Tut tut, it looks like rain.

Ok, for my buddy Wayne who sent me the latest silliness from the most recent Creationist who insists on taking the biblical flood story seriously...

Some problems with the biblical Flood story:

Wood isn't very good for building ocean-going craft. Not without being reinforced with iron straps. The largest ones still suck - stress opens seams and they have to be pumped constantly, or they'll sink.

Gathering the animals. What, are you serious? How long did they wait for the sloths to show up? Penguins and polar bears don't travel so quickly over land either, nor do snails or mules. How'd the kangaroos get there? There is a reason why Gila monsters, yaks, and quetzals don't all live together in a temperate climate. They can't survive there. How'd they keep the heat-loving creatures separated from the cold-loving ones, and how did they simulate the many various environments? Some anthropods can only survive in 100% humidity. How did all those different species of bacteria and viruses live? Many can't live without human hosts. This family musta been the sickest, most disease-ridden people in the history of the world. So... how'd the kangaroos get back to Australia?

Where'd they keep the dinosaurs and all the other extinct animals? There's more species of those than what we have in the world now. There'd be barely enough room on such a boat for all the known species of insects, arthropods, and birds on the planet, and they'd be eating each other from the get-go. Worms musta been there. They couldn't survive outside of the ark for long.

Neither could many species of plants, for that matter. We'd have to bring in those as well. There's certainly no room for poop now! How'd the freshwater fish survive? Bring them on the ark too? So far, the ark is about the size of Great Britain, and now we need fish tanks (and filters, air compressors, and fake lighting). What about coral? It's pretty sensitive stuff.

Oh, and all the mayflies are dead by day 2.

Why didn't the other civilizations notice all the water? By counting back so many generations, the bible puts the ark at around 1300 years before the building of the first temple by Solomon. That's at 'round 950 bce. So that places the bible at around 2250 bce. Egyptians and Mesopotamians didn't notice any flooding around that time. Not even "significant" flooding. You'd think they might have recorded something like "lookit all the fucking water!", but no, we hear nothing from them. The bible puts the building of the tower of Babel at around 110 to 150 years after the flood. How did humans bounce back so fast from just one family, to the point of having such a large population to undertake building cities and towers?

Why don't we see various mountain ranges with the same amount of erosion? Obviously, the Appalachians and the Rockies aren't the same age. There's no evidence of a flood in ice core sampling. Where would the ice caps go anyways? Why isn't there suddenly large amounts of debris laid down in one layer of the ocean floor? Tree rings go back more than 10,000 years. That's right - I said 10,000. There's no sign of a catastrophy in the ring histories (there shouldn't even be trees older than the flood, but I suppose that's nit-picking). Know what a varve is? It's the layering of sediment that goes on in lake beds, and they're consistent. There's no sign of a global flood in their history.

Weird, eh?