Regarding that creationist theme park in Kentucky, the one with the planned state tax breaks and dinosaurs on the ark, today we mortals get a glimpse of God's logistics:
Animals including giraffes -- but only small, young giraffes -- will be kept in pens on board.
"We think that God would probably have sent healthy juvenile-sized animals that weren't fully grown yet, so there would be plenty of room," said Mr. Zovath, a retired Army lieutenant colonel heading the ark project. "We want to show how Noah would have taken care of them, taken care of waste management, taken care of water needs and food needs."
I hate to be a literalist about it, but seriously, if you somehow accounted for where the termites would live, and how you'd have dinosaurs existing at the same time as people, and if you brought on only a pair of very tiny apatosaurus along with miniatures of all the other dinosaurs, and even if you took the largest estimates for the size of Noah's ark, the critters still wouldn't fit. I'm just saying.
Bonus: Barefoot and Progressive on Ark Encounter's circular feasibility study.
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And the dinosaurs wouldn't EAT any of the other little critters?
Also... how did KANGAROOS get from Australia to TURKEY in order to be loaded onto the Ark?!
This is ridiculous.
The idea is that God commanded the animals to not eat one another while they were on the ark. There are at least 2 passages in the Bible that reference that once Jesus' kingdom is made manifest here on earth the animals will stop eating one another and will become vegetarians. Many vegans practice their dietary habits based on these passages. I'm a little fuzzy as how the commandment worked with animals...I don't mean that he literally said to them "don't do this," although some interpretations of the Bible claim that animals used to be sentient until man was kicked out of the Garden of Eden. It is possible, then, that God temporarily restored sentience to the animal kingdom long enough to fit on the ark. That or he somehow worked through the animals, or Noah was magically able to run up and down a vessel larger than an air craft carrier long enough to keep hungry lions from eating gazelles. Or God turned them all temporarily into vegetarians. Perhaps this is how the termite matter was resolved- God simply made termites eat something other than wood while they were on the ark.
Why does Jesus hate plants so much? Aren't they living creatures too? If he were all powerful, he would've made us all nuclear powered. Eating is such an inefficient way of getting energy.
Nuclear power is certainly the most efficient energy form we've so far invented (from what I've been told), but it isn't necessarily the most infinitely (meaning we may yet discover something more efficient, just haven't). So it is curious as to why God didn't give whatever that hypothetical form of energy production was for all the creatures on Earth. Or perhaps the lesson here is our cars need to start eating more grass....wait...I think those are horses. ;-)
I did some quick research, to find out how fast Giraffes grow up, since the Bible says they were on The Ark for a year, and found something VERY Interesting on Wikipedia:
"Necking
Male giraffes often engage in necking, which has been described as having various functions. One of these is combat. Battles can be fatal, but are more often less severe, generally ending when one giraffe surrenders to the other.....Another function of necking is sexual, in which two males caress and court each other, leading up to mounting and climax. Such interactions between males are more frequent than heterosexual coupling. In one study, up to 94% of observed mounting incidents took place between two males. The proportion of same sex activities varied between 30 and 75%, and at any given time one in twenty males were engaged in non-combative necking behaviour with another male. Only 1% of same-sex mounting incidents occurred between females."
So, we might have GAY Giraffes in Kentucky's Ark, but probably No Lesbians? Hmmm....
ps: They do tend to answer all questions of logic with "The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways!", but I wonder how they'll explain the "Gay Giraffes" Issue? *Gasp* Maybe God APPROVES of it?
No, b/c two every kind meant one male and one female...except for all those asexually reproducing organisms...and the ones that can switch their own sex...
I dunno MechTrek, but that last one sounds kinda fun! :)
For the "clean" animals, Noah was to take seven pair...
http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/8170
Since giraffes have completely divided hooves and also chew their cud, they should be considered clean/kosher.
Yeah I'm confused about that- why did Noah save the none Kosher animals?
btw, cheers to TNT, i believe it is, which edited out the "You sold me queer giraffes" line when they air the movie.
You can't be accused of being a literalist when it comes to the Creationist Museum, because the museum attempts to teach 'facts' about the creation of the earth. The displays are supposed to represent actual events, so any and all questions regarding literal interpretations of Biblical events are valid.
Ah-ha! Gordon, you went right to the nub of this atrocious farce. All the previous maunderings about gay giraffes and vegetarian lions and dinosaurs coinciding with humans are hypotheticals. NONE of it is anything but mythology and fantasy, embroidered over the centuries with some inventive and poetic storytelling. None of it is FACT.
