*long debunking of his previous points, specifically about inbreeding if only two animals of every species survived the great flood as well as freshwater lif being unable to survive in saltwater*
As for saltwater and freshwater, God could've just split the waters and made them not mix, like when Moses split the red sea.
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"choose the best and most diverse examples of each species? That could've happened, and that would solve your problem."
For precisely one generation, then all the offspring of that first pair would have an average 1/4 of their alleles in common. It doesn't matter how diverse the parents are, the next generation have no option but to mate with their brother or sister.
"God could've just split the waters and made them not mix"
This is the "continual miracle" excuse, and it fails under its own 'logic'. If God is required to continually prevent the mixing of fresh and salt water to preserve all the fish, why not just magically make all the other animals able survive in water, or simply transport his chosen few through time to the post flood world?
Any logical analysis of the problems in the flood story forces its defender to up the ante of God's miracle working until God is having to continually work miracle at an epic level to preserve the story of a few people surviving in a boat. It soon becomes apparent that the amount of magical explanation involved in making the story work dwarfs that necessary to achieve the actual ends. God would have to have deliberately chosen almost the most inefficent, complicated and maniacally clumsy way of achieving his goal.
The "continual miracle" defence is basically arguing that the flood story is perfectly rational if God is insane.
Yes, we know that the Ark story could seem to make sense if you add a hundred more miracles that aren't documented in the Bible, including miracles that erase all evidence that the flood occurred.
I still don't get how fundies and other religious folk seem to be totally fine with incest and inbreeding and support these views. Unless god whipped up a whole batch of new humans and other animals, that's a whole barrel full of inbred.
And if your go to answer is "god magic," you're just flat out wrong. The stories in the bible are illogical fucking ridiculous myths. Anyone who takes them seriously is an idiot. The end.
As for inbreeding, where's your proof that he didn't choose the best and most diverse examples of each species? That could've happened, and that would solve your problem.
Most diverse? You only get two alleles for each gene maximum, four at maximum between the two individuals. Ignoring the fact that two creatures with two completely different sets of alleles for all genes are two different species and thus cannot produce viable offspring, that still hardly solves anything and doesn't account AT ALL for the diversity of bred species such as cats and dogs. You can't get specimen as different as seen below with only 4 alleles per gene maximum.
image image image image image
That's already 5 different alleles for color alone.
As for saltwater and freshwater, God could've just split the waters and made them not mix, like when Moses split the red sea.
Sure, it's magic, why not? But as I stated in the previous quote, if your God is going to use magic during the flood then he really sucks at it because there are so many better solutions including simply zapping all of the evil people in the world with an evil-seeking lightning bolt. Instead he chose to drown everything in the world, including guys like these:image
Well, hell, Moses. Sure, if Moses could do his magic shit maybe God could pull of some big tricks, too. He was a lot like Moses, ya know.
"As for inbreeding, where's your proof that he didn't choose the best and most diverse examples of each species?"
Noah had an advanced DNA lab at his disposal? Who knew?
"That could've happened, and that would solve your problem."
No, it wouldn't.
"As for saltwater and freshwater, God could've just split the waters and made them not mix, like when Moses split the red sea."
Yet again I'll point out that once you accept the existence of an omnipotent entity, you have to accept that anything is possible. However, you're still going to need some evidence no matter what you propose, so all of these hypothetical "he could have" postulations are rather pointless in the end anyway.
You do realize none of this is actually in the Bible don't you? Isn't there something in Revelation about not adding to the Scriptures?
yeah...
I don't think you quite have a grasp on how genes and inheritance work either.
"As for inbreeding, where's your proof that he didn't choose the best and most diverse examples of each species?"
Manbearpig!
Alzo, dots diverse eggsample of de chifting proof-burden I haf ever zeen!
(Wow. That really wasn't worth it. Sorry.)
As others have pointed out, the problem with your argument is that the more you add "God could have done this and this miracle," the more ridiculous a scenario you create. Even assuming an omnipotent being who would have been able to perform all the miracles required with no difficulty, you still have the problem of, "why?"
If all of this herculean effort is necessary to carry 8 humans and 2 of every "kind" through a 40 day flood, why do it? There are so many better solutions available - up to and including just redoing creation. It only took him (if I remember correctly) three days to create all of the flora and fauna the first time. What's three more days?
