ReligionCreationism
ReligionCreationism
October, 2002
Introduction
Creationists are probably more defensive about the Flood than any other part of their mythology. One indication of that is the fact that the seminal work of modern creationism (oxymoron) was called The Genesis Flood. The Flood story apparently required lots of explanation and justification if anyone were to take creationism seriously. An instantaneous supernatural creation by an omnipotent God is somehow easier to swallow than the cobbled-up mish-mash of legends that became the biblical Flood story. Consider a few minor difficulties and childish questions:
Were pairs of every species living on Earth taken aboard the Ark? All living and extinct species? All 50 billion or so species that have ever lived on Earth? Or only land animals and birds that couldn't survive by swimming for several months? We're still talking many millions of species. And while we're at it, why does my Bible state clearly and unambiguously that two of each kind of animal were taken aboard, then immediately afterwards it seems to correct itself by informing us that seven of each "clean" animal were boarded, and then immediately after THAT it insists that two of every kind were loaded? How did Noah know which species were clean several thousand years before God imparted those laws to Moses? And if Noah knew about "clean" animals, why wasn't that knowledge passed down through the generations? Is it possible that the whole business about "clean" animals necessary for sacrifices was tacked on later by a bungling editor who forgot to check the context for obvious contradictions?
I have compiled a list of "Things Creationists Hate" which might also be of interest.
Kinds?
OK, how about "kinds" : two of the dog "kind," two of the antelope "kind," two of the elephant "kind," two of the diplodocus
"kind,"ad finitum? That certainly cuts down on the crowd, but then we need a definition of what a "kind" is. Creationists
can't seem to manage a consistent definition of "kind", even among themselves. Some, after thinking about it long and hard,
arrive at a definition of "kind" that is indistinguishable from "species." But that doesn't solve the problem of way too many
animals on the boat. Others want to define "kind" as inclusively as possible to solve the space problem. But then incredibly
supercharged evolution is required after the Flood to expand each "kind" into the thousands (in some cases) of species
belonging to that "kind." Whatever the solution, 99+% of all species of animals became extinct, either between the time of
creation and the Flood, or during the Flood, or immediately thereafter.
One must then wonder about an incredibly inept or wasteful creation in which virtually all animal species were doomed to
extinction within a couple thousand years. Having dared to broach the subject of a God who seems less than omniscient
(didn't He know all this was going to happen ahead of time?), consider also limited omnipotence. Why would God need a
lengthy Flood to destroy miscreant humans? Why destroy billions upon billions of other living things? Why not simply snap
His fingers and make all the bad people disappear? (Note to creationists who are seriously bent out of shape by these
"sacrilegious" questions: this is not an attack upon the qualifications or abilities of the Almighty, but upon your risible notion
of Him and what He has done.)
The Brutality and Atrocities
Did ALL those people deserve brutal and terrifying deaths? The children? The two-year-old little girls? The newborn
infants? The unborn fetuses? Why don't creationists get all exercised about the murder of those unborn? And of course
there's Noah and his kin, who, of all the human race, deserved to survive. That would be the same Noah whose first crop
after the Flood was wine grapes. In celebration of all the blessings bestowed upon him, he got drunk as a skunk and lay
around naked. Then when his thoughtful son Ham tried to help him out by getting help to cover his bare butt, Noah cursed
him and his descendants forever (and God, apparently, backed up that curse [and biblical literalists have used that as a
justification for slavery and segregation of blacks {whom they imagine to be "Hamites"}, among other atrocities]). Was that
mean drunk the best of the human race that God could come up with?
Somewhere Over That Non-Existent Rainbow
And yet more rainbow nonsense: God states multiple times that it will be in a cloud, He will "set [His] bow in the cloud."
Rainbows aren't formed or seen "in clouds." They appear when the sun shines on raindrops and is refracted back at the
proper angle to the viewer. They are often seen against a backdrop of clouds, but they are not in the clouds. As a matter of
fact, the rainbow doesn't even exist where it appears to be! It's an optical illusion that's "in" the light reaching viewers at the
proper angle from sun and rain. You can fly a plane through the exact spot where a ground viewer reports seeing a rainbow.
