PensivePenny wrote:

Alan C wrote:And how did the plants repopulate the Earth in sufficient number [and quickly enough]? I'm not sure many seeds tolerate salinity too well.
How would the marine food chain have coped with this disruption?

Invoke the magic man... God did create all the land and all the plants on the land in a single day, once before.

Which does kind of beg the question, "Why did god need Noah?"

Fucking one hit wonder, that god, I guess.

Indeed. Plus it probably would have had to magic away all the rotting dead organisms when the excess water disappeared.

Plus getting them back to their original habitats.

PensivePenny wrote:I'm sure any being capable of flooding the entire planet with water could probably manage the salinity of that water... it is well within the skill set of any high school chemistry student to work out the proper ratios.

You know the trump card is whatever card the creationist plays next. (sarc). Deductive reasoning is no match for the magic man.

Indeed. Reasoning stands no chance when pitted against the shit-brained ignorance and stupidity of YEC's. You might as well argue with a garden weed.

That would give you more sense.

PensivePenny wrote:If god can extend a man's life to 500 years (or 900) then is there really any further leap of faith required to think god didn't just preserve all the bugs, and solve all the unsolvable problems that render the ark implausible? It's why this falls on deaf ears with creationists. One magic can be any magic.

One does have to wonder though, if god is really capable of all that, why the fuck was the flood even required? Wouldn't a snap of his fingers kill off all the evil humans instantly? Ha! Your god is weak.

Wouldn't even have to kill them - just make them infertile, and wait.
A deity can afford to play the long game.

Though one does wonder about the [supposed] inherent evil of everyone else.

Even leaving aside the necessary post-flood Noah-family incest to repopulate the world, if the wives of Noah's sons weren't also their sisters, they must have come from other families, which suggests not everyone else was inherently and incurably evil.

But maybe that's falsely trying to apply logic to a biblical fairy tale.

And making the mistake of considering women as people, rather than the rapable-on-payment baby factories which various of the people who wrote the OT seemed to essentially see them as, even when they weren't merely slaves, or Untermensch from other than the chosen tribes.

tolman wrote:

PensivePenny wrote:If god can extend a man's life to 500 years (or 900) then is there really any further leap of faith required to think god didn't just preserve all the bugs, and solve all the unsolvable problems that render the ark implausible? It's why this falls on deaf ears with creationists. One magic can be any magic.

One does have to wonder though, if god is really capable of all that, why the fuck was the flood even required? Wouldn't a snap of his fingers kill off all the evil humans instantly? Ha! Your god is weak.

Wouldn't even have to kill them - just make them infertile, and wait.
A deity can afford to play the long game.

Though one does wonder about the [supposed] inherent evil of everyone else.

Even leaving aside the necessary post-flood Noah-family incest to repopulate the world, if the wives of Noah's sons weren't also their sisters, they must have come from other families, which suggests not everyone else was inherently and incurably evil.

But maybe that's falsely trying to apply logic to a biblical fairy tale.

And making the mistake of considering women as people, rather than the rapable-on-payment baby factories which various of the people who wrote the OT seemed to essentially see them as, even when they weren't merely slaves, or Untermensch from other than the chosen tribes.

All good points. My point is the one emphasized in your quote. There is a lot of logic applied to the fairy tale. It's really the only thing we have as rational beings to argue the absurdities in the book. But, when you have a magic man, logic and reason have no power. I particularly like the idea of making the evil people sterile. How elegant a solution that would be. Too bad god didn't think of it.

Wortfish wrote:

Rumraket wrote:
The fossil record of primates is quite poor but my guess would be it lived in Africa.

That's what the creationists are seizing upon because of the lack of fossil evidence for anything resembling a pongid in Africa.

I don't see the problem with this, they shared a common ancestor over 12 million years ago. Seems completely reasonable they can slowly migrate across the distances in that time?

Agreed. But there appears to be no fossil evidence for such a slow migration. This is relevant because there is no evidence of a slow migration of kangaroos from the Near East to Australia (which is what creationists believe must have happened post-Flood).

The Roos were carried on the backs of angels.
God can do that, don't you know?

Hmm. What about the polar ice caps as well, they probably would have to have reformed.

Alan C wrote:Hmm. What about the polar ice caps as well, they probably would have to have reformed.

Should be easily within the capabilities of a universe maker.

So magic is ok for Celestial dictators but not Harry Potter. Makes sense.

Alan C wrote:So magic is ok for Celestial dictators but not Harry Potter. Makes sense.

Some myth-believers just don't like competition.

In fact, that seems to be one of the defining characteristics of most mythologies 'elevated' to the position of 'religion'.

tolman wrote:
Some myth-believers just don't like competition.

In fact, that seems to be one of the defining characteristics of most mythologies 'elevated' to the position of 'religion'.

Pretty much.

Only God can do "magic" only it gets rebranded as "miracles" or "divine intervention" or some other such nonsense. Then everything else branded as "magic" is clearly either false or evil in some way.

Sendraks wrote:

tolman wrote:
Some myth-believers just don't like competition.

In fact, that seems to be one of the defining characteristics of most mythologies 'elevated' to the position of 'religion'.

Pretty much.

Only God can do "magic" only it gets rebranded as "miracles" or "divine intervention" or some other such nonsense. Then everything else branded as "magic" is clearly either false or evil in some way.

Exactly. For example, some Catholic clergy got very exercised about children reading Harry Potter books on the grounds that it encouraged belief in "magic" and "sorcery". Unlike the Catholic Church, which is steeped in rationality and evidence-based sceptical enquiry.

Blackadder wrote:
Exactly. For example, some Catholic clergy got very exercised about children reading Harry Potter books on the grounds that it encouraged belief in "magic" and "sorcery".

Because belief in such things is a direct challenge to the power of the almighty or in the priests themselves, who seem to have a derth of magical powers at their disposal.

Indeed, the knowing-pretence side of things may be a significant aspect of why some religious types have an issue with overtly fictional magic.
A priest has no more access to supernatural powers (even by proxy) than a Harry Potter fan dressing up and pretending to be a wizard has, and the priest knows it.

Sendraks wrote:Only God can do "magic" only it gets rebranded as "miracles" or "divine intervention" or some other such nonsense. Then everything else branded as "magic" is clearly either false or evil in some way.

Presumably one reason for that is that actual 'magic' would be distinctly better than many things claimed as being 'miracles', such as a child surviving a landslide which kills everyone else in its village, including its entire extended family.