Friday, 19 August 2011
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Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study
By John Woodmorappe
see relatedThe Creationist Concept of "Kind" and "Superevolution"
Since I've had no less than eight Xangans in the last 24 hours express to me that they have no idea what evolution is, or that creationism is not a science, I thought I'd bring out a classic of mine:
Kind. It's a word often used by creationists. But what does it mean?
The term is central to understanding the young earth creationist's take on the deluge. Without knowing what a "kind" is "Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth." - Genesis 7:2-3
Without knowing what a kind means, we cannot know what Noah loaded onto the ark. Creationists love to claim that evolution is wrong since one kind has never been observed to evolve into another kind. Well, if we don't know what kinds are, how can we know if this ever happened?
So what explanations have I gotten from creationists as to what a kind is?
1) It's so simple even a child could understand it, so I don't need to explain it. (A favorite of the currently incarcerated "Dr. Dino" Kent Hovind)
2) Dogs are a kind, horses are a kind. (Also a favorite of the good "doctor.")
3) Kinds are what were on the ark. (Circular reasoning, anyone?)
4) Kinds are those that can reproduce more of their own kind. (Finally, an actual explanation. There are problems with this, which I'll get to later.)
5) (Yes, often I am met with silence.)Only answer (4) is a definition, but it looks an awful lot like the definition for a species.
Species: The members of a group of populations that interbreed under natural conditions and are capable of producing fertile offspring.
Kind cannot mean species for two reasons:
1) It has been scientifically proven that an ark of the size described in the bible could, in no way, hold two of every species that walks (or walked, in the case of dinosaurs and mammoths) on the land. It is simply impossible. When this is pointed out to proponents of definition (4), they suggest that kind might mean genus, family, or even order. To put this in perspective, the order Carnivora includes dogs, bears, cats, weasels, and seals. The order Primates includes lemurs, monkeys, apes, and yes, humans.
Conservative estimates suggest that the ark could hold about 10,000 pairs of animals, while there are currently estimates between 3,000,000 and 30,000,000 species of animals (for math simplicity, we'll assume 1,600,000). This means that a speciation event must have occurred every 1.6 days for the past 4400 years since the flood. This is a rate of evolution orders of magnitude beyond what all available data agrees is possible.That's right, some creationists don't believe in the theory of evolution, claiming that such changes cannot occur over millions of years, but have no problem believing in the completely unsupported idea of SUPER EVOLUTION. And all this happened somehow without any increase in information or beneficial mutations.
2) Another reason kind cannot mean "species" is because there have been over a dozen documented cases of speciation in the past century, in the field and in the lab. And since according to creationists, one kind has never been observed to evolve into another kind, kind cannot mean species.
This is why kind is not a scientific term. Its meaning is subjective.
So what do creationists mean by the word kind? If they mean species we know it is impossible to literally interpret the story of Noah's Ark. Also, there are many examples of a population of one species splitting off and evolving into a completely separate species.
If they mean some categorization higher than species (i.e. genus, family, or order) the animals may fit on the ark, but one must now accept the completely unscientific, unsupported, and undocumented idea of SUPER EVOLUTION.
So next time a creationist uses the word kind when discussing this with you, bring this up. Most likely, they already know most of it, they're just hoping you don't. Ask them to define the term kind and we'll discuss it.
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Comments (46)
idk anything about creationism but lul @ kitteh pic
I suspect the story of Noah and the ark is an exagerated tale, evolved from legends handed down from generation to generation, based on an actual event. The event must have been spectacular and mind boggling. The facts have most likely been distorted, but the flavor probably remains the same. A very bright guy probably loaded a pile of livestock and his family on a very large barge and saved them from certain death during a catstrophic flood. Most likely he had a strong faith based belief in an almighty deity and gave credit to the deity for guiding him.
A very interesting read. I've never really thought about this stuff before, which may come as a shock to you. Blogs like this make me more confident in my atheism and why I side with the Evolutionists. I'm not sure if I told you but I used to sit in my Psychology lessons (I needed the grades for University) and think "bullshit, bullshit, bullshit" until an Evolutionary theory was brought up. If I was to ever go into Psychology, or anything in that area, it'd be Evolutionary based. For sure.
I hate the word 'kind'. It's like calling someone or something 'nice'.
Isn't the appearance of this word dependent on what version of the Bible you read?
bible thumpers be gone. the only person ever to have gotten the story of Noah and his ark right was Bill Cosby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0KHt8xrQkk
I love the kittens
In 1983 I wrote a reseach paper on creationism and evolution and whether either theory was worthy of inclusion in the education ciriculum of the public school system. I approached the subject with as open a mind as I could muster for a Catholic boy who had attended Catholic school for 12 years. My research lead me to concede that fundamental principles of the evolutionary process were sound and well grounded in matter and reality. The creationists theory lacked the volume and integrity of evidence or support that the evolutionist theory contained. This being said I thought it noteworthy to recommend that the creationist theory be presented as a cultural teaching rather than a scientific one, for in the creationists theory we answer the fundamental question of why, where as the evolutionist theory only answers how. Perhaps we ought not to look at the two theories as oppositional, but rather complimentary. Both are curiously entertaining and insightful, Each has a practical application in today's society. Creationism is mythical and prevocatively simple, while evolution is deeply complex and contains many intricasies which require a greater dedication of intellectual description to be accurately understood. In evolution we have yet to uncover all the details, and for that matter many of the big puzzle pieces are still missing. Creationism wraps everything up in a nice neat little package, which for many is all that is necessary to get from sunrise to sunset on a daily basis.
Also, one should keep in mind that taxonomic nomenclature was in its infancy when man first began jotting down his myths and legends. They had the right idea, They just hadn't developed the language or understanding to express it properly. Even today we are constantly reclassifying creatures based on newly uncovered physical and behavioral characteristics
@Aloysius_son - That's all well and good, but my argument is with modern-day creationism. I don't fault ancient Israelites for not knowing modern science, I blame modern people for believing that ancient Israelites knew modern science.
@GodlessLiberal - yep
It was kind of kind of you to try and explain what kind means.
I always thought, if God really told Noah to save pairs of every single different living organism, then that fucker really loved bugs & microbes.
@nerdyveggiegirl - "The Creator, if He exists, has an inordinate fondness for beetles." - J.B.S. Haldane
@GodlessLiberal - that guy was awesome. he's the one who said the line about the universe being queerer than we suppose it is, and also queerer than we can suppose it is. In high school, I quoted him in essays, for fun =]
I refuse the extraordinarily strong temptation to make a "kind" pun...!
In my high school biology class at a private religious school they taught us that microevolution was possible and that the "kind" thing was probably what happened with the ark because all of the species couldn't fit. Even then, at the ripe old age of 14 or 15, I thought that was a little unusually, unscientifically vague. A kind? Derp? I was too shy to ask anything about it, of course, but I wondered. When you said this: "This means that a speciation event must have occurred every 1.6 days for the past 4400 years since the flood. This is a rate of evolution orders of magnitude beyond what all available data agrees is possible." it hit the nail on the head. THAT is definitely what seems rather wrong with that theory. THAT. YES. LOL. Oh dear.
@TheSutraDude - That was funny.
@Grtt - What I don't get is that the bible is in English and yet as far as we can tell, the ancient tribes of the fertile crescent didn't play cricket or drink tea.
@Aloysius_son - Youse one of a kind youse. A local disaster but when the local region is practically all that exists as far as you know, then it was a world flood. His world. A local chap had a boat, so he had to be near water, saved a few of his livestock and some of the scarce but useful wild animals. Probably in the Nether Lands or what we now call the Black Sea. This would have been before that Greek Irishman Phil O'Sophy started to make an art out of sodomy and the Turks were still in some stan eating their grandfathers. The break in the Dardenelles beaver dam must have been impressive, making Niagara look like a schoolboy taking a wee. This was of course before "beaver" came to be used to describe a female entertainments facility.
Anyway, Monsieur Noah was a good Anglican, praying for the Queen and the royal family 'n all. So, of course he attributes his survival and that of his goats to his version of God and over time the tale was embellished as the tale spread from culture to culture.
Anyway, where'd he get all the nails? Iron was a valuable commodity and that amount of iron would have been enough to make weapons for all the king's horses and all the king's men. So Humpty Dumpty, being a bit of an egg-head, would have suggested the idea to Old King Cole to pay Noah a visit with a nail tax demand.
It probably did all happen to a local red neck with a boat, and he thought the world ended at the other side of the Appalachians so when the dam backed up,he figured every one else was history, or indeed legend. Yet, unbeknownst to this yokel, the English tribes were slowly developing the Tiffin principle and yearning to cross the Channel to Her Majesty's islands so they could start planning to invade Nantucket and tax everyone.
Obvious really.
which link shoul i click to know what a super evolution is?
I always took kind to mean species. So I've never even argued the word "kind."
@firetyger - How do you explain that all the species couldn't have possibly fit onto the ark?
It was enjoyable to read this again.
Your number from your link includes fish, sponges, and shell fish which probably would not have been taken on the ark. The biggest part of the number with huge error is insects . . . between 1 and 30 million is a huge difference in order of magnitude. Insects don't take that much space. For reference, a 23,000 sq ft insect museum holds over 900,000 species (thats species, not number of insects) with plenty of room for visitors, a theater, rooms with no live displays, and a restaurant. Assuming an 18-inch cubit 450 ft long x 75 ft wide, that is a 33,750 sq ft per deck and at 45 ft tall and a comfortable 10 ft+ ceiling you easily have four decks. That is 135,000 sq ft. with which you could fit over 5 million species of insect with the same comfortable density of an insect museum. Based on your link, apart from the insects, Noah would have only needed about 50,000 species + plus the insects which takes up the 99.8% of your figure. Granted, 50,000 is still a large number and in my opinion would still require supernatural involvement, but it is not as magnanimous as 30,000,000.
I rather enjoyed this post. Perhaps this is why I follow paganism. I always found some of the christian stories I learned in catholic school growing up to be quite fantastical...