You won't see anything around you but air and water. You can also make your own rainbows with a garden hose in full
sunlight--no clouds required at all. One more: God states unequivocally that the rainbow is to remind Him of the no-Flood
clause. If God has such a faulty memory that He needs such cosmic Post-it Notes, we're in big trouble.
Whatta Deluge!
And from Barrie: 40 days and 40 nights of rain raised the ocean levels by 29,000 feet to cover the Earth. How could anyone survive a 30 foot an hour
deluge? Approximately 6 in. a minute! Maybe God provided Noah and his family with snorkels ?
Noah's Ark
...just refuses to be found. Or it's been found too many times, in completely different locations. A dozen different people
claiming to have found the Ark in a dozen different places is even more embarrassing than not finding it at all. For some
reason that escapes creationists, it just won't be found and stay found. (More than one creationist has claimed to have
"found" the Ark. Such a claim is always followed by a book, a paid lecture tour, and maybe a film--all designed to relieve the
gullible of the burden of extra cash. Then a few years later another "explorer" "finds" a whole other Ark somewhere else, and
runs the whole con again with a fresh crop of easy marks.) [Suggested research project!]
Kathleen Kirkland points out that "God specifically says to coat the entire inside and outside of the Ark with pitch. I wonder... Do fundies/creationists
know where pitch comes from? Do they know that it's a naturally-occurring derivative of tar, which according to their "flood geology" didn't yet exist at
the time the Ark was built? One must wonder why God would give Noah an instruction that he couldn't possibly carry out, eh?
Size of the Earth
...has obviously expanded greatly since Noah's day, when he could, in a short period, collect pairs of all animals and birds
from all over the world, without the benefit of modern air transport. Then after the Flood, the critters all had to migrate, at the
double-quick, to their present habitats in Tasmania, the Galapagos, the coasts of Antarctica, Patagonia, the American
Southwest, or wherever. It's clear the Earth was no more than a few hundred miles across, probably flat, and with no
inconvenient oceans like, say, the Pacific.
The Slow Rate of Evolution
Having some time ago abandoned the completely silly proposition that Noah could actually have accommodated pairs--let
alone sevens--of every animal species on Earth aboard the Ark, creationists have fallen back upon the rationalization that he
collected not species but "kinds." They never, of course, clearly define "kind," because any such definition would create more
problems in biological classification than it solved (and reveal how little they know about species diversity). Be that as it may,
if a pair of the bovine "kind" walked off the Ark a few thousand years ago, they have had to evolve into all 24 present species
and uncounted varieties and breeds of wild and domestic cattle since then. (Creationists: you really don't want to know how
many species of the bat "kind" there are. And don't even think about beetles .) Creationists, then, are in the awkward position
of believing in a much faster rate of evolution than is possible in nature, while detesting the term itself, and generally refusing
to call diversification-since-the-Ark evolution (Lord, how they hate that word)!
The Number of Species in the World
There are just way too many of them! There are so many that we still don't even have a solid estimate of exactly how
many--but five million is at least the right order of magnitude (counting only living species--throw in the extinct guys and
you're way into the billions ). That's so many that creationists have given up trying to stuff them all into theArk (see above).
A vanishingly tiny percent are even mentioned in the "scientifically accurate" Bible. Whole orders and phyla are left out. Of
the few mentioned, there seems to be some slight confusion over such seemingly simple things as whether a bat is a bird or
mammal, how many legs a grasshopper has, and who chews cuds and who doesn't (see the parts about the dietary laws
handed down to Moses). There's even embarrassing mention of creatures unknown to science, such as unicorns.
My humbly-offered solution: Since the Bible is "scientifically accurate," then when it was written there were just a few
hundred species! They could all fit onto the Ark.
