Distribution of plants and land animals

[Bluejay]

Hi, Snoozer.

What I was implying was God. If you want to take God out of the picture, yes, I agree this is a difficult story.

Forgive me for misunderstanding you.

But, the original question was:

Do you think Noah and Company made a study of compatible habitats for the various animals and plants, based on careful taxonomy and meteorological forethought?

Emphasis added again

If God already had all the requisite knowledge, what purpose would be served by having Noah and company do a monumental-scale study of global ecology equivalent to several orders of magnitude more than hundreds of thousands of scientists have accomplished over nearly three centuries?

Why not just have God bestow all that knowledge on Noah miraculously so he wouldn't botch it up?

Better yet, why not just let God zap-poof everything to the places He wanted them originally? Why get Noah involved at all?

And, if we're going to go there, why did God make Noah take the animals onto the Ark? Why not just zap-poof the animals and plants and Noah's family into the future to land on the earth after the Flood receded, in the correct distributions already?

What's the point of discussing anything if you're just going to counter with, "God could have done it"? Why should any thread go longer than two posts?

So, basically, you either (1) agree with me that the distributions of plants and animals today were not based on a study undertaken by Noah, and just thought it would be cute to throw in a "godcuddadunnit" to mess with my mind; or (2) believe that God thinks learning how to catalog organisms is of such great importance for Noah that Noah should at least go through the motions of doing it, even though God had already done all the work Himself already.

[Seminarysnoozer]

Hi, Snoozer.

Forgive me for misunderstanding you.

But, the original question was:

Emphasis added again

If God already had all the requisite knowledge, what purpose would be served by having Noah and company do a monumental-scale study of global ecology equivalent to several orders of magnitude more than hundreds of thousands of scientists have accomplished over nearly three centuries?

Why not just have God bestow all that knowledge on Noah miraculously so he wouldn't botch it up?

Better yet, why not just let God zap-poof everything to the places He wanted them originally? Why get Noah involved at all?

And, if we're going to go there, why did God make Noah take the animals onto the Ark? Why not just zap-poof the animals and plants and Noah's family into the future to land on the earth after the Flood receded, in the correct distributions already?

What's the point of discussing anything if you're just going to counter with, "God could have done it"? Why should any thread go longer than two posts?

So, basically, you either (1) agree with me that the distributions of plants and animals today were not based on a study undertaken by Noah, and just thought it would be cute to throw in a "godcuddadunnit" to mess with my mind; or (2) believe that God thinks learning how to catalog organisms is of such great importance for Noah that Noah should at least go through the motions of doing it, even though God had already done all the work Himself already.

Why did you just give me only those two options? I'll answer that ... because you don't know God's purpose.

Even though I don't know God's purpose either, let me throw out one other possibility that maybe will give you reasonable doubt in your own understanding so you don't think you know all the variables and therefore can confine the response to just two options;

What if God wanted to preserve a genetic record of the degradation from the original creations that transpired to that point so as to be able to restore, in the end, all physical beings back to the original. For roughly the same reasons its important for us to keep a genealogical record to document our lineage back to Adam and Eve. Maybe there were only a few of the millions of species that had to be taken "alive" on the ark to maintain some certain amount of biological activity going from the start, some sort of biological substrate from which DNA manipulations could respawn all other life. By taking the embryos of those 'alive' pairs and altering the DNA, they could have been put back into their original and needed location and yet maintain the sterility of Earths biological existence. I don't think Noah had to catalog everything per se, just follow instructions without necessarily knowing what he was doing. When I hit the start button on the PCR machine, I don't have to physically replicate DNA on my own.

Let me reverse the question then, why do you insist that God played no roll in the event? and that Noah and company did all the work alone, without any help whatsoever?

[Bluejay]

Hi, Snoozer.

I forgot that the agressive tone I was using isn't as kosher on this site as on my other one, so I'm sorry for getting a bit testy.