The next time I get into a discussion about anything at all with one of these creationist yahoos who accuses me of using a hypothetical argument, I know just what to say!
Now I'm wondering if the animal 'pens' on this ship- only 500 feet long- will be in serious violation of animal cruelty laws.
Also, where are they going to get a dodo? Oh, wait, the those are the developers...
This is what you get when you spend 3% of your Federal budget on education.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkB9OT2XVvA
Fffound! I was just gonna post that commercial too.
It seems to me that the message of the story (whatever it is) has been lost in all the trivia. What a huge waste of time and enery this is!
Are you referring to the fact that the Park's Owners have requested, and probably will receive Tax Subsidies for their Theme Park?
To be Fair, every Museum of Natural History, Science, The Smithsonian, and many other Tax Subsidized Institutions demonstrate Evolution, but of course you have those Tax Exempt Institutions that can and do teach whatever THEY Believe - They're called CHURCHES.
Including the Church of Scientology, which believes in a Galactic Warlord named Xenu, 75 Million years ago, whose 'Souls of Dead Aliens' are the 'Negative Emgrams' which attached to all humans, causing all of the problems of humanity (Yes, they are Tax Exempt!), or
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as 'Mormons', Glenn Beck, Mitt Romney, Harry Reid, Tom Udall, and many others), who seem to believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri, don't believe in the Trinity of God, do believe in Baptism AFTER Death, that the Original Inhabitants of the United States were White, and came here from the Holy Land, and that Jesus Christ also walked and taught here in America, after His Resurrection (also a Tax Exempt Church).
Everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, and most would allow for Tax Exempt Status, but asking for Taxpayer Subsidies is a little different, and people of one belief are free to disagree with, question, or even make fun of, other beliefs. I seem to recall a lot of people making fun of Evolution, saying "Those Crazy People think we're descended from Apes!", such as, oh I don't know, Christine O'Donnell, along with many other 'Born Again Christians'?
There are many beliefs, not all can be correct, and no-one knows for certain, but in the end, One of them will turn out to be True!
Meanwhile, let's all keep a POLITE sense of humor, and don't get too mean or nasty about other beliefs, as long as they don't harm others, even while we tease them!
;;-D
In my humble opinion churches should pay taxes especially when they butt into politics. As for religion, well I will make fun of others beliefs when they are obviously and blatantly absurd. Ignorance and willful obtuseness in the face of reason and science deserves to be poked at. Churches and religious groups like this one promote stupid ideas at the expense of exploring the spiritual and metaphorical message that they should be doing. They do damage and are the root of all evil.
This is beyond stupid.
i'm so glad i haven't lost my sense of humor...
It looks like Texas, Florida and Kentucky are in a competition to see which state can be the biggest embarrassment to its citizens. Talk about a race to the bottom!
uff - dont leave out AZ, NV, & palin's alaska.
The lineup for Team Stupid seems to grow every day, doesn't it?
And Virginia..home of the Cooch.
Wait! Don't forget Washington D.C.
An amusing, yet pointless debate. Anything that doesn't fit will come down to God blessing it. Why didn't the predators eat the other animals? Because God blessed them. How do you account for the incest? God blessed them. See, genetic problems occur because God wills it.
I'm just bummed that this theme park will probably thrive, while the Hard Rock Park theme park folded after one season.
Fundies have their own language and a well developed defense against reality and logic. When they say 'kinds" in reference to the animals in the ark myth, they mean a fictional biological division: any animal of a "kind" has all the genetic info needed for multiple similar species. This gives them a defense against the small size of the ark compared to the huge number of species, and also allows them to deny evolution by saying animals can change within "kind" but can not change from one "kind" to another. Thus they only need to bring a dwarf "kind" of giraffe and one small "kind" of dinosaur. Just a single pair of marsupials or ungulates, for example, would stand in for great numbers of individual species. After the flood subsided all these "kinds" spread through out the earth and morphed into the different species within a few thousand years. They have an answer for everything despite there being no actual evidence to support their claims. It is a waste of time to try to debate them, but if you insist you have to make an effort to understand their language and arguments first.
Ham: "Dad, can we go fishing?
Noah: Sure, son, but remember we only have two worms."
Well, they COULD have multiplied after the Ark sailed -
Remember, at least Two of Each (seven of some), Male and Female.....Hey, wait! Earthworms and a lot of other animals are HERMAPHRODITES, each belonging to Both Sexes/Genders? And Algae, Bacteria, Viruses, etc., which have NO Sex or Gender, and Reproduce Asexually -
Were All the Organisms which Cause Disease on the Ark? Syphilis, the Plague, Smallpox, Pneumonia, AIDS, All of Them?
