them as arguements... But if I were too start a thread on the flood, I would probably have asked rather than assumed anything.

Eitherway. I believe their is a reason their is very little concerning the actual logistics of the ark and Noah single handedly saving the planet. In that the story given in the book of Genesis is not about how a singular man and his family saved the planet from an angry God with a big boat. Rather how God used the faith of a singular man and his family as a reason for God himself to save creation, by only killing the wicked.

The redemption in this story is found in the 120 years of faith and hard labor Noah put into God's word to build something that had never been attempted or seen before. But, where the mistake most people make are in the idea that this is about the ark saving everyone in it from the flood waters. The Ark is not the key here God is the key. The ark was the trivial sacrifice needed as it was a demonstration of the faith noah/Man had in God. It is for this faith God saved man and creation. Not by the Ark but by His own will. The ark was just a fraction of what God actually did.

[RobbyPants]

Where did all that water come from?
And where has it gone?

Hydroplate theory? Catastrophic plate tectonics? Lunar bukkake hypothesis (yes, really)?

And you probably thought Baraminology was the weirdest of the flood myth apologetics! :p