Why did you just give me only those two options? I'll answer that ... because you don't know God's purpose.

Well, actually, I think my two options pretty much exhausted the possibilities: (1) Noah didn't do the study; (2) or Noah did do the study, even though God had already done it.

There was a little imprecision in the snarky way I presented it that ruined the dichotomy I was trying to set up, so I'm sorry for my poor communication of the main point.

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What if God wanted to preserve a genetic record of the degradation from the original creations that transpired to that point so as to be able to restore, in the end, all physical beings back to the original.

I'm not really following this. Are you suggesting that Noah did genetics, too?

At any rate, it still seems like this is something that God should already know, and thus, wouldn't have the need to ask Noah to do it.

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Let me reverse the question then, why do you insist that God played no roll in the event? and that Noah and company did all the work alone, without any help whatsoever?

I didn't actually insist on that: that was just one of the two options I presented. Either there was need for Noah to do the alleged study, or there wasn't.

If there was a need for Noah to do it, then it makes sense for God to ask him to do it. It can't be for the practical benefit of collecting information, because God presumably already knows whatever information Noah could have collected. So, the need for Noah to do it must have been for a spiritual or other personal benefit to Noah or to his family. It would also seemingly imply that this study was of greater importance to Noah than any alternative use of his time.

While I consider biology important enough to have chosen to dedicate my professional life to it, I don't think this deal of emphasis on the importance of biology is consistent with the God who is presented in the Bible.

On the other hand, if there wasn't a need for Noah to do the study, it raises the question of why God would ask him to do it. The logical conclusion would be that, if there is no need for Noah to do the study, then God wouldn't ask him to do it.

[mnn727]

Something tells me Moksha OP was tongue in cheek.

But it is a good argument for a non-global flood.

[Seminarysnoozer]

Hi, Snoozer.

I forgot that the agressive tone I was using isn't as kosher on this site as on my other one, so I'm sorry for getting a bit testy.

Well, actually, I think my two options pretty much exhausted the possibilities: (1) Noah didn't do the study; (2) or Noah did do the study, even though God had already done it.

There was a little imprecision in the snarky way I presented it that ruined the dichotomy I was trying to set up, so I'm sorry for my poor communication of the main point.

-----

I'm not really following this. Are you suggesting that Noah did genetics, too?

At any rate, it still seems like this is something that God should already know, and thus, wouldn't have the need to ask Noah to do it.

-----

I didn't actually insist on that: that was just one of the two options I presented. Either there was need for Noah to do the alleged study, or there wasn't.

If there was a need for Noah to do it, then it makes sense for God to ask him to do it. It can't be for the practical benefit of collecting information, because God presumably already knows whatever information Noah could have collected. So, the need for Noah to do it must have been for a spiritual or other personal benefit to Noah or to his family. It would also seemingly imply that this study was of greater importance to Noah than any alternative use of his time.

While I consider biology important enough to have chosen to dedicate my professional life to it, I don't think this deal of emphasis on the importance of biology is consistent with the God who is presented in the Bible.

On the other hand, if there wasn't a need for Noah to do the study, it raises the question of why God would ask him to do it. The logical conclusion would be that, if there is no need for Noah to do the study, then God wouldn't ask him to do it.

(you don't have to say 'sorry' I am only responding because I also find this topic interesting not because I am trying to defend some point, but rather I am trying to understand it myself and make sense of it)

I think you, in essence, are asking why God makes us do things that He already knows the answer to. That question applied to other areas of our lives we are okay with but for some reason when it comes to the story of Noah, that is not okay? Why do we do genealogy when God knows who our parents were and their parents etc. all the way back to Adam and Eve?