If God were able to do all this cool stuff with the water, one wonders why he bothered with the ark in the first place instead of just leaving the animals in their own habitats with walls of water surrounding them. It sure saves him the trouble of forcing them to travel halfway around the world to Noah and then halfway around the world again back to their homes. God may be omniscient and omnipotent but he seems to have a really crap imagination.
if you only have 1 male and one female of a species there is still the problem of genetics. Breeding brother/sister, father/daughter or mother/son gets you problems which in livestock you cull.
where's your proof that he didn't choose the best and most diverse examples of each species?
(a) That still wouldn't solve the inbreeding problem.
(b) There's nothing in the Bible that says God chose the animals for Noah.
(c) God didn't do that with humans - the only genetic diversity was three people - Noah's daughter in laws.
God could've just split the waters and made them not mix
Rain water is always fresh.
"As for inbreeding, where's your proof that he didn't choose the best and most diverse examples of each species?"
Where's your proof that God didn't fuck your mother up the arse and made her pregnant with the godly cum-and-shit mixture before she gave birth to it and called it LogiChristianity?
If you can't prove he didn't, then you must believe he did...
As long as we're going to argue "God is magical he can do anything", why bother with a flood at all? Why not just do some kind of reverse rapture thing, where all the evil people just vaporize? It certainly would be a lot less complex of a solution, requiring far less mental gymnastics down the road...
So what exactly did the predators eat, both on the Ark and afterward? Meat doesn't keep very long, and there weren't any freezers on the Ark. Plus if there are only two of each prey species, every time the lions, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and wild dogs had a successful hunt, it caused the extinction of an entire species. Considering these animals share many prey species, they all would have starved to death before the pery species could reproduce.
This new science is amazing, Sire! Tell me again how sheep's bladders may be used to prevent earthquakes.
Seriously though, nice theory pal. Do you have any evidence that doesn't have your feces on it?
The saddest thing is that my mom basically is like LogiChristianity here. Whenever I try to tell her about the logic fails in the Bible, she replies with "Well, God just removed the evidence". Of course, from that point, where can you go without your opponent returning to the removed evidence gambit. So I tend to not talk about these things with her anymore.
That's standard apologetics. Any possible explanation regardless of how ridiculous it is.
Then, when all else fails, God did MAGIC! It's sad that so-called adults actually buy into this crap.
Just adding my POVERTY.. but it seems that God was written reflecting the cultural ideologies of the time; If you created something on a tapestry for example,and made a mistake, you had no choice but to rubbish it and start again. Whereas today, if you make an error on a document or have a corrupt file on your computer you can just delete the error or file without restarting the whole computer... so.. if we're better at problem solving today than God is/was.. what does that say about God? Omnipotent diety or cultural reflection?
Love how they always want it both ways. When the science gets questionable they just insert 'Oh, yeah, well, god took care of that part' and then move on without breaking stride.
"the best and most diverse examples of each species"
Huh? What kind of drugs are you on?
Alright. I'll bite. Please identify which penguin is a better and more diverse example of its species.
Penguin A image
Penguin B image
I was reading through Da Vinci's notebooks and he has a discussion about why he doesn't think the flood could have been universal, because of the problem of the dispersal of the waters.
As for saltwater and freshwater, God could've just split the waters and made them not mix, like when Moses split the red sea.
As Christopher Hitchens pointed out, if you have to randomly insert miracles into your scientific explanation, it's not that scientific.
And as Darkmatter2525 pointed out, this only raises another question: If God could just magic away all the problems with this convoluted flood plan, WHY DIDN'T HE JUST USE MAGIC IN THE FIRST PLACE? Why not just zap all the sinful people at once with lightning bolts, or just stop all their hearts at once, or just magic them out of existence with a wave of his hand? That would've achieved the same goal in a fraction of the time.
If you really want to explain the Biblical Flood in a way that doesn't require further explanations, there's one simple explanation that does just that...
IT'S JUST A FOLK TALE THAT NEVER REALLY HAPPENED.
Most diverse individuals.
Aside from the fact that too large a diversion has made lions and tigers have extreme difficulties in mating (although some tigrons and ligers do survive and breed), you just managed to admit that evolution happens.
That said, the resulting spawn would still have to interbreed, a fact you just can't face without putting serious comtemplation onto who Adam and Eve's kids would have gotten down with.
Well, I'm 99% convinced. As long as you can tell me how a pair of 'diverse' kangaroos got to the middle east before the flood, I'll sink to my knees and praise baby Jesus. No? Polar bears? Pandas? Bison? No...?
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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