After the Flood (take your pick):
Elephants
Deep-sea Fish
One of the ways that creationists try to weasel out of the volume of water needed for Noah`s Flood is to say that the Earth
was much flatter then--the oceans were shallow, and the mountains were more like low hills. Therefore, much less water was
required to flood the entire planet. All the mountains were raised after the Flood (or towards the end of it), and the oceans
became deeper, allowing the water to drain off (creating the Grand Canyon in the process). By the way, none of this
nonsense is in the Bible; I'm constantly amazed by the additions creationists insist on adding to the Genesis myth in attempts
to make it more believable--while never ceasing to parrot the mantra "the Bible is perfect." This particular Genesis
"improvement" raises two embarrassing questions:
The Land Down Under
Ed Vinson asks just how far it is from Mt. Ararat to Sydney, and which of Noah's sons got stuck with herding all those
numbats, wombats, platypi, and wallabies down there without mixing any rats in. G'day, Mate!
Koalas
They live only in Australia. Their diet is so restricted--to a few subspecies of eucalyptus--that they're threatened now by
destruction of the only kinds of trees they will eat. It's also hard to imagine them migrating. Over many generations they might
slowly spread through an area--but travelers, they ain't.
And when they did migrate over 9,000 miles, in a tiny herd from Ararat to New South Wales, eating a convenient trail of
long-disappeared eucalyptus (which took how many years after the Flood to grow?), they left no trail of koala fossils behind.
A suggestion for creation "researchers": instead of wasting endless hours combing through the writings of real scientists to find
phrases to yank out of context that make them seem to doubt evolution--instead of that, put together a real research
expedition! Find us that bee-line trail from northern Turkey to Australia. Find us those fossilized eucalyptus leaves, koala
footprints, and koala bones. While you're at it, it would be lovely if you turned up a few kangaroos, giant moas, marsupial
lions, Tasmanian wolves, and platypuses along that superhighway to the South Pacific.
Enjoy yourselves in Afghanistan. [More on this project]
Gonorrhea
It is a strictly human disease. Did the Good Lord bestow the gift of gonorrhea on Adam, or was it Eve? Who carried it onto
the Ark? Why would God instruct Noah to carry any disease organisms or parasites onto the Ark? One of Noah's family had
to have been infected, but they were the only people worthy enough to be saved on the whole Earth. Which one had the clap?
Why would He create anything so nasty anyway?
-suggested by Noah Riggins
Noah and His Ancestors
John Hoppner points out that creationists must be a bit miffed at Noah and his ancestors for cremating their dead, because
that destroyed all of their evidence of having human remains intermixed in the [paleontological] fossil record.
Sloths
... reside in the tropics of Central and South America, which is quite a distance from western Asia, where Noah assembled the
animal passengers for the Ark. Sloths generally move while hanging upside down from tree limbs. They can't travel very fast.
And just how did they cross all of those treeless deserts on the way (to say nothing of the ocean)?
A corollary: How did any South American animal make it from the Ark? Certainly not via the Atlantic -- there is no island
chain that could have constituted a land bridge. The first land mammals to cross the Atlantic were Vikings.
It is possible to move across the Pacific, and there is fossil evidence that indicates that such migrations did occur (but not,
sadly, of modern sloths). So, obviously, after the Flood subsided, the llamas, vicunas, nutrias, etc. (and yes, sloths), trotted
along what is now known as the Silk Route until they reached the east coast of Asia, skirted around the Sea of Japan and the
Sea of Okhotsk, continued northward to the agreeable climate of 65 degrees north latitude, crossed the Bering Strait to the
Seward Peninsula of Alaska, clambered through the Canadian Rockies, continued southward along the coast of California, the
rain forests of Mexico and Central America, and the Panama isthmus, until they reached their destination. The journey, at the
most moderate calculation, was at least 16,000 miles and covered an incredible variety of terrains and climates. It is rather
curious that to date no vicuna remains have been found in Alaska or Siberia; but those areas are pretty big, after all, and they
have lots of unexplored territory -- maybe some dedicated creationist will undertake a mission there to dig something up.