With those options you pose, you are assuming that Noah is knowledgeable about what he is doing. I don't think he is, I think he did it because God asked him to. I think the reason God made the flood in the first place is the answer to why God had to do the things he did, including bringing in so many animals into the ark etc. If the goal was to cleanse all the severely corrupted beings from the Earth at that time then only God would know which beings were severely corrupted and which were not. He would then make sure all those lines that were not corrupted were protected and continued in whatever fashion He can do that. If all He needed were a certain number of 'basic' animals to have the substrate needed from which all other life as previously existed could be reformed and reinserted back to their original locations, then that is all that Noah was asked to do, not necessarily take account of all of the millions of species at that time. Your original options were not whether Noah did any study or not, it was did Noah and company do it on their own or was God involved? My feeling, without knowing 100%, is that God was involved without needing Noah to know about every species that existed in the world or necessarily having to gather every species in the world.

[Moksha]

.

But it is a good argument for a non-global flood.

Why obliterate millions of years of evolutionary development that enabled plants and animals to adapt to their surroundings, when you are ticked at a small group of individuals? This question was never addressed in the original Babylonian epic version of the flood. For those in the flat river basin of the Fertile Crescent, inundated by water as far as they could see, such a flood extending world wide seemed plausible.

[Bluejay]

Hi, Snoozer.

I think you, in essence, are asking why God makes us do things that He already knows the answer to. That question applied to other areas of our lives we are okay with but for some reason when it comes to the story of Noah, that is not okay? Why do we do genealogy when God knows who our parents were and their parents etc. all the way back to Adam and Eve?

Well, I addressed this in my last post. If the reason for Noah doing this work wasn’t fact-finding (which I think is safe to assume, because God already has the facts), then the reason must be for Noah’s spiritual or personal edification through the study of biology. This is what I understand the purpose of us, rather than God, doing genealogy, so it makes sense to apply it across.

But, since there is no real indication anywhere in the Bible that God considers biology a major source of spiritual or personal edification, this seems like it would be a deviation from the norm for the God of Genesis.

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With those options you pose, you are assuming that Noah is knowledgeable about what he is doing.

How so?

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Your original options were not whether Noah did any study or not, it was did Noah and company do it on their own or was God involved?

Here’s what I originally wrote:

So, basically, you either (1) agree with me that the distributions of plants and animals today were not based on a study undertaken by Noah, and just thought it would be cute to throw in a "godcuddadunnit" to mess with my mind; or (2) believe that God thinks learning how to catalog organisms is of such great importance for Noah that Noah should at least go through the motions of doing it, even though God had already done all the work Himself already.

(1) Noah did not do the study: God did it all Himself

(2) Noah did the study; God asked him to do it for his own edification, even though He already knew what Noah would find

Again, it was written poorly and I was being snarky, but, if you read it again, you will see that this really is what I was saying.

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But, in the end, my real reason for rejecting Noah’s part in the distribution of organisms today is, as I wrote in my very first post on this thread, that there is no physical evidence for a global Flood, while there is very strong physical evidence for an alternative explanation.

[Bluejay]

Hi, Moksha.

Why obliterate millions of years of evolutionary development that enabled plants and animals to adapt to their surroundings, when you are ticked at a small group of individuals?

Seminarysnoozer seems to believe that God was "ticked" at more than just a small group of individuals. Snoozer has twice discussed the notion that many, or most, organisms (not just humans) had become corrupted, and the few that were saved had not been corrupted.

So, in essense, Snoozer's idea could be seen as God preserving and perpetuating the best of what evolution had produced; thereby not wasting the work of evolution, but just acting as a very severe agent of selection.

Granted, I can't say for sure what Snoozer's views on evolution and natural selection are, so it takes a little projection to get Snoozer's ideas to be saying this, but it's at least compatible with your concern here.

[Bluejay]

Hi, MNN.

Something tells me Moksha OP was tongue in cheek.

But it is a good argument for a non-global flood.

It seems that a large proportion of the membership of this board views a lot of things as tongue-in-cheek.

Maybe, as still a bit of an outsider, I just don't know the board well enough: but this paradigm seems a bit excessive to me.

[Dravin]

Hi, MNN.