Questions, Questions!
the one prob i have w evolution is where are the newly evolved species for the last hundred yrs or so? i mean evolution must be regarded as on-going. therefore we should be seeing selectively adapted species continue to emerge like dogs w opposing digits. >since they're not (?) the logical conclusion is alien colonization :))
Why would dogs evolve to have opposing digits? They have domesticated humans to open doors and cans of dog food for them. Much more efficient.
Ya I've always personally wondered how people who believe evolution is a myth explain how their pet dog/cat/cow/pig came into existence....and also corn and yellow rice.
I saw an article a couple of years ago that had studied stray dogs in major cities around the world, and they found that strays tended to end up all about the same size, which could be an indication of evolution at work. Dogs that were larger or smaller than a certain optimal size tended to die out under the living conditions of a stray dog in an urban environment.
The fact that dogs exist is evolution. The principle of being able to selectively manipulate genetics in order to produce a wanted trait- whether that is done by man or not- is evolution. If creationism (in the Biblical sense) were true you would not be able to selectively breed animals. Viruses would not be able to adapt to vaccines. Plants could not be spliced with other plants to make corn and rice could not be genetically engineered to be healthier. These are man induced form of evolutions, but the system itself proves evolution exists. Now you could make the non-Biblical argument of creationism and say that the mechanism was put in place by God. That very may well be true. But to say that evolution doesn't exist when you know where your beagle comes from (as far as how beagles came into being) shows that evolution exists. Now you are correct that the scenario you're referring to would suggest nature induced (as opposed to man induced) evolution.
Big changes in structure require time. They are inferred from biogeographical, paleontological and comp anatomical data. A species of Carnivora evolving opposable thumbs in just a hundred years would be a miracle. Evolution won't make it happen, that's for sure.
What you are able to see at any particular moment is a pattern of genetic divergence leading to very close related species that most of us wouldn't recognize as a separate species just by looking at it, because reproductive isolation almost always comes first. When the subpopulations don't get to mix with one another, then physiological and anatomical divergence can start to take place.
Anyway, google "observed speciation" for some examples.
God MUST have had a Sense of Humor - Look at the Duck-Billed Platypus! An egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal?
Then again, He created Man and Woman, to live together - Now THAT shows a Real Sense of Humor!
:-P
God sounds incompetent! I for one, don't see the humor!
You know, I hear dinosaurs love tiny giraffes.
Chompy, chompy!
love this: "We think God would probably have..."
people projecting their own rationalization and beliefs and conjecture kinda puts a damper on Biblical literalness, wouldn't you say? imposing human limits on God?? why didn't God just make the Ark dimensionally transcendental, like Dr. Who's TARDIS - bigger inside than outside? it doesn't have to be explained, after all, simply say "the Lord works in mysterious ways,' it was a miracle, or to quote Leonard from Ugly Americans, "Mmagic!"
or are they -- *GASP!* -- my god, are they saying that God works via natural laws and principles of the universe, like physics and other science? like... like a flood destroying everything instead of poof, like the sky being blue, global warming, geologic "days," and... and EVOLUTION?!?!? Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Yeah why did God have to flood the Earth to destroy it? Why couldn't he just poof people/animals/plants/whatever else away?
That's their first big mistake.
Oh for goodness sake; it's a THEME PARK people. There are lots of theme parks. Stop knockin it and let those who would, enjoy.
I thought the real issue was their justification for a tax break. Silly me.
I think you're confusing everyone's general enjoyment over questioning the story of Noah. They shouldn't be getting a tax credit to build the park, but I don't think anyone here objects to the idea that if you want to go you can go. I just find the questions surrounding the issue of animals eating one another and evolving rather humorous. I mean what did the termites do? That, for me, is an enjoyable thing to ponder.
Termites are not animals. Most likely,there will not have circus fleas there either. Sorry to bum anyone out. ;) Please continue, people need to laugh at something.
It depends on how you're defining "animals," but you're right that the scientific classification puts them in a different category. But then that raises the question of- if they aren't animals- how did they survive? God's command was just about the animals. It never specifies what "animals" means in the Bible. What about the viruses?! I can't believe there'd be such an oversight by the all-mighty creator. A creator who apparently had to flood the earth because he wasn't able to destroy the people who made him mad. But yes- see it's humorous- lol ;-)
Good grief Mickey Mouser! Have you ever tried to drown termites by flooding their sealed tunnels? Or tried killing a virus by freezing it? They don't need OUR help. Or God's. Just sayin...