[More on this project]
Come to think of it, there is a continent more remote even than South America. Will someone explain how Noah was able to
obtain a pair of penguins? Well, actually, more than one pair, because at the last count the number of penguin species was --
oh well, you get the point.
--Josh Silverman
Cute Little Bunny Rabbits
Ted Krapkat has improved upon my argument by applying the creationist logic directly to the human population:
If we create a simple formula using today's population of ~6 billion, and figure in the starting population (8 individuals), and
the starting time (4360 YBP), we get an annual growth rate of about 0.0047. Since that IS what happened, according to
creationists, and it IS the only possible explanation for today's human population then...
(and from another contributor) Those silly Chinese, just building and building, oblivious to the Flood and all its implications. Around 200 BCE,
the Chinese built two great monuments: the first section of the Great Wall and a tomb for their first emperor. The equation from creationists says there
were only around 170,000 people in the world, while the historians are quite certain the Emperor dedicated 300,000 soldiers immediately to the task of
the Great Wall. Man, that's pretty rough, right? Now the tomb...700,000 citizens at the very least cooperated to build this massive monument to their
leader. That's a minimum of 1 million in this part of the world at this time. Err...wait, my Bible says...
Real Flood Evidence
Yes, I'll admit it, there is evidence of the biblical Flood. It just doesn't turn out to be quite as reported in Genesis. First, all the
genuine evidence of a worldwide inundation a few thousand years ago could, with $2.39, get you a cup of Starbuck's. There
are seashell fossils on Mt. Everest, but plate tectonics has a little something to do with that. Mysteriously, there aren't any
shells on plenty of much lower mountain ranges, which happen to be igneous or metamorphic rocks, unlike the former marine
sediments that became the Himalaya.
Now for more local floods: There is genuine archaeological evidence of one or more real, catastrophic floods in the valleys of
the Fertile Crescent (where the myth originated). To tribes who thought Sumeria was pretty much the whole world--or all of it
that mattered--it would have seemed that their whole world was indeed flooded.
Recently, another possible source of the legend has been recognized. Thousands of years ago a sort of natural dam at the
Bosporus gave way, allowing seawater to rapidly pour into a huge basin and lake north of Turkey (the region near Ararat!
hmm...), flooding out thousands of square miles of fertile land, villages, and cities. The result is the Black Sea, where even
now marine archaeologists are finding the drowned communities on the former lake shore.
Take some legends of the day their world ended, brought by Black Sea refugees, add to them a horrific flood or two from the
Tigris-Euphrates region, conflate it with some exaggerated tales of the guy who saved some of his goats on a raft--and you've
got the "Genesis Flood." Many myths have those ingredients: some probable but untraceable basis in fact, exaggeration,
combination with other tales, adoption and adaptation by other tribes with other gods. In that sense, Noah is in the same
boat as Odysseus.
Egyptians
To which Keith Harwood adds:
The prehistory of Egypt stretches from about 8000 BCE. The history, that is, what was written down at the time, stretches
from ~3500 BCE through invasions by Hyksos, Hittites, Romans, through floods, famines, insurrections, twenty-odd ruling
dynasties, massive building projects, and the mind-boggling minutiae of royal bureaucracy. During this period the whole world
was engulfed in a flood which scoured the land clean. And in Egypt, nobody noticed.
(They didn't notice when they lost a Pharaoh under the Red Sea, either, but that was later.)