It seems that a large proportion of the membership of this board views a lot of things as tongue-in-cheek.

Maybe, as still a bit of an outsider, I just don't know the board well enough: but this paradigm seems a bit excessive to me.

In my experience it's Moksha's (aka Mocks Ya's) posts that are assumed to be tongue in cheek, not posts in general.

[Seminarysnoozer]

(1) Noah did not do the study: God did it all Himself

(2) Noah did the study; God asked him to do it for his own edification, even though He already knew what Noah would find

But, in the end, my real reason for rejecting Noah’s part in the distribution of organisms today is, as I wrote in my very first post on this thread, that there is no physical evidence for a global Flood, while there is very strong physical evidence for an alternative explanation.

I think I was partially confused by what you were saying before and I realize (now) that you are mostly responding to the specific question of the OP, so I appreciate you summarizing the options again.

I would lean to number one of the two options with one small exception. I think it is possible that Noah did part of the study. It kind of depends on what is meant but "...of his kind" in Genesis 7:14. I think it is possible that Noah was instructed to take animals of certain kinds and types that would allow for a redistribution of animals that could later be altered (not by Noah and company) to meet their individual habitats etc. And the word "study" doesn't have to imply knowledge of the reasons why certain animals live in certain places, it could simply mean 'keeping a record'. I think Noah had to keep a record of the animals taken and the numbers and probably was told to take certain types of animals. With that work, he would have to have knowledge of the habitats of those animals etc. But, I don't think he had to know the habitat and genetic history of every creature on the planet. ... in that sense, it doesn't fit with those two options you provided. ... at least in my mind. It was more of a collaborative work and I don't think it was done for the purpose of learning biogeography, only for the purpose of preserving some genetic lines and allowing for the "cleaning up" of the distribution of genetic variation that had preceded the flood according to God's instruction.

Would you think Joseph Smith could translate reformed Egyptian without help from God? And after he got help, do you think he could read and translate reformed Egyptian without help after he finished the translation of the BOM? I don't think so.

Likewise, even if Noah and Company did some biogeography study and work, that doesn't mean they comprehended what was done or how it was done or could reproduce it on their own. So, to say that they couldn't have done it on their own because it would take to long is absolutely absurd like you say it is .... unless they had help from God.

We see help provided in many stories of the scriptures, it wouldn't be unheard of. The Liahona, the urim and thummim, are examples.

[Moksha]

In my experience it's Moksha's (aka Mocks Ya's) posts that are assumed to be tongue in cheek, not posts in general.

Some nicknames feel uncomfortable. While many of my posts have a humorous component, some elements of them can be profound.

[HEthePrimate]

I am against the redistribution of plants and animals--that's socialism! (tongue firmly in cheek)

To answer your question, though, I have doubts that the story of Noah is to be taken quite as literally as many LDS and other fundamentalist Christians do. So no, I do not believe that Noah distributed the animals any particular way.

Peace,

HEP

[Dravin]

Some nicknames feel uncomfortable.

Then you probably shouldn't sign up with them.

[HEthePrimate]

Then you probably shouldn't sign up with them.

Dude,

Did Moksha actually register the nick "Mocks Ya" or did you make that up? If he registered it, your comment is fair, but if not, I object to your making fun of his nickname "Moksha", especially since he said he's uncomfortable. Moksha is a term from the Indian religions meaning "release" or "liberation" from samsara, and I think that's how he intended it.

HEP

[Dravin]

Dude,

Did Moksha actually register the nick "Mocks Ya" or did you make that up? If he registered it, your comment is fair, but if not, I object to your making fun of his nickname "Moksha", especially since he said he's uncomfortable. Moksha is a term from the Indian religions meaning "release" or "liberation" from samsara, and I think that's how he intended it.

HEP

It's also a way to phonetically 'spell' the nick in question. Feel free to object, but from my interaction with Moksha he isn't making an esoteric religious reference.

Edited July 12, 2010 by Dravin