Biogeography falsifies the worldwide flood.

While this isn’t exactly geology I think it belongs under the flood discussion. I don’t see an explicit discussion of it elsewhere on the board.When creationists attempt to explain the world's biogeography they often greatly underestimate the magnitude of the problem it presents for the worldwide flood. I consider it a falsification of the flood account, along with several others of course.There are particularly insoluble problems with the fauna of Australia/New Zealand/New Guinea and the Americas. According to the ark story marsupials and the other unique animals in Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea would have had to get there after coming off a boat, in pairs, in the Middle East along with representatives of all other land dwelling animals extinct and extant. Note that among the marsupials are blind marsupial mole like animals (of the Order Notoryctemorphia) that only live in sand. Overall there are 13 families and about 180 unique species of marsupials in the area including the famous kangaroos and kolas. The Kiwi, a flightless bird and the only monotremes (egg laying mammals) in world, the platypus and 2 species of echidna are found in the area and nowhere else. How is it that the marsupials and monotremes made it to Australia where they just happen to exist in fossil record while thousands of species of placental mammals that just happen not to exist in the Australian fossil record did not? How did blind marsupial mole like animals make it at all, let alone getting there with no placental mammals? Of course this is far from being the only problem. How did the flightless dodo bird come off the ark amongst all those hungry predators and make it to an island in the Indian ocean? The three-toed sloth can only drag itself slowly on the ground it can’t walk. How did they make it to the Americas, where sloths just happen to exist in the fossil record? The giant spiny anteater (one of the echidna species) is also a slow moving clumsy animal but is supposed to have made it to New Guinea ahead of all the placental mammals.How is it that Gila monsters got to the American Southwest and why did they not go to the much more convenient deserts around the middle east instead? How did armadillos make it across the Atlantic Ocean while wildebeest, zebras and giraffe did not? The question is not only how these animals got where they were going but also why other animals equally well adapted for the destination and in many cases far more able to travel did not.On the TrueOrigins ark defense page Jonathan Sarfati saysMigration patterns explain some of them, but another important factor is introduction by humans. That’s how the rabbit reached Australia, and the Australian marsupials could have arrived with post-Babel humans.This does not really explain anything. Many of these animals are not migratory. Post Babel Humans introduced them? By them time of the supposed Tower of Babel incident many of the animals would have scattered out over a vast range and either established themselves where they are not present now or become extinct, since marsupials don't generally compete very well with placental mammals. How and why did migrating humans take these particular animals? Do you really think people took blind marsupial moles, kangaroos, echidna, kiwis, koalas, wombats, the platypus, Tasmania devils, bandicoots, Moas ( a giant predatory bird), Cassowarys (a bad tempered bird that is the second largest now living in the world) and the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) to Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand along with all the other animals unique to the area? That would have been some interesting trips in dugout canoes. How and why did they gather all these marsupials and leave only a few behind (such as the prolific opossum which somehow got to North America without leaving any descendants in Europe and Asia and some others that got to Central and South America without leaving any descendants anywhere else) while taking no placental mammals except dogs? Did people bring Gila monsters to the American Southwest and sloths, new world monkeys, jaguars and rattlesnakes to the Americas?The land bridge explanation also fails. First Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand are separated from Indonesia by the very deep water, the so-called Wallace line, so land bridges are highly unlikely. Most importantly, even if land bridges did exist they do not help. How could marsupial moles or other slow moving marsupials get from the Middle East and cross land bridges to Australia while faster moving placental mammals did not? Do you really think tree sloths, which cannot survive low temperatures, move about 1 mile a month and only travel in trees and Gila monsters, which are desert reptiles crossed an ice age land bridge over the Bering Sea to get to their current habitats?Randy

I believe the currently observed biogeography is explained by a mix of naturalism and miracles - natural repopulation sure but at the gross level I suspect that God directed the major groups just as he brought them to Noah.Here is a balck and white statement about races of people from the New Testement:Acts 17:26 "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."We all tend to believe everything is chance and luck but the Bible makes it very clear that God gave different peoples to different lands. I would be not suprised at all if this is the same with animals.Once animals (and man) settled then, sure I'm a Galapogos man, and naturalism takes over.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
I believe the currently observed biogeography is explained by a mix of naturalism and miracles - natural repopulation sure but at the gross level I suspect that God directed the major groups just as he brought them to Noah.

