Posted: Mar 06, 2015 10:36 pm
Heh, think of the trillions of insects that would have been exterminated, if this episode hadn't been a fantasy. For example, every square metre of terrestrial soil on the planet contains up to 100,000 springtails. A typical paper in which this assessment can be found, by the way, is this one:
Soil Fauna And Site Assessment In Beech Stands Of The Belgian Ardennes by Jean-François Ponge, Pierre Arpin, Francis Sondag and Ferdinand Delecour, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 27(12):, 2053-2064 (accepted September 5th, 1997) [Full paper downloadable from here]
From the paper in more detail:
From Table 3, the data for numbers of animals per square metre for each of the 13 sampled sites, reading along the row for Collembola (Springtails), is as follows:
42,000
70,000
59,000
88,000
38,000
51,000
57,000
71,000
100,000
68,000
45,000
81,000
120,000
Yes, the authors went to the trouble of counting individually, the thousands of Collembola that emerged from their soil and litter samples. An example of what Dembski sneeringly referred to as "pathetic level of detail" when trying to hand-wave away the complete absence of empirical work from "intelligent design" apologetics, but I digress.
The point I'm making here is that the numbers of insects that would have been exterminated, if the fantasy "global flood" had been real, would have run into trillions. Bear in mind that springtails are found everywhere on Earth except the coldest reaches of the polar ice caps, and so, if for a conservative estimate we omit the polar ice caps altogether, and concentrate upon the land area of the nonpolar continents, the largest contiguous land mass is formed by combining Europe, Asia and Africa together, with a total area of 84,211,532 km2. The Americas (North, Central & South America) comprise 42,549,000 km2, whilst Oceania (which includes Australia and assorted Pacific islands) comprises 9,008,458 km2. Add this lot together, and you have a grand total of 135,768,990 km2. To obtain the area in square metres, you multiply this figure by a million, and then, you multiply by 100,000 to obtain the springtail population. Which gives you a whopping 1.3 × 1019 individuals.
To put this whopping figure into perspective, if you wanted to maintain a human population of the same size, you would need over 1.9 billion planets the size of planet Earth. You would need an entire galaxy full of Earthlike planets to maintain a human population equivalent to the current population of springtails. If you want impressive numbers for biocide, then the extermination of 1.3 × 1019 living organisms, which is what would have happened if the fantasy "global flood" had ever taken place, would make the Abrahamic god a murderer on a scale that utterly dwarfs the worst genocidal dictators of human history. Just think for a moment, about that sort of scale of death. If that many humans ever exist, spread across 1.9 billion or more planets in a galaxy, just imagine what sort of effort it would take to exterminate them all, and then ask yourself, what sort of hideous monster would regard this as a good idea. Welcome to the Abrahamic god in all its sickening "glory".
Soil Fauna And Site Assessment In Beech Stands Of The Belgian Ardennes by Jean-François Ponge, Pierre Arpin, Francis Sondag and Ferdinand Delecour, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 27(12):, 2053-2064 (accepted September 5th, 1997) [Full paper downloadable from here]
From the paper in more detail:
Ponge et al, 1997 wrote:Soil fauna
Macrofauna was sampled by forcing a 30 × 30 cm steel frame into the litter sensu lato and the first 5 cm of underlying soil. Three samples were taken in each site in June 1989, then three others in October 1989. Samples were placed in plastic bags and then transported to the laboratory. Animals were extracted within 15 days by the dry-funnel method. For soil-dwelling earthworms an additional sampling around the same plots was done by watering a 50 × 50 cm area three times at 10-mm intervals with diluted formaldehyde as a repellent (2, 3, then 4‰ v/v), then digging the soil underneath down to 30 cm.
Mesofauna was sampled by forcing a 5 cm diameter steel cylinder into the top 15 cm of soil (litter included), at the same dates as for macrofauna, but with only 2 × 2 replicates. Samples were then processed as mentioned above.
Given the poor efficiency of the dry-funnel method for enchytraeid worms, these animals, together with other visible soil animals, were hand sorted directly in special soil cores (5 × 5 × 15 cm), which were taken in June 1989 for micromorphological purposes (two replicates in each site), according to the method described by Ponge (1991). Hand sorting was performed by dividing the cores into small volumes of litter and soil, which were observed in ethyl alcohol under a dissecting microscope. Plant fragments as well as soil aggregates were thoroughly comminuted, and all mesofauna and macrofauna were recovered, thus allowing comparisons of extraction methods.
Table 2 indicates the animal groups that were identified and counted, together with the methods used for their recovery.
From Table 3, the data for numbers of animals per square metre for each of the 13 sampled sites, reading along the row for Collembola (Springtails), is as follows:
42,000
70,000
59,000
88,000
38,000
51,000
57,000
71,000
100,000
68,000
45,000
81,000
120,000
Yes, the authors went to the trouble of counting individually, the thousands of Collembola that emerged from their soil and litter samples. An example of what Dembski sneeringly referred to as "pathetic level of detail" when trying to hand-wave away the complete absence of empirical work from "intelligent design" apologetics, but I digress.
The point I'm making here is that the numbers of insects that would have been exterminated, if the fantasy "global flood" had been real, would have run into trillions. Bear in mind that springtails are found everywhere on Earth except the coldest reaches of the polar ice caps, and so, if for a conservative estimate we omit the polar ice caps altogether, and concentrate upon the land area of the nonpolar continents, the largest contiguous land mass is formed by combining Europe, Asia and Africa together, with a total area of 84,211,532 km2. The Americas (North, Central & South America) comprise 42,549,000 km2, whilst Oceania (which includes Australia and assorted Pacific islands) comprises 9,008,458 km2. Add this lot together, and you have a grand total of 135,768,990 km2. To obtain the area in square metres, you multiply this figure by a million, and then, you multiply by 100,000 to obtain the springtail population. Which gives you a whopping 1.3 × 1019 individuals.
To put this whopping figure into perspective, if you wanted to maintain a human population of the same size, you would need over 1.9 billion planets the size of planet Earth. You would need an entire galaxy full of Earthlike planets to maintain a human population equivalent to the current population of springtails. If you want impressive numbers for biocide, then the extermination of 1.3 × 1019 living organisms, which is what would have happened if the fantasy "global flood" had ever taken place, would make the Abrahamic god a murderer on a scale that utterly dwarfs the worst genocidal dictators of human history. Just think for a moment, about that sort of scale of death. If that many humans ever exist, spread across 1.9 billion or more planets in a galaxy, just imagine what sort of effort it would take to exterminate them all, and then ask yourself, what sort of hideous monster would regard this as a good idea. Welcome to the Abrahamic god in all its sickening "glory".