Plants
Robin Randolph, who knows her plants, sent this gem:
Plants were not noted to have been taken on the ark. Less than 1% of flowering plants are aquatic, and those which are not cannot
tolerate "wet feet" or inundation by flood waters. Of those few species that are submersed (grow totally underwater), these are not often
found at a depth below 10 m. Yet, when the waters receded, there were plants there that were fully grown (in spite of lack of available
sunlight underwater and other things necessary for their growth). In fact, the dove came back to the ark with an olive branch in his
mouth. [More on animal food problems]
Fruit Flies
And Robin strikes again:
Many species, including fruit flies, have very short lives, and the original pair would not have survived the trip, making it necessary for
reproduction while on the ark in order for the species to survive. If you have ever bred fruit flies (as I have for genetics class) you will
know that a fruit fly is sexually active within 5 hours of hatching. Their generation times are very short. By the end of the 40 days and
40 nights (not to mention the time waiting for the waters to recede), the ark would have been filled from one end to the other with
annoying fruit flies. Therefore, either they routinely sprayed insecticide around the ark to keep these, and other similar species, in
control; put up fly paper; or else these species evolved quickly after departure from the ark.
Robin, I've often suspected that fruit flies are sent by the devil. Why else would they have proven so useful to evil-utionists
in their dark, satanic laboratories where they make up lies about DNA, mutations, and other absurd stuff? [Other picayune
Ark problems]
Along the same line, another contributor wonders about the fig wasp, which is only capable of laying its eggs in a fig fruit, which grows on a fig tree,
[and therefore] would not have survived the trip. The males mate with the larvae of the female then die. The females live for about 3 days, bearing eggs
to lay. Because there were no fig trees on the Ark, it would have been impossible for the fig wasps to reproduce, as they require fig fruits for
reproduction. And, assuming that the fig wasps died, any surviving fig trees (there probably wouldn't have been any) would have also perished, as the
fig tree requires the fig wasp for pollenation.
If, by some miracle, the fig wasp HAD survived, it would have quickly gone extinct, as fig trees would have been quickly killed by the salt water
floods (and again, the fig tree is required for reproduction). This contradiction probably occurred in the Bible because at the time of the writing of the
Bible, the fig tree's [co-evolutionary] relationship with the wasp was unknown. That's unfortunate.
Commandments Against Incest
No, this isn't a joke about the folks back in the hills marrying close relatives. After the Ark, there were either 7 animals of
each type (oops, scratch a bunch that were immediately sacrificed) or a pair. That would produce such a genetic bottleneck
and limited gene pool that their descendants would face severe inbreeding problems (if you want to learn about a real-world
example of this, look into the breeding difficulties of cheetahs). The people on board were only Noah and his family. That
means, at the very least, matings between first cousins. But then of course Adam's children were either copulating with each
other, or with their parents (unless God created some unrelated mates for them--which would mean the original couple were
NOT the parents of all mankind. Genesis seems to assume that of course there were other people living elsewhere (in "Nod,"
for instance), who could supply a Mrs. Cain.
(Suggested by Keith Kinney)
The Gilgamesh Epic
Population Centers
John Guzik has noted a disturbing fact about the distribution of the human population:
Assuming the Chinese decided to keep the Great Flood a secret, we must concede it actually happened. This means that humans, and all
animals, were killed off and had to start over. They started over in the Ararat region of northern Turkey. Why are the countries with the
greatest populations (China and India, both with one billion+) so far away from where humanity had to start over? Since people are
generally territorial, that would mean that the further away from the Ararat mountains you got, the thinner the population would be. This
is not the case. Almost as far away from the Ararat mountains as you can get on the same landmass, there are more than one billion
Chinese. By the way, if everyone descended from Noah and his family, why bother migrating "back" to a country (China) that you have
never been a part of? Or would China even be known about to Noah and his family or descendants?
Asexual Animals
David Evans wonders why Noah had to board pairs of ALL animals, when there are a few which reproduce asexually and
therefore only one would be needed?
