 |
Top 10 List
Top 10 Sylvia Browne Excuses For Not Taking the James Randi Challenge |  |
Nick's Corner
 | | | |
Home ReligionCreationism
![]()
by Bob Riggins
October, 2002
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.
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.)
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?
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.
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.
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 ?
...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?
...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.
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)!
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):
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!
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:
-(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!
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!
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]
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
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.
... 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
... 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.
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...
- At Christ's death there were only about half a million people in the whole world!
- At the time the Israelites entered Canaan, (about 1180 BCE) we get a world population of 2024! By the time you divide
that up between Egypt, Canaan, the rest of the world, and Israel, that leaves maybe 6 or 7 people for the Israelite army!
- If we go back to the time that the Jews were expelled from Egypt, in 1560 BCE, we get a world population of only 340
people!
- In 2300 BCE there were only about 10 people on Earth! How did fewer than a dozen people build the pyramids?
(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...
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.
...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
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.)
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]
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.
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)
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.
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?
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?
(From a contributor) Vast, colossal,
great sheets of ice inhabiting the poles of our planet. The southern of
the pair, the Antarctic, slides slowly off in all directions, like
runny icing on an oversized cake. Things start to go south (no wait,
north) when, with the aid of those pesky oxygen isotopes, the ice cap
constantly fools scientist into believing that it is 25 million years
old. Not only that, but during the Genesis flood it had only a limited
number of options:
In its absolute contempt for the laws of physics and its own density, it remained in place, sitting obediently on the (now
submerged) Antarctic continent. Undoubtedly this allowed the 6 families of Notothenioid fish to live in their optimal -1.8
degree Celsius water temperature (they die in water above 5 degrees C), oblivious to the pressure of all that extra water.
or
Like
any sensible piece of ice, given that all the Earth's surface was
covered by water, it bobbed to the surface, broke up, and floated off
in all directions and melted. Not only that, but all those billions of
tonnes of ice never once crossed paths with Noah. (Maybe they did and
he hauled some onboard to keep the polar bears from squabbling with the
penguins.) Then, they miraculously reformed in the time since, while
Satan grabbed a generous supply of isotopes and busied himself making
them look much older than they actually are.
Unless of course, the ice sheets (and
related habitats) didn't appear until after the Genesis flood, and the
ice, the ice fish, and the consistently un-biblical radiometric dating
results are put there to test our faith in the scriptures, or give God
somewhere to put all those snowflakes he spends so much time on.
...presents the same series of problems as
Noah's Ark. How big was the Garden? Were ALL the plants, animals,
fungi, bacteria, etc. on Earth present in the Garden? Genesis 2:19
seems to indicate so, ."..brought them unto Adam to see what he would
call them." How many climates did the garden have? I can picture a lion
lying down with a lamb, but I simply can't picture a polar bear sharing
the same climate as a rattlesnake. And if all the sea creatures were
there too, the garden must have had two big ponds, one freshwater and a
saltwater one. Come to think of it, the saltwater one must have been
really deep, and must have had thermal vents at the bottom...... well,
you get the idea. (from Stephen Reese)
| |