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Here is a balck and white statement about races of people from the New Testement:

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Acts 17:26 "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."

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We all tend to believe everything is chance and luck but the Bible makes it very clear that God gave different peoples to different lands. I would be not suprised at all if this is the same with animals.

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Once animals (and man) settled then, sure I'm a Galapogos man, and naturalism takes over.

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ROTFL and you think we demand a lot of evolution. Your evolutionary speeds dwarf macro.CheersJoe Meert

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
I believe the currently observed biogeography is explained by a mix of naturalism and miracles - natural repopulation sure but at the gross level I suspect that God directed the major groups just as he brought them to Noah.

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Here is a balck and white statement about races of people from the New Testement:

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Acts 17:26 "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."

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We all tend to believe everything is chance and luck but the Bible makes it very clear that God gave different peoples to different lands. I would be not suprised at all if this is the same with animals.

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Once animals (and man) settled then, sure I'm a Galapogos man, and naturalism takes over.

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So much for science!!!!------------------
http://www.hells-handmaiden.com

So, TB, how many "kinds" were present on Noah's Ark? What was the speciation rate to produce the current level number of species over a period of about 4,500 years? Why was this dramatic speciation rate not mentioned in the bible or other historical documents? Don't you think that nomadic goatherders might have noticed the dramatic biological changes going on before their eyes?When did this hyperspeciation process decline to its current slow, barely perceptible rate? Just before Linnaeus started classifying living organisms? It seems that creationism is full of processes occurring at dramatically different rates in the past (speed of light, radioactive decay, speciation, plate tectonics etc) which mysteriously change to the current rates when humans are able to measure the rates accurately.It appears that TB has now given up all pretense of offering rational, scientifically verifiable postulations for supporting his particular religious beliefs and now simply plugs in any old miraculous process where necessary to reconcile the literal interpretation of scripture with the problems posed by the laws of nature.

^ When Scripture quite clearly indicates a miracle I will not try and construct scientific theories to account for it!On the other hand when Scripture indicates a process I will not pretend that a global event (eg the flood) will not leave evidence!PS - some have estimated that there were 2200 kinds on the ark, mostly below sheep size. I think these may correspond to the Linnean terrestial families. Your hyper-speciation may have primarily been hybridization and then Galapogos type microevoltuion. By completely standard mathematical processes every new state (eg the selected species after the flood) rapidly find a shifted equilibrium in the new environment. The rapid speciation would settle down quickly. Just like a heat transfer rate is high and settles down as the temperature differntial drops. I think this has even been observed in artificial bacterial evoltuion. Stress a bacteria and it will rapidly change or die and then settles down. (And before you get too excited that change is always to an existing gene's existing properties).[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 08-22-2002]

That's what I don't understand TB, a scientist moving so easily between miracles. Any way, what cannot be is to use miracles as a scientific argument.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]I believe the currently observed biogeography is explained by a mix of naturalism and miracles - natural repopulation sure but at the gross level I suspect that God directed the major groups just as he brought them to Noah. [/QUOTE]

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Well at least you admit to God did it. How did He get all those marsupials to Australia after the flood? STP on OCW said the He teletransported them. It is an explanation but it sure isn't science.

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[quote]Here is a balck and white statement about races of people from the New Testement:

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Acts 17:26 "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."

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We all tend to believe everything is chance and luck but the Bible makes it very clear that God gave different peoples to different lands. I would be not suprised at all if this is the same with animals.

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Once animals (and man) settled then, sure I'm a Galapogos man, and naturalism takes over.[/B]

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So do you admit that there is no natural solution to the biogeography problem and that biogeography falsifies the flood as a natural event? In fact, there is no way to have had a worldwide flood without a continous steam of miracles before during and after the flood. This is part of the reason that creation science is an oxymoron.
Randy

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]^ When Scripture quite clearly indicates a miracle I will not try and construct scientific theories to account for it!

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On the other hand when Scripture indicates a process I will not pretend that a global event (eg the flood) will not leave evidence![/quote]

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So since there is no evidence for a worldwide flood are you admiting it didn't occur.

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[quote]PS - some have estimated that there were 2200 kinds on the ark, mostly below sheep size. I think these may correspond to the Linnean terrestial families. Your hyper-speciation may have primarily been hybridization and then Galapogos type microevoltuion. By completely standard mathematical processes every new state (eg the selected species after the flood) rapidly find a shifted equilibrium in the new environment. The rapid speciation would settle down quickly. Just like a heat transfer rate is high and settles down as the temperature differntial drops. I think this has even been observed in artificial bacterial evoltuion. Stress a bacteria and it will rapidly change or die and then settles down. (And before you get too excited that change is always to an existing gene's existing properties).

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 08-22-2002][/B]

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Don't forget that all the extinct "kinds" had to be represented on the ark as well as extant "kinds" it just happened that all the dinosaurs and therasid reptiles went extinct right after the flood I guess. Though maybe some dinos got to the American West to leave tracks in the Navajo sandstones if they are indeed supposed to be post flood. The diversity of life on earth is a falsification of the myth of Noah's flood along with several others such as the fossil record and the fact that 40 days and nights of global rain is physically impossible without cooking the earth to death, but I would prefer to keep this thread focused on the biogeography falsification. Maybe I'll start a new thread on the biodiversity falsification but not right now.
Randy

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
^ When Scripture quite clearly indicates a miracle I will not try and construct scientific theories to account for it!

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On the other hand when Scripture indicates a process I will not pretend that a global event (eg the flood) will not leave evidence!

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PS - some have estimated that there were 2200 kinds on the ark, mostly below sheep size. I think these may correspond to the Linnean terrestial families. Your hyper-speciation may have primarily been hybridization and then Galapogos type microevoltuion.
[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 08-22-2002]

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So this miraculous hyperspeciation after the flood didn't warrant a mention in the bible? Noah didn't notice such events after babysitting all of the surviving pairs for a year?

^ We see hybridisation between horses and zebras every day and in my previous insititue we saw hyperspeciation of viruses every day. It's natural. Fascinating but it's not like the ancients were seeing new limbs popping up.You get beak shapes changing over hundreds of years. No offence to the ancients but why are they going to have noticed that? Did European agriculturalists start saying that man evolved from monkeys when they were able to breed cattle with beneficial feautres? No. Only a hand full of scientists followed that up.

Randy I'll admit that biogeography probably falsifies the flood as a completely natural event but I'll leave a tiny bit of room for natural repopulation.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
... I'll admit that biogeography probably falsifies the flood as a completely natural event....

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Interesting.... we venture further and further from science....------------------
http://www.hells-handmaiden.com

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Originally posted by John:

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
... I'll admit that biogeography probably falsifies the flood as a completely natural event....

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Interesting.... we venture further and further from science....

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Just remember that the flood is still the most logical explanation for geological features. At least, according to TB's hunches, that is.

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Originally posted by edge:

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Originally posted by John:

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
... I'll admit that biogeography probably falsifies the flood as a completely natural event....

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Interesting.... we venture further and further from science....

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Just remember that the flood is still the most logical explanation for geological features. At least, according to TB's hunches, that is.

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Right. I mean, 100,000 geologists can't all be wrong.... wait a minute... I guess they haven't spoken with TB.