Then there's the rainbow. If you want to hear some really creative additions to Genesis, ask a young-Earther how there could
be no rainbows for a couple thousand years, until after the Flood. You may get some truly bizarre planetary climate models,
involving such things as water soaking up through the ground to keep plants alive (let's see--if there is so much water
underground that it soaks UP to the surface, isn't that what we call a bog? Some paradise!), or a "vapor canopy" that watered
the Earth with a kind of fog, then fell as the Flood rains. If you think conditions on Venus are hellish, try modelling the
atmospheric conditions on an Earth with all the gigatons of ocean water added to the atmosphere! If Adam's descendants
were protected from such incredible temperatures and pressures (the natural physical result of such super-greenhouse
conditions) by some sort of miraculous intervention, then again this is not creation science, just creation magic. (I've heard
creationists attribute the mythical long life spans of Old Testament notables to such atmospheric conditions. I invite them to
try it for themselves to see if it promotes longevity.) But the purpose of the rainbow is what really puzzles me. God states
(and repeats--Noah must have been a slow learner [or chronically drunk?]) that the rainbow signifies a promise by God that
He will never flood out the whole Earth again. Most creationists I know are dead certain that God WILL destroy the Earth
(and soon!), but just not with water next time (most seem to favor fire, but personally I expect it to be peanut butter [extra
chunky]). But wait--if God reserves the right to destroy all mankind, then what's the point of promising not to use water
again? We won't be drowned again, but burnt to cinders? Thanks a lot.
In the Sunday School stories, most of us imagined one pair, or at most two African and two Asian pachyderms, on the Ark;
and we assumed those few were Noah's biggest problem. But he could probably have wedged them in somewhere, among the
handful of other large mammals always shown in the picture books. Somehow the elephants were always waving their trunks
over the side, and the giraffes poking their heads up over the deckhouse. Then we grew up (most of us) and found out that
there used to be things like mastodons and woolly mammoths. As a matter of fact, if we did just a little research, we could
have found out that there are some 160 species of probiscideans, living and extinct, many of them wildly, grotesquely
different from modern Jumbos. Then the problem arises of whether or not all those guys were on the Ark. All 160 species,
with their months of fodder, obviously could not have been aboard, especially if we realize that other large mammal "kinds"
also have myriad extinct species, some of which were larger than any elephant ever was. As I see it, there are several
explanations. Choose your favorite from the list below:
Thanks to Oren Grossman for informing me that there are actually three species of living elephants, including the smaller
African bush elephant.Thus creationists only need to account for 157 instant extinctions... but have to accommodate at least
six pachyderms on the Ark!
-(suggested by Adrian Barnett)
...to which I would add a corollary question: How, during a worldwide flood, when seawater and freshwater would be pretty
much thoroughly mixed, would ANY fish survive? I've had enough experience with aquaria to know that darn few freshwater
fish species can tolerate saltwater, and vice versa. A flood of the whole Earth consequently would kill off all but a few
brackish water species, capable of surviving rapid changes in salinity. Since the oceans and lakes are jam-packed with species
exquisitely sensitive to even slight changes in salinity (they DIE), today's fish have to have evolved since the one-world-ocean
of the Flood. Sorry, I just don't believe in evolution--not the lightning variety that creationism demands!
... because they give the lie to the creationist "proof" that there are just the number of people alive today that there would be
if we had started repopulating the Earth after the Flood. Check out the full story here , but the short answer is, if you hold to
the creationist logic, the whole visible universe would be one squirming mass of rabbit flesh by now.
...who continued building their civilization and constructing monuments, and didn't bother to take notice of the worldwide
flood that was supposed to be drowning them all. (Creationists estimate that the flood took place about 4000-5000 ybp [years
before present], which was the height of the Egyptian civilization.)
-Adam Levenstein
It's older than Genesis. It comes from the part of the world where the Israelites originated (according to Genesis). It contains a
Flood legend that has remarkable similarities to the one in Genesis (even with a Noah-like character), but some obvious
differences. And to any objective scholar or even casual reader, that legend is obviously the source for much of the Noah
story. The Hebrews apparently adopted it into their mythology, brought it to Israel, retained it through their time in Egypt (if
that's a genuine historical episode), brought it back to the Promised Land, and carried it with them into captivity in Babylon
(where Genesis was actually written in its present form). They modified it considerably along the way, but not to the extent
that its original source can't